The Last Laugh

Genesis 1

Every week now it seems there’s rocket launches. It’s a proud moment each time one goes up, and now they are coming down and landing and that saves money. Of course, saving money is a relative thing. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry. Is it worth it? Starlink and other satellites enhance our world, even if they clutter the heavens. Space junk is mounting up. Look up after sunset and you’ll see some stars apparently moving. Those are satellites in low earth orbit.

War will happen in the heavens in these last days, and it’s a fact that weapons are circling right above us. If I told you that our enemies have nukes 100 miles from us you’d say, where, do you mean in Columbus or over past Canton or up near Detroit? No, right above us!

But by far the most expensive things we are venturing into space are in search of life in the universe, and for future homes for mankind. Now that’s billions of dollars of your money and mine to try to find out what’s in the first chapter of Genesis.  That’s just unnecessary. This planet was made for life, and none other. It’s hard to exist anywhere else for a reason…we aren’t meant to.

Satan is the archenemy of God.  Satan is an incurable liar and a deceiver, and the Bible says he is the father of lies.  Satan hates the truth of God and he dominates the world that he rules with falsehood.  In fact, Romans 1 says that civilization in general has exchanged the truth of God for the lie.  In other words, the world lives under pervasive deception and falsehood.  And Satan’s lies literally pervade all human thought governing all intellectual work, all science, all philosophy, all sociology, all psychology, and everything else.

But there are two lies in particular that provide the basic paradigm for modern culture.  Lie number one is that life is random.  That is that the way things are is just the way they kind of happened with nobody planning and nobody carrying it off, it just sort of evolved that way.  Life is random.  There is no purpose to it.  There is no reason for it.  There is no sovereign unfolding plan being carried out by a designing and powerful creator.  Life is just random.  To put it another way, the universe, as it exists, was not created by God, nor is God the authority over this creation.  It’s just a matter of random chance.

Second lie:  Truth is relative.  The Bible is not the Word of God.  The Bible does not give us the truth about right and wrong, life and death, morality and immorality.  There is no authority beyond yourself.  Life is random.  Truth is relative.

Now those two lies are so established in our society that vast throngs of people hate the Christian worldview, which opposes those lies.  We don’t believe life is random.  We believe the universe as it is right now was created by God and is sustained by God and ruled by God.  We do not believe that truth is relative.  We believe truth is absolute and it is absolutely revealed on the pages of scripture.

The truth goes against the grain of our culture, to say that truth is absolute in the Bible generates the hostility of the society around us.  Two great ideologies rule.  No creator and no moral law.  And that dispossesses man of any accountability. And it will be our undoing.

Now in this series, we’re looking really at both of these lies.  Because the lie that life is random flies in the face of Genesis chapter 1.  Genesis chapter 1 does away with all evolution, establishing the fact that God is the creator of everything as it is.  And we also, by accepting at face value the teaching of Genesis chapter 1, are countering the attack on the Bible as the Word of God.  We believe the Bible is the Word of God, no matter what it says, whether it’s talking about history, morality, or creation. Any evolutionist, whether he believes there is a God or not, in order to espouse evolution, has to deny Genesis chapter 1.

We believe that what Genesis 1 says is as true as any other part of scripture. Genesis 1 is just as true as Exodus 20, which gives us the Ten Commandments.  It’s just as true as Isaiah 53, which describes the suffering servant who would be the Messiah and bear our iniquities.  It’s just as true as Matthew chapter 1, which indicates that Jesus was to be born of Mary and to be the savior of the world.  It’s just as true as John chapter 3 which says you must be born again.  It’s just as true as every other part of scripture.

There is no basis for tampering with, questioning, or denying the veracity of Genesis 1 any more than any other part of scripture.  In fact, any disbelief in or tampering with or altering of Genesis 1 is an act of rebellion against God and his Word.  It’s a serious thing to do that because, like any other such rebellion, one who attacks the veracity of God and the Word of God brings upon himself the threat of divine judgment.

Revelation 22:18-19   For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: ¹⁹ And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

The bottom line, the Bible ends with a warning that you better not tamper with scripture.  And anyone who tampers with scripture to add to it or take away from it brings himself under divine judgment.  So we could readily conclude that altering the scripture, tampering the scripture, or just flatly not believing the scripture is unthinkable for a faithful, wise believer.  It’s unthinkable. 

For a believer to assault the veracity of scripture is an unimaginable thing.  And yet, there are many so-called Christians who do that.  They wouldn’t deny the morality of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20.  They wouldn’t deny the prophetic testimony of the coming suffering Messiah in Isaiah 53.  They wouldn’t deny the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.  They wouldn’t deny the gospel of grace and the need for the new birth.  They wouldn’t deny other things in scripture.  But they do deny the clear teaching of Genesis chapter 1. Why do they do that?  Why do so-called Christians bring themselves under such jeopardy under the threat of the closing portion of scripture, which says their names could be taken out of the Book of Life and from the holy city and the plagues that are written in scripture could be pronounced upon them as divine curses?

Do they do it because they desire to please evolutionary scientists rather than Holy God?  Do they love the applause of men?  Do they love the reputation of academics more than God?  Do they seek the approval of their peers more than the Holy God of the universe?

Satan has managed to be extremely successful in getting his evolutionary lie out, so much so that most professing Christians would deny the simple, straightforward testimony of Genesis 1, that God created the entire universe as it is now in six 24-hour days…and that, about 6,000 years ago.

When most people think about evolution, they think about man.  They think about the picture in National Geographic of the apelike creature on fours, and all of a sudden the sequence of about ten different pictures as this four-legged creature begins to stand erect and take the posture of a man.  And they tell us that’s the progression of human evolution.  Every schoolchild in public education is constantly taught that man has come from apes. They find bones from picture #1 and picture #10, but none from pictures 2-9. But they imagine such and all they need to find is a toe bone that is more rounded than average or a skull that is more egg shaped or a tooth that is sharper. And that’s where the fairy tale takes off, in the world of make believe!

The fossils they show are hoaxes, and misinterpretations.  The presupposition is that evolution is true.  They’re trying to make the bones fit the drawings in National Geographic.  Many have been debunked as intentional deception. They aren’t looking for the truth. They are looking to change the truth.

The evolution of man has sort of been divided into three sort of Latin terms:  Ramapithicus, Australopithecus, and Pithecanthropus.  And those names will be on the quiz, of course.  They use impressive sounding words to try and sound like they know more than you do. The average person on the street probably still believes these classifications represent genuine intermediate forms, but they don’t. 

Java man or the Peking man, represent the creation of some kind of transitional form out of some minute skeletal fragment.  Even evolutionists today admit those were never a man at all, but some creature related to the gibbons.  [The gibbons not being a family down the street, but an ape, as you know.]  Cro-Magnon man, Neanderthal man, they now know were nothing more than just human skeletons. But such terms deceive most people.

But even with their evidences crumbling and vanishing, most still cling to that which they know to be impossible. Spontaneous evolution from nothing, because to admit it could be God is intolerable.

Why are we even talking so much about this? I’m preaching to the choir, right? You don’t believe in evolution. You believe in God. Here’s why we do this: I believe that Satan’s main effort today is mixing truth with a lie. A little leaven sours the whole lump. That little fox spoils the vines. He has the masses lost in full blown evolution, and that won’t be changing. Now his efforts focus on getting Christians to blend their beliefs with evolution. Theistic evolution is the movement which marries the two, stating that God started it all, and has used evolution and billions of years to carry out His plan, and that what we read in Genesis is simply allegory of a timeless God…that the 6 days are actually ages…and they do it just so people won’t laugh at them.

You can’t succeed today in the mainstream if you believe the literal account of Genesis. You get laughed right off the stage if you believe the universe is 6,000 years old. You have no chance in politics, in science, in a university, if you hold such belief. And I’m sad to admit that today, the majority of spiritual leaders have caved on this matter, because they don’t want to be laughed at or alienate their crowd. Butts in seats today trump the truth. You can google today’s big name preachers and what they believe and you’ll be shocked at where they fall on this issue.

It’s sad, because when you try to add millions of years of death before Adam’s sin, the gospel falls apart. And Satan knows it. He’s still the same snake that crawled in Eden, and he’s still getting people to doubt God’s Word.

Are you willing to be laughed at? God will have the last laugh.