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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.
Here's our host, Pastor Mike Avendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.
My name is Mike Avendroth, and today is part two in our series from another speaker, and that speaker is Rick Phillips. Rick Phillips is going to do part two today on theistic evolution and how you should not believe in theistic evolution.
And if you compromise Genesis chapter one and two, where will you stop? You're going to have to give the whole house away. What will stop next? Certainly the unbeliever does not respect who we are, what our authority is.
They think the cross is foolishness. They think it's moronic. And so why do we want to somehow appeal to the unbeliever and get him to think that we're not really these stupid tunnel vision moronic evangelicals who believe in, of all things, six-day creation?
And so Tim Keller has written an article on biologos, and we are seeing other men like Bruce Waltke who are giving up, basically the whole house is what they're giving up. They're giving up everything.
Once you compromise in one area, compromise leads to more compromise. And so here on No Compromise Radio, I want you to hear this message preached at Bethlehem Bible Church. The other two messages are on www .dbchurch .org.
But today specifically, I want you to hear how we need to stand up for biblical truth from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. And if you're going to give in on something, you're going to eventually give in on everything, including the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Don't hanker after, don't drool after the world's acceptance and somehow say we'll change what we believe so we can have entree into the world. That's called capitulation. That's called compromise. That's called something that we don't ever want to do.
And so today, Rick Phillips here on No Compromise Radio, part two, theistic evolution. And should we follow Tim Keller's lead in believing in theistic evolution? And I think you're going to find out the answer is affirm no.
Genesis 1 is one of the most clear passages in the Bible that is historical narrative. And it's interesting to me, you say, no, it's like Genesis 15, the song of Moses, Exodus 15. It's just not. You know, Exodus 15, the song of Moses at the passing of the Red Sea.
I will sing to the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously, the horse and the rider he has cast in the sea. Now let me read Genesis 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This does not sound like that kind of literature.
So why are we saying that it is? Because it is a barrier to theistic evolution to believe that Genesis 1 is a historical account of creation. For me, for us to say, Genesis 1 is more or less agnostic, that's my way of putting it, on the issue of how creation happened, it introduces a willingness to abuse the plain meaning of the text that will destroy our faith.
If we are willing to avoid a fight with the secular powers over evolution, if we are willing to say that Genesis 1 is poetry, then what are we willing to do in the rest of the Bible? Genesis 1, it clearly purports to be, now there's a lot of theology in Genesis 1.
It's a richly theological text. It does set forth the lordship of God. It is a polemic against the heathen religions of the other nations, but it does so in a historical account. Moreover, if you go back to the Song of Moses, it actually, even though that is a exalted song, it actually gives historical truth.
I will sing to the Lord the horse and the rider he has thrown into the sea. Is that a historically true account of it? Yes, that is an event in the poem that happened. And so this whole notion that we can, I don't mean that, I think with facile arguments that fall to the ground with any serious consideration, we are willing to say, so concerned are we to pick a fight with the big, bad secular powers.
We are willing to say, well, right away, Genesis 1 doesn't say anything about creation. Genesis 1 doesn't say anything about creation. I'll say it right now. The secular powers are just as outraged over the resurrection of Jesus Christ as they are with six-day literal creation.
And if we're willing to do that here, what's gonna keep us for doing it there? And Keller, to his credit, and look, I'm not trying to pick on him. He's written a prominent article that's gonna be used to advance this cause.
I feel it's my duty to talk about it since I'm asked to talk about it. They're arguing for theistic evolution based upon these arguments. In fact, he says, well, I don't believe in, I'm gonna hold fast to a historical Adam and Eve.
Let's realize that the vast majority of the people, evangelical scholars, reform scholars, promoting theistic evolution, admit that there can be no Adam and Eve historically. Because, I mean, it's a ludicrous argument.
These attempts to find, in Genesis 2, 7, Peter Renz, who taught me Hebrew at Westminster Seminary, after he was finally fired for saying that Genesis was a myth, he then wrote a series of articles on the Biologos website admitting that, yes, Paul believed there was a historical Adam and Eve.
You can't deny that. There's no way around that. And what can we say? Science has proven that Paul was wrong. Don't think badly about Paul. He's an ancient man. I mean, what he didn't know, he didn't have a Hubble telescope.
What are we doing? What about the word of God? And so I appreciate a man like Keller saying, look, we wanna believe, we wanna make room for theistic evolution, but we don't wanna give up too much. I'm gonna say, my friend, you are giving it up.
And the logical consequence of these arguments are just too strong for your little seawalls. The waves are washing away. And most of the people you're hanging out with, they laugh at the idea of historical Adam and Eve because evolutionary processes do not and cannot create an Adam and Eve except by special divine fiat.
But the whole point is that we're arguing against special divine fiat. If we were arguing special divine fiat, we'd believe sixth day creation, which is what the Bible teaches. You say, now, how does, here's a principle of interpretation.
We interpret scripture by scripture. Okay, so let's ask ourselves a question. Does the Bible itself tell us how we should take the Genesis 1 creation account? The answer is yes. Let's go to Exodus 20, verse 13, I think, or verse 11, the fourth commandment, where Moses makes a very helpful statement here.
And he tells us how he understands Genesis 1. Starting at verse eight, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.
On it, you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, male servant or female servant, or your livestock and your sojourner who is in your gates, verse 11. For in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day.
Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. And so Moses, it seems, believes that the Genesis 1 account, which God used him to write, so his opinion may be especially valid. He believes that it was a record, a historical narrative of what actually happened.
And he bases his theology upon what actually happened. The Bible teaches that its view of Genesis 1 is not as poetry that should not be taken seriously or as Tremper Longman, another one of my former professors said, you can, he did a video on the internet, you can, it's, don't look, it's worthless.
But he says, only an excessively literalistic view of Genesis 1 requires Adam and Eve. Also now believing the text the way Moses did is now an excessively literalistic view. Well, Moses seen, now some people will come back and they go, well, we admit that Moses, who God used to write Genesis 1, believed in Exodus 20 that Genesis 1 was a literal six day account, but Moses was limited.
He's an ancient man. He just had his own cosmology. And so now we're gonna actually argue that what Moses wrote reflected what he believed to be true, but was not true, but God was using his false view.
Our high view of the Bible is falling through our fingers like sand. And that is exactly what is at stake. I actually came to six day creationism while I, cause I was trained not as a six day creationist.
And I was trying to explain to a younger man why I didn't believe in six day creationism. And while I was explaining why I did not believe in six day creationism, I stopped and repented because the things that were coming out of my mouth were too frightening to me.
And I realized the implications of what I was saying, namely, I was actually saying to somebody, I gotta understand, Moses had his ancient cosmology and yes, Moses wrote in the Bible how he saw things.
That's not really true, but God makes it seem like it is true. And I'm just going, I need to repent because the scriptures plainly teach that Genesis 1 is historical narrative. That's an accurate recording.
Yes, and they'll go, well, you're trying to make it answer all the questions of modern science. No, I'm not. I'm believing what it says. And frankly, the burden is not on me, frankly. They say, what about the discrepancy, the apparent discrepancy between the way that time functions in Genesis 1, God said and it was, versus Genesis 2, where he talks about a process.
How do you reconcile that? My answer is it's not my duty to reconcile it. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 were talking about different topics. Genesis 1 is macro creation. This is the cosmos, the planets. Genesis 2 on the sixth day, which involves special providence, is God doing the human society?
I don't have the right to deny Genesis 1 because I don't understand how fits in Genesis 2. That's not how we do the Bible. Well, I'm gonna decide which parts are gonna be true and which parts are not gonna be true.
That is the problem. Historical Adam and Eve. The fact is that those who embrace theistic evolution are not able to hold on to Adam and Eve, and you cannot hold on to Adam and Eve. Here's one of my great objections.
Let me go back to what Keller says. That Christianity is a historical religion, and therefore we cannot allow a belief in theistic evolution to deny the historical claims of the Bible. Now, Genesis 1's not making any historical claims, but Genesis 2 is about Adam and Eve.
He's right, but he's wrong that you can hold them together. Let me just make the point. Actually, I have argued that the current embrace of theistic evolution is merely the effect of the prior embrace of what is called the framework hypothesis.
Raise your hand if you've heard of the framework hypothesis. Good, not many of you have because your pastor's teaching you the Bible. But a lot of good Reformed guys, it's really been popular in our day to believe that Genesis 1 is not a historical narrative, but it is a literary framework in which God uses to teach the theology of Genesis 1.
What Genesis 1 says happened, you know, the first day this and the second day that. God's not saying, it didn't really happen, but it's kind of the story that God writes so that he can get to the theology.
Now, these are people who would deny theistic evolution, but they're opposed to six-day creation, mainly, I think, because it makes you look like an idiot to scientists today. What's the problem with that?
We've already driven the wedge between the historicity of what the Bible says and the theology of it. And as soon, if we allow the interpretive principle that the historical claims may be false, but the theology of it, it can be right, we lose the Christian faith.
This is what liberals argue about the resurrection. We don't believe that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead because people don't rise from the dead. Have you ever seen anybody rise from the dead? Come on, we know that's myth, but it's teaching the theology is true while the history claims are false.
Paul says, if Christ was not literally raised from the dead, we are to be despised. It's all fraud. And I wanna say to my friends doing this, you are pulling a string that is gonna undo the whole Bible.
And what they believe is we'll kind of dabble at it, we'll give away creation, but we'll hold the line on Jesus. My response is you won't, because that is not enough, it's just not enough of a compromise.
I wanna tell you, the secular powers are not going to accept. Our proposal is this. Okay, look, we'll give you creation, but we're gonna keep sin, judgment, wrath, and atoning blood. Is that a deal? What are they gonna say?
No deal. You gotta get rid of that Christ guy. You got one of those other theories of atonement. How about the moral example theory? We like that. Get rid of wrath, get rid of retributive justice, get rid of sin, get rid of blood.
You know, God's love. So my response to my friends is you get to compromise more than you thought. Because I really think, and I don't know the motives of these people. I think in general, there's a desire to preach Jesus so we can be gospel-centered, which we do, but and therefore, let's not argue about this stuff.
Yeah, but you understand. If once we had said, well, the Bible, well, I mean, you know, Paul's wrong. Well, the question, what's the next question? You know the answer. Well, what else is wrong? And we go, well, we'll consult the scholars.
And now we have the priesthood of the scholars. And I got, you know, a lot of things are gonna go. And what happens is the culture is going to dictate. The culture is dictating. These, this embrace of theistic evolution is not arising out of a sober, prayerful study of God's word in a vacuum.
It is an inability to absorb the animosity in the contempt of the world. Even a problem is constructed. Look, our scientists, you know, it kind of looks bad to believe in creation. Well, it does. Whoever wants to lead a godly life will be persecuted.
We have got to be willing, while we lovingly set forth the truth, to be persecuted and held in scorn. Let's get to the last issue of suffering and death before the fall. My friends, you cannot separate physical death from spiritual death.
The Bible does not do that. This is where we become agnostic. When the Bible says the last enemy is death, it's not just spiritual death, it's bodily death. Thank God that redemption is going to be the redemption of my body.
I remember my father died of multiple sclerosis 10 years ago next month. And I mean, MS had ravaged his body in a hideous way. And after he died, I went into the corner. I didn't want my mom to have to go in there.
And I stood in my father's bedroom with this really hideous corpse of my dear dad, as they're putting his body in a bag. And with tears streaming down my face, I quoted from 1 Corinthians, where o 'er death is thy victory?
Where o 'er death is thy sting? Because my father had embraced the blood of Christ about a year previously. And I stood there with the medic kind of going, he's having a hard time coping. And I said, I will see this body again in glory.
And many times as a pastor, I've stood with trying children and brothers. And I said, you will hold these hands because death will not have the victory. And we're not gonna say, I don't say to them, well, but it'll be a spiritual victory.
No, no, there's gonna be a bodily resurrection. And the death of Genesis 3 is not a nebulous spiritual death. There was no death prior to that. Evolutionary process is one that is opposed to the Bible's teaching.
The Bible says that God is the Lord and the giver of life. And that death is the enemy. The last enemy defeated is death. And Christ, where, oh, death is thy victory. Jesus is angry at death at Lazarus' tomb.
God did not say it was all very good and was speaking about death. I wanna say to Bruce Waltke, that great scholar that he is, and I honor so much, I'm not trying to pick on him. But when he says that we are going to be a dying church, unless we embrace evolution, I wanna say, no, we will be a death church if we do.
Because Christians are opposed. We will not exalt death. And of course, the logic thereof with euthanasia and all of that stuff that goes along with it. But let me wrap up with some general considerations.
I have tried to, as accurately as I can, work through an evangelical trying to make room for theistic evolution and to show you how it does not work and the price tag is devastating if we do. How much better for us to go back to 2 Corinthians 4 and say, you know what, I refuse to engage in this creative special pleading to make the text fit the secular theory.
What I'm gonna do is God helping me in my weakness. I'm gonna hold forth the word of God before the consciences of men and I'm gonna rely on God sovereignly to change the heart, which by the way is how I was converted as an adult.
Let me just some final things. The whole point of evolution, my friends, is to replace God. I mean, honestly, there's a reason why with the secular powers controlling the public schools, the media, the textbook, the majority of Americans still do not believe in evolution.
Why? Because it is ludicrous. It is a ludicrous theory and the facts do not work and you go, why then are we so committed to a theory that both prima facie and in the details is manifestly ludicrous because we hate God and there's a desperate desire to replace God but we need a plausible way to do it.
I'm a living member of my family. I'm the only Bible-believing Christian and some family members will say to me, you know, you don't believe in evolution? My answer is I don't have enough faith to believe that.
I mean, I commend you for, that's blind faith. There's Kierkegaard. If you believe evolution, you'll believe anything. Why? The whole point is the death of God because if God is the creator, then he has the right to tell us what to do and he has the right to judge us and we must come to salvation on his terms and only in a godless, pointless, purposeless, immoral creation process can I do what I bloody well want with nobody telling me what to do.
That is the point of evolution. Why would we pander with that? And science, in my view, does not prove macroevolution. A micro, sure, there's an adaptation within a species but the Bible, macroevolution says the species came about through this process of, the Bible says, no, God created the kinds.
He created the species and there's adaptation. You know, there's chihuahuas and great Danes. That's a lot of microevolution. There's a lot of, and it's to the glory of God but they're both dogs, right?
In all the years, all the centuries of special breeding of dogs. So this is not random evolution. This is interfering with it, to manipulate the agenda of the code. They have never bred two dogs and gotten something other than a?
Thank you. We must not equate general revelation with what the scientists say. Keller makes the argument, it's an argument he frequently says, that says we must listen to God speaking in creation. We believe in general revelation as well as special revelation.
Amen, amen. But what Time Magazine says is does not equal general revelation. And one thing we need to do, we're being very naive. I want you to go back and read some Thomas Kuhn and the philosophy of science that there are axes to grind.
There are presuppositions. There are worldviews that are sifting the data. These scientists are not neutral people without an axe to grind, objectively looking at the data. Wasn't that funny with the climate change thing where the emails were found?
That goes on all the time. And these are sinners like you and me. And so just because a scientist says so or the entire scientific community says so does not mean that God says so speaking through the creation.
Ah, Rick, come on. All truth is God's truth, but not all claims to truth are God's truth. And we must not, if the entire, how many, in fact, every time Time Magazine does a cover story on a new theory, they're saying that the entire scientific community was wrong until now about this, and they'll be wrong again.
Now that is not me disparaging science, but the Christian worships a God who knows, who has all the data, who is perfect, who is without bias other than the true bias of the display of his own glory, and he has generously given us his word, and where the word speaks to the subject, let God be true and every man a liar.
Unless we say, here we stand, unless we're standing on the rock, my friends, we will have no place to stand. We must avoid hermeneutical Trojan horses. In my view, the framework hypothesis long accepted, probably the dominant view of reformed theologians today and pastors who don't wanna argue about creation, and they don't wanna look like Ken Ham, and they belittle answers in Genesis.
Personally, I love Ken Ham and the answers in Genesis, and I refuse to despise my fellow Christians in the media, even if he has a goofy beard and lives in Kentucky. My mama came from Kentucky, so it's okay with me.
And we have scientists in South Carolina. Thank you very much. It was said to me, you know, Rick, it was recently said to me, we have a creation study group in my church, and they're militant creationists.
And they're like, you know, it's in South Carolina. The head of this was a NASA scientist who still in his retirement is called upon to don't give me this use unsophisticated Dukes of Hazzard bumpkins, because behind this is a love of urban sophistication to which we are so addicted that we will tamper with the word of God, lest we should lose the credit of our sophistication.
Do not embrace false hermeneutic approaches. I think the framework hypothesis introduced the idea that the history could be wrong, but the theology is true. And now, where do you stop then? Well, here it is.
Five years ago, they just said, we'll never say theistic evolution. Now they're saying theistic evolution. We'll never deny Adam. Most of them are denying Adam. Oh, we'll never. Pete Enns once said to me, Rick, I've got a don't touch Jesus box.
I'll never let it get to Jesus. I said, yes, you will. Because there's no reason to believe it if in your heart of hearts, you don't believe it's true. And if your hermeneutic says, we don't have to believe that Jesus rose from the dead to believe in the doctrine of the resurrection, and then you will not believe in it, and we will lose everything.
Once the Trojan horse gets into the gate, the city falls. I fear that happening. We must not tolerate theistic evolution, even from friends we honor and love. We cannot isolate creation from redemption.
Well, we're gonna hold on to Jesus, but we'll give them creation. You lose everything. Creation, fall, redemption, it's all one picture. Redemption is the restoration of creation. So am I running out of time for my next session?
Not yet, okay. Because I don't want to. We'll see that in the next subject as well. The gospel, we gotta be careful about what we mean today by being a gospel-centered church. It must not mean all we really hold on to is the doctrine of justification.
We need the whole, but what did Paul say? I taught the whole counsel of God, and yet I was Christ-centered. I want to teach this. I can teach Genesis 1 in a Christ-centered way, in a way that teaches it as historical narrative, which it is, and upholds sixth-day creationism.
And I can do those, and it's not opposed, but to be Christ-centered does not mean giving away every part of the Bible that we don't think touches on Jesus. It all touches upon Jesus, and we must not have a Christianity that compromises on creation.
Let God be true. Let God be true. Let's be willing. Let us not cultivate scorn. We don't get bonus points for being mocked. Let's not say inflammatory things, and I've tried not to. I hope I have not.
That'll get, oh, look at what a great Christian I am. I'm being persecuted. I feel like a hero. Let's not do that. Let God be true. We really cannot afford these clever ways of accommodating the text to the demands of the world.
Let me conclude where I began. Let us do 2 Corinthians 4. Having this ministry by God's mercy, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning.
We refuse to tamper with God's Word. Well, then what are you gonna do? By the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. And the Word of God, in the hand of God, is sufficient to do the work of God, by the power of God, to the glory of God, in our generation, as in the times before.
No Compromise Radio, with Pastor Mike Abendroth, is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church, firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.
Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.