Adam—Man Or Myth?
Few know why modern theologians reject Adam as myth. Or why the Biblical record is labeled "UNscientific." You will be shocked at the cause!
By Robert E. Gentet
Plain Truth Magazine
November 1984
 TODAY the club-swinging, ape-like origin of man is accepted and taught as if it were fact. It is commonplace today for teachers and theologians to label the Bible record of man's creation as "poetic," "not to be taken literally."
Why this general disbelief in the literal meaning of Genesis?
Few really know the astounding causes. Few understand how materialism and agnosticism obtained a strangle hold on school and pulpit.
Churches Reject Divine Revelation
Today, large religious groups openly reject the literal meaning of the Genesis account. They claim "the early Christians took this description [of man's creation recorded in Genesis] at its face value. We do not."
Many of your children are now being taught that Genesis "does not agree with the scientific facts we believe today." So says a newly released Sunday School help. It adds: "Anyone who attempts to harmonize the two is simply ignoring plain facts"!
Certainly, this is not a return to the "faith once delivered to the saints"! Early Christians believed the Genesis account.
Then what happened to cause today's children to question whether or not Adam and Eve were real people?
Let's understand.
Scientists and theologians often claim they cannot believe the Genesis creation account because "there were no eyewitness reports." But they are wrong! There was an eyewitness, who did report what He saw!
About four thousand years after the literal creation of Adam, that eyewitness appeared and described what He saw! Who was he? Jesus Christ!
Notice what the Bible says: "In the beginning was the Word [Christ], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . . All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made [including Adam and Eve]" (John 1:1, 3).
Throughout the Gospels Christ verified the whole Old Testament, including the creation account. Do we want To believe Christ or the fables of foolish men who are looking for excuses to deny God?
The Apostle Paul also taught the creation account: "Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses..." (Rom. 5:14).
Theologians and secular scholars alike, throughout the Christian world, generally recognized the creation account as a literal fact until about two centuries ago. But then something went wrong with man's Thinking.
The Dispute About Man's Origin What happened during the latter part of the 1700's and early part of the 1800's?
Why has the Genesis record of man's creation been rejected?
The major departure from God's Word came in Sir Charles Lyell's book, Principles of Geology, published in 1830. The ideas presented in his book laid the foundation for modern historical geology!
The earth, according to Lyell, has had no catastrophes. Every act of nature has supposedly been uniform and due to the natural forces we can see in action around us.
Although Lyell was not the first to have this idea (the ancient pagan philosophers had long taught the same pagan idea), it is because of Lyell that the teaching of uniformity gained modern-day acceptance.
As we shall see, Lyell's idea had much to do with the rejection of Adam as a literal historical figure!
Lyell is now recognized as the "high priest of uniformitarianism" - an apt title!
 For, uniformitarianism is a false "RELIGION" worshipped by millions in this world. The true God and His Word are rejected and the pagan ideas of uniformity are substituted. This is idolatry!
However, strangely enough, Lyell did not believe in evolution at the time he wrote Principles of Geology. This was because he could find no method, which would support the evolutionary concept.
Lyell's ideas were based only on a desire to explain the earth's history from a non-catastrophic viewpoint. Time-vast lengths of time-was the central theme of his book.
It was not until Darwin's time, as we shall see later, that Lyell professed evolution.
Prophesied End-Time Doubt!
Lyell's idea set the stage. Men who were unwilling to obey God's Word eagerly grasped onto Lyell's ideas. The time had come for the end-time fulfillment of II Peter 3:3-4!
Notice what this amazing prophecy foretold, over a millennium and a half before it occurred!
"Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days [in our time- just before Jesus Christ returns] scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation."
In other words, men would be saying that uniformity is true. This is exactly what is being said today!
Who said God's Word is not able to foretell the ways of men! Could a mere man prophesy what false educational teachings would seize this end-time world ?
Only God could foretell that! As men have departed further and further from Him, the belief in uniformity-" ... all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation"- has become the cornerstone of modern education!
The fulfillment of II Peter 3:3-4, at this time, presents one more irrefutable proof of God's existence for all to see! Yet ungodly men continue to hide their heads in the sand of ignorance and ridicule-unwilling to obey their Almighty Creator-Ruler!
Notice further how this amazing prophecy was fulfilled in this end-time.
Aided by rationalism springing from German universities, the so-called "scientific" world was arming itself for a wholesale extermination of God's plain statements about man's origin.
The conspiracy to thrust all the knowledge about Adam's creation out of education had fully begun.
As Peter further prophesied: "For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the Word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was [before Noah's Flood}, being overflowed with water [in a huge catastrophe], perished" (II Pet. 3:5-6).
Armed with Lyell's God-denying principle of uniformity, men began to view the earth's history from a totally wrong concept. The plain Biblical statements concerning past catastrophes were rejected as "superstitious." Why? Because men assumed that, since worldwide devastations were not now taking place, they never had occurred.
This assumption of uniformity, which ignores any intervention of God in nature, is not true science. It is intellectual stupidity!!
Scientists, blandly assuming uniformity, advantageously pointed out the wrong ideas theologians had falsely read into the Bible. A climax was inevitable in the mid 1800's between the evolutionists and the theologians.
The Critical Year
1859 was a decisive year. Remains of man and extinct animals from the world God created for man had been found buried together at numerous places. It was undeniable and proved that all remains had been buried at the same time.
In 1859 Lyell and other famous geologists became convinced that man did live at the same time as animals that are now extinct.
These animals were thought to have become extinct many thousands of years before the Biblical date of man's creation. That is, if there had been no catastrophes and if Lyell's assumption of uniformity were correct!
Thus, the blindfold was securely pulled over the eyes of the world's greatest scientists. Adam was reckoned as a "myth" because men's baseless conclusions about the age of so-called "prehistoric animals" did not agree with Biblical chronology.
In the words of one evolutionist: "The battle was over; the great antiquity of man was an established fact. Victorian thought had to adjust itself not only to organic evolution but also to the antiquity of man; 4004 B. C was forgotten" ("The Idea of Man's Antiquity" by Glyn E. Daniel, in Scientific American, November 1959, p. 174).
Once again men failed to use the Bible as the guide. Men failed to consider the allowance the Bible makes for the extinction of many animals during the time of man.
Having already rejected most of the Bible, men proceeded to devise an unholy marriage. For, in 1859 another important event occurred. Darwin published his book Origin of Species! In this book Darwin taught the fable that all life developed through organic evolution.
Darwin's ideas were joined with Lyell's, and the children of this marriage are today's conflicting assumptions of how to trace man's lineage from the animals.
Assumptions are so common and varied that they are as numerous as the authors themselves: "The more authors, the more theories" (Fossil Men, Boule and Vallois, p. 512). Confusion can arise only from error!
Lyell's theory of uniformity supplied Darwin with the time element the theory of evolution needed. For, without vast amounts of time, it was thought that evolution could not take place.
Lyell's uniformity idea alone could not account for evolution. It needed a METHOD of evolution. Darwin's idea of natural selection seemed to supply the method.
Lyell became an evolutionist upon reading Darwin's book.
Darwin's Theory Admittedly a Myth!
In reality, as modern-day scientists are forced to admit, Darwin's theory could not account for the existence of the different kinds of animals. At best, it could account for only a limited change in a plant or animal - an adaptation to a different environment so the animal or plant "kind" could continue to survive.
|
|
|
Having rejected the Biblical record, man vainly tries to locate "missing links" between himself and the animal world. Fossil above (Zinjanthropus), previously assumed to be a "missing link," is now admitted by its finder, Dr. Leaky, to be a "nonhuman vegetarian."
|
|
Darwin's theory of natural selection cannot account for the existence of characteristics such as legs, fins, eyes, hands, etc., etc., in an organism that has not previously had such members. Evolutionists must now admit this fact.
Yet, remember that it is upon Darwin's theory that Adam's existence was supposedly disproved!!
Listen to what one evolutionist confesses: "We owe to the Origin of Species the overthrow of the myth of Creation, especially the dramatic character of that overthrow. Yet the overthrow itself led to . . . the myth of Darwinism, which obscures what happened" (Scientific American, May 1959, p. 66).
Darwin's theory-now admittedly a myth and unable to prove the theory of evolution-was used to "overthrow" the Biblical account! Is this logic?
Yet, men still assume evolution to be true! All the discoveries of prehistoric man are still viewed through the eyeglasses of evolution and uniformity: The result: the present-day belief in man's animal origin.
Uniformity An Assumption
A recent meeting of the American Geological Society also graphically revealed another amazing admission of present-day scientists.
 A well-known paleontologist, Norman Newell, sums up the matter by confessing: "Geology suffers from a great lack of data, and in such a situation, any attractive theory that comes along is taken as gospel. That is the case with uniformitarianism. Geology students are taught that 'the present is the key to the past,' and they too often take it to mean that nothing ever happened that isn't happening now. But since the end of World War II, when a new generation moved in, we have gathered more data and we have begun to realize there were many catastrophic events in the past, some of which happened just once" (Newsweek, Dec. 23, 1963).
It is no longer possible for the believer in uniformity to by-pass the stark facts of "many catastrophic events in the past." Plainly, the facts show mass extinction. Scientists are without excuse! They refuse to go back and re-evaluate the Bible record. They refuse to do anything that might obligate them to believe God!
Can you begin to see what would have happened if God's Word had been used all along as the guide for interpreting these facts? The remains of men and extinct animals, for just one example, would have been seen in their proper perspective. Men could prove God's Word by studying the world around them (Rom. 1:20). The correct timetable of events-and the events themselves in many cases - would be known, if only men would turn to the source-the Bible!
But, instead of doing this, as this same Newsweek article went on to say, "... many geologists at the recent meeting of the American Geological Society were advising the rehabilitation of catastrophism, without recourse to a supernatural agent."
The power of God's Word is still shunned and ignored! Man does not want to retain God in his knowledge. He does not want God's revelation about Adam's creation in his educational system. And no wonder.
The blame is on those who professed to teach God's Word. The present state of affairs- that of theology turning to the theories of evolution and uniformity to explain man's origin-is a direct result of theologians ignoring the truth of the Bible and preaching lies!
When wrong concepts could no longer stand the test of time and fact, disbelief in the literal meaning of the Genesis record was bound to result. Instead of confessing their ignorance about the Bible and turning to it with open minds, most theologians and ministers have been sucked into the whirlpool of the God-denying theories of uniformity and evolution. They are victims of their own devices!
Make no mistake about it! The Bible nowhere teaches the theory of evolution. It teaches just the opposite and makes it very plain that the teaching of evolution denies the Word of God! It is the same basic fable once taught by ancient pagan philosophers who did not want to retain God in their knowledge (Rom. 1:18-32).
The foolish theories about man's animal origin will soon be forgotten. In just a few short years the whole earth will be filled with the faith that was once delivered unto the saints (Isa. 11:9).
Man will be set free from the shackles of ignorance and superstition about his origin. Adam will be restored to his rightful place in the annals of human history.
Brought to you as a Study Resource by the
Church of God Faithful Flock
|
