By Dave Hunt
The first law of
thermodynamics states that energy, the stuff of which the universe is made, can
neither be created nor destroyed. Two conclusions follow: (1) the total energy
in the universe remains constant; and (2) energy must be self-existent and
eternal, exactly what the Bible says about God. Is science promoting energy as
"God"?
The second law of
thermodynamics states that while total energy remains constant, usable energy
and order continually decrease as entropy increases. Common sense tells us that
all fires eventually burn out. Neither our sun nor the other stars could have
been burning forever. There must have been a time when neither stars nor the
energy of which they consist existed. Clearly, the universe had a beginning, as
the Bible declares: "In the beginning..." (Gen 1:1).
The conflict between
these two laws poses a serious problem for science. Energy could not have been
here forever as the first law implies, or, according to the second, ages ago it
would have reached the state of maximum entropy, but it hasn't. The
contradiction can be resolved in only one way: since energy could not have been
created by any means known to science, yet has not always existed, it must have
been created by God.
Matter, life and
intelligence could not arise spontaneously from nothing. Therefore, all that
now exists was created either by a self-existent eternal energy, or by a
self-existent eternal Person. The first choice is eliminated by the
second law of thermodynamics, because
energy itself and all things it
produces deteriorate. Furthermore, whereas energy is physical, there is a
demonstrable nonphysical dimension to human existence. Nor could energy, being
impersonal, create personal beings such as man.
We are driven to the
conclusion that some One always existed, an infinite
Person
without beginning or end, who is capable of creating out of nothing the entire
universe and all the creatures in it, including man. Our finite minds cannot
conceive of God always having existed. Yet we know He must exist
eternally or nothing would exist. And He must be outside of time for a number
of reasons, including human freedom of choice in spite of His foreknowledge,
which we have shown in the past.
Science says the
universe began with a "Big Bang." But what was the source of that
energy? It could not have existed forever or (according to the second law) it
would have reached maximum entropy before it "banged." Obviously the
energy from which the universe is made came into existence simultaneously with
the universe a finite number of years ago. It could not have arisen out of
nothing by any natural process and thus its origin had to be supernatural.
Accurately, the Bible says, "God said, Let there be..." (Gen
1:3,6,9,11,14,20, 24,26); "...the worlds were framed by the word of
God..." (Heb 11:3a). That God made the universe out of nothing is also clear:
"...things that are seen were not made of things which do appear"
(Heb 11:3b). It has taken science thousands of years to catch up with the
Bible.
Did God create the
universe in a sudden burst of energy? We don't know. We do know that a
"Big Bang" could never produce the digitally organized
database imprinted on the single cell (the size of the period at the end of
this sentence) with which each human life begins. This immense store of
self-replicating information (with enzymes that check for copy errors and
correct them) directs the construction, operation and differentiation of tens
of trillions of cells as different as those in the heart and hair an incredible
feat which science can't even begin to unravel.
The written
instructions are encoded so that only the proper protein (of which there are
tens of thousands of types) can decipher it. Darwin knew nothing of DNA or the
structure and operation of the cell, today's knowledge of which has relegated
his theory of evolution to the trash heap of absurdities, where it belonged
from the beginning. If the simplest cell were broken into its chemical
components, the odds that they would ever come back together in the right way
is 1 chance in 1 followed by 100,000,000,000 zeros and the human body has trillions
of cells.
With a retina which
solves in a fraction of a second complex equations that would occupy a
supercomputer for 100 years, the human eye's 100 million light-sensitive cells
send information through a million fibers of the optic nerve to the brain. We
can't produce optical instruments that come even close to the human eye. A
newly discovered starfish has more than 1,000 eyes, each with a lens at least
ten times better than anything science has yet been able to construct and all
evolved independently yet simultaneously by chance? Please!
The human brain, with
its 100 billion nerve cells linked by 240,000 miles of nerve fibers and 100
trillion connections, storage capacity 1,000 times that of a Cray-2
supercomputer and operating at a thousand trillion computations per second, is
even more incredible than the eye, whose optical impulses it translates into
three-dimensional images to which it directs numerous parts of the body to
react instantly. And all this was produced by a "Big Bang" plus
chance, eons of time and survival of the fittest? But until they worked,
the eye and brain could not aid in survival thus the "evolution" it
supposedly took to create this incredible optical/intelligence system produced
millions of intermediate stages in the right succession by pure chance without
any "survival of the fittest!" Yet in spite of all the evidence to
the contrary, evolution continues to be promoted as fact by the media and
taught in fact mandated in our schools!
Instead of a spontaneous
"Big Bang" of previously nonexistent energy that suddenly created
itself, the Bible introduces us to the Creator, a personal God who always
existed and was able to make the universe out of nothing by speaking the word.
Science and reason demand the very God the Bible presents.
In contrast to the
pitiful gods of the world's religions which hold their followers in darkness,
superstition and fear, the Bible describes God exactly as He must be:
self-existent ("i am that i am" - Ex 3:14), eternal ("the
eternal God is thy refuge" - Dt 33:27; "from everlasting to
everlasting, thou art God" - Ps 90:2); and a personal Being who wills
("this is the will of God" - 1 Thes 4:3; 5:18; "by the will of
God" - Eph 1:1; Col 1:1; 2 Tm 1:1; and many other verses), who thinks
("my thoughts are not your thoughts" Is 55:8), has personal
emotions ("God is angry with the wicked every day" - Ps 7:11;
"we love him, because he first loved us" - 1 Jn 4:19; "I was
grieved with that generation" - Heb 3:10, etc.), and speaks ("the
Lord spake" is found 144 times, "the word of the Lord" is found
258 times in Scripture, etc.).
Except for God's unique
qualities (self-existence, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, perfection,
sinlessness, etc.) man reflects, though imperfectly, God's characteristics
listed above. "God created man in his own image..." (Gn 1:27), but
not physically because God "is a Spirit" (Jn 4:24). Thus man must
also be a spirit living in a physical body. There is no other explanation for
man's intellectual abilities (to form conceptual ideas and express them in
words, etc.) inasmuch as intelligence, thoughts, will, emotions, etc. are not
physical but spiritual. That easily proven fact involves serious consequences from which physical death
provides no escape: "...it is appointed unto men once to die, but after
this the judgment" (Heb 9:27); "...the rich man also died, and was
buried; and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments..." (Lk
16:22,23).
We have proved in the
past that man is a nonphysical soul and spirit living in a physical body
("I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body..." - 1 Thes 5:23).
Bodies, being material, are subject to the second law above, begin to die from
birth, deteriorate and eventually return to dust: "...dust thou art, and
unto dust shalt thou return" (Gn 3:19).
But the spiritual part
of man which thinks and makes choices, man's soul and spirit, invisible to
physical eyes, is not subject to entropy, and must continue to exist
forever. As Paul declared, "for the things which are seen are temporal;
but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Cor 4:18). The fact that
death does not end human existence carries awesome eternal consequences. God is
perfectly holy and by his very nature must punish sin by banishing the sinner
from his presence.
Sin is defined as
coming "short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23). When Adam and Eve
sinned, they immediately "knew that they were naked..." (Gn 3:7a). It
wasn't that they suddenly realized they had never worn clothes; they had been
stripped of the spiritual glory that clothed them upon their creation in God's
image.
Their sense of
nakedness was a new and frightening awareness of God's holiness in contrast to
themselves as sinful rebels: "all things are naked and opened unto the
eyes of him with whom we have to do" (Heb 4:13). Adam and Eve "sewed
fig leaves together [for] aprons" (Gn 3:7b). Unable to cover their
spiritual nakedness, they "hid themselves from the presence of the Lord
God amongst the trees of the garden" (v. 8).
God had given them the
easiest command possible: not to eat of one only one of the thousands of
trees in the garden where He had lovingly placed them. The Spirit of God had
withdrawn from their seditious spirits, bringing immediate spiritual death,
which also affected their bodies and finally resulted in physical death. This
harsh penalty was not for "stealing some fruit" but for rebelling
against God.
Adam and Eve were
expelled from the Garden of Eden lest they "take also of the tree of
life,...and live forever" (Gn 3:22). While the physical fruit of that
special tree, if eaten continuously, could have caused their bodies to live
forever, it could not restore spiritual life through bringing God's Spirit back
into their spirits. God will not perpetuate man in his sinful condition. How
much more wicked would man be if he knew he would never die!
In spite of man's sin,
God loves him and is "not willing that any should perish, but that all
should come to repentance" (2 Pt 3:9). In infinite love, He would
"have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the
truth" (1 Tm 2:4). He desires for all mankind a full and eternal
restoration to the glory in which Adam was created and in a new universe where
sin can never enter.
But how can that be
done?
God cannot "clear
the guilty" (Ex 34:7). Cannot? (see "What a Sovereign God
Cannot Do," TBC, Feb '01) Isn't He omnipotent? Yes, but He is also
perfectly just. God's love, com-passion and mercy cannot override his justice,
which will not allow sin to be forgiven unjustly. Nor will God's integrity
allow him to go back on his Word that "The wages of sin is death"
(Rom 6:23).
Man's forgiveness and
restoration involve the very nature of both God and man. It is no mere figure
of speech that man was made "in the image of God." We have often used
the analogy of a mirror, which exists solely to reflect another image. Note the
folly of the popular delusion even among evangelicals of developing a
"positive self-image." What vanity and pride for a mirror to concern
itself about its "self-image"! Rather, the mirror needs to exhibit a
faithful likeness of the one whose image it was designed to reflect.
Sinful man must be
reconciled to a holy God and brought back into an intimate relationship so that
the very life of God becomes once again the life of manor man's doom is
eternal. The first three chapters of the Bible tell of man's creation in God's
image and of the defacing, deforming, and defiling of that image through man's
sin and separation from God. The rest of the Bible is all about the
reconciliation of man to God.
This reconciliation
comes about through what the Bible calls "redemption" and
"atonement." It is a thrilling love story of God's willingness to
leave His glory to become a Man through a virgin birth, to be rejected, misunderstood,
hated, falsely accused, mocked, scourged and nailed to a cross and as He hung
there to take upon himself the sins of the world, suffering the penalty for all
mankind demanded by his perfect justice.
This love story
involves One who is called "the second man...the last Adam" (1 Cor
15:45-47). Since Adam, no one who walked this earth was a man as God intended,
until Christ was born in Bethlehem of the virgin Mary. He is the progenitor of
a new race and thus He is the second Adam. But because there will never be
another, He is called "the last Adam."
When Adam was cast out
of the garden, God guarded the tree of life with "Cherubim, and a flaming
sword" (Gen 3:24). Mankind fled that sword in complaint against the
harshness of the "death penalty" decreed by God upon sinners. In
love, the second man, the last Adam, Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord, took
that sword of God's judgment in His own heart for us. Thus He became "the
way, the truth, and the life" which alone leads men back to God (Jn 14:6).
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