Adventists, the Seventh-day Sabbath of the Bible, and "The Battle for Creation"

All competent Hebrew scholars, both rabbis and Christians, agree that Moses in writing Genesis, the Bible's first book, meant to convey the idea that Creation occurred over six twenty-four hour days, as that is the Hebrew word he employs of the six days, and of the seventh, which followed them. What Moses meant to say is clear and unmistakable: That is beyond question.

What is at stake is whether those who look to the Bible will accept what it clearly says, or instead simply disagree with Moses and the Bible from its very first page in favor of an alternate world view's contrary ideas instead--specifically materialistic evolution, which posits a many millions and even billions of years of time span needed for life to evolve from a chance and unreproducible alleged beginning through various states of increasing complexity by random mutations and natural selection to its present state.

These two world views--Biblical Theism with its Creator, who speaks and things spring into existence--and Materialism--which says the world has always been pretty much as we know it now, with variation, or evolved from simple, chance beginnings, through random chemical processes to its current state--are diametrically opposed to each other.

Though this is the case, there are those who would attempt to meld these alternate takes on reality together through teachings that would bend the Bible to accommodate the needs of the opposing world view, suggesting that God created over long periods of time, ranging from a thousand to many millions of years. This approach has been employed in Catholic education since the 1950's. It was also largely adopted by the Christian Churches in America as a whole after Darwin's ideas swept through society.

I read a book many years ago in the Santa Cruz Public Library on a day off titled "The Battle for Creation". In it, evolutionists lamented the fact that their favored world view, which once seemed so triumphant, was now being successfully challenged in public forum by Christian churches once intimidated into silence in the public arena on the subject. These same once-cowed and placid entities were now bringing repeated challenges for public school education on teachings on origins.

The author noted that after Darwin, every voice of opposition from the religious world fell silent, with a single exception: Ellen G. White. After her, the Seventh-day Adventist professor Dr. George McGreedy Price of Pacific Union College began employing scientific evidences in favor of the Creation model of origins. Others began doing the same. And now, sadly, (for the evolutionist's view of matters) many Christian churches had picked up that once flickering torch, and were scorching evolutionists with it at every turn. They were losing public debates and also public support for the promotion of their teaching, a thing they had long simply assumed.

It was all the Seventh-day Adventist's fault! If that flickering wick of an Adventist Sabbath-keeping prophet, and those who looked to her teaching, had been only extinguished, atheistic (or at least the fish/fowl hybrid of "theistic evolution") would have held entire, permanent sway over the minds of the masses. Now, sadly, that was not so...and was getting more not so all the time.

I must say, that bit of information from the camp of the opponents of the Biblical view of origin made me proud to be a Creator-worshiping Seventh day Adventist! There is an organic and unbreakable link between keeping the seventh-day Saturday Sabbath of the Bible's teaching out of reverence for our Creator, in keeping with the repeated teachings of the Bible that declares His truth on matters of origin, and the example of Jesus and the apostles, and the ability to stand up against opposing world views that would deny, by clear implication, all of these things. If you are not willing to obey the teaching of the Bible in this matter, or any other, you will quickly find yourself in a position to no longer know clearly what you believe either. That was the case with the Christian world as a whole only a few generations ago on the matter of origins. It remains a practical truth today, as well. Do it, and you'll know it. Don't do it, and you may, or may not, be able to argue in its favor, with any conviction, or success.

As for the author of "The Battle for Creation", he states that it was Seventh-day Adventists in particular, with their Sabbath observance and insistence on hanging on to the Biblical view of origins tenaciously, when it had been abandoned by all other religious groups, who proved to be the beginning of the undoing of Darwin's theory in the minds of men. We are their most effective, most persistent, and most harmful opposition.

Hey, thanks for the compliment! Glad you noticed.