The Dangers of Clutching Straws

 

(or "If You're Right You're Right, Regardless")

 

Dr. Rueben Ruebenhiemer BA

July 18, 1999 ~ Pickering Standard Church

 

The secular scientists have a term for what we Christians call creation, they call it "The Big Bang." Now while it may indeed have been a big bang, the phrase itself hardly conveys the splendour of stuff appearing out of nowhere as we see in the opening verses of Genesis.

 

Genesis 1:1-3 - In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

 

There is a majesty in these words that cannot be contained within the single phrase "The Big Bang." Imagine, by the power of the voice of God all that is became reality. Yet our scientists, adhering as they do to the theory of evolution, proclaim it merely as a big bang and define all that happened from that point on in terms of what now is. We all know that the theory of evolution states that the time span for all that occurred somewhat exceeds the Bible's teaching of no more than 10,000 years and many theories have been developed by well meaning Christians to reconcile the difference between the reality proposed by science and that of the Bible.

 

One such theory, called "The Gap Theory," postulates that the phrase in Genesis 1:2 "Now the earth was formless and empty" should be read "Now the earth became formless and empty." By so doing they allow all the vast eons of time required by naturalistic theories of evolution to occur in the perceived gap between the end of verse one and the beginning of verse two. Adam, according to Gap Theorists, was no more than a recreation of some already existent being. But this is merely capitulating to science and assumes that science is always right. In truth there is no way that verse two can be rendered other than as it appears in our bibles, even though the NIV does allow the difference in a footnote.

 

Other Christians have accepted the theory of evolution with the provision that it was the mechanism by which God created all that is. Yet the text of Genesis 1 clearly indicates that God made all that is out of nothing other than His spoken word. No indication is given in the Bible that God used natural processes to produce all we see about us today.

 

Still others came up with the idea that God embedded the appearance of age into the universe as He created it. In other words galaxies that are so far away that their light could not have possibly reached us in all the years since creation were created by God with their light already falling on the earth. While this appears elegantly simple it is flawed for some of the objects that fall into this category are exploding stars that have clearly exploded in the past several hundreds of years but which are still so far away that their light could not reach us during the 6,000 years that are believed by Christians to have elapsed since creation. What this means is that God would have been forced to create into His perfect creation a flaw that would not occur for several thousand years in order for its light to reach us at the appropriate time. This clearly flies in the face of theology which teaches that creation fell apart, or began to decay after the fall, and seems to indicate that God might possibly be less that perfectly trustworthy.

 

Christians who have held to the Biblical teaching that the earth is quite young (no more than 10,000 years) have been beset on all sides to give up such a naïve and antiquated notion in favour of what scientists have discovered to be true. But have scientists actually discovered truth.

 

Some years ago two Australian scientists, both of whom accepted the Biblical understanding of creation, proposed a remarkable theory. This theory stated that the speed of light has been decreasing from a near infinite value at creation to the more sedate speed of almost 300 million miles per second that is being measured today. To arrive at this theory they plotted all the measured speeds of the past couple centuries and came to the conclusion that the decrease was occurring.

 

When I, Rueben Ruebenhiemer, first heard of this I was amazed, astounded, and delighted. Here at last was the proof that I had been seeking to refute my secular colleagues. Finally I could approach them with dignity and with confidence say "The world is but 6,000 years in age!" And they would be unable to refute my proclamation and would finally yield in humble surrender to the God who made us all. Alas this was not to be. When I came upon them with my evidence marshalled to beat them into submission they but laughed at me, as I had at them for so long when the showed me bone after dusty bone and proved by them evolution. They held to their beliefs just as strongly as I held to mine and no one moved either way.

 

Lately, however, the theory of which I have been speaking has been shown to be possibly in error by both secular and Godly scientists. It seems that these two men had fudged the figures somewhat to arrive at their convenient result. Now the evolutionists have one more laughable incident in their collection by which to ridicule we who believe the earth is young and created by God. This has not, however, changed what I believe to be true and it should not for you as well. Our basis for truth is not based on man's interpretation of what he sees around him but instead on the words of the Almighty God. If the Bible states explicitly that the earth is young then it must be so, even if we cannot understand how.