We greet you, friends, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator of heaven and earth, under God the Father, as revealed through God the Holy Spirit. And I now introduce to you one of the greatest creations in the whole vast universe. It's called the neck of the giraffe. How many have ever seen the neck of a giraffe? In fact, the entire giraffe. What a marvel of all marvels, just as if God designed and created this animal to prove to the world of secular godless evolutionists that there is a designer and there is a creator in the universe. When I was an evolutionist at Princeton University, the neck of the giraffe was a tremendous challenge to the theory of evolution. They just couldn't imagine how such an animal... could ever have acquired a neck like this. And so Lamarck, a French scientist, decided, well, maybe he just, under tremendous pressure of the demand for leaves and times of drought, reached, stretched his neck harder and harder, and it just got longer. But, of course, we realize that that doesn't accomplish anything. And you try to chop off the tail of a dog. And the next generation, the puppies have tails. There's something more involved this year that has to be explained, isn't there? Well, Charles Darwin came along and said, I have the answer. Among any particular generation of baby giraffes, some would, by chance, have longer necks than other ones. And so nature would select out the one that had the advantage of a longer neck because in those supposed millions of years of constant droughts in Africa, only the ones that had the longest neck survived. Survival of the fittest. But that seemed to create some enormous problems. No matter how much longer a baby giraffe neck was than that of his brother or sister, how could he survive until he was grown up and had a full length neck? And there is no answer. For instance, how did the hippopotamus survive with practically no neck? And all the other animals with short necks. And the giraffe gallops around and smiles at us, I guess, at our stupidity, not knowing where he came from. And you see, there's another problem, friends. When the giraffe puts his neck down to drink water, he becomes very vulnerable. In fact, he should totally collapse in unconsciousness. Why? Because he puts that head suddenly down eighteen feet. And wouldn't you think that enormous mass of blood in that nine-foot-long neck would rush down to his brain and knock him unconscious? And then cheetahs and lions would there gobble him up, and that would be the end of the story of giraffes. But now we've discovered that inside the neck of the giraffe, there's an amazing set of valves in the arteries. which, when the neck goes down, suddenly reverse and stops the flow of blood, and he's not knocked out, and he suddenly puts his head back up and gallops happily away as if there was no problem whatsoever. Now the evolutionists have a real problem. Where do these valves come from? Well, the scenario, as you might expect, sounds something like this. Millions and millions of years ago, potential giraffes didn't have any valves in their necks. But one giraffe evolved one and it helped so much that he survived with this advantage over his other friends, that his babies inherited that mutation. And then, of course, through millions of years, finally more and more and more valves evolved. And finally, all giraffes have all the valves they need and all of them are happy and are surviving. Well, all you have to do, dear friends, is just listen to the evolutionists. speculate on and on, and you have a deep sense of sorrow for such willful blindness. What an amazing creature God put together here. You know, he only has seven neck bones just like you and I have, but each one is a foot long. And in order to get the blood pumped all the way up to this head here and to take care of that neck, He has a heart that is forty times bigger than yours and mine. And, you know, it takes a lot of air, too, to pump in and out of that nine-foot-long neck from his mouth and nose down to the lungs, though God gave him lungs eight times as big as yours and mine. Just as if God is saying, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? as he said to Job four thousand years ago. Too bad, God says to the consensus of all modern scientists, too bad I didn't have your help to design my world and to create things because, you know, with gentle sarcasm, mingled with sadness, he would say to us in our pride and arrogance, why don't you try to make something? But let us, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, marvel at your skill and your brilliance and your ingenuity, your power, your wisdom. And of course, friends, you know that's how the book of Job ends. Job has seen a whole parade of ten different magnificent birds and mammals and a couple of reptiles, the behemoths and Leviathan, and finally collapses before God. He says, I have heard of thee with the hearing of the ears, but now mine I see is thee. Wherefore I repent and abhor myself in dust and ashes. You win, Lord. I lose. I repent of every evil, unworthy thought I've ever had of you. And so we say, Oh God, oh God, how great thou art. Now friends, the real tragedy is that no evolutionist today will ever surrender, no matter what evidences or proofs you give him. Because he will say, and they're all saying today, we really don't know how the giraffe got such a marvelous neck, but somehow, someday we'll find the answer. We'll never surrender. See, never. Why does he say that? Well, because he's got an infinite problem. And the Lord Jesus describes that problem, doesn't he? Jesus said in Matthew fifteen that it's out of the heart of man that come evil thoughts, the heart of man. We don't get evil thoughts by what we see, by empirical observation of repeatable processes in nature. Friends, we just have evil thoughts because an evil heart controls and guides our thinking process. And twenty-seven hundred years ago God said through Jeremiah the prophet chapter seventeen verse nine, the heart of man is what? Deceitful above all things and is desperately wicked and who can know it? Only in omniscient God can fathom the depth of human sin, depravity, perversion and suppression of divine truth everywhere, always, and with amazing success. You see, friends, unless we understand the problem the evolutionist has, his real problem, we're not going to be able to help him at all. Now, let's take a look at the problem. Here he is. This is his heart, absolutely saturated and dominated by evolutionism. That's Satan's masterful contradiction to biblical creation truth today. And, of course, he has won enormous victories in our supposedly once Christian country, which of course never has been fully Christian, we understand, but nevertheless, we're spiraling downward, apparently in an accelerated pace with all of our public schools now teaching in all the textbooks this scenario right here. Generally, atheistic evolutionism. Now, an evolutionist does have a choice, you know. within our depravity, we have all kinds of choices of what form of depravity we will exhibit, display, exemplify. This is by far the most consistent for all science textbooks in elementary schools, secondary schools, universities, graduate schools, and all the great media of communication today, namely there is no God at all. It all happened by chance that a big bang explosion somewhere, a cosmic egg just came from somewhere and exploded. And there was a great fallout from this explosion. And here we all are. Giraffes and people and elephants and apple trees and sparrows, magnolias. Here we all are. But most... of the advanced thinkers in the world of science today have a real hard time with that. Satan, as a matter of fact, prefers another position. It's called deistic evolution, where you say, in Latin, Deus, there must have been some kind of a personal God to get that first cosmic egg launched and exploded, but surely we've never heard from him since. He really doesn't care that much about people. He's never revealed himself. And certainly he never came to this planet to die for the sins of men. No. And many of our founding fathers in America were of this persuasion, weren't they? Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, and many of the others. See, deus. That was a very popular option in the seventeen hundreds in England and America. But that wasn't enough either. Satan now is going to unveil his real masterpiece. by which he has won vast numbers of people to his side. It's called theistic evolutionism. And what does that teach? Oh, there had to be a God to design the universe. That's obvious. And there had to be a God to inaugurate the universe. That's obvious. Cause and effect, you see. The effect demands an equal or greater cause. And furthermore... We can't really imagine that if God launched the universe, he wouldn't have anything to say to his creatures. And we therefore believe that he has personally and constantly guided the whole process of evolution for billions of years. And he's the one that finally evolved the apes. And from them, he brought human beings here with just a little miraculous touch called the Spirit. soul that he put into the bodies of that male and female ape a million years ago or so. But God really doesn't perform miracles that you can see in the physical world ever. Why? Because that contradicts science. Science says there are no miracles. In fact, they're impossible. And our whole concept of science would collapse if we believed in miracles. So God just through millions of years personally guides the evolutionary process and watches over his world with intricate care, but he never says anything and he never does anything miraculously. Now friends, that is the major view in Roman Catholicism and the liberal Protestantism today. That's the major view. All the liberals and the Unitarians, of course, would fall in line with that. And all the great universities of the world would have theistic evolutionists in prominent places in the faculty, but they would never dare talk about creation and never mention Genesis as having any relevance at all on the issue of origin. They're locked in, you see, to satanic blindness on God's revelation of how the world began. Well, friends, look at their dilemma. All the scientific data they see, the sun, moon, and stars, and earth, atmosphere, and oceans, and plants, animals, and people all get screened through this grid right here, and it always comes out evolution. There are some exceptions. Because why? They're totally locked in by a bias, a preconceived idea about origins that dictates to their depraved hearts their interpretation that they impose upon God's universe that they are almost, with rare exceptions, totally locked into. It's a vast, deep religious commitment. We have to recognize this. Evolutionism is a religion. And when we argue in our public tax-supported schools about the separation of church and state, let's face it, friends, it's not science versus religion. It's one religion versus another religion. And God's religion revealed and enshrined in Holy Scripture is one choice that human beings have. And Satan's religion, you see, of a distorted, perverted, finite, evolving God developing into self-consciousness through billions of years is another option, you see, for most people. But... But look, friends, there's only one possible way to get out of this box. And that is a miracle of regeneration. Not endless arguments and debates and evidences and proofs of God's power and wisdom and presence. In fact, the Lord Jesus warned us against that. This is one of the most horrible things he ever said about human beings, in fact. Do not cast your pearls before... My. My. Really? Well, he gave two reasons. You don't take the precious pearls of, for instance, Genesis chapters one to eleven, the order of creation events, the length of the creation days, the... the fall, the curse, the involvement of Satan through the serpent and the flood and the ark and the power of able dispersion. You don't take those things to an unregenerate mind and say, believe that. Why not? It's impossible. You are taking pearls of revealed truth and casting them before those who are hopelessly incapable of discerning, appreciating, The value, the source, the significance of those pearls. What you have to do, friends, because Jesus said they'll just trample them underfoot and turn and rinse you. They hate your pearls and they hate you for distributing them. So what do you have to do? You have to do whatever necessary to change those swines into sheep. Guess what? That's a miracle. And it won't happen by pushing pearls into the swine harder and harder. No. You have to trust the living God to perform a miracle of regeneration, the new birth, that will enable that once blind, dead, depraved person to appreciate and love the pearls of revealed truth. And that's First John two twenty. You have an anointing of the Holy One and you don't need to have teachers anymore. to give you permission to believe the Bible, or some human mediator to get you to God. No. You have the Holy Spirit Himself to this book, which is self-authenticating to illumine your heart and mind and be your ultimate teacher. That doesn't mean we don't need teachers, because the rest of the New Testament emphasizes that point, doesn't it? We need teachers, but friends, you are not the helpless victim of a false teacher. All the teaching, including this week, You must believe only to the extent that it was. That it agrees with this book. You are in charge of your destiny, not some guest speaker, lecturer, pastor, theologian, or whoever. No. You are accountable to God, the Holy Spirit, in your reaction to His precious word. Now, if a teacher can show you things in the Bible that you didn't know were there, thank the Lord. And we all need that help. Lectures, sermons, commentaries. But careful here, friends. We don't depend on those experts, so-called, to tell us what we must believe. Only God tells us through this book. I'm sure we know that. I'm sure we realize that. But once a person has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit in a marvelous miracle of the new birth, then and then only is he capable of listening. Then immediately he has appreciation or reverence for Scripture. It doesn't mean he knows everything. It means now he is teachable. Now he has access to reveal truth that he never had before. The blindness has been removed. His spiritual eyes have been opened. And now he can discover things he never could have known before. One night in my dormitory room at Pine Hall at Princeton University in February, nineteen forty-three, little more than fifty-six years ago. An evangelist, a missionary who had been working with me for seven months on that campus, I assure you he was not a professor of the university. At a weak moment in the administrative design and structure of the university, he came and asked permission to have a Sunday afternoon Bible class on Murray-Dodge Hall, the campus student center, and some officials said, yes. And he clung on to that opportunity for fifty years and won hundreds of students of the Lord. And that was in nineteen thirty-one. And twelve years later, I was on the scene and He said to me, You must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and gave me the scriptures. And that night, by the grace and mercy of God, I passed from death to life and darkness to light, and I have never recovered. As God commanded the light to shine in the darkness, so, of course, Christ, the light of the world, shines into our darkened heart. and I became a new creation in Christ and all things passed away and all things became new and at that moment and for the first time dear friends this book became my ultimate infinite eternal authority source of truth right there and now look God created a new grid a new screen within me so that the same scientific data sun moon and stars earth atmosphere oceans plants animals and people were now being processed through a different kind of heart. See? A heart that was open to God's interpretation of what I was seeing, of what was coming through the eyes and ears and to the mind. And friends, now I can look at a giraffe and not be frustrated anymore. I would just say, well, thank you, Lord Jesus, of course. You must not only have infinite wisdom and power, but as I look at this giraffe, I think maybe you also have a slight sense of humor. You just marvel at your creatures. That's the book of Job. God says, look at this ostrich. Look at this horse. Look at these marvelous. God enjoys his animals. That's why he made them. But, friends, now we are not embarrassed as to how they got here. We say, thank you, Lord. However, There are some things in God's universe we haven't yet fully understood as Christians. There are complexities in the living world and in the physical universe that we can't fully fathom. And so we have an attitude also about this. Here's our presupposition. We may not be able to explain everything now, but someday God will show us, and in the meantime we will trust Him. Do you see a slight different perspective here? A different what? Different bias? A different preconceived set of ideas the Holy Spirit now gives us? See, that is the whole foundation of the evolution-creation controversy today. It's what faith do you have in which God? And creationists are very open about the fact. They should be that... By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God so the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. By faith. We weren't there when it happened. We don't have photographs of the world being created. No. But we trust the God who can't lie, who doesn't deceive anybody, who's infinitely trustworthy, and who's given us enormous masses of information and demands that we take Him at His Word and believe in Him. That's our source of conviction. and understanding. But if the evolutionists were honest, and there are some friends here and there, you'd be surprised who are remarkably honest about the fact they haven't the faintest idea how anything evolved. Dr. Henry Morris, my co-author of the Genesis Flood book, has an enormous new book. I forgot the exact title of something about what the evolutionists say about themselves, something like that, or what they have said about their theory. And thousands of evolutionists, friends, are in full-time business contradicting whatever other evolutionists are saying. You see? And many of them admit we don't know where anything came from. But we believe in evolution. All right? We have faith in our God. You say, what God? Well, I'll name him for you. as I used to worship Him. His name is Time to Chance by Evolution. So let's revise Hebrews eleven three to accommodate this religious faith commitment. You ready? This is honest evolutionists now speaking. By faith we evolutionists understand that the worlds were not framed by the word of any person living God. so that the things which are seen were indeed formed by previous existing simpler things through endless ages of time by chance. Thank you. That's their faith in their God. And I have my faith in my God and I trust you do too. So what do we do in public schools then? We give people a choice. Which God do you want to worship? Now friends, you've got a problem here. You know what the problem is? Sure you do. In addition to God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, that's our God, ruling and governing and guiding and controlling and upholding the universe, and here's a deep mystery. There's another God who is the God of this world, and guess how he became the God of this world, because we asked him to, in the persons of Adam and Eve. endorsed every moment we live in the light of Isaiah fifty three six all we like sheep have gone astray and here's the real bad news and every one of us has gone his own way we have daily endorsed what Adam and Eve did and have just said to Satan we want you to be our God we want to you know be as God knowing good and evil We want to be independent. We don't want some God telling us what we can do and can't do. We want limitless freedom. We want to be free at last. We want to be God ourselves. And so, friends, the tragedy is that He is the God of this world, and He will fight every inch of the way through His vast army of dozens of millions of demons to prevent any fool from having biblical truth ever taught, ever. That's the problem. It's not, well, we demand that the government gives us, you know, equal time. Won't work. Try it. There is no such thing in Satan's world as equal time for God's truth. Jesus told us that. If they have hated me, they will what? They'll hate you. And there's a war going on. And we wrestle not against flesh and blood. I mean, we just don't go reasoning with administrators of schools and say, can we have equal time to present biblical truth? Just try that. See? Parents will be up in arms and enraged that their children are being exposed to mere myths of Genesis. You see, and many thousands of creation scientists have found to their horror that there is some kind of a dark force that blocks every effort. to reach those millions of public school children who are being daily deceived in their classrooms and their textbooks. And rare indeed are Christian teachers, friends, that have the courage to speak up. And when they do, all of a sudden they're gone. So friends, we have to have a different strategy, don't we, to reach those millions of school children. And the strategy is not to reach the administrators and make them change their philosophy of education in their textbooks. The strategy, and you knew it, you knew it, is to pray to the God of heaven to give a one-on-one contact, house to house, out in the street, evangelism, precious fruit picked, one by one, here and there as God gives us entrance into homes, wherever the children might be. You can't just march in a classroom and take over. No. It's a very different kind of strategy than perhaps we would prefer or become excited about. It's a non-spectacular, you see, quiet way of prayer and witnessing, in evangelism, in discipleship, in local assemblies, as children are reached. And hopefully through godly homes until they're indoctrinated and taught in the marvelous things of the Word of God. See, there are too many creation scientists, dear friends, that still have grandiose ideas, I'm afraid. Triumphalism is what we call it. We're going to change the government. We're going to change the public schools. We're going to change the laws of the land. Oh, really? Try that. Try... going to Congress. See, try the White House. Try the Supreme Court. God says, whenever you're tired of trying, would you listen just once to me and read instructions? When all else fails, read what God told us to do. And God says, you will, number one, ask me for help that only I can give you. to do the great commission that I gave to you when I left this earth, namely you're to make disciples, and you're to baptize them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and you're to teach them to observe all things whatsoever I've commanded you, and that is not spectacular, and it takes dedication, and it involves disappointment and satanic opposition, and will take years of years of prayerful, patient work. Americans don't like that anymore. We want immediate results on a massive scale. God says when you're through with the lightning and the thunder and the noise, may I have a still small voice here on this one. Satan won't just go away when you puff at him or use human schemes and finite strategies. He's been around a long time, friends, and he's just waiting for you. to try your method with finite force and you and I will become victims in catastrophes under His power. God willing, tomorrow morning we're going to find out what God says about the problem and what God says about the solution to the problem and this is called in theology presuppositional apologetics namely that this word and this word alone is the self-authenticating light that God promises to use for those who trust in Him and obey Him and do His work, His way, and for His glory. Let's pray. Father in heaven, help us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. of having wisdom toward those who are without, not underestimating the enemy or man's depravity in blindness, in rebellion and resistance to precious revealed truths. May Christ our Lord be honored as we think of His will and His way.