In our last broadcast, we introduced the subject of evolution, and we promised to tell you today God's answer to evolution, to give the most authoritative explanation yet of evolution. We found yesterday, of course, certain basic tenets of the evolutionary theory. We told about three things that must be true, and must be proven true, before the theory of evolution can stand any test. We discovered that all three of those contentions of the evolutionists fell flat, they didn't hold water, they were not scientific at all. In fact, the entire theory has been proven absolutely unscientific and untrue.
You know, friends, the great God we serve has given an abundance of evidence in science of the power of God. You take, for instance, the law of gravitation. How is it that the sun and earth attract each other through ninety-three millions of miles of space? There is nothing between them. We know they do attract but we don't know how. The best answer, I think, is in Colossians 1 where it says that through Christ "all things consist," or hang together, that is the actual meaning of the Greek word.
A remarkable interview took place a few years ago dealing with this subject of the power and majesty of God. The man interviewed was Dr. Willis R. Whitney, Vice-President of General Electric in charge of scientific research. Here is the news account of that interview. "We have our theories, said the scientist, but can't prove them." He picked up a small bar magnet from his desk. "Bring this near to a steel needle and the needle will leap to the magnet. No one knows why but we have worked out elaborate explanations. We speak of lines of force and we draw a diagram of the magnetic field. We know that there are no lines there and field is just a word to cover our ignorance." Then he laid the magnet over a wooden vase in which was imbedded another bar magnet and the other magnet floated in space about a half inch above the vase. "What supports it? Sir Oliver Lodge says it's the all-pervading ether, but Einstein denies that there's any ether. Which is right? I say the magnet floats in space by the will of God. The magnet repels another magnet by the will of God and no man today can give a more precise answer." "What do you mean by the will of God?" I asked. "Let me answer that with another question. What do you mean by light?" shot back the scientist. "The beam of light comes speeding from a star traveling hundreds of years and finally it reaches your optic nerve and you see the star. How does it do that? We have our corpuscular theory of light, our wave theory, and now our quantum theory, but they're all just educated guesses. About as good an explanation as any is to say that light travels by the will of God. The best scientists," he added, "have to recognize that they're just kindergarten fellows playing with mysteries. Our ancestors were and our descendents will be also." Well, friends, there it is, coming from a great scientist.
The study of the development of an embryo shows the marvelous plan of nature. The embryo will develop just in the right way. When the nerve cells begin to grow, they travel with uncanny accuracy exactly to their appointed place in the body of the developing embryo. All these things point to a great designer in nature. Sir William Dawson, President of Yale University and noted geologist, admitted, "I know nothing about the origin of man except what I'm told in the Scriptures that God created him. I do not know anything more than that and I do not know anyone who does." So, friends, we see beyond any question that true science confirms rather than refutes the Bible story of creation.
Charles Darwin in his book, DESCENT OF MAN, discusses the thought at length as to where man might have made his appearance in the dim ages past. Then he adds this, "But it is useless to speculate on this matter." Well, friends, I'll say the same thing. I only wish Darwin had realized how useless such speculation was before he unleashed his godless theory to prey on the world. I wish he had thought of that before his idea had robbed millions of youth of their faith and left them cold and disillusioned. I wish he had thought of it before the wave of crime and juvenile delinquency began which can be traced in large measure to the results of his theory. The majestic words, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," found in Genesis 1:1, are still the best explanation of life in existence. They express the most sublime elements to be found anywhere in philosophy.
The way this creation came about is explained in Psalms 33:6 and 9. "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth, for He spake and it was done; He commanded and it stood fast." Why the very Word of God caused the worlds to come into being. Even modern physics believes matter and energy to be interchangeable so what could be more reasonable than the very power of God brought the worlds into existence. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the One who died on the cross to pay the price of our sins, was the active one who performed the creation of the world. In John 17:5 we read that He was in existence with the Father before the world was.
Now notice in Genesis 1:26 and 27, "And God said Let us make man in our image." Why is the plural form used here? Friends, it is because Christ worked with His Father in the creation. We read this in John 1:1-3. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." That is Jesus. He was the Creator. The fact that Christ was the Creator is further confirmed by the words of Hebrews 1:1, 2. "God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days, spoken unto us by His Son whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds." So there is no question about it, friends, God and Christ are eternal; they are powerful; they formed life in the beginning; and it is to them that we owe our existence.
God desired that His people should always remember with gratitude His creative power. By remembering this, they would also remember the moral law of conduct which God laid down for His children. It would remind them of the Creator's power to create a new heart within us to take the place of the old sinful heart. Looking down across the centuries, God could see the dangers of forgetting Him through Godless philosophies and theories. Consequently, He made provision for men to remember Him and His creative power by setting aside a memorial of His work. At the end of six days of the creation week, the Lord looked upon His handiwork and realized that it was very good. Then, He instituted the Sabbath as a perpetual reminder of His love to all the human family. This is recorded in Genesis 2:2 and 3. "And on the seventh day God ended his work which He had made and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made and God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because that in it he had rested from all His work which God created and made." The Sabbath was thus given at the very time of creation. God sanctified it. To sanctify means to set apart for holy use. Therefore, the Sabbath was set apart for holy use even before sin came into this world.
My friends, the Sabbath is God's answer to evolution. The seven-day week which it has commemorated and kept in existence is not based on any movement of the heavenly bodies. There is only one logical explanation of the fact that a seven-day week has come to us through history and has been known among all peoples of the earth. That explanation is that God created this world in six days and rested the seventh and commanded that every seventh day after that was to be kept in His honor. Evolutionists are at a loss to explain the seven-day week. The Sabbath has always been kept down through history. When the children of Israel were going to leave Egypt, Pharaoh complained that Moses made them rest. The original Hebrew word is Sabbath. In other words, Moses led the people to better Sabbath observance before he ever led them to liberty.
In Exodus 16 it is clearly shown that the children of Israel knew about the Sabbath before the Ten-Commandment law was given from Mount Sinai for they were told not to gather manna on the Sabbath day. Then came that majestic hour when God gave His law with His own voice from the heights of Sinai and later wrote it with His own finger on tables of stone. In the very heart of that Law was the Sabbath commandment given in Exodus 20:8-11. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work, thou nor thy son nor thy daughter nor thy manservant nor thy maidservant nor thy cattle nor thy stranger that is within thy gates for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day, wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath Day and hallowed it."
So solemnly is the warning given concerning the necessity of Sabbath observance that in Jeremiah 17:19-27 God's people were told that their fate and their future depended upon their faithful observance of the Sabbath. God warned that if they failed to keep the Sabbath, the city of Jerusalem would be burned. The actual destruction of the city in 70 AD was a grim reminder of the prophecy of Jeremiah. The Sabbath, of course, was kept by Jesus. In Luke 4:16 we read that it was His custom to go to the Synagogue on the Sabbath. In Mark 2:27 He claims the Sabbath as His special day and tells us that it was made for the whole human race. In Matthew 24:20 He warns His disciples concerning the destruction of Jerusalem which was to take place forty years later. "Pray ye that your flight," from the city, that is, "be not in the winter neither on the sabbath day." So Jesus actually urged his disciples to pray for forty years so that the sanctity of the Sabbath would not be marred for them on the occasion of the destruction of Jerusalem.
Not only was the Sabbath observed by Jesus, but it was observed by the apostles. Acts 18:4 shows us that their manner or custom was to worship on the Sabbath. Acts 16:13 shows that it was the case even when they weren't meeting in the Jewish Synagogue, when they were over in a Gentile land, in Greece. Acts 13:42 tells of an instance when all Jews and Gentiles alike met with the disciples several times on the Sabbath. And in the writing of the Apostle Paul in Hebrews 4:9 after he had been discussing the Sabbath, he says, "There remaineth therefore the keeping of a Sabbath unto the people of God." (That is the marginal reading.)
And so, my friends, a final text in Isaiah 66:22. The Sabbath will remain so long as the earth stands for it will even be kept in the new earth. Listen! "For as the new heavens and the new earth shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass that from one new moon to another and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord." So there you have it, friends. The Sabbath is eternal. God gave it to remind men of His power as the creator. So that they would not begin to question that creation account in Genesis, and if men had always kept the Sabbath, there would be no evolutionists now, no atheists, no agnostics in all the world. And so God is trying to call people back to the Sabbath, back to His law again, so that all this infidelity can be brushed aside and men might once more serve the true and living God.