THE ORIGIN OF LIFE ON EARTH
Where did the heavens and the Earth come from? How about plant life, animals - and you? The Bible tells us in Rom 1:20 the universe and everything in it speaks clearly about God, the Creator. Pss 19:1 reminds us the heavens declare His glory. Evolutionists, on the other hand, tell us that everything happened by chance.
Everything God created has a purpose. The Bible tells us, "God . . . formed the
earth and made it . . . [He] did not create it in vain, . . . [but] formed it to be
inhabited" (Isa 45:18). It is
not by accident that the Earth is the only planet in our solar system capable of
supporting life.
God placed the Earth at just the right distance from the sun so it would be neither
too hot nor too cold for living things to survive. God surrounded the Earth with an
atmosphere made primarily of nitrogen and oxygen gas, with water vapor. No other planet
has in its atmosphere the free oxygen that man and other living creatures must breathe in
order to stay alive. The free oxygen is at just the right level -- if free oxygen in the
atmosphere were just a few percent lower, living things could not breathe; if it were just
a few percent higher, the world would catch fire. Earth is the only planet for which God
provided liquid surface water, and life on Earth could not exist without water. Pss 24:2 tells us, "He has founded
it [the Earth] upon the seas, and established it upon the waters." Praise God for
purposefully creating the beautiful planet Earth to be our home!
Life by Accident?
No process known on Earth can explain how life could ever arise from nonliving elements. Scientists have tried again and again to create life through endless experiments -- but without success.
Since it has never been possible for scientists to create life in the laboratory by
purposeful effort under carefully controlled conditions, it is hard to imagine that life
could have arisen by accident. It is much easier to believe the Bible: God purposefully
created everything, ". . . all things were created through Him [Jesus, God the Son]
and for Him" (Col 1:16).
Why Did God Create Man?
God created all living things, including you and me, for Himself;
God has a purpose for everything He created. He created us to enjoy fellowship with Him (Gen 3:8; Mic 6:8). But friendship with God is
only possible when we become His children by receiving Jesus Christ His Son as our Savior
and Lord (John 1:12; Eph 1:4-5). Once we belong to Him,
God wants us to give ourselves joyfully to serve Him (Rom 12:1-2).
2. LIFE ONLY COMES FROM LIFE
What Is Spontaneous Generation?
The theory that life somehow arose by chance from nonliving matter is related to a belief known as "spontaneous generation." Some people in the Middle ages believed that living things could originate suddenly from nonliving things, such as rotting meat, for they had seen maggots (little wormlike fly larvae) appear on rotten meat. However, in 1668, scientist Francesco Redi did an experiment with rotting meat that helped to disprove spontaneous generation.
He covered one piece of rotting meat so flies could not reach it. He allowed another piece of meat to stay uncovered so flies could land on it. Maggots failed to appear on the protected meat, but they did appear on the unprotected meat. Redi realized the flies had laid tiny eggs on the uncovered meat. Spontaneous generation was not true!
Some two hundred years later Louis Pasteur's scientific experiments should have settled the matter for good. Pasteur proved that the growth of bacteria and other microbes in sterile (dead, free of any living thing) media was the result of contamination by live, airborne, microbial spores. Pasteur developed pasteurization, the process of destroying harmful microorganisms by applying heat. Pasteurized liquids and foods packed in airtight bottles and cans are safe to drink and eat months or years later because the "spontaneous generation" of harmful, living things in nonliving matter is impossible.
Life comes only from Life. God, the only self-existent Being, is the Source of all life and the Creator of all living things. The Bible tells us that God made all living things -- plants, fish, birds, insects, animals (Gen 1:20-27). He also made man: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being" (Gen 2:7).
An All-Powerful Creator -- the Only Possible Source of Life
The basic physical or chemical elements of the human body (nitrogen, oxygen, calcium, and so on) are found in the "dust of the earth," but bringing the necessary ingredients of life together does not produce life. Adam's body, in an act of miraculous creation by God, had been completely formed; but it was lifeless until God energized it - gave it life! Then God miraculously created Eve from Adam. Life passed from Adam and Eve to every other human being. After God's creation of the first of every living thing on Earth -- plants, animals, and humankind -- life has only come from life; it is passed from one generation to another.
Can Modern Science Create Life?
While scientist have produced in their laboratories some of the amino acids needed by living things, they have not created "life in a test tube" as has been reported in the media. Amino acids are simple compounds found in living things. Scientists continue to learn more about intricate workings that characterize the twenty different amino acids needed to form the protein of living cells. But they have also found that the conditions needed to produce some substances necessary for life will destroy other substances equally necessary for life.
Life comes only from God. And God alone has power not only over life but over death as well. When the body of Lazarus lay in the tomb -- although it contained all of the amino acids needed by living things -- it was dead until Jesus restored life to it. Jesus alone, the Active Agent in creation, had the power to give life to the lifeless bodies of Adam and Lazarus. We will all grow old and our physical bodies will die. Only Jesus has the power to raise us from the dead and give us glorious resurrection bodies that will live forever. In Him there is life!
What God's Word Says About the Origin of Life
In God's Word we read that in six days God made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them (Gen 1:31-- 2:2). Then, based on that pattern, He established the six-day work week, which man has used through the centuries . Some believers view the days in Genesis as periods rather than as twenty-four-hour days. It is simpler and within the meaning of the Bible text to understand the days as twenty-four-hour days like we have now.
The Bible says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen 1:1). The unformed, empty Earth and the formless waters God made were in darkness at first. On the first creative day God created a supernatural light and separated it from the darkness (Gen 1:3). God caused the light to shine upon the world and started the cycle of day and night on the first day of creation. It was not until day four (Gen 1:16) that the light was localized into our sun and the other stars.
On the second day, God made the firmament (Earth's atmosphere) and separated the waters above the firmament from the waters below it (Gen 1:6-8).
On the third day, God gathered the waters under the firmament together to form seas and caused dry land to appear. Then God created grasses, herbs, and full-grown trees already bearing delicious fruit -- each plant complete with seeds to reproduce its own kind (Gen 1:9-13).
The supernatural light source God chose to use during the first three days was localized on the fourth day when God created the sun, moon, and stars "to give light on the earth" (Gen 1:14-19).
On the fifth day God created living creatures to populate the waters and birds to fly above the Earth also made "great sea creatures" on the fifth day (Gen 1:20-23). According to the Bible, birds and whales preceded reptiles and land animals.
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All land animals were created by God on the sixth day. God's work on day six may have included dinosaurs and other animals now extinct. It was also on day six that God created insects that would be needed to help pollinate the plant life (Gen 1:24-25).
After creating animal life, God created Adam who was, apparently, an adult man,
highly intelligent and immediately able to speak (Gen 2:7). When Adam had named all bird and mammal kinds, he discovered
that there was nothing like him (Gen
2:20). Eve was created from Adam to complete him and humankind (Acts 17:26; 1Cor 15:22).
A Brand New World
The newly created Earth apparently had fully mature life forms in it -- plants, animals, and humanity. They would have had the appearance of age, even though they were only days old. Human beings were able to reason and speak; and God gave them positions of responsibility (Gen 1:28). They, along with all other created forms of life, were blessed by God to "be fruitful and multiply."
Living cells contain DNA, the "code" that cells use to reproduce the
proteins that make new cells. That DNA code also tells the cells how to make more DNA. In
other words, in order to make DNA, there had to be DNA to begin with. DNA is a scientific
discovery that makes it easy to see that life originated through a miraculous creation by
God.
The Species -- An unbridgeable Gap
When God created different categories, or species, of living things, He made each "according to its kind." God created a division between different kinds of animals that cannot be bridged. Cats always give birth to kitty cats; dogs always give birth to puppy dogs. There can be great variation within a "kind" -- look at the great variety of dogs; however, all the various breeds of dogs living today probably came from an original wolflike stock.
We believe God put the wide variety of characteristics now found in different dog
breeds within the original dog kind He created. There are many different types of dogs,
but they are all dogs. And they are not turning into anything else.
The fossil remains of billions of land animals, plants, and even sea creatures are found buried -- layer upon layer -- in sedimentary rocks. Sedimentary rocks have been deposited by the action of water or sometimes wind. These rocks are made of materials like mud, organic matter, and sand. Sedimentary rocks cover most of the Earth's surface and are layered some 8,000 feet thick in places like the Grand Canyon.
Scientists who support evolution have said that geological processes (volcanic
action, local floods, erosion, and so on) account for and explain what we find on Earth's
surface and buried in rocks. These processes like erosion have always occurred at the same
slow rate we observe today. Studying these layers, some scientists in recent years have
begun to realize that Earth's surface has been affected by a series of catastrophes.
How Old Is the Grand Canyon?
Scientists who support biblical Creation suggest that the Earth's surface and its buried rocks could be the result of terrible cataclysms (violent, sudden changes or disasters) such as the Genesis Flood. The changes in topography that followed the explosion at Mount St. Helens provide a scaled-down example of just such processes.
This belief is called "catastrophism." These scientists would say that "the past is the key to the present." They can explain the Earth's fossil record, coal and oil depots, even the Grand Canyon by the great worldwide catastrophe called the Genesis Flood. This is in contrast to the view that the layers of the Grand Canyon were deposited slowly over millions of years in a large lake or shallow sea. Then over millions of years the slow-paced erosion of the Colorado River formed the mighty gorge.
The Genesis Flood, the Logical Explanation of Earth's Features
The Bible describes several major catastrophic events at the time of the Flood: "On that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights" (Gen 7:11-12). Great underground reservoirs of water burst forth from the fractured Earth accompanied by volcanic explosions and eruptions. A deluge of waters "above the firmament" was suddenly released and fell for a full forty days. Following the year-long Flood, violent volcanic activity and catastrophic earthquakes may have continued for hundreds of years.
Fossils of plants and animals all over the world seem to have been the result of rapid burial under rushing waters. Some geologists think that coal and oil deposits were formed rapidly under deep layers of sediment deposited by the Great Flood.
In a similar vein, there are Creation scientists who propose that much of the Grand Canyon could have been formed sometime after the Great Flood when huge natural dams that held back enormous lakes once covering the high flatland areas of Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico broke. Geologist Dr. Steve Austin, who has spent years studying the Grand Canyon, believes that the vast waters released by the collapse of these dams rapidly eroded through sediments, which, at the time, were still soft. He believes the Grand Canyon was not formed by the slow-paced erosion of the Colorado River over eons of time, but by the violent, rushing of thousands of cubic miles of water in a very short time.
The Ark and the Flood
God brought the Great Flood upon the Earth as a punishment for sin. At the same time, He provided safety (salvation) in the face of certain destruction for those who believed, honored, and followed him. Noah and his family were saved from death in the ark. God has promised us that He will never again destroy the Earth with a worldwide flood (Gen 9:11-17). Yet God is righteous. He must punish sin. That is why, in His great love for us, He sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, to be our salvation. Jesus paid the price for our sins by His death on the cross and saved us from destruction. Jesus provides safety and salvation for us today. He is our Ark. Won't you accept Him as your Savior and be safe from God's judgment.