OUR DAMAGED PLANET

We have now seen that the cosmos, the solar system and the earth have all been subject to catastrophes in the past. After the Flood on earth, God promised Noah that there would never be another Flood, and God used the rainbow as the symbol of His promise. But although the earth was safe from another global Flood, still the earth was changed by the Flood as sin tightened its grip over the creation.

God had promised in Genesis chapter 3 that if man ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that death would surely ensue; and as we have seen, Romans 8:22 clearly states that this death and destruction extends not only over mankind, but over the cosmos as well. So the earth was damaged by the Flood. It became a less congenial world. It was a harsher world where life often had to struggle for survival.

One change since the Flood is the occurrence of lightning storms and other kinds of storm activity. Genesis 2:5-6 indicate that there was no rain before the Flood. In fact, Genesis chapter 2 talks about the pre-Flood water distribution cycle over the face of the earth. We are told that the earth was watered by a mist every day (Genesis 2:6), and that in the garden of Eden there was a system of rivers with four heads that also watered the earth (Genesis 2:10).

Clearly the watering of the earth before the Flood was equable (it happened everywhere) and predictable (it happened every day). It was gentle (see Note 5). Now, however, the rain cycle though absolutely necessary for life today, is flawed. It does not distribute the rain evenly. Sometimes it is violent in its instability. One region can be flooded while another place only a few hundred miles away may be parched with drought. The water distribution cycle today has suffered along with the rest of creation because of sin.

The earth shows other kinds of upheavals. Volcanic eruptions seem to be a phenomenon that has resulted because of instabilities initiated by the Flood. Other remnants of the destructiveness of the Flood remain on the face of the earth. The Grand Canyon, for example, is a giant drainage ditch formed in the aftermath of the Flood. The entire earth bears scars from the immense activity of the Flood.

The Bible promises that one day Christ will intervene in His creation to make all things new. Isaiah 65:17 tells us that if Christ did not miraculously renew His creation that it would eventually grow old and wear out. And the book of Revelation claims in chapters 20 and 21 that at the consummation of all things Christ will establish a new creation, a creation free of the catastrophe and disaster we see today. The new creation will be much like the original creation. It will be perfect and blameless. It will operate perfectly. There will be no want, no crying, and no death. The curse on the creation today is not a permanent part of reality.

Evolutionary philosophy, of course, teaches that through eons of evolutionary development the struggle for existence has been a permanent fixture of nature. Evolutionary philosophy goes on to claim that it is this struggle for existence, with its resulting death and extinction, which has ultimately allowed more complex and sophisticated life to evolve.

In other words, according to the evolutionary philosophy, death is the author of life. Yet even science teaches that only life can yield life. "Life comes only from life" is one of the primary statements of modern-day biology. And certainly the Scripture has the same teaching. The Scripture teaches that life comes only from life, and ultimately from Christ Who is the Author of all life.

The evolutionary assertion that death has yielded life by way of extinction and struggle is actually a satanic inversion of the truth. But in the Christian philosophy, in the Biblical statements that promise a complete renewal of the creation, we have the basis for real hope rather than despair. The creation, though now cursed by sin and groaning under decay, will not always be in this present self-destruct mode. One day the creation will be renewed and the terrible effects of man's sin will be purged away.