We continue our series on questions and answers today on the Amazing Facts' broadcast. Our listeners have been writing in a great deal during this past month and asking some very interesting questions about certain texts of the Bible. We are trying to answer all of them. We are working just as many as possible into these special broadcasts dealing entirely with questions and answers.
Here is a question that has come to us about the age of the earth and the evolutionary theory. Now we have had a great deal to say about this on the broadcast and this listener wants to know how can we be sure that the days of creation week were not long periods of time, perhaps even a thousand or more years. Well, this is certainly a good question because there are multitudes of people and many scientific authorities who actually believe that those days of creation week were long geological periods of time. Now, there are a number of reasons why it could not be. We will deal with a few of them very briefly in answering this question.
First of all, the Hebrew word for day is "yom". Throughout the Bible, when this word "yom" is used in relation to any specific number such as first, second, or third, it always has reference to a literal solar day. In other words, "yom" is never used with a numerical designation anywhere else in the Bible except in reference to a twenty-four-hour day; therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that it is so used in dealing with the first, second, and third days of creation also. In the second place, according to the Bible account, every day of that first week was made up of darkness and light and evening and morning. So what ever length of day that might have been, it was composed of half darkness and half light. I'm sure that we can all agree on that. Now if we suppose that a day was a long geological period or even one thousand years in length, it would mean that five hundred years would be light and five hundred years would be darkened. Immediately we can see how impossible it would have been for any living vegetation to survive such a long period of darkness. There would have been absolutely nothing left alive at the end of creation week.
Now the third reason we know that these were not longer periods and irregular solar days because the grasses, herbs, and trees were created on the third day and the insects on the fifth day. All of us are acquainted with the fact that the bees and insects are absolutely necessary for the process of pollination which reproduce the flowers and the grass. Had those days of creation been long periods of time, none of the flowers could have possibly survived until the bees were created on the fifth day. Alright now, I believe that is easy for us to understand. There had to be a very close continuity here between the creation of the insects and the creation of the flowers. In the fourth place, Adam was created on the sixth day and lived through the rest of that day and the seventh day also of that first week. Now had those days been long periods of time, Adam would have been many thousands of years old before he died, yet we are plainly told in the Bible that he was only 930 years of age when he died. Thus, we see that to be consistent with the Bible record, we assume that those days were actual literal solar days of time just as we know them now. In fact, there is no reason to believe that they were any longer in length.
One other point that we are noting as we are passing along and that is concerning the Sabbath Day. In Genesis 2:1-3 we read, "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them and on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made." Later in Exodus 20, God actually included the Sabbath commandment as one of the Ten Commandments. He commanded man to keep the sabbath day holy; "six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God." Then He goes on to tell why it's the sabbath of the Lord. "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." It would have been completely inconsistent for God to command man to keep every seventh day, every literal seventh day in honor of the creation week if that work had not been accomplished in six literal days. There would have been no meaning at all in resting every seventh day if the work of creation had been accomplished over long geological periods. The reason God commanded man to keep every seventh day was to remember that God had created everything in six days. Friends, these five or six strong reasons are quite enough to convince us that the making of this world and its creatures was completed in the first seven days of time.
Alright, here is the next question. "Do you not believe that science and the Bible agree? Why then can you not accept the scientific facts of evolution?"
Well friends, I do accept all scientific facts and believe that they do agree perfectly with the Bible. It is the misinterpretation of those facts which creates the problem with evolution. The evolutionary scientist ascribed all of the order of our universe to a blind operation of unintelligent force, just as though I should put all the parts of a fine wrist watch into a box and then shake them up and just keep on shaking them until finally they come together and form a beautiful, perfectly operating watch. Now you and I know that that could never happen, of course. Everyone knows that a watch will not go together without a plan and without the use of energy intelligently directed. Even though all the parts are available and you could just shake it and go on shaking it for a year, for a hundred years, and a thousand years, and even a million years and still you wouldn't get a watch put together by itself.
Take the revolutions of the earth around the sun. If the sun were a little heavier and the earth were traveling no faster than it is now, the earth would be pulled into an elliptical orbit which would bring it so close to the sun that all life on this earth would be extinguished. Essentially the same thing would result if the velocity of the earth were decreased. As it is now the earth is traveling at the rate of about 18 1/2 miles a second. If it were slowed down to 14 miles a second, we would be pulled in so close to the sun as to annihilate life. On the other hand, if the velocity were increased to 26 miles a second, the earth would go off into space away from the sun and never return. Strange isn't it that our earth should develop just the right velocity to compensate for the sun's pull on the earth, and yet keep us at the right distance so that life continues. Of course, that might have been accidental, friends, but do you think so?
However, almost the same thing is true with respect to the moon which is circling the earth. It maintains an orbit which keeps it the proper distance from the earth. Strange that two accidental happenings should be that closely related, isn't it? Now a series of accidents begins to look like a master plan, but a master plan would involve a planner, of course, and so that means, friends, there has to be a God. A supreme being that regulates and controls all of these tremendous things of nature.
Now, one of the important concepts of physical chemistry is that of entropy. You may not understand what that means, friends, but it is a word which actually describes the degree of disorder in a system. One of the principles states that the entropy of a system tends to increase. To use a simple example, if you have a poem set up in type and you shake the type, you get a more disorganized arrangement and not a more sublime poem. You can understand that, of course. In order to get less entropy and a more orderly arrangement it is necessary to use intelligent force directed into making something better and more organized. Now if the solar system is disturbed, it will not make a better arrangement, not of itself, but a more disorderly one.
But I hear somebody say, "Well, time has been limited; listen, anything can happen if time is given to be a factor." Well, try shaking a board with a fount of type until the type spells out all of Longfellow's poem of "Hiawatha", for example. Time is no factor, my friends. Just keep on trying, but entropy increases with time. In other words, disorganization increases. Spelling out the poem would be a decrease in entropy and contrary to all scientific principle. This poem is simple compared with the complexities of nature or of the human body. If it can't happen with the poem, how could it happen that the universe is so well organized? What happened to all the unworkable combinations?
What about the complex relationships in our body? Take the case of clotting of the blood. If a person's blood does not clot, he has very little chance of survival. Suppose that at some time or other, man or his predecessor if we accept evolution, had no blood clotting mechanism. A minor wound, of course, would cause a man to bleed to death. However, the blood clotting mechanism is a very complex one and if one step is missing, the blood will not clot. It is very, very complicated. The liver has to produce certain substances and they synthesize with other substances so that the little platelets of the blood begin to congeal and form blood clotting. Now friends, how did the liver know that it was supposed to produce these different substances to prepare for an emergency it had never experienced before? Let's assume there was a man back there who needed this wonderful process of blood clotting. Maybe this was a process of evolution and the blood needed to begin clotting so that man could survive. Well now, how did the liver know that it should start producing these substances that would cause the blood to clot? Suppose these blood platelets should rupture in the arteries and veins and start the clotting reaction? Then what? Provision has been made for this by means of an inhibitor. For every step in the reaction, there is a reactive enzyme which becomes activated and begins to dissolve the clot; leaving the clot in an artery, of course, would cause death.
But how did all this system of counterbalances come about? A human being could hardly develop this complicated system because if it were not present, the individual would bleed to death if he were just slightly wounded and if he were not wounded, the series of reactions would not be necessary. So what I'm saying, my friends, is this, no individual could anticipate the emergency that would end his life and be able to devise such an elaborate means of counteracting it. So the first man who needed to have blood clotting would have simply died because he would have bled to death and there would be no future generations at all and no opportunity for any kind of evolution even.
Well, these are wonderful facts, dear friends, and they show us really that evolution is not a fact at all. There is nothing proven about it. There is nothing scientific about it at all. It has just been assumed and presumed by men who will not accept the plain teaching of God's Word. The Bible is clear in telling us that man was created in the image of God. He was made upright in the very beginning. There was no process of long evolution over a period of millions or billions of years. No integrating form has been found between different families. Every animal falls into a category of a specific family unit and there is no half-way combinations of the animals. They all belong to one or the other. So evolution, my friends, is not as scientific as it appears to be. Some of its most fundamental assumptions are diametrically opposed to the very principles of physical sciences and even of chance. Then why has evolution received such universal acceptance? Well, it is because man has rejected the idea of a creator and has insisted upon finding some other explanation which does not involve a supreme being and an admission of a superior intelligence. But may God help us to take the Bible in its simplicity.