Earth Center of the Universe: The Error of Uniformitarianism

Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, featuring the radio ministry of Pastor James W.

Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of Delaney, Florida.

Our prayer is that these half-hour Bible study programs will bring the lost to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and enable the saved to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Savior.

Now here's your host, Pastor James W.

Knox.

And a very pleasant good day to each and every one of you, and greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

I'm Brother James, and this is the Preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast, a half-hour program coming to you on this station through the kind sponsorship of Christians in your area who believe that Jesus Christ is the Virgin-born Son of God, the second uh member of the divine uh Trinity, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one.

That this virgin-born Son of God lived a perfect, sinless life, and at the close of uh that perfect and sinless life, he laid down his life, suffered and bled and died on the cross at Calvary, to pay for the sins not of ours only, but the sins of the whole world.

That whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

He rose from the dead, is seated right now at the right hand of God the Father, and at just any moment the trumpet will sound.

The dead in Christ shall rise, then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

And there are people in your area who believe that message so strongly and so sincerely that they sponsor these radio programs in your area.

We're in the midst of a series of studies on the preaching of the cross broadcast dealing with the earth as the center of the universe.

The earth is the center of the universe.

We talked in our first uh program in this series about the fact that the earth is the only planet capable of sustaining uh life as we know it.

We talked in the last program about the creation of the earth, the fact that God is its creator, and we've debunked just ever so briefly the nonsensical evolutionary theories of the infidels that reject the word of God.

And we started to take up a discussion of this matter of catastrophe versus uniformity.

And let me just state for you once again what we mean by that.

Uh from 2 Peter chapter 3, verses 3 through 6 There shall come in the last days scoffers walking after their own lusts and saying, Where is the promise of his coming?

2 Peter 3:3–6

For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

Now, this is the bedrock, this is the foundation of all evolutionary theories.

That is, there has been no catastrophe to interrupt the flow of life, the flow of the universe, the flow of planet Earth, and the things thereon, since in the beginning, God.

Of course, they don't acknowledge God, but the statement is just the same.

Since the beginning of time, they reason, there has been an unbroken succession of events.

The Bible teaches, you see, because you go on in the passage, for this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old and the earth standing out of the water and in the water, whereby the world that then was being overflowed with water perish.

What we are dealing with in the Word of God in the Bible is the fact that there have been two great catastrophes on planet Earth that have interrupted uh life, that have interrupted uh existence, that have interrupted uh the creation of God.

And this is what we are talking about on the program today.

We're going to continue on with that discussion of catastrophe versus uniformity, and then we're going to talk about that first catastrophe that was inflicted upon the earth.

Uniformitarians, that is, those who hold to a doctrine of uniformity, are willingly ignorant of scripture.

They intimate that in the days of the fathers, people were foolish enough to believe otherwise, but since the fathers fell asleep, we have learned better.

While uniformitarians talk a great deal about their modern doctrines, they forget that the current debate of evolution will have to be confirmed by centuries of corrobatory truths before it can ever hope, scientifically speaking, to be as well established as a established a fact as the truths of scripture.

If evolution cannot be found to be consistent with the teachings of the Bible, then the burden of proof must rest upon it rather than upon the pages of Scripture.

It is well for hasty and unscrupulous men who take undue liberties with the Bible to heed the words of the late Lord Kelvin, one of the greatest of modern scientists, who said, quote, I marvel at the undue haste with which teachers in our universities and preachers in our pulpits are restating truth in terms of evolution when evolution itself remains an unproven hypothesis in the laboratories of science.

End of quote.

The reasonings of the exponents of uniformity are contrary to the facts of the case.

They say that the writers of the Bible were a product of an ignorant age and therefore could not be scientifically accurate in their statements.

Such would be the case if the Bible had been written by men.

They would naturally reflect the learning of their day, which would be utterly inconsistent with our present scientific information.

The Bible is based upon true science and not upon the science of the Babylonians and Egyptians or even upon the scientific revelations of our present day.

Now, this is a very important fact, and you can't overlook this fact.

Scientifically speaking, the Bible is modern, a modern rather than an ancient document.

And the only possible explanation of its marvelous accuracy is that it is not a man made, but a God made book.

It is only willful ignorance of the Bible that keeps men from seeing this marvelous manifestation of its truth.

The Bible is not a book on science.

We've heard that until we've had it up to here with it.

So have you.

But the Bible is written for the popular mind and therefore deals with science indirectly.

That is why it uses such terms as sunrising and sunsetting, just exactly as they're used in your newspapers and on your weather report on the TV set.

It argues nothing against the Bible as long as man accurately, inaccurately, I should say, continue to use these expressions.

In fact, astronomers in strictly technical papers, the Bible is far from being a technical book, speak of the accelerations of the sun's motions, when in reality they mean the Earth's motion.

As long as scientists continue to consciously err in their expressions, it is useless to criticize the popular language of the Bible as a criterion of the enlightenment of its writers.

When we cease to speak of the four corners of the earth with our modern enlightenment, we may have reason to criticize such an expression in the Bible.

As we shall see later in our study, the Bible provides abundant evidence that it was far in advance of the scientific knowledge of the day in which it was written, and that's significant.

Secondly, uniformitarians are willingly ignorant of the teaching of mythology.

Now, hang on, I don't want to throw you for a loop here, so listen carefully.

They can see nothing in the myths of the nations but the flights of imagination.

It never occurs to them that it is possible in this day for men to strain the truth by too violent a stretch of their imaginations.

But even those who imagine vain things in this day are not without some truth at the outset.

The story follows the fact, and not the fact the story.

History has not built upon fable, yet many fables contain historical fact.

This is true of all mythology.

Underlying the many myths of various nations, there have been actual facts.

The appearance of smoke indicates the presence of fire.

All myths contain some element of truth to make them acceptable, and the element of truth can only be separated from the element of imagination by substantiation in parallel accounts.

Facts become common elements in traditions, but speculations do not.

Shakespeare drew from Plutarch's lives much of the fact for his fictitious tragedies.

The work of Shakespeare is only one illustration that there must be an element of fact in all fiction, and the more books of fiction we can find with a common element of fact running through them, the more we must be impressed with a certainty of that fact.

Now we can hardly expect the newspapers to be free from exaggeration in the daily record of events.

If their source of authority is the Associated Press, for example, their accounts may tally to a word.

But in the discussion of a local fire, each reporter will see a different side of it, and after reading all the accounts, the only fact of which we can be absolutely sure is that there has been a fire.

This is the situation in regard to early Bible history and the mythology of ancient nations that cooperates it.

Mythology substantiates the six great facts of human history as they are recorded in the Bible.

There is agreement as to the origin of man.

There is agreement as to the disobedience of man.

There is agreement as to the longevity of man's life.

There is an agreement as regarding the degeneration of mankind.

There is an agreement regarding the destruction of man, and there is an agreement regarding the dispersion of man throughout the earth.

On the other hand, there is not so much as a suggestion in the annals of the nations of an uneventful, orderly development of the human race.

Is it not evident from these common accounts with so many diversified witnesses that underlying their united testimony, there were the awful facts that we find recorded in the Bible?

The distances and dissimilarities that separate the many tribes originating these myths make it impossible that they could have copied from the Bible or that the Bible could have copied from them, but it is the best proof of underlying facts of a common origin.

Setting aside for a moment any claim for definite inspiration.

The Bible account is probably more circumstantial and much freer from inconsistencies than any of the others.

Instead of accusing Bible writers of securing their information from contemporary nations, it's about time for us to consider whether the ancient nations did not base their tradition upon the facts recorded in the Bible.

Men say today that the Hebrews were an uneducated people, and whatever knowledge of science they possessed they must have obtained from the Babylonians and Egyptians.

That's what you get when you go off to college and study Western civilization.

It is well, however, to heed the words of the great English astronomer Professor Maunder.

Quote We do not know how much of astronomy the Hebrews taught to contemporary nations, but it is evident that they could not have learned anything, even from the most advanced scientists of Egypt, Babylon, or Greece.

End of quote.

You see, the Hebrews possessed no great universities, no organizations for the pursuit of learning, and they had no great mathematicians or scholars.

The scientific accuracy of their writings can only be explained by the fact that they obtained their knowledge directly from God.

One of the best evidences that the prehistoric annals of the nations are based upon the facts of the Bible is that they deal with that part of the Old Testament which is chronicled as world history.

This is remarkable when we consider that the Old Testament primarily is concerned with the history of the children of Israel.

From Genesis 12 forward, with the calling out of Abraham, the Old Testament focuses in on one nation, one race of people.

The Hebrew nation from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Only in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, containing the history of the human race, do we find the events with which the mythology of other nations corresponds, thus proving a common ancestry.

Modernists today relegate the book of Genesis to the realm of mythology and contend that the history of the Hebrew people begins with the book of Exodus.

But the world history written in the early chapters of Genesis is even better established than the annals of the Jewish people, since it is so largely confirmed by these records of widely scattered nations.

Uniformitarians, therefore, are willingly ignorant that the great underlying facts in the Bible and mythology are fully corroborated by science.

As we've already asserted, the marvel of the Bible is that it agrees not with the mistaken beliefs of the day in which it was written, but with all true science thus far revealed in this modern age of so-called enlightenment.

The scriptures abound in such illustrations as, for example, the number of the stars.

Jeremiah declares in Jeremiah 33, 22 that the host of heaven cannot be numbered.

But Jeremiah is not a scientist.

In fact, this unscientific statement of Jeremiah must have been an object of ridicule in his day.

Why Hipparchus, H-I-P-P-A-R-C-H-U-S, the Egyptian astronomer, made an accurate account of the heavenly bodies.

He carefully charted 1,022 stars, and his observations were so accurate that Ptolemy a few years later, Ptolemy P T O L E M Y, a few years later was able to add only four more.

Surely the ancients could count the stars, and Jeremiah was discredited, as well as the writer of Genesis.

Abraham was challenged to count the stars in Genesis 15, 5.

God said to the patriarch, I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is upon the seashore.

But no scientist of Abraham's day would have ventured to compare the stars with the dust of the earth for multitude, yet the children of Israel were to be counted as the stars for multitude.

The best scientists of that day could provide nothing more than a paltry thousand.

And then came the modern telescope of the 20th century, which proves what?

The scientific accuracy of the biblical statement and the ignorance of the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Babylonians, the Chaldeans.

Our latest interests have yet to determine the almost inconceivable and incalculable number of the stars.

No better illustration can be given of the underlying truth of all mythology and its right to be regarded as Earth's earliest history than the excavation in recent years of the ruins of Troy.

For centuries, men have contended that characters and places of which Homer and Virgil wrote were imaginary.

With one accord, they relegated the contents of these classical poems to the realms of mythology.

Troy existed only in the imaginations of Homer and Virgil, but modern discoveries through the excavation have convinced the world that under the heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey and the Aeneid, there lie some reality and truth.

The marvelous walls of Troy and their situation prove to every student of history who looks for facts and does not contend himself with mere theory, that the Trojan War can no longer be called fiction, but that it actually occurred about twelve hundred years before Christ.

Such walls would not have been there without a purpose.

Their scale is astonishing, even to modern minds, but regarded in their true historical perspective, they indicate the determination of a mastermind to carry out a great plan.

The remarkable work of Schlyman, S-C-H-L-I-E-M-A-N-N, in unearthing the ruins and establishing the identity of the veritable Troy of Homer has changed the point of view taken by modern scholars generally.

They have a new respect for the truth and teaching of mythology.

In this time of doubt and criticism, our Savior's words, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out, take on a new significance.

For as the voice of those who should be supporting the Bible are raised in criticism, the archaeological archaeologist's spade is constantly digging up new evidence supporting the truth of its message.

The witness of the archaeologist is one of the strongest endorsements of the Bible statement.

God foresaw the modern skepticism and gave the proofs for his word.

Hidden away in old ruins for hundreds of years, priceless treasures bearing upon the Bible have been buried in some heap of stone.

Only recently have these been found, and if they had been accessible earlier, no one could have read the inscriptions.

The opening of these ruins and the key to their languages were left to our day of doubt, our day of scoffers, our day of criticism of the Bible.

The work of Campoliant, C H A M P O L L I O N on the Rosetta Stone, gave us the Egyptian language, while the diligent labors of Sir Henry Rawlinson unlocked the secrets of the Babylonian libraries.

Now from the monuments of Egypt and the clay tablets of Babylonia, the Bible is vindicated.

Does not God choose the foolish things of this world to confound the wise?

Even to the present hour we find the spade hard at work verifying the scriptures.

Everywhere the archaeologists dig, they find confirmation of the truth of the Bible.

Not one time, not one place, not one excavation anywhere has disproved one jot or tittle of the Word of God.

All have verified its truth, even to the present hour.

Why, during the recent years, all the lands where biblical events were enacted, Egypt, Palestine, Asia, Asia Minor, the Euphrates Valley, have been echoing the excavators' pick.

And we watch these events very carefully because it just gives us more ammunition with which to fight against Satan and his ministers.

Now, what about Earth's first catastrophe?

Let's start in with this on the program today and God willing finish it up next time.

Because the Bible was written for men and not for angels, it is not easy for us to discover all of God's dealings with these majestic creatures with whom he has surrounded himself as partakers of his holiness and participants of his glory.

It is only from widely scattered illusions that we are able to piece together the events that in all probability took place upon the earth before man was created.

We pointed out that a glorified earth was the theme of the angels' song in prehistoric days, and that the leader of the heavenly host was Lucifer, the fairest and wisest of all God's creatures upon whom the Creator had confirmed the sovereign conferred the sovereign rule of the earth.

But the weight of glory was more than Lucifer could bear.

His heart was lifted up because of his beauty, and his wisdom was corrupted by reason of his brightness, his beautiful surroundings and his majestic power overwhelmed him with pride.

Indeed, the Apostle Paul tells us that the cause of Lucifer's fall was the sin of pride.

Regarding the selection of elders, he warns against appointing a novice.

First Timothy 3:6, lest being lifted up with pride, he fall into the condemnation of the devil.

1 Timothy 3:6

Isaiah graphically describes the ambition of the haughty monarch in his downfall.

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning?

How art thou cut down to the ground which didst weaken the nation?

For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.

I will ascend my uh ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.

Exalt my throne of the stars of heaven.

Yep, thou shalt be brought down to hell.

To the sides of the pit, is what God told him.

You read that and get it just exactly right.

Isaiah 14, verses 12 through 15.

Isaiah 14:12–15

In his pride, Satan imagined that he might be God.

Rebellion ruled his heart, and he fell from his obedience.

Then corruption appeared among his angels, which only strengthened him in his defiance and disobedience.

How God bore with them, what warning and opportunities he gave, whether any availed themselves of his mercy, are now and are now holy angels.

All such questions can only be answered by conjecture from the analogy of our own race.

But as we shall talk about later, there's no word of scripture to indicate that the grace such as man enjoys was ever offered to the angels.

What punishment?

Will God now inflict upon these his rebellious subjects?

Had the audacity to uh go with Lucifer and Satan and his rebellion?

How will their pride be punished?

The first step in their punishment was the ruin of their beautiful home.

The second verse of Genesis reads, And the earth was without form and voice.

This verse has arisen not only from ignorance of other portions of the scripture, but a failure to compare Scripture with Scripture.

Why?

Isaiah 45 and verse 18.

The Bible says that God himself that formed the earth and made it, he hath established it, he created it not in vain.

In Isaiah chapter 24, in the first verse, the prophet introduces his prediction of the coming desolations upon the world by calling attention to some former occasion when God had despoiled the entire earth.

Isaiah 24 · chapter mention

He carefully observes the law of appreh appreception, speaking of the unknown in terms of the known, thus taking for granted that the people he addressed were already familiar with some previous catastrophe that had visited the earth.

He says, Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.

This could not possibly refer to Noah's flood or any other great catastrophe in human history.

It must be identified with the cataclysm at the very beginning of Genesis and the one to follow at the close of the millennium.

The use of this interesting phrase without form and void by Jeremiah further substantiates the argument for a ruined world once perfect and beautiful.

In Jeremiah 4, 23 to 26, we read, I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form and void, in the heavens, and they had no light.

And I beheld the mountains, and lo they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly.

I beheld, and lo there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled.

I beheld, and lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord and by his fierce anger.

Here is not only given a description, but also the occasion of the catastrophe.

The earth became an empty waste, and its beautiful cities were broken down at the presence of the Lord and by his fierce anger.

The preadamic destruction of the earth seems to be graphically described in the vivid language in the book of Job.

The inspired writer contemplates with awe the scene of the wreck and ruin, once the beautiful abode of him who in madness and folly dared to harden himself against God.

In Job 9, verses 4 through 7, he is wise in heart and mighty in strength, who hath hardened himself against him and hath prospered, which removeth the mountains, and they know not, which overturneth them in his anger, which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble, which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, and sealeth up the stars.

Job 9:4–7

Peter, in speaking of the destruction of the world by the flood and the subsequent overthrow of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire, is first careful to indicate the overthrow of the angels as the earth's first catastrophe in 2 Peter chapter 2 and verse number 4.

2 Peter 2 · chapter mention

Most of the traditions of the nations start with the creation of man, but there are several illusions which would indicate some conception of the great tragedy of the angels.

Such a glimpse of the fallen angels and their garden of Eden is recorded in the Babylonian records.

They relate that the hosts of heaven were singing a song of praise when a portion of the choir rebelled.

The leader took the form of a dragon, who with his entire rebel host was cast out and forbidden to return.

In their stead, man was created.

The Greek account of the origin of man is preceded by the war of the giants, who, when cut to pieces, resumed life in new forms.

We don't need the secular mythology to cause us to believe the word of God.

But oh, it's just another reinforced the biblical truth.

Now, let me ask you something.

If God would bring such a catastrophic judgment upon planet Earth because of rebellion and pride and disobedience, if God would bring such a dreadful judgment upon a race of angelic beings that he created because of pride, because of sin, because of disobedience.

Dare you, oh man?

Dare you, O woman, to think that you can live a life of pride in rebellion against your creator, living in disobedience to his will revealed in his word, and escape his wrath and his judgment.

What a deception of the devil.

God is love, yes, hallelujah.

God is gracious, praise his name.

God is merciful, oh, I'm so glad that he's merciful.

But if you do not receive his grace, if you do not receive his love gift of salvation through his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, if you do not receive his mercy that is given to those who repent of their sin and turn from it, you will face that same God in his wrath, in his fury, in his judgment, because he is so holy.

His hatred of sin and wickedness is so great that it will not go unpunished.

God proved that.

When Lucifer rebelled, God proved that.

When his angels followed, God proved that in the first catastrophic destruction of life on earth.

And my friend, take the lesson.

Don't force God to teach you by your experience.

Allow God to teach you by the experience of that angelic host.

Repent of your sin.

Obey God, love him, serve him, live for him, receive his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as your personal Savior.

Receive God's love, his grace, his mercy, that you might not ever have to taste of his wrath and his judgment.

Thanks for tuning in today.

Join us every weekday for another episode of the Preaching of the Cross Radio Podcast.

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Knox Sermons, our sermon audio page, Bible Baptist Land, or our website, Bible Baptistland.com.

Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.