Crawford, Norman: Week Of Meetings-05 ~ Creation-Gen 1

I'm going to try and answer these questions in a brief way. If the answer is not clear, or if some brother has something helpful to add, I- I will wait a few moments after each answer and give you that opportunity. Okay, there are three questions that are almost identical. I'm going to read the one that is the longest. In creation, what was the purpose of the tree of life? Given that Adam was only forbidden to eat w- of the one tree, and after sin entered, it was dr- he was driven out, why the tree of life? Okay. Did you think that Adam didn't eat of the tree of life before? Obviously, the person who asked this question seems to think that. That isn't, that isn't what we are told. It was after he had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That was the tree that was forbidden. And after he had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then lest he eat of the tree of life and live forever in that fallen state, he was forbidden then to eat of the tree of life. I would think now, and I'm not going to be very dogmatic on that, I would think that the tree of life was put there. All the trees of the garden were good for food and were given to him to eat, but of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, thou mayest not. What tree was that? It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. All right, why did God put a tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden? Why? There's a simple answer. It will help you greatly. It has helped me tremendously. God didn't make robots. You see, there are creatures in God's creation that only do what they are created for. They have no ability to deviate from the purpose for which they were created, not by an iota. When God made man, he made man a moral creature. You know what a moral creature is? A creature who has choice. Just let me do it like this. If you're a parent and you have a child, and that child sometimes breaks your heart, is disobedient, would you re- then rather have a machine that you could program that would never deviate from the program? Would that be better than a child who disobeys? Oh, you say, please, no. That- that's no substitute for a living child. No, it isn't. Because you see, when God made man, he made us after his likeness. That's moral likeness. So God gave us a choice. God could have made creatures without a choice. He made us with a choice. And then when man made the wrong choice, God couldn't say, I'll cancel the results. You see, or else it wouldn't be a choice. Where did that explanation come from? It came from C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. I think it's an excellent answer. So God gave man the choice, man chose wrongly, and the punishment fell, and man was driven out. Um, anyone want to add? There is another question here that has been asked several times, and uh, do you believe we are misled as to the number of scientists that believe in creation? The media would have us believe they are almost non-existent. Yes, the media does that. There are three areas of very great liberal thinking: the legal profession, the teaching profession, and... I'm sorry about this, the media. Those are the three areas of the greatest liberal thinking. They have an agenda. You know what an agenda is? They they they they have an axe to grind. So therefore they push that very much. I know this for a fact. I know that scientists who believe the Bible are not as rare as they would have us think. In fact, there are quite a large number of them. And sometimes those men have been courageous to come out against their own professions, to stand firmly for the inspiration of scripture. Um, but let me go back the other side. It is the accepted theory that is made a fact that uniformity and evolution have happened. That is the generally accepted fact. And not only is that the fact that is accepted in the scientific community, it is accepted to a greater degree in the educational system. You see, those men that I was telling you about at the University of Manitoba, not one of those men really believed that there was no God. And yet we are led to believe that, and there's thirty of them, and they're scientists, and they're researchers. Not one of those men was ready to say there was no God. So maybe we are misled to think that the whole scientific community is in unbelief. I don't think so. Uh, there is another question here that, um, are the continents still drifting? We mentioned this afternoon that there is a correlation in the very configurment of North and South America, Europe, and Africa. Actually, there is even a greater conformity in what are called the continental shelves. In other words, down under the ocean, the continents spread out, and the water is comparatively shallow compared to the deep ocean. It's called the continental shelf. Uh, we are told that the configuration of the continental shelf is so close that there's great evidence of a continental drift. So was the continental drift something that happened over millions of years, or did God bring that about? I- I would think that Genesis ten, when it tells us in the days of Peleg, the earth was divided, that's earth. That is the actual physical world. So, what does the verse mean? I take it it means that God divided it. And, uh, I can't really say more about that simply because I do not know. Um, that happened after the flood. I have another question here regarding this. Did this happen as a result of the flood? I'm not going to tell you that the flood did not affect that. Uh, very surely it, it could have, uh, but definitely the statement is in Genesis ten, and that is a statement that is after the flood happened. This is a different kind of a question totally, so I'll, for a little variety, I'll put this in now. Scientists said that the capacity, in the capacity of the human brain, that only twenty five percent is used. Can you explain why? Yeah. Because we're lazy. Would you say, Dr. Ye, would you agree with that? I ask the doctor if, uh, my ten billion component statement about the human brain was correct. He thinks it is. He he he was saying that millions of cells die every day, yet the brain goes on. And there are there are things that can accelerate the death of brain cells, like alcoholism, certain kinds of disease that can accelerate. That- that's why you should never drink alcohol. You want to keep your brains? Good way to lose them. Put alcohol in your system. Was there an ice age? Uh, ice very evidently covered the northern reaches of the North American continent to an area that covers the what is called in geology the Great Shield. There is great evidence of scouring, great evidence of ice and the effects of ice. There are, uh, areas where the ice actually deposited, uh, huge amounts of debris that it scoured from the surface of the Earth. Yes, there is evidence of an ice age. Not maybe as some scientists try to explain it, because they put that into the equation for evolution and uniformity in geology. But as I mentioned earlier, how were those great mammoths in Siberia, uh, covered with silt that was almost instantly frozen? It was. In fact, there are myriads of fossils that could not possibly have been produced over a period of time. The very tiny filaments of their being still exist in the fossil records. How did those tiny fossils stay there for, as they tell us, millions of years, exposed to all kinds of forces? Because they didn't. Because those fossils were formed in a very brief period of time. I once was in a lab where they produced coal. How long does it take to produce coal? Well, I saw it. Took uh six hours. It just takes pressure, and the pressure creates heat, and the heat reduces all the other elements in the carbon and leaves you with coal. That's why there are trees that go up through coal measures. Instead of those coal measures being laid down over eons of time, actually you have trees embedded in two or three different measures of coal. How did it get there? Because it all happened with a terrible cataclysmic judgment. So the mammoths, how did they get frozen? That's what I started with. I'm wandering here. How did, how did the mammoths get frozen? Okay, there was a canopy effect before the flood. The Earth was watered with water from heaven. It was an even climate. There were not tropic, subtropic, torrid, and temperate zones. There's lots of evidence, lots of evidence in the fossil records to show that the Earth had an even climate. What happened? The canopy was removed. The windows of heaven were opened. The canopy that was covering the Earth as a protective shield was gone. What happened? The Arctic and the sub-Arctic and the Antarctic were suddenly produced by the tilt of the Earth twenty three and a half degrees on its axis. And so the, the actual freezing must have taken place in a very short period of time because these great creatures are frozen, undecayed, with vegetation that hasn't even deteriorated in their stomachs. So they were actually inundated with the flood waters and then frozen very quickly. There seems to be evidence of that, and maybe you think that's just theory too, but uh, that's what we think anyway. Um, what should be our attitude toward the environment? No Christian that knows that this is God's world. The physical world is God's world. The world system is Satan's world. There's a vast difference between God's world and Satan's world. None of us should be, should be prodigal in our treatment of the world that God has made. We should be very careful how we use all the blessings God has given us. Dear Robert Chapman had a poem above his dining room table. Robert Chapman is one of the, is the, was the, was the patriarch of Barnstaple in England, a dear godly man in early assemblies, and he had a poem over his table. It was about salt, and under the bottom of the poem it said about using just as much salt as was necessary, not wasting it, because underneath it said about the Lord Jesus eating the five thousand, Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost. That's very good theology. We, we shouldn't be wasteful, but here's a warning now. Don't substitute the environment for God, and that's what ecology has done. How have they done it? Well, what is right today? What is right is no longer how you behave morally, whether you're honest, whether you refrain from fornication and adultery. That's no longer what's right. What's right now is that you don't pollute the environment. It's a substitute for righteousness. Be careful of it. Be careful you don't get too deeply involved, and make it your God, and make it a substitute for God. I- I've had men come to my door, and I- I told them that. I said, you have a substitute for God. Your substitute is ecology, the ecosystem. Be very careful about how you use Mother Nature anymore. Mother Nature has- has been abused. It's a bit like the word gay. We don't use it anymore. It was once a good word, it got stolen from us, and so is Mother Nature. Mother Nature means much more to these people than just the natural processes. Mother Nature is like a god to them. They've substituted. That's animism. Know what animism is? When men find God in nature. It's pagan. And I'm afraid in North America we have the pagan religions of the world coming in like a flood. So animism is very popular in modern thinking. So don't substitute ecology for God, and yet we should be careful of all the blessings God has given us. Any comment on that? I answered this next question when I was speaking this a bit ago. Uh, why are there not many human fossils found? There are many human fossils found. What are not found are the transitional forms between ape and man. That is not what is not found. In fact, there are so few and so scant and so scarce that they had to manufacture entire, uh, human skeletal remains from a few fragments of bone. They're very scarce because it didn't exist. Good reason why it's scarce, there never was any transitional periods, uh, uh, transitional forms between anthropoid and man. Why did... This is a very interesting question. I didn't get a chance to read this one before. Why did men live longer before the flood than they do today? I think the answers are at least three. What has happened in the human race has been a deterioration of physical strength. You could believe that, couldn't you? Why has strength deteriorated? Because of abuse, because of the abuse of what God has made, because we abuse ourselves in many, many ways and sit at a desk all day and never get any exercise. Um, yeah. So definitely there has been a deterioration. Also, from that first creation that contained no disease, that had absolutely no pests, no parasites, no diseases. It evidently took a long period of time before disease developed to the point where it is. And there are, uh, new forms of disease, would you say, doctor? New forms of disease arising. Maybe, maybe not a totally new disease, but new forms of disease arising, affecting people in many different ways. It's a deterioration. It really is the law of entropy. It's the law of decay. So very clearly then, in those days, and beside that, before the flood, there was not ultraviolet rays, for instance, because there was a canopy, and we escaped much that people talk about today, about the, the, the adverse effects of radiation. We escaped that, and therefore there was not the destruction of human living cells as there are by many, many means today, so it's very obvious that men did live very much longer. It would seem that it was not too long after the flood that the, what David writes in Psalm ninety became a reality, that the life of man was threescore years and ten. Any comment on that? Ho- hope I'm answering all these. I think I am. I read in a Christian publication that not long before his death, Darwin totally changed his mind and wondered why so many believed in his theory. Now, there is some truth to this statement. Uh, Darwin never was as convinced of his theory as his disciples were, and I've already mentioned to you, uh, Thomas Huxley, who was tremendously a pro- promoter. He's actually called the popularizer of Darwin. So Darwin did not push his theory too far. I think you remember that we said that, that Darwin had an agenda. You know what his agenda was? He was actually educated at Christ Church Chapel at Cambridge in England. You know what that is? It's a school of theology. It was at that time. Darwin was educated in theology. Darwin planned to be a priest of the Anglican Church. He actually turned away from the Bible and turned away from God. He never was sure of his ground. He had many misgivings. He actually wrote what I quoted earlier today, that if the fossil record did not prove his theory, then his theory should rightly be rejected. So he was not all that convinced himself. And I have read this, I, I have read several, uh, life stories of Darwin, and, uh, I have read this, that he actually did say that his whole theory was built on a foundation of sand. He maybe was thinking of the words of the Lord Jesus about the two builders. What was the population of the earth before the flood? I don't know, but I don't think it would be six billion. Wouldn't be much evidence for that. But that it was great? Yes, it was great. Genesis five indicates that men actually did people the earth before the flood. Um, how advanced was man before the flood? I think this is the most interesting conception. You see, we have primitive man in our minds, cave dwellers who use stone implements and very gradually, uh, got copper implements, and then the Iron Age began and all this sort of thing. This is what we have, this slow progression from primitive man who never even plants anything, who, who is scarcely human at all. Uh, why, there's nothing further from the truth. There is vast evidence of the tremendous knowledge that men had, the tremendous skills they had, the abilities they had. And even after the flood, we are told by, by engineers today, by mechanical engineers, that it would be, it would require a crane such as the crane that built the bridge to Prince Edward Island to erect the pyramids. Did they have it? Well, then how did they do it? Men had great skill. In fact, the records that they have left indicated that they had done so many things in so many areas of knowledge. They had, they had charted the heavens. They knew the stars. They knew exactly the constellations. They knew exactly how to, how to... In fact, there is powerful evidence that they built ships that came across the Atlantic and landed in South America, and as you know, the Vikings came across the North Atlantic and landed on the Labrador coast and Newfoundland and in New England. Not, not primitive in the sense that they were cave people. They really had tremendous knowledge. So man's mind is of such a nature that he is, he is a searcher after truth, and that has ever been so. What about the theory that God created an old earth, similar to God creating an aged man? I'm thankful that somebody asked this, and maybe the question doesn't just ring, uh, with what the person means. Let me say what, what this person means. Did God create seeds, or did he create trees? God created trees. Um, does a tree have an evidence of age? Sure it does. You see a, a fully formed mature tree, you, you know that it didn't sprout that morning. You know it's been there for a long time. It had to be. Its very size and height is an evidence of age. So when God created this world, he didn't create seeds, he created mature things. I'm going to get into this later, perhaps tonight, but there is a tremendous problem that nobody is asking these questions. How did the light of stars that is, that are millions of light years removed from Earth, how did the light of those stars get to Earth if the universe was only created in the six days of Genesis one? Think about it. I'll try and answer it tonight. So, yes, God did create creatures that, uh, had the appearance of age. He didn't make a world of seeds and elemental cells. He made a world of mature plants, animals, and he made Adam. I love to think of how he made Adam. He formed him out of the dust of the ground. I used to think in my simplicity that it was just kind of a rough, uh, but like we would do in the sand if your children were playing and they were making a man in the sand, and they would just kind of form a sort of a appearance of a head and shoulders and arm and torso and legs and what have you, just kind of a rough thing like that. Oh, it wasn't like that. Whatever God does is perfect. When he formed man out of the dust of the ground, he formed a perfect man. Organs? Yes, everything. But it was just clay. And into that clay, God breathed the breath of life, and man became a living soul. It doesn't say man received a soul. So don't look for a man who, who possesses a soul. Look for a man who is a soul. That's what we are. And man became a living soul. God did that only once. Only once. Where did Eve get her soul? From Adam. Where did you get your soul? From Adam. Where did you get your fallen nature? From Adam. When did you get it? If it's from Adam, you must have got a fallen sinful nature when you were conceived. If your soul is from Adam, you must have become a living soul when you were conceived. That's why I don't believe in abortion. That's a person. So certainly it is true that, that when God formed man out of the dust of the ground, he formed him perfectly. And, and that helps me to understand. See that, see that form there that God made on the ground, that perfect form of a man, and it, but it has no life. That's what happens at death. The soul leaves the body, it's just the form left. And just as the soul came into the body in Eden, so at death the soul leaves the body. No wonder it says about Rachel, her soul was in departing. Did death exist in any physical form prior to the fall? No. How do I know? First Corinthians fifteen and twenty one says, by man came death. And I have to believe that. That- that's my whole argument against the gap theory. That's the biggest argument, at least there are many others. That's the biggest one. There could not be death before sin came into the world. Oh, you say, what about Satan's sin? Well, nobody has ever explained to me how the sin of an angelic being w- would bring death to our world. Never heard about that. Of course, G.H. Pember, as I mentioned this afternoon, he does have a story to tell about that, but, um, it it doesn't make any sense from scripture. It's a nice, nice story that somebody has told, but it's not from scripture. So yes, I believe that death came by the fall of man. Why? Have you ever thought of that? Because Adam was made the head of creation. He was the first Adam. Do you notice what the Lord Jesus is called? Not the second Adam. We read that this afternoon. He is called the last Adam. Why is he not the second Adam? Because there won't be another. And you see, when God put man in the garden, listen to this. God made man to rule over the fowls of the air, over the animals that walk upon the earth and all that creep, and over the fish of the sea. Man was the head of all creation. When the head fell, this is what Romans five is teaching. When the head fell, the whole creation fell with him. You don't notice what it says in Genesis three: cursed be the ground for thy sake. The very ground, Adam was head over it, and the fall of the head affected everything. So I cannot believe any different than that. I think the Bible teaches without a doubt Adam was the first man. It says that in the New Testament. So don't put a creation before Adam, will you? Because Adam was the first man, and death came by that man, because sin came by that man. Now, did Satan impart a fallen nature to Adam and Eve? Or where did the desire come from to sin? That's similar to the question that is asked, um, about why did God put a tree in the garden and tell him not to eat it? This is a similar question, although it's asked in a very different way. Where did the fallen nature come from? Didn't come from Satan. The suggestion of evil came from Satan. He said, yea, hath God said. And you, you know what we've been talking about all day today? Satan is still saying, yea hath God said. He's still saying that, and people are believing him, doubting the word of God. See, a lot of people don't actually believe all this. They don't actually deny that God is, but what it does for them is it takes away the actual authority, the, the actual... Yes, the total perfection of scripture. Maybe it's not a book of science, and therefore maybe it, it's not right on these subjects. I know, I know men who have been great teachers of New Testament truth, who actually believe some kind of thing like that, that God never set out to tell us what really happened in Eden. I believe he did, and the New Testament backs it up. So a fallen nature didn't come from Satan. Satan is an angelic being. Satan is a spirit. And he, he, he indwelt the serpent, but the, the serpent was not Satan. Satan indwelt the serpent. He's a spirit, and he didn't... Would you accept this? Satan is a fallen creature. I don't think you can say in the language of Romans chapter seven and eight and six that Satan has a fallen nature. He's a fallen creature. So man was made a moral creature, and he had a choice. That's why First Timothy chapter two makes it clear that Eve was deceived, and Adam chose to sin. I don't like what some of our brethren say, that Adam loved his wife so much that he had to join her in her fall. I- I- I think that makes it a- an heroic thing instead of a rebellion. It was a rebellion against God. Mind you, it wasn't the sin of Eve that brought the fall. You notice that? It wasn't the sin of Eve. It was by one man that sin entered into the world. It was the fall of the head of creation that brought the curse. So when Adam sinned, he immediately was in possession of two natures. Oh, you say, I don't hardly think that. He only had one. He wasn't saved, was he? Well, I think Adam got saved all right. You know, God was the first slayer of an animal. You know what brought the first death in our world? What do you think? God killed an animal. God was the first slayer of a living thing. God killed an animal, and what I like about it is, as far as I know, it was only one animal, and it was large enough so a coat of skin was made for both Adam and Eve from the one animal. That's a beautiful picture of what Christ has done at Calvary. Uh, there's a couple more, and then the time is going to be out. Did the flood cause the tilt of the Earth? I don't think so. But I don't, maybe someday when I get to heaven, I'll find out the truth of this answer. But the Earth is tilted on its axis, and that tilt is what gives us seasons. That tilt is what gives us winter and summer, spring and fall, as you know. And, uh, by the way, the Earth tilts, but it doesn't wobble. What do you think keeps the Earth from wobbling on its axis? It would be a very natural thing, according to to the mechanics of engineering, for the Earth to wobble on its axis. Why doesn't it? Surprising answer. The moon keeps it from wobbling. The gravitational pull of the moon actually makes the rotation of the Earth to be even, so that the tilt of twenty three and a half degrees is maintained perfectly. So the Earth couldn't exist without the moon, but that's not what uniformity says. We believe that's true. So that tilt of the Earth, uh, well then why, why weren't there seasons before the flood? Because we believe there was a canopy effect that gave the Earth an even climate, and when that canopy was removed because it crashed down to Earth. Uh, uh, would there be enough water in creation to cause the flood? They tell us that the amount of water that is in the atmosphere is equal to the amount of water that's in the oceans. And I believe that before the flood, that water was even greater in the canopy above. The, the, the windows of heaven opened. So there was a very different world before the flood, and it is only since the flood that we have had ice, winter, Arctic, tropic, and so forth. I- I think this question means, and I left this one till the last, I think it means, uh, if what we have been saying today is all true, should not we be using this in gospel witness and testimony. I must confess that if we should be using it, then we have been very amiss, because I've been preaching the gospel for fifty two years, and very seldom ever in those fifty two years have I ever preached this kind of thing in the gospel, and I've never taught it in ministry, never. Are we right? I'm not sure. When I see this company today and see the interest that is generated by these subjects, I'm wondering. You see, there was a time when we could just preach the gospel and say here in Nova Scotia, in places like Prince Edward Island, in Newfoundland, you had all kinds of people who had the fear of God in their soul. You had all kinds of people who believed the Bible to be the word of God, and you preached the gospel to them, and they knew the Bible was true, and it was right, and they were convicted and convinced by the preaching of the word of God. What do we have today? We have a lot of stones of difficulty in people's way. They can't hear the word of God because they say, well, God isn't the creator, uh, this all came about by natural processes. So it is different. And I have learned that this is different, and we oftentimes meet people who have great difficulties. We try to roll away the stone and help them to see that the word of God is true after all. So it is a different world. It is a world of skepticism and unbelief. And there always has been unbelief, but here's the difference. If I could tell you what the difference is in our modern world from the past. People knew there were, there was right and wrong. They knew what the right was, but they knew they didn't live by it entirely, that they failed to come short of it. But even though they didn't measure up to what they knew was right, they still believed that it was right. There was a standard out there, the standard of what is right, and they didn't live up to it, but they didn't argue that that was right. What has happened? It's not right anymore. Not just a matter of saying I don't live by it. There isn't any right standard. They call evil good and good evil, but darkness for light and light for darkness. So it's a different day. And I, I know this, this is one thing I've learned. In the book of the Acts, have you noticed the different kind of gospel messages in the Acts? Notice how different Acts two is, for instance, from, say, uh, Acts uh seventeen or Acts fourteen even, or even Acts thirteen. Have you noticed the great difference in the preaching? Was it a different gospel? Was there a different Christ? No, there were different listeners. The difference in those messages was in who the hearers were. So, brethren, maybe we should be thinking a bit more of reaching the hearers where they are in our day.