Much is being made of recent fossil finds alleged to constitute "missing links" between marine and amphibian animals - purportedly reflecting attributes of both fish and tetrapods (animals with limbs and backbones). Of one recent discovery, a prominent news agency asserted the event's "significant blow to creationism."
What to make of it all? As believers fully committed to God's having "created the heavens and the earth" and "all that is therein," it will prove useful here to consider some of the ways in which we Christians have sometimes failed to assist our own cause by seeking to combine Scripture with preconception and/or speculation of our own making.
For example: The Bible teaches that the earth is 6,000 years old - right? The fact is that Scripture gives no indication as to the earth's age. We are simply told tht God created it "in the beginning." We are then told that, "the earth became waste and emptiness" (Gen. 1:2: the word translated "was" in the KJV being the same word elsewhere rendered "became" - e.g., Lot's wife "looked back, and she became a pillar of salt," Gen. 19:26).
Following earth's devastation (almost certainly in association with Lucifer's rebellion against God), God then recreated the earth. Mankind, having been created in God's image and likeness was now given dominion over the earth in place of Lucifer ("light bringer") who had formerly exercised earthly dominion. (Interestingly, following mankind's rebellion and fall, God gave promise of another, yet pending, "restoration of all things," Acts 3:21; II Pet. 3:13, etc.).
A further point of significance factors into the equation: Jesus states in John 4:24 that "God is spirit" (the "a" of KJV being an interpolation). "Made in the image and likeness of God," man is also spirit - a human spirit living in a physical body and possessing "soul," i.e., conscious life. Scripture accordingly notes that "God breathed into man's nostrils the spirit [same word used for "breath"] of life, and man became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7).
As such, it is man's spirit that returns at death to God who gave it (Ecc. 12:7); in dying on the cross, Jesus gave up his spirit (Matt. 27:50; "ghost," KJV); at his martyrdom, Stephen committed his spirit to Christ (Acts 7:59); and, as stated by James, "the body without the spirit is dead" (James 2:26). Herein lies the distinction between mankind and the rest of the animate world; man is a special creation, a spiritual being created in the image of the Creator.
Our intent here can be addressed in a few simple questions: Is the earth really 41/2 to 51/2 billions years old? Who knows? If science can prove the point, it is no challenge to faith. Not only did God create the earth, he also ordained and established the laws of physics, thermodynamics, molecular attraction, ad infinitum by which it operates. Or, again: Did life in original creation pass through progressive states of development? Again, God could have done so were that His will and plan (interestingly, at certain points in the Genesis account, it is stated that "the earth brought forth").
The important point is that mankind is a special being, created in the likeness of God. As such, "the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God," in association with which "the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glofy of the children of God" (Rom. 8:19-21). This, as opposed to arguing whether the "days" of Genesis 1 were twenty-four periods of time or geological ages, is the hope and focus of faith (vv. 23-25).
Relative to creation, the fundamental issue is that God did it.
Burl Ratzsch
