Creation Research - UK Update
May 2010
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Dear Friends,
Welcome to the first Creation Research UK Update of the year. 2009 was a very busy year for us, with a double Darwin anniversary. John Mackay, our International Director, was in Britain for both occasions. During his visits John travelled to most corners of the land and managed to include a meeting in the Irish Republic. In every place interest in his message was high, no doubt stirred up by the media’s devotion to Darwin, especially the BBC who paid homage to Darwin almost daily.
When John returned home to Australia in December, it marked the end not just of 12 months of concerted effort, but of two years of hard work researching and filming material for new videos. Two of these were released to coincide with the Darwin anniversaries. ‘Darwin on the Rocks’ has proved to be one of our most popular titles and paved the way for ‘Darwin’s Evolution - A Very Unnatural Selection’ which is the third part of the ongoing Darwin on the Rocks Project. (Parts one and two are on the DVD of that name.) More information on these and the other DVDs we released last year is enclosed with this Update. (Go to our DVD page)
Having spent a third of his time from September 08 to November 09 in the UK, this year John is concentrating on ministry elsewhere. At present he is focussing on Australia, then in the autumn he will be visiting North America. On his way home he is coming to Britain for a short visit at the end of November. The main objective of these two weeks is to enable him to visit places which invited him some time ago, but which we were unable to include in his recent tours. At present I am arranging his itinerary, and nearer the time we will let you know where and when he will be speaking. Can I take this opportunity to remind you that if anyone would like John to speak in their area from 2011 onwards, please do contact the UK office - details below. John is planning to visit Britain next year too, but at present the details are still being worked out.
I began writing this Update in the week of the General Election - an election which was perhaps of more interest to many Christians than previous ones. In recent years, Christians have begun to notice that we are being marginalised in Britain as aggressive secularism gains overwhelming influence. Until quite recently this tide seemed to be doing nothing more than eroding values which had their roots in Biblical principles, but as I am sure we are aware, it is now seeking to bully Christians into leaving their convictions at home and not speaking up for Christ in the workplace or public arena.
However it would be a mistake to think that these changes are peculiar to these islands. Secularism is bringing in anti-Christian legislation throughout the Western world. In our recent email updates and on our main website John Mackay has been highlighting the agenda of the Victoria State Government in Australia. As in Britain, its Equality laws are being used as the vehicle for such changes. Their ‘Equal Opportunity Bill’ passed in mid-April includes provisions giving staff of the Equal Opportunity Commission:
the power to enter a church or meeting for the sole purpose of assessing what is said;
the right to demand that religious organisations hand over records;
the right to compel church members to attend Commission Hearings without any complaint being made;
the power to initiate a complaint of discrimination.
The Bill removes many of the ‘equality’ exemptions for churches whilst retaining the right to discriminate on grounds such as marital status, sexuality and gender. However it does demand that religious bodies and schools prove why it is ‘reasonably necessary’ for them to discriminate in these areas in order to adhere to the doctrines of their faith. This mirrors the recent attempt in Britain to prevent religious organisations from recruiting key employees only from amongst those who live in accordance with their teaching. The Victoria State Government for example believes it is wrong to insist that a teacher in a Christian school is a Christian. This reflects the false impression held by secularists that religion has nothing to do with life-style.
Back here in the UK, one of the difficulties which faced Christian voters was that none of the main parties even pay lip service to a Christian world-view any longer. This was illustrated by the three Westminster party leaders’ answers to a question in the televised leaders debates. Just one question in these touched on Christian values, but it took the form of an attack on them. During the second debate on 23 April, Michael Jeans asked about the leaders' response to the Pope’s visit later this year, “If you win the election, will you disassociate your party from the Pope's protection over many years of Catholic priests who were ultimately tried and convicted of child abuse, and from his fierce opposition to all contraception, embryonic stem cell research, treatment for childless couples, gay equality and the routine use of condoms when HIV is at an all-time high?”
No Biblically thinking Christian would support key elements of Roman Catholic doctrine, nor could they defend the widespread immorality amongst its clergy leading to the abuse of many people over the years, plus the subsequent failure to address the situation. However, the questioner went on to include implied criticism of convictions held by many Bible-believing Christians. This was stressed by Adam Boulton of Sky News when he interjected, “I would remind you that Michael Jeans is also concerned about the attitude of the Catholic Church to science and also gender matters.”
All three leaders made clear in their answers that they disagree with the Bible’s teaching that homosexual practice is sin. (On this particular moral stance, as with abortion, Catholic teaching is essentially in line with the Scriptures.) Whilst Nick Clegg kept his comments focussed on the abuse issue and his support of homosexual practice, Gordon Brown and David Cameron both went further. Cameron’s words at first seem welcome, “But I do think we should respect people of faith. I think faith is important in our country. I think faith-based organisations, whether they are Christian or Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu, do amazing things in our country, whether it is working in our prisons or providing good schools or actually helping some of the most vulnerable people in our country.” , Christians however should read the above slowly enough to understand its implications. His view of Christianity is that it is one amongst many religions and that the value of any faith does not lie in its teaching on righteousness, but in the social work undertaken in the community by its adherents.
Brown too took the opportunity to stress his multi-faith beliefs,
trying to justify them by the fact that he was brought up in a
Presbyterian manse. In the first of his two answers he stated,
“Secondly, we must break down the barriers of religion that
exist in our world. The faiths must come together and recognise they
have common values and common interests.” When he next
spoke, he went on to explain why he believes this, “The Pope
should come to Britain, we should have these debates and we should
welcome all religions because bringing religions together is the
key to making sure that we have a more peaceful world.”
(Emphasis mine.) Brown is not alone in his view that Christians must
surrender the uniqueness of Jesus Christ on the altar of world peace.
This is a commonly held objective amongst international leaders.
World peace will only be truly established when Jesus Christ returns,
but humanism seeks to establish it by rejecting His authority.
So
not just in Britain, but around the world in once ‘Christian’
nations, there is a strong tide of secularism flowing and it is
beginning to bite into our freedom to proclaim The LORD’s
authority.
Many Christians are wondering how nations such as Britain, which have a heritage influenced by Christian teaching, can now be turning against believers like them.. You may also be wondering what this has to do with creation issues - surely ministries like Creation Research should be focussed on scientific arguments. They are indeed part of our calling, but not our only burden. In 2007 John Mackay was presented with a recording of the very first sermon he preached over thirty years ago. In this brief sermon he highlighted the Bible’s warning of what happens to a society when it refuses to acknowledge The LORD as Creator. This sermon is available from the UK office as an audio CD with the title, “God’s Word is True From the Beginning”. In the second part John turned his attention to Romans 1:19-26, a passage where Paul warns of what always happens when a society becomes proud and unwilling to glorify and be thankful to our Creator. John’s summary of Paul’s message was this: “If you turn away from God, God turns away from you.” Later he added, “Turning away from God causes things not to make sense any more.”
John was able to warn of the consequences of humanism not because he had been given special insights, but because he took the Bible at face value. The Apostle Paul, just under two thousand years earlier, had described with pinpoint accuracy the moral disintegration in today’s western societies, not through specific revelation, but through knowing and believing the Scriptures. It is common to describe the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah as immorality and homosexuality. However, Ezekiel (in 16:49-50) said this about that broken society: “Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty and committed abomination before Me; therefore I took them away as I saw fit.” The sexual immorality for which Sodom is infamous was not the root of its rebellion but the final consequence of it before The LORD wiped them out. Romans 1 reflects this route of social decline which starts with pride and a refusal to honour The LORD as Creator. From here the way then leads to selfish materialism; if unchecked, this in time bears the fruit of widespread immorality as their Creator gives them up to the lusts of their hearts. It is not just the Bible which illustrates these truths, but secular history contains numerous accounts of societies which have fallen apart once immorality has risen to the surface.
In the West many Christians look back to the 1960s as the time when society broke and immorality blossomed. That decade did see significant social changes, but the blooms did not appear out of the blue. Flowers need the rest of the plant if they are to appear. In the same manner, the 1960s did not arrive from nowhere. What was the stem on which the ‘flower power’ of the sixties blossomed?
In his very first sermon John Mackay was able to predict the type of society which is becoming common in the west because Romans 1 spells out that when people reject what they know about The LORD - His eternal power and Godhead which is made clear to them through creation - they proclaim themselves wise, whilst in reality they are being fools. Such people Paul wrote, “exchange the truth of God for the lie, and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator!” Back then John was aware that under the influence of Charles Darwin, Western society was in the process of turning away from honouring the Creator and embracing a secular world-view. Before long they would reap the judgement of social breakdown which Paul described very clearly.
Romans 1 closes with a catalogue of attitudes which are now rampant in Western nations. Paul brings that list to a close with the warning, “who, knowing the righteous judgement of God, that those who practise such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practise them.” It is not just the political leaders in Britain and other once-Christian nations who go out of their way to say that they support homosexual practice, but we now have several generations of ordinary people who have been taught through the media and in secular schools that Darwin knows better than God! Embracing evolution has not been simply about science, but about mankind’s desire to be free from moral restraint - people desire to do their own will, they want to look after number one, they want to be the fittest who survive. If lying and cheating gives them an advantage over others, they do not want anyone to tell them they will be judged in righteousness by their Creator. In post-Christian cultures around the world, men and women are trying to convince themselves they are free from divine restraint and can live in any way that they please.
There is no question that Darwin and his close friend and mentor Charles Lyell together provided the most popular excuse for rejecting the implications of the Gospel in the West today. However it is rarely acknowledged that Darwin based his own rejection of the Gospel on the fact that The LORD holds men and women accountable for their attitudes to Him. In the original draft of his autobiography he wrote, “I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.” He then added, “And this is a damnable doctrine.” (The full reference for this quotation and others which illustrate how Darwin and Lyell worked together to undermine Christianity can be found in the enclosed leaflet, “The Descent of a Man”.)
Last year however saw a concerted effort by evangelical Christians who want deny Genesis 1 as history to reinvent Darwin as not being anti-God. In an article called “What type of God would choose to use evolution?” sent out with our last UK Update (and still available on our UK web site), we pointed out some of the claims made by those who are seen as Theistic Evolutionists. In this we mentioned that Theos, which describes itself as a ‘public theology think tank’ and is substantially funded by the Bible Society, had yet to publish research which they had commissioned on the nature of belief amongst ‘thought-leaders’ in UK creationism. This was part of a longer project which they called “Rescuing Darwin”. The report was finally published whilst John was here in November, under the title “Doubting Darwin”. One of the first things I noticed when reading it was that Theos themselves recognised that the report did not validate their own stance. Nick Spence, their Director of Studies, wrote in the introduction, “For those who have publicly argued that belief in God and belief in Darwinian evolution are compatible, some of the findings in Doubting Darwin will make uncomfortable reading.”
Indeed it would have been, and Theos have not publicised it widely though it can still be downloaded from their web site. We cannot review it all here, but it is worth mentioning one very remarkable chapter. Chapter 4, “Religious belief, theology and evolution” deals with the theology of creation. I found that chapter to contain one of the clearest explanations of the Gospel by non-Christians that I had ever read. The section on The Fall highlights this as the authors write:
Many creationists, therefore, do not see the Fall as simply a historical account (although they would claim it is that) but as a fundamental part of a Christian worldview, with which evolution is incompatible not just at a factual level, but also on a theological level. And there are theological reasons to doubt the veracity of evolution that go beyond the Fall presented in the text of Genesis and the Old Testament. The Fall also presents an understanding of humankind as having sinned and as needing salvation. This leads directly into the narrative of Jesus and his position as the saviour of mankind. In fact, the centrality of the Fall to this aspect of Christian theology means that creationists cannot see the account of Adam and his rebellion as merely metaphorical or symbolic. (Page 54)
No doubt this is one reason why it made uncomfortable reading for evangelicals who doubt Genesis 1.
The next section in “Doubting Darwin” prolonged the dismay for those who commissioned it. This deals with the social consequences of embracing Darwinism. The authors comment:
If evolution was seen by our respondents as a ‘threat’, it was a threat not to their Christian belief system but to the role of Christianity in society. In giving up on the authority of scripture on issues such as those outlined above, they argue, Christians have ceded ground to those who would prefer secularism to be the dominant ideology in the UK. (Page 55)
This of course highlights what I was saying earlier about why in Britain, as in other Western nations, we find political leaders virtually unanimous in their preference for sin over righteousness. The Theos report is also helpful in highlighting that whilst Darwin’s doctrine of evolution is responsible for the rise in modern secularism, his views were not the start of this decline. Evolution may be the stem which held up the blossom of the 60s, whose fruit we are now reaping, but all of them require roots under the ground to hold them up. Darwin was not the pioneer of secularism. It is well known that he stood upon the shoulders of his grandfather Erasmus, who penned most of Charles’ theory of evolution before the birth of his most famous grandchild. (Charles’ role was to provide the ‘missing link’ of natural selection, an idea Erasmus had not considered.) Darwin the elder was a well known member of ‘The Lunar Society of Birmingham’ - a dinner club at the heart of what is known as the ‘Midlands Enlightenment’.
The misleadingly named “Enlightenment”, influenced by so-called ‘rationalists’ such as David Hume, prepared the way for Darwin’s anti-Christian message. Everyone interviewed for the Theos report was quoted anonymously; one of them put it this way:
“I actually trace the roots of the problem long before Darwin. The church did itself no favours way back in the 17th century, when they started to reinterpret the Bible in light of things like geology. The church capitulated then. And when Darwin came along it was easy for them to capitulate again. And they did – and it has been disastrous. Now people wonder why they should believe anything the Bible says.” Creation science author/speaker, creation science organisation (Page 56)
Christians who are struggling to understand what is happening in
the Western world, who are asking why once Christianised nations are
turning en masse against Biblical standards, need to remember The
LORD's declaration in Gen. 6:5 about mankind, “that every
intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”.
Even whilst John Wesley and his colleagues were at the forefront of a
great Christian surge which touched the world through later
missionaries, at another level in Europe men were discussing how to
justify their unbelief. Even this was not a new departure in
thinking though, as many like Erasmus Darwin based their thinking on
that of the Greek philosophers, some of whom put forward their own
theories of evolution.
If you are trying understand the
days in which you are living, we would encourage you to think
carefully about the path Western nations have taken since much of
Europe was known as Christendom. Today’s aggressive secularism
can certainly be traced back to the sexual revolution which blossomed
in the 1960s. However, that did not come from nowhere. It was the
first generation which was taught evolution in schools, even though
at that stage this was still alongside an RE curriculum which was
based on Christianity. A hundred years earlier the Church had not
been prepared to oppose Darwinism with a united voice - and now
Christianity has been marginalised. It was because the Church
in general had sought to be friends with the world in earlier
centuries that it was prepared to tolerate unbelief when faced with
so-called “science”, just as it had not risen up against
the philosophical secularism of the Enlightenment.
Creation organisations have for many years been on the front line of defending not just Genesis but the whole of the Gospel against secularism. Increasingly, Bible-believing Christians are finding themselves coming under pressure from humanists in many levels of society. Whilst we would encourage you to support us with your prayers and giving (see the enclosed leaflet about the Creation Research Trust), we want to urge you to join us in standing firm with Jesus Christ for the full truth of the Gospel yourself. Those who are wilfully rebelling against recognising Jesus Christ as Creator do so that they may deny His authority and delude themselves into thinking that they will never have to stand before Him as their Judge. Such people seek to silence those who remind them about accountability to their Creator, and even if Christians do not believe in a historical Genesis, the Gospel they believe in proclaims the authority of God. That is the light unbelievers do not want to shine in their eyes. These are days when Christians need to take seriously Paul’s advice in Eph. 6:13, “Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”
Creation Research exists to help you to stand for Biblical truth against evolution and unbelief in general in an informed way. Clearly, having John Mackay to speak in your area is one of the most effective ways to become familiar with the issues (contact the UK office if you wish to invite him), but you will realise that he cannot keep coming back week by week. This is one of the reasons why we seek to make our material available to you. Best known are our DVDs. At present we have 35 different titles available, all designed to help people get to grips with the issues involved in the creation/evolution debate. We also encourage you to take a look at our audio recordings - available on CD or as MP3 downloads - most of which feature John’s Bible teaching. An order form for DVDs and CDs is enclosed and descriptions are on our UK web site - we are able to print a catalogue on request for those without Internet access. The UK site also has information on which books we have available.
Our web sites also give access to a lot of other information. If you have not yet visited our web museum, can we encourage you to do so. This is the site where we have put the majority of information which is of interest to those looking for the facts about the evidence for creation. It is also where we have concentrated on multimedia presentations such as videos, slide-shows and interactive 3D images of fossils and rocks. The search engine on that site is also the best way of accessing information from our Evidence News email updates - these are archived under the “Fact File” search. If you are not already on the mailing list for our eNews (every 3 to 4 weeks) or ePrayer (every 5 to 6 weeks) updates, please consider signing up for one or both. The enclosed leaflet “The Descent of a Man” mentioned above was initially sent out as one of our eNews mailings last year.
Please let us know if we can help you in any way to advance the message of Jesus Christ, Creator, Saviour and coming righteous Judge.
Randall Hardy
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This page last edited May 2010.
© Randall Hardy, 2010