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We wish you a blessed year 2003 and pray that God may grant you health, strength and wisdom. We would encourage you to "stir up the gift of God which is in thee… for God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." (2 Timothy 1:6-7) May you "earnestly contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints." (Jude 3) - At the beginning of this year we reaffirm the aims of the Gospel Defence League, namely

• To proclaim the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ as that Gospel is set forth in Holy Scripture and generally affirmed in the historic creeds of Christendom, and
• To oppose any attempts to secularise the Gospel, deny its supernatural elements, or question the full substantial deity of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In many ways the world is full of turmoil, but we have no cause for despair. "The heathen rage," says the Psalmist, "and the people imagine a vain thing… and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us." But "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision." (Psalm 2:1-4)

Most of the "vain things" which "people imagine" go back a long way to the teachings of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) which have come to dominate the worldview of our times. Darwin started off reading Medicine, then Theology, and was appointed Naturalist to the British survey ship HMS Beagle. During a 5-year voyage around the world he studied "natural selection" and published his book "The Origin of Species". His "Theory of Evolution" offended the Church, because it denies the Creator/Redeemer God. Darwin himself admitted that it was "the Devil's gospel." 1) But though he had many doubts about his ideas these were later erased from his writings by his disciples. When he died, his theories died with him, but were revived when Gregor Mendel published his laws on genetics. Now they have become the credo of our times, are taught in all schools, exhibited in all museums, and applied to all academic disciplines.

Evolution and the Bible
The Architect Pieter Pelser of Stellenbosch has written a book entitled "Evolusie en die Bybel. Kan hulle versoen word?" 2) This exciting book is a must-read. He calls the Theory of Evolution "by far the greatest and most exten-sive delusion, which mankind has experienced in the past two centuries." (p. 9) This theory is not based on true science, but is indeed a materialistic philosophy. It claims as a scientific fact that the universe came into being with a big bang 15 000 to 20 000 million years ago, that chaos changed to order, that the earth formed 4 600 million years ago, that inorganic matter spontaneously changed into organic, and that all life developed from a single cell organism into the complex life forms we have today. Man (Homo sapiens), it says, evolved from primates between 50 000 to 250 000 years ago and learned to make stone implements 35 000 years ago. 3)

The Theory of Evolution is in direct conflict with the first 11 chapters of Genesis, i.e. the stories of creation, of Adam and Eve, of the Fall, of Paradise Lost, of Sin and Death, of Noah and the Flood, and of the Tower of Babel. These contain God's revelation of the beginnings, the nature and place of Man, God's purpose for him, and man's eternal destiny. To anyone who talks ignorantly about Creation God says: "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements - surely you know?" Who made the sea, the clouds, and the darkness? Who commanded the sun to rise every morning? Who directed the orbits of the stars and the ways of all created things? (Job, ch. 38-41) The Book of Genesis also explains the need for God's work of Salvation in Christ. If there was no Fall, the person of Christ, His incarnation, death, and resurrection would be in vain. If Adam and Eve evolved from the ape-family, via many births and deaths, death would not be due to sin. Adam's sin would be no sin, but simply animal behaviour. But Romans 1:12 says: "Sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned." Adam had been created perfect, in God's own image, filled with His Spirit. He could speak, reason, plan, love, and communicate with His Creator. Hence, Man did not evolve from lower forms of life. Through the Fall he devolved from a higher position. - Evolution, then, is not a harmless theory. It is a materialistic religion which seeks to dominate the whole of man's existence. It is the basis of ideologies such Humanism, Marxism, many forms of Socialism etc. and has claimed a foothold even in the Church.

Before the 19th century most scientists believed the Bible accounts of the origin of all things. They generally accepted the time frame of the Irish Bishop James Ussher (1581-1656). 4) This exceptional scholar had worked out that Creation took place in the year 4004 before Christ. But modern man believes that the universe is 4 600 million years old, that it was not God who created it, and that life arose by accident from inorganic material in the sea. But no scientist has even remotely been able to verify this in a laboratory. Louis Pasteur, for one, insisted that "Life can only come from Life." (p 239) Yet, Evolutionists assure us that, given enough time it is possible for life to evolve from non-life. (Evolusie & die Bybel, page 51)

The most complex of God's creation is Man, made in His very image. The Psalmist exclaims: "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man that thou art mindful of him… Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour." The Designer's information inherent in the development of Man is staggering! "One human cell stores enough information to fill 30 volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica four times over. His DNA determines the precise composition of all 206 bones of the body, the 600 muscles, the 10 000 hearing nerve strands, the more than 100 000 blood vessels and hair follicles etc. The information stored in DNA exceeds by far all human attempts on the technological level, because the DNA information which is necessary for all forms of life which ever existed can be held in a teaspoon with enough room left for all the information of all the books in the world." (Evolusie & die Bybel, p. 182)

The complexity of only one part of the body, the eye, is so great that even Charles Darwin had to admit: "To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. The belief that an organ as perfect as the eye could have been formed by natural selection is more than enough to stagger anyone." 5) If we marvel at the intricacy of the eye, how much more amazing is the brain! In absolute wonderment the Psalmist says to God: "I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made!" (Ps. 139:13-18) Pieter Pelser describes how God "knits" a child together in his mother's womb: "During the first four weeks of a new life hundreds of thousands of separate cells are formed. Around the 15th day a dramatic development takes place: The first blood vessels appear. A few days later another miracle happens: Within the little chest of the 1,7mm embryo two blood vessels form a heart which begins pumping blood through this minuscule body - all before the end of the third week. The heart supplies the developing brain with blood and oxygen. By the fourth month the heart pumps 30 liters of blood a day, and at birth the volume reaches 350 liters. During the embryo state, lungs, eyes and ears develop though they are not yet used. After two months the embryo is 3-4 centimeters long and so small that it could fit into a walnut shell, already with all its organs…" (Evolusie & die Bybel, p. 243) Yet Evolutisnists say that there is no Designer and no design!

No Transitional Fossils
Evolutionists claim that the "proof" of their theory is in the fossils. These are dated by means of a geological chart which divides the 4 600 million years since the big bang into the Proterozoic (first life), the Paleozoic (ancient life), the Mesozoic (middle life), and the Cenozoic (modern life) ages of the earth. This chart is displayed in every school and museum, often together with a line of ape men walking ever more upright till they become Homo sapiens. Evolutionists take the present geological conditions as a pattern for the past and believe that sedimentation has taken place at a uni-formly slow rate over a very long period. They make no allowance for the great catastrophe of Noah's Flood, a flood which is recorded in folklore all over the world. It deposited mud, now sedimentary rock, up to 25 000 meter deep right around the globe. Indeed, in our own country, we need only to look at the mountains around Gordon's Bay, Laingsburg, Meiringspoort, Montagu, to name a few, to see that a great catastrophe shaped their contorted layers. Some of the most dramatic evidence of catastrophe is given in two books: Worlds in Collision (1951) and Earth in Upheaval (1956), by the scientist Immanuel Velikovsky. 6) Immeasurable destruction was caused not only by water and climate, but also by a near-contact collision between the earth and one or more planets which had previously been 'comets' and not part of our solar system - all this within the past 5000 years. (Evolusie & die Bybel, p. 94) In now icy Northern Siberia, for instance, remains of an estimated 5 million mammoths were found with tusks of up to 4 meters in length. These were so suddenly overtaken by death that some still had grass and yellow flowers in their mouths. In coal deposits in Gesteltal, Germany, fossils of tropical animals were found: of apes, crocodiles, marsupials, and many others. There are veritable fossil 'graveyards' in Yorkshire, Scotland, Northern Italy, Michigan, and many other places around the world. All speak of a great watery, volcanic, and climatic catastrophe. (Evolusie & die Bybel, pp. 94-97)

There are now more than an estimated 10 000 scientists in the USA alone who align themselves with Genesis-compatible suppositions. More than 25 000 scientists reject evolutionism. But for many it would be academic suicide to say so. The search for the "missing link(s)" goes on, though even Darwin himself said: "We cannot prove that a single species has changed; nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork of the theory." 7) The ultimate purpose, then, of the Theory of Evolution is to deny the Creator-Saviour God, to establish a purely materialistic world view and to make Man the measure of all things. It is therefore an urgent necessity that the Church take up the battle to break the stronghold of this anti-religion, reject the materialistic world view and reaffirm the Bible as the inspired Word of God. Holy Scripture must again become the sole "rule of faith and life," for "the whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture." (Westminster Confession)

May God bless you richly,
D. Scarborough.

Footnotes:
1. Darwin, Letter to TH Huxley, dated 8.8.1860; cit. in Evolusie & die Bybel, p. 287. 2. Publisher: BDU Bybeldenke Uitgewers, Posbus 12685, Stellenbosch, 7613. 3. Op. cit. p. 279, quoting Dr Ben du Toit: God? Geloof in 'n Postmoderne Tyd. 4. Bishop Ussher was a scholar and historian of vast learning, whose reputation for scholarship, tolerance, and sincerity was so great that Oliver Cromwell gave him a state funeral in Westminster Abbey. 5. Op. cit. p. 190, quoting from E Schute, Flaws in the Theory of Evolution, p. 127-128. 6. Velikovsky, Immanuel, Worlds in Collision, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1951; And Earth in Upheaval, 1956 (which he wrote in discussion with Albert Einstein) London: Abacus, Sphere Books. Another of his books is Ages in Chaos. 7. Darwin, Life and Letters, Francis Darwin II (red), p. 210, op.cit., p. 129.