The Origin of Life — John Whitcomb

Genesis 1 and the Order of Creation

And God said, Let the earth put forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, wherein is the seed thereof upon the earth. And it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, wherein is the seed thereof after their kind.

And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day. For those who have a profound respect for the Bible as God's word, and yet at the same time are deeply impressed by the apparent consensus of scientific opinion concerning the supposed order of events and the length of the time required for these events and the formation of our earth and of living things upon it, in the evolutionary, uniformitarian approach to earth history, this passage, which I have just read from Genesis chapter 1, verses 11 to 13, should come as a profound shock.

Why? Because nothing can be more clear than the total contradiction between the order of events set forth in Genesis chapter 1 and the order of events demanded by modern, uniformitarian concepts of earth history.

Genesis boldly, deliberately, and emphatically sets forth fruit trees and other complex forms in the plant kingdom as the first living things on this planet upon the dry land. And not until the fifth day of creation, two days later than the appearance of these forms of vegetation, were any creatures created to live in the oceans.

Chance, Evolution, and the Origin of Life

Now, all evolutionists reject this order of events as impossible. Why? Not because of any supposed consistency of the order of fossil remains in the crust of the earth, not because of any other scientific empirical evidences as to what kind of living thing appeared on this earth first, but because of a faith concept in terms of chance as the dynamic for the formation of living things over vast periods of time.

In other words, evolutionism insists that it was by chance that life began on this planet, and if it was by chance, then only by a chance floating together of lifeless chemicals in a liquid environment could any build-up from simple to complex in the organic world be imagined.

This is the basic thrust of the evolutionary theory because of its faith commitment to chance as the ultimate god of creation. However, it must be recognized that even in this age of scientism and of a fantastic expansion of the horizon of scientific discovery, the idea that by chance things came into existence has fallen upon evil times.

You see, a hundred years and more have passed since the days when Charles Darwin first popularized the idea of the spontaneous generation of life from lifeless chemicals. Darwin lived, obviously, in a sort of pre-scientific age of low visibility with regard to the complexities of living things and the processes by which living things come into existence and perpetuate into the second and third and ultimate generations.

Many people, including Darwin, clung to the spontaneous generation concept whereby a stagnant pool of water, for example, left long enough to itself would begin to produce wiggling microorganisms that were supposed to have come directly from the water.

But a French scientist about the time of Darwin named Louis Pasteur demonstrated by a series of remarkable experiments that spontaneous generation is a myth, a dream, an impossibility. And so magnificent was his demonstration that no competent recognized scientist in the world today for one moment believes that spontaneous generation can occur in our present world system.

Life can only come from life. Then how, in the name of common sense, could life have begun on this planet apart from a miracle of God's creation billions of years ago? Was spontaneous generation possible at the beginning of the world or is it not possible today?

Evolutionists say it was. In fact, their whole worldview stands or falls upon their willingness to take by faith the spontaneous generation concept as far as earth origins are concerned. They do insist, of course, that the conditions were quite different then than they are now.

The Improbable Conditions Required for Spontaneous Generation

And as we consider briefly what conditions had to exist in order to enable chance to do its amazing work, we will have to realize that in effect we are projecting by faith an Alice in Wonderland world billions of years ago which not only was totally different than the world we know about, but was contradictory to the laws and processes that are obtainable anywhere in the observable universe.

What are those conditions that we are asked to believe in for life to have begun spontaneously? In the first place, we would have to assume that the oceans were composed of different types of substances than they are now.

They had to be literally packed with just the right biochemical ingredients for this amazing event to occur. But there is no geologic evidence that the oceans ever had such things. Secondly, the atmosphere had to be totally different.

There could have been no oxygen, for example. There had to be methane and ammonia and hydrogen, exactly as in the test tubes that are used today for origin of life experiments in modern scientific laboratories.

But there is no geologic evidence in the rocks of the crust of the earth that our atmosphere was basically different two or three billion years ago, according to the uniformitarian scheme of determining the age of our planet.

And the conditions that prevail today. Again, we are asked to change the rules in contradiction to the evidence in order to allow chance to function in bringing life into existence. But that's only the beginning of problems.

If the oceans were packed with just the right biochemical ingredients, you would still need enzymes in order to trigger the development, the build-up of complex proteins. In fact, there would have had to have been so many that as one author or team of authors has expressed it in a recent volume in enzymes, the oceans would need to have been packed with those fantastically complex chemical forms.

Obviously, we must presuppose life, then, in order to have life in its normal processes. If there was no oxygen in the atmosphere, then the deadly radiation from the sun would have destroyed any incipient organism.

It would have been oxidized and burned with oxygen. It would have been destroyed by deadly radiation without oxygen. And you can't have it both ways. You have to have a proper environment with the ozone shield to protect the earth's surface from deadly radiation from the sun.

And you have to have a miracle of God to put the completed metabolic motor system, which is a single-celled organism, into the oceans in order to absorb and utilize the radiation that did get through to the earth.

Thermodynamics, Reversibility, and Probability

But even this is just the beginning of problems. What do we do with the second law of thermodynamics that says in the passing of time there can be no increase of complexity or build-up from chaos to order?

That great universal law would have to be cancelled. That rule would have to be changed in order to fit the idealistic environment that the evolutionists must have at the beginning of earth history. Furthermore, we would have to assume that reversible processes did not obtain.

If we have to have a liquid environment rather than the dry land, in order for life to begin by a chance floating together of lifeless chemicals, let it be observed that those same chemicals could float apart from each other too.

A reversible process in a liquid environment. There was no scientist there either to bring things together or to hold them together even if they floated together by chance. It would be like trying to build up a ladder of seawater from the middle of the ocean to the moon.

At first the prospects might look encouraging as a gigantic wave would lift you up toward the moon. And all you would need then is to wait for another wave to lift you yet higher and you would be well on your way.

One problem however, by the time the second wave arrived the first one had reversed itself and on the average you would have gained not one inch of progress toward the moon. But let's cancel that problem and look squarely at an even greater problem flung into the face of neo-Darwinian biologists by modern mathematicians who have studied and pondered the laws of probability statistics.

What are the chances mathematically that the right kinds of ingredients could have come together in just the right form and interrelationship for this single-celled organism to begin its existence? What are the factors that would have to be involved, fed into the computer as it were, in order for this probability factor to be worked out?

The human mind staggers at the factors involved. Darwin of course knew next to nothing about the complexity of single-celled organisms. He thought they were simple little things that could easily float together from lifeless chemicals.

The Complexity of the Living Cell

But through a hundred years of research, by the use of very powerful microscopes that can probe the inner depths of the structure of living cells, we now realize that in order for even a so-called simple, single-celled creature to live, to absorb nutrients, to reproduce itself, to be called alive, it has to have complete equipment for life, with its complex double membrane holding the creature in existence from the hostile environment in which it moves, and then the outer part of that cell, called the cytoplasm, with its many enzymes that trigger the amino acids into an increasing complexity of build-up to various types of proteins from polypeptides.

No one can even begin to imagine the complexity of this gigantic factory system, which has in its central nucleus a brain called deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA for short, which is the basic programming of the character and nature of the cell which is to be reproduced in the next generation.

And that particular complex molecule has packed within it tens of thousands of nucleic acids that are linked together like steps in a gigantic double spiral staircase that has more information units programmed into it than you will find in the average 12-volume encyclopedia.

And somehow, by a complex system of communication to the outer part of the cell through RNA messenger code molecules, this information guides the cell in how to reproduce itself. I. N. McDowell, in the Creation Research Society Quarterly of December 1971, in a remarkable article entitled, A Law of Biological Conservation, describes the process in these words,.

The elements of a chromosome are its genes, and each human chromosome might possess some 20 ,000 of them. Each gene includes a very large and complex molecule called DNA, which has the characteristic that it divides along its entire length like a zip fastener, at the same time picking up components from its environment in a way which duplicates exactly the original molecule, leaving virtually no change normally.

Each living cell contains the individual's DNA master tapes and produces from them RNA working tapes, which in turn program some 15 ,000 ribosome factories to manufacture on a sort of assembly line the protein and amino acid components of a growing creature.

The slightest change in the DNA master tape effectively destroys the component it specifies, just as a mistake in a computer program produces nonsense at the output stage.". In other words, we are beginning to realize that a single-celled creature is more complex than the entire solar system, and in order for it to function it has to have all its parts and they have to be fitted together, interrelated perfectly.

What are the chances that such a fantastic thing could have come into being by lifeless chemicals just floating together in an ancient ocean? Mathematicians have the way, the basis for solving this problem, and the solution is astounding to behold.

Mathematical Probability and the Monkey-Typewriter Illustration

Let's simplify the problem mathematically so that we can grasp it. What are the chances that a monkey poking blindly at a typewriter by mere chance could spell out Genesis 1 -1? Surely the chances would not be very great, would they?

Especially if that monkey hit a key every time he poked at the typewriter, and could do so with champion speed, 12 keys a second, and if he never got tired, night or day, and if he had a simplified typewriter with nothing but capital letters.

Surely in a reasonable time he could spell out by chance such a collection of letters as we find in Genesis 1 -1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Let's give this monkey a million helpers, each with simplified typewriters and similar skills.

How long would it take for just one of those million monkeys to type Genesis 1 -1 by chance? Are you ready for the answer? Imagine now a rock so huge that with the earth at its center, its outer edge would reach to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, some 20 trillion miles away.

Can you imagine a rock that big? Now imagine a bird every million years coming to that gigantic rock and taking away from it a speck no bigger than a grain of sand. Do you realize that four rocks that big would be worn away completely by that bird at that process rate before one of those million monkeys could type Genesis 1 -1 by chance?

That is nothing compared to how long it would take for a single-celled organism to float together in proper relationship of its inner parts by mere chance in an ancient ocean. And yet the most frustrating thing of all remains.

Even if by some fantastic quirk that event did occur and the faith of evolutionism is capable of matching the challenge, the most frustrating result of all would follow, namely, that you would end up with a dead cell and not a living one.

Why? Because one of the laws of biology and physiology is that you cannot create a living thing by tacking together the appropriate parts of it. Try it yourself sometime. Take a frog and slice him into 87 pieces.

Don't lose a single piece. And then quickly put them together again in the right relationships, in the right positions. What do you have for your trouble? A dead frog. The fact of the matter is that evolutionism itself is a dead faith because it is focused upon a God that doesn't exist at all.

Elijah, Baal, and the Living God

The situation that confronts modern biochemical evolutionism is analogous to a crisis that faced the nation of Israel 800 years before Christ. The nation of Israel was worshiping a dead God, having deliberately abandoned the living God of their fathers, Jehovah, the God of the Exodus, the God who gave them the promised land, the God who, in the days of Solomon and David, had established that kingdom of Israel as the greatest of all kingdoms in quality and spiritual privilege.

And yet by 800 B .C., vast numbers of Israelites, especially in the northern kingdom, had deliberately rejected that God in favor of a fertility deity named Baal. But Baal had a great advantage over Jehovah.

For depraved and sinful men. Namely, that his worship involved a purely mechanical relationship to this God. Those who would simply go through the routine of bowing the knee before his altar on a high place according to the instructions of the priests would be guaranteed fertility of crops and prosperity of home and family with no moral, spiritual responsibilities or requirements at all.

And that was the basic key that brought the entire nation of Israel to the worship of Baal, a projection of their mere imagination, as opposed to the living God, Jehovah, who had moral and spiritual standards for those who would name his name.

But God had mercy upon that nation, and in the days of their deepest spiritual darkness and apostasy, God sent to them a prophet named Elijah who challenged King Ahab, Queen Jezebel, and the entire priestly cult of Baal worship to a public demonstration of the non-existence of their God and the power of Jehovah, the God of the fathers of the Israelite people.

It was a spectacular occasion. Elijah gave them every opportunity imaginable. He allowed the contest to be held on the top of Mount Carmel, on the southern border of Phoenicia, where Baal was most fervently worshipped.

Four hundred and fifty Baal priests were allowed to conduct the ceremony, men who were not only sincere but skilled from their youth up in the incantations and religious acts and formulas that would invoke the blessing and the answers from their God.

Representatives of the entire nation of Israel were there for the occasion. The Baal priests were given the first opportunity, and as they set up their altar and began to cry out, O Baal, hear us, no answer came from heaven at all.

They cried more desperately, hour after hour, dancing around the altar in the prescribed fashion for Baal priests, Elijah standing at the sidelines mocking them. Why not shout louder? Maybe your God went on a journey.

Maybe he fell asleep. Stung by the sarcasm of his challenge, they began to slash their bodies with knives till the blood gushed out. But there was no answer from heaven at all. Would you like to know why?

Because their God had a stupendous disadvantage, had a stupendous obstacle to overcome in order to speak or to show his existence. Namely, he did not exist at all. Non-existence was his problem, and I can't imagine a greater problem than that one to overcome in order to speak and to act in the presence of worshipers.

We are living in a day in the mid -20th century when the God of the world of educated leadership is not Baal, but Chance. Chance is the God who is now invoked in a thousand university laboratories and in ten thousand schools and in a hundred thousand textbooks as the one who alone was sufficient to bring the world of life into existence two or three billion years ago in the shallow waters of an ancient sea.

But that God has failed. He is a God who is dead, non-existent, a mere projection of the imagination of men who have rejected the God of the fathers of our nation, who came to the shores of North America believing in the God of creation, the God of the Bible.

Today, the worshipers of the God Chance, his chief priests, are at the verge of frustration and desperation. They are crying out in a hundred laboratories, Oh Chance, hear us! Show us how you brought life into existence.

Help us to duplicate your fantastic techniques. Show us that it happened by chance. And there's no answer at all. No single-celled organism has ever yet, in any test tube, even with the help of brilliant minds, thousands of them, with millions of dollars of expensive equipment provided in some cases by the government itself.

They have never yet produced one single self-reproducing organism from lifeless chemicals. Why not? Because the living God of creation has reserved to himself the power, the wisdom, the key to unlock the mystery of life's creation.

The Creator as the Answer to the Origin of Life

What an opportunity for those who do believe in the true God of creation to sound forth in power the message that he and he alone is the creator. He and he alone is the true God, the only one worthy of worship.

And as men in their laboratories stand, as it were, slashing their bodies in desperation till blood gushes out, there is no answer or voice from heaven in terms of chance as the chief rival of the God of creation who has deliberately denied chance any part whatsoever in the origin of life on this earth.

May God help us to see the contrast between this God and a God who is totally unworthy of the intelligent devotion of modern man. The Origin of Life, Part 2. Genesis chapter 1, verses 11 to 13 clearly state that life on this planet did not begin as a single-celled, tiny, submicroscopic organism floating in an ancient ocean.

In fact, it tells us just the opposite. Life began on the dry land, not in the ocean, in the form of vegetation in all its varieties, including fruit trees, and not till later did any marine life come into existence by God's creative word.

No evolutionist for one moment could accept this picture, even a theistic evolutionist, who invokes God as the providential guider and director of this process, because fruit trees are considered the latest arrivals in the plant kingdom because of their supposed complexity in comparison to single-celled organisms.

But we can see immediately that the book of Genesis, by reversing the order, fruit trees first, marine creatures later, is showing us something of great importance about the methods that God uses and the order of events in bringing living things into existence, namely that He is not dependent upon any chance developments or supposed rational scheme of events devised by the unaided human mind.

You see, Genesis chapter 1 is designed in such a way that we can see God uniquely as the creator by supernatural, miraculous processes that we do not observe in the world today. You say, is not this a contradiction then to the message that God has given to us through natural revelation, through nature and the message it tells us about God?

No. There is nothing in nature that contradicts the order of events in Genesis, but the only way we can be sure of this order of events is through special revelation in God's written word. And as we begin to ponder this in Genesis chapter 1, we see other clues of God's deliberate contradiction of evolutionary schemes of earth history.

Genesis 1 and the Sequence of Whales, Birds, and Insects

For example, evolutionists insist that whales had to evolve from land mammals because whales are so different in their bodily functions from other marine vertebrates. But God deliberately tells us that whales were created on the fifth day of creation and land mammals not till the sixth.

In other words, whales not only did not evolve from land animals, land mammals weren't even in existence yet when whales were first created. Evolutionists insist that birds had to evolve from reptiles.

But Genesis chapter 1 tells us that birds were created on the fifth day and reptiles not till the sixth, a deliberate contradiction by means of the order of events of any scheme that the natural mind can devise.

Genesis tells us that flowering plants appeared in the third day and insects not till the sixth with creeping things. That proves that insects did not evolve at the same time as flowering plants in the Mesozoic era as evolutionists demand because, point one, there were no vast geologic ages.

These days of creation did not last for millions of years. They were literal 24-hour days, proven if for no other reason than by the fact that if you reverse the order, you are multiplying your problems if you stretch the days into ages.

If it's hard enough to believe that fruit trees were created two days before marine creatures, it would be even harder to imagine that they were created millions of years before marine creatures. So the order of events in Genesis 1 protects the brevity of the creation events and you cannot tamper with any part of the Genesis account without wrecking and spoiling it all.

It is a built-in self-protected system of interpretation. Furthermore, Genesis 1 tells us that the earth was created first and the moon, planets, sun, and stars three days later. You see, God doesn't need the help of any previously existing forms or substances to bring highly complex things into existence.

This magnifies the unique power and glory of God as creator of all things. You might say to yourself that this is an astounding idea which couldn't possibly be supported by an intelligent interpretation of the Bible.

Mature Creation and the Appearance of Age

But, on closer inspection, we discover interesting clues to the fact that God means exactly what He says. We find, for example, as we look into this chapter more closely, that God did not use any processes to bring living things into existence.

Therefore, time is no consideration to God. Take, for example, the fruit trees themselves in verse 11. God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit trees, what? Bearing fruit after their kind, wherein is the seed thereof.

God created, not seeds, that grew into fruit trees through a process of growth, but He created full-grown fruit trees already bearing fruit. Where were the seeds? Not in the ground, sprouting and growing into trees.

They were in the fruits that were hanging upon full-grown trees. This is the shocking concept of creation of mature, adult, functioning entities with a superficial appearance of age. One of the most profound contradictions to modern evolutionary thought.

But the Bible is deliberate in its presentation of this method that the Creator employed. Take the human race, for example. God could have brought the human race into existence by several different methods that come to our minds.

He could have created animals and then through a process of time brought forth by evolution, man. But we know that this is impossible for two reasons. Number one, the second law of thermodynamics dictates that through the process of time apes could not become human but would become feebler, more mutant-type apes.

Ultimately programmed for extinction. Furthermore, and even more important, the Bible denies that man could have come from apes. Man was created absolutely unique, as we shall see in lecture number five on the origin of man in this series of studies.

But of course, another factor must not be forgotten. It would have taken an endless series of miracles for God to have gradually changed apes into men by reprogramming their DNA code. And God does not unnecessarily multiply miracles to accomplish His work in this world if human experience and biblical history are valid guides.

Another way God could have launched humanity into existence would be to create a baby boy and to wait thirty years for him to grow up to adulthood. But that, too, would have required numerous miracles day by day to provide, without human parents, a system of instruction, guidance, and physical help for the helpless infant to grow to maturity.

By far the simplest method would be to create an adult, two adults, fully capable of bringing forth and caring for their own children. And that is the method God employed. You say, well, that certainly contradicts everything we know and experience in the world today.

That's true. Therefore, the only problem with that position is that you must assume that God can perform real miracles. Genuine miracles on this earth. And that God's record of that miracle of creating man, as set forth in the book of Genesis, is true.

Faith in Creation and the Authority of Revelation

You see, here is the difference between a creationist on the one hand and an evolutionist on the other. Both positions involve faith. Faith in an authority. Faith in processes no longer seen in this world.

The evolutionist believes by faith that all of the natural processes we know of today were not in operation when life first began, and that it all happened by chance. The creationist, however, by faith, believes that God, by miracles, brought the world into existence, and then since then, by providence, sustains and guides the creatures he once miraculously made.

Which faith do you have? What is your basic faith commitment to a worldview? Faith in the unaided mind of man as it extrapolates observable processes into the eternal past and future? Or faith in a God who has proven himself to millions, to be the only one worthy of complete trust and confidence?

Yes, as we look at God's method of bringing the human race into existence, we must immediately recognize a pattern in Genesis 1, namely full-grown adult mature organisms. And then after that, the seed, the embryo, the offspring, the baby, the child.

Which came first, the hen or the egg? Creationism, by the analogy of fruit trees and human beings, would state hens were created first and brought forth eggs. What does evolutionism say? Evolutionism, of course, can allow for neither the hen nor the egg.

If the egg came first, who laid it? Evolutionism has no problem greater than the problem of explaining the starting point in the cycle of life. But God's word provides reasonable answers to those who accept God as supernatural creator.

Actually, for the Christian, there is no excuse for rejecting the manner that God employed in bringing living things into existence in Genesis 1. Surprising, though it may be, and it is intentionally surprising because, as Isaiah 55 says, God's thoughts and God's ways are higher than our thoughts and ways.

And if God's ways did not surprise or even shock us, we could well ponder whether, indeed, it is a God and not a mere man or a human theory that we're contemplating. Shocking, yes, but perfectly consistent with God's character and nature.

Christ the Creator in John, Colossians, and Hebrews

How can we be sure of that? Because less than 2 ,000 years ago, this God of creation, this God of miracle, appeared on the planet Earth in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. And in a fantastically brief public ministry of three and a half years, the Son of God demonstrated, among other things, the methods by which He brought the world into being.

You will recall that Genesis is explained in John 1, Colossians 1, and Hebrews 1 in terms of the Son of God, the second person of the triune Godhead, being the creator of the entire physical universe.

He is the one who brought man into being, the fruit trees, the earth itself. And as we continue to read in John 1 of this pre-incarnate Word who brought the world into existence, we discover that before we are finished with the first chapter of John, that this incarnate Word had powers beyond human comprehension that He revealed to men, as to His wisdom in the case of Nathanael.

But in John chapter 2, we see an example of His power as creator. When through His mere Word, 150 gallons of water instantly became delicious and genuine wine or grape juice. This is one of the most remarkable acts of our Lord, and it's the first miracle He ever performed.

Jesus Turns Water into Wine at Cana

According to John chapter 2, what really happened on that occasion? It was a very happy setting, a wedding feast at Cana of Galilee. Many guests were assembled there from different parts of the province for the week-long festivities, but a deeply embarrassing development occurred.

All the refreshments were gone before the week was half over, and the master of ceremonies, greatly embarrassed, made known the problem to Mary, who talked to Jesus about it. Jesus chose to use that occasion to demonstrate His omnipotence.

He commanded the men to bring huge pots full of water. At His mere Word, it was completely and suddenly transformed. The ruler of the feast, tasting this water that was made wine and not knowing what had happened, assumed that it had been kept somewhere until that moment, stored, having previously come from grapes that men had picked and squeezed, that had previously grown on vines that somebody had planted in the ground, and which the sunshine and the rain and the nutrients of the soil had nourished.

He was a uniformitarian. And really, we can't blame him, because when he saw what had happened, he had to arrive at a conclusion that is based upon his own experience. And this is the basis upon which all keen observers of the universe today arrive at their conclusions.

When the ruler of the feast said in John 2 .10, Thou hast kept the good wine until now, he was saying what all scientists in leading positions in the world today say when they look at the sun, moon and stars, earth, atmosphere, oceans, plants, animals and men, in all their vast complexities, they say somehow it's all been kept somewhere until now.

What do they mean by that? They mean that these things are end products of complex processes through endless ages of time, from simple to complex, without any miracles at all. This is uniformitarian evolutionism.

It is the natural conclusion of natural men who do not have supernatural answers to ultimate questions. Evolutionism, then, for the natural man, is a logical conclusion, in spite of the hopeless contradictions that it involves even in a scientific realm.

But this ruler of the feast in John 2 .10 did not realize he was standing before the Son of God, the Creator of the world. That was his mistake. In fact, Jesus didn't even need water to produce that wine.

He didn't need pots to hold it in. He was the one who created all things by his word. And every miracle Christ performed was like that one. Little later, he calmed a storm instantly, giving it the appearance of not having been a raging storm five minutes after it was calmed.

Christ's Miracles as Acts of Creation

He created thousands of loaves and fishes by a hillside near Galilee. And men sat there eating fishes, full-grown, dried, which had never been hatched in any sea or had never grown, had never been caught.

In fact, had never dried, because they had never been wet. They had the appearance of a history they never had. They ate barley loaves with barley grains in them that supposedly had grown in some field, harvested by men, gathered, processed, baked in ovens.

But that was not true. Christ created 10 ,000 barley loaves with an appearance of history they had never had. In fact, every diseased, crippled, leprous person Jesus ever healed instantly took on the appearance of previous health they hadn't had.

Men born blind could see when Jesus touched them. And one man, who had rotted more than half a week in a tomb at Bethany, near Jerusalem, suddenly sprang to full, complete life in response to the mere word of Jesus Christ, Lazarus, come forth.

What would you have thought if you sat at the banquet table at Bethany where the feast was held in honor of the resurrection of this beloved brother of Mary and Martha? Wonder if you stumbled into that feast hall not knowing what had happened or what the occasion was and sat across from Lazarus and heard him say this to you, Sir, do you know why we're assembled here?

I see you're a stranger. No, sir, I don't. What is this for? You mean you haven't heard what happened last week here in this town to me? No. Do you see that empty tomb across the way? Yes. Last week I was in that tomb.

You were? Yes. I was decomposing having died four days earlier. Would you believe that testimony? Never. Never while this world remained would you believe that testimony unless you knew personally the power of Jesus Christ as creator, as supreme miracle worker.

Our whole faith and confidence in Jesus Christ as Lord depends upon our confidence in the veracity of the New Testament account of his miraculous work. When Jesus said to Lazarus, Come forth, he did. When he brought forth his own body from the tomb, he demonstrated his power as the God of all nature.

Christ, Resurrection, and Christian Hope

Therefore, Christ himself is the key to unlock the mystery of God's methods in bringing the world into existence because he was the world's creator. And during those three remarkable years of his public ministry, 1900 years ago in Palestine, Jesus showed men that he did not need vast periods of time or appropriate previously existing processes and materials to do fantastic things.

If he did need time, nobody would have looked twice at his claim to be Israel's king, the son of God, the savior of the world. Christianity stands or falls, and with it your personal hope of eternal salvation and ultimate resurrection upon the power of the living God to try to do things by means and methods apparently contradicted by the assumptions of modern uniformitarian scientism.

This is our hope that God is able to reach down and do things in ways that nature in itself does not reveal. That is why we desperately need God's special revelation in Scripture, not only in the New Testament, but in Genesis, to lay the foundation of our confidence that this is a God who is real, who is alive, who can actually do things, who is not like Baal of old, a completely imaginary, hopelessly inadequate, because nonexistent deity.