John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1)

I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too.  I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I have ever done are posts from John MacArthur. One is on what the Bible has to say about alcohol and then what the Bible says concerning the prophecy of the city of Tyre.

Biblical Inspiration Validated By Science, Part 1 (Selected Scriptures) John MacArthur

We continue in our look at the Word of God tonight and the subject of the doctrine of inspiration. In 2 Timothy chapter 3 we read, “That all Scripture is inspired by God.” All Scripture is God-breathed. All Scripture proceeds from God. He is the author of Scripture. And therefore, when we study the Word of God, it reflects the divine mind. And since the mind of God is all knowing, everything in the Bible is true. It is a true representation not only of what God said but what God determined is true. Whatever the Bible says on whatever subject it speaks, it is true. Whether it is talking about past history, present reality or future prophecy, it is absolutely accurate and inerrant and without flaw. Whether the Bible is talking about temporal history or heavenly reality, it is true. Whether it is talking about events on the earth or events in heaven, it is true. Whether it is talking about the spiritual realm or the physical realm, it is true. Everything in the Scripture is true because all Scripture is God-breathed. It does not come to us from any human origin, but rather holy men are moved by the Spirit of God to write down that which God has said.

So when we study the Bible, we expect it what it affirms and what it declares and what it says is consistent with reality and with truth. It is God who wrote the Scripture and it is God who created reality, therefore you have the same author of what is and what is said about what is. And there is therefore a perfect consistency in both.
When you think about that with regard to the natural world in which we live, it sort of breaks down to a very simple way to understand it and it would go like this. “Whoever designed and created and sustains the universe also understands it. Whoever made the earth understands the earth. Whoever created the animal life, the plant life and the human life on this earth understands it perfectly as its designer and its creator and its sustainer. He knows the earth and He knows it well because He made it. Whoever made this earth understands that is spherical and not flat. He understands that it rotates on an axis, not that it is stationary with heaven rotating around it. Whoever it was that created this earth knows that it is suspended in space on nothing. Whoever created this earth knows that it sweeps through the universe, being dragged along in a solar system around the sun as the sun moves in an orbit from one end of infinite space to the other. Whoever created this universe knows that there are innumerable stars. Whoever created this world knows that the cycles of air and the cycles of water move in systems that are consistent. Whoever created this world understand the facts of chemistry and understands the facts of biology. And so whoever wrote a book in which any of this is discussed would get it right. So if we find a book that gets it right, we know who wrote it.

If God the Creator writes a book about His creation, we expect it to be a true reflection of the reality of that creation as much as is observable to us, consistent with scientific reality. And to take that argument a little further, whoever is intelligent enough to create the entire universe with all of its complexity is certainly intelligent enough to write a book in which He declares the reality consistently with actual fact. We would expect one who is intelligent enough to create the universe to be up to the task of writing an accurate book that is rational and logically consistent and true to fact.

And we might add another element to our argument. It would be of great assistance to the Creator in convincing us that He actually wrote this book since there are so many other books that have been written that claim to be divine, it would be very helpful to the Creator if He wrote this book wanting us to know that He actually wrote it if He said some things in that book which we can verify as true and yet which no one knew at the time He wrote. It would be, in fact, a monumental thing for God to write in His book things that we know now to be true which no one else at the time of writing knew or could know. That would give us evidence of transcendent divine authorship by the Creator. Whoever created reality knows reality. Whoever can create reality and knows reality can reveal Himself to us accurately about that reality.

So, whey then does Science and Healthand Key to the Scriptures, the authoritative divine book of the Christian Science movement, say “Man is not matter, he is not made up of brain, blood, bones and other material elements and man is incapable of sin, sickness and death?” Well so much for that religion. Whoever made man didn’t write that. Whoever created man and made him brain, blood, bones and material elements didn’t write that book. And whoever wrote that man is incapable of sin, sickness and death did not know the truth, for we are all subject to sin, sickness and death. Why does the Book of Mormonin 2 Nephi chapter 2 say, “Adam fell that men might be and they are that they might have joy?” Why does the Book of Mormonsay that if men had not fallen, they would not be what they are and therefore they would not have joy? Whoever wrote that the result of the Fall was human joy doesn’t know the facts…doesn’t know the facts. By the way, the Book of Mormonalso says in Alma chapter 7 verse 10 that Jesus was born in Jerusalem. Whoever wrote that book doesn’t know the facts.
Why does the Koran describe the earth, the Moslem Koran, describe the earth as flat with the sky suspended over it being held up by Allah so that it doesn’t fall on top of the flat earth? Whoever wrote that didn’t know reality. Why does the Hindu Upanishad say that the sun is the source of all energy in the universe? That’s not true. So far none of these books pass simple tests.

And then there is Taoism, that very vast oriental religion, why does the Taoist holy book say, “There are only thirteen members through which death can come.” We now know that there are far more than that in the human anatomy through which death can come. That is an inaccurate statement, and there are many others. Why does the sacred Buddhist book say that earthquakes are caused by the wind moving the water and the water moving the land? That’s not true either.

All these and many more supposedly holy books written by gods, all these and more are historically inaccurate, scientifically wrong, morally inferior and spiritually muddled. The Bible never is. It doesn’t matter what subject it speaks on, it gets it right. It is accurate because it is written by God. It is a reflection of His Word that men wrote down under the power of the Holy Spirit so that what was written was a true record of God’s Word.

The veracity of the Bible and accuracy of the Bible can be sustained and has been sustained wonderfully under THE most long-lasting and intense examination. And although it is not a text book on science, it is not a text book on technical things, whenever it intersects with science and whenever it intersects with scientific reality, it is completely true and accurate. True science has no argument with Scripture. I’ll say that again. True science has no argument with Scripture. The word science simply means knowledge. That’s why we say when we say God is omniscient, we put the word science with omni, all knowing. True knowledge, true science has no argument with Scripture because the Creator is the author of Scripture and He is the one who determined the way things are and He knows the way things are because He made them the way they are. Never has science, never has science disproven one jot or tittle in the Bible, and, believe me, they have tried those unbelieving scientists. They’re still working at it. The Word of God stands the test of all the poundings that it has taken from so-called science and pseudo-science.

The fact of the matter is that the Bible will not only stand up under the assaults of so-called science, and it will stand fast when compared with true science, but it is also true the Bible, the Word of God, is far ahead of science. It is far ahead of scientific discovery in revealing the reality of the observable matters in this material universe. That is to say the Bible says things that are true long before man ever discovers them to be so. There’s absolutely no contradiction between true science and the Bible, only between pseudo-science and the Bible.

So no matter where we go in the Bible, we’re going to find the Bible scientifically accurate. And, of course, the first thing people are going to say, “Well what about creation? Don’t we know that evolution has been proven?” Answer…of course not. Evolution is a theory, it is not fact. There is no present or never…and there never has been an observable, repeatable scientifically honest illustration of macro-evolution. There’s never been one to observe, it is pure theory and nothing else.
When you read the Genesis account in Genesis 1 through 3, it is absolutely consistent with all true science. There are no conflicts and we’re not surprised by that because God is the author. Biblical inerrancy extends to every word of Scripture and it starts with the first word “in” the beginning. Scripture, not science, is the ultimate test of all truth. In fact, the Bible warns us, 1 Timothy 6:20, against science falsely so called, or false knowledge that opposes the truth of Scripture. And though the biblical account, particularly thinking of the creation account in Genesis 1 through 3, strongly conflicts with nat…natural…naturalistic evolutionary theory, it never conflicts with true scientific fact. All geological, astronomical biological physiological true scientific data fits the Bible. Genesis 1 to 3 tells us exactly the truth about creation. Modern science, going back to Darwin, has developed a very unscientific theory called evolution. It is very unscientific, it is totally irrational because the basic premise of evolution is nobody times nothing equals everything…that’s intellectual idiocy…nobody times nothing equals everything? The Creator in an evolutionary system is chance, but chance is not a force and chance is not a power, it is only a probability. And so they have turned chance into a creator and the theory of evolution, natural selection and natural origination out of nothing, is based on a series of accidents, coincidences, random events and blind luck that has no cause whatsoever. All this comes out of nothing, producing the intricate eco-systems and complex organisms and macrocosm of the universe, out of absolutely nothing by sheer random coincidence. This is total absurdity by any normal scientific evaluation.

There’s a new veil out for the bizarre irrationality of evolution now that’s come along called ID, have you been reading about it…Intelligent Design? This is the new scientific approach to this theory of evolution that says, “Wait a minute, there’s just too much intelligence here, it’s just way too complex to come out of non-intelligence. There has to be some intelligence behind this. It’s just too complicated.” And so they came up with this ID, Intelligent Design. And there are many scientists who are admitting that there is intelligence behind this, there must therefore be some intelligence somewhere in the universe, but they stopped short of saying that that intelligence is the God of the Bible. In fact, they stopped far short of the God of the Bible.
The fact of the matter is, they’re all right with some other god. They’re all right with some cosmic force. Even Einstein said, “Of course there’s a cosmic force out there, but we could never know it.” Even he realized you can’t have all these effects without a cause, you can’t have all this complexity without intelligence. They’re happy to have any god and every god except the true and living one. Marvin Lubinow(??) has written an interesting book called Bones of Contention. And in that book he tells us why, I think, listen to this paragraph. “The real issue in the creation/evolution debate is not the existence of God. The real issue is the nature of God. To think of evolution as basically atheistic is to misunderstand the uniqueness of evolution. Evolution was not designed as a general attack against theism, or against the idea of God, it was designed as a specific attack against the God of the Bible and the God of the Bible is clearly revealed through the doctrine of creation. Obviously…he writes…if a person is an atheist, it would be normal for him to also be an evolutionist. But evolution is as comfortable with theism as it is with atheism. An evolutionist is perfectly free to choose any God he wishes as long as it is not the God of the Bible. The gods allowed by evolution are private, subjective and artificial. They bother no one. They make no absolute ethical demands. However, the God of the Bible is creator, sustainer, Savior and judge. All are responsible to Him. He has an agenda that conflicts with that of sinful humans. For man to be created in the image of God is very awesome. For God to be created in the image of man is very comfortable,” end quote. So they’re comfortable with intelligent design as long as we don’t say it’s the God of the Bible who is not only a creator, but who is a judge, a law giver and a Redeemer.

This is really what is behind the scientific resentment of Scripture. It’s not that the Bible is scientifically inaccurate. It’s not that the creation account is not a right and verifiable and sensible and reasonable and logical explanation of the way things are. It is that if you accept the Creator God of the Bible, then you have the Law-Giver of the Bible and the judge of the Bible. And in order to get rid of Him, you get rid of creation.

Now in the first place, science cannot know anything about creation anyway because it’s not repeatable and it wasn’t observable. Nobody was there. Not until the sixth day did God even create man and woman, and by then He had created everything else. There were no eyewitnesses to creation, with the exception of the angels who were there singing together, as the Scripture tells us, when God was creating, and God Himself. Therefore any view of creation, any view of the origin of the world as we know it is a matter of religion. It’s a matter of faith. It’s a matter of deciding what you want to believe. Science can observe the present. It can observe phenomena in a microscope or a test tube or some kind of telescope. But it can only speculate about prehistoric reality and about origin. There’s only one who knows how it all came to exist, and that’s the one who brought it into existence, and that’s God the Creator.

So what we have in the Bible in Genesis 1 through 3 is the Creator’s account of His creation. And why would He give us a faulty account? If He wanted to reveal Himself, He would tell us the truth about His creation so that when we studied the creation carefully we find that it matches perfectly with the creation account when we measure true science against that account and therefore it verifies to us that this in fact is a book written by the creator. And if we can trust Him for His record of creation, we can trust Him for everything else as well.

Turn to 2 Peter chapter 3 for a moment, because if we’re going to talk about science and the Bible, we’re going to find a good starting point here. And we discussed this a week ago in our Sunday-morning series on the Second Coming, so it will be a little bit familiar to those of you who are here. But in 2 Peter chapter 3 and verse 3, we are told that in the last days, in these days in which we live, the day since the Lord has come and particularly in the days since evolutionary theory was developed over a hundred years ago, “In the last days, mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lust and saying, ‘Where’s the promise of His coming?'” They mocked the idea of a cataclysmic event called the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. They mocked the idea that the Lord is going to come and bring destruction, massive destruction upon the earth and upon the ungodly. And their mockery is basically framed around a theory called uniformity, or uniformitarianism. That is, verse 4, they say, “For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.” They say there’s never going to be a cataclysmic event in the future such as described in the Bible as the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, no such cataclysmic event can happen because none ever has. That’s their theory. All things have always continued at the same pace. This is a scientific view that observes current processes, current scientific reality, scientific data. And it extrapolates observing present processes, extrapolates them indefinitely into the past and indefinitely into the future so that as things are changing at the current pace, they must have always changed in the past at that same pace and they will all change in the future at that very same pace.

And so, it’s always been that way. You extrapolate the processes back and you go back millions and you go back billions of years. You’ve extrapolated into the future and you go forward millions and billions of years. There are no great cataclysmic events in the future because there haven’t any…been any such things in the past. It’s always been the same through all history since the fathers way back died, everything continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.

Now if a scientist wants to hold that view, he can. He can determine the age of rocks, the age of the sun, and the age of the human race by projecting present rates of change into the limitless past and into the limitless future. He can develop theories about the evolution of life, assuming that everything continues at the same speed, extrapolating it all the way back billions and billions of years. He can do the same thing with galaxies in space. He can do the same thing with chemical elements in the universe if he wishes. But he cannot know that it is true. He cannot know that it is accurate. He cannot know that it is right because he can’t reproduce those years in the past, he can’t reproduce those realities and those forces. The original events and sequences are not observable so he doesn’t know if it’s always going at the same rate in the past, nor can he know that will always go at the same rate in the future. That he cannot reproduce. Therefore, the viewpoint is not subject to scientific affirmation and verification, it is purely a theory, it is an idea one holds by faith. That is the idea of uniformity. And that’s exactly what this text is saying. Their view in the world is that there’s not going to be a future cataclysm because that’s not how the universe works, it just keeps going along in the same way. The argument then of the heretics goes something like this, the universe is a closed naturalistic system of cause and effect. It moves along in this naturalistic system of cause and effect, closed to any divine intervention at the beginning, in the middle or at the end. There are no catastrophes. They call it uniformity, or uniformitarianism and it denies divine intervention in history.

This became very formalized in the nineteenth century under the influence of a British lawyer and geologist named Charles Lyle. Charles Lyle wrote a book called The Principles of Geology, this was a book that really influenced Darwin. In fact, when Darwin went to the Galapagos Islands, took a copy of Lyle’s book and was studying this idea of uniformitarianism.
The reality, however, is…the reality is, in modern times it is apparent that there is far too much evidence for catastrophism to really, honestly hold to a theory of uniformitarianism. There is just too much evidence for catastrophism, too much evidence such as finding mastodons on the north edge of Siberia buried in the ice pack with their stomachs full of tropical vegetation. How does that happen? Unless there is a catastrophe on the earth that freezes them instantly with their stomach contents in place as a result of some massive innundation and change in the earth so that what now is Arctic Circle ice is a dramatic change from what once was tropical vegetation. That argues for massive catastrophe. And, in fact, the catastrophe, the Bible explains, as the universal Flood which then issues in the changing of the continents of the earth, the repositioning of mountain ranges, the redevelopment of seas leading to massive ice floes moving across the world and changing its face. How do you explain if you go down the road here on Highway 14 and go toward Lancaster and wander in the mountains, you’re finding seashells all over everywhere? How do you get the ocean in a aqua dulce? That’s just a…I have a shell on my desk from Aqua Dulce, an ocean shell that carried an ocean creature. There’s just too much overwhelming evidence for catastrophism to hold on to this.

And so, honest uniformitarians are saying, “Well, there…there have been a few small catastrophes, like the Ice Age.” They love the Ice Age. It doesn’t explain everything by any means. It’s better to view the reality as God created everything the way it is, creation was the first massive catastrophe…that is to say He created a fully mature creation, both in the universe and on the earth, all that exists, He created it all in six twenty-four-hour days by a series of miraculous catastrophic divine evasions. And it’s not billions of years ago, it’s only thousands of years ago that the whole creation is probably somewhere around ten thousand years old.

True science will support that. There are reams of books available for that particular study. The evidence is on the side of biblical creation. That is why…let’s go back, verse 5…”When they maintained this…” I’m not real thrilled with the New American Standard translation of the next phrase, “When they maintained this…” it really says, “They are willfully ignorant…they are purposely ignorant,” thelontos(?), the verb thelo, to will in its participial form. They are willfully ignorant. That is they purposely reject what is true. You can’t have everything from nothing. You can’t have a complex universe that is fully intelligent and personality among humans from non-intelligent non-personality. You can’t have everything from nothing. But they are willfully ignorant of that. They are purposely ignorant of that. They choose to reject that. They refuse to believe that because if they believe that, then they’re stuck with the God of the Bible. So they refuse to believe what is obvious intellectually, what is observable scientifically because they love their sin and they do not want to have to give an account for their sin to a creator who is also a law-giver and a judge. So self-induced blindness leads them to reject the truth that they should understand.

What is so strange to me is Christians that come along and join the evolutionary bandwagon and deny creation. Very popular stuff…theistic evolution, progressive creationism as they’ve called it for years at Wheaton College. The idea that evolution is true, or the writings of Hugh Ross who has written much on this subject and with whom I interact, by the way, in my book The Battle for the Beginning.Why do Christians need to reject Genesis 1, 2 and 3? And I asked the question…okay, you say you’re a Christian and you believe the Bible, what chapter do you come in? When do you start believing? Do you believe in chapter 4? Do you think you can buy in to the Cain and Abel story? How about chapter 5? Can you take that genealogy? How about chapter 6? Can you buy in to the Flood? At what point do you start believing?

And if God didn’t tell us the truth in Genesis 1, 2 and 3, then why would we believe Him anywhere else? And if He didn’t get that part right, then what part did He get right? And what other parts did He get wrong? And we are left with great chaos.
Hugh Ross and others like him wanted to protect God from being wrong, come up with the idea that Genesis 1 through 3 is poetry, not history. It is poetry not history. It is…it is God talking in poetic language, taking poetic license. That, of course, is contrived since there is nothing in the Hebrew text to indicate that this is poetry. And Hebrew poetry is easily recognizable. One of our noble professors at the Master’s College, Dr. Stephen Boyd who is a doctor at…has a doctorate in Old Testament and who is a Hebrew scholar, recently did a very fascinating study which has established an unanswerable argument. And what he did was, he quantified Hebrew poetry so that it could be graphed and put into a computer. He quantified Hebrew historical narrative so then it could be graphed and put into a computer and statistically could then demonstrate whether this Genesis 1 to 3 narrative had the properties of poetry or history. The result of his study is published in a book called Thousands Not Billions, a wonderful book. There’s a whole chapter in there, this study is available…it rocks, believe me…(laughter)…it rocks. It is a…it is a formidable argument and the end result is that it is something like 99.9 percent of what is in Genesis 1 through 3 can only be historical narrative, it has zilch properties of Hebrew poetry when measured in an honest way. That is an illegitimate approach. What you have is historical narrative. And so, I go back to the fact that you can trust Genesis 1 to 3 because every word of God is true and because God knows what is and because the only one who is there at the creation is God, and God can be trusted to tell us what is true. It is so foolish to deny what is true. And there’s no reason to deny it because, as I said, true science compared with the Genesis account matches up perfectly.

And, in fact, we get help in 2 Peter 3. You study creation and then you study the great second cataclysm, the Flood. Verse 5, “When they maintained this, when they willfully are ignorant of this, they forget conveniently that by the Word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water.” They forget the great catastrophic, cataclysmic events that made up the original creation. First God created the earth, and then He created water over the surface of the earth and then He in cataclysmic fashion reshaped the earth and went on to create everything else and populate the earth, creates light first, then attaches that light to heavenly bodies as well. They forget the cataclysm of creation. And verse 6, they forget the cataclysm by which the world in ancient times was destroyed, being flooded with water. And they forget that the Bible promises the present heavens, verse 7, and earth are going to be reserved for a future fire on a day of judgment and destruction of godly men. Uniformity doesn’t work. That is not how it came into a being, that is not how it goes out of being. It comes in in the cataclysm of creation, is reshaped in the second cataclysm of the Flood, Genesis 6, 7 and 8, and it will be destroyed in the cataclysm of fire in the future. And there is nothing scientific that can disprove that. Peter says, “In fact…giving us further detail about the future destruction in verse 10…that the heaven will pass away with a roar, the elements will be destroyed with intense heat and the earth and its work will be burned up.” That is a very simple description of the destruction of the atomic structure of the universe. And verse 12 adds to it, “The heavens then destroyed by burning the elements melt with intense heat.” That is very reasonable as to its description of an atomic implosion of the created material universe.
The Bible then when examined scientifically holds up as to creation account, Flood account, and future destruction. But as one evolutionist says, “I reject the idea of a transcendent God, so what other alternative but evolution do I have?” Well you could come up with a god of your own making that you like better than the God of the Bible. And that’s what the ID men are doing, those scientists who want to come to the recognition of intelligent design but stop short of the God of the Bible. The problem goes back to Romans 1:28, “They did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They did not want to hold on to the God of Scripture.”

Now having said that, let me talk a little bit…I want to talk about a few things in terms of science. We’ll do it tonight and we’ll do it then next Sunday night. Let’s talk, first of all, about the basic principles of science since we’re dealing with foundational things. Science deals with a matrix when we’re talking about natural science. We’re talking about the way things are in a material universe, there is a matrix of things. You have to have matter, you have to have force, you have to have energy, you have to have space and you have to have time. That is…that is Herbert Spencer’s great achievement, he died in 1903, he said, “Everything in the universe can be deposited in one of these categories…time, force, action, space and matter.” Force and action comprising energy. There has to be time, there has to be energy which is force and action, there has to be space, and there has to be matter. And by the way, those five things which he defined in that order are all in Genesis 1, “In the beginning…that’s time…God…that’s force…created…that’s action…the heavens…that’s space…and the earth…that’s matter.” The matrix is in Genesis 1:1, that is a profound scientific statement. The universe in essence is a…is a matrix of space, time, matter, and energy. And all of it has to be existing at the same conflux. It all has to come together or none of it exists. One cannot exist without the other. The entire continuum must have existed simultaneously from the beginning. That is why you find it all in Genesis 1:1, it all had to be there. Science says it has to be there and Scripture says it is there.

Now once the matrix comes into instantaneous simultaneous existence, its processes then are designed to operate in an orderly fashion, going forward. All the different phenomena within the matrix of nature and life are sustained by the forces that exist in that matrix. Time goes on, space goes on, energy goes on, matter goes on. It is all instantaneously and simultaneously coming into existence, it is then not only brought into existence by some external force and source, but it is then kept in prefect balance and function by that same power. It is sustained by the same force that brought it into existence. But everything that God made was made in six days. And it says in Genesis 2:2, “God ended His work which He had made.” God stopped making anything. If you know science, you understand that that is scientifically accurate, nothing is being created, nothing is coming into existence, nothing has since creation, day six, and God’s cessation of His work. The complete cessation of creative activity has been, by the way, in advertently recognized by modern science and they call it the law, the first law of thermodynamics and the first law of thermodynamics is called the conservation of mass and energy…the conservation of mass and energy. This is THE most and universal and certain of all scientific principles. Science has shown and verified that there is nothing being created in the known universe today. Things are doing what they do but not coming into existence newly. There is nothing new in the universe. In fact, the Bible tells us this in the most unaffected, the most simple, the most direct ways without ever defending itself as if its made some statement contrary to fact.
For example, in the words that come to us in the ninth chapter of Nehemiah, “In praise to God, in blessing to God,” we read in Nehemiah 9:6, “Thou alone art the Lord, Thou hast made the heavens, the heaven of heavens with all their hosts, the earth and all that is in them, the seas and all that is in them. Thou dost give life to all of them.” You made it all, everything that exists in the heaven and the earth and the seas, everything that lives, you made it all. That is an affirmation of God’s completed and ended creation. Everything that is You made, and You made it all in those six days of creation.

I think it’s in Isaiah, there are a lot of Scriptures that we could look up but there is another one, I think it’s in Isaiah…yes, chapter 40 verse 26, “Lift up your eyes and see who has created these stars, the one who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name, not one of them is missing.” Nothing comes into existence and nothing goes out of existence. This is the law, the first law of thermodynamics, the law of the conservation of mass and energy. Nothing is being created, nothing is going out of existence. And this is exactly what the Bible says in the most unaffected way and without any scientific pretension. For example, Ecclesiastes 1:9, “That which has been is that which will be and that which has been done is that which will be done and there is nothing new under the sun.” In the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, verse 14, “I know that everything God does will remain forever.” There is nothing to add to it, there is nothing to take from it. It is God so…it is God who has so worked it, that which is has been already, that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by. This is the continuum of the creative reality, spontaneous generation, new creation doesn’t happen. What perpetuates the creation is the conservation of mass and energy. And every organism that is a living organism has the seed of life within itself to reproduce itself.

Now there’s a second law of thermodynamics and science has labeled this law, and the second law of thermodynamics is this…nothing new is being created, nothing is being destroyed, that is in the sense the first law. The second law is, however, all things are tending toward increasing disorder. This is the second law of thermodynamics. Energy is running down. It is losing its capacity to perform its work. There is increasing disorder. That means that slowly but observably the processes that God set in motion are winding down. We’re heading toward the death of this creation. Now they don’t have an explanation for that and it’s a very hard thing to come up with an evolutionary view that everything is getting more complex, more intelligent and better while at the same time they can show scientifically that energy is dissipating and everything is tending toward chaos and disorder. All energy is running down and heading toward being incapable of performing its function.
Now God didn’t make the world that way. God did not make the world that way. In fact, when God finished His creation, Genesis 1:31, He looked at it all and said, “It’s…what?…it’s very good.” How do we explain what’s happened? The Bible is the only place you can go for an explanation. Science has no explanation for the second law of thermodynamics. It has no explanation for the first law. Why is it that everything came into existence in a matrix at one time and continues in that same matrix? Why is it that if this is all a matter of chance, coincidence and randomness that that’s not happening again and again and again and again? Why is it that it has come into existence in such a matrix of complexity and sustained itself in that matrix of complexity? That, in fact, is what drove Einstein crazy, if you would call him crazy, because he couldn’t figure out the power was that held everything together. And how then do you explain this slow death? What is the reason for that? Only the Bible explains the matrix, the power of God is the invisible power that holds it all together and sustains it. And only the Bible explains why it’s all tending toward disorder and death and the explanation comes in Genesis 3, it is the Fall and God curses creation. God curses creation. You read Genesis 3, man is cursed, woman is cursed. Sin enters into the world, the land is cursed, the ground is cursed. You have to till and work by the sweat of your brow to get something out of the land and fight all the cursed elements, the thorns, the weeds. And man has to fight against the weakness of his own body and his weariness and illness and disease because death enters the world and women have pain in childbearing. The ground is cursed. The whole creation is cursed. Read Romans 8:20 to 22. In Romans 8:20 to 22 the whole creation groans under the weight of the curse.

Science has no explanation for the first law of thermodynamics which they are glad to label but cannot explain how the complex matrix can come into existence in a moment, which all of which is required for anything to exist out of nothing. They cannot explain that nor can they explain how it holds itself together because there’s no way to find the power that holds it together scientifically, nor can they explain the principle of disintegration and disorder in the second law of thermodynamics. The Bible explains both perfectly.

The Bible also explains that the second law of thermodynamics without calling it that is working its way down to an end, and the end must come and it will come, only it won’t die a slow death, it will die an immediate death, as I just read you, when the Lord Jesus destroys this cursed universe and establishes a new heaven and a new earth. And in the new heaven and the new earth, there will be a different matrix. There will be a different matrix. There will be no time, there will be no space, there will be the energy of eternal life. It will be a completely different matrix and there will be no second law of thermodynamics. There will be no death, no sickness, no sorrow, no dying, no decay, no unrighteousness, no trouble, to pain, no destruction, and so forth and so forth.

So, you see, when you talk about science at the very basic level, it is only the Bible that gives you any sensible understanding for the way things really are. And we would expect that the one who made things the way they are, knows the way they are, and tells us the truth about the way they are. I stand so firmly before you as somebody who is not a scientist, by any stretch of the imagination, to say to you that I have read as extensively as I can read in science, particularly in those many, many months when I was going through Genesis chapters 1, 2 and 3, trying to understand science, true science, comparison to Scripture, and I have yet to find and I am supported by Christian scientists all over the country and all over the world who study far more in depth and more diligently than I who back up the fact that there has never ben any…any scientific discovery that is in true fact the way it really is that contradicts the biblical record…never…never.

Now, I want to go from the basic principles of science to talk to you about hydrology. That’s sounds like fun, the science of water, astronomy, that is marvelous and thrilling, geology. I want to talk to you about meteorology, I want to be sort of a biblical weatherman and a little bit about physiology and what the Bible says about all those ologies. But that won’t be tonight. We’ll save that for next time. Okay? Let’s pray together.

We are in awe, O God, of Your Word. And we’re so grateful for its purity, its clarity, its integrity, its inerrancy, its inspiration. Truly it has stood the test of close intense hostile angry aggressive scrutiny and its weathered all the storms. We thank You for the great strength of scientists who uphold Your truth. How encouraged we are. So many of them even since the seventeenth century when the truth began to really come out about the way the world really is, how many were Christians, how many had their biblical confidence strengthened and upheld in the discoveries of science that have come to the modern world. We thank You for all of those who work in the field of science today and work so diligently and uphold the Word of God because it can stand every attack. This is Your Word, it’s true whatever it says. We rejoice in that. And our confidence in its spiritual testimony is strengthened when we know it’s testimony about that which we can see and know is absolutely true. Thank You for giving us a true Word. You are the true and living God. Christ is the truth and we trust perfectly and completely in You. We thank You in the name of the Savior. Amen.

Related posts: