The NXR Podcast - QUESTIONS - Can A Person Believe In Evolution And Be A Christian？

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00:00:22.160 All right, welcome to our show called Questions.

00:00:24.380 The question for today is this,

00:00:26.180 can a person believe in evolution and be a Christian?

00:00:29.560 Can a person believe in evolution and be a Christian?

00:00:33.100 To flesh the question out a bit more, we've got this.

00:00:35.180 Does theistic evolution fall under the banner of Christian orthodoxy?

00:00:40.440 Can a person believe in evolution and still be a Christian?

00:00:44.740 Or put another way, is believing in a literal six-day creation, 0.68

00:00:49.540 a relatively young earth and a relatively young earth, a gospel issue?

00:00:55.820 Let me say that again.

00:00:57.100 does theistic evolution, right?

00:00:58.800 So there is a God, but he's using evolution as his tool

00:01:01.720 in order to create the world

00:01:03.120 and create human beings in his image.

00:01:05.140 Does theistic evolution, that idea,

00:01:06.800 does it fall under the banner of Christian orthodoxy?

00:01:10.280 Meaning, maybe it's wrong, maybe it's right,

00:01:12.460 but can I hold to theistic evolution 0.62

00:01:14.700 and still be orthodox, still be Christian?

00:01:17.560 Or put another way, can a person believe in evolution

00:01:20.720 and still be a Christian?

00:01:22.640 or put another way, is believing in a six-day, a literal six-day creation for six 24-hour days,

00:01:31.620 and therefore from that, a relatively young earth, is that idea, six-day literalist creation,

00:01:41.400 is that idea, young earth, a gospel issue? Is it primary? Is it necessary? Is it salvific?

00:01:50.380 Is it necessary to be orthodox?

00:01:52.300 All right, so here are my thoughts.

00:01:55.180 One, one thought.

00:01:59.220 And this is the biggest thought.

00:02:00.240 This gets to the heart of the question,

00:02:01.660 whether or not it's a gospel issue,

00:02:03.140 whether or not this makes the difference in orthodoxy

00:02:06.020 or being outside of orthodoxy.

00:02:09.440 The Bible says that through sin, death entered the world. 1.00

00:02:15.220 Let's just, let's use the Bible.

00:02:17.060 Let's look at this, all right?

00:02:17.860 This is Genesis chapter two, verse 17.

00:02:20.780 So let's start with Genesis.

00:02:21.820 Genesis chapter two, verse 17.

00:02:29.940 All right, it says,

00:02:32.040 but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil

00:02:35.980 you shall not eat,

00:02:37.180 for in the day that you eat of it,

00:02:39.500 you shall surely die, right?

00:02:42.260 So man in the day,

00:02:44.820 and not a day before,

00:02:46.600 not a single day before, not a minute before,

00:02:49.080 not a second before, not a moment before,

00:02:51.020 but only if you eat of the tree

00:02:54.920 that I forbid you from eating from,

00:02:56.820 the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

00:03:00.380 If you disobey, if you sin, you shall surely die.

00:03:04.320 So right there we see that death

00:03:06.160 enters the world through sin.

00:03:07.400 Now, if you feel like, well,

00:03:08.200 I don't know if that was clear enough.

00:03:09.380 Okay, then let's just make it really clear.

00:03:10.840 Romans chapter five, verse 12 through 17.

00:03:15.760 Romans chapter five.

00:03:25.540 All right, here we go.

00:03:26.500 Romans chapter five, verse 12 through 17.

00:03:28.460 Starting verse 12.

00:03:29.720 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man

00:03:32.780 and death through sin,

00:03:36.700 and so death spread to all men because all sinned,

00:03:40.440 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given.

00:03:43.760 he's speaking of the law given at Mount Sinai, the law given on tablets of stone,

00:03:49.280 the 10 commandments, Moses, right? Israel wandering in the desert. So ultimately what

00:03:54.180 Paul's saying is this, sin was alive and well in the world long before the law was given through

00:04:00.220 Moses. The law was given through Moses because of the prevalent sin problem. Okay. But sin was not

00:04:07.320 in the world before Adam sinned, right? So, well, maybe it was in the world a second before Adam

00:04:14.320 sinned when Eve sinned, but even that was Adam's sin because he was there in the garden with her

00:04:17.820 and he abandoned his post. He was called to provide and protect, provide and protect. Adam

00:04:23.440 should have stepped right in there the moment the serpent started talking to Eve and said,

00:04:27.660 hey, talk to me. Don't talk to my wife. Talk to me. What are you saying? Are you questioning 1.00

00:04:34.180 what God said, okay, yeah, get out of the garden or I'll kill you. You're not allowed in the garden, 1.00

00:04:40.600 right? That was Adam's job to work and keep, work and keep. Work meaning to provide, to nourish,

00:04:49.540 to, I would argue, even to expand the borders of the garden so that the garden would eventually

00:04:53.820 take over the whole earth, right? Because Adam, we know that the earth was, well, when God first

00:04:58.580 created, it was void. It was dark and void without form. But then God began to bring substance into

00:05:06.740 the world, bring shape, bring form. But even when God was done with all that, when he lastly created

00:05:11.980 man, the Bible says that he created man in the wilderness, actually. So there were still

00:05:16.240 wildernesses, deserts, things like that, like we still have today, arid places. And God created

00:05:22.180 Adam in the wilderness, but then put him in the garden. He placed him in the garden. So I believe

00:05:27.500 that Adam, you know, two main commands to work and keep, which is ultimately the dominion mandate

00:05:33.720 that he would work. And in his work, he would be nourishing and providing for the garden. And of

00:05:38.400 course, for his wife and posterity, but providing for the garden. And in that expanding, the garden

00:05:44.640 would grow under his care as he, as he worked the ground, worked the garden, worked the fruit

00:05:50.560 and the plants, they would grow and the garden would expand and eventually take over all these

00:05:56.240 deserts and wilderness places, and the whole earth would become the garden. The garden would

00:06:01.860 cover the face of the earth. And so too, he would have to fill this ever-growing garden

00:06:07.040 with image bearers of the living God by having children and their children having children and

00:06:11.760 children and children. And so I think that was Adam's saying, was to work, which is to

00:06:16.600 nourish the garden to where it would expand, advance, and of course, to love his wife and

00:06:24.660 produce children and love them and teach them so that humanity also expanded. So the garden,

00:06:28.900 the borders are getting bigger and humanity is getting bigger. But the second command,

00:06:32.460 that's all under the banner of work, but then keep. That's not provision, but protection.

00:06:39.360 And when the serpent wandered into the garden and started questioning the integrity of God and what

00:06:46.820 God had said and the validity of what God said, did God really say? The Bible says that when

00:06:53.160 Eve took of the fruit and ate. Adam was there with her. So Adam was there. He saw this occur

00:07:00.180 and he did nothing. So all that being said, you could argue that Adam sinned before Eve,

00:07:05.440 even though she ate of the fruit before Adam, he sinned by doing what many men today do,

00:07:10.160 which is abdicating his responsibility of leadership. And under the banner of leadership,

00:07:17.060 provide and protect, work and keep. And he was not in that moment keeping, protecting. So all

00:07:22.460 that being said. That's when sin entered the world. And when sin entered the world, death

00:07:30.540 entered the world. That's what Paul says. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man,

00:07:34.620 he's talking about Adam, and death through sin, not a moment before, death came into the world

00:07:40.020 through sin. And so death spread to all men because all sinned. For sin indeed was in the world before

00:07:45.540 the law was given. So sin was in the world before Moses, but sin was not in the world before Adam.

00:07:49.900 and therefore death came through sin.

00:07:52.500 So death was not in the world before Adam.

00:07:54.760 But sin is not counted where there is no law.

00:07:57.460 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, not before,

00:08:01.660 but from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning

00:08:05.300 was not like the transgression of Adam,

00:08:08.200 who was a type of the one who was to come,

00:08:10.520 a type of Christ, the second Adam.

00:08:13.260 Verse 15 now, but the free gift,

00:08:16.040 talking about salvation and justification,

00:08:17.880 but the free gift is not like the trespass for if many died through one man's trespass

00:08:25.440 right every every person who's ever lived has died because of one man's sin adam i know there

00:08:32.560 are a couple exceptions um um enoch was taken up with god elijah um but other than that every

00:08:39.180 single man has died and will die until christ returns and but all this because of one man's

00:08:45.080 sin. So, for if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and

00:08:51.620 the free gift by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ, abound for many. And the free gift is not

00:08:59.280 like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation,

00:09:07.180 but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if because of one

00:09:13.060 man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more, here it is, much more will those

00:09:20.020 who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the

00:09:26.160 one man, Jesus Christ. So all that being said, here's the point. Adam, through one man, Adam,

00:09:34.380 there's two Adams, the first and the last. The first Adam sinned. He brought sin into the world,

00:09:39.860 into a sinless world, until he sinned, there was no sin in the world. He brought sin into the world.

00:09:46.720 And when he brought sin into the world through sin, sin, he, he, he opened the door, right?

00:09:54.960 His, his opening the door was, was sin. And then death came through into the world. So Adam brought

00:10:01.360 sin into the world. And by bringing sin into the world, opening the door of sin, he let death in

00:10:06.640 into the world. There was no death before Adam sinned. And Jesus as the second Adam brought

00:10:13.960 righteousness into the world and threw it life and life abundantly, not only for himself, but for all

00:10:20.540 those who have a union with him by grace through faith. Okay. So first Adam, last Adam, this Adam,

00:10:29.580 the first Adam sinned and brought death. This Adam obeyed and brought life. Here's the gospel

00:10:39.260 issue, right? Is theistic evolution, this idea that God created man, but he did it through

00:10:44.360 evolution, but is it a gospel issue? If you hold to that, does it make you outside the banner of

00:10:50.240 orthodoxy. Um, this is, this is what I would say. Evolution in a nutshell is the idea that you have

00:10:58.880 two, you know, husband and wife, man and woman, you have two fully made, fully functional, healthy,

00:11:06.900 developed homeo sapiens standing on top of a mountain of millions, probably billions,

00:11:16.820 perhaps even trillions of bones.

00:11:21.560 That's evolution.

00:11:23.760 Evolution in a nutshell is this.

00:11:26.560 Death made life.

00:11:30.440 Life started with single cell organism

00:11:32.920 and it lived for a little bit, but it died.

00:11:35.680 And out of this primordial soup,

00:11:37.540 eventually you got multiple cell organisms

00:11:39.440 and then you've got the tadpole,

00:11:41.460 but there's maybe hundreds or thousands

00:11:44.120 or millions of them

00:11:45.820 and and and they all die all of them but like three of them you know cross cross the the the

00:11:52.220 evolutionary threshold and become frogs and then you know and blah blah blah is species after

00:11:57.520 species after species and at first you know it's it's you know small single-celled organ but

00:12:02.180 eventually you're talking about a homo erectus and and man-like creatures you know like uh you

00:12:07.940 know if you hold to evolution right um so so far more complex and developed than than gorilla or

00:12:14.980 chimpanzee, you know, something, the missing link, something in between, Lucy, you know,

00:12:19.540 which is just a joke. We found three bones and we're going to say this, you know, but so all

00:12:24.280 of that. And again, you have millions of them dying so that a couple can transcend and hit the

00:12:31.880 next evolutionary bump to the higher species and higher species. So essentially, if you hold to

00:12:38.160 theistic evolution, right, the idea that, okay, it's basically everything that, you know, evolution

00:12:42.900 teaches except replace the Big Bang with God. That's theistic evolution. So instead of the Big

00:12:48.240 Bang, you've got God at the very beginning. But then God uses evolution as his tool to produce

00:12:55.220 life and specifically the life of Adam and Eve, the life of the human race. Well, then what you

00:13:01.240 essentially have is you have Adam and Eve standing, not so much on a garden. They're standing in a

00:13:08.260 garden, sure. But the garden is really a graveyard. Underneath that, you know, that garden, those

00:13:13.020 flowers and those plants and fruit is trillions. By this point, if you add up all the different

00:13:18.920 species, trillions of skeletons, skulls, bones. And then Adam sins against God. So essentially

00:13:28.060 what you have is this. By the time sin enters the world through Adam, death had long before

00:13:36.840 entered the world. Death was massively prevalent. There was virtually nothing but death. Life,

00:13:43.860 right? Life was the exception. Death was the norm. Tons and tons and tons and tons of death.

00:13:51.200 And eventually it produced the life of Adam and Eve who sinned, which ultimately it doesn't just

00:13:59.040 mess with Genesis chapter one and two. And this is what you got to get. If you mess with Genesis

00:14:03.380 one and two and three, then you mess with the whole Bible. Everything else is on the bedrock

00:14:09.700 of Genesis one, two, and three. So Romans five stems from Genesis two. So that's why I read

00:14:14.400 Genesis two, verse 17. And then I read Romans five, 12 through 17. Romans five, 12 through 17

00:14:21.620 is, is on the foundation of Genesis two, 17. And so if you get rid of the idea of Adam sinning and

00:14:29.600 through his sin, that's how death came into the equation, then ultimately, what you have

00:14:37.940 is not just an undoing of Genesis 2.17, but an undoing of what I read in Romans chapter 5,

00:14:43.680 which undo does Christ. I mean, the gospel is, literally, the gospel is through one man's

00:14:51.040 trespass, sin into the world, and through sin, death. And it affected all men. One man sinned,

00:15:01.160 and that caused all to become sinners and all to be under the threat of death.

00:15:07.140 But the second Adam, the better man, the God-man, by his perfect obedience, he brought life into

00:15:13.840 the world, and that life is given to all those who have faith in him. Theistic evolution says

00:15:20.240 that that's not true. The gospel, I think it's a gospel issue. The gospel is not true.

00:15:28.900 That one man's sin is not what brought death into the world. God brought death into the world

00:15:37.020 and he brought death into the world, not on some minor scale, not, not, because I'm fine with a

00:15:43.700 mitigated entropy. Just what is mitigate? Mitigated entropy is just a phrase that I would use just to

00:15:49.920 say that like i'm fine with adam and eve for instance having certain skin cells dying and

00:15:57.760 the new skin cells being reproduced as they're walking with god in the cool of the day before

00:16:03.400 the first sin before they sinned against god and and you know some troll on youtube is going to

00:16:10.580 say see yeah death was in the world before they sinned okay mitigated entropy is not the same as

00:16:15.380 trillions of not just single-celled organs, a skin cell, but trillions of creatures,

00:16:24.860 multifaceted creatures, including Homo erectus, according to evolution, like almost people,

00:16:31.140 almost man, communicating, talking caveman, basically millions and millions and millions

00:16:38.040 in between all the species, trillions dying before sin enters the world. See, in theistic

00:16:43.720 evolution, in that worldview, you ultimately say, man did not bring in the problem of death by his

00:16:52.120 sin, and therefore Christ bring in the solution of life by his obedience. Instead, God brought in

00:16:59.580 the problem of death, and God lied to Adam when he pinned it on him, saying that Adam's sin was

00:17:07.100 the problem. Adam, you brought death into the world by sinning, and then God's snickering in

00:17:12.120 the background. Actually, I brought in death. He should look. If he digs six feet under the ground

00:17:17.240 where he's currently standing, he'll find more skeletons than anybody could count, right? And

00:17:22.980 God's maniacally laughing. No, no, no. Adam brought death into the world because Adam brought sin in

00:17:31.000 the world. It's sin. God created the world and it was good. It was a place of life. And God's not

00:17:38.360 the author of death. Man brought death into the world through sin. And the God-man, Christ Jesus,

00:17:45.460 the perfect Adam, the last Adam, he brought life back into a world that had been tarnished by death

00:17:52.140 and destroyed by death because of sin. And he did so by his obedience. That is the gospel.

00:17:58.760 And evolution messes up that. And theistic evolution also still messes up that. Theistic

00:18:07.600 evolution just for the record theistic evolution is evolution to the t just replace god with the

00:18:15.200 big bang and all that does theologically is it just says god is responsible for death instead of

00:18:21.120 a cosmic accident but it still actually indicts they think they're giving credit that god exists

00:18:27.180 none of this can happen without god but but what happened what what couldn't happen without god

00:18:31.700 trillions of deaths god is the author of death and jesus ultimately isn't really even coming

00:18:37.480 back to fix Adam's problem of sin, because sin didn't bring death into the world. God did.

00:18:43.040 God used death to create life and theistic evolution. So Jesus is really just coming

00:18:48.040 back to fix God's problem. So evolution, I think, denies the gospel. Theistic evolution,

00:18:55.560 likewise, denies the gospel. Theistic evolution, evolution says, secular evolution says God doesn't

00:19:01.140 exist. Theistic evolution says God does exist and it's his fault. So it's almost even worse.

00:19:09.660 So theistic evolution, yeah, I don't think it's under the banner of orthodoxy at all.

00:19:13.440 I think if somebody holds the theistic evolution, it's a denial of the gospel.

00:19:19.680 So there's my thoughts. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks so much for listening. But real quick,

00:19:24.540 before you go, do us a small favor, take a moment and leave us a five-star review if you enjoyed the

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The NXR Podcast - February 25, 2022

QUESTIONS - Can A Person Believe In Evolution And Be A Christian？

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