| Topic: |
Sociology > Education |
| User: |
"Jesus has Risen!!!" |
| Date: |
03 May 2007 09:13:24 PM |
| Object: |
The relevance of creation: The Gospel, Sin and Death |
"The Gospel, Sin and Death
"What is the gospel message? When God made man,
He made him perfect. He made the first two people,
Adam and Eve, and placed them in the Garden of Eden
where they had a special, very beautiful relationship with
God. When He made them, He gave them a free will--
they could choose--and they chose to rebel against God.
This rebellion is called sin. All sin comes under the banner
of rebellion against God and His will. As a result of that
rebellion in Eden, a number of things happened. First, man
was cut off from God. That separation is called spiritual
death. On its own, the final effect of this would have been
living forever in our sinful bodies, eternally separated from
God. Imagine living with Hitler and Stalin forever! Imagine
living in a horrible sinful state forever. But something else
happened. Romans 5:12 tells us that as a result of man’s
actions came sin, and as a result of sin came death; but
not just spiritual death, as some theologians claim. To
confirm this, you only have to go to 1 Cor. 15:20 where
Paul talks about the physical death of the first Adam and
the physical death of Christ, the last Adam. Or Genesis 3,
where God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden so
that they would not eat of the tree of life and live forever.
Physical death as well as spiritual death resulted from their sin.
"Why did God send death? Three aspects of death should
be considered carefully:
1. God, as a righteous judge, who cannot look upon sin,
had to judge sin. He had warned Adam that, ‘dying, thou
shalt die.’ The curse of death placed upon the world was
and is a just and righteous judgement from God who is the judge.
2. One of the aspects of man’s rebellion was separation
from God. The loss of a loved one through death shows
the sadness of the separation between those left behind
and the one who has departed this world. This parting should
remind us of what sin did and how great a gulf has occurred
between God and man as a result of sin. When we consider
how sad it is when a loved one dies, it should remind us of the
terrible consequences of sin which separated Adam from the
perfect relationship he had with God. This separation was
passed on to all of mankind.
3. Another aspect of death which many people miss is that
God sent death because He loved us so much. God is love,
and, strange as it may sound, we should really praise Him
for that curse He placed on us! God did not want man to
be cut off from Him for eternity because of his rebellion.
Imagine living in a sinful state for eternity, separated from
God! But He loved us too much for that so He did a very
wonderful thing. In placing on us the curse of physical death,
He provided a way to redeem man back to Himself, in the
person of Jesus Christ, who suffered that curse on the cross
for us. ‘He tasted death for every man,’ (Heb. 2:9). By
becoming the perfect sacrifice for our sin of rebellion, He
conquered death. He took the penalty which should rightly
have been ours at the hands of a righteous judge, and bore
it in His own body on the cross.
"All who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour are
received back to God to spend eternity with Him. Isn’t
that a wonderful message? THAT IS THE MESSAGE
OF CHRISTIANITY. Man forfeited his special position
through sin, and as a result God placed upon him the curse
of death so he could be redeemed back to God. What a
wonderful thing God did! On Good Friday, we remember
Jesus being nailed to the cross, thus saying ‘No’ to what
Adam did. On Easter Sunday, we remember His rising from
the grave, which says ‘yes’ to mankind.
"But evolution destroys the very basis of this message
of love. The evolutionary process is one of death and
struggle, cruelty, brutality and ruthlessness. It is a ghastly
fighting for survival, elimination of the weak, and of the deformed.
This is what evolution is all about--death and struggle bringing
man into existence: death over millions of years. It is an onward,
upward ‘progression’ leading to man. Yet, what does the
Bible say in Romans 5:12? ‘Man’s actions led to sin,
which led to death.’
"In other words, evolutionists would say death and struggle led to
man’s existence. The Bible says man’s rebellious actions led to
death. These statements cannot both be true. One denies the
other-they are diametrically opposed. That is why the compromisers
who claim to hold both positions at the same time (e.g. theistic
evolutionists) are destroying the basis of the gospel. If life formed
in an onward ‘progression,’ how was man to fall upward? What
is sin? Sin then becomes an inherited animal characteristic, and is
not due to the fall of man through disobedience. The many
Christians who accept the belief of evolution and add God to it,
destroy the very foundation of the Gospel message they are
professing to believe.
"Even the atheists realise this, as seen in the quote from the article
by G. Richard Bozarth entitled, ‘The Meaning of Evolution.’ from
‘The American Atheist,’ September 1978, page 19: ‘... Christianity
is-must be -totally committed to the special creation as described in
Genesis, and Christianity must fight with all its full might, fair or foul,
against the theory of evolution ... It becomes clear now that the
whole justification of Jesus’ life and death is predicated on the
existence of Adam and the forbidden fruit he and Eve ate. Without
the original sin, who needs to be redeemed? Without Adam’s fall
into a life of constant sin terminated by death, what purpose is there
to Christianity? None.’
"As the atheist Jacques Monod (noted for his contributions to
molecular biology and philosophy) said in an interview broadcast
by the Australian Broadcasting Commission on the 10th June,
1976 as a tribute to Monod and entitled ‘The Secret of Life’,
‘... selection is the blindest, and most cruel way of evolving new
species, and more and more complex and refined organisms ... the
more cruel because it is a process of elimination, of destruction.
The struggle for life and the elimination of the weakest is a horrible
process, against which our whole modern ethic revolts. An ideal
society is a non-selective society, it is one where the weak are
protected; which is exactly the reverse of the so-called natural
law. I AM SURPRISED THAT A CHRISTIAN WOULD
DEFEND THE IDEA THAT THIS IS THE PROCESS
WHICH GOD MORE OR LESS SET UP IN ORDER TO
HAVE EVOLUTION’ (emphasis added).
"Original sin, with death as a result, is the basis of the gospel.
That is why Jesus Christ came and what the gospel is all about.
If the first Adam is only an allegorical figure, then why not the
second or the last Adam, Jesus Christ? If man didn‘t really fall
into sin, there is no need for a Saviour. Evolution destroys the
very foundations of Christianity because it says that ‘death is a
part of life’. Now, if you lived in a skyscraper, and if there were
people underneath that skyscraper with jackhammers hammering
away at the foundations, would you say, ‘So what?’ That is what
many Christians are doing. They are being bombarded with
evolution through the media, the public school system, T.V.,
the papers, and yet they don’t even react. The foundations of the
‘skyscraper’ of Christianity are being eroded by the ‘jack-hammers’
of evolution. But, inside the skyscraper, what are many Christians
doing? They are either sitting there doing nothing or they are throwing
out jack-hammers and saying, ‘Here, have a few more! Go destroy
our foundations!’ Worse still, theistic evolutionists (those who believe
in evolution and the Bible) are actively helping undermine the basis
of the gospel. As the Psalmist asked in Psalm 11:3, ‘if the foundations
be destroyed, what can the righteous do?’ If the basis of the gospel is
destroyed, then the structure built on that foundation (e.g.: the Christian
Church) will collapse. If Christians wish to preserve the structure of
Christianity, they must protect its foundation and therefore actively
oppose evolution."
"The relevance of creation: The Gospel, Sin and Death"
by Ken Ham
First published:
Creation 6(2):18
November 1983
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v6/i2/creation.asp
--
..
"Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution."
2 Timothy 3:12
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