Many people think that we evolved – that over aeons of time simple molecules combined to form primitive life-forms which eventually evolved into men. But this is without any firm scientific foundation.
Medical science has shown us the remarkable workings of DNA – with its digital-computer-like control mechanism for making all the proteins necessary for life. Let us consider what this means.
Life is information
DNA (deoxyribo-nucleic acid) was found to be the universal information storage medium of living systems. In every cell of our bodies, and every split-second, messages are going back and forth using a digital code!
And that code is not defined by the material on which it is written – just as the words you are reading are not defined by the paper on which they are printed.
What this shows is that life cannot be composed just of matter and energy, but consists chiefly of information.
Furthermore, the message transmitted is not defined by the code used! What you are reading could have been written in Spanish, French or Chinese – any language (even the Morse code) could be used to convey exactly the same meaning.
Finally, meaningful messages always imply intelligence. Wherever information transfer is going on, mind and intelligence are involved.
Is there life out there?
For decades millions of dollars have been poured into the search for extraterrestrial life (they call it the SETI project). The scientists concerned are using radio-astronomy to look for patterns of signals from distant galaxies.
Why? Because they believe that any such non-random signals would have to be the product of intelligent life.
If one applies the same logic to the DNA signals that give life to every creature here on earth, the implication is clear – intelligence is written all over the building-blocks of life.
This points us to the Mind that made the universe. The Bible rightly states that ‘the invisible things of him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse’ (Romans 1:20).
Scientific study of the world is not a reason to disbelieve in God’s existence, as evolutionists often claim. It is a magnificent testimony to his greatness.
No new information
The very idea that complex creatures could arise from more simple life-forms is against scientific law. Genetic variation can never lead ‘uphill’, that is, to create new information.
Natural selection (and artificial selection – such as dog or cattle breeding) always leads to a reduction in potential variety within the genes and gene pools of subsequent generations. The resulting organisms are less, not more, complex.
A new species may arise – that is, a variation from the original parent population which can no longer breed with other descendants. But this is not evolution, only a change within a ‘kind’.
For example, all dogs will have come from an original wolf, with great capacity in the original genes for large variation (allowing the development of Pekinese to Great Dane, Alsatian to Poodle). But wolves never had the genes to make them cats!
The evidence for creation points to a creative Mind. But who is he? We cannot know – unless he reveals himself to us. The Bible’s account of origins now becomes deeply significant.
Christ’s creative power
Begin with Genesis, but see it now in a new light. Read it as history (which it is) and it tells you that the God who made the world is a personal God. He desires communion with man, who is made in his image.
Now turn to the fourth Gospel in the New Testament, which states: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made’ (John 1:1-3).
The passage goes on to say that Christ himself is ‘the Word’. This all makes profound sense of a complex world.
The information content of living things, made so evident by scientific discovery, is nothing other than the physical expression of Christ’s creative power. He is the Word (the logos, the meaning behind everything) and it was he who designed and made DNA. He created the message which makes all things work.
But Genesis also tells us that he made Adam ‘a living soul’; that is, we are spiritual beings with a capacity to see beyond what is merely physical. Our whole understanding as to who and what we are starts here.
Christ the Redeemer
John’s Gospel goes on to say that this Creator loves us so much that he came into the world as a human being. The Creator became one of his own created beings! Stunning, but true.
Though born of Mary at Bethlehem, the Lord Jesus was not only man but God ‘made flesh’. His humanity from Mary combines with his deity from the Holy Spirit, who came upon Mary (not in a physical relationship but supernaturally) causing her to become pregnant.
The third Gospel records the words spoken to Mary (Luke 1:35): ‘The Holy Ghost will come upon you, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow you: therefore also that holy one who is to be born will be called the Son of God’.
And why did Christ come? To redeem us – to buy us back – from the disaster of Eden, where Adam and Eve fell into sin and rebelled against God. This historical event, recorded in Genesis 3, shows that we are all born sinners, and consequently under God’s wrath (Ephesians 2:3).
But Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). The name given him at birth was Jesus, which means ‘Saviour’ – for ‘he shall save his people from their sins’.
He came to die. He died on the cross as our substitute – to pay the price of sin for all who believe in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). God’s love towards sinners is expressed in the cross: ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life’ (John 3:16).
Christ the judge
We know Christ will judge the world finally, because he has already done it once – at the great Flood in the time of Noah which, as Genesis records, covered all the world.
The rocks testify to the enormous upheavals caused by the Flood and its aftermath. The massive sedimentary rock formations which cover 75% of the earth’s surface, together with the fossils they contain, provide powerful testimony – not of evolution as many suppose, but of God’s judgement in the past.
Rather than searching for transitional fossils (‘missing links’) which the rocks will never show, we should stand in awe at the judgement of God, which swept men and creatures to their deaths, as described in Genesis 6-9.
This really happened, and is referred to in no uncertain terms by the Saviour himself in Matthew 24:37-39. But there is still judgement to come.
As God brought the watery catastrophe some 4,500 years ago so, declares Peter, ‘the heavens and the earth which now exist, are kept in store by the same word, reserved for fire until the day of judgement and perdition of ungodly men’ (2 Peter 3:7).
Christ will be the final judge on that last day, and only those who have believed in him as the Creator, Saviour and Judge will be saved.
Your whole future hangs on Christ.
