by
Henry Morris
A
cosmic warfare is raging between God and the devil. Every age, every nation,
has been involved, and we also are involved on one side or the other because,
after
all, these are the only two worldviews. Either we can explain the origin and
development of all things in terms of continuing natural processes or
we
cannot; so the one worldview is evolution and the other one is creation. These
two perspectives embrace everything in the world of sense, knowledge,
and
understanding. We must believe either one worldview or the other; we cannot
really believe both because they are not synonyms, but antonyms. Each is
the
opposite of the other.
The
basic rationale, the foundation of this cosmic conflict, is between these two
worldviews: God-centered or creature-centered. Creator or creature. Creation
versus
evolution. This conflict has been going on since the very beginning in one form
or another. When we evaluate these two worldviews scientifically,
we
find that all of the genuine scientific evidence supports creation but not a
single real fact of science supports evolution.
I
But there's also another way to evaluate this conflict, away that the Lord
Jesus himself gave us. He said, "By their fruits you shall know them. A
good
tree
cannot bring forth corrupt fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good
fruit" (Matt. 7:16-17). We can therefore evaluate these two worldviews
not
only in terms of their scientific validity or invalidity, but also in terms of
the fruit which they have produced. When we do this, it becomes evident
that
the creationist worldview, the creationist tree, has born good fruits and the
evolutionist tree has borne nothing but bad fruits.
The
creationist worldview has produced sound doctrine, good systems, and good
practices. The evolutionist tree, on the other hand, universally has produced
bad
doctrine, bad fruits, bad practices. That may sound like an extreme statement,
but I believe that it can be documented compellingly, in ways even most
Christian
people are not aware of. That's part of what we want to take a look at in
this chapter.
In
support of the thesis that there is a basic conflict involving evolution versus
special creation, or Satan versus God, let me mention a few verses of
Scripture.
The Lord Jesus Christ said himself in John 8:44 that the devil is the father of
liars. He is a liar, he is the great deceiver. Revelation 12:9
reveals
that Satan is the one who has deceived the whole world. In 2 Corinthians 3-4,
we read, "If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost,
in
whom the god of this world, [that is, the devil] hath blinded the minds of them
which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ,
who
is the image of God, should shine unto them." If people cannot understand
the gospel, it's because their minds have been blinded by the devil. He is
the
great deceiver. He appears sometimes as an angel of light and he has so called
ministers of righteousness, but he is basically the deceiver. And as
I
John 5:19 says, "The whole world lies in [the wicked one]." Evolution
is, in fact, Satan's great lie, with which he seeks to persuade men and women
to
abandon
faith in their Creator.
In
reference to the creationist tree producing good fruits, let me suggest a few
things. Are you aware that our nation was founded upon creationism? Our
American
nation, with all of its tradition of religious liberty and freedom, was founded
upon creationism. It's even in the Declaration of Independence,
which
asserts that we have been endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable
rights. And creationism is implicit in the Constitution and in the writings
of
the founding fathers. Even men like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, who were
deists rather than fundamental, Bible-believing Christians, at least
believed
in creation. Thomas Jefferson explicitly rejected the idea of evolution in his
writings. Ben Franklin also said that he believed in a Creator
who
had created the world. So did George Washington and even Tom Paine. The
founding fathers of our nation were practically all creationists, and our
country
was
founded upon creationist principles built around laws which were the laws of
that Creator. Our early schools - not only religious schools, but also
public
schools taught creation when they first came into existence. But it wasn't long
before Unitarians such as Horace Mann and others got control of
the
public school system. And it wasn't too long after that until John Dewey came
along and established evolutionary humanism as the religion of our public
school
system and, with others of like mind, established the American Humanist
Association with its humanist tenets. Since that time our nation and its
schools,
its courts, its media, just about our whole society, have been taken over by
the evolutionary worldview. But the creationist worldview was our
foundation.
The
same thing is true with science. True science does not support evolution;
almost all of the founding fathers of science were creationists. Many people
think
that science came out of the Renaissance, but it did not. Greek philosophy,
which was an evolutionary philosophy, was restored in the Renaissance.
True
science came out of the Reformation when people began to have access to the
Bible and to be able to read and propagate the Word of God. Then came
along
men such as Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle (the father of
chemistry), Pascal, Pasteur, Brewster, and most of the other great founding
fathers
of science. Almost without exception, these men were Bible-believing theists
who at least professed to believe in creation and in Christianity.
They
might have been somewhat unorthodox in various ways, but they all believed in
God as the Creator. They believed in the Bible, they believed in Christ,
and
many said men such as Newton, Kepler, and Clark Maxwell - that they were simply
thinking God's thoughts after Him as they were doing their science.
But
now science has been taken over by the evolutionary worldview by and large. Our
scientific establishment is currently circulating the idea that science
is
a proven fact and everything has to be taught in the light of evolutionism. The
fact is, however, that true science, true Americanism, and true Christianity
are
all based on the foundation of special creation.
Sometimes
we hear people say, "Don't get involved in preaching creation. Just preach
the gospel. It's important to get people saved, not to make creationists
out
of them." In a sense we would agree with that. Our purpose is to see
people come to the Lord Jesus Christ. But we have to realize that Jesus Christ
was
Creator before He became the Savior. And the reason we need a Savior is because
we rebelled against our Creator who is Jesus Christ. "For by Him
were
all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and
invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities or powers:
all
things were created by Him," it says in Colossians 1:16. "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" (John 1:1-3). He is our Creator, and we
don't
really preach Christ without preaching Him as He is. We don't want to preach
another Jesus who is not the true Jesus, as we see mentioned in 2 Corinthians.
We
want to preach Christ as He is, and He is the Creator and the Savior and the
coming King and Lord. That's the full scope of the doctrine of Christology,
which
is founded upon Christ as Creator.
In
reference to Christ's saving in the gospel, the last time and the climactic
time the word "gospel" is used in the Bible is in Revelation 14:6-7,
where
John
says, "I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the
everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth ... Saying, with
a
loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is
come, and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the
fountains
of waters. " That's the final time (of the 101 times) where the word
"gospel" is used in the Bible.
Remember
that Paul, in Galatians 1:8, said, in effect, that even though "an angel
from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached
unto
you, let him be accursed." Therefore, we can be sure that this angel of
Revelation 14 will be preaching the same gospel that Paul preached and the
essence
of the angel's gospel is a command to worship Him who had made heaven and earth
and the sea and the fountains of waters. In other words, worshipping
a
Jesus who supposedly comes into our experience merely through some personal
feeling, or something like that, isn't the way it is. We have to recognize
that
Jesus Christ is the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and all things
therein. In Adam, we have all rebelled against Him and He has pronounced
an
age-long curse on the creation because of man's sin. Death has come in because
of that; therefore, we need a Savior, and the great Creator is the only
one
who can be the Savior. There are two other creationist religions besides
Christianity Islam and Judaism, for example - that are creationist because
they
accept the Book of Genesis as their foundational account of creation. But they
miss the boat when they refuse to acknowledge that the Creator must
be
the Savior, and that He must die and rise again in order to implement His
purpose in creation. Biblical Trinitarian Christianity is thus the only real
creationist
religion. It's basic and essential, then, that we believe in creation.
We
could go on and show that all the other basic doctrines of Christianity are
founded upon the doctrine of creation. A man once wrote me and said, "You
shouldn't
be talking about creation being the foundation, because don't you know that
Christ is the head of the Church?" Yes, Christ is the head of the
Church.
Christ the Creator is the head of the Church. And furthermore, He is the head
of the whole creation, not just the head of the Church. He is the
author,
the finisher, the head, the Alpha and Omega of everything. We need to preach
Him as He really is.
On
the other hand, the evolutionist worldview tries to explain everything in terms
of an eternal cosmos which never was created, never had a creator. The
cosmos,
itself, therefore is the ultimate reality. That's basically what evolution is:
it seeks to explain everything in terms of the cosmos and its processes
and
systems and properties, even though these may be personified in terms of
different gods and goddesses. Basically, it identifies ultimate reality with
this
physical universe. That evolutionary worldview has come to dominate not only
our modem world, but it has dominated the world since time began.
As
far as the present order of things is concerned, let me just read a statement
from Sir Julian Huxley, who might be called the world's top evolutionist
of
the twentieth century until he died a few years ago. He was the first director
general of UNESCO, the main founder of neo-Darwinism, and, along with
John
Dewey, was one of the chief founders of the American Humanist Association.
Having written many, many books, Huxley was a profoundly influential man.
In
one of his books, he said: "The concept of evolution was soon extended
into other than biological fields. Inorganic subjects, such as the life history
of
stars and the formation of the chemical elements on the one hand, and on the
other hand, subjects like linguistics, social anthropology and comparative
law
and religion are studied now from an evolutionary angle till the day we're able
to see evolution as a universal, all- pervading process." In another
place,
he says: "The whole of reality is evolution, a single process of
self-transformation."' So every subject, not just biology and the natural
sciences,
but
the social sciences, the fine arts, and other subjects today are taught within
the framework of an evolutionary premise in our colleges, universities,
public
schools, and unfortunately, even in many Christian schools. Evolution is a worldview,
which impacts every field, no matter what your field of study
may
be.
I
mentioned the American Humanist Association. Humanism is what's really being
taught in our public schools today. Most of the secular universities would
not
acknowledge that humanism is a religion, though some of them do. But basically
this evolutionary humanism is a religious point of view. The tenets
of
the American Humanist Association, which were promulgated primarily by John
Dewey, Julian Huxley, and others of like mind back when they formed the
organization
in 1933, really provide what we find being taught in our schools and also in
the news media today. Whether it's explicit or not, basically
these
tenets of humanism have become the official doctrine of our intellectual world.
The original tenets of humanism set forth in 1933 were combined with
another
manifesto that was given in 1973 and published more recently by the American
Humanist Association in the magazine the Humanist. In a preface to
that,
Editor Paul Kurtz said that: "Humanism is a philosophical religious and
moral point of view as old as human civilization itself.... It has its roots
in
classical China, Greece, and Rome; it is expressed in the Renaissance and the
Enlightenment, in the scientific revolution, and in the twentieth
century."'
And
what is this humanism? First, religious humanists regard the universe as
self-existing and not created. So the first tenet of humanism holds that there
was
no creation; the universe is the ultimate reality. It is self-existing. The
second tenet of humanism states that man is a part of nature and he has
emerged
as a result of a continuous process.' There is no Creator, there is no
creation; everything is explained in terms of evolution. The other humanist
tenets
involve a world government, complete freedom of sex, and all of the other
things that we see causing so much havoc in society today. The late Isaac
Asimov,
who was president of the American Humanist Association and one of the most
prolific science writers of our time, was a bitter opponent of creationism.
He
refused to debate us publicly, but he wrote against creationism vigorously in
his publications. Asimov, who is said to have produced more than 500 books
covering
every field of science, probably knew science as well as anybody. Here's what
he said, in case you have any questions about what humanism really
is:
"I am an atheist." Out and out, he was an atheist. Humanism is
basically an esoteric form of atheism. He went on to say, "Emotionally, I'm
an atheist.
I
don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist. But I so strongly
suspect He doesn't that I don't want to waste my time."' Now if anybody
would
have
any scientific evidence against God, it seems like he would. But he admitted
that he didn't, and if he didn't, then nobody does.
So
people are not evolutionists because of science; scientific evidence does not
support evolution. If anybody maintains that it does, just tell them,
"Well,
show
me the evidence." Science is supposed to be what you can see, but nobody's
ever seen evolution take place. As long as people have been looking at
changes
in biological organisms and other things, nobody has ever seen a new species
evolve. Nobody's ever seen a new star evolve. Nobody's ever seen evolution
from
simple to complex take place anywhere in the whole universe in all human
history, and nobody knows how evolution works.
Charles
Darwin became famous 135 years ago by solving that problem, the humanists
thought, with his Origin of Species by Natural Selection. But as Dr. Colin
Patterson
of England, a great evolutionist, has said, nobody has ever seen a new species
come into existence by natural selection or any other way. Nobody
knows
how it works; nobody's ever seen it happen.' If you go to the fossil record,
there are no transitional forms there.' Evolution is even contrary to
the
laws of thermodynamics, the basic laws of science. There is no scientific
evidence for evolution whatsoever. People don't believe in evolution because
of
science. In spite of science they believe in evolution because emotionally they
don't want to believe in God. They don't want to have this Man to rule
over
them, as Christ said in one of His parables in the New Testament.
Something
which is based on the rejection of the very possibility of a God who creates
and controls His cosmos is bound to create havoc in the universe.
Charles
Darwin ended his famous book, The Origin of Species by Natural Selection, like
this: "Thus, from the war of nature from famine and death the most
exalted
object which we are capable of conceiving, namely the production of the higher
animals, [by which he means man] directly follows." In other words,
man
came about by suffering and death. So suffering and death are basically good
because they produce evolution, a struggle for existence, survival of
the
fittest, natural selection - that's the ultimate good in the world. Of course,
that's exactly opposite to what the Bible says. Darwin says "By death
came
man." The Bible says "By Man came death" (I Cor. 15:21). There
was no death, suffering, or struggle for existence in the world until sin came
into
it
via man. God had to pronounce the judgment of the curse on the creation, which
had been given to man as his dominion. Because of this introduction of
spiritual
disorder, God pronounced a judgment of physical disorder on his dominion, and
there has been suffering and death in the world ever since then.
Stephen
J. Gould, the most articulate modem evolutionist, has insisted in many of his
writings, that "evolution is a proved fact of science," in one way
or
another. This is a litany that evolutionists repeat over and over, as if they
expect everybody to believe it because they say it so often. But then
when
people ask Gould for evidence that proves evolution, he says that the best
evidence for evolution is imperfection in the universe. For example, he
cites
the panda's thumb, which he says he could have designed better if he or an
engineer had designed it. Imperfections in the animal world, he says,
prove
that God didn't have anything to do with creation because God would make
everything perfect .8 However, the fact that God made everything perfect
doesn't
mean it's going to stay perfect! We do have the reality of sin in the world,
and mutations, disease, decay, disintegration, and death because of
sin.
But rather than proving evolution, these imperfections really prove that we are
alienated from God because of sin.
Of
course, this idea of struggle for existence and survival of the fittest has had
a terrible impact on the world as a whole. For example, laissez-faire
capitalism
became the watchword of England, America, Germany, and the western world back
in the nineteenth century. Even many of our conservative political
people
today still kind of stick with evolution because they think that the survival
of the fittest applies in society and in economics today. But we need
to
realize that all of this was based on evolution, too. For example, the great
steel baron, Andrew Carnegie, whom we honor because of his charitable
endowments,
said,
"The law of competition is here, we cannot evade it. No substitutes for it
have been found and while the law may sometimes be hard for the individual,
it's
best for the race because it insures the survival of the fittest in every
department."'
So
let's exploit labor, let's do whatever we have to do. What's good for the
corporation is good for the world. Here's what he also said in his
autobiography:
"I
remember that the light came in as a flood and all was clear. Not only had I
gotten rid of theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth
of
evolution." 10 That was the basis for his actions. John D. Rockefeller
said much the same thing, and so did Raymond Hill, the railroad baron. In fact,
all
the great "robber barons" of the nineteenth century, as many called
them, were basically following Herbert Spencer, particularly with his survival
of
the fittest concept. Spencer didn't believe in child labor laws or anything
like that because he believed the fittest should survive, and that's what
would
contribute to the advancement of society.
Of
course, in Germany, the concept of "survival of the fittest" led
finally to World War I and later to the great racist implications of Hitlerism
and World
War
II. Let me pass along just one statement from an authority, Daniel Gasmann, who
said of Adolph Hitler in his book, The Scientific Origins of National
Socialism,
"(Hitler) stressed and singled out the idea of biological evolution as the
most forceful weapon against traditional religion and he repeatedly
condemned
Christianity for its opposition to the teachings of evolution." Hitler was
a strong evolutionist. For Hitler, evolution was "the hallmark of
modern
science and culture"" He was also an occultist who was committed to
astrology. But basically, he was a Darwinian and an evolutionist and he felt
that
in the struggle for existence among nations, the greater nations would survive.
So it was justified in his mind to wage that kind of war. Even in
England,
Alexander Keith, who was opposed, of course, to Hitler, acknowledged that
Hitler was a good evolutionist and that he was following the principles
of
evolution in his plan for the war.
Communism
also is based on evolution. And racism is completely based on evolution, not on
fundamentalist Bible teachings in the South at all. All the great
evolutionary
scientists of the nineteenth century were evolutionary racists, including
Charles Darwin. You can see that in his book, The Descent of Man,
in
which he makes it clear that there's an ascending order of evolution among the
races. Thomas Huxley said the same thing. All these men of science,
evolutionary
scientists
of the nineteenth century, were evolutionists.
The
same thing applied particularly among the anthropologists, even up to the
mid-twentieth century. Men such as Henry Fairfield Osborn, the director of
the
American Museum of Natural History, believed that the Negro race, for example,
was not even of the same species as homo sapiens. These men of science
said
some terrible things about the supposed "lower races." Of course,
with World War II and Hitler's genocide and racist activities, racism lost
favor
among
scientists and most evolutionary scientists today, of course, are not racists.
Then
we come to the social practices we're so alarmed about today: the drug culture,
abortion, pornography, immorality, and others. If space permitted,
we
could document that all of these are based on evolutionary philosophy. That
doesn't mean that, for example, every young woman who has an abortion or
doctor
who performs one is an evolutionist. People commit sin for all kinds of
reasons. But whenever anybody tries to rationalize these things on a scientific
basis,
they fall back on evolutionism as their rationale. For example, take a look at
this quote reported in the LA Times from Elie A. Schneour, who says
he
is the director of the Bio-systems Research Institute in La Hoya, California,
and chairman of the Southern California Skeptics, which is an affiliate
of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Quoting
Schneour: "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. This is a fundamental tenet
of modem biology that derives from evolutionary theory and is thus anathema
to
creationism as well as to those opposed to freedom of choice. Ontogeny is the
name for the process of development of a fertilized egg into a fully formed
and
mature living organism. Phylogeny, on the other hand, is the history of the
evolution of a species, in this case, the human being. During development,
the
fertilized egg progresses over 38 weeks through what is, in fact, a rapid
passage through evolutionary history. From a single, primordial cell, the
conceptus
progresses through being something of a protozoan, a fish, a reptile, a bird, a
primate, and ultimately a human being. There is a, difference
of
opinion among scientists about the time during pregnancy when a human being can
be said to emerge. But there is general agreement that this doesn't
happen
until after the end of the first trimester."
You
see, the justification some people use for killing a fetus in the womb is that
it isn't really human. If people who propose freedom of choice and abortion
really
believed that this was a human being, then they would have to acknowledge that
killing it is murder. But they don't believe it's a human being.
Their
rationale for saying that is to say that it's going through its evolutionary
history. But the fact is that this recapitulation theory, this so-called
biogenetic
law, was disproved at least 50 years ago, and no knowledgeable biologist or
embryologist would still believe in the recapitulation theory because
it's
completely unscientific. The embryo never does go through a fish stage. It
never has gills or a tail or anything like that.
In
fact, the DNA which programs the whole development indicates that the embryo is
a human being right from the very time of conception. There's no rationale
whatever
in terms of real science to support the idea that it ever is anything but a
human being.
Once
again, that's why I say that all these harmful practices basically find their
rationale in evolutionism. I think we could show that to be true of our
modem
drug culture. You see, Aldus Huxley, Timothy Leary, and others who were the
founding fathers of the modem emphasis on drugs some 50 years or so
ago
said that we've done away with God. Evolution has proved that there is no God,
yet we still need that religious experience. So Aldus Huxley said that
we
can compress an eternity of joy into just a few hours with the materials that
the pharmacologists provide for us." So the drug culture is based on the
rejection
of God because of evolution.
What
about the New Age movement? You've heard of that, I'm sure. The New Age
movement, in all of its multiplicity and complexity, encompasses witchcraft
and
astrology and spiritism on the one hand and the anthropic principal and bio-systems
and biogenetic fields and so forth on the other hand. Various churches,
cultures,
and religions now are involved in some aspect or other of the New Age movement.
Every single one of them have two features in common: 1) their
goal
is a world culture, a world religion, a world government; and 2) they base
their worldview, without exception, on evolution. The patron saint of the
New
Age movement is the Jesuit priest, Teilhard de Chardin.
Marilyn
Ferguson, who wrote The Aquarian Conspiracy, the so called bible of the New Age
movement, polled the leaders of the New Age movement, asking them
who
had been the most influential in leading them to their philosophical position.
By far, most of them answered de Chardin. What was his view? Here's
what
he says in his book, The Phenomenon of Man: "Is evolution a theory, a
system, or a hypothesis? It is much more. It is a general condition to which
all
theories, all systems, all hypotheses must bow, and which they must satisfy
henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light
illuminating
all facts, a curve that all lines of thought must follow.""
Evolution,
to him, is God. Only it's not a personal god, it's a god of nature. It's a
pantheistic god. And, of course, the New Age orbit generally is a
restoration
of ancient pantheism. It sounds a little bit more spiritual to say
"pantheism," which means "all God," or "God is
everywhere," than it does
to
say "atheism," which means "no God." But, you see, if God
really is everywhere in general, then he's nowhere in particular, and there's
really, therefore,
no
difference in terms of the practicality of God's existence and meaning.
People
would ask, "But wasn't this de Chardin a priest? Didn't he believe in
Christ?" Yes, he did. But listen to what he said about Jesus Christ.
"It is
Christ,
in very truth, who saves - but should we not immediately add that at the same
time it is Christ who is saved by evolution. Evolution is not only
the
creator but also the savior, and now that we understand past evolution, we can
control future evolution."" And as the Humanist Manifesto of 1973
says,
"No
deity will save us; we will save ourselves." A recent assistant secretary
general of the United Nations, Robert Muller, who is currently one of the
leaders
of the New Age movement, has said: "The most fundamental thing we can do
today is to believe in evolution." He says, in effect, that our whole
system
must be based on evolution if we are to realize the goal of world government.
Thus,
the impact of evolution today is worldwide; it's devastatingly harmful
everywhere. I don't think we could find a single good product that has come
out
of evolutionary philosophy. It hasn't produced any scientific discoveries. None
of the 100 outstanding contributions of science and technology each
year
ever have anything to do with evolution. Evolutionary theory doesn't produce
anything good in science, yet it's considered to be the basic premise
in
science in many states. Amazing!
Well,
where did this evolutionary paradigm come from? Most people think that it came
from Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species. Yes, Darwin was a catalyst
who
was tremendously influential, both in his day and in our day. He changed the
world in a very real way. Yet he didn't invent evolutionism. As a matter
of
fact, he didn't even discover the idea of natural selection. In my own reading,
I have found that at least two men had published books or articles advocating
natural
selection before Charles Darwin did. In fact, Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus
Darwin, did so before Charles was even born Benjamin Franklin advocated
natural
selection. And so did various others. But the most influential person in this
area was a man by the name of Alfred Russell Wallace. And I must
tell
you a little about him because it does seem more than coincidental that the
time that modem Darwinian evolution came to the fore back in the mid-
nineteenth
century was also the time when ancient witchcraft, spiritism, and occultism
were being revived in the western world. These practices had always
been
prominent in the world of pantheism, in other nations and in the ethnic
religions of the world, but in the western "scientific" world,
spiritism and
occultism
began to be revived about the same time as Darwinian evolution began to be
promoted.
I
mentioned earlier that a long war has been raging between the devil and God.
Apparently because of the God-sent revivals and the Christian worldview that
dominated
Victorian England and our own nation at its birth, Satan determined to
accelerate his war with our Almighty God. Three men are generally believed
to
have made the greatest influence on modem thought: 1) Sigmund Freud, in the
field of psychology and human relationships; 2) Karl Marx, in the field
of
economics and political science; and 3) Charles Darwin, in the field of natural
science. These men all seem to have had some strange occult influences
behind
what they were doing. Scholar Paul Vitz, in his book Sigmund Freud and His
Christian Unconscious, gives an abundance of evidence that Sigmund Freud
(whom
most people believe to have been an atheist, but who really was a pantheist)
based his system on the recapitulation theory mentioned earlier. Vitz
explains
that Freud thinks people have psychological hang-ups because they haven't
evolved far enough; therefore, they can be treated by psychoanalysis.
Vitz
says that Freud was preoccupied with things like the devil, Antichrist,
demonism, and so forth, and then he presents some rather significant evidence
that
Freud might even have made a Faustian pact with the devil.
The
same thing has been shown to be true of Karl Marx. In his book, Marx and Satan,
Richard Wurmbrand suggests that Karl Marx was not just an atheist as
we
tend to think; he was a pantheist. Marx was a professing Christian through high
school. In fact, he wrote a rather interesting essay that appeared in
Christianity
Today many years ago on "Abiding in Christ." It sounded like a
spiritual testimony from someone who was a Christian talking about how
important
it
was to abide in Christ. But shortly after that essay was published, he, like
Freud, seems to have made some kind of a Faustian pact with the devil.
He
even says in one of his poems, "My goal is to destroy him who reigns
above." So Wurmbrand makes a strong case for the belief that Marx was
actually
a
Satanist.
As
far as Darwin was concerned, he wasn't a Satanist; he was an atheist, although
there may be some rather equivocal evidence that he may have had a partial
change
in his thinking near the end of his life. At any rate, up until very near the
time of his death, Darwin was an atheist who sometimes wavered between
being
an atheist and an agnostic. He firmly rejected Christianity, the Bible, and
creation. He had been working on his theory of natural selection for
some
20 years there in England, ever since he returned from his well-known
round-the-world voyage on the Beagle. He was influenced then by Charles Lyell,
in
particular, to try to develop this theory. But Darwin was afraid to publish the
theory; he didn't think he had strong enough evidence, so he kept looking
for
more evidence, with the intention of publishing at some point a massive tome on
natural selection. But all of a sudden, he condensed his material down
quickly
and got his book out, because he was afraid he was going to be pre-empted by
Alfred Russell Wallace.
Wallace
was an interesting person. He was an anarchist and a spiritualist. In fact, he
was one of the leaders in the spiritist revival in England at the
time.
He wrote books on the scientific evidence for spiritism and he believed that
one could communicate with the spirits, just like modem New Age people
believe
they can do this through what they call channeling. Furthermore, Wallace had
spent many, many years in the jungles, working with animist tribes
who
also believed in this communication with the spirits. Wallace thought very
highly of these people; he was not like Darwin, who thought these were
primitive
people
just a little above the apes. He thought very highly of them because he worked
with them and he knew they were true human beings. In, fact, he wouldn't
go
along with Darwin's idea that man's soul had evolved. He believed that some
sort of a pantheistic, cosmic consciousness had generated man's soul. Wallace
was
a self-educated man who had never had much opportunity to associate with the
scientists of England - he had only met Darwin and Lyell very briefly,
but
he knew that they were interested in the origin of the species as he was. He
wrote this testimony in a book called The
Wonderful
Century: "I was then (February 1858) living at Ternate in the Moluccas and
was suffering from a rather severe attack of intermittent fever, which
prostrated
me every day during the cold and succeeding hot fits. During one of these fits,
while again considering the problem of the origin of the species,
something
led me to think of Malthus' Essay on Population."
Malthus
talked about the survival of the fittest and human populations and he had been
quite influential in Darwin's thinking, too. "It suddenly flashed
upon
me," Wallace said in another book, "that this self-acting process
would necessarily improve the race, because in every generation the inferior would
inevitably
be killed off and the superior would remain - that is, the fittest would
survive. Then at once, I seemed to see the whole effect of this. Returning
to
the first quote, he said that "the whole method of species modification
became clear to me, and in the two hours of my fit, I had thought out the main
points
of the theory. That same evening, I sketched out the draft of a paper; and in
the two succeeding evenings, I wrote it out and sent it by the next
post
to Mr. Darwin .
When
he received the draft, Darwin was just astounded. He told his friend, Lyell,
that Wallace had anticipated everything that he had poured 20 years of
research
into in preparation for his big book. So Darwin had to come out with a book
right away in order to establish priority. He never did publish his
big
book, and probably never would have published a book at all had it not been for
Wallace sending him this information stating that he had discovered
the
theory not during 20 years of research among the leading scientists in England,
but during two hours of a fit in Malaysia jungles. Loren Eiseley, a
great
historian of science at the University of Pennsylvania, said in an article
about Wallace: "A man pursuing birds of paradise in a remote jungle did
not
yet know that he had forced the world's most reluctant author to disgorge his
hoarded volume or that the whole of Western thought was about to be swung
into
a new channel because a man in a fever had felt a moment of strange radiance.
Make what you want out of that, but I cannot help thinking that there
is
more there than meets the eye. This may well have been the beginning of the
modem battle in Satan's long war.
But
then, of course, neither Wallace nor Darwin originated evolution. As we go back
to consider men before Darwin (his grandfather, Erasmus, and other leading
evolutionists),
we find all sorts of strange influences being brought to bear on them. Le
Marcq, the German rationalist philosophers, and various French
philosophers
had all been influenced very much by a system called the "great chain of
being." This is not taught much anymore, but the ancient idea of
a
great chain of being was that there is a continual link between all orders of
reality in the cosmos. This is not a biblical concept, but it does have
sort
of a religious flavor. It starts out with the divine essence, whatever that may
be. Some of the medieval religionists put that into the form of the
theological
God, but that wasn't the way it started out. It was just the divine essence of
nature. That descended in a continuous link through the spirit
world
- angels, demons, what- ever other spirits there might have been - down to the
highest races of human beings, then down to the lower races, then
to
the great apes, then to the other animals, then to the insects, then to the
non-living things, and finally down to the elementary particles. The idea
was
that there was a chain of being in which there were no missing links; it was up
to the philosophers to find them.
Of
course, all the nineteenth century evolutionists had to do was to invert this
chain of being and then put a time scale on it to come up with the evolutionary
system.
That chain of being was really the basis for the initial studies of comparative
anatomy and comparative embryology. The idea was that everything
had
to go through this chain from simple to complex or complex to simple. So the
development of the embryo progresses from very simple to complex. Their
comparative
anatomy had to be based on the idea of studying the simplest organisms on up to
the most complex. Finally, when it came time to develop a geological
time
scale (there is no place in the world where the standard geological column is
ever found except in a text book) it was developed by assuming that
the
simple forms of life had to be early in the chain of being and the more complex
forms of life later. That was imposed on the study of paleontology,
and
was finally built up into our standard time scale. So the recapitulation
theory, the geological column, the idea of races being inferior and superior,
and
the idea of human beings not having fully developed and therefore still having
psychological hang-ups - all these things were based on this idea of
the
great chain of being.
And
where did that come from? Not from the Bible, obviously. It came from the
ancient philosophers, probably Plato. But it became most prominently expressed
among
the neo-platonists after the time of Christ.
Ancient
Greek philosophers without exception were non-creationists. They did not believe
there was a personal creator-god who had created the universe.
They
all believed that the universe was the ultimate reality and that it gradually
expressed itself in terms of the chain of being. Paul dealt with some
of
them, you will remember, in Acts 17. The Epicureans were atheists; the Stoics
were Paratheists. There were also many varieties of Gnostics, but they
were
all pantheists and some of them tried to mix Christianity with their Gnostic
pantheism, when Christianity became prominent. In fact, one can trace
such
beliefs on back through Plato and Socrates and then to the pre-Socratic
philosophers back around 600 B.C. in Greece. Among these were such men as
Thales,
Anaximander, and Anaximenes, as well as later thinkers such as Leucippus,
Democritus, and others who developed the materialistic philosophy, the
evolutionary
system which was prominent then in Greece and later in Rome. Evolution isn't a
modem idea at all!
But
where did the Greeks learn it? According to Milton Munitz, professor of the philosophy
of science at New York University and one of the greatest authorities
on
the history of science, "Anaximander reinterprets, while at the same time
retaining basically the same pattern of cosmogonical development that is to
be
found in the Babylonian myth .1121 This has already been partly transformed in
the Greek version of Hesiod's theogony. Homer and Hesiod held a polytheistic
system
of gods and goddesses, Nit really, polytheism is just a form of pantheism.
Pantheism is the all-god, expressed locally as the god of fire, the god
of
thunder, the goddess of the river, and so forth. The forces of nature
personified represent the all-god, the whole cosmic consciousness, or Mother
Earth,
Gaia,
or Mother Nature. They got this, Munitz says, from Babylon.
But
now we have to think in biblical terms, because the Bible says that Babylon the
Great is the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. Once we
get
back into that era, long before 1000 B.C., which was Hesiod's time, we've
stepped into the realm of mythology. We don't have very much recorded history
from
that far back except what we find in the Bible and a few archaeological
monuments.
Many
people don't want to go to the Bible for their information, but that's where
the best information is, of course. The Book of Genesis, in chapters 10
and
11, tells us that Babel was the center of the first great world kingdom and
that Nimrod was its founder. The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, but
Nimrod
also founded Nineveh and other great cities. He was the first great world
emperor.
He
was just the great grandson of Noah, so it wasn't very long after the flood. It
had probably been 100 or more years or so, enough time to build a fairly
good
population. But instead of going out and filling the earth like God had told
him, Nimrod wanted to make a name for himself and his people. So they
decided
to build a great city and a great tower - not to "reach into heaven,"
but rather, dedicated to the heavens, to the host of heaven, to the angels,
to
the stars. (The stars and the angels are apparently used almost interchangeably
in the Bible. Stars are called angels and angels are called stars frequently
because
everything in the realm of the heavens where the stars are is also where the
angels are.) So this tower dedicated to the host of heaven probably
had
at the apex a great shrine with the zodiac symbols and so forth. God came down
and confused their languages and scattered the people across the face
of
the earth. They couldn't talk to each other anymore, so each little family
group had to become isolated and segregated. Each group first had to develop
a
hunting and gathering culture and inbreed for a while. The recessive genetic
characteristics in the little population could now be expressed, so that
each
small family group developed its own tribal characteristics (not
"racial" characteristics, however; "race" is not a biblical
concept).
People
think of that event as having been the origin of the races. No. There's no such
thing as a race in the Bible. That's an evolutionary idea. God made
of
one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth. There's only
one race, that's the human race, biblically speaking. We're all descended
from
Noah and from Adam. At any rate, the family groups developed into nations, some
of which became extinct like the Neanderthals, and others developed
into
great kingdoms like Egypt and Sumeria. That's where the different
characteristics of each nation came from, too.
But
where did Nimrod get this concept? If we go into the Babylonian origins myth,
the Egyptian origins myth, or the cosmogonies of many other nations around
the
world, we find a rather amazing similarity. Although they couldn't talk to each
other anymore, they all carried the same religion with them everywhere.
They
had different names for their gods and goddesses. They had different languages.
But basically the same system of evolutionary religion was carried
everywhere
and the source of all this was, apparently, the Babylonian cosmogony, which I
suggest Nimrod had learned, probably from Satan himself. That
cosmogony
was the Enuma Elish. This famous Babylonian "genesis" said that
originally there was nothing but a watery chaos everywhere and out of this
watery
chaos
two gods just appeared, and from them everything else came. One finds the same
thing in Egypt, the same thing in Hesiod, in many of the African tribes
and
American Indian tribes, this idea of a primal chaos. But none of them tell
where the creation, the universe, came from. All start with the universe
in a
chaotic condition, usually a watery chaos.
Now
why that? Well, that immediately makes us think of Genesis, of course, where,
"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth
was
without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said let there
be
light" (Gen. 1:1-3). Initially, there was water everywhere. It wasn't
chaos; it was all perfect for that particular stage of God's created work.
God
created the angels as well as human beings. Angels were created first, probably
on the first day of creation, and Satan was the highest of all the angels,
as
we read in Ezekiel 28:15-17. He was perfect in his ways and full of wisdom and
perfect in brightness and beauty until iniquity was found in him and
God
told him that He was going to cast him to the earth. Everything was "very
good" at the end of the six days of creation (Gen. 1: 3 1), so it was
after
that
that God cast Satan to the earth. Then Satan tempted Adam and Eve, apparently
with the same temptation with which he had tempted himself. He had said,
in
effect: "I want to exalt my throne above the stars of God, I want to be
God. I want to ascend above the Most High" (Isa. 14:13-14). In other
words,
he
thinks he is of the same order as God.
Now
where would he get such an absurd idea? When he first came into existence, all
he knew was that God told him that he had been created for a great purpose,
but
all he could see was this watery chaos around him. That's where he was when he
was created, and all the other angels had been created the same way.
So
he thought, perhaps, that he was of the same order as God. And it was just a
matter of time before he could successfully rebel and become God himself
or
like God, at least. So he, at that time, initiated his long war against God.
Now
if Satan (or Lucifer) is going to believe that God isn't really the Creator,
then he has to have some other explanation. That's why I have to say that
Satan
was the first evolutionist. Evolutionists ridicule me for saying that, but
again, I can think of no better explanation for how this worldwide, age-long
lie
came to be, than through the father of liars, who is the devil. Satan is the
deceiver of the whole world, but he has deceived himself most of all!
And
he still thinks, apparently - because he's still fighting against God - that
somehow he's going to win. So he keeps on fighting. He has to use the same
lie
with which he deceived himself, that the universe is the ultimate reality, that
it's evolving itself into higher and higher systems, and that now men
think
they can even control its future evolution. Men can develop human beings and
other things the way they want them in the future if Satan can just
get
control of everything.
We who
believe in the Bible know that's not the way it's going to end. But that's the
way it is right now. And it looks like he's getting control pretty
rapidly.
But God's Word does say that we "wrestle not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness
of
this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Eph. 6:12).
Therefore, we cannot fight this war with bullets or even with ballots.
"Though
we
walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh; (For the weapons of our
warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God, to the pulling down of
strongholds),
casting
down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the
knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience
of
Christ" (2 Cor. 10: 3-5). That's our commission, to fight that war. It's a
spiritual battle. We have to have the girdle of truth and the breastplate
of
righteousness and the helmet of salvation and our feet shod with the gospel of
peace. We must have the shield of faith, and the sword of the spirit,
which
is the word of God, and all this weaponry must be accompanied by a great aura
of prayer (Eph. 6:14-18), but then the weapons are powerful and mighty
through
God to the pulling down of strongholds.
Finally,
we can read in the Book of Revelation how it's all going to come out. There it
says that all the kings in the world one day are going to give their
allegiance
to the great humanist man who gives his allegiance to Satan, They're all going
to worship the beast, as this man of sin is called, they are
going
to worship the dragon who gave his power to the beast. The whole world will
become Satanists then, and all the kings of the earth are going to give
their
power to him. They're all going to "make war with the Lamb, but the Lamb
will overcome them: for he is Lord of lords and King of kings; and they
that
are with him are called and chosen and faithful" (Rev. 17:14).
It's
going to be a lot better to be with Him than with them in that day!