The Progress of Creation: Day 5

Then we are going to start with verse 20.

Tonight we are going to get into day five of the creation. Day six is a big day.

Big day. That's when you and I got here. And as well as other land animals. Not that we're like land animals, but some of us act like it sometimes.

And I said us. I said you. Alright, so let me go ahead and read then our text, verses 20 through 23.

Then God said, Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures. And let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.

So God created great sea creatures like Moby Dick and some of those. And every living thing that moves with which the waters abounded according to their kind.

And every winged, or winged, if you want to say it that way, bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.

So the evening and the morning were the fifth day. Alright, so there's the fifth day. And we'll get to that in a minute. But before we do, I mentioned last week for you to ponder a question about light.

And about, specifically about how, you know, on day four, and we studied this last week, God created the sun and the moon and the stars.

And knowing that many of those stars, including our own sun, but especially those stars that are way out there billions of miles away, how did the light get there in time, or did it get there in time for Adam and Eve to be able to look up into the sky and, you know, look at the stars.

And I wanted you to ponder that because there is a common question that is brought up by those who either hold to evolution or say, well, maybe here is, you know, some kind of proof that there is, you know, something about evolution that is true.

And so the question kind of goes like this. Because galaxies are billions of light years away, isn't that proof the universe is billions of years old?

Now, why would they ask a question like that? And what would be the basis of that? How could that be a proof? Think about it.

If it takes billions of years for light to come from those stars way out there, the stars that we see at night, then that must prove that the earth is billions of years old because we can see the light now.

If God created, say, a star over here in some distant galaxy or millions of stars in a distant galaxy, and how can we see them today unless the earth is billions of years old?

You see the basis of the question. And so that's the question. Doesn't that prove, then, that the universe is billions of years old? And the answer to that is no.

It doesn't. Not at all. It's not proof the universe is billions of years old. And I'm going to give you and gave you in your notes two reasons. One of them would be a faith-based Bible-believing reason.

And for me, that's enough. And probably for you as well. But then there's also a possible answer to that from science, a scientific evidence reason.

And so what about the faith-based? Well, you know, the faith-based Bible-believing answer really is pretty easy, I think, and very obvious.

If God can create plants and animals and man full-grown, and He did, didn't He? You say, well, I don't know if there's any proof of that.

Well, maybe not about plants and animals, although I think there's plenty of proof, but certainly He created a grown man. If God can do that with plants, animals, and man, and they'd be full-grown from the very beginning.

Remember I mentioned you know, you fell a tree and would it have rings in it? You know, the first tree that God created. I would say no. And if it did, God created the rings in there.

But if God can do that, then He can certainly create the light between the farthest star and the earth. He just creates the light beam as well as the source of light to begin with.

Can He do that? Yes. Of course He can. And I believe that. And He created the stars on day four, set them in their places, some of the billions of miles from the earth.

And with them, He created their light beam that instantaneously spanned that distance between that farthest star and this earth.

Instantaneously. So, you know, when Adam and Eve went out for a date one evening, that first day they were created, you know, the day was over and God said it's all very good and they went out in the evening and sat there and looked up into the stars and whispered sweet nothings to one another in their ears.

Because what would they whisper to one another that barely knew each other? Yeah. How do kids do it? Wait a minute. Wait. Yeah. Or how do kids do it?

Well, I don't have any kids. Anyway. And I just believe that's a good enough answer right there. But there is a scientific possibility that some have discussed and I don't think it gives the full answer and even after we read or I read this little article that I gave for you in your notes, you're going to come away thinking, no, that's not really a complete answer.

But it is a very clear possibility. And that is, you, and really to get at this, you need to begin with this question and it's a question that may not really have occurred to us.

Certainly didn't occur to me until I did some research. And the reason is because we're not scientists. And I don't know about you, but I never read the scientific journals.

And if I tried to, I probably couldn't understand them. And so here's the question that maybe we ought to ask. Has light always traveled at the same speed, the present speed that it travels now?

Has it always traveled at that same speed? 186,000 miles per second. You say, well, I guess so. I mean, we naturally want to say, well, yeah, of course.

That's what I've been taught all through school, 186,000 miles per second. That's the speed of light. And not only that, but surely everything is constant in the universe.

Right? I mean, we kind of assume that. Everything is so orderly and everything works in a constant kind of systematic way. And God has set that order into His creation.

And so we would, I think, very naturally come to the conclusion that light has always traveled at the same speed since God created it. But is that true? Well, I want you to listen.

I'll read it. You have it there in front of you, but I won't read it anyway. This article by, written by Dr. Walt Brown, Center for Scientific Creation, highly recognized, respected organization of scientists who profess to be Christians.

And he's one of them. And I think I gave you the website, christianscience.com, and you can look at that. There are a number of pretty good websites out there for this.

But this article comes from there. And here's what he said, or a portion of the document. And it's a little technical. In fact, I had to read it six times to understand it.

But anyway, if either A, space and its starlight, were stretched out, that would be one answer. God created it real close, and then He stretched it out.

All right? So that's possible, A, possibility, which is not a good one. Or B, the speed of light was much faster in the past, that then distant stars should be visible to a young universe.

Of course, this whole argument in the larger article, and really all of these scientists argue for a relatively young universe. And I would agree with it.

So he said, if B is it, then there's this possibility for a young universe. Here we will address possibility B by examining the historic measurements of the speed of light.

I bet you didn't know that there were scientists over the past several centuries that had actually been working on measuring the speed of light. Did you know that? There have been. At least, this is what he says.

All right, during the past 300 years, he said, at least 164 separate measurements of the speed of light have been published. 16 different measurement techniques were used.

Astronomers, very center field of Australia, have studied these measurements, especially their precision and experimental errors. And they always have to factor in some kind of error.

His results show that the speed of light has apparently decreased so rapidly that experimental error cannot explain it. In the seven instances where the same scientists remeasured the speed of light with the same equipment, years later, a decrease was always reported.

The decreases were often several times greater than the reported experimental errors. I have, he says, I have conducted other analyses that weight or give significance to each measurement according to its accuracy.

even after considering the wide range of accuracies, it is hard to see how one can claim with any statistical rigor that the speed of light has remained constant.

He says, so, pulling all of these experiments, these measurements, and looking into all the details of each one and putting together the fact that many of them use different techniques and all coming up with the same conclusion, he said that it's just, you'd be hard-pressed to argue against the notion that light has been slowing down.

That's kind of an amazing thing, isn't it? M.E.J. Goury-Debray, I think that's good enough, isn't it? Writing in the official French, oh, French?

Who could figure that? French Astronomical Journal in 1927 was probably the first to propose the decreasing speed of light. He based his conclusion on measurements spanning 75 years.

Later, he became more convinced and twice published his results in Nature, possibly the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, and by the way, not a Christian magazine by any stretch of the imagination.

He emphasized, if the velocity of light is constant, how is it that invariably new determinations give values which are lower than the last ones obtained?

There are 22 coincidences in favor of a decrease of the velocity of light while there is not a single one against it. Although the measured speed of light has decreased only about 1% during the past three centuries, the decrease is statistically significant because measurement techniques can detect changes thousands of times smaller.

While the older measurements have greater errors, the trend of the data is startling. The farther one looks in time, the farther back one looks in time, the more rapidly the speed of light seems to increase.

Various mathematical curves fit these three centuries of data. when some of those curves are projected back in time, the speed of light becomes so fast that light from distant galaxies conceivably could have reached Earth in several thousand years.

That's not a complete answer to it. In fact, it's theory, obviously, although it is measurable by some bona fide experiments.

And the conclusion that the Earth could be thousands of years old, I mean, that it took thousands of years for the light to come, I think still minimizes the ability of God to just instantaneously create the light beams, light trails from their sources.

But if the measurements are bringing a correct conclusion, even though we don't know just how fast light once traveled, if they're correct in any degree, then it could explain that light traveled so fast that when God created the source, it reached the Earth rapidly.

and then that would explain how a star could be out there billions of light years away and yet we can see the light today. If, and at the same time, believe the biblical record that the Earth may only be six or seven thousand years old.

The universe even younger than that because God began with the Earth. So it's kind of interesting and you can, you know, there's the source there if you want to check it out yourself and read some more of that article.

Maybe some evening when you can't sleep and you want to, I read some of these articles on this website and ugh. Alright, now we're ready for day five and it won't take us long and then we'll save day six for next time, next time I'm here.

Jonathan will be, did that remind you about that? Jonathan will be taking things next Wednesday because I'm going to be with the Awana meeting. So then it'll be the Wednesday after that and we'll get to day six.

Day five, the creation of birds and sea creatures and that's what we read or I read there at the beginning. And so now, you know, with day five, things are really starting to take shame here in God's creation here on this planet.

day. And it's worth mentioning here that the order of creation is contrary to the views of evolution. In fact, it is in many respects completely backward from what evolutionists believe.

Evolution says that after the sun evolved, not created, but evolved to a certain point, and the earth was then formed, all of this by some big bang or whatever it may have been.

Marine creatures evolved first. This is, you know, there are variations of course of evolutionary views, but nearly all of them will have life coming out of the seas, out of water.

And so marine creatures come first and then land plants and then animals, you know, they came out of the sea, became animals, grew legs, and started breathing air, and you know, just in a matter of a few million years, all this took place.

And so that's the view, the evolutionary view basically. But the Bible says that the earth was formed first, formed before the universe, before the sun, moon, and stars.

Land plants came before the sun. We discussed that last time, and it's all right. It worked just fine if you believe in 24-hour, literal 24-hour days of creation.

So the sun came first, or the plants came first, then the sun, then marine animals and birds at the same time.

All right, so we don't have from the biblical record, marine animals first, and then over some process of a few million years, some of those marine animals got tired of the water and they crawled out onto the land and lost their gills and grew lungs and legs and all that kind of stuff.

But they were formed at the same time, and created at the same time, marine and animals and birds. And it's also important that we note here from the biblical record that God created something in both fish and fowl.

He created that day. And what was that? Look at your notes, it's there. The ability to reproduce. Now that's important. Not evolve, but reproduce.

He blessed them, he said, be fruitful, multiply, and fill the waters of the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth. Now, God created the sea creatures or animals and the birds, and he created a tremendous variety of them.

He said, I can sit on my front porch, and though I don't do this, I've got some friends who love to do this. They're bird watchers. They've got their little book there. Maybe some of you do this.

And you see a bird, and say, what's that bird? And you go through your book and find what it is, and I've got a friend over in Arkansas that has recorded a hundred and some odd birds that he has seen in his yard.

And just think about how many different birds there are. And God has created a tremendous variety of them. And of course, you know, in the seas, there seems to be a limitless number of varieties of sea creatures, small and large.

And he created them all at the same time. Not evolving slowly over millions of years or billions of years, and even though plant life was created before animal life, animal life was not created out of plant life.

It'd come from there. All plant life, all sea life, all bird life, were created according to their kind. That's a very important phrase in the biblical record.

According to their kind. The Holy Spirit knew what he was doing when he had Moses insert that little bit of information. Maybe Moses didn't completely understand.

The ramifications of that. And how crucial that would be. Centuries later, when we're debating over, you know, the evolution of animals in all life.

That one kind becomes another kind, and then it becomes another kind, and so forth. You may not have understood that that was going to happen one day, but the Holy Spirit, of course, did. And it's a very crucial statement from Scripture that all of these animals, the sea and the land, were created after their, or according to their kind.

Now, God created plenty of variations. Did he? Wonderful variations. variations. But he created those variations within the kind, their kind.

And one kind, then, does not reproduce into another kind. Never does that happen. Never has that happen.

And those who claim that it has have absolutely no proof of that. Now, I dealt with this, I think, a little bit, sometime back, a few weeks back.

But I think maybe I ought to mention it again, warrants another look. Evolutionists, you see, they love, they really love to point to the obvious variations within species. And they say, that's proof of evolution.

And, but that's, that's microevolution. Do you remember when we discussed micro, the difference between micro and macro? Microevolution is, speaks or defines variations of a kind within a kind.

And, and there are those. There is microevolution where, you know, there are changes within the kind brought about by adaptations.

Yeah, that does happen. That's not, that's not heresy. That's not evolution. So there are adaptations. In fact, I've got a couple of examples. And I, I think I named them there, but I'll explain them. The peppered moth.

I have no idea what a peppered moth is. Anybody know what a peppered moth is? All right. It really does. Okay, surely? Okay, surely? Oh, okay. I'm listening to the white one with the black one.

Well, no, actually, it has been proven scientifically, according to my source here, that the ratio of black to white peppered moth, so there are some black ones and some white ones.

Okay, apparently. Maybe that's why they're called peppered. Maybe peppered salt. I don't know. but the ratio between black and white increases when pollution in certain areas where they live where pollution makes it easier for the black moths to escape detection and so guess what there are more black peppered moths in fact the research says that the dominant were white but but in some of these areas suddenly the blacker dominant and so there is we could call it an adaptation to the environment but it simply is that the white ones just couldn't live only the black ones lived and so the uh you know the in relation to the genes those that had more black genes they survived and had black ones and black ones and so there becomes kind of an adaptation that's one kind of a micro evolution there are finches uh that's a bird you knew that and uh finches may develop different beaks they have discovered different beaks in response to their environment now i didn't delve into uh what caused the the changes uh but the environment dictated a larger beak and so the finch developed uh over time to have a larger beak now that's that's okay uh and that does happen it's observable uh these these are observable variations that have evolved this is micro evolution but moths are still moths and finches are still finches moths don't become finches finches don't become moths because of some kind of evolutionary process or change so there's there has been no change outside of the kind micro evolution does not prove macro evolution and to date no proof has ever been discovered to support macro evolution that is one kind gradually evolving into another time and now someone will object and say well wait a minute not anybody in this room certainly but uh some will say but now doesn't the fossil records show that certain kinds of animals today slowly evolved into existence instead of suddenly appearing that you know the fossil record proves that that it used to be like this and you know maybe it was a fish and then suddenly it grew lakes and then you know we're not suddenly but over time and then it may be uh later wings or you know whatever the the the changes uh may have been uh doesn't the fossil records show that it doesn't not at all and uh you know it's interesting that darwin's strongest opponents by the way were not preachers or bible believers back when darwin wrote his origin of the species uh his biggest enemies or critics were not religious people christian people or bible believing people preachers they were fossil experts they were then and to some degree uh even some who are not christians they're fossil experts today who are the biggest enemies to the whole whole uh theory of evolution even darwin admitted that the fossil evidence was and these are in his words the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory spoken like a true scientist uh and so that's just the fact now according to the fossil record then

to date and i don't imagine this will change the species do not change they don't change the fossil record may identify certain extinct species may find things that don't exist today anymore fossil record certainly reveals that does reveal that sometimes the fossil record may identify some variations within a certain kind or species but the species do not change into other species they they never do and the fossil record is marked by two principles and i've given those to you there first what is called stasis state of static balance which means species are unchanged in all of their documented fossil history that is where they think they have found the uh you know the oldest fossils you know that's kind of what they do you know they look at the strata and they you know go down to certain place where they find certain kinds of rock or or use some carbon dating that uh is is uh full of error they'll get the oldest or the quote newest fossils they'll find them in both places and there's no change in them and they're just intellectually dishonest when they don't uh come to the right conclusion about that and so they're unchanged and that is the way they look when they first appear in the fossil record as they date that you know uh is the way they look today or in the the uh the the newest of uh fossil records second the principle of sudden appearance which means in any local area that means an area where where there's a cache of fossils a species does not appear gradually but appears all at once and fully formed the bottom line is there are no missing links no missing links no fossils to connect this kind of animal with this one uh monkeys and man nothing in between i think we kind of talked a little bit about that uh several weeks ago and those that have been proposed put forward as evidence of the missing links have all proven to be be hoaxes or or just misread or whatever all right a couple of quotes that i've put for you one christian and the other not philip johnson uh darwin on trial by the way it's a really good book i don't know if uh have you heard heard this book it's been out a number of years now uh but it's it's good i would highly recommend it darwin on trial he made this statement he said if evolution means the gradual change of one kind of organism into another kind the outstanding characteristic of the fossil record is the absence of evidence for evolution that means if that's where you're going to to to to take your stand on evolution then uh you're on sinking sand because there's no evidence no evidence whatsoever nile eldridge an evolutionist wrote we paleontologists have said that the history of life in the fossil record supports the story of gradual evolution all the while knowing that it does not not so they're not even honest with themselves that's why evolution is a religion uh dear people and not science not science so either evolution happens slowly with each tiny change building on the last over billions of years or the changes came with sudden or suddenly something like a mouse hatching

out of a snake's egg which uh by the way not even the evolutionists would believe that it you can't have both ways if you go with the bible and and as well as the the scientific evidence fossil record then you have to come to this conclusion that everything if it wasn't created by an all creating almighty god uh you still have to admit that everything came at once uh and not gradually appearing on the scene over uh you know eons of time of course i will just take the bible record and it says that god on the fourth day he created all the fish in the seas even the big monsters one of them swallowed jonah eventually uh and all of the the uh uh birds of the air and he did that in one day and they were all here and many of them are still here though some species have been become extinct all right