1/20/17

"THE GOSPEL OF MARK" Weakness In The Seat Of Power (6:14-29) by Mark Copeland

                          "THE GOSPEL OF MARK"

                Weakness In The Seat Of Power (6:14-29)

INTRODUCTION

1. The ministry of Jesus was bound to attract attention...
   a. By virtue of His miracles, even those done by His apostles - Mk6:12-13
   b. Eventually King Herod heard about Him - Mk 6:14

2. In our text, Mark shares with us information about King Herod...
   a. The king's initial reaction to what he heard - Mk 6:14-16
   b. The events that led up to the king's execution of John the Baptist
      - Mk 6:17-29

[In doing so, Mark shows us a sad picture of "Weakness In The Seat Of
Power".  It is a picture borne out by secular history as well.  Let's
first consider...]

I. HEROD AS A KING

   A. HIS POSITION AS TETRARCH...
      1. He is generally known as Herod Antipas
         a. His father:  Herod the Great, an Idumean; ruling when Jesus
            was born - Mt 2:1,3,19
         b. His mother:  Malthace, a Samaritan; the fourth of Herod's
            ten wives
         c. Educated in Rome (together with Archelaus and Philip
      2. Not to be confused with:
         a. Herod Agrippa I (nephew), who killed James - Ac 12:1-2
         b. Herod Agrippa II (grand-nephew), before whom Paul appeared
            - Ac 26:1
      3. When Herod the Great died (4 B.C.), his kingdom was divided
         into four parts - Lk 3:1
         a. Archelaus (full brother) - Judea, Idumea, Samaria (later
            ruled by Pontius Pilate)
         b. Antipas - Galilee, Perea
         c. Philip II (half brother) - Iturea, Trachonitus
         d. Lysanias - Abilene (Syria)
      -- Antipas' position as tetrarch was ratified by Caesar Augustus
         of Rome

   B. HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS TETRARCH...
      1. Governed Galilee and Perea for 42 years (4 B.C. - 39 A.D.)
      2. Built the cities of Sepphoris, Tiberias, and oversaw other
         projects
      3. Imprisoned and executed John the Baptist - Mk 6:14-29
      4. Sought to kill Jesus, who described Herod as "that fox" 
         - Lk 13:31-32
      5. Later mocked Jesus prior to His death, which led to friendship
         with Pilate - Lk 23:7-12
      -- Antipas had the potential and position to be a great man

[But those in positions of power often have personal failings.  Such was
certainly true of Herod Antipas...]

II. HEROD AS A MAN

   A. HE WAS SUPERSTITIOUS...
      1. He initially thought Jesus was John the Baptist - Mk 6:14
      2. Believing John to be raised from the dead - Mk 6:14,16
      -- Such was his attempt to explain the miracles he had heard

   B. HE WAS IMMORAL...
      1. First married to Phasaelis, daughter of King Aretas IV of
         Nabatea
      2. Divorced her to marry Herodias - Mk 6:17
         a. Who was his half-niece, married to his half-brother Philip
         b. They had fallen in love while in Rome together
         c. They agreed to divorce their spouses and marry one another
      3. This was an unlawful marriage (even though Antipas was not a
         Jew) - Mk 6:18
         a. Because it was simple adultery - Lev 20:10; cf. Ro 7:2-3
         b. Also because of the prohibition against marrying a brother's
            wife - Lev 20:21
      4. For which both Herodias and Herod wanted to kill John 
         - Mk 6:19; cf. Mt 14:5
      -- His willingness to divorce and remarry revealed his inner
         character

   C. HE WAS EASILY MANIPULATED...
      1. He feared the multitude, who viewed John as a prophet - cf. Mt14:5
      2. He feared John, liked to listen to him, but did not repent - Mk6:20
      3. He was enticed by his stepdaughter (Salome, possibly 12-14
         years old) - Mk 6:21-23
      4. He was tricked by Herodias into executing John - Mk 6:24-25
      5. He was afraid of losing face in front of his guests - Mk 6:21,26
      6. Herodias' machinations would later lead to his exile
         a. She became jealous of her brother's (Agrippa I) success
         b. An attempt to turn Emperor Caligula against Agrippa
            backfired
         c. Caligula exiled Antipas to Gaul (possibly Lyon, France)
         d. Where Herodias chose to join Antipas
      -- He was concerned with self-image and self-indulgence

CONCLUSION

1. What a sad picture of "Weakness In The Seat Of Power"...
   a. A man in the position of power
   b. A man whose personal failings left him weak and easily manipulated

2. How might we learn from Herod's mistakes today...?
   a. We may be in positions of power
      1) As politicians, businessmen, professional occupations, etc.
      2) As husbands, parents, etc.
   b. Will we be weak or strong?
      1) Like Herod Antipas, easily tempted, easily manipulated?
      2) Or like John the Baptist, strong in one's moral convictions?

John may have lost his head (literally), but he won his soul.  Herod
lost both his head (figuratively) and his soul.  In the end, who would
you rather be?  Remember what Jesus said about John...

   "Assuredly, I say to you, among those born of women there has not
   risen one greater than John the Baptist..." - Mt 11:11
 
Executable Outlines, Copyright © Mark A. Copeland, 2016

"THE GOSPEL OF MARK" Principles Of Evangelism (6:7-13) by Mark Copeland

                          "THE GOSPEL OF MARK"

                   Principles Of Evangelism (6:7-13)

INTRODUCTION

1. In Mk 6:7-13, we have Mark's account of "The Limited Commission"...
   a. A charge given to the apostles during the earthly ministry of
      Jesus - cf. Mt 10:1-5
   b. So-called because He limited their work to the house of Israel
      - Mt 10:5-6
   c. In which the Lord gave them instructions for fulfilling their
      mission

2. From the instructions of Jesus, we can glean some "Principles Of
   Evangelism"...
   a. Principles that helped them later carry out "The Great Commission"
      - cf. Mk 16:15
   b. Principles that can help us be more successful in evangelism today

[From our text, I want to point out at least four principles that Jesus
applied in sending out His apostles.  They are principles that I believe
can prove successful today.  The first one is...]

I. THE PRINCIPLE OF SYNERGY

   A. THE APOSTLES WERE TO GO TWO-BY-TWO...
      1. Mark's account is the only one to mention this - Mk 6:7
      2. A practice continued on other occasions...
         a. When Jesus sent out the seventy - Lk 10:1
         b. When the Spirit sent out Paul and Barnabas - Ac 13:2
         c. When Paul and Barnabas went their separate ways - Ac 15:36-40
      3. This illustrates the principle of synergy
         a. Synergy:  "The working together of two things (muscles or
            drugs for example) to produce an effect greater than the sum
            of their individual effects"
         b. Two or more working together can do more than by working
            separately
         1) They encourage one another, and help each other - cf. Ecc
            4:9-10
         2) A plurality of witnesses lend credibility to their story
            - cf. Jn 8:17
      -- Indeed, two are better than one

   B. MAKING APPLICATION TODAY...
      1. The practice of two or more preachers working together should
         be encouraged
         a. Especially in foreign fields or difficult areas
         b. Through the principle of synergy they can be effective in
            one area more quickly, and then move on to the next
         c. This is better than preachers working alone, struggling for
            years by themselves
      2. In one's own personal evangelism...
         a. Seek out a companion in the congregation with similar
            interests
         b. Go together in visiting, teaching home studies, etc.
      -- Whenever possible, find a co-worker!

[Perhaps much of the slow growth in evangelism today is a failure to
appreciate the principle of synergy which was applied by the Lord and
the early church.  Another principle to consider is...]

II. THE PRINCIPLE OF SUPPORT

   A. THE APOSTLES WERE ALLOWED SUPPORT...
      1. They were to depend on others - Mk 6:8-10
      2. Supported by those who willing to provide for them - cf. Lk 10:7-8
      3. This illustrates the principle of supporting workers
         a. Defended by Paul in 1Co 9:4-14
         b. Applied to elders who rule well - 1Ti 5:17-18
         c. Encouraged by John many years later - 3Jn 5-8
      -- This is how the gospel spread throughout the first century
         world

   B. MAKING APPLICATION TODAY...
      1. Preachers may rightly receive support for their labors
         a. It allows them to concentrate their efforts in matters of
            the gospel
         b. This support should come from Christians, and not as a means
            to accumulate wealth
      2. Churches have an important role in such support
         a. Churches can provide support of preachers - 2Co 11:8-9
         b. Much foreign evangelism goes undone today, not because
            preachers are unwilling to go, but because churches have not
            been willing to send and support - cf. Ro 10:15
      3. In one's own efforts...
         a. There is nothing limiting an individual from helping to
            support preachers
         b. While one might help support a local congregation's effort
            to send and support, one can also help through direct
            support
      -- If we are unable to teach, at least we can support those who
         do!

[Turning now to the actual proclamation of the good news, we read of
the...]

III. THE PRINCIPLE OF SELECTION

   A. THE APOSTLES WERE TO BE SELECTIVE...
      1. Preaching to those willing to listen - Mk 6:10
      2. But they were to "shake off the dust under your feet" when
         leaving a city that would not receive them or hear their words
         - Mk 6:11
      3. This illustrates the principle of selection
         a. We're told not to "cast your pearls before swine" - cf. Mt 7:6
         b. People judge themselves unworthy of the gospel by their lack
            of interest
            1) Paul was willing to preach again if people were
               interested- Ac 13:42-44
            2) But when people rejected the gospel, he turned elsewhere
               - Ac 13:45-46
      -- People judge themselves unworthy of eternal life by their
         disinterest

   B. MAKING APPLICATION TODAY...
      1. We are to preach the gospel to every creature - Mk 16:15
         a. But once people display lack of interest, we are not
            obligated to keep trying
         b. Rather than "cast our pearls" before those who don't
            appreciate it, we should move on
      2. Admittedly, there is room for judgment...
         a. As to how long we try to reach someone before going on
         b. Some may not show much interest at first, but do later on
      -- At some point, we need to turn to souls who show more interest!

The next principle is most essential...]

IV. THE PRINCIPLE OF SUBJECT

   A. THE APOSTLES WERE GIVEN A SUBJECT...
      1. In "The Limited Commission", the subject was "repent" - Mk 6:12
      2. It also included the kingdom of heaven - cf. Mt 10:7
      3. In "The Great Commission", it was expanded to include the
         gospel of Christ - Mk 16:15
         a. So Philip the evangelist preached when he went to Samaria
            - Ac 8:12
         b. So Paul preached in synagogues and from house to house 
            - Ac 19:8; 20:18-21,25; 28:23,30-31
      4. This illustrates what our subject should be
         a. It should always be the Word of God, the Gospel - Ro 1:16
         b. As Paul instructed Timothy:  "Preach the word!" - 2Ti 4:1-5
      -- The apostles faithfully proclaimed their subject

   B. MAKING APPLICATION TODAY...
      1. Preachers need to avoid things...
         a. Which entertain, rather than provide sound doctrine
         b. Based more upon the ideas of men, rather than the Word of
            God
         c. Text based, expository preaching can help keep preachers in
            the Word
      2. Churches should consider what message they are presenting to
         the lost...
         a. Is it the gospel of health and wealth, or the gospel of
            Christ?
         b. Are we call for people to become just church members, or
            disciples of Jesus?
      3. In one's own evangelism...
         a. Do not get sidetracked on various issues
         b. While many subjects may have their place, they may be
            "second principles" rather than "first principles"
      -- The lost need to know the gospel of Christ and His kingdom,
         first and foremost!

CONCLUSION

1. The apostles fulfilled their limited commission with great
   confirmation - Mk 6:12-13

2. "The Principles Of Evangelism" gleaned from our Lord's include...
   a. The principle of synergy
   b. The principle of support
   c. The principle of selection
   d. The principle of subject

3. These principles were later employed by the early church...
   a. Which may help explain the rapid spread of the gospel in the first
      century
   b. Which can still be useful to the Lord's church today

Could it be that failure to implement any of these may be reasons why
the church is not growing like it did then...?
 
Executable Outlines, Copyright © Mark A. Copeland, 2016

Psalm 137:9—Dashing Babies’ Heads Against a Stone by Kyle Butt, M.Div.


http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=13&article=913

Psalm 137:9—Dashing Babies’ Heads Against a Stone

by  Kyle Butt, M.Div.

In my debate with atheist Dan Barker in 2009, Barker accused the God of the Bible of numerous egregious immoralities. One of these accusations centered on Psalm 137:9. Barker stated:
In Psalm 137:9, he [God] told us that we should be happy to take the innocent babies and dash them against the stones. That’s—even if that God did exist, I might not necessarily want to worship such a monster. I might ask him to confess his sins to me. What a guy—what if I were to treat my kids like this?1
The accusation is that Psalm 137:9 is a prescriptive verse that says that whoever dashes the heads of the babies against a stone will be “happy.” According to the skeptical interpretation of this verse, it is to be understood in the same way as the Beatitudes are understood—as a blessing that will be the result of some stated actions. Allegedly, just as Jesus said “Blessed [or “happy” as some translations say] are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5), so Psalm 137:9 is saying that anyone who kills these babies will be blessed with such happiness. There are several problems with the skeptic’s charge against God in this Psalm.
First, we need to look at the context of the verse. By ripping a verse out of its context, a person could force the Bible to say practically anything he wanted to make it say. Instead of misinterpreting passages out of context, it is the job of every honest person to attempt to understand all texts, including and especially those in the Bible, in the context of how the author intended them to be understood. Here is the Psalm in its entirety.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hung our harps upon the willows in the midst of it. For there those who carried us away captive asked of us a song, and those who plundered us requested mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! If I do not remember you, let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth—if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy. Remember, O Lord, against the sons of Edom the day of Jerusalem, who said, “Raze it, raze it, to its very foundation!” O daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed, happy the one who repays you as you have served us! Happy the one who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock!
The author of this Psalm is a captive in Babylon. The Babylonians (who caused so much destruction in Israel, killed so many of the Israelites, and held the author and other survivors captive) were demanding that the Israelites perform for them and sing songs about the beauty of Zion. The author was indignant that his captors would make such a demand in light of the horrible things that the Babylonians had done to the Israelites, and the fact that the Babylonians still held them captive. The author then proceeds to explain that the Babylonians were not going to be in their elevated position as victors for long. Instead, these captors who were demanding mirth and songs from the Israelite captives were going to suffer a similar fate to the one that they dealt out. According to the author, there would be those coming who would, in essence, do to the Babylonians what the Babylonians did to Israel, except the Babylonian punishment would be on an even greater scale. The nation that would destroy the Babylonians would repay the Babylonians for the evil they had done and would go so far as to dash the heads of the Babylonian babies against the stones.
We get a glimpse of how this process works in Isaiah 10. Isaiah explains that God would use the nation of Assyria to punish the Israelites. He says, “Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger and the staff in whose hand is My indignation. I will send him against an ungodly nation, and against the people of My wrath…. Yet he does not mean so, nor does his heart think so, but it is in his heart to destroy, and cut off not a few nations” (10:5-7). Even though God used Assyria as a tool to punish Israel, Assyria did not view its mission in light of God’s justice, and Assyria cruelly and arrogantly abused its power. What, then, did God promise to do to wicked Assyria? The text explains: “Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Lord has performed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, that He will say, ‘I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his haughty looks’” (10:12). Assyria’s wickedness would also be punished.
This same scenario is seen in the Babylonian victory over Israel. In Jeremiah 12, the prophet asked God, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are those happy who deal so treacherously?” (12:1). Jeremiah is perplexed about how God can use a wicked nation such as Babylon to punish the Israelites for wickedness, when it seems that the Babylonians are just as wicked or more sinful than the Israelites. God then explains: “Many rulers have destroyed My vineyard [the nation of Judah—KB]…they have made it desolate…. The plunderers have come on all the desolate heights in the wilderness” (12:10-13). What does the Lord say would happen to those “plunderers” who destroyed Judah? “Thus says the Lord: ‘Against all My evil neighbors who touch the inheritance which I have caused My people Israel to inherit—behold, I will pluck them out of their land and pluck out the house of Judah” (12:14). Thus, God would take vengeance on the nations such as Babylon and Assyria because of their sinful arrogance and cruelty against Israel.
In Jeremiah chapters 50-51 we see a detailed description of what would happen to wicked Babylon. The prophecy begins by stating: “The word that the Lord spoke against Babylon and against the land of the Chaldeans” (50:1). The Israelites would repent of their sins (50:4-5) and beg the Lord to return them to Israel in a renewed covenant with God. God would then punish Babylon, as the prophet stated, “‘For behold, I will raise and cause to come up against Babylon an assembly of great nations from the north country, and they shall array themselves against her; from there she shall be captured. Their arrows shall be like those of an expert warrior; none shall return in vain. And Chaldea shall become plunder; all who plunder her shall be satisfied,’ says the Lord” (50:8-10). Jeremiah 51 continues to describe the destruction of Babylon at the hands of the Medes and Persians. The prophet explains, “The sound of a cry comes from Babylon, and great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans, because the Lord is plundering Babylon and silencing her loud voice…. For the Lord is the God of recompense, He will surely repay” (51:56). And again, “Repay her according to her work; according to all she has done, do to her; for she has been proud against the Lord, against the Holy One of Israel” (50:29).
Looking at Psalm 137 in context, then, we see the psalmist foreshadowing the destruction of Babylon by the Medes and Persians. Since that is the case, we can now understand some things about the statement made in 137:9. The first thing we can see is that it is not a command given by God for anyone today to dash babies’ heads against stones. It certainly is not saying that Christians should dash babies heads against stones to be happy. It can be interpreted as a descriptive statement made about the army that would destroy Babylon and cannot be assumed to be a prescriptive statement that gives a command from God.
Let us consider the difference, then, between a prescriptive statement and a descriptive one. A prescriptive statement prescribes what God says should be done in order to obtain a certain result. For instance, Ephesians 6:2 says, “‘Honor your father and mother,’ which is the first commandment with promise: ‘that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.’” Notice that “honor your father and mother” is a commandment from God of what should be done, and the result would be “that it may be well with you.” A descriptive verse or idea, however, is one that describes a situation—not that God has commanded or ordained—but one that simply relates what is the case if something happens. For instance, in 1 Kings 21, we read about King Ahab attempting to buy a vineyard from Naboth. Naboth refused to sell the king the vineyard, and 1 Kings 21:4 says, “So Ahab went into his house sullen and displeased.” This text is describing what Ahab felt, not what he should have felt or what was the necessary result of the situation. In truth, if he were doing what God wanted, he should have commended Naboth for not selling his family land, and he should have been pleased with Naboth’s obedience to God. Instead, the Bible describes his sullenness, but does not condone it in any way.
When we apply this idea of descriptive talk to Psalm 137:9, we can understand that there is no way the skeptic can prove that dashing babies’ heads against a stone was a commandment that God gave anyone, not even the Medes and Persians. The text is easily understood as one that simply describes what was going to take place. Furthermore, the text cannot be shown to be stating that those who do such things “should” be happy because of these actions. As further evidence of this distinction between descriptive and prescriptive writing, consider the fact that, even though God allowed the Babylonians to destroy Judah (and the Assyrians to destroy northern Israel), those two wicked nations had performed their deeds in a cruel, arrogant way that God did not approve or condone. Their wicked treatment of Israel brought about punishment from God. We can see that God allowed Babylon to destroy Judah, but then punished the nation for the evil way the Babylonians went about it. In the same way, it would be wrong to assume that the Lord condoned the future actions of the Medes and Persians when they would dash the heads of the Babylonian babies against the stones.
Second, if it would be wrong to assume that God condoned the actions of the Medes and Persians, why does the text state, “Happy shall he be who repays you as you have served us! Happy shall he be who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock” (Psalm 137:9)? Another primary reason this text is often misused is due to a misunderstanding of the way the word “happy” is used. It is assumed that happiness is an ultimate good that all people are trying to attain. In this context, however, that is not how the word is used. Instead, it is used in a way that describes a fleeting feeling that has no lasting effects and is of no ultimate spiritual value. A parallel passage that sheds light on this word is found in Jeremiah 12:1, which we noticed earlier. Notice how Jeremiah used the word “happy.” He asked God “Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are those happy who deal so treacherously?” Jeremiah recognizes that the “happy” people in this passage are wicked, treacherous, and unrighteous. He is wondering how such wicked people can be “happy.” God then explains to the prophet that what he views as happiness is not ultimately a spiritual good, but only a temporary situation. In fact, God explains to Jeremiah that He will punish all those wicked treacherous people, but offer them a chance to repent. If they repent, “then they shall be established in the midst of my people” (12:16), thus offering them an opportunity at legitimate spiritual well-being. If they refused to repent, however, God declared, “I will utterly pluck up and destroy the nation” (12:17).
When we look at the way the Babylonian destruction of Israel is described, we see similar statements to Psalm 137:9. In Jeremiah 50, the prophet tells the Babylonians they would be destroyed, “Because you were glad, because you rejoiced, you destroyers of My heritage” (50:11). They were not glad in a righteous sense, or one that had to do with any ultimate spiritual good, but in a sinful, fleeting sense. Again, their “rejoicing” was not brought about because they followed a commandment from God, but the very opposite. They cruelly and arrogantly destroyed God’s people. This made them “glad” and they “rejoiced” in a way that had nothing to do with commendation from God, or with doing what God has said do in the way He said do it. In such a context, the Bible is not saying that wickedness leads to any type of ultimate good. On the contrary, such statements describe a fleeting feeling of emotional pleasure that can be felt by any person, whether righteous or wicked, but which is not based on the rightness or wrongness of an action.
To illustrate, consider the bank robber who is “happy” that he was able to get away from the policeman without getting caught. Or think of the murderer who was “happy” he successfully buried his victim’s body without being discovered. Or think of the college student who was “happy” it was Friday so he could get drunk with his friends. These scenarios show us that, even today, we often use the word “happy” in the same way that the Bible writers did. The New Testament gives us another clear use of such language in James 4:9. There the writer tells the sinful rich people to “Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to sorrow and your joy to gloom.” The word “joy” is used in other places to describe real, spiritual contentment and happiness (James 1:2). It is used in James 4:9, however, to describe a fleeting feeling that the sinful rich experienced as a result of the misuse of their money. James demanded that they reverse their wrong emotional state to a more accurate one of sorrow and gloom due to their sinful condition.

Conclusion

In Psalm 137:9, it cannot be assumed that the inspired writer was saying that God commanded anyone to dash the heads of children against a stone. The idea that the text merely describes what the Medes and the Persians would do in the future fits the context perfectly. The way the word “happy” is used throughout the Bible allows for the author to be using it in Psalm 137:9 in a way that can describe a fleeting feeling that can be the result of evil actions. This feeling has nothing to do with a blessing or commendation from God. The way the skeptic pulls this passage from its context and misinterprets it says more about the skeptic’s dishonesty when dealing with the biblical text than it does about God’s morality.2

Endnotes


1 Butt, Kyle (2010), A Christian’s Guide to Refuting Modern Atheism: An Expanded Study of the Butt/Barker Debate, Apologetics Press, http://apologeticspress.org/user_file/A%20Christians%20Guide%20to%20Modern%20Atheism-w.pdf.
2 For further discusion on the skeptic’s accusation that God kills innocent children, see pages 203-214 of the above mentioned book. For a discussion of psalms that contain statements about God’s vengeance, see Dave Miller (2013), “The Imprecatory Psalms,” http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=13&article=4707&topic=82.

Is God Immoral for Killing Innocent Children? by Kyle Butt, M.Div.


http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=260

Is God Immoral for Killing Innocent Children?

by  Kyle Butt, M.Div.

Dan Barker and many of his atheistic colleagues claim that atheism offers the world a superior system of morality when compared to the moral system presented in the Bible. In fact, near the end of Dan’s ten-minute rebuttal speech during our debate, he stated: “We can know that the atheistic way is actually a superior intellectual and moral way of thinking” (Butt and Barker, 2009). One primary reason Dan gave for his belief that the Bible’s morality is flawed is that the Bible states that God has directly killed people, and that God has authorized others to kill as well. In Dan’s discussion about Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, Dan said that Abraham should not have been willing to obey God’s command. Dan stated: “By the way, Abraham should have said, ‘No, way. I’m better than you [God—KB], I’m not going to kill my son’” (Butt and Barker, 2009).
In his book godless, Barker said: “There is not enough space to mention all of the places in the bible where God committed, commanded or condoned murder” (2008, p. 177). The idea that God is immoral because He has killed humans is standard atheistic fare. In his Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris cited several Bible verses in which God directly or indirectly caused people to die. He then stated: “Anyone who believes that the Bible offers the best guidance we have on questions of morality has some very strange ideas about either guidance or morality” (2006, p. 14). In his landmark atheistic bestseller, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins wrote the following as the opening paragraph of chapter two:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully (2006, p. 31, emp. added).
After listing several Old Testament verses pertaining to the conquest of Canaan, Dawkins referred to God as an “evil monster” (p. 248). Christopher Hitchens wrote that God’s actions and instructions in the Old Testament had caused “the ground” to be “forever soaked with the blood of the innocent” (2007, p. 107).
Is it true that atheism offers a superior morality to that found in the Bible? And is the God of the Bible immoral for advocating or directly causing the deaths of millions of people? The answer to both questions is an emphatic “No.” A close look at the atheistic claims and accusations will manifest the truth of this answer.

ATHEISM CANNOT MAKE “MORAL” JUDGMENTS

The extreme irony of the atheistic argument against God’s morality is that atheism is completely impotent to define the term “moral,” much less use the concept against any other system. On February 12, 1998, William Provine delivered a speech on the campus of the University of Tennessee. In an abstract of that speech, his introductory comments are recorded in the following words: “Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent” (Provine, 1998, emp. added). Provine’s ensuing message centered on his fifth statement regarding human free will. Prior to delving into the “meat” of his message, however, he noted: “The first 4 implications are so obvious to modern naturalistic evolutionists that I will spend little time defending them” (1998).
It is clear then, from Provine’s comments, that he believes naturalistic evolution has no way to produce an “ultimate foundation for ethics.” And it is equally clear that this sentiment was so apparent to “modern naturalistic evolutionists” that Dr. Provine did not feel it even needed to be defended. Oxford professor Richard Dawkins concurred with Provine by saying: “Absolutist moral discrimination is devastatingly undermined by the fact of evolution” (Dawkins, 2006, p. 301).
If atheism is true and humans evolved from non-living, primordial slime, then any sense of moral obligation must simply be a subjective outworking of the physical neurons firing in the brain. Theoretically, atheistic scientists and philosophers admit this truth. Charles Darwin understood this truth perfectly. He wrote: “A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and reward, can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones” (1958, p. 94, emp. added). Dan Barker admitted this truth in his debate with Peter Payne, when he stated: “There are no actions in and of themselves that are always absolutely right or wrong. It depends on the context. You cannot name an action that is always absolutely right or wrong. I can think of an exception in any case” (2005).
If there is no moral standard other than human “impulses and instincts,” then any attempt to accuse another person of immoral behavior boils down to nothing more than one person not liking the way another person does things. While the atheist may claim not to like God’s actions, if he admits that there is a legitimate standard of morality that is not based on subjective human whims, then he has forfeited his atheistic position. If actions can accurately be labeled as objectively moral or immoral, then atheism cannot be true. As C.S. Lewis eloquently stated:
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust...? Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense. Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple (Lewis, 1952, pp. 45-46, italics in orig.).
If there truly are cases of justice and injustice, then God must exist. Furthermore, we will show that the God of the Bible never is unjust in His dealings with humanity. On the contrary, the atheistic position finds itself mired in injustice at every turn.

STRESS “INNOCENT”

Generally, the atheistic argument against God’s morality begins with blanket statements about all of God’s actions or commands that caused anyone to die. When the case is pressed, however, the atheistic argument must be immediately qualified by the concepts of justice and deserved punishment. Could it be that some of God’s actions were against people who had committed crimes worthy of death? Sam Harris noted that he believes that the mere adherence to certain beliefs could be a legitimate cause for putting some people to death (2004, pp. 52-53). Almost the entirety of the atheistic community admits that certain actions, such as serial killing, theft, or child abuse, deserve to be punished in some way. They do not all agree with Harris that the death penalty may be appropriate, but they would argue that some type of punishment or preventive incarceration should be applied to the offender.
Once the atheistic community admits that people who break certain laws should be punished, then the only question left to decide is how they should be punished and to what extent. Atheists may quibble with God’s idea of divine punishment, but it has been sufficiently demonstrated that their arguments cannot be reasonably defended (see Lyons and Butt, 2005, 25[2]:9-15; see also Miller, 2002). Knowing that the idea of justice and the concept of legitimate punishment can be used effectively to show that their blanket accusations against God are ill founded, the atheists must include an additional concept: innocence.
The argument is thus transformed from, “God is immoral because He has killed people,” to “God is immoral because He has killed innocent people.” Since human infants are rightly viewed by atheists as the epitome of sinless innocence, the argument is then restated as “God is immoral because He has killed innocent human infants.” Dan Barker summarized this argument well in his debate with Peter Payne. In his remarks concerning God’s commandment in Numbers 31 for Moses to destroy the Midianites, he stated: “Maybe some of those men were guilty of committing war crimes. And maybe some of them were justifiably guilty, Peter, of committing some kind of crimes. But the children? The fetuses?” (2005, emp. added).
It is important to note, then, that a large number of the instances in which God caused or ordered someone’s death in the Bible were examples of divine punishment of adults who were “justifiably guilty” of punishable crimes. For instance, after Moses listed a host of perverse practices that the Israelites were told to avoid, he stated: “Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants” (Leviticus 18:24-25, emp. added).
Having said that, it must also be recognized that not all the people God has been responsible for killing have been guilty of such crimes. It is true that the Bible documents several instances in which God caused or personally ordered the death of innocent children: the Flood (Genesis 7), death of the first born in Egypt (Exodus 12:29-30), annihilation of the Midianites (Numbers 31), death of the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15), etc. Using these instances, atheists claim that God cannot be moral because He kills innocent children. Atheists then insist that modern-day atheism would never approve of such, and thus atheism is morally superior to the morality of the biblical God.

ATHEISM HAS NO MORAL QUALMS ABOUT KILLING INNOCENT CHILDREN

A closer look at atheistic morality, however, quickly reveals that atheists do not believe that it is morally wrong to kill all innocent children. According to the atheistic community, abortion is viewed as moral. In his debate with John Rankin, Dan Barker said that abortion is a “blessing” (Barker and Rankin, 2006; see also Barker, 1992, pp. 135, 213). One line of reasoning used by atheists to justify the practice is the idea that humans should not be treated differently than animals, since humans are nothing more than animals themselves. The fact that an embryo is “human” is no reason to give it special status. Dawkins wrote: “An early embryo has the sentience, as well as the semblance, of a tadpole” (Dawkins, 2006, p. 297)
Atheistic writer Sam Harris noted: “If you are concerned about suffering in this universe, killing a fly should present you with greater moral difficulties than killing a human blastocyst [three-day-old human embryo—KB]” (2006, p. 30). He further stated: “If you are worried about human suffering, abortion should rank very low on your list of concerns” (p. 37). Many in the atheistic community argue that unborn humans are not real “persons,” and killing them is not equivalent to killing a person. Sam Harris wrote: “Many of us consider human fetuses in the first trimester to be more or less like rabbits; having imputed to them a range of happiness and suffering that does not grant them full status in our moral community” (2004, p. 177, emp. added). James Rachels stated:
Some unfortunate humans—perhaps because they have suffered brain damage—are not rational agents. What are we to say about them? The natural conclusion, according to the doctrine we are considering, would be that their status is that of mere animals. And perhaps we should go on to conclude that they may be used as non-human animals are used—perhaps as laboratory subjects, or as food (1990, p. 186, emp. added).
Isn’t it ironic that Dan Barker protested to Peter Payne that God could not cause the death of an unborn human “fetus” and still be considered moral, and yet the bulk of the atheistic community adamantly maintains that those fetuses are the moral equivalent of rabbits? How can the atheist accuse God of immorality, while claiming to have a superior morality, when the atheist has no moral problem killing babies?
In response, God’s accusers attempt to draw a distinction between a “fetus” in its mother’s womb, and a child already born. That distinction, however, has been effectively demolished by one of their own. Peter Singer, the man Dan Barker lauds as one of the world’s leading ethicists, admits that an unborn child and one already born are morally equivalent. Does this admission force him to the conclusion that abortion should be stopped? No. On the contrary, he believes we should be able to kill children that are already born. In his chapter titled “Justifying Infanticide,” Singer concluded that human infants are “replaceable.” What does Singer mean by “replaceable”? He points out that if a mother has decided that she will have two children, and the second child is born with hemophilia, then that infant can be disposed of and replaced by another child without violating any moral code of ethics. He explained: “Therefore, if killing the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him. The total view treats infants as replaceable” (2000, p. 190, emp. added; see also Singer, 1983).
He went on to argue that many in society would be aghast at killing an infant with a disability like hemophilia—but without good reason according to his view. He argued that such is done regularly before birth, when a mother aborts a child in utero after prenatal diagnosis reveals a disorder. He stated:
When death occurs before birth, replaceability does not conflict with generally accepted moral convictions. That a fetus is known to be disabled is widely accepted as a ground for abortion. Yet in discussing abortion, we say that birth does not mark a morally significant dividing line. I cannot see how one could defend the view that fetuses may be “replaced” before birth, but newborn infants may not (2000, p. 191, emp. added).
Singer further proposed that parents should be given a certain amount of time after a child is born to decide whether or not they would like to kill the child. He wrote: “If disabled newborn infants were not regarded as having a right to life until, say, a week or a month after birth it would allow parents, in consultation with their doctors, to choose on the basis of far greater knowledge of the infant’s condition than is possible before birth” (2000, p. 193). One has to wonder why Singer would stop at one week or one month. Why not simply say that it is morally right for parents to kill their infants at one year or five years? Singer concluded his chapter on infanticide with these words: “Nevertheless the main point is clear: killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all” (p. 193, emp. added).
It is clear, then, that atheism does not have moral constraints against killing all innocent babies, but rather only those innocent babies that the atheistic community considers “worthy” to live. How in the world would a person make a moral judgment about which children were “worthy to live?” Singer, Harris, and others contest that a child’s age in utero, mental capability, physical disability, or other criteria should be used to formulate the answer. Dan Barker has given his assessment about how to make such moral decisions. He claimed that “morality is simply acting with the intention to minimize harm.” He further insisted that the way to avoid making mistakes in ethical judgments is to “be as informed as possible about the likely consequences of the actions being considered” (2008, p. 214).
Using Barker’s line of reasoning, if God knows everything, then only He would be in the best possible situation to know all the consequences of killing infants. Could it be that all the infants born to the Amalekites had degenerative genetic diseases, or were infected with an STD that was passed to them from their sexually promiscuous mothers? Could it be that the firstborn children in Egypt, or Abraham’s son Isaac, had some type of brain damage, terminal cancer, hemophilia, etc.? The atheistic community cannot accuse God of immorally killing infants and children, when the atheistic position itself offers criteria upon which it purports to justify morally such killing.
Once again, the atheistic argument must be further qualified. The argument has moved from: “God is immoral because He killed people,” to “God is immoral because He killed innocent babies,” to “God is immoral because He killed innocent babies that we feel would not have met our atheistically based criteria for death.” Ultimately, then, the atheistic position argues that atheists, not God, should be the ones who decide when the death of an innocent child is acceptable.

ATHEISM TAKES “ALL THAT THERE IS” FROM INNOCENT CHILDREN

As with most logically flawed belief systems, atheism’s arguments often double back on themselves and discredit the position. So it is with atheism’s attack on God’s morality. Supposedly, God is immoral for killing innocent children. Yet atheists believe the death of certain innocent children is permissible. Have we then simply arrived at the point where both atheistic and theistic morality are equally moral or immoral? Certainly not.
One primary difference between the atheistic position and the biblical position is what is at stake with the loss of physical life. According to atheism, this physical life is all that any living organism has. Dan Barker stated: “Since this is the only life we atheists have, each decision is crucial and we are accountable for our actions right now” (2008, p. 215, emp. added). He further commented that life “is dear. It is fleeting. It is vibrant and vulnerable. It is heart breaking. It can be lost. It will be lost. But we exist now. We are caring, intelligent animals and can treasure our brief lives” (p. 220). Since Dan and his fellow atheists do not believe in the soul or any type of afterlife, then this brief, physical existence is the sum total of an organism’s existence. If that is the case, when Barker, Harris, Singer, and company advocate killing innocent babies, in their minds, they are taking from those babies all that they have—the entirety of their existence. They have set themselves up as the Sovereign tribunal that has the right to take life from their fellow humans, which they believe to be everything a human has. If any position is immoral, the atheistic position is. The biblical view, however, can be shown to possess no such immorality.

PHYSICAL LIFE IS NOT “ALL THERE IS”

Atheism has trapped itself in the position of stating that the death of innocent children is morally permissible, even if that death results in the loss of everything that child has. Yet the biblical position does not fall into the same moral trap as atheism, because it recognizes the truth that physical life is not the sum total of human existence. Although the Bible repeatedly recognizes life as a privilege that can be revoked by God, the Giver of life, it also manifests the fact that death is not complete loss, and can actually be beneficial to the one who dies. The Bible explains that every person has a soul that will live forever; long after physical life on this Earth is over (Matthew 25:46). The Bible consistently stresses the fact that the immortal soul of each individual is of much more value than that individual’s physical life on this Earth. Jesus Christ said: “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26).
Although the skeptic might object, and claim that an answer from the Bible is not acceptable, such an objection falls flat for one primary reason: the skeptic used the Bible to formulate his own argument. Where is it written that God is love? In the Bible, in such passages as 1 John 4:8. Where do we learn that the Lord did, indeed, kill or order the death of babies? Once again, that information comes directly from the Bible. Where, then, should we look for an answer to this alleged moral dilemma? The answer should be: the Bible. If the alleged problem is formulated from biblical testimony, then the Bible should be given the opportunity to explain itself. As long as the skeptic uses the Bible to formulate the problem, we certainly can use the Bible to solve the problem. One primary facet of the biblical solution is that every human has an immortal soul that is of inestimable value.
With the value of the soul in mind, let us examine several verses that prove that physical death is not necessarily evil. In a letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul wrote from prison to encourage the Christians in the city of Philippi. His letter was filled with hope and encouragement, but it was also tinted with some very pertinent comments about the way Paul and God view death. In Philippians 1:21-23, Paul wrote: “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet what I shall choose I cannot tell. For I am hard pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better” (emp. added).
Paul, a faithful Christian, said that death was a welcome visitor. In fact, Paul said that the end of his physical life on this Earth would be “far better” than its continuation. For Paul, as well as for any faithful Christian, the cessation of physical life is not loss, but gain. Such would apply to innocent children as well, since they are in a safe condition and go to paradise when they die (see Butt, 2003).
Other verses in the Bible show that the loss of physical life is not inherently evil. The prophet Isaiah concisely summarized the situation when he was inspired to write: “The righteous perishes, and no man takes it to heart; merciful men are taken away, while no one considers that the righteous is taken away from evil. He shall enter into peace; they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness” (57:1-2, emp. added). Isaiah recognized that people would view the death of the righteous incorrectly. He plainly stated that this incorrect view of death was due to the fact that most people do not think about the fact that when a righteous or innocent person dies, that person is “taken away from evil,” and enters “into peace.”
The psalmist wrote, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints” (Psalm 116:15). Death is not inherently evil. In fact, the Bible indicates that death can be great gain in which a righteous person is taken away from evil and allowed to enter peace and rest. God looks upon the death of His faithful followers as precious. Skeptics who charge God with wickedness because He has ended the physical lives of innocent babies are in error. They refuse to recognize the reality of the immortal soul. Instead of the death of innocent children being an evil thing, it is often a blessing for that child to be taken away from a life of hardship and evil influence at the hands of a sinful society, and ushered into a paradise of peace and rest. In order for a skeptic legitimately to charge God with cruelty, the skeptic must prove that there is no immortal soul, and that physical life is the only reality—neither of which the skeptic can do. Failure to acknowledge the reality of the soul and the spiritual realm will always result in a distorted view of the nature of God. “The righteous perishes...while no one considers that the righteous is taken away from evil.”
We then could ask who is moral: the atheist who has no problem approving of the death of innocent children, while believing that he is taking from them the only life they have? Or an all-knowing God Who takes back the physical life He gave the child, exchanging it for an eternal life of happiness?

WHY NOT KILL ALL THE CHRISTIANS AND BABIES?

Once the atheistic position is forced to concede that it advocates the killing of babies, and that if there is an afterlife, then the biblical description of God’s activities could be moral, then the atheist often shifts his argument in a last ditch effort to save face. If death can be, and sometimes is, better for the innocent child or for the Christian, why not kill all children and execute all Christians as soon as they come up out of the waters of baptism (see Lyons and Butt, n.d.)? The atheist contends that if we say that death can be a better situation for some, then this position implies the morally absurd idea that we should kill every person that death would benefit.
Before dealing with this new argument, it should be noted that we have laid the other to rest. We have shown that it is impossible for atheism to accuse God of immorality in His dealings with innocent children. Since atheism’s attack against God’s character has failed on that front, the maneuver is changed to accuse the follower of God of not carrying his belief about death to its alleged logical conclusion by killing all those who would benefit. One reason that atheists argue thus is because many of them believe that humans have the right to kill those who they deem as “expendable.” Of course, atheism does not base this judgment on the idea that certain babies or other innocent people would benefit, but that society at large would benefit at the expense of those who are killed. Here again, notice that God is allegedly immoral because He “sinned” against innocent children by taking their lives; yet atheism cares nothing for innocent children, but for the society of which they are a part. In truth, atheism implies that once a certain category of people, whether unborn babies, hemophiliacs, or brain-damaged adults, is honestly assessed to be “expendable,” then humans have the moral right, and sometimes obligation, to exterminate them. The atheist berates the Christian for not taking his beliefs far enough, in the atheist’s opinion. If certain people would benefit from death, or in atheism’s case, society would benefit from certain people’s death, then the atheist contends we should be willing to kill everyone who would fall into that category. If we are not so willing, then the atheist demands that our belief involves a moral absurdity. Yet, the fact that death is beneficial to some cannot be used to say we have the right to kill all those that we think it would benefit.

What Humans Do Not Know

One extremely significant reason humans cannot kill all those people that we think might benefit from death is because we do not know all the consequences of such actions. Remember that Dan Barker stated that the way to make moral decisions was to “try to be as informed as possible about the likely consequences of the actions being considered” (2008, p. 214). Could it be that human judgments about who has the right to live or die would be flawed based on limited knowledge of the consequences? Certainly. Suppose the hemophiliac child that Singer said could be killed to make room for another more “fit” child possessed the mind that would have discovered the cure for cancer. Or what if the brain-damaged patient that the atheistic community determined could be terminated was going to make a remarkable recovery if he had been allowed to live? Once again, the biblical theist could simply argue that God is the only one in the position to authorize death based on the fact that only God knows all the consequences of such actions. The atheistic community might attempt to protest that God does not know everything. But atheism is completely helpless to argue against the idea that if God knows everything, then only He is in the position to make the truly moral decision. Using Barker’s reasoning, when God’s actions do not agree with those advocated by the atheistic community, God can simply answer them by saying, “What you don’t know is....”
It is ironic that, in a discussion of morality, Barker offered several rhetorical questions about who is in the best position to make moral decisions. He stated: “Why should the mind of a deity—an outsider—be better able to judge human actions than the minds of humans themselves...? Which mind is in a better position to make judgments about human actions and feelings? Which mind has more credibility? Which has more experience in the real world? Which mind has more of a right?” (1992, p. 211). Barker intended his rhetorical questions to elicit the answer that humans are in a better position to make their own moral decisions; but his rhetoric fails completely. If God is all-knowing, and if God has been alive to see the entirety of human history play out, and if only God can know all of the future consequences of an action, then the obvious answer to all of Barker’s questions is: God’s mind.
Additionally, there is no possible way that humans can know all the good things that might be done by the Christians and children that live, even though death would be better for them personally. The apostle Paul alluded to this fact when he said that it was better for him to die and be with the Lord, but it was more needful to the other Christians for him to remain alive and help them (Philippians 1:22-25). Books could not contain the countless benevolent efforts, hospitals, orphanages, soup kitchens, humanitarian efforts, and educational ventures that have been undertaken by Christians. It is important to understand that a Christian example is one of the most valuable tools that God uses to bring others to Him. Jesus noted that when Christians are following His teachings, others see their good works and glorify God (Matthew 5:13-16). Furthermore, the lives of children offer the world examples of purity and innocence worthy of emulation (Matthew 18:1-5). While it is true that death can be an advantageous situation for Christians and children, it is also true that their lives provide a leavening effect on all of human society.

Ownership and Authorization

The mere fact that only God knows all consequences is sufficient to establish that He is the sole authority in matters of human life and death. Yet, His omniscience is not the only attribute that puts Him in the final position of authority. The fact that all physical life originates with God gives Him the prerogative to decide when and how that physical life should be maintained. In speaking of human death, the writer of Ecclesiastes stated: “Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it” (12:7, emp. added). The apostle Paul boldly declared to the pagan Athenians that in God “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). If God gives life to all humans, then only He has the right to say when that life has accomplished its purpose, or under what circumstances life may be legitimately terminated.
In addition to the fact that God gives life and, thus, has the authority to take it, He also has the power to give it back if He chooses. Throughout the Bible we read of instances in which God chose to give life back to those who were dead, the most thoroughly documented example of that being the resurrection of Jesus Christ (Butt, 2002, 22[2]:9-15). In fact, Abraham alluded to this fact during his preparations to sacrifice Isaac. After traveling close to the place appointed for the sacrifice, Abraham left his servants some distance from the mountain, and said to them: “Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you” (Genesis 22:5). Notice that Abraham used the plural pronoun “we,” indicating that both he and Isaac would return. The New Testament gives additional insight into Abraham’s thinking. Hebrews 11:17-19 states: “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten...accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead...” (emp. added). Since God gives physical life to all, and since He can raise people from the dead, then any accusation of injustice that fails to take these facts into account cannot be legitimate.

CONCLUSION

It is evident that atheism has no grounds upon which to attack God’s character. Atheists contend that a loving God should not kill innocent babies. But those same atheists say that killing innocent babies could be a blessing under “the right” circumstances. Atheists contend that God is immoral for taking the lives of innocent children. Yet the atheist believes that it is permissible to take the lives of innocent children, when doing so, according to their belief, means that those children are being robbed of the sum total of their existence. Yet, according to the biblical perspective, those children are being spared a life of pain and misery, and ushered into a life of eternal happiness. Atheism contends that its adherents are in a position to determine which children should live and die, and yet the knowledge of the consequences of such decisions goes far beyond their human capability. Only an omniscient God could know all the consequences involved. The atheist contends that human life can be taken by other humans based solely on reasoning about benefits to society and other relativistic ideas. The biblical position shows that God is the Giver of life, and only He has the authority to decide when that life has accomplished its purpose. In reality, the atheistic view proves to be the truly immoral position.

REFERENCES

Barker, Dan (1992), Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: Freedom From Religion Foundation).
Barker, Dan (2008), godless (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press).
Barker, Dan and Peter Payne (2005), “Does Ethics Require God?,” [On-line], URL: http://www.ffrf.org/about/bybarker/ethics_debate.php.
Barker, Dan and John Rankin (2006), “Evolution and Intelligent Design: What are the Issues?,” [On-line], URL: http://www.ffrf.org/about/bybarker/ID_Debate.mp3.
Butt, Kyle (2002), “Jesus Christ—Dead or Alive?,” Reason & Revelation, [On-line], URL: http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/121.
Butt, Kyle (2003), “Do Babies Go to Hell When They Die?,” [On-line], URL: http://www.apologeticspress.org/scrspeak/2003/ss-03-18.htm.
Butt, Kyle and Dan Barker (2009), Butt/Barker Debate: Does the God of the Bible Exist? (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).
Darwin, Charles (1958), The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, ed. Nora Barlow (New York: W.W. Norton).
Dawkins, Richard (2006), The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin).
Harris, Sam (2004), The End of Faith (New York: W.W. Norton).
Harris, Sam (2006), Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).
Hitchens, Christopher (2007), God is Not Great (New York: Twelve).
Lewis, C.S. (1952), Mere Christianity (New York: Simon and Schuster).
Lyons, Eric and Kyle Butt (no date), Receiving the Gift of Salvation, [On-line], URL: http://www.apologeticspress.org/pdfs/e-books_pdf/Receiving%20the%20Gift%20of%20Salvation.pdf.
Lyons, Eric and Kyle Butt (2005), “The Eternality of Hell: Part 2,” Reason & Revelation, 25[2]:9-15, February.
Miller, Dave (2002), “Capital Punishment and the Bible,” [On-line], URL: http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/1974.
Provine, William (1998), “Evolution: Free Will and Punishment and Meaning in Life,” [On-line], URL: http://eeb.bio.utk.edu/darwin/DarwinDayProvineAddress.htm.
Rachels, James (1990), Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (New York: Oxford University Press).
Singer, Peter (1983), “Sanctity of Life, Quality of Life,” Pediatrics, 72[1]:128-129.
Singer, Peter (2000), Writings on an Ethical Life (New York: Harper Collins).

Has Satan Always Existed? by Eric Lyons, M.Min.


http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=11&article=817

Has Satan Always Existed?

by  Eric Lyons, M.Min.

From a very early age, children learn about the righteousness of God and the wickedness of Satan. We teach children that God is the loving, powerful, and all-knowing Creator and Sustainer of life Who wants them to live right and go to heaven. We also tell them that there is an evil being called Satan who is very influential in the world, and who is doing everything he possibly can to keep them out of heaven. Many Sunday mornings in Bible class, children either sing or study about these two beings. This time of study certainly is worthwhile because children are taught to obey God (John 14:15) and to resist the devil (1 Peter 5:8). In time, however, if young people are not offered additional teaching about the origin of Satan and the eternal nature of God, many inadvertently begin to form a picture in their minds of two opposing “gods” who are at war with each other. Like two heavyweight boxers exchanging punches in the middle of a ring, children begin to think of God and Satan as two equally opposing “forces.”
Although little is suggested in the Bible about Satan’s beginning, we can know that Satan is a created being. Unlike God, the Bible teaches that Satan is not omnipotent (1 John 4:4), omnipresent (cf. Job 1-2; 2 Corinthians 4:4; Luke 4:6; Revelation 20:1-10), or eternal (cf. Deuteronomy 33:27; Psalm 102:27). Furthermore, in speaking of Jesus, Paul wrote: “For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him” (Colossians 1:16, emp. added). The apostle John was inspired to write: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1-3, emp. added). Who made all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible? Jesus (the Word—John 1:14). Thus, the Bible teaches that Satan is one of God’s created beings. He had a beginning just like you, me, and everything else that exists other than God.
But just because God created Satan, does not mean that He created him as an evil being. Rather, God created him good, and then he chose to become evil. The Bible indicates that Satan was one of the angels who lived in heaven, but he (along with other angels) rebelled against God and was cast out of Heaven. The apostle Peter said that “God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment” (2 Peter 2:4). Another inspired writer wrote: “And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day” (Jude 6). Since the Bible also refers to the devil as “the ruler of demons” (Matthew 12:24), and speaks of “the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41, emp. added), it is very likely that the devil is the leader of a group of rebellious angels that was expelled from heaven to eventually spend eternity in hell.
Thus, unlike the philosophy of dualism (made popular by the Persian—Zoroaster), which teaches that an eternal good being and an eternal evil being exist and oppose one another, the Bible teaches that the Godhead is the only eternal entity. Although Satan is not to be taken lightly, it is a blessing to know that he cannot snatch us from the love of God if we are unwilling to allow him to do so (Romans 8:37-39), nor can he tempt us beyond what we are able to bear (1 Corinthians 10:13). God alone is deity, and He alone deserves our praise and adoration.

Did Death Occur on Earth Prior to Man's Sin? by Bert Thompson, Ph.D.


http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=9&article=677

Did Death Occur on Earth Prior to Man's Sin?

by  Bert Thompson, Ph.D.

Through the years, various theories have been set forth which suggest that prior to the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, death and decay nevertheless had been widespread on the Earth amidst a “previous creation” that included pre-Adamic people. In his book, Earth’s Earliest Ages, George H. Pember suggested that the fossil record was clear and compelling evidence of death, disease, ferocity, and even sin—all of which had occurred before Adam and Eve existed. He wrote:
Since, then, the fossil remains are those of creatures anterior to Adam, and yet show evident token of disease, death, and mutual destruction, they must have belonged to another world, and have a sin-stained history of their own (1876, p. 35).
In making such a statement, however, Pember has leveled a serious charge against the Word of God—a charge that deserves intense scrutiny.
The idea that the death of humankind occurred prior to Adam’s sin contradicts New Testament teaching that indicates the death of humankind entered this world as a result of Adam’s sin (1 Corinthians 15:21; Romans 8:20-22; Romans 5:12). The apostle Paul stated in 1 Corinthians 15:45 that Adam was “the first man.” Yet long before Adam—if Pember is correct—there existed a pre-Adamic race of men and women with “a sin-stained history of their own.” But how could Paul, by inspiration of God, have written that Adam was the first man if, in fact, men had lived, sinned, and died before him? The apostle Paul and George Pember cannot both be correct.
A word of caution is in order here, however. Allow me to explain. As certain creationists have opposed both organic evolution and its religiously based cousins, theistic evolution and progressive creation, they have pointed out (correctly) that evolution not only is by definition a purely natural process, but also one that works via natural selection and survival of the fittest in a world where (to quote the famous British poet Lord Tennyson) “nature is red in tooth and claw.” Those responsible for defining and defending the General Theory of Evolution have admitted as much. Harvard University’s late, eminent evolutionist, George Gaylord Simpson, wrote: “Evolution is a fully natural process, inherent in the physical properties of the universe, by which life arose in the first place, and by which all living things, past or present, have since developed, divergently and progressively” (1960, 131:969, emp. added). The renowned evolutionary philosopher of science, David Hull, observed that the evolutionary process is “rife with happenstance, contingency, incredible waste, death, pain and horror” (1991, 352:486).
Creationists have noted (again, correctly) that God’s creative acts were not those of happenstance, contingency, and incredible waste. Rather, they were acts of deliberate, purposeful, intelligent design on the part of an omnipotent Creator. But in their attempts to oppose evolution and to make the case for the biblical account of origins, some creationists (who no doubt are well intentioned) have misinterpreted, and thus misapplied, the teachings of two important New Testament passages. The first of those passages is Romans 5:12-14.
Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned: for until the law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come.
The second passage is 1 Corinthians 15:20-22:
But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of them that are asleep. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
The portions of these two verses (shown in bold type) that are emphasized by certain creationists stress the fact that death only entered the world because of man. The argument set forth, therefore, is as follows. Evolution suggests that there were billions of years of “happenstance, contingency, incredible waste, death, pain, and horror” (to use Dr. Hull’s exact words). Contrariwise, the Bible states quite specifically that death did not exist until Adam and Eve sinned against God. The evolutionary scenario, therefore, is apodictically impossible—regardless of whether the evolution being advocated is that found in atheistic (organic) evolution, theistic evolution, or progressive creation. Each requires vast eons of time, during which, so we are told, nature was viciously and uncaringly culling out evolutionary dead-ends and witnessing extinctions that resulted from the deaths of untold thousands of species of plants, animals, and “hominoids.” In addressing this point, creationist Henry M. Morris wrote:
Perhaps the most serious problem is theological. If we accept the geological ages at all, in effect we are saying that God used the methods and processes which exist in the present world to finally bring into the world the goal and culmination of His creative activity—man. This means, therefore, that at least a billion years of struggle, suffering, disorder, disease, storm, convulsions of all kinds, and, above all, death troubled the world before man ever entered the world and before any sin appeared in the world. The Bible, on the other hand, teaches quite emphatically that there was no suffering or death in the world until after sin came in. Romans 5:12 declares, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”
Death by sin—there was no death in the world until sin was introduced. The present groaning, struggling creation of which we read in Romans dates Biblically from the time of the great curse God put on creation because of Adam’s sin. So the whole creation now is under the bondage of corruption and decay and death because of man’s sin. But if the concept of the geological ages is correct, there were geological ages and over a billion years of death in the world before any sin entered the world. Therefore, God must have used the principle of decay, suffering, and disorder. This is not the God revealed in the Bible—a merciful God, a gracious God, a God of order and power, not a God of confusion, random change and chance (1973, 3:72-73, emp. added).
In his book, Man: Ape or Image—The Christian’s Dilemma, Rendle-Short wrote:
Sin entered the world through one man, Adam. Death also entered the world through Adam. There had been no sin or death previously.... It may even be argued that the plants did not die before Adam. Eating the fruit or foliage of plants does not kill them.... [T]he death of a plant is of a different order from death of an animal.... [P]lants are on a par with the basic earth, of lesser worth than animals.... [P]lants are not “living” and so cannot die as an animal does. That they were eaten by animals and man before the Fall is quite consistent with the statement that there was no death.... Death and dying are always against nature, the God-given order of things. Especially would this have been so before the Fall, at a time when God declared everything to be ”very good” (1984, pp. 139,148,149, first emp. added, last emp. in orig.).
Another well-known creationist, Ken Ham, devoted a section of his 1987 book, The Lie: Evolution, to “No Death Before Adam’s Fall.” He wrote:
The Bible clearly teaches that death, particularly the physical and spiritual death of man, entered the world only after the first man Adam sinned.... But what about the animals? Was death a part of the created animal world? There are a number of reasons why I believe animal death as well as human death did not occur before the Fall.... Before sin came into the world, death wasn’t even a question—God had total control of the creation and sustained it 100 percent. There was no corruption or decay. Hence, death wasn’t even a possibility.... Death and bloodshed came into the world as a judgment from God for man’s rebellion. But at the same time death was the very means by which man was redeemed. So bloodshed could not have existed before man’s fall. There was no bloodshed before Adam sinned: everything was perfect and death was not a part of animal existence (pp. 137-138,139, emp. added).
Thirteen years later, in his book, Did Adam Have a Bellybutton?, Mr. Ham repeated the same sentiments (2000, pp. 16-17,24,88-89,91,149).
Are the conclusions of these creationist authors—that there was absolutely no death of any kind prior to Adam and Eve’s sin—correct? And even more important, are they scriptural? The answers are “No” and “No.” To say that there was no human death prior to the Fall of man is to make a perfectly biblical statement. The passages in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 make that crystal clear. However, using those same scriptures to suggest that not even plants or animals could die ignores the specific context of each of the passages and is a serious abuse of the texts under consideration.
Paul’s presentation in Romans 5:12-14 and 1 Corinthians 15:20-22 had nothing whatsoever to do with the death of either plants or animals. Rather, an examination of the passages reveals that, in the context, he was discussing only the death of humans—which resulted from the tragic events that occurred in the Garden of Eden. Notice his specific phraseology, not only in Romans chapter 5, but even continuing into chapter 6. The inspired apostle spoke of: (a) “if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound unto the many” (5:15); (b) “much more shall they that receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, even Jesus Christ” (5:17); (c) “as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men” (5:18); (d) “as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous” (5: 19); (e) “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid” (6:1-2); (f) “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey the lusts thereof” (6:12); and (g) “I speak after the manner of men;... ye were servants of sin,...but now being made free from sin and become servants to God” (6:19-20,22).
Notice the terms (in bold type) that Paul used in his discussion of the fact of, punishment for, and salvation from sin. He spoke of “the many,” “they,” “all men,” mankind’s “mortal body,” and “after the manner of men.” Who, exactly, is represented by such terms? Surely, words and phrases such as these cannot have reference to plants and animals, but must instead refer solely to human beings. Furthermore, neither plants nor animals can sin; only humans are capable of committing such a travesty by revolting against their Maker. Only humans are recipients of the “gift by the grace of...Jesus Christ” (5:15). Only of humans may it be said that “the many shall be made righteous” (5:19).
Sin and death came on man by man (notice especially Paul’s comment in Romans 5:12 that “death passed unto all men“). Anthropologist Arthur C. Custance correctly observed: “[I]t seems clearly intended by the record in Genesis that death was in no sense inevitable for Adam” (1976, pp 145-146, emp. added). But, why was it not inevitable? The simple fact is that the suspension of man’s demise was provided by his continually having access to the tree of life that stood in the midst of the Garden (Genesis 2:9; 3:22). However, as Custance went on to remark: “Adam surrendered his potential immortality...” (p. 146). Thus Paul was constrained to say: “Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin” (Romans 5:12). Yet it must not be overlooked that the fateful promise of imminent death that resulted from having violated God’s law was made to Adam and Eve, not to the rest of the creation (Genesis 2:17). Custance therefore lamented: “[I]n the very day that he ate, that day the process of dying began. Thenceforth it was merely a question of time” (p. 150)—which explains why we read in Genesis 5:5 that “all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.”
When, then, did death and decay begin to occur in the natural (i.e., non-human) world? In an article titled “Was There Death Before Adam?,” Trevor Major addressed this point.
This is difficult to answer from Scripture because its special concern is for the fate of man—the only being created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Perhaps plants and animals began to die from the moment of their creation. There is every suggestion that grass, fruit trees, birds, sea creatures, cattle, insects, and other organisms functioned quite normally even in the creation week. In this period they began to grow and to reproduce, so why could they not also begin to die and decay, as is the fate of all living things? (1990, 2[7]:2).
In his book, God’s Time Records in Ancient Sediments, Dan Wonderly agreed when he suggested:
We of course agree that both spiritual and physical death in the human race originated with the tragic event of Adam’s sin. But the beginning of death in the animal and plant kingdoms is simply not mentioned in any of the Scripture passages having to do with man’s sin; nor is the time of the beginning of such death given in any other place in the Bible....Man was given the privilege of eating the fruits of the garden, and we certainly must assume that the “beasts of the field” and the “fowls” likewise supplied themselves with food from the garden. Thus we are led to the conclusion that the supply of the biological needs of animals and of man was basically the same in the Garden of Eden before the fall of man as it is today (1977, pp. 236,237). [NOTE: While I wholeheartedly agree with Wonderly’s conclusion that plant and animal death occurred prior to the Fall, I strongly disagree with the position he takes in his book that the Earth itself is ancient, with an age measured in billions of years rather than thousands (see Thompson, 1999).]
Some might object, however, that Genesis 1:31 records that “God saw everything He had made, and, behold it was very good.” As Rendle-Short opined: “Death and dying are always against nature, the God-given order of things. Especially would this have been so before the Fall, at a time when God declared everything to be “very good” (1984, p. 149, emp. in orig.). The question then becomes: “How could something be ‘very good’ if there was death and decay in the natural world?” This seeming problem is solved quite easily, however, if we recognize that, at times, what we prefer to label as “good” is not necessarily what God considers good. [Recall God’s statement via the prophet Isaiah: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8).] As Clifford Wilson put it: “If it were not for the principle in nature of life continuing through death, all life would soon be extinct.... Sometimes we must reassess our ideas on the basis of newly discovered facts. Is it ‘good’ to kill a mosquito, a spider, a snake?.... Remember, too, the Lord said to Peter, ‘Rise, Peter, kill and eat’ (Acts 10:13)” [1975, p. 34, emp. in orig.]. Wonderly went on to observe:
Actually, we should not be surprised that the regular death of even complex organisms was included in the “way of life” before the fall of man. God created the whole animal kingdom, and much of the plant kingdom, with dependence upon the intake of food for the production of energy; and that food is always organic material produced by cells. In nearly all cases these cells which provide food for man and other organisms must die, either before being eaten or soon afterwards, as they are digested. Even most of the fungi and bacteria are dependent upon cellular organisms which have died, to provide their food for energy and growth. In fact, some kinds of fungi and bacteria are equipped with mechanisms to produce strong enzymes which digest the living cells of plants and animals which are their food. Thus if death were not a part of the original world of living organisms, then the entire basis of their lives would have had to be different from any principle known on the earth today. But, as we have seen, such a difference is not in keeping with the Genesis account of life in the Garden of Eden (1977, p. 237, emp. in orig.).
If God has established something as the “natural order of things,” then: (a) by definition it qualifies as “good”? and (b) who are we to suggest otherwise? Furthermore, if we ask, “How could something be good if it involves death and decay?” this begs the question by assuming that the normal operation of the natural world, including death and decay, is not “good.”
Consider also the indefensible position in which a person finds himself when he asserts that there was absolutely no death of any kind prior to the Fall. As Major concluded:
[T]o insist that neither death nor decay existed in the non-human world before the sin of man, is to ask for special pleading. What of bacteria, adult butterflies, and other creatures that measure their longevity in terms of hours or days? What of the luckless ant that is trodden on by an elephant, or the fly which wanders into a spider’s web? These creatures lived in a world governed by natural laws instituted by God during His creation. It is unnecessary to propose that God acted during this time like a machine, constantly intervening at every level to ensure the eternal preservation of all creatures until that terrible day when sin came into the world (1990, 2[7]:2).
Each of us should remember the adage that “a text removed from its context becomes little more than a pretext.” Especially is this true when Scripture is involved. Paul’s statements in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 about sin having entered the human race deal with exactly that in their original context—the entrance of sin among humans. While God’s statement to Adam that “cursed is the ground for thy sake” (Genesis 3:17) informs us that man’s sin ushered in certain drastic disadvantages for the animal and plant kingdoms, the statement, in and of itself, neither says nor implies that simultaneously this was the beginning of death among nature’s non-human inhabitants. Wonderly properly summarized the problem associated with taking the position that there was no death prior to Adam and Eve’s sin.
The fact of the eating of plant materials in the Garden of Eden is readily admitted by all. Since plants are living organisms, with living cells similar to those of animals, there is no question but that the terms “life” and “death” are appropriate in speaking of them. Thus when man, the beasts, and the birds ate and digested plant materials, they were bringing about the death of living organisms. This fact is intensified when we realize that seeds contain young, living embryos; so when Adam and Eve ate nuts and seeds they were killing the young embryos within those seeds.... It is not possible for us as finite human beings to say that death in the animal world was not in the original, good plan of God, but that death in the plant world was in his plan. Who are we to say that plants and animals are less “alive” than animals? Plants can carry out some activities which animals cannot. Their cells are highly complex; and many plants produce motile reproductive cells—and even some motile non-reproductive cells—which swim about by means of flagella just as actively flagellated protozoans of the animal world.
Also, the death of small animals must have been a regular occurrence in the Garden of Eden. It is difficult to conceive of the hoofed mammals roaming the fields day after day without crushing beetles and worms with their hoofs. And how could any sheep or cow pluck grass from the earth without eating the microscopic sized insects and mites which live on the blades and upper roots of the plants? Beyond this, how could such animals drink large quantities of water from streams and pools without ingesting many tiny aquatic arthropod animals? It should also be remembered that such tiny insects and mites are not insignificant specks, but that there is only one phylum of animals which is more complex than they, namely, the phylum which contains the vertebrates. Each such tiny insect is equipped with a complex nervous system, well-developed eyes, an elaborate respiratory system, a chemically efficient excretory system, etc....
The same wisdom of God which led Him to ordain that plant life would serve as food for certain organisms could certainly have ordained that certain animals would also serve as food. For example, when God created the kinds of whales which live on microscopic organisms (as the blue whale), He surely foresaw that as they dashed through the water scooping up planktonic organisms their diet would include many kinds of tiny crustaceans which are very complex animals. Crustaceans belong to the same phylum as insects and have a degree of organization very similar to that of insects. Even if we might say that these whales may have originally eaten seaweed, we would have to remember that a vast number of these tiny crustaceans are found in among and clinging to the branches of the seaweed (1977, pp. 236-237,238, emp. in orig.).
Wilson was correct when he stated simply but emphatically: “Only for man was death the direct result of his fall and expulsion from the Garden of Eden” (1975, p. 33).
But some will ask: “What about obviously carnivorous animals? Were they carnivorous from the beginning, or did they become carnivorous after the sin and subsequent curse of man?” There can be no doubt that all animals were created by God initially to be herbivorous. Early in the book of Genesis we read:
And God said, “Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food: and to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food.” And it was so (1:29-30, emp. added).
Later, however, after the Fall of man, there are indicators that not only were animals killed by man—at first for clothing (Genesis 3:21) and later for sacrifice (Genesis 4:4)—but that the animals themselves had become carnivorous. When God surveyed the situation immediately prior to the Great Flood, the text indicates that “God saw the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, ‘The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence’ ” (Genesis 6:12-13, emp. added). Some conservative Bible scholars have suggested the commentary that “all flesh had corrupted their way” so that the Earth was “filled with violence” may well signify that animals already had become carnivorous by the time God sent the Flood. [Of course, after the Flood God gave humans permission to eat meat as well (Genesis 9:3), but noted that “the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the heavens” (9:2), indicating a permanent change in man’s relationship to the Earth’s animals.]
The issue also has been raised about how animals that, at present, seem well equipped only for a carnivorous existence might have survived in the pre-Flood world at a time when they were forced to exist solely as vegetarians (a concept plainly taught in Genesis 1:29-30). Wonderly has responded to such an inquiry as follows:
There is, however, one problem which seems to be particularly bothersome to us, concerning the existence of violence and death in the animal world. This is the pattern of behavior and way of life of the carnivorous mammals. The seemingly ruthless capturing of other mammals, and even of human beings by carnivores appears to be—and perhaps is—contrary to what we believe concerning God’s original creation. So we are quite willing to say that the carnivorous mammals may have begun their ruthless hunting of other animals only after the fall of man.... If the specialized flesh-tearing teeth of the carnivores make us wonder if they did not possess an instinct for ruthless hunting as soon as they were created, we should consider the possibility that in earlier times their diet was restricted to invertebrate animals (insects and sea-shore animals), and to fruits and other plant materials which their teeth could handle. After all, many carnivores even now eat large amounts of such foods. For example, cats eat grasshoppers; bears often eat fruit and honey; and raccoons eat corn, nuts, and other fruits, and even leaves and grasses (1977, 239-240, parenthetical item in orig.).
Rendle-Short wrote in agreement:
I readily agree it is difficult to see how certain creatures could ever have been solely vegetarian. Their whole anatomy and mode of life now seems adapted for catching prey. My reply must be, firstly, as biologists study the problem it becomes obvious that many so-called carnivores can easily live on a purely vegetarian diet—the domestic dog or cat for example. Teeth apparently designed to tear prey can also be used to tear tough vegetable fibre (1984, p. 147).
Furthermore, at times the “specialized” traits and characteristics that we think, at first glance, make animals better adapted to a certain activity, climate, or habitat turn out not to inure such an advantage after all. Joseph Dillow acknowledged this problem in discussing the giant, woolly mammoths whose frozen remains have been found in the Arctic regions.
The mammoth was endowed with a fur coat and a wooly overcoat 25 cm. long. This is generally taken as proof that the mammoth was well adapted to cold. However, the presence of fur or hair is not necessarily an indication of protection against cold. Consider, for example, the hairy mountain Malaysian elephant that inhabits a tropical region today. The Sumatran elephant from Burma, R. lasiotis, has a thick hair covering on its belly and legs, a hairy tail, and bristles at the end of its ears. In fact, thick fur means nothing, as many animals of the equatorial jungles, such as tigers, have thick fur (1981, p. 338).
Whereas one would think that a tiger’s thick fur would equip it to live in an area of the world where the average temperature is low, quite the opposite is the case. Although in possession of an impressive, thick fur coat, it nevertheless lives quite comfortably in the tropical to subtropical regions of the Middle East. Other examples could be cited at length. For generations, we were taught that Arctic animals enjoyed protection from the frigid temperatures and waters of their icy environments as a result of thick, subcutaneous layers of fat that endowed them with remarkable survival skills. But, once again, what at first glance appeared to be the case turned out not to actually be the case. In a scholarly treatise on the body insulation of a variety of Arctic mammals and birds, Scholander and co-authors wrote:
Except for a thermally insignificant localized fat pad on the rump of the reindeer and caribou, none of the mammals (except the seals) has any significant layer of subcutaneous fat or blubber. Subcutaneous fat is a heavy and poor insulator compared to fur and does not seem to play any role at all in the insulation of terrestrial arctic animals (1950, p. 226, parenthetical item in orig.; see also Krause, 1978, p. 92).
Thus, even though certain animals possess traits (e.g., razor-sharp teeth and powerful claws) that appear to be best suited for carnivorous pursuits, the exact opposite may well be the case. The characteristics that we thought equipped them for one activity actually may have equipped them for something quite different.
Last, but certainly not least, what about Paul’s statement in Romans 8:20-22: “For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” (emp. added). Some have suggested that this particular passage from the pen of the apostle teaches that no creatures died before the Fall of Adam and Eve. But is that what the passage is saying? No, it is not.
There are two important areas of this passage that must be explored. First, we must examine the context within which the apostle placed his comments. Second, we must study to ascertain the meaning of the phrase “the whole creation.” The context of the passage is this. Paul affirms that “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward” (8:18). In verses 19-23, he then continues by acknowledging that while the creation once was subjected to vanity, it now is waiting for “the revealing of the sons of God,” at which time that creation “shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God” (8:21). The apostle concluded by reminding Christians, who possess the “first-fruits of the Spirit,...groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (8:23).
While the passage certainly is brimming with eternal comfort, it also contains some admittedly difficult material, not the least of which is Paul’s reference to the fact that “the whole creation” anxiously awaits deliverance from the “bondage of corruption.” What does he mean by his phrase, “the whole creation”? Various writers have documented the reasons why the phrase “the whole creation” cannot apply to such things as, for example, unredeemed humanity or some kind of alleged millennial material/physical realm (see Jackson, 1990, 26:25). But what, then, does Paul mean by his use of this intriguing phrase? In investigating this matter, Trevor Major responded as follows:
What does Paul mean by “creation?” This word is translated from the Greek noun ktisis—a term meaning the act of creation, or the product of that creative act. For example, Jesus referred to the act when He used the phrase “from the beginning of the creation” (Mark 10:6; 13:19), and Paul referred to the product when he wrote that the Gentiles “served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). However, the product of creation does not always encompass every single part of the creation, whether human, plant, animal, or non-living matter. In Mark 16:15, Jesus instructed His disciples to “preach the gospel to the whole creation.” No one would suggest that Jesus wanted the Gospel taken to human and non-human inhabitants of the world alike. Rather, “the whole creation” in Mark is equivalent to Matthew’s “all the nations” (28:19), and refers to all people everywhere in the world. Hence, could not “the whole creation” in Romans 8:22 apply solely to man?
Further, note the way in which the word “creation” is used in the verses preceding Romans 8:22. Verse 19 states that the creation waits “for the revealing of the sons of God,” and verse 21 says that the creation “itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.” On the one hand, the creation has suffered at the whims of men. His selfishness and greed have despoiled the Earth, and his unrepentant sin brought a destructive flood on the land and its creatures. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine how Christians would receive any comfort knowing that plants and animals would be delivered from their “bondage” into the same “liberty of glory of the children of God.” Nonetheless, it seems more consistent to equate this “whole creation” with intelligent beings because, as Peter writes in his second epistle, the physical creation must itself look forward to obliteration by fervent heat and with great noise (3:10). The world of plants, animals, and inanimate matter is not included in the plan of redemption. Only in a metaphorical sense can it look forward to the deliverance of the children of God (1990, 2[7]:1).
It thus seems that Romans 8:19ff. is referring not to the inanimate creation or merely to members of the animal and/or plant kingdoms, but rather to intelligent beings who were suffering for their faith and who, as children of God, could look forward to their resurrection and glorification. Paul’s discussion of “the creation” in this passage and in others of a similar import (e.g., Romans 1:20-21), offers evidence aplenty of the fact that God’s concern over His handiwork never wanes. The psalmist recorded His testimony to that effect when he wrote:
Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify unto thee: I am God, even thy God.... Every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the mountains; and the wild beasts of the field are mine...the world is mine, and the fulness thereof (Psalm 50:7-12).
Perhaps it was such heart-rending passages as Psalm 50 and Romans 8 that caused British theologian D. Martin Lloyd-Jones to write:
Many people seem to think that the sole theme of the Bible is man’s personal relationship with God.... This is a central theme...but it is not the only theme.... Ultimately the main message of the Bible concerns the condition of the world and its final destiny; you and I as individuals are part of a larger whole. That is why the Bible starts with the creation of the world, rather than that of man (1953, p. 5, emp. in orig.).
An in-depth study of God’s Word, and of God’s world, makes for a terribly fascinating human enterprise. As we study, however, we must make sure never to impose our wants and wishes upon the text, but rather to let the text speak to us instead. It is admirable that certain Bible believers are desirous of defending the biblical account of creation and opposing the concept of organic evolution and its theistic cousins. But to suggest that Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 teach that nothing died prior to the Fall of man weakens the creationists’ case and inflicts serious damage on the actual meaning of these pristine biblical passages. The biblical account of creation does need to be defended. And the theory of evolution does need to be opposed. But not via a misinterpretation and misapplication of God’s Word. Two wrongs do not make a right.
God has placed the defense of His Word into the hands of men and women who have been instructed to teach it so that all who hear it might have the opportunity to obey it and be saved. Paul commented on this when he wrote: “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves” (2 Corinthians 4:7). The thrust of the apostle’s statement was that the responsibility of taking the Word of God to a lost and dying world ultimately has been given to mortal men. But the power is not in the men; rather, it is in the message! This, no doubt, accounts for the instructions Paul sent to Timothy in his second epistle when he urged the young evangelist to “give diligence to present thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, handling aright the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15, emp. added).
Considering the fact that we, as God’s “earthen vessels,” have been made the instruments through which God offers to a lost and dying world reconciliation through His Son (John 3:16), the apostle’s admonition is well taken. Surely it behooves us to “handle aright” so precious a commodity as the Word of God. The salvation of our own souls, and the souls of those we instruct, depends on the accuracy of the message.

REFERENCES

Custance, Arthur C. (1976), The Virgin Birth and the Incarnation [Volume V of The Doorway Papers] (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan).
Dillow Joseph (1981), The Waters Above (Chicago, IL: Moody).
Ham, Ken (1987), The Lie: Evolution (EI Cajon, CA: Master Books).
Ham, Ken (2000), Did Adam Have a Bellybutton? (Green Forest, AR: Master Books).
Hull, David (1991), “The God of the Galapagos,” Nature, 352:486, August 8. [Dr. Hull, of the philosophy department at Northwestern University, was reviewing Philip Johnson’s 1991 book, Darwin on Trial (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway).]
Jackson, Wayne (1990), “When the Creation is Delivered,” Christian Courier, 26:25, November.
Krause, Hans (1978), The Mammoth—In Ice and Snow? (Stuttgart, Germany: Im Selbstverlag).
Lloyd-Jones, D. Martin (1953), From Fear to Faith (London: InterVarsity Press).
Major, Trevor (1990), “Was There Death Before Adam?,” Reasoning from Revelation, 2[7]:1-2, July.
Morris, Henry M. (1973), “The Day-Age Theory,” And God Created, ed. Kelly L. Segraves (San Diego, CA: Creation-Science Research Center).
Pember, George H. (1876), Earth’s Earliest Ages (New York: Revell).
Rendle-Short, John (1984), Man: Ape or Image—The Christian’s Dilemma (San Diego, CA: Master Books).
Scholander, P.F., et al. (1953), “Body Insulation of Some Arctic and Tropical Mammals and Birds,” Biological Bulletin 99.
Simpson, George Gaylord (1960), “The World into Which Darwin Led Us,” Science, 131:966-969, April 1.
Thompson, Bert (1999), The Bible and the Age of the Earth (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).
Wilson, Clifford (1975), In the Beginning God... (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).
Wonderly, Dan (1977), God ‘s Time Records in Ancient Sediments (Flint, MI: Crystal Press).