Lovely, isn't it? It's great to be out here in the fresh air and sunshine enjoying God's creation. The Bible says that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, yet many of our schools are teaching the theory of evolution as a fact. Which do you think is true? Today we're here at Whidcombe Baptist Church in Bath to hear John McKay from Brisbane, Australia speaking on this controversial subject. Mr. McKay, a geologist and Christian, is writing the textbooks on creation for teaching in Australian schools. There's three things tonight that I want to talk about to deal with the whole issue of creation evolution. And in case you think I'm going to cover everything you're wrong, I'm not. It's not possible in the hour and a half we've got, and neither am I going to cover it at an incredibly deep level. I firmly believe like Abraham Lincoln did that God must love ordinary people because most of us are like that. And so I'm not going to use big words like thermodynamics or ornithorhynchus or things like that. I'm going to use little words and lots of pictures. The three areas I want to cover tonight, the first one deals with the thing that lots of people are afraid of, particularly Christians. They don't think they know enough about it, so therefore they keep their mouth shut, whereas in reality they don't need to do that at all. I'm going to talk about science. Why you don't need to be afraid of it and how to recognize good science from bad science, just briefly. Then there's lots of people who say, but look all the evidence proves that ape-like creatures lost their hair and turned into people. Surely you couldn't believe in creation. So I'm going to deal a little bit with what's wrong with the belief called evolution. And then in the last half hour or so I'm going to deal with why the issue matters anyway. So those three things we'll hopefully get through tonight. First of all we'd better have an intelligence test. You all recognize that? What is it? Fish. No, see I told you you'd fail. That's a picture of a dead fish. See we're being scientific tonight and if you want a good definition of science you don't need to go to university to learn what science is. Science is just organized common sense, which also tells us why most of us are not scientists, doesn't it? It does, yes. You see that's a picture of a dead fish. And if we apply our common sense to that we'll find out something about many science textbooks. You see many science textbooks throughout this country and throughout the Western world tell the students that the only way that fish got there is this way. I mean there's a page out of a very popular textbook on biology and what it says is millions of years ago the fishes swam around in ancient seas and they died and they fell to the bottom and they slowly got covered up with mud and over a long period of time the rocks went hard and you end up with a fossil. And people go into museums and you see that on the museum's walls. I've seen it over here during the five weeks I've been in the UK up on the walls. There's only one trouble, it's wrong. You know it's wrong because you know the dead fish float, don't you? They do float, don't they? Dead fish don't just sink down to the bottom of the sea and get covered up with mud. If you don't believe me go and do some underwater diving and count the number of dead fish lying on the bottom of the sea waiting to be slowly covered up with mud and turned into fossils. You can do it on the fingers of your left foot, it's not very hard, not very hard at all. In fact you know very well that if your fish dies in the aquarium what's it do? It rises to the top doesn't it? And then little green hairs start to grow out of it and white ones and then it goes doesn't it? And all the intestines are everywhere that's if it hasn't been eaten yet and then what's left of it falls to the bottom and of course by the time it gets to the bottom it doesn't look like that. You see that story which you'll see in many museums, which you'll read in many textbooks just simply isn't true. So therefore it isn't good science and you see the reason you need to know the difference between good science and bad science is that nearly 2000 years ago Paul wrote to young Timothy and said watch out for false science because it leads many people astray concerning questions about the faith. Well if science has organized common sense how could having the wrong story about a fish lead you astray concerning the faith? Well put it this way if that fish lived and died and fell to the bottom and slowly got covered up with mud therefore the rocks must be very old because they took a long time to cover up the fish right? And if the rocks are very old then how could you believe that God created the heavens and the earth in only six days? Because the rocks are very old. But of course if fishes don't sink to the bottom and don't take a long time to get covered up then I wonder how old the rocks are then. You see think about it this way how could you make a fish that looks like that? In the laboratory I mean well I'll give you a good experiment you can repeat this one at home. What you do is you get your pet goldfish you drop it in the aquarium you back up a cement truck and fill it in and you see three weeks later when you chip the fish out that's what it looks like. Why? Because you buried it so quickly it didn't have time to go rotten. Now that wasn't a hard argument to follow was it? That was nice and easy. You see if you took very long to bury that fish it starts to rot it explodes it gets eaten. You see the only way you can preserve a fish like that is to bury the thing quickly and if all the fishes in the rock record had to be buried quickly to get there then it couldn't have taken the rocks very long to form could it? So therefore the rocks don't automatically shout millions of years to you at all. Watch out for false science said Paul to Timothy because it's led many people astray concerning the faith. I've got a friend in the USA Professor Paul Ackerman who for many years thought that he had to believe in evolution because even though you couldn't see it happening the world was so old anything was possible. So he finally decided he better do some work on how old the universe was, how old the world was and he wrote a book about it. It's a young world after all. You'll notice that I'm referring to quite a few of these books through the evening because there's no way in the world you remember everything I've said and if you want to take it away they're out there and I'd recommend them to you particularly that one. It's a young world after all exciting evidence of recent creation. Why do I recommend it? Well you know what he found when he started to do his discovery when he started to research the age of the earth. Well he found out things like this. Do you know how old the world was in 1984? If you can't remember we forget so quickly don't we? The world was 4.6 billion years old but if you check your high school textbooks from 20 years ago you find that in 1964 the age of the earth dogmatically in black and white was about 3.6 billion years old and if you go back to 1954 then you find it was 3.2 billion years old and if you go back to 1940 you find the age of the earth was 2 billion years old. Now it doesn't take too many brains to realize that if the earth has increased its age by 2.6 billion years in the last 40 years and grandma's no more than 40 years old or something's wrong. In fact the age of the earth doubles on the average every 15 years and has done so for the past two centuries. It's a young world after all. Dr. Paul Ackerman writes of all the incredible evidence that shows the world can't have been here for millions of years. In fact it can't have been here for too many thousands of years. It's a young world after all. I'd really recommend that one. Watch out for false science said Paul to Timothy so let's have a think about some false science. There's a picture of a scientist. Well there's some ideas that many people have about scientists. Scientists wear white coats. They're infallible. I mean they must be given long enough they're going to find out everything anyway. That's what the average person thinks. You see the average person says well look how could you believe in the Bible? Science has proved that it's wrong. Well if science has proved it wrong they must know a lot. Scientists are infallible in many people's impressions and therefore they're objectively searching for the truth. Nothing gets in their road and therefore they're unbiased because truth is what they're looking for. You know it doesn't take too much to realize that that's not a true view of science at all. I mean take the third one for example. Are scientists infallible? Well last year we made one little mistake. Those people are involved in science. Do you know what it was? Somebody didn't have a little rubber ring right. It was in the shuttle. Remember the shuttle that blew up? Just wasn't a very serious mistake was it? Well yes it was. You see somebody didn't know as much as they should have known and seven people were blown off the face of this planet because of it. Which means something. Scientists don't know everything do they? Of course if you don't know everything there's a good question you should ask yourself. How much don't you know? But of course if you don't know everything you don't know how much you don't know do you? But if you don't know how much you don't know I wonder how much you do know. But if you don't know how much you don't know you don't know how much you do know either. So perhaps you don't know very much at all and I'm not going to say that again. You see therefore the scientist is not infallible so he cannot be objective because he'll do one thing. He'll use a bias to get him from A to where he wants to go. You see I know that to be true historically. If you have a look at the history of science and I'm giving you a very brief trip through its history tonight. Why is it that science didn't come from ancient India? Why is it that science didn't come from ancient China? Why didn't it come from Australia? Why didn't the Red Indians give it to us from America? Why is it that it only came from Western Europe and England? Why? Is it because that the English people are smarter than the Chinese? No that can't be true can it? I mean you didn't invent Chinese cooking did you? It can't be that. Is it because the Germans were smarter than the Indians? No it can't be that either. You know what the difference is when you look back through the history of science? The difference is the particular bias those people had. Or you've got another word for it it's called religion. You see we are told in most school systems today that religion and science are separate and mutually exclusive realms of thought quote unquote the National Academy of Sciences a few years ago. But you know that's hogwash. It's never been true and it can't be true. Let me quote to you. See if you remember who said this. There are two books laid before us to study to prevent us falling into error. The first is the volume of the scriptures which reveals the will of God. Then there's the volume of the creatures which expresses his power. Do you remember reading that in school? You should have you know. Do you know who said that? That was the man called Francis Bacon 1605. Now what's he famous for? That's right he was the man who invented the scientific method. But I know one thing about Francis Bacon that you don't as well. Francis Bacon never ran an experiment in his life. So did he invent the method because he found it worked? No. We found that it worked after he invented the method. But where did he get it from? If you look back through the history of science the one thing you'll find is they got the right ideas which eventually worked because if Jesus Christ was the same yesterday today and forever. If he created a world that was full of law and order then there must be laws out there to find. That's where they got it from. It's the law. You see the reason the ancient Indians didn't give us science is they didn't believe that. And neither did the ancient Chinese and neither did the aborigines, northern North American Indians. So they never gave us science. If you go to the Cavendish laboratories in the UK, well yes that's a rather famous set of scientific laboratories carved in the door. Over the top of the door you'll find the heavens declare the glory of God. You see even that quote from Francis Bacon that I gave you tells us one thing about the history of science. You can't separate it from a particular religion because science just reflects the religion of a society. Whatever your religion is you'll build your science on it. And you see the science that we currently have grew out of Christianity. That was its particular bias. You know how I know that? Well let's just take a couple of examples. There's a man there. Yeah I'd recommend this book. It's a well-written book. It's a biography. The two of them are biographies. On famous scientists, this one is George Washington Carver. You've heard of him? Probably not. Next time you eat a peanut butter sandwich or you have peanut ice cream or peanut brickel bar or something like that, you want to thank this man and you want to remember that science and Christianity have always been linked together. Why do I refer to this man? No, he didn't have a fabulous education. He started life as a slave and he was a black man and he lived in the USA and he found out things the hard way. He didn't have a silver spoon in his mouth but when he died he was a world-famous scientist. You see he gave us virtually every use that we've got for peanuts but he was more than just a scientist. You see once he got people growing peanuts, yes he had to convince them to even grow peanuts because up until his day no one had much to use for them. And once he got them growing peanuts then the problem started. It's all right to grow peanuts Mr Carver but what do you do with them? Well that's a good question he said. I never thought of that. So he decided to find out and you can read in there how he found out. You see George Washington Carver had to go to the US government one time to get some help for the peanut farmers and during the conversation that occurred in there he was given 10 minutes to put his case to the government and at the end of 10 minutes they gave him ages more to speak because he was so interesting. And one of the senators said at the end of that time, Mr Carver where did you get all that information about peanuts from? And he said I got it from a book and they said what book? He said the book of Genesis, the book of Genesis because in there God tells me what he gave me, the plants for and he declares in there that you know how he got all his uses for peanuts? Yes from Genesis but one day he went into his laboratory and he got on his knees and he said Lord Jesus Christ what can you do with peanuts? And he said I prayed and I worked for six days and for six nights and on the seventh day I rested and I came out of my laboratory with thousands of uses of peanuts. So next time you have a peanut bar then remember that what you've been taught at school or at college or at university that you've got to separate science and religion is abject nonsense. The only choice you have is which religion you'll mix your science with. You see the whole history of science tells us one thing, science was built on a particular religion called Christianity and it owes nothing to another particular religion called evolution. It didn't come out of evolution, evolution's been no benefit to it whatsoever. In fact science came out of a belief in creation. Why don't you read the life history of Isaac Newton? Well you've heard of him haven't you? What's he famous for? Wasn't he the man who discovered the law of gravity? No he wasn't the first person who fell out of a tree discovered that but what he did was he wrote down how it all connects together didn't he? Now did he figure all that out by watching the law of gravity? Watching the law of gravity in operation? I mean did he really discover that there was a law because he went out to look for it or did he go out to look for it because he believed it would already be there? Did you get told at school that Isaac Newton hoped to be remembered as the man who wrote commentaries on the book of Daniel? They didn't tell you that. I'm surprised they left that bit out didn't they? And they didn't tell you that Isaac Newton hoped to write a commentary on the book of Revelation. They didn't tell you that in physics either. You see one of the things that's happened to history is that the truth's been left out of it. The truth's being left out of it because you see when you change people's histories you change the value that they put on something and so most people today including the scientists they don't really know that science grew out of Christianity. They don't know that at all. Can I recommend you have a look at those? They've been written for middle high school grades and they're well written. Put the truth back into history and see what the relationship of the right religion has been to the whole history of modern science and if you want a summary of all of the famous scientists who've been men of science men of God and there are many British scientists in there I'd really recommend that little book. It's only cheap but it gives you a good summary of what they did when they did it how they did it and why they did it which is far more important. Oh I did say one thing I said science owes nothing to evolution. You see if you go back 400 years and try and imagine yourself believing in evolution do you think you would have ever come up with the idea of science? I mean put the belief into your head that says everything happened by chance. If everything happened by chance are there any laws and if there are no laws would you ever bother going to look for laws that don't exist? And if your brain got here by accident anyway do you think you could ever trust any conclusion you reached? You had a problem haven't you if that's what you believe. You see if you believe the whole of your mind the whole of your existence the whole of your world got here by accident then in the end you wouldn't even know if what you think was connected to what you think you know because all that up there is just accidental processes. Have you had your appendix out? You see evolution has been terribly detrimental to science. It's put up a big barrier which has stopped progress in science. Let me give you just one example because we've only got a limited amount of time. Remember 20 years ago or so if you went along to the doctor with a tennis elbow he'd cut your appendix out or you went along with an ear ache he'd cut your appendix out or you had a tummy ache he'd cut well it wasn't ever that bad was it? But by the time the 1950s came along there were surgeons who were saying the appendix has evolved to make doctors rich because it doesn't do anything and so therefore they said since we were once ape-like creatures we used to eat lots of nuts and berries and grass and we needed an appendix but now of course we're more civilized and we eat McDonald's and steak burgers and things like that we don't need an appendix and therefore it's useless it doesn't do anything. So the doctors in the 30s and 40s and 50s said cut it out. It's even a hint there's anything wrong cut it out we don't need it but you know the 1970s brought to light that we do need it that it does do lots of things. In fact I've got a list of some 140 things that the appendix is now known to do and it's not a useless organ whatsoever and in fact we learned that the hard way because after 20 and 30 years of keeping track of people that had their appendixes out you know what some of them started to show? They started to show the symptoms of Parkinson's disease and your appendix is now known to do lots of things. By the way do you realize that if doctors had believed that man was created they never would have chopped out his appendix so willingly? Do you know why? Because they would have built their medical science on a totally different religion. The religion that said because man was created he was created well designed by a god who made him to need all his bits so he wouldn't cut it out and you would only cut it out if it was a dire necessity and by the way that's where medicine has got back to. If you go along to the doctor today he won't just rip out your appendix he will think very carefully once twice three times and get other opinions before he does that. He will try to leave it in there because we now know that it's not a useless organ you see science has paid a high price for putting its faith in evolution and some of us have suffered because of it. Watch out for false science said Paul because it leads many people astray concerning the faith. What about the second section I said I was going to deal with? Surely scientists have proved that life evolved. What if you went to your well let's imagine you're a young man here tonight and you just got a girlfriend. Remember I said science was organized common sense and your girlfriend's mother has offered to cut your hair. Now I wonder what common sense criteria you'd put on your girlfriend's mother before you let her cut your hair. Have you thought about it? Well I'll give you three sort three thoughts you'd want to know that she had a way she could do it you'd want to know that she was actually able to do it and you'd want to base that on the evidence that she actually had done it before and you weren't the first wouldn't you? That's right so you'd want to look for scissors you'd want to look for evidence that she could use them and you'd want to look for evidence that she actually had used them before she got to you. So you're trying to look to your girlfriend's place and that you can't find any scissors and all of a sudden there's a niggling suspicion in your your little old mind that something's wrong here. What does she do? Rip it out by the roots perhaps she bites it off at the ends I don't know. Something's wrong somewhere here and then all of a sudden you meet your future and brother-in-law and he's walking out of the house and there's blotches in his hair everywhere. Now you're quite sure that she hasn't got scissors and he looks like it's ripped out one at a time or in whole handfuls. Now this niggling suspicion has become a hypothesis that something's terribly wrong and perhaps it's not wise to get your girlfriend's mother to cut your hair because there's no evidence that she can do it and no way she can do it it appears and then all of a sudden your future father-in-law walks out and he's as bald as a tack. 40 years of marital abuse ripped out by the roots every week. Now at that point your common sense should take over. There's no evidence that she can do it, no way she can do it and no evidence that she ever has done it as well as you require and if you're wise you start looking for another girlfriend don't you? That's right you do. You see when it comes to scientific theories those are the only three questions you need to ask as well. Is there any evidence that is happening any way it could and any evidence that ever has? Particularly when it comes to that theory. I mean there's a picture of the theory called evolution and you don't need to know an in-depth quantity of biology. You don't need to know a horrendous amount about fossils because tonight I'm not going to give you a horrendous amount of details because I know you're like me you'd never remember it anyway would you? But you see what you need to know is how to tell the difference between good science and bad science and all you need for that is common sense which sadly ain't all that common is it? But by the time you finished here tonight you'll be able to tell the difference. Is there any evidence that process is happening? I mean it says that simple things took a long time and turned into more complicated things. Is there any evidence that is happening? Is there any way it could happen? I mean is it a pair of scissors that will enable that to actually happen from simple things to get more complicated? And thirdly is there any evidence that it ever has? Because if the answer is no in every one of those cases your theory won't work. In fact if it's no in any one of them your theory won't work. And by the way if you want a good question to throw to someone who says but look all the evidence proves evolution just turn it around on them and say hang on a moment what evidence would you look for to show creation? That's a very good way to twist it. It's really the same thing but let's deal with it this way. Is there any evidence that is happening? Is there any way that it could and is there any evidence that it ever has? Well some people say yes there's plenty of evidence that is happening let's go to the Galapagos Islands. Everybody knows that the finches there have evolved into 14 different varieties of finches. Charles Darwin went there 150 years ago or so and saw it. The only trouble is with that and that's in all the major textbooks since Charles Darwin has been there we haven't got any more types of finches than he found. Do you remember Charles Darwin's theory about this? Charles Darwin said that a long time ago some finches flew across from South America and that due to different pressures on the different islands they turned into different varieties of finches. Due to different types of food that they ate etc they produced all these varieties of finches. Now I honestly think that's a good idea. Of course I haven't got a clue whether it's true or not because you see since we've been to the Galapagos Islands we've never seen any finches fly across from South America and in fact we've still got the same varieties of finches as we had when Charles Darwin got there. So the point I want to make is we've never seen anything happen on that island. We've never seen anything so don't be fooled by all the glorious pictures in textbooks. We've never seen anything happen on that island. Secondly even if it is true and I honestly think it probably is, finches flew across from South America and produced 14 different varieties of finches on the island because if that is true do you know what it proves? Finches turn into finches and I've got no objection to that at all because we've been doing that on our farms for ages. We've been turning cows into new varieties of cows and pigs into new varieties of pigs and new varieties of wheat from old varieties of wheat. We've been doing that for a long time. You see that's got nothing to do with this story here which says that something which hasn't got fins grows into something which has which grows into something which has got legs and comes from something which didn't which finally becomes an animal which can live purely on the land then it grows feathers and takes off into the air. That's got nothing to do with that story. If you want a good definition of how much change is involved in the idea of evolution then let me give it to you this way. You know what evolution is? It's the belief that hydrogen is a colorless odorless gas which given long enough turns into people. That's what it is. That's the sort of degree of change you're talking about of chemicals turning into people. That's what it's really on about and you see even if you can prove that finches from South America produce 14 different varieties of finches on the Galapagos Islands that's got nothing to do with the other theory. You need to prove an awful lot more than just finches turning into finches or horses turning into horses. That tells me by the way that if finches turn into finches and that's all they can do then animals reproduce after their kind and I remember reading that in a religious book. I think it was the book of Genesis because God said that he created the animals to reproduce after their kind and the fact of the matter is that all of our history, all of our breeding experiments, there's no exceptions to this, animals have always reproduced after their kind and if you're looking for evidence to show that animals were created to do that you've got it staring you in the face. That's why it's a good question to throw to people. Look hang on a moment. What evidence would you look for to show you that life was created? There it is there. The fact that animals reproduce after their kind or some people say yeah well what about all the bacteria and that? Surely they reproduce so fast and flies and insects reproduce so fast they multiply the number of generations so even if it takes a long time in people like ourselves because we reproduce so slowly you can speed up the process by looking at little bugs and bacteria. You can see animals evolving they say when you look at the animals like the flies that have become resistant to poisons. Have you told that at school? I was. I'm sure most of you have been too. That the flies have evolved resistance to pesticide and the bacteria have evolved resistance to all of our new drugs. Well is anyone trouble with that? We found it is not true. They're not evolving resistance. You know what they're doing? When we first discovered DDT for example and started spraying them yes it worked for a start and we killed off most of them because most of them obviously couldn't resist DDT. Then it seemed to stop working 20 and 30 years later hasn't it? Nowadays if you want to kill a fly with DDT you've virtually got to drown it one by one in the DDT haven't you? It doesn't seem to work so well. I wonder what happened in between the two? Well originally people said well the flies must be evolving resistance to DDT. But you know we found that isn't correct. Do you know what we found? We found that those original flies that we sprayed most of them weren't resistant to DDT but for some unknown reasons some of them were and those ones that already were resistant when we sprayed them didn't have any effect on them whatsoever. And all the others died but those ones that already were resistant they were still alive. That's how they survived and they gave rise to the next generation and what do you think the next generation inherited from their daddy and their mummy? Well they inherited resistance to DDT didn't they? And so we came along we sprayed again but this time of course more of them were resistant to DDT and then they gave rise to the next generation, the next generation, the next generation until virtually all the flies have inherited resistance from their ancestors who had it in the first place. In other words they haven't evolved resistance they already had it. If they didn't have it they bombed out and it's too late. Now we know this because not only have we looked at it in the laboratory but recently many of the chemists around the world have been told to stop trying to look for chemical solutions to the pest problem because in the end you know what we're finding? Yes we got rid of DDT so we invent a new spray but then the same thing happened all over again. Some of those little wretches were already resistant to the new spray even before we discovered it and so in the end we had to throw that one away as well. But of course now the flies are resistant to DDT and product X so we come up with product Y and for the first time we use it it seems to be pretty effective but some of those little creeps are already resistant to that as well and so nowadays we've got little Louie the fly running around the place and he's resistant to DDT, he's resistant to product X, he's resistant to new improved product X and every other thing you can think of and if you want to spray a can of pesticide on him you're wasting your time you're better off throwing it at him because we're breeding Louie the super fly who's resistant to just about everything that you can think of and that's a silly process to get involved in. By the way in Australia do you know we're leading the world in research when it comes to pesticide? I don't want to boast too much but it just happens to be true. Do you know what we do with the little bugs? Because we've got lots of bugs in Australia we've got these little radiation canisters we've been trying out and the little fruit flies will come down and zoom they'll zoom through this little canister and the male fly you know they're the male fly he won't know it because he didn't feel anything but we just sterilized him we shot his testicles out and he didn't feel it at all so he flies away and he mates with a female and he dies happy and she lays the eggs and she dies happy and the eggs die and we're happy everybody's happy it's a marvelous arrangement and but you see in all of that not one thing has evolved from simple to complex we haven't got a single solitary example that will show that fishes can grow legs and turn into frogs that reptiles can grow feathers and turn into birds at best we've got wheat that turns into new varieties of wheat we've got dogs that turn into new varieties of dogs well we turn them into new varieties of dogs you see if you leave them alone they usually go back to being what they used to be just take some of the new varieties of wheat that you get in from your farms drop one off the side of the road if it survives do you know what it usually does within two or three generations it's back to what it used to be somewhere built into that little thing is a memory of what is best for it not what's best for you you see we breed these things so they're best for us if you believe that a bulldog is best for being a bulldog you've got another thought coming we had to breed that bulldog to be as ugly and as ridiculously made as it is haven't you realized that a bulldog is a degenerate mutant and left long enough will breed itself out of existence because a bulldog is a problem dog you don't know that do you i don't want to insult any bulldog owners but haven't you realized what we've done with that poor bulldog we started with a normal dog that had a normal nose and then we bred it for shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter noses but we didn't quite solve the problem too well because you see we we haven't ever managed to get rid of the skin it used to have on its long nose so now we've got this poor dog with a short nose with just as much skin as it used to have in its long nose all stuffed in and of course we didn't quite succeed with the bottom jaw so the only way the poor dog can shut its mouth is if it has a deformed jaw in which the longer bottom jaw hooks back in you thought the bulldog was brave when he bit something he wouldn't let go no he's not brave he can't let go right it's just as simple as that he's stuck with a problem and we've taken advantage of it now can you think of any other problem that a dog would have if you started to do that i mean you've stuffed its nose and you've pushed its jaw right up that's right it suffers from bronchitis if you get a bulldog one of the safest dogs to ever be chased by is a bulldog do you know why well you go home tonight and stuff your nose and push your mouth up and run 100 yards you'll find that after 100 yards you go you see you leave that poor dog alone enough and he'll go back to being a sensibly made dog not the poor silly degenerate mutant that we've bred into him dogs produce dogs pigs produce pigs is there any evidence that this process ever has happened i mean if you believe this theory then there should be evidence in the fossils that show that fishes can grow legs and turn into frogs whether you believe it happened rapidly whether you believe it happened slowly makes no difference it's got to be there somewhere so what you do of course is simply go to the fossil record and you get the fossil fish which most closely resembles any possible animal that could be on its way to turning into a frog-like creature and then you get the fossil frog-like creature the amphibian that looks as close as possible as you can get to a fish and you put the two side by side and you see how they compare i mean that's what you actually do so i'm going to do it for you it's not hard to do there you are there you get the closest possible fish that could even resemble an amphibian by any stretch of the imagination and alongside of it you put the closest possible amphibian that could even resemble a fish and you see the difference between the two that's what's always been called a gap in the fossil record that's where all the missing links are because if you believe that grew legs and turned into that you go right ahead but don't call it science because it's not based on the slightest shred of evidence i'm not pulling the wool over your eyes that's the fossils you'll find and the fossil record is full of gaps and the gaps are systematic gaps they occur in exactly the same positions as occur in the living animals today in other words if you go off the coast of africa and you catch one of this fellow's cousins the coelacanth and you strip the bones off him and you go and catch one of these big big amphibian salamanders or something like that that look like that and put them side by side you know what you'll see you'll see that sort of a gap do you know what that tells me it doesn't matter how long you believe those fossils took to get there whether you believe they're millions of years or only thousands of years animals have reproduced after their kind and the gaps have stayed the same you see it was rather embarrassing back in the 30s 40s and 50s because we caught one of these fellows relatives and he was alive why was that embarrassing because you see he was supposed to become extinct 60 million years ago that's why it was embarrassing and all the geologists had been shooting their mouth off about this coelacanth being extinct and well we can be rather arrogant sometimes we should have asked the natives off the coast of africa who'd caught them every now and then they knew they weren't extinct but they didn't know they were called coelacanths and uh why is that so significant well you see here you've got this animal which theoretically died out 60 million years ago still alive today excellent opportunity to see how much an animal changes in theoretically 60 million years you know something that animal hadn't changed one iota now i don't believe in that 60 million years for a start but i do know one thing that creates a heck of a problem for an evolutionist do you know why if you've got this animal that hasn't changed for 60 million years it's never going to get around to it is it it's fixed it's stuck it's stable you see anything that can remain unchanged for 60 million years is far more stable in politics isn't it yes it is it's far more stable than man-made constructions that animal reproduces after its kind so when you get back to that question whatever it is you're looking for to show that life was created it it shows up in the fossils too because that stability is there even in the dead creatures and by the way remember i said that science grew out of a particular religious belief the way you think about things reflects religious beliefs most people think of the fossil record as the history of life on earth let me give you a totally different way to think about it you know the fossils what are they they're all dead aren't they okay the fossil record i'm going to put to you isn't the history of life on earth do you know what it is it's the record of death now you go home and think that one through a little bit and you might come away thinking totally different about how the fossils got there what they mean etc the fossil record is not the history of life on earth it's the record of death well some of you might remember a few years ago when you got your national geographic publication they had a glorious two or three page foldout and it was the picture on how these land dwelling creatures had become whales i mean the standard theory is that a whale is just sort of like a cow that went back to sea that's the sort of standard theory and they had this glorious set of pictures about how it happened so you have this whale like this cow like creature you know its horns went back into its head its nose went up into the top of its skull it's utter became a rudder and away it went well that's sort of sarcastic but that's the picture that you get what sort of evidence have you got to show that that sort of thing did or didn't happen well you do the same thing again you take one of the closest possible fossil creatures that could it by any stretch of imagination turn into a whale or a sea cow or a dolphin and then you put it alongside the skeletons of the fossil sea cows and fossil whales that most closely resemble the land creatures and look at the gap do you really believe that that turn into that if you did it's not based on any evidence because that's as close as you can get and there's a big gap there there's always been a gap there there's still a gap there and it's the same gap that exists between some of the land-dwelling mammals and whales today again you've got reproduction after its kind what about one last aspect since we're a bit pushed for time let's just take man now you go to the museums all over this country and you'll see that young people and old people alike have got evolution stuff down their throats they are told from knee-high to a grasshopper that there was the ape men then there was the cave men then there was the bronze age and the iron age and the jet age and the space age and all those sort of things and they come away from school believing that man is just another animal and there's abundant evidence the scientists wouldn't have us on there must be abundant evidence to show that this has happened well just a couple of thoughts that might help you you know if you come to say an island like new guinea guinea it's a very interesting island and if you get off your big jet plane at the main airport you've just left the jet age and of course you're back to the vehicular age once you get onto the main roads but if you drive far enough out of town you'll have to get out and walk because the roads don't go any further and if you keep walking up through the jungles you'll find there's still people up there that live in caves and in one day you went from the jet age through the vehicular age back to the stone age and you're now with the cavemen and they all lived in 1986 1987 and 1988 that's interesting way to think about it isn't it well let's ask another question is there any evidence to show that that ever ever happened i mean put it another way how big a box would you need to fit all the bones in that that sort of picture is based upon how big a box would you need i mean that's a common sense question isn't it i mean i could have asked you uh can you demonstrate from the bones of the australopithecines that that is is or is not true i've really asked the same question it's just made more practical how big a box would you need to put all those bones in i don't mean the bones of all the people and i don't mean the bones of all the apes they're the easy ones to pick out people are people and apes are apes dead are alive i mean the bones that are supposed to be halfway in between the two well i came across an interesting book in 1982 it was a article in science digest by dr loya watkins and he said this he said the most surprising thing about all the supposed evidence for human evolution is you could fit it into a single coffin with room to spare now that's rather staggering is it because most of us come away from school or college or from university or the museum thinking there must be truckloads of this evidence it must be everywhere surely the scientists would have evidence to back up all of this well you mightn't believe science digest so let me give you another authoritative publication science 84 had an interesting article a couple of years ago called creating us the fossils that tell the story of human evolution i'm always amazed that we can mix those words together but that's what they do and they started their article with an interesting quote here i'll put it up for you bones of our ancestors in all the world there are only a few dozen now did it say skeletons no it didn't did it didn't say skeletons did it say skulls now it didn't say skulls either did it it said bones in all the world just a few dozen you could put them all in a single coffin and there'd be plenty of room to spare of course you've already been to the creation bookstore out there and bought the books to read about them so you could jump into that coffin and read darwin's enigma with no trouble because you'd be reading all about it and what most people don't realize of course if all you've got is bits and pieces of bones the rest is imagination i'll put it for you quite simply how much of you is skeleton i mean if you stuffed on a chico roll here tonight we have to take you out and put you in a black box and bury you six foot under in five years time after the worms have finished their party how much of you would be left i mean how much of you is actually bone you ever figure that out well let's let's allow 10 percent how much can i learn about you from 10 of the evidence about you or perhaps not a great deal what if i've only got one bone of you now i'm getting rather hard pushed aren't i you see it shows up rather practically this way if all the kangaroos you know those big grasshoppers we've got in australia if all the kangaroos in the world were extinct and we only knew about them from their bones how many people would ever guess that kangaroos had pouches it's a good question isn't it because it doesn't show up in the bones you see when you've only got bits and pieces of bones you see when you've only got bits and pieces of bones your opinion is probably as good as mine and they're probably both irrelevant when you've got a whole skeleton that's different but you see whenever we've discovered the rest of the skeleton you know what we found it's either whole man or it's whole ape and the difference is exactly the same as the gap between you when you're on one side of the bars in the zoo and the monkey that's on the other side and you know even then the differences are more important on the things that aren't in your skeleton you think about the differences between you and a monkey most of them are not the skeleton i mean think of just the simple aspect of speaking we've tried to teach monkeys to speak haven't we we fail monkeys can't talk we've taught them deaf and dumb language though yes they've learned that you can teach them and remember how we did it you give them peanuts every time they get it right and as long as you're giving them peanuts they'll get it right what do you think happens the minute you stop giving them peanuts they don't get it right do they how do you think it would be if president reagan reacted that way if you took away his jelly beans you see there's a big difference between men and monkeys and it shows up not just in the bones most of the differences are not in the bones most of the differences are in the things that are attached to the bones even just things like your vocal cords and the ability to to use the part of your brain which is specially to control your speech monkeys don't have anything resembling it apes don't have anything resembling it they just simply don't the gap is even far greater when you look at the things that are not involved on the bones in other words when you ask those three questions is there any evidence that it is happening the answer is no is there any evidence based on the fossils that it ever has happened the answer is again no which brings me up to the last one is there any way it could happen if you talk to most evolutionists in the world today they'll be quite happy to admit that all they're arguing about is how evolution happened i mean we know it happened for sure they will say we're just arguing about how it happened in other words do you know that's a disguised way of saying we don't know how it could happen but let me let you in on a little secret in order for scientists to find out how something is happening do you know what they first of all have to be able to see they have to be able to see the thing happening and if you can't see the thing happening then you can never ever figure out how it could happen and that's why the evolutionists are quite prepared to admit they don't know how it happened but they're not prepared to admit the reason they don't know how it happened because the reason is the fact that they can't see it happening in other words when you get to those three questions is there any evidence that it can happen the answer is no is there any evidence that it is happening the answer is no and is there any evidence that it ever has happened the answer is again no and if you want to follow up any more on that i'm going to recommend that book by luther sundaland darwin's enigma fossils and other problems why do i recommend it no it's not just a creation book all about the fossils but what he did was he went and he interviewed many of the famous people who are ardent evolutionists and he asked them to cut a long story short look you're the world's expert in this particular view of evolution have you got any evidence to show that fishes grew legs and turned into frogs and the answer usually came back well no and you know what he did next he printed the interviews with their permission so if you want a good book to quote from at college or university or high school in which all of the evolutionists quoted have given their permission to be quoted i recommend it to you darwin's enigma fossils and other problems is really worthwhile looking at well let me just go into the last segment for tonight the ancient greeks had a very interesting thought they said there's really only three things that people spend their life thinking about the first is where we come from the second is who we are and the third is where we're going to you know all those things are connected the ancient greeks were quite right about that where we come from tells us who we are and who we are decides where we're going to in other words if you change the way people think about where they came from you change their view of who they think they are which changes their belief about where they should be going to i'll give you a practical example over here in britain 40 years ago if someone chopped up a baby what would have happened to them well they would have been put on a charge of murder wouldn't they but since 1967 it's been quite legal it's called abortion i wonder what made the difference between the two ages why was it 40 years ago it was called murder now 20 years later it's quite okay you know the difference is related to where people think they came from if you have a look at what most people since the 1950s have believed about where they came from the answer is simple they believe that man is just an animal after all we evolved therefore we count here by chance man is an animal apes are animals cats are animals and how much therefore is a baby worth well the baby is just an animal and if you kill spare cats you kill spare kids there can't be anything wrong with that can there that's just logical you see you've changed people's beliefs about where they came from therefore they've changed their opinion about who they are and therefore they put it into practice about where they and the next generation is going to or not going to you see 40 years ago why was it regarded as murder well i'll tell you why because you see grandma had a different belief about where she came from whether she went to church or not she had a different belief about where she came from she happened to believe that man wasn't an animal because somewhere tied there in the background was the belief that god created man separate therefore man had more value than the animals therefore babies were worth more than cats therefore if you kill the cat well we had the right to kill cats that was our our dominion over the animals but no one had the right to chop up a baby because babies had a heritage in the image of god you see they had a different belief about where they came from in fact this whole issue of creation evolution is that crucial it's tied up with those very nitty-gritty practical issues about what we do where we live how we live our lives do you recognize that that's a house isn't it what part of the house is the most important or some people argue it's the roof because it keeps the rain out well that's a pretty necessity necessary thing over here in england it's rained just about every day i've been here um my impression of scotland is that it's like living on the moon covered painted green covered in mist that was all it was when i was up there mostly uh so roofs are pretty important over here but i wonder if they're the most important well of course roofs wouldn't be up there if there wasn't walls holding them up so walls must be more important than roofs eh yeah it seems to be that case but then the wall wouldn't be there unless the foundation was all right and the foundation actually if something's wrong with the foundation you start to have serious problems don't you i mean that's what happens to the roof and the walls if the foundations are no good you know nearly three thousand years ago the psalmist wrote if the foundations are destroyed what can the righteous do you know the answer hasn't changed for three thousand years the answer is nothing unless they replace the foundations and this whole issue of creation evolution is an absolutely foundational issue it's related to social conflicts like abortion or not abortion it's related to who man thinks he is it's related to who on earth does jesus christ think he is and what rights he got to tell me what to do anyway in fact let me give you a very dogmatic statement every biblical doctrine has its foundation back there in the book of genesis and if you get rid of the book of genesis all of a sudden the foundation is gone from every biblical doctrine you see bible doctrines are just like houses and they've got a roof and they've got walls and sometimes they've got things inside the house that are just like the wallpaper perhaps not all that important they're nice and they're useful but they've got parts they can't do without and they've got foundations which if you get rid of it then the house falls down you see jesus demonstrated that whenever he taught and so did paul and peter because you'll find that in the new testament the most quoted book is the book of genesis and they had a very specific purpose for doing it that way don't you remember when the scribes and the pharisees came up to jesus and they said what do you teach about divorce matthew 19 is the reference and jesus instantly whipped them back and he said haven't you read back in the beginning god made them male and female and that's the reason a man will take a wife now do you see what jesus did what he did was this he said you want to know about the end of marriage you want to know about divorce the only way you'll make sense of the end of marriage is to go back to the beginning do you know why because where we come from tells us who we are and who we are tells us where we're going to go to or put it another way the origin of something gives it its meaning and its meaning gives it its value and its value tells you what you'll do with it if it's so precious you'll do everything you can to defend it if it's not very precious you'll throw it out with the rubbish its origin determines that in fact i read of one lady over here in england a few years ago she'd had an older vase on a mantelpiece for many years she'd resisted every year her husband's attempt to throw it out you know what men are like yes and year by year went past and one day she saw a picture of her vase in an auction manual except it didn't have her name underneath it you know what words it had underneath it it had ancient chinese ming dynasty vase for sale now that looks like her vase but she'd only paid five pound for her vase in a junk shop because i suppose the junk dealer thought well it was just bought in here it's just junk it's not worth more than five pound so this lady was a clever lady and she knew that whatever an ancient chinese ming dynasty vase was it sold for a lot more than five pound you could buy a lot of fish and chips for what that ming dynasty vase was worth so in the next auction manual was a picture of her vase and she said the auction manual was a picture of her vase another ancient chinese ming dynasty vase for sale and if my memory is correct i think she cleaned up 190 000 pounds on the deal why because the origin of something gives it its meaning and its meaning gives it its value and its value tells you what you do with it you see the origin of that little vase wasn't just in the junk shop it had a much more important history than that haven't you read said jesus back in the beginning god made the male and female and that's the reason a man will take a wife you see when you have a look at marriage most of you thought you get married because you fell in love those of you aren't married here tonight you'd better learn something the bible never says that's the foundation you should build a house called marriage on because if you got married because of the foundation called falling in love what do you do when you no longer feel like being in love what happens i mean 20 years down the line who is it that you'll be married to just ask some of the people who've been married here for 20 years they married a gorgeous blue-eyed blonde now 20 years down the line she's just like your mother-in-law and you're just like her father-in-law and if you're married because of looks or love then things might change and your house might come crumbling down the bible never ever says that falling in love is the foundation for building your marriage on i haven't got time to talk about marriage tonight that'll be another talk but you see it deals with the origin of something that's the point jesus is making haven't you ready said back in the beginning god made the male and female and that's the reason that's the reason now that's a simple argument isn't it it was this way in the beginning so it'll be this way now you want to understand about divorce you want to know whether you can write out a little note and throw your wife out because she's burnt the chicken after church because that's what they were doing if you want to know where the marriage is that lacking in value then you'll have to go back to see where it came from now by the way today the divorce rate has skyrocketed hasn't it even the christians are getting divorced yes they are you know even the christians have forgotten where marriage has come from they think that the rules about marriage are rules that we can make and we can break whenever we like you want to know about divorce said jesus you want to know whether your rules are right or not then you go back to the beginning and you'll learn one thing about marriage god created it it's his the rules are his to make and they're not yours to break that's as it that's as simple as it that's as it that's as simple as it was you see when you live in a society which says we invented marriage as we evolve from ape-like creatures into man we invented this idea called marriage so therefore the rules are ours to make and whenever it becomes inconvenient they're ours to break and so even the christians today think that marriage is something which can be treated likely and they can't understand why god said through the prophet malachi i hate divorce do you know why god hates divorce how would you feel if you were at rembrandt and you just donated a lovely painting to this building and you hung it up there on the wall and you're sitting there and all the other people saying isn't that lovely and all of a sudden someone came in with a knife and chopped it in half you can't do that that's my work you you've got no right to chop that up you see the you see that's what god says about marriage marriage is my creation you've got no right to chop it up and that's what divorce does haven't you read said jesus back in the beginning god made them male and female and that's the reason but when you live in a society which no longer accepts genesis then you live in a society to which marriage doesn't make any sense i mean have you seen some of these problems lately yeah we talked about abortion haven't we how would you argue against abortion i hear lots of arguments for and against these things but most of them don't make sense you know the bible says that christians should have a reason for the faith that lies within them and one of the saddest things i've seen is so many christians who don't have a reason they do things and they do lots of right things and we all do some wrong things but when you boil down to it what would you do if someone rushed in here with a microphone put it under your nostril and said why are you opposed to abortion what would your answer be where would you get down what would the bottom line be you see you're you and i are living in a society which believes that man is just an animal so therefore if you kill spare cats you kill spare kids and it's 100 logical the trouble is the foundation is all wrong but they believe that foundation so they've built this house called abortion is okay on top of it and if you want to argue against that house then you'll have to destroy the foundations you see why is a baby precious the answer goes back to genesis don't you remember reading about the first baby what was his name was cain wasn't it and you remember what eve said behold i've received a man child with the help of the lord it wasn't just a boy meets girl situation that's not really how you have babies despite what you learn in free sex lessons at school that's not how you have babies the bible says it's more to it than that and god happens to be involved in it and if you want to argue against abortion then you've got to get back to the fact that every baby born on the face of this planet is not just a result of the birds and the bees every baby born on the face of this planet has a heritage in the image of god that's what makes the baby precious you see the baby isn't just an animal it isn't just a biological set of tissue that baby has a heritage in the image of god and therefore abortion is murder it's as simple as that and when you have a look at issues like homosexuality haven't you read said jesus back in the beginning god made them male and female and that's the reason a man will take a wife notice how clear-cut his argument was a man won't take a husband and a woman won't take a wife because in the beginning god made adam and eve not adam and bruce isn't that it that really is it you see when you want to get back to homosexuality you've got to realize that you and i live in a society which has got a particular foundation sex evolved males evolved females evolved and lately there's a third sort that's got here and they're not sure where they are yet 40 years ago grandpa would have shot them now what's changed i'll tell you what's changed the foundations have changed and our society is building on a foundation called evolution is true therefore there are no rules about sex therefore do whatever you like isn't that what's happening yes it is and if you want to argue against that it's no use saying homosexuality produces disease therefore it must be terrible do you know there's lots of things that produce disease that you're not going to give up because they produce disease so don't expect the homosexual to be convinced that he should give up homosexuality just because he's going to get aids i mean you think of the things that produce disease that you like i mean you young fellas here what do you get when you kiss a girl you just get a mouth full of germs give it up it's disgusting but it's nice isn't it and i'm not going to give it up for a silly reason like that even though the reasons are they've got a lot of truth in it you see that's a consequence not a course when you have a look at homosexuality you've got to get down to foundational issues the fact of the matter is that when you live in a society which rejects genesis it rejects all laws because you see god's right to give us laws depends on the fact that he is the creator of the heavens and the earth and if there is no creation there are no laws therefore there's no rules about sex so don't you christians tell me i have to wear my clothes and don't tell me there's any rules about what to do with the products of sex there aren't any in other words as society increasingly accepts evolution it will increasingly accept homosexuality it will increasingly accept pornography it will increasingly accept abortion if you want that to change then you'll have to go back to foundational issues if you want the society to increasingly reject those things then you'll have to give them a reason to do it when you have a look at the gospel did you know the gospel is a house there it is there and if you destroy the foundations of that house the house falls down but most christians think the gospel is a house founded in the new testament and they forget one thing oh yes they really want to be new testament christian which is really good i encourage you to be that but don't ever forget one thing all those new testament christians you want to be like like paul and luke and john and james only ever had the old testament only ever had the old testament new testament wasn't around for quite a while in fact when you look through all the doctrines in the new testament whether it be in the gospels whether it be in romans you'll find they all start back again in genesis haven't you read said jesus you want to understand my doctrine on divorce haven't you read what did paul say when he was expounding the gospel with the first atom came sin and with sin came death and with death came corruption decay and therefore the last atom who was jesus christ had to come to die of course we went from romans 5 to first corinthians 15 there but you see what paul did was build up a foundation and on it he built the house and there's the roof up there but you get rid of that foundation look what happens to the house you see one of the commonest things i get thrown at me in universities or schools is why are you bothering to tell us all about jesus christ we know evolution is true we know adam and eve isn't true so don't tell us about jesus if adam and eve isn't true jesus isn't true you see the non-christian usually knows the connection far better than the christian does by the way when you read through your new testament you'll find that in luke 16 it finishes with an interesting verse do you know what it says it says this if you don't believe what moses wrote then you won't be persuaded even if somebody rose from the dead you ever thought about that if you don't believe what moses wrote creation noah's flood the tower of babel to law you won't be convinced even if someone rose out of their grave jesus said that so i'm not surprised that one of the biggest problems we have today when it comes to evangelizing is a barrier called evolution in fact one of the reasons i'm involved in this is that i'm convinced that one of the biggest barriers that exists for many of today's people in society even listening to the gospel is a problem called evolution what right has jesus christ got to tell me to do anything he's never done anything for me who does he think he is you know something i'll tell you who he is jesus christ is the creator of the heavens and the earth that gives him the right to tell you and me what's right and what's wrong and it gives him the right to tell you and me when we are wrong and we don't like that because we've been trained to believe we've got rights but the bible tells me that because jesus is the creator he's got the right not only to tell us when we are wrong he's got the right and the authority to demand that we repent when we are wrong but you know even more important than that that what gives him the right to hang on a cross outside of a place called jerusalem and to declare whether you agree with it or not that his death not yours not mine not anybody else's his death was sufficient payment for your sin and mine that's where he gets it from you see remove that foundation and all of a sudden the house falls down if you don't believe what moses wrote said jesus you won't be persuaded even if somebody rose from the dead you know why because we've changed the origin of things you and i live in a society in which the young people are trained from knee-high to a grasshopper to believe a particular origin for death death's always been here i mean what happened to the dinosaurs they died out 60 million years ago what happened to the ape men we beat their brains out what's going to happen to us well we're all going to die out what a glorious future we've got if evolution is true in other words death is just part of the natural system of things you can't do anything about it we're all going to die the evolutionary view says death produced man you know what the bible says that's not how the world started the bible tells me the world started good and then we blew it and with adam came sin and with sin came death and where death came corruption decay now the fascinating thing is if it's true that death produced man then it can't be true that man produced death and how do you see where you can't put the two together because they are mutually exclusive the christians who try and put evolution and genesis together have just shot their own foundations out from under them because the bible is emphatic that the world was created good charles darwin recognized the conflict of trying to put evolution and genesis together he said how could you believe in a god who could use millions of years of death and struggle which is a pretty vicious process to create as it were using evolution and then have the hide to turn around and call it good because you see that process is what you and i see around us today death struggle survival of the fittest lions eating zebras puppy dogs ripping the eyeballs out of pussy cats and you know something you and i know that isn't good deep down in there we know there's something wrong the little kids know it the big kids know it grandma knows it and you and i know it you and i know something's wrong and you know the bible tells me that one day when god recreates the heavens and the earth it's going to be restored to what it should be like what it used to be like axe talks about the restoration of all things in the old testament the prophet isiah looked forward to a time when the lion would lay down with the lamb and what were they going to eat they were both going to eat straw just like the ox just like they used to eat back in the garden of eden you see the bible tells me that back there there wasn't any death by violence the lions ate grass but sin brought corruption decay and by the time of Noah's flood they learned to kill each other the world's a radically different world than it used to be and if you believe that god used evolution to create if you're a christian what is it you're hoping god's going to restore the world to well you've got to be honest he's going to restore it to millions of years of death and struggle and violence and decay now if that's the world you want you go right ahead i've already got one of those i don't want that one i want a world where the lion will lay down with the lamb and they'll both eat straw just like the ox and there'll be no death and no corruption and no decay because there won't be any sin there that's the sort of world i'd like you see if that's true that's false there's a real battle going on at the moment and the sad thing is that most christians don't realize their house has had its foundation shut out from under them and they're trying to be nice new testament christians without realizing they've got nothing to anchor themselves to there's a picture of the battle that's happening there's two castles in the world there always has been humanism which is what man wants to do and christianity was what is which is what god wants man to do humanism of course is currently pretty dominant in your society and mine and it's got lots of issues which are attracting attention like abortion and homosexuality and pornography they're pretty rampant i was quite staggered when i got off the train at houston station after coming in from the airport and what was in front of me was a man who was in the airport and what was in front of me well the boys with pink and green hair and with their bangles and their earrings on and their makeup and the girls who look just like boys i thought something's wrong here when you have a look at this castle it's pretty rampant this castle over here called christianity well the christians are they're reacting in different ways some of the christians know there's a bit of a problem with some of these issues so they've set up their pornography groups and they've set up their anti-abortion groups and they've set up their anti-homosexual groups and they're getting nowhere let's be realistic if they were getting somewhere then two million babies wouldn't have been killed in britain since 1967 would they so the christians are losing why are they losing when they're shooting up there at the balloons well as fast as they shoot any one balloon down the humanists blow up two more of course there are some christians who don't think they should get involved in those sort of social issues so they're standing up there on the top of what i call hallelujah tower and they're shooting out into space gloriously irrelevant you know some people like that i do and of course there are other christians over here on criticism tower and they don't think these christians should be that involved in social issues either so they're shooting their cannons at these christians you've met some like that it's easy to be like that isn't it and look what the humanists are doing they're destroying your foundations they've been doing it for the last 120 years they've been doing it through the museums they've been doing it through the schools and sadly they've been doing it through the theological colleges too you can't believe in genesis and you know what jesus said in john chapter 5 if you don't believe what moses wrote how can you believe what i say in other words if you claim to believe what he says then you are committed by him to accepting what moses wrote creation noah's flood the tower of babel the law and away it goes by the way if you want to win this battle it's an easy way to win it stop wasting your time shooting up there or by all means oppose those things they're wrong they're evil they're ugly and they're horrible do you want to know how to win the battle turn your cannons down there and shoot out their foundations because if the humanist foundation is destroyed what's going to happen to their castle well it'll just fall down their own way do you know how i know that we've had humanism around for a long time in this society but it never got anywhere until evolution came along because it had no foundation to give it a reason for the hope that lay within it and now the christians have had their foundation shot out and so they appear to not have any reasons they appear to just be blind faith people isn't that the accusation that's surrounding against so many christians yes it is you see if you want to win this battle then turn your cannons down to the bottom load them up with some decent ammunition now can you see why i encourage you to get those books from out the bookstore and share them around because most of the christians who are involved in teaching and most of the non-christians they think the fossils prove evolution they think that we've got proof the world is billions of years old and we haven't got any such thing they've been led astray concerning the faith because they've been given whole wrong heaps of information load up your cannons with them and get out there and share that around you see this fight here is a savage one and it's a fight to the death you see the castle that's got the strongest foundation is the one that makes the rules i already gave you a good example of that to start the evening off 40 years ago what happened to people who chopped up babies they got put in jail didn't they what happens to them now well it's quite legal and above board and what happens to you if you try and stop them well you get put in jail don't you see you see what's happened this castle is now making the rules because it's got the strongest foundation now 40 years ago 50 years ago 60 years ago 60 years ago it was all of these people who were put in jail it won't be too long until this castle decides that it's time these people were put in jail it's already happening in places like russia and communist countries isn't it doesn't take too much further to tip the scales after all anyone who believes something for no reason must have a mental problem yeah so we need to lock them up and keep them away from society and we need to keep religion like christianity out of the school rooms and we don't want to have religion in the science classrooms take a warning the castle with the strongest foundation is the one that dominates society and just one other clue if you're using uh if you're outreaching in today's society then take a lesson from paul and i'll leave you with this thought when paul evangelized a society which already knew about creation he started with matthew's gospel so did peter they didn't need to start anywhere else because you see these people had already been prepared but when he was going to a society which didn't have a background and when he went to a society which believed in evolution like the greeks he had to start somewhere else do you know what he said about it you can read it in corinthians he said this to the jews the gospel is a stumbling block but to the greeks the gospel doesn't make any sense you ever wondered why he said that you know why he said that the jews they knew all about the fact that the creator was coming they expected him didn't they yes they did but they wanted him to come in a big gold-plated rolls royce with heaps of angels and throw the romans out and lower the taxes isn't that what they wanted but instead he came and on a donkey he rode in can you imagine the creator riding in a down on a donkey that's what he did didn't he yes he did and uh that was too much for their pride but of course when peter preached to them he just lambed into them straight away with the gospel the good news of the coming of christ and he really made it hard and tough for them and thousands of them repented but when paul went to the ancient greeks he had to start with genesis because the gospel didn't make any sense to the ancient greeks why because they didn't believe in creation you know what they believed in that you see evolution's been around for thousands of years the greeks were evolutionists and so the first thing paul had to do was tell them i want to tell you who god is he is the creator of the heavens and the earth that's where he gets his authority from and he's made all races from one flesh therefore it's relevant to your greeks and you see what paul was doing he was putting in a foundation to build the last half of the story on and by the time he got to the last half he spoke about the resurrection and you know what it says in acts chapter 17 many of them laughed well i'm not surprised jesus had already told us that if they don't believe what moses wrote and the greeks didn't they will not be persuaded even if somebody rose from the dead but you see paul's method worked in that society because we read that quite a few people were one to christ because paul put the foundation in and built remember the parable of the seed in the sower let me give you a different application to it for you what was the story the sower went out to sow and he sowed the seed four different places but was it four different seeds no it was the one what was the seed it was the good news of the coming of christ wasn't it yes when he sowed it on the rocks did it work no but it was the same good preaching when he sowed it on the hard ground did it work no but it was the same good preaching when he sowed it on the thorns and the thistles did it work well a little bit it was the same good preaching when it was sowed on the prepared ground did it work my word it did but it was the same preaching and now the point i'm making there is this the only time that faithful preaching worked was when an unnamed farmer had gone out and shifted the rocks dug up the hard ground removed the thorns and the thistles and prepared the foundation so that the evangelist could come along and fill in the last half of the house the good news of the coming of christ now the point i'm making is this you and i live in a society which has got that foundation and if you want to proclaim the gospel then you've got to realize our society is no longer what it was 40 years ago when they had this foundation and billy graham could just come in and build the last half of the story and he was the last one to come in and build the last half of the story and it made sense to them you go out and witness on the streets today they've got this foundation if you try and build that castle on it it doesn't make any sense it's ridiculous it's absurd and i'll tell you so i'll tell you so you see you'll have to go back to here you'll have to dig up those stones of evolutionary doubt you'll have to dig up the hard ground of popular evolutionary opinion you'll have to pull out the thorns and the thistles of evolutionary unbelief and prepare the foundation so the evangelist just comes along and finishes off the job it makes a good team if you do that so can i encourage you to take those books and do exactly that by the way for those who are on the video since you don't have any access to books tonight i'll read out an address you can get the books from and i'll leave that address here at this church so you can follow that up if you want the books you can get them from 89 mosley road that's m-o-s-s-l-e-y road ashton underline ol69rh i'll repeat that again all the books i've mentioned can be obtained from 89 mosley road ashton underline ol69rh now due to circumstances totally within my control i'm going to finish the evening with just a couple of books to recommend to you again the great dinosaur mystery everything you want to know about dinosaurs but never knew which dinosaur to ask how do they fit into the bible what happened to them were they on noah's ark more importantly who cleaned up the droppings if they were all sorts of fascinating questions that people ask about dinosaurs how big were they how did they fit on board the ark didn't know i have to collect them what happened to them ever since did st george fight a dragon or was it really a dinosaur are dinosaurs mentioned in the bible it's written for kids so you'll all understand it it's great you can pretend you're buying it for your son or your daughter or your cousin that's all right i won't say a thing buy it for yourself read it and then give it away to the kids because they'll enjoy it as well you see the reason this is such a significant area is that monster books are the most read books in libraries so don't just buy one for yourself buy three and give two away to the local libraries they'll come back and i'll ask for more when they're finished i'll guarantee that's what i've found the great dinosaur by a mystery and the bible it's expensive but it's worth every cent or every pound rather that you can invest into it and lastly bomby the bombardier beetle can i make a plea to all your parents out there to teach your little sons not to rip the legs off grasshoppers but to use the grasshopper to remind them how clever god really is bomby the bombardier beetle is a fascinating book written for kids again what does it teach us that god is really clever let me tell you a little bit about this little beetle here he's the one on the cover and god has just done a magnificent job on him you see every now and then he's got this particular problem a spider likes to creep up behind and bite him on the back side he's not too keen on that but it's never really a problem because anytime the spider ever gets near him two little jets of liquid come out of from behind this beetle and a fraction of a centimeter after they leave his body they combine and a fraction of a second later just before they get to the spider they go boom and all up the snout of this spider is hot fuming gas and he gives up the idea of biting this beetle on the back side now that is excellent evidence of how wonderful god is as a creator why because if you believe that little beetle evolved by millions of years of evolutionary accidents it would have blown its backside off millions of years ago it's as simple as that you see that's what happened to the shuttle wasn't it by accident intelligent design is needed to overcome problems like that it's brilliant it's written for the kids i'd really recommend it it in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god and he was in the beginning with god all things were made through him and without him nothing was made that was made in him was life and the life was the light of men and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory the glory as of the only begotten of the father full of grace and truth the lord jesus christ is the word of god so