Creation and Redemption

Notes

1. It is certainly significant that the first chapter of the Bible should be occupied with an account of creation, and that the time employed in the creative work should be so explicitly stated. The reason for this becomes clear when we study the plan of redemption. That creation which was pronounced "very good" was marred by sin, and there must be a new creation. Man must be renewed "after the image of Him that created him," and there must be new heavens and a new earth. Redemption is thus simply the bringing to perfection again the original creation when man was created in the image of God.

2. The development in this last generation of the theory of evolution as the scientific method of creation is of much meaning in its relation to the closing work in the plan of redemption. "The assumption that the events of the first week required thousands upon thousands of years, strikes directly at the foundation of the fourth commandment. It represents the Creator as commanding men to observe the week of literal days in commemoration of vast, indefinite periods. This is unlike His method of dealing with His creatures. It makes indefinite and obscure that which He has made very plain. It is infidelity in its most insidious, and hence most dangerous, form."—Patriarchs and Prophets, page 111. This theory of evolution has now been carried into the sphere of religion, and has become the fundamental principle of the so-called "new theology," which is based upon "the acceptance of evolution as the method of divine providence in the spiritual sphere as well as in the material." By this system of teaching God has been transformed into an Infinite Force ⟦of Personal?⟧ Power, and there is no place nor need for the atoning work of Christ, as all imperfection will be remedied by natural processes.

3. Almost at the same time that the message of Sabbath reform began to be proclaimed, the claims of geology began to be emphasized. "Geologists claim to find evidence from the earth itself that it is much older than the Mosaic record teaches. . . . But apart from Bible history, geology can prove nothing. Those who reason so confidently upon its discoveries, have no adequate conception of the size of men, animals, and trees before the Flood, or of the great changes which then took place. . . . In the days of Noah, men, animals, and trees, many times larger than now exist, were buried, and thus preserved as an evidence to later generations that the antediluvians perished by a flood. God designed that the discovery of these things should establish faith in inspired history; but men, with their vain reasoning, fall into the same error as did the people before the Flood,—the things which God gave them as a benefit, they turn into a curse by making a wrong use of them. It is one of Satan's devices to lead the people to accept the fables of infidelity; for he can thus obscure the law of God, in itself very plain, and embolden men to rebel against the divine government. His efforts are especially directed against the fourth commandment, because it so clearly points to the living God, the Maker of the heavens, and the earth."—Patriarchs and Prophets, pages 112, 113.