How Did We Get Here?

PASTOR ROSS: Good evening, everyone. Welcome again to the Ultimate Purpose where we’re looking at what the Bible has to say about life’s big questions; where do we come from, why are we here and where are we going?

I’d like to welcome our local audience here again at Southern Adventist University and those also who are watching via satellite across the country and around the world. Thank you for joining us for this interactive study into God’s Word.

Now, before we actually get started with the presentation portion of the program, we want to make this as informative as possible and so we’re needing your participation. If you have a Bible-related question, we’d like to hear from you.

You can send us your Bible question via text message. And we’re going to put a number up on the screen for you and if you have a Bible related question, you can text us and the number is 931-683-9887. That’s 931-6-Text-Up. And we’ll try to answer as many of your questions as possible as we go through the series.

We also have a book that goes along with each of the presentations; it’s entitled Dare to Follow. And for those of you who are watching us, you can go to the Amazing Facts website, just www.AmazingFacts.org, and you can click on the link that says Ultimate Purpose and learn how you can receive the book.

For those of you here in our audience, please be sure to visit the Amazing Facts table as you exit this evening to find out how you can obtain your book as well.

Now, the question that we’re considering this evening is Where Did I Come From? Where Did Life Come From? And we went out on the streets and we asked just various individuals that question, Where Does Life Come From? And here’s some of the responses that we got. We’ll pay a video clip.

‘Well, I believe in reincarnation, so life comes from, you know, the past and living it over.’

‘Life comes from God. He’s the one that gives you -- the Bible says He gave you breath.’

‘The earth.’

‘Life comes from the Creator.’

‘I definitely have a creationist-type of view for life and at least how the world started and everything. So I definitely would say God.’

I’d like to invite Pastor Doug Batchelor, President of Amazing Facts, to come out and join me on stage and we’re going to take a few moments to look at some of the questions that have been texted in. Good evening, Pastor Doug.

PASTOR DOUG: Good evening, Pastor Ross. Hi, friends. Good to be here.

PASTOR ROSS: All right. Well, let’s begin with our questions for this evening, and the first one is a text question and it’s this ‘How do I know God has not given up on me because of my past?’

PASTOR DOUG: Well, that’s an important question. Of course, if all of us were to ask that question, we’d all have reason to think God gave up on us, because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Meaning, as soon as you reach the age of accountability, virtually everybody has sinned and we all could worry from, you know, 12-years-old onward or whatever that age is for the individual. Oh, can I be forgiven? I’ve got this past.

And I’m saying that somewhat facetiously because here I am 55-years-old, and when I hear university students expressing concern that their burden of guilt from their past is going to separate them from God, don’t think that you’re a better sinner than God is a savior. The reason Jesus came is to save us for our sins and if His sacrifice was effective enough to cover the sins of the entire world, then I suspect He is enough for you, too.

And so whenever you’re willing to genuinely repent and come to God, He’s willing to receive and to forgive you.

PASTOR ROSS: Our next question is a video question and we’ll take a look at that.

‘Pastor Doug, I have a friend who’s completely rejected Christianity and turned toward Wicca and paganism. What would you say?’

PASTOR DOUG: Well, that’s sad that you’ve got a friend that’s turned away. You know, if a person has known the truth and they turn away from the truth, it tells us in the First Book of Peter that a group of people can sometimes be harder to reach, but it doesn’t mean they’re unreachable.

I mean, you’ve got examples in the Bible of people like Peter that at one point denied the Lord and then they were converted. Or Solomon who was led away from the Lord by his Pagan wives, but then he repented when a prophet was sent to him and that’s how you get the Book of Ecclesiastes.

And so even after a person drifts away there’s really three things you can do for somebody that you love that has rejected Christianity, and whether they’ve gone off into being involved in Wicca, which is, you know, a pagan version of witchcraft -- if you’re lost, you’re lost, right?

I mean, you know, you could be a nominal Christian; it’s almost even more dangerous for a person to be lost in church because they can have just enough Christianity to deceive themselves. At least if a person’s off in paganism they’re not kidding themselves. They say, well, I have nothing to do with Christianity.

But there’s three things you can do to reach your friends. Pray for them; and I’m not saying that as it’s some passé powerless thing. Prayer is very powerful. Be a good witness for them. And if they’re open, try to share information with them in a tactful, loving, winsome way. Say, you know, I’ve got something I’d like to you read or consider, could I talk to you about that? I found a great study in the Word of God; can I share that with you?

And you know, how much a person is willing to listen or not to listen, but if you can engage them, if you can share information, do that. Be a good witness, pray for them, and then put it in God’s hands. That’s really all you can do.

But all of us know people that maybe knew the truth that wandered away. And they need a little extra prayer.

PASTOR ROSS: Our next question is a text question that came in. Last night you spoke about what is truth and this is a follow up on that.

‘Can there be more than one truth?’

PASTOR DOUG: Well, we’re right now not far from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and it is true I could get to California going east. And it’s also true I can get to California going west. But I will never get to California going north and south. See what I’m saying? So if you want to, you can create a complex answer out of that, but California hasn’t moved. The truth about the longitude and latitude of California hasn’t changed.

And so in that respect, truth is absolute. Sometimes people approach it differently, but the truth doesn’t move. When you’re flying from point A to point B, point B is going to stay point B. There’s a lot of different circuitous ways you can get there, but the truth doesn’t change. Mountains might move, rivers might relocate, the truth doesn’t change, and God said I am the Lord, I change not, and Jesus is the truth. Amen.

PASTOR ROSS: Our next question is a text question as well. It says,

‘How can I regain a love for God after my heart has been hardened?’

PASTOR DOUG: Well, that’s similar to that question about a friend who’s wandered away. You know, but the Bible talks about the new birth. Everybody that comes to the Lord really has a hard heart. Because the new covenant and the new birth, the promise is, I’ll make a new covenant with you, I’ll take that heart of stone out of your flesh and I’ll give you a heart of flesh.

And when we pray and ask God to give us his spirit and help us to experience the new birth -- and this is something worth seeking after, this is something worth asking for, this is something worth knocking on heaven’s door, it’s something that’s worth pursuing.

You know, love wants to be pursued. I still am of the persuasion that girls are different than boys. I’m old fashioned that way. And I think that a girl, if a boy has taken an interest in her, she will appreciate being reminded that he’s interested. Assuming she’s interested in him. And even though Karen and I have been married for many years, she doesn’t ever get tired of me showing an interest. And she may want to go for a walk with me, but it means so much more to her if I say would you like to go for a walk? Just that I’m pursing her.

Well, you know, God wants to be pursued. God wants to be wanted. God is not going to force himself on you; He wants to know that you really want Him. Whenever anyone asked Jesus to leave, he didn’t bother them anymore. But whenever they asked Him to come in, He came into their hearts, He came into their homes, He came into their lives. Seek after God. What can be worth more than having God in your life? And He will soften your heart. He’ll give you a new heart.

PASTOR ROSS: You know, following up on that, Pastor Doug, after we hear the question of well, maybe I’ve committed the unpardonable sin; my heart is just so hard that God can’t reach me. And we hear that question on the radio program. People will call in and say, ‘I think I committed the unpardonable sin.’

Now, we know if someone even is wondering whether they’ve committed the unpardonable sin, they haven’t. It means the Holy Spirit is still speaking to their hearts. You wrote a book not too long ago dealing with the subject about the unpardonable sin.

PASTOR DOUG: Yeah, we get this question all the time and it really concerns me, especially when young people call our radio program. We do a live program on Sunday nights. And they say, Pastor Ross, Pastor Batchelor, I’m afraid that I’ve gone too far, God was talking to me about this problem in my life and I ignored Him and ignored Him and ignored Him and now I don’t hear Him talking to me anymore and I think I may have grieved away the Holy Spirit and there’s no hope for me. And usually the very fact they’re concerned about that is the Holy Spirit still in the background tugging on their heart.

And so, yeah, if a person wants to know more about that, we explore that. We don’t want anyone to think God’s given up on me, I should stop seeking Him. The devil wants you to think that.

PASTOR ROSS: There’s a new book, take a look at the website, it’s -- the book is entitled Beyond Mercy and you can learn more by going to the Amazing Facts website. Just AmazingFacts.org and you can type in there Beyond Mercy and you can actually read it online at the library there. So Beyond Mercy, go to AmazingFacts.org. We have another video question we’ll take it at this time.

‘Pastor Doug, some psychologists have proven that a Christian’s dedication to God has actually improved their brain pattern making them more intelligent. But some psychologists have said that this is only psychological and that God is not an actual being and it’s as if we had just a relationship with a best friend. How can we disprove this and how can we make God an actual being, not some psychological entity?’

PASTOR DOUG: Well, if I were to summarize and simplify that, how do you know that God is not just something you’re imagining and you’re dealing with reality; it makes it easier for you to have faith in this superior being, otherwise how could you cope with the uncertainties of life, and so if it works for you, great, if it gives you some kind of psychological comfort. How do you know beyond that that God is real and it’s not just in your head?

Well, God does make a difference in your mind and in your heart, in your life. But things happen around you because of the faith that’s in you that can’t be explained any other way than the power of God.

How many of you experienced some miracle where you prayed and then something tangible happened as a result of your asking God? I don’t know if -- you may have heard me share the story one time -- I was still a baby Christian, I was hitchhiking across the country, hungry, prayed for food out in the middle of the desert between L.A. and Phoenix, and an orange truck went by hit a bump and three oranges bounced out. Now, was that just my positive thinking?

And I could tell you story after story of these miraculous things that happen when we pray. So prayer is real, and it’s only because those prayers are ricocheting off a very real God that things are happening around us. He’s not just in our head; through what’s happening in our minds and hearts, real and tangible things happen in the world through faith. God is real.

PASTOR ROSS: Well, I think that’s it for our questions for this evening, Pastor Doug.

Again, we’d like to remember you if you have a Bible-related question you can send us a text with that question and the number is 931-6-Text-Up.

We also have a theme song that we’d like to sing at this time and I invite the congregation to stand and our song leaders to come up. We’re going to be singing just the first verse of Higher Ground.

PASTOR DOUG: Let’s pray before we begin our program.

Loving Father, we just thank you and praise you for the many blessings that you send. That you do speak to us through your Spirit and through your Word and that you will guide us if we seek you to know what the ultimate purpose of life is. Lord, we invite your presence here in a very special way right now. You promise that when we come together in your name and we come seeking you, that you’ll be in that place. We trust that you’re here now, Lord. Through your Spirit, I pray you’ll not only speak to every heart; be with me as I speak, Lord, and I pray ultimately it’s the truth that is heard. Because we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Thank you very much. Thank you for our musicians. And once again, I want to thank all of you for coming and for the privilege of being back with you here at Southern University.

You know, we put this program together because my heart really goes out to the most dynamic and kinetically potential age in life is all coalesced right here. You got all the ideas and the energy and the youth and the wisdom and -- well, you don’t have all the wisdom.

My father used to say youth is wasted on the young because when you get old enough to figure out what it’s all about you don’t always have the energy then to do anymore. And so I’d like to invite you to explore with me what the ultimate purpose of life is.

Now, we talked in our last presentation about something very important, what is truth? In order for us to define where God wants us to go with our lives we need to know what is truth?

And then I shared that there’s three really crucial questions that we need to answer if we’re going to be successful in life, and that has to do with where did I come from? What am I doing here? And where am I going?

So we talked a little bit about what is truth. Tonight I’d like to talk to you about where did I come from? And this is especially dear and near to my heart because I’m going to talk to you about evolution and creation. And I should tell you right up front, I’m doing this with my personal perspective. My doctorate is not in biology. I’m going to be sharing with you from personal experience.

Now, I gave a little bit of my testimony last night, and while I went to 14 different schools before I ever got my GED and then went on to college, many of those schools taught evolution. I was a firm believer that we just evolved because I had heard it so many times. But you know, in the back of my mind I found I had to torture my logic to accept it, but I thought everybody believes it. And you’re looked upon as foolish if you don’t believe it.

And even though I had a hard time understanding how you could get all of these intricate organizations and systems and design and structure through random chance, I figured well, I’m just not smart enough. There must be things that the science is just not explaining about how it happens. Or that I don’t quite understand yet.

But you know, then after -- I shared with you I went to the mountains, I started reading the Bible. I came to believe the Bible, and for a while there I tried to mix the Bible with Eastern religions, with reincarnation and with evolution. I said, you know, Jesus had a lot of very important things to say and it think there’s a lot of truth in what He said and so I tried to just make it all fit. But you know, I couldn’t make it fit.

We need to know -- it changes everything to understand where you came from in order for you to know where you’re going. I remember hearing about a family that came home from church one day, and they had a seven year old boy, dad was off doing something, Mom was in the kitchen getting lunch ready, and the boy called to his mother in the kitchen from his bedroom as he was changing after church and he said, ‘Mom?’ ‘Yes, son?’ ‘I heard the preacher say today that we all came from dust.’ ‘That’s right, Johnny, I’m glad you were listening.’ ‘Mom?’ ‘Yes, Johnny?’ ‘I heard the preacher say when we die we’re all going back to dust.’ She said, ‘That’s right. Why are you asking?’ ‘Mom, you better get in here, because I think there’s someone under the bed and I don’t know if they’re coming or going.’

So we need to find out whether we’re coming or going. You need to know something about where you came from in order to know where you’re going to go. Now, I’ll share with you -- I think that’s important. Our message tonight is, of course, how did we get here? How did we get here? Was it just a series of biological accidents? Atoms colliding with molecules randomly that just brought all of what you see around you into existence?

If we begin with the premise, let’s assume that we are here. In other words, I believe I exist. I have some conscious self-awareness that I exist.

There was a time when I was very young where I thought I was the only one that existed, that everyone else was just part of my imagination. But I’ve gotten past that, a couple years ago. And I’ve accepted now that you’re not just part of my little universe, that you all have your own universe. That I exist, that you exist, so let’s assume that we all agree we’re here. Where did we come from?

What you believe about that will affect everything in your world view. Your belief about origins will define every other belief. Your world view about where you came from is going to have a defining influence on every other belief. Let me give you just a couple of examples here.

What you believe about death is going to be affected by whether or not you believe in evolution and creation. If you think we evolved then you think death is the dead end; you just sort of decompose, then that’s it, you cease to exist. What you believe about sin and holiness is going to be greatly influenced by that.

What you believe about marriage -- I’ll never forget, I went to this school; it was called a free school. It was a very liberal school in Waterford, Maine, called Pine Hinge. It has since closed. And just almost anything went. It was like hippy school, is the best definition.

And we were in the cafeteria one day and one of the faculty came in and she was crying. She tried to hide it, and she was pregnant, and she was crying, and I just overheard some of the other girl students were talking to this teacher and saying what’s the problem? And she said -- she just broke down and said my husband’s having an affair with another faculty member. And she said he’s a science teacher and he said this should not bother her because we’re all animals and this is perfectly normal behavior.

And so I remember thinking to myself, logically if I believed in evolution what he was arguing made sense. There’s no morality if there’s no God. Your idea of morality is not worth a nickel more than mine if there’s no God. Who defines what’s right and wrong? Every country in every culture can just make up their own rules.

But if there’s a God and if He is the truth and there’s absolutes, it will define what you think about marriage, whether or not there’s a day of rest, the inspiration of scripture, the words of Jesus. It will affect everything from adultery, homosexuality, suicide.

You know, in countries like Sweden, I’ve been to China, I’ve been to Japan, I’ve been to Russia, I’ve been to -- Russia’s got three times the suicide rate for teenagers as the U.S. You’ll notice as you look -- you can just see all these statistics, they’re right there online about the countries with the highest suicide rate. You’re going to notice something right away; countries that are predominantly atheistic have higher suicide rates. Why?

It’s pretty obvious; if there’s no purpose to life, and if you’re unhappy, and if you can just pull the trigger or jump in front of a train, and it’s all over, why not get it over with? I know I used to think that way. I struggled with suicide for years because I thought, we’re just going to die; if I’m unhappy, it seems like life is unfair, nobody seems to be happy, why not get it over with?

Oh, please don’t ever think that way. And if you’re ever thinking about suicide, think about all the things you’re going to miss if you just hang around one more day. One more day; you’ve got to live one day at a time.

My Mom called me very discouraged, when she turned 40 she thought her life was over. She said, Doug, I just need to let you know I’m thinking about suicide. She wasn’t a Christian. I said Mom, I used to think about, too, but I’m so curious I always thought I’m going to miss something tomorrow and I can always postpone it, but once you do it you can’t go back. She called me later, she said, you know, that really helped me. And praise the Lord, she never did it.

It will affect your views on racism, what you believe about evolution and creation. You know, people talk about Darwin’s book, Origin of Species and they stop right there, but that’s not the whole title of the original book. You know, what the whole title of the original is? The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.

When Darwin went to Australia he was convinced the Aborigines there were somewhere on the continuum of the missing link. That’s where that’s going to lead.

But you know, in the Bible -- let me read something to you from Acts 17. Acts 17, and this is Paul, he’s in Athens. It was the center of learning back in his day and he’s waiting for his friends to come and while he’s waiting he’s wandering around the town and he just saw there were idols everywhere and they had so many idols they made an idol to a god they didn’t know who he was, they just want to make sure they didn’t leave any gods out. Very pluralistic culture back there among the philosophers in Athens.

It says in Acts 21, ‘For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there, spent their time in nothing else but to tell or to hear some new thing.’ Lots of philosophy. You got your truth, I got my truth, there’s nothing absolute.

Then Paul, he stood in the midst of the Aeropagus and he said, ‘Men of Athens, I perceive in all things that you’re very religious for I was passing through and I considered the objects of your worship, I found an alter with this inscription, ‘To the Unknown God.’ Therefore, the one that you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you. I happen to know that one that you don’t know. Let me tell you about Him. God who made the world and everything in it, since He is the Lord of heaven and earth, He doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands, nor is He worshipped with anything since He gives life to all and breath to all.’ And notice, ‘And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell in all the face of the earth and He has determined their pre-appointed times and their boundaries of their dwellings --’ Notice why, ‘-- so they should seek the Lord in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him. Though He’s not far from every one of us. He is not far from every one of us. Every one of us, He’s not far.’

But He says, ‘He created us; we’re caught in this quandary of sin --‘ we talk about that in our next presentation ‘-- and He wants us to seek for Him.’ We need to understand what the ultimate purpose of life is and there’s a lot of confusion. We need to know where we came from.

Paul said ‘God who made all things,’ and he made all nations of one blood. It doesn’t matter if you’re red or yellow, black or white, or pink or purple. If you’re a man, you’re made in the image of God. You did not evolve. You did not come into being over a long period of time.

You know, I told you I went through a struggle. One of the things that changed my thinking was when I moved up into the mountains and I was surrounded by the things that God made, I just started thinking differently.

Everybody is influenced by their environment. When I grew up in New York City -- well, I was born in L.A., lived in Boston, Miami. Most of my education was in Manhattan. And you’re in a city where, I mean, you can’t look out the window and see the horizon. You don’t believe there’s air unless you can see it, and you can see it. And just constant noise, surrounded by buildings of men and flashing lights and everything was all the creation of man.

And when man says yes, we’ve done all this and we are getting more and more god-like and we have evolved and we’ve rised up out of the ooze and you just hear that from everybody and you start thinking, I guess it’s true. But then you move out into the wilderness and you have absolutely no outside human influence and every day I woke up and every night I went to sleep -- I’d go days without seeing anybody -- but I’d look around at the things that God made and I could not shake, I could not shake, the overwhelming evidence that I saw in the things of nature the incredible diversity of creatures.

Even in the desert where I lived, everything from the beauty of flowers -- I used to think, why do I think that’s beautiful? That flower, that sunset, why am I seeing -- why would -- if I’ve evolved, why would I recognize beauty?

And there are just so many things that just told me that there was a God, and the Lord arranged that that was the time in my life I found the Bible. And it was perfect timing.

It wasn’t through going to church or people preaching to me, just the Lord spoke to me through the things he made and through his Word, and I just -- I finally got to the place where I said, I can’t lie to myself anymore. This could never happen by accident.

So I’d like to share with you again -- and you’ve got a lot of people here on the campus that are a lot more sophisticated than I am in the way I present these things, but in layman’s terms I’d like to share with you what made sense to me and why I changed from believing in evolution to believing in a short-age creation. I believe the history of man in this world is about 6,000 years.

By the way, there’s no written history beyond that, so I think that’s interesting. If you think man’s been around a million years, it’s amazing how we’ve rised -- that we’ve achieved so much exponentially in such a short period of time.

And you know what I can never understand? If man is the -- I’m going to do a lot of this kind of wandering, so bear with me. If man is the epitome of sophistication in evolution, how come a zebra can get up and walk within minutes after it’s born and we can barely roll over after months?

If we’re so sophisticated why do we only live three score and ten years, or eighty or ninety if you’re a vegetarian, but a turtle can live 175? Does that sound fair? You know, they got a pike, a fish, a pike that’s lived up to 200 years. A fish. They have no personality at all. With their minds how did -- you know, you wish that you could trade off a little bit of your looks for their lifespan, right? Not much, but -- all right.

There are three major theories about how everything got here. You’ve got life was generated from non-living matter, a biogenesis. You’ve got life was created as described in the first chapter of Genesis, first and second chapters. And then you’ve got life was introduced from outer space, panspermia.

Now, we’ll talk about the first two in a moment, but that last one is kind of intriguing. You know what’s happened, in recent years the overwhelming evidence for intelligent design has confounded a lot of very loyal evolutionists and since they cannot show how life could spontaneously be created, even with all the incredibly elaborate laboratories that we have now, they have not yet created a single cell of life.

You’re going to hear, oh yeah, we’ve proven that life can be formed in a test tube. No, they didn’t. All they did was make some oxidation. There was no life in it, there was no structure, there was no organization, no DNA. So what they did is they said we have a problem; we cannot demonstrate in this world how life spontaneously formed.

So what’s become a very popular theory is they said that’s because we’ve got limited knowledge in this world of other things that are out there. There are other mediums in space, other galaxies and other planets have got the right ingredients and the right combination of events where life managed to form spontaneously there and intelligent life that evolved there came and planted it -- it’s the Star Trek theory -- came and planted it in our world.

That’s very clever. Do you know why? How do you argue with that? If you say aliens brought life here -- well, in one sense I believe it, if you want to call God an alien. You know what I’m saying? It’s an outside intelligence. Why would they agree that it’s got to be some E.T. out there that brought life, and they can’t believe God did it? You see what I’m saying? That doesn’t make any sense.

I’ll tell you what’s at the heart of this; sin. That’s right. Everybody’s got two options. Everything that you see going on in the world that’s observable around us, it either happened by accident or it happened by plan. If it happened by accident then there is no planner and then there’s no meaning, there’s no purpose.

But if it happened by design in an intelligent creator that would mean that there is a supreme power that we are all accountable to. Some people really chafe at the idea there’s an intelligent god we must answer to. You see what I’m saying? And if they are passionate, they are absolutely committed to removing God from the equation.

Because as soon as you say there’s an intelligent God that made everything, then he becomes the ruler, he’s the one in charge, and we have to answer to him and people don’t want to be accountable with their lives because of the sin in their lives. They want to do their own thing. And so that’s something I’ve observed.

Well, I’d like to explore some of the reasons that I think that there is a God and that we should believe in Him and trust our lives to Him. ‘Whether you look down or whether you look up --’ Psalm 8:3, ‘-- when I consider your heavens, the word of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have ordained, David said, what is man that you are mindful of Him? And the Son of man that you visit Him? For you have made him a little lower than the angels.’ Notice that? Man wasn’t made a little above the monkeys.

There’s a big difference between being made a little above a monkey and being made a little lower than an angel. God said we were made a little lower than the angels. We were created really to be the gods of this world. Man was given dominion of this world. We are made in the image of God.

And you know, that does something for your self-esteem. Can you -- I just remember when I used to think I was an animal. I had been raised to believe you’re an animal. And you know what, I acted like an animal. That’s why I was in and out of jail. I was living like an animal, steeling, cursing, immoral, because I thought we’re all just animals.

You know, evolution teaches survival of the fittest and I thought that if I’m more clever than you are and if I can take something from you -- I was a thief. Evolution, survival of the fittest. If I can outwit you, then I’m just superior by design and so you get what you deserve. I mean, that’s the logic behind it. See what I’m saying?

But if there’s a God, then there’s a right and a wrong, and that means God’s watching all the time, and there are morals and there are values. Well, let me give you a few reasons that I believe that evolution is impossible.

And I’m not going to have time to cover them all, but among the reasons are the laws, first and second laws of thermodynamics and entropy. Now, I know many of you are studying these things now and I’ll just give you the very simple definition.

For instance, the first law of thermodynamics, ‘Energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed.’ You’ve all heard that before. First law of thermodynamics.

In other words, there’s only so much matter and energy in the universe and it can be altered. You can turn matter into energy and energy into matter, but you cannot create new energy or matter. Well, we see there’s a lot of energy and matter in the universe.

Here’s the big question; where did it all come from? Everybody, evolutionists, creationists, is going to be stumped at this point and you’ve got two options. You can believe that all of the life and the organization and structure that we see in the universe is the result of ever existing gas particles that somehow collided and began to explode. And through an infinite number of very convenient small explosions or one great big explosion followed by a lot of smaller explosions and things spiraling off into galaxies, that all that you can see, all the interworking perfects systems, the earth, the prefect distance from the sun so that we don’t melt or freeze and the prefect cycle in the ecosystem between the plants and the animals and the symbiotic relationships between everything from ants that take care of aphids and bees and flowers and just so many mysteries out there, you can believe all that is a result of matter that collided and exploded. And you don’t know where the matter came from. Every evolutionist will say, well, something was always there. Right?

Or you can say, I don’t know where God came from, but I believe that there is this ultimate supreme intelligence that lives somehow in and outside of time and space, that is from everlasting to everlasting, and He is much bigger than I am, but He’s made me in His image. And the Bible reveals who He is, and He has feelings and emotion and thought and love. You can believe that or you can worship gas particles. Those are the two options.

Well, seeing all that I see around us coming from gas particles, I don’t think that the laws of thermodynamics support that.

The second law of thermodynamics is in all energy exchanges if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than started with.

In other words, if you take -- go into a room and you set down a cup of boiling water on the table in the room and you set a cup of ice water on the table in the room, given time they’re all going to kind of equal out to room temperature. Everything just sort of flattens out.

Why is the universe expanding and spinning? Why is the sun still burning? Where is this energy coming from that keeps the molecules and the atoms vibrating? Where did it all begin? You know, a garden left to itself goes to chaos, right?

If you’re walking across the desert and I point to a rock along the way, you and I might have a discussion and you might say, well, Pastor Doug, you know, that rock over millions of years, wind and time and rain and just there it is. Sediment and sludge hard hardened in -- all right.

But we’re walking along the trail and I see five rocks that are neatly stacked one on top of another and I say, oh, somebody’s been here, somebody did that. Wouldn’t you probably agree with me? It looks like somebody, because given enough time those rocks would not be stacked up like that, something would have knocked them down, right?

A garden -- if I showed you my beautiful manicured garden with all the rows and the vines trained and the weeds pulled, it’s -- you know when you look at a garden like that where all the flowers are clipped and it’s nice and you uniform, there’s an intelligence involved. That garden left to itself will turn to chaos, entropy.

We see too much structure and organization in the world today, and interworking systems -- even a flower, the design and the symmetry of it, it tells you that there must be an energy that is entering our world giving life and order, or you would just have -- the whole world would probably look like the surface of the moon.

God came to this corner of the universe and he did something with this planet and He’s invested Himself in it. There’s life here that tells us there’s a God there. Amen.

And then you’ve got the amazing complexity in a cell. Just one cell. You know, years ago they used to believe -- I’m talking about just before the time of Louis Pastor, they believed in spontaneous generation. When you asked evolutionists back then where does life come from?

It’s a very ancient theory that life just spontaneously grows out of things, because they would see a dead carcass, and after a while they’d notice that worms began to crawl out of it, and then they’d fly off and they didn’t realize that’s because other flies had laid eggs on that carcass, and so the though there was this spontaneous generation.

Or there’d be a strawberry left in a room and all of a sudden they’d see this little spores growing out, fungus growing out of the strawberry and they’d say, oh, it’s generating life. And Lewis Pastor, he put these things in a vacuum and he said you’re not going to see any maggots, you’re not going to see any spores; these are outside things that are coming in that are causing that growth and that life.

And now we know that -- you know, back then they didn’t have microscopes with the power that we have now, and when they looked at a cell they saw something just very simple. A simple cell. Right now when we look deep into the amazing complexity of a cell -- I think I’ve got a picture of one that’s up on the screen. This is actually a pancreatic cell, a single pancreatic cell.

And there is more machinery in a single human cell than you would have in a Mercedes Benz factory at peak production hours. You think about all the computers and all the systems and all the interworking programs and motors that are going on in there, and the chemicals and workers, one single cell of life has such astronomical complexity to it. The idea that that would come into being through an explosion is really an insult to logic, in my opinion. I know you may disagree with me and I’m just telling -- this is my opinion.

I’d like to illustrate that, briefly. And I think I’ve got a volunteer somewhere here that likes cooking? Okay. Would you mind coming up for -- come on up real quick here. We’re going to -- I want to try and illustrate that -- any of you like eggs? You like eggs? Cholesterol’s not good for you. Okay. We got a microwave here. Have you ever microwaved an egg before? All right. Come on over here, and you’re Hailey; is that right?

HAILEY: Yes.

PASTOR DOUG: Okay. All right. So we’ve got some eggs in the bowl there. Why don’t you go ahead and pick an egg there. There’s no trick. Just -- they’re all -- these are all just your average everyday hummingbird eggs. And those hummingbirds, I’ll tell you, are very happy right now. All right.

Why don’t you put that in; let’s cook an egg, okay? And these are raw eggs; they’re not hardboiled. Now, you’ve got to balance it very carefully; there might be -- I think we’ve got a cap to a water bottle in there so that we can have that in there. And I’m sure you know how to program a microwave. Go ahead and shut that. Why don’t we -- oh, just for fun, let’s put it on for two minutes. Those of you on the front row, how’s your insurance? You press start?

HAILEY: Yes.

PASTOR DOUG: Oh, it’s going. I wonder if life can just be introduced? Now, an egg is a simple cell. Well, we heard screams from the balcony. I think we can stop it now. You better help me. You guys like eggs? All right. Let’s see -- oh, let’s do that again. Anyone hungry? Did we just increase the organization and the design? Will a big bang create life? I’d like to give you a gift. No -- here, maybe -- we’ll give you one of our books, Dare to Follow. Thank you very much, Hailey. Let’s give her a hand.

Okay. We can take that away. Well, they say egg is good for your hair. I wonder if it’s good for your hands. I used it on my hair.

Now, I know that’s a simple illustration, but I’ve just never observed where explosions produce a lot of organization and order and design. I also thought that would be very good for you here at school in case you’ve ever wondered if you can microwave an egg. Twenty-five seconds is about all you’re going to get.

The complexity of a cell tells us that these things could never happen by accident. You know, everywhere we look around us we see just incredible organization and design. Now, some are going to say, but Pastor Doug, I believe in a creator, but I also believe in evolution; I think that God created through evolution. Have you heard that before?

And you know, I don’t want to insult anybody here. I’ve got dear friends that believe that, but I would respectfully disagree with them. I don’t think you can reconcile the two.

Some people struggle with the first 11 chapters of the Bible, and they say up until you get to Abraham, God spoke to us through myths. And those things aren’t to be taken literally; they’re just -- they’re symbols, they’re stories. It’s not science. But you’re going to have a problem with the rest of the Bible if you don’t believe in a literal six day creation. Let me just give you a few versus that explain why.

First of all, if you’re going to believe in Jesus, if you believe anything that Jesus says, if you can say I’m a Christian and I believe in God, but I still believe in evolution; do you really believe in Jesus?

Listen to what He says, John 5:46 and 47: ‘For if you believe Moses you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?’ Could that be anymore plain? You say, oh, I love the Sermon on the Mount, but I don’t believe -- you know, Moses was, you know, exaggerating or you can’t really take those first 11 chapters -- he was stretching the truth. Oh really?

The guy who gave us the Ten Commandments that you claim to believe was stretching the truth when he wrote the first eleven chapters? It doesn’t work. You can’t do the two, not in my opinion.

Again, Luke 16:31, Jesus is speaking ‘If they don’t hear Moses and the prophets neither will they be persuaded that one should rise from the dead.’ You’ll probably have problems believing the resurrection, too, if you don’t believe that God can speak things into existence.

You know, one of the reasons that I think people struggle with evolution; it’s the dating methods that give them such a hard time.

Oh, I want to give you some more verses before I get to that. You can’t believe Paul -- I just read Paul in Acts, but here’s another one, Romans 5:14: ‘Nevertheless death reined from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression who was a figure of Him who was to come.’ Jesus. Paul speaks about Jesus as real and he speaks about Adam as real and he said sin began with Adam.

If you think that there were millions of years of animals killing each other and death and mutation and bloodshed and violence and carnivores and then along comes Adam and he sins; the Bible tells us that sin began with man. It didn’t begin millions of years before man.

And you know, no disrespect; I used to go Catholic school. You know, the Catholic Church for some time now has said that evolution is an option for dedicated Catholics, and I think how do you do that? They said, well, at some point along the way God injected a soul into man.

And I’m just trying to picture that day when man went from being a gorilla to being a human. And you know, you just -- he’s out there dragging his knuckles and then some little spark, he looks up and all of sudden God says, all right, now you’re a man and you’ve got a soul. Up until then you were just an organism.

You know, I just don’t -- that doesn’t really do much for my self-esteem, for one thing. And it just seems very noble and it contradicts the Bible.

I don’t have a problem believing that God can speak things into existence. I think that God made man full formed and that like you buy a computer from the factory, there’s a lot of programs that are preinstalled and running. I don’t know what that perfect age was, but I believe that when God spoke to him he was able to communicate and talk.

Jesus told a man to get up and walk who had not walked in 38 years, and he got up and he jumped. He told a man to see who had not seen in his entire life and all of a sudden he could see.

Because we maybe haven’t seen miracles in the short time that we’ve existed doesn’t mean there aren’t miracles in history. Even in the Bible there were hundreds of years of no miracles, where Bible writers saying where are all the miracles we heard about? And then miracles came again. God can go outside of his own laws and He can do wonderful things that we can’t explain. I believe He can speak things into existence.

Oh, you say, Pastor Doug, but you know, there’s this -- the dating, we’ve got millions of years in the dating. Now, you know, I really hesitate to say this because I am not a conspiracy theorist, where I think everywhere there’s a conspiracy and there are some people smoking cigars in some dark filled room with Masonic symbols that are running the world somewhere. And I’m not one of those people.

But if there was a conspiracy in our world today, you know, what I think that conspiracy is? People who are manipulating the dating of the evidence. I have just seen the most outrageous things being done that it’s the distortion and the twisting of evidence, and there’s a very small elite group that claim that they’ve got all the facts, and they’re telling everybody the same thing over and over again.

And it’s like Lennon used to say, if you tell people a lie long enough it becomes the truth. And it’s like there’s this altered universe that a lot of people are living in. They say, well, Pastor Doug, we know how long it takes light to travel and for us to be seeing the light that’s coming from those solar systems and it had to begin on its journey millions of years ago, how could God say the stars came into existence and the light already be seen by Adam? It would have taken millions of years for the light to reach Adam and -- or billions of years.

People forget the belly button factor. When God made Adam, did he have a belly button? When God made the first trees, did they come with rings already installed? Don’t rings show time? See what I’m saying?

You know, let me look at really quick a few examples why I think the dating dilemma is something that we need to consider. We are told, for instance, that dinosaurs did not live contemporaneous with man, and they lived millions and millions of years -- you know, know how long a million years is? Can you even comprehend how things can change in a million years?

Look at what’s happened in our lives. Just what’s happened to the environment in our time. Millions of years, and they say that these dinosaurs lived 65 million years ago.

Well, back in 1990 in the United States they found -- they were actually dissecting the thigh bone of tyrannosaurus rex and they found what appears to be soft tissue and blood cells. And it just caused kind of an implosion in the paleontology community because there is nothing in their scheme that would explain how you could get a tyrannosaurus thigh bone that is 60 million years old -- doesn’t matter, 30, 60, 100 -- that’s still going to have soft tissue in it. And they were beginning to wonder if they could get some sampling from those blood cells, and they started talking like Jurassic Park, you know, all over again.

By the way, and let me read this to you, this is from National Geographic; hardly a creationist magazine. ‘A tyrannosaurus rex fossil has yielded what appears to be the only preserved soft tissue ever recovered from a dinosaur taken from a 70-million-year-old thigh bone. The structures look like blood vessels, cells, proteins involved in bone formation.’ National Geographic.

Then folks will say, well, we know how old the planet is because we take these ice cores in Greenland and at the Antarctic, and we can look at the different layers in the ice cores and each of those layers represents one year, you know, a season, and so we find that there’s anywhere between 80,000 and 130,000 layers and we know that the polar caps -- and Greenland has been there for 130,000 years, so how can you believe -- that’s the craziest manipulation of evidence I have ever seen.

Let me give you a couple of examples why. I’ve lived in some very cold places and I’ve seen in one snowstorm on top of a car lots of different layers because the snow came down cold, then it got a little warmer and it came down wet, and then it froze during that night and there was a layer, and more snow came down, and you’ll see -- how many of you have seen that before? You know what I’m talking about. Layer after layer, and they’re trying to perpetrate that all these layers represent a whole year.

Now that’s easy for me to say that, but let me give you a little evidence. Any of you ever heard about the Lost Squadron? 1942, six P-38’s were coming from the United States going to the war effort, World War II in Europe ever Greenland with two B-29’s, brand new planes, they got lost in bad weather over Greenland.

They finally realized rather than crash land, they’d circle, they’d do emergency landings, most of them did it with their gear up -- one left his gear down, he flipped. But they were all fine. Twenty-five crew members, they were all rescued, but the war was going on, they were all re-deployed, they left all those planes up there in Greenland up in the middle of nowhere, but they marked the longitude and latitude.

Well they got covered quickly by snow by the time the war was over and they weren’t easy to locate. Years later some aviation enthusiasts went looking for the Lost Squadron because they thought those planes, they were brand new from the factory; if you could find them and recover them and restore them, they’d be worth a fortune.

Well, they spent a fortune finding them. They finally got this ground penetrating radar and they went back and forth. They found out they had drifted about a mile from where they landed because the cap was moving, and they bored down with this hot bore, it was a thing with hot water going through it, and just would bore right down into the ice.

You know, how deep those planes were? 260 feet deep in exactly 50 years, and in that 260 feet, there were thousands and thousands of layers in the ice that evolutionists would say those planes are about 50,000 years old.

Well, they were not 50,000 years old. They actually went down there, they built a cave around one of them, they took it all apart, pulled up at great expense, reassembled it. It’s the only perfectly restored P-38, and it’s -- they call it right now the Glacier Girl. I think there’s a picture of it up on the screen.

So you’ve got -- then the -- you know, they talk about the ice cores. And then you’ve got the animals that they claim are extinct, like the coelacanth, they said that this fish lived between 300 million years ago and became extinct 65 million years ago, and they said it was one of the missing links in the evolutionary process because it had these little proto legs and it would try to walk up out of the beaches onto the land.

And they had this whole scenario written up about the coelacanth fossils that they found, and they’re all extinct now. Until they were fishing off of South Africa in 1938, and you know what happened? The dug up a coelacanth; they pulled up a live one. Since then they’ve found many more.

And you know, the amazing thing was, it was exactly like the fossils that are supposed to be 65 million years ago. As far as I know they’re still alive in the world today.

I remember when I lived on the east coast we’d see the horseshoe crabs come up out of the ocean; any of you ever see the horseshoe crabs? Do you know that the horseshoe crabs, they really need our prayer. Because 100 -- no, it’s 300 million years and they have not been able to get any more advanced. Why do some things just stop?

As ugly as they are you think that they’d want to go at least a little higher, but they haven’t changed. And they call them living fossils, and that’s really an oxymoron.

There’s just -- and then there’s -- you know, they say well, we can date rocks and we use potassium argon, a number of other methods to date rocks, and -- but you don’t hear them confess that they will date these volcano’s and say, yeah, this is, you know, this many million years old.

And then some who challenged these geologists who are testing the rocks, they say, well, we’ve got brand new rock formation here in New Zealand or in Greenland, let’s test that.

And they go to test a new formation there in New Zealand and they actually can -- they had this one formation that was surrounding trees, that they knew the trees had been there for a 1,000 years, volcanic flow had covered these trees that were 1,000 years old and the volcanic rock came up at 465,000 years old according to their potassium argon dating and the other, I understand, very sophisticated methods they use for dating it, but they get these vastly different measurements.

I’ve got a friend who is an evolutionist, worked in a dating lab, and one of the questions people will ask when they submit some artifact is basically how old do you want it to be?

You know, how they tell how old the different layers are in the strata? Based on the fossils that are found there. Do you know how they tell how old the fossils are? Based in the layers where they find them. So it’s kind of like circular reasoning. I could go on and on.

You know, friends, I think there’s just so much evidence, I think there’s evidence -- I’m -- I grew up in New York City. I mean, we’re just surrounded by con artists. I don’t want to be conned. I don’t want to waste my life believing in a god that doesn’t exist, but I can’t escape the evidence.

And I became absolutely convinced that God is real, not only because of the evidence I see in the world around me, but because of what he was doing in my life; answered prayers, his providence. And if there is a God, then he has an ultimate purpose for you.

I think it’s interesting that you can’t find the history of man going back beyond what the Bible says. Oldest trees in the world, you’ve got there in the White Mountains in California where I live, the Bristle Cone Pines. That is a picture of the Methuselah Pine, and they actually had one older but they cut it down by accident so they can measure the tree rings. And they said, oops, that was older.

Now, this one supposedly nobody where it is because they’re afraid, you know, people will flag it and tag it and do all kinds of things.

But it’s interesting that all these trees seem to go back to the time of this great flood. That was one of the things that really impressed me when I lived up in the mountains, I read in the Bible about this flood and I thought, you know, I lived in Nageezi, New Mexico on the Indian reservation at 8,000 feet in the middle of North America and there were sea shells everywhere.

And then I’ve got friends who say you can find sea shells on Mt. Everest at the 26,000 foot level. There are clams that all died in vast volumes; they’re closed, which means they died suddenly. What are they doing there on Mt. Everest?

All around the world, from the Grand Canyon to so many other things that you see, the coal fields and the oil; there’s evidence that there has been a massive global flood. And you know, for years scientist said oh, that’s just -- no, they fairy tale -- Bible, there’s never been a global flood, but the evidence after evidence -- all the fossils are -- things died rapidly.

So finally they said, that wasn’t Noah, it was an asteroid. Well, what did the asteroid do? Big flood. That’s exactly what they say now. They even tell you it landed near -- in the Gulf of Mexico. Have you heard that before? They couldn’t accept there was flood. So once you get past this dating conspiracy then the whole house of cards falls.

For me, you know, what I think one of the most incredible things is -- you’re going to think, oh, Pastor Doug, you’re getting sappy. A butterfly. I mean, just take -- you’ve heard it before -- the Monarch Butterfly.

To me, how you can have this little egg, tiny, almost like a pinhead, underneath a leaf. That butterfly knows that it’s only on that plant it can lay its egg. Where -- how does it know that? Who teaches it that? Out of the thousands of plants in the woods, it knows it’s the milkweed.

That thing hatches out, mom’s provided that it’s born right where it needs everything it needs. It eats voraciously and while it’s eating voraciously, day after day, it’s gaining a lot of weight.

Just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and it’s growing so fast it grows out of its own skin, and it molts and sheds its skin several times and it burgeons out, splits it, and as it comes out of its skin it’s just a bigger caterpillar, and it’s a brighter caterpillar, and it’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger, but then one day something happens and its mind it triggers and it says, all right, this next molt is going to be different.

And it lodges itself underneath a leaf and it turns into a chrysalis and begins to harden. And you know what happens at that point? It basically disassembles itself and it turns into a soup of cells. And it goes from the mush that the caterpillar had inside -- that by the way a bird can’t eat because milkweed is poisonous and so it even protects itself by eating what it eats, but somehow it thrives on it.

Clever; it only took 50 million years for that develop. I’m sorry; I’m just kidding. Someone’s going to turn the channel and just see that part of the program and say I saw Pastor Doug believes in -- I know, I’ve gotten those phone calls before. Someone just flips through and they hear some -- a little of my sarcastic statement and then they go on -- and so it gets the information and it basically decomposes into this virtual soup and those cells restructure and reorganize and they come back together in just a matter of a few days.

And all of a sudden now where it had these little, stubby little rubbery legs, it’s got these elegant long legs and elegant wings and antenna and beautiful coloring on the wings and a proboscis, and instead of now eating milkweed it goes for sweet nectar. It’s digestive system is different. It’s got eyes that are different. It’s brain is different.

It completely reforms itself and it emerges knowing how to fly, and it never gets -- you know, an eagle teaches its young how to fly; they get flying lessons. It emerges knowing how to fly; no flying lessons. Aerodynamic design. Could that be an accident? But wait, there’s more. Get your credit card out, we’ll double -- no.

Then the Monarch, the ones that are born in the Northeast, they are born with the ability to migrate 2,000 miles all the way to Mexico. And they have never been there before; their parents have never been there before because the generations that come back from Mexico, several generations happen along the way back to their ultimate destination in the north.

They don’t know any other butterflies that have ever been to Mexico. They don’t know how to go online and book a trip to Mexico. And somehow they find their way back to this place in these remote mountain woods in Mexico where they spend the winter; it’s called a super generation. They somehow survive. And how can that ever happen by accident?

You know, for me metamorphosis is such a miracle, how God can take something that is -- it’s basically a worm and turn it into this beautiful elegant creature. And what He does for a butterfly, He can do for each one of you.

I know that sounds very simplistic, but it’s a miracle. I can’t explain it, except the Bible tells us that in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. I believe that.

And you know it works for me; my whole world view makes sense based on the Bible, that there is a creator. And I believe that He’s got a special plan for each one of you. He’s got a purpose for your life.

Now, you might be thinking, oh, you know, I’d like to be a little different than I am, I’d like to make some changes. If the Lord cares that much about sheep and birds and dogs and cats and butterfly and worms, would He care about you who are made in His image? Does he have a plan for your life?

Especially when you consider all these other beautiful creatures and things that you see in the world; do you know why He made them so beautiful? Do you know why He made this wonderful world?

The pinnacle of His creation was man, His children, made in His image, because He loves you that much. If you ever want to know what God’s plan is for you, you look back in the beginning in Genesis. God made a beautiful perfect world, and the Bible says everything was good, good, very good. And He wants to take you to another world like that.

But you know, you and I can’t live in that world the way we are now. We need to be recreated. Jesus can recreate us. All things that were made were made by Him, and He says ‘Behold we can become new creatures.’ What He did for the butterfly, He can do for each of you.

Would you like Him to do that for you? Would you like to have a new life, be a new creature? He says he can give you a new heart, and He’s got a plan, He’s got a purpose for you. If He’s going to guide birds and fish and butterflies, would He guide you? Oh, ye of little faith.

Now, I know I don’t have all the answers, and there’s some things that people are going to argue for me -- or argue with me on these issues and I admit I don’t have all the answers. At some point everybody, everybody, evolutionists, creationists, everybody is going to exercise some faith.

Where do you want to put your faith? In an intelligent God who is from everlasting to everlasting, that loves you so much he came into this world to show you what His plan is for you, what His purpose is for you? Or are you going to put your faith in exploding chicken eggs? Really, those are our two choices.

If you’d like to say, Lord, I think I can trust my life in your hands, my purpose in your hands, and I’d like to be recreated, would you like to ask him tonight? Let’s stand together. Ask Him for that new heart and that creative power in our lives, in our minds.

Loving Father in heaven, Lord, we do believe you’re a God of love, we see it when we look up, we see it through a telescope, we see it through the microscope, and even in spite of the trials that we might have in our life there’s still enough evidence that you are a God of love, that you’re a God of infinite wisdom. And there’s some things we can’t understand, but you’ve revealed so much to us.

Help us to believe your Word, Lord. I pray you’ll be with each one of these young people. Pour out your Spirit on this campus, on all who are watching, and in our hearts and make us new creatures just like you, in your image we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.