The Conflict of the Ages

By Arno Clement Gaebelein

Chapter

The Great Enigma

The marvelous universe with its countless stars and distant nebulae, the earth upon which man dwells, animate and inanimate creation, life itself, and above all, human existence and destiny—these are all a great enigma. For thousands of years members of the race, endowed with the faculty of reasoning, the capacity to search and to explore, have raised certain questions. Some answers have been found, yet the most vital questions have not been answered in the past and, in spite of the boasts of certain scientists, they remain unanswered today.  

What is the origin of this almost infinite space we call universe? How did it all come into existence? How did the laws which govern and uphold the different solar systems with an astonishing precision, perfect and inerrant, originate? Is our earth the only planet on which life is flourishing? How did life originate on our globe? What is man? What is the future of the earth? What is going on in these heavens so deep and so mysterious? What is in existence beyond the farthest point reached by the most powerful telescope? These are a very few of the many questions which have baffled scientific efforts and which constitute the great enigma.  

There are plenty of theories which attempt and propose a solution. Many times certain cocksure scientists have announced triumphantly their discoveries, assuming that at least a part of the riddle had at last been solved. But soon after their findings, other scientists, by their research, have proved the supposed solution incorrect and another exploded hypothesis has been buried in the ever-growing graveyard of forgotten scientific theories.  

Human science—what is it? We let another answer with well-chosen words. "It is, as we know only too well, an edifice composed of light and darkness, of truth and error, of humble research and arrogant dogmatism, of daring hypothesis and clearly demonstrated theories, of millions of facts and billions of thoughts, of the inborn and the acquired, of yes and no, of dreams of the past and the future, of unbending prose and high-flown poesy; an edifice continually being built up, now slowly, now quickly, and in constant need of repair, ever growing, yet never completed."1  

What ludicrous things have been taught and are being taught by these scientists who ridicule the faith of Christians, who push aside God's revelation found in His Word, and who arrogantly assume that direct Creatorship according to Holy Scriptures is incredible! Their theories make the greatest demand upon man's credulity.  

We mention but one still advocated by a number of scientists. They say that the simplest forms of life were carried and are carried through space by tiny particles and picked up in some unexplainable way. These particles containing life-germs were carried by meteorites to our globe. This explains the existence of all life found on our earth, in a drop of water, or in the unsearchable depths of the sea, animal life in thousands upon thousands of varieties, and also human life. But a meteorite rushing through space becomes a fiery, a red hot, mass. How then could a little speck of life have survived such an intense heat? Only a miracle can account for such a survival. And tell us, O ye scientists, where did these dust particles, carrying the life germs, come from? The denial of an omnipotent creator postulates the self-generation of these dust particles. Another unbelievable miracle.  

As this is not a work dealing with the different theories of science and pseudo-science, endorsed by modernism of the religious stamp—theories which are the stock in trade of the different brands of atheism—we do not cite other equally ludicrous assumptions which do not come anywhere near the solution of the great enigma.  

Yet one thing needs to be said—all these theories have one common trend. They uphold a spontaneous generation. Dead matter, they say, was always existing, hence it must be eternal. They do not believe in the existence of an eternal Being, God, but they believe in the eternity of matter, call it protoplasm or by any other name. This dead matter was quickened into life by natural law. Life called thus into existence by spontaneous generation gradually shaped itself into manifold and marvelous expressions, culminating in the race of human beings. Therefore not only matter is self-made, but natural law, also, is self-existent; it developed itself, endowed itself without any outside influences, with super-intelligence, producing all the marvelous things in nature— things so great that man is unable to comprehend them. To offer as a solution of the enigma of life, such theories as these—dead matter producing life, and life shaping itself into hundreds of thousands of different forms, through self-made laws, devoid of free will—is a gross insult to the intelligence of any human being. Nature reveals everywhere astonishing designs. Over a hundred years ago Dr. Paley wrote his "Natural Theology" in which this great scholar uncovers the marvels of the human body and some of its delicate organs like the eye and the ear, at the same time tracing other equally amazing designs in other spheres of life. His arguments demolish the whole infidel theory of chance and blind laws. What a blessing it would be if this master-work could be republished and put into the hands of our youth, to save them from the high school and college parrots, who still prattle and babble over long-exploded theories.  

Louis Agassiz, the great scientist, started out as an atheist. After progressing in his scientific research, he became deeply convinced that his atheism was a miserable, a lying invention. The study of nature led him to nature's God and he became a believer and an earnest worshipper. Nor is he the only eminent scientist who has acknowledged the superiority of the supernatural knowledge offered to man in the Bible. There are many others. One of the noblest words spoken by the great scientist, Lord Kelvin, is the following: "We are absolutely forced by science to believe with perfect confidence in a Directive Power— in an influence other than physical or dynamical or electrical forces." And now, after certain infidels have had their say for several decades as to spontaneous generation and these mysterious laws of nature, the leading, the foremost, scientists of our times are almost in unison that the rule of blind law in nature can no longer be maintained.  

Dr. Fitchett, in his lecture on "The Unrealized Logic of Religion" says: "It were as easy to believe that, say, Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' had been set up in all its stately march of balanced syllables by an anthropoid ape, or that the letters composing it had been blown together by a whirlwind, as to believe that the visible universe about us—built upon mathematical laws, knitted together by a million correspondences, and crowded thick with marks of purpose —is the creation of some mindless Force."2 And the late Professor Francis Bowen of Boston, Massachusetts, a great thinker, has left us the following declaration: "I have faithfully studied most of what the philosophy of these modern times, and the science of our own day, assume to teach. And the result is, that I am now more firmly convinced than ever, that what has been justly called the 'dirt philosophy' of materialism and fatalism is baseless and false. I accept with unhesitating conviction and belief the doctrine of a being of one personal God, the Creator and Governor of the world, and of one Lord Jesus Christ, in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; and I have found nothing whatever in the literature of modern infidelity, which, to my mind, casts even the slightest doubt upon that belief."  

One of the greatest materialists of the nineteenth century was Ernest Haeckel. An ardent defender of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, he uttered a sentence which is of much significance. He said: "If we do not accept  the hypothesis of spontaneous generation we must have recourse to the miracle of a supernatural creation." In other words, when the spontaneous generation theory is disproved, the only other alternative is direct creation. Not so long ago much was being said by certain boasting scientists that they were on the high road to producing life artificially. Among the most loud-mouthed was a certain Professor Loeb. He tried to manufacture living cells out of some slimy matter. We do no longer hear of such foolish attempts, because true scientists know the truth, "Omne vivum ex vivo"— "all life from life." Pasteur and Tyndall have given the death-blow to the spontaneous generation invention. And all materialists should ponder over one of the last utterances of the famous Lord Kelvin: "It is impossible to conceive either the beginning or the continuance of life without an overruling creative power. I feel profoundly convinced that the argument of design has been greatly too much lost sight of in recent zoological speculation. Overpoweringly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us, showing to us through nature the influence of a free will, and teaching us that all living things depend on one everlasting Creator and Ruler."  

Scientist after scientist has expressed his opinion that spontaneous generation cannot be proved and is nothing but a myth. Professor Conn, in his "Evolution of Today" (page 26) says: "There is not the slightest evidence that living matter could arise from non-living matter. Spontaneous generation is universally given up." And years before, another eminent searcher, M. de Quatrefages reached the following conclusions: "I make bold to affirm that the deeper science penetrates into the secrets of organization and phenomena, the more does she demonstrate how wide and how profound is the abyss which separates brute matter from living things." In view of such outspoken declarations of real scientists, the words of H. G. Wells, in his "Science of Life," appear puerile: "As a matter of history, life on this planet originated not from life." But how weighty and significant are the words of the co-worker of Charles Darwin, Alfred Russell Wallace: "So marvelous and so varied are the phenomena presented by living things, so completely do their powers transcend those of all other forms of matter subjected to mechanical, physical, or chemical laws, that biologists have vainly endeavored to find out what is at the bottom of their strange manifestation and to give precise definitions, in terms of physical science, of what life really is." Thales, six hundred years before Christ, expressed his belief that all life originated in sea-water. Materialists have travelled the same road and now, over 2500 years after, are not nearer the solution of the origin of life. The Darwinian Evolution is dead, a thing of the past, and all the other materialistic theories are on their death beds. Men of real scholarship acknowledge readily that the enigma of the beginning of life remains unsolved. They admit very frankly that spontaneous generation remains, and will always remain, an unproved theory.  

Let us listen to just a few of them. Professor William Bateson of Cambridge, one of the greatest biologists, says: "It is impossible for scientists longer to agree with Darwin's theory of the origin of species."  

Dr. W. H. Thompson, former president of the New York Academy of Medicine, declared "The Darwinian theory is now rejected by the majority of biologists as absurdly inadequate."  

Dr. Etheridge of the British Museum, the leading authority on fossils, says: "Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation, and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views."  

Here are the words of Professor Beale of King's College, London: "In support of all naturalistic conjectures concerning man's origin, there is not at this time a shadow of scientific evidence."  

And Herbert Spencer, an outstanding evolutionist, made the fatal admission that: "No scientist of repute ever claimed that evolution is science. It is only an unproved hypothesis."  

Professor Huxley said: "Evolution, if consistently believed, makes it impossible to believe the Bible." And Professor Drummond—who was a professed Christian and who had fallen for evolution—before he died declared: "I am going back to the Book to believe it and to receive it, as I did at first. I can no longer live on uncertainties."  

Professor Virchow, who was one of the foremost medical men and scientists, said: "It is all nonsense. It cannot be proved by science that man descended from the ape or any other animal. Since the announcement of the theory, all real scientific knowledge has proceeded in the opposite direction."  

Another Englishman, Sir Charles Bell of London, made the statement: "Everything declares the species to have their origin in distinct creation."  

An eminent German zoologist, Professor Fleischmann of Erlangen, adds his testimony by saying: "The Darwinian theory of descent has in the realm of nature not a single fact to confirm it. It is not the result of scientific research, but purely the product of imagination."  

We realize that few scientists today, though evolutionists many of them, are no longer Darwinians. The point is that Darwin's five causes of evolution—survival of the fittest, heredity, variations, struggle for existence and natural selection—are admitted by men like Bateson and others to be impossible as causes of evolution. Yet, while Darwinism is as dead as it can be, evolution persists. Many leading biologists confess their total ignorance as to the cause of evolution, yet they still believe in it.  

Therefore we have said: "Darwinism is dead and all other materialistic theories are on their death beds." Yet, in spite of these facts and the increasing demonstrations that Darwinism and spontaneous generation are unscientific—totally unproved—high school teachers and college professors, male and female, continue to teach the young the lies and deceptions of Darwin—paving for our youth the way which leads into atheism, radicalism and immoral lawlessness. And words fail us when we think of the so-called "clergymen" who pose as "Christian leaders," who have violated their ordination vows and who brazenly hiss forth these lies as scientific facts. If they had a drop of honest blood in their veins they would drop their Christian profession, disown their affiliation with evangelical denominations, and accept the invitation of "Free-thinkers" and "Atheists" to join hands with them in the attempted destruction of the Truth of God.  

Inasmuch, then, as spontaneous generation is dead and gone—an exploded theory (as Ernst Haeckel said)—supernatural creation remains as the only alternative. But who is going to give us light and understanding as to supernatural creation? Who is going to answer satisfactorily the agelong question as to the origin of all things? True it is spontaneous generation being inadmissible and impossible furnishes indirectly the proof of a direct creation. But this is not satisfactory. We need something more positive. Can it be obtained by more research, by more powerful microscopes and telescopes? Is man, by searching alone, going to solve the great enigma? Or is there another channel through which the needed knowledge, the knowledge which science is unable to bestow upon us, may be obtained?  

Without a moment's hesitation we answer this question affirmatively. The human race has at its disposal a supernatural knowledge given in a supernatural way. This knowledge which offers to man the Truth is positive, fixed, unchangeable, unaffected by the changing things of time. It is a knowledge which transcends human reason, a knowledge which is offered to man to believe. Scientific knowledge is only deduction and as such nothing but sinking sand. But this higher knowledge is not gained by reasoning deductions, but by acceptance of faith. Well said Emanuel Geibel: "The end of philosophy is to know that we must believe."  

But who has this super-knowledge to offer? Where does it come from? The knowledge which brings to man the Truth and the solution of the great enigma comes from the Almighty Creator, God Himself. It is divine revelation knowledge.  

According to David, the illustrious King of Israel, it is only the fool who says in his heart "There is no God" (Psa. xiv:l). This was written by David three thousand years ago. Even at that time men were living who were mental perverts and attempted the denial of the existence of a Being by whom all seen things were made. The King who lived a life crowded with the evidences that God is—who had fellowship with Him, had received messages by His Spirit, was led and preserved by Him—brands the atheist a fool. Belief in God, as the author has shown in another volume (3), is a universal fact in the human race. Polytheism, fetishism, animism, and other forms of paganism, have for a basis belief in the unseen and in supernatural beings. Nor is polytheism (the worship of many idols) the original form of worship, which, according to evolution, man adopted when he came forth from his animal ancestry. Far from that! The most painstaking and scholarly anthropologists have brought to light that monotheism, the belief in one God, was the belief of the human race at one time. They knew God, the Creator of heaven and earth, in the beginning. The atheist is contranatural; he belies his own consciousness. Atheism is a mental obsession, a mental perversion; it denies what demons cannot deny. "Thou believest there is one God; thou doest well, the demons also believe and tremble" (James ii:19). It is no compliment to our civilization when men and women, cultured and uncultured, learned and unlearned, turn to atheism. It is not progress but one of the outstanding evidences of degeneration.  

A God, who created all things, whose offspring man is, demands a revelation.  

Man cannot know God by himself. God must come down to man and reveal Himself to His creature. "Canst thou  by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection" (Job. xi:7).

That God has revealed Himself in His creation is an unquestionable fact. "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge" (Psa. xix:l-2). "The visible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead" (Rom. i:20). All nature bears witness to the existence of an Almighty God, who has manifested His Omnipotence and His Wisdom everywhere. The greatest scientists are not the materialists, the atheists, but men who believed in God, for they discovered His footprints in creation. Copernicus, the founder of the great system which made his name immortal, was a godly man. He requested to have put on his tombstone the words: "That which Thou hast granted the dying thief is all I ask." Kepler, an equally great astronomer, whose discoveries are as great as Newton's, concluded his most important work with these words: "I thank Thee Lord, Creator, that Thou hast given me this joy in Thy creation, this delight in the works of Thy hands. I have proclaimed the glory of Thy works to man as far as my finite mind was capable of grasping Thy infinity. If I have said anything which is unworthy of Thee, or if I sought after mine own honor, forgive me." Sir Isaac Newton, whose discoveries still are unsurpassed, in spite of the claims of a certain infidel, was a diligent student of the Bible and a firm believer in its infallible Truths. Linneaus, the greatest naturalist of all times, when discovering inflorescence, cried out with delight: "I have seen the footprints of God." William Herschel, another great astronomer, said: "The wider the field of science extends, the more numerous and indisputable become the proofs of the eternal existence of a creative and almighty wisdom." Leibnitz, one of the most powerful thinkers, was a believer, the author of a beautiful hymn: "Jesus, whose death and suffering have brought us life and joy." One of the greatest chemists was Liebig. He unreservedly and joyfully confessed his faith in God and said: "The chief value and glory of science is that it promotes true Christianity."  

Among the more recent astronomers, Maedler holds a high rank. He made the statement: "A true student of nature cannot be an unbeliever; natural law and God's law are one and the same." Similar confessions have come from the lips of Faraday, Robert Mayer, Agassiz, Pasteur, Lavoisier, Cuvier and many others.  

We quote but one more, who is, we believe the greatest living American scientist, Professor R. A. Millikan, of California. He writes in his "Science and Life" (page 56): "It seems to me as obvious as breathing that every man who is sufficiently in his senses to recognize his own inability to comprehend the problem of existence, to understand whence he himself came and whither he is going, must in the very admission of that ignorance and finiteness recognize the existence of Something, a Power, a Being, in whom and because of whom he himself lives and moves and has his being. That Power, that Something, that Existence, we call God."  

Still more outspoken are the words of Professor Shepardson, an electrical engineer of International reputation, who says: "The evidence obtainable from study of material phenomena gives us confidence in concluding that a Supreme Being exists, that He is profoundly intelligent, that He designed and constructed and governs the universe, and that He encourages those who seek to learn of His works and ways."4  

But there is a higher source from which this knowledge springs. God has revealed Himself in and through His Word. While Creation reveals Him in His Omnipotence, in His Wisdom, and all Creation makes known His Glory, the great enigma is not solved by these things.  

When Walter Scott, the well-known novelist and poet, was approaching the end of his life, he requested his son-in-law to bring to him the book. The son-in-law asked the  dying man, "What book?" Sir Walter answered: "There is but one Book— the Bible."

Countless thousands have found out that when it comes to dying that there is only one book. That Book is rightly called "The Book of books." We have no time or space to waste with the refutation of the coarse and perverted attacks which present day atheist and free-thinkers have launched against the Book. Nor do we pay attention to the more subtle attacks which are so widespread in Christendom itself, which masquerade under the name of Bible-Criticism. The atheist openly and boldly stabs the Bible with his dagger; the baptized infidels in the different evangelical denominations betray the Bible with the Judas kiss.  

Frequently the writer has been asked for a substantial reason of his unswerving faith in this Book as the infallible revelation of God, in which the things unknowable by scientific research are made known. The answer he gives is—the Bible itself. We have read and studied this Book for over sixty years. With many millions of human beings, among them the most noble of the highest intellect, we, too, have found that this Book contains in its blessed pages the words of eternal life and brings to the mind and heart the knowledge which satisfies and gives assurance. The more the great Book is read and searched the more the conviction grows that it is not an empty, unmeaning, human phraseology which the chosen instruments, who produced its pages, wrote several thousand times: "Thus saith the Lord," and "The Word of the Lord came unto me," and again "The Lord spoke unto me." The more one turns in the spirit of reverence to this Book the stronger becomes the conviction that the Book is "God-breathed."  

The holy men of God wrote as they were moved and controlled by the omniscient Spirit of God. The sixty-six books which compose the Bible were written by different men under different circumstances yet they present a supernatural unity, which can only be explained by the one supernatural author. We compare it to a magnificent structure resting upon an unmovable rock. As we enter the portal and explore the structure we discover marvelous things. As we climb higher and higher the vision enlarges; through its windows we look over the distant past and before us spreads the panorama of the future, till we reach the great capstone, the final great revelation, from which we behold human destiny in the endless ages of eternity.  

The real scientist, not the scienticulist with a smattering of picked-up knowledge, sees God's footprints in all Creation. In a far higher sense the true student of the Bible can trace God's footprints in all history, learn from it what Being He is, find here His majestic and infinite attributes. He is seen in His Omnipotence, as the Eternal One, in His Omniscience, in His Omnipresence; He is Light, Holiness and Righteousness, He is Love, all-merciful, the God of Mercy and of Grace. This is the unsurpassed glory of the Book— God—Revelation. Human reason cannot comprehend Him; the finite can never reach up to the infinite. Faith accepts Him and finds in the knowledge of Him the help, the comfort, the joy and peace, which no science is able to give.  

But the Bible also reveals the origin of man, solves the enigma of human existence and makes known human destiny. Here we receive the knowledge that man is not like the beast that dies, that he is not evolved from the beast, but is a created being in a class by himself. In him is the breath of the Almighty, he possesses endless being. Between the lowest man and the highest developed beast is therefore a gulf which cannot be bridged. All attempts to find the missing link are hopeless. How can one find a thing which does not exist?  

And this Book with its super-knowledge, with its solution of the great riddle, is hated and despised today as never before. Yet in spite of all the hatred, all the pernicious attacks to destroy the Book, or to undermine its authority, the old Book stands. It will continue to stand for God and His Word are One. So let the turbulent, the turbid and the angry waves of atheism, modernism and other forms of infidelity dash with increasing force against the Rock of Ages. The waves will cast up their own mire and dirt, only to be broken to pieces. The Rock will stand.  

Unspeakably majestic is its beginning. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." This one sentence, composed in the Hebrew of seven words silences forever the invented theories of man and annihilates the false religious inventions with which man tries to satisfy his religious instinct.  

Here is the complete and final answer to materialism and spontaneous generation. The different forms of agnosticism are refuted; atheism is given the lie, and polytheism and pantheism are wiped out by these seven words.  

The charge is brought against the Bible that it fixes Creation as having taken place some six thousand years ago. The Bible does not make any such claim. The date put over against the first verse of the Bible in some editions— 4004 B. C.—is put there by man. It is no part of the inspired text. The age of the physical earth is not revealed in God's Word and science gives only the wildest guesses. Perhaps the reason why this is not revealed in the Bible is that no human figures could express the age of our globe.  

But what is the meaning of the second verse of Genesis where we read that the earth was without form and void, or as it should be translated, waste and empty? Geology gives us an interesting information in connection with this mysterious chaos. It reveals the fact that originally this earth existed in a different form from what it is today. It once sustained a gigantic animal creation and an equally gigantic vegetation. Something happened to this prehistoric earth. It was plunged into death and destruction; a great cataclysmic change took place. It remained in that condition for an incalculable period of time during which the earth was submerged in water and probably covered with ice. What happened to the original earth? Why did the Creator let it go down into the night of death?  

In our next chapter we shall touch briefly on the possible solution of this mystery. From the Creation account we learn that God in His own time, and that was but recently, dispelled the darkness by light, commanded the light to shine out of darkness, and commanded the earth to come out of the state of death on the third day. The earth is garnished once more with vegetation and a new animal world is called into existence.  

It is interesting to find that the word "create" is used thrice in the first chapter of the Bible. It is found in the first verse in connection with the beginning of all things, when God created out of nothing. It is found in the twenty-first verse in connection with the new animal Creation and finally it is used in connection with the creation of man. The other word used is "made." This necessitates the existence of matter, which is shaped into something. So God put the earth into the condition as the dwelling place of an intelligent being. That being is man.  

What dignity God's Word puts upon man! God speaks in the plural, because while He is One, there is with Him in all eternity His Word and His Spirit. "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing, that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them." Man's constitution is more minutely given in the second chapter of the Bible.  

"And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." It is this which differentiates man from the beast. Man is the offspring of God. If these opening chapters of this Book are not true, then throw your Bible away; it begins all with a lie! But if there is a beginning, as there is, a God, a heaven, and an earth, and man the offspring of God, then the Bible is true to the last word concerning the new heaven and the new earth.  

And man is seen in fellowship with His Creator. He is not described as a half-ape only uttering grunts without intelligent language. The first man possessed a higher intelligence than man possesses today. God showed to Adam His created beings, every beast and every fowl, to see what Adam would call them. "And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field." Let us suppose that Mars is inhabited and possesses an animal creation adapted to that planet. Let us suppose that in some way a Committee of Scientists headed by H. G. Wells and Albert Einstein were suddenly transported to Mars and confronted with the different animals found on that planet. Would they be able to name them in as correct a way as Adam did? Certainly not. Adam possessed the knowledge of God's creation, the knowledge now lost to man, which he tries to recover and which eludes his grasp. But something happened to man. The fellowship, the great purpose of man's existence, was broken. The mystery of lawlessness was born. The tragic history of the human race begins; it is still being written as never before.  

But even the Bible, the written Word of God, is not the very highest revelation of God, in which knowledge is offered and the great enigma is solved. There is a higher revelation. It is the revelation of God in His Son, the eternal Word of God, known in history as the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible had announced His coming. Prophet after prophet had by divine inspiration written of His person and of His work. He appeared and entered human existence in the supernatural way of the Virgin Birth, conceived by the Holy Spirit. He came to make the invisible God visible in His Person. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him" (John i:18). "All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life and the life was the light of men" (John i:3-4). "This is the true God and the eternal Life" (1 John v:20). His own words of self-witness confirm these and other statements. "I and the Father are One" (John x:80). "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father" (John xiv:9). He spoke of His works as a witness of His Deity. Omnipotence and Omniscience were constantly displayed in His life among men. His moral character manifests holiness and righteousness; God's Love and Mercy are revealed in Him. In his words of truths He confirms the revealed facts as to God, the origin of man and human destiny. But the highest purpose of the manifestation of God in the person of His Son, the eternal Word, was the solution of the mystery of lawlessness, to redeem man, to bring man back to God, to reveal the Love of God and ultimately defeat the forces of evil, to dethrone lawlessness and bring all things back to God.  

The solution of the great enigma is found in the Person and Work of the Son of God and in the great revelations of the Spirit of God, who has come to show to man the marvelous truths of redemption, the ultimate goal of human existence and all in Him "in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." Evolution and any other materialistic science has failed to explain His supernatural Person. It can never explain Him. All it can do is to negate.

 

1 Prof. Bettex, "Science and Christianity," page 191.

2 The author is indebted for this and other quotations to the excellent volume by Prof. Dr. Theodor Graebner, "God and the Cosmos," a work which we cannot recommend too highly.

3 "Christianity or Religion?" by searching find out God?

4 "The Religion of an Electrical Engineer."