Thanks to all of you who have participated in the discussions during the most recent series. I've seen some great comments and your interaction has been very encouraging and edifying. So, what's next?

We're preparing a series of posts from John's material on the opening chapters of Genesis, dealing with the question of origins. It’s not enough to say, “God is responsible for all that exists, but how it all got here isn’t important.” We’re making the case that how God brought everything into existence is just as important as the bare fact that He did it.

Now, before I lose any of you, let me explain why we think the issue of origins is one of the most important battlegrounds of our day. Hopefully, at the end of the day, you’ll see the significance of the subject, the consequences of the position you take, and your role in defending what God has to say about it.

The question of origins won’t be—indeed, it can’t be—decided by pointy-headed scientists in white lab coats, using beakers and test tubes, microscopes and telescopes. Questions like, “Where did we come from?,” and, “How did the universe come into existence?” are not answered through observation, measurement, hypothesizing, testing, and reporting. This is ultimately a spiritual battle between competing worldviews—we’re dealing with fundamental presuppositions and fighting for the hearts and minds of people created in the image of God.

For Christians in a spiritual battle, we keep Paul’s reminder to the Corinthians front and center:

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:4-5; you just gotta love the way the KJV renders it!)

Evolution—a philosophy driven by anti-supernaturalistic, materialistic, naturalistic assumptions—is the dominant worldview of our day. At its heart, evolution is atheistic and anti-Christian. It is a stronghold, an imagination, and a high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Even apart from its demonic theology, the social and cultural effects of evolutionary theory reveal the fingerprints of demons who hate the image of God in men and women.

Sadly, there are many individual Christians and Christian institutions (e.g., para-church ministries, colleges, and seminaries) that compromise with evolution. In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say some form of evolutionary compromise is the prevailing position in the evangelical movement. Many evangelicals have surrendered serious biblical ground on origins to the secular establishment, hoping for a greater degree of academic respectability, a voice in the marketplace of ideas.

Meanwhile, the giant Evolution batters and smashes with his club, denying biblical authority, devaluing and degrading humanity, and undermining Christian evangelism and the gospel of the cross. It’s time for Christians to wake up and smell the compromise, depose the giant, and take captive“every thought to the obedience of Christ.”

We hope this series of posts will serve that end. We’ll start by looking at the threat of evolution and consider some of its devastating effects. Then we’ll think through some of the limitations of science and see how it has overextended itself, trying to answer questions of theology. And finally, we’ll state and defend a biblical view of origins—that God created the universe by divine fiat in six, literal days.

So, buckle up. It’s going to be a wild and bumpy ride.

Travis Allen
Director of Internet Ministry