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A VISIT TO THE MUSEUM by Dr. R. L. Hymers, Jr. A sermon preached on Lord’s Day Morning, July 22, 2007 “And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:25). |
When I was a little boy about eight years old, my mother took me to the great museum at Exposition Park, near the University of Southern California (USC). I still remember that visit as vividly as though it were yesterday. I remember “The Hall of Evolving Life,” which proclaimed the theory of evolution in graphic designs, pictures, reconstructions of “stages in animal life” – all given to support the Darwinian theory of evolution. I believed everything I saw in those halls at the Museum of Natural History in Exposition Park, next to the University of Southern California. I knew evolution was true because my mother told me it was – and because I saw what seemed to be irrefutable proof of it in that museum.
Later, at the age of twenty, I became a Christian in a sudden, unexpected conversion to Christ. It was then that I read the verses in Genesis, chapter one, from which our text is taken. The passage I read was recited to us in the Scripture reading that one of our deacons, Dr. Chan, read a moment ago before the sermon. What the Bible said in that passage was the opposite to what I had seen in the museum exhibits. Those exhibits said that one form of life evolved out of another. At the door leading to those exhibits on evolution was a sign that said, “Line of Descent from Amoeba to Man.” But this contradicted what I now read in that passage in Genesis 1:21-25,
“And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:21).
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so” (Genesis 1:24).
“And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:25).
Then God said that man was a special creation, apart from the “kinds” of animals, birds and reptiles He had created after their kind. Man was a special “kind” also, created by the hand of God.
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them”
(Genesis 1:27)
Dr. Henry M. Morris said,
The types of animals mentioned in this passage are apparently intended to include every inhabitant of the waters and atmosphere. Furthermore, each was produced to reproduce after its own kind… Modern genetics has shown that all [life on earth functions] in the framework of the marvelous information program in the DNA molecule. The DNA for each kind is programmed to allow wide variations within the kind, but not beyond the kind itself (Henry M. Morris, Ph.D., The Genesis Record, Baker Book House, 1986 edition, pages 69-70).
Dr. Morris went on to say,
There was no evolutionary struggle for existence among these animals either, for “God saw that it was good.” Neither did one kind evolve into a different kind, because God made each category “after his kind” (ibid., p. 71).
Regarding the separate “kinds,” Dr. Charles C. Ryrie said,
After their kind. There are fixed boundaries beyond which reproductive variations cannot go (The Ryrie Study Bible, note on Genesis 1:11).
Each “kind” of animal is contained in fixed boundaries, beyond which they cannot go. As Dr. W. A. Criswell put it,
The Bible gives a conclusive and definite statement that God created these life forms [these “kinds”]. Each one He created in a group of his kind, and these kinds are never broken. They are unbreakable units in the creative act of God (W. A. Criswell, Ph.D., Messages From My Heart, REL Publications, 1994, page 29).
But let’s go back to the Museum. I went there to the Museum of Natural History next door to USC. A little later Dr. W. A. Criswell went there. I’m going to give you Dr. Criswell’s observations. These are his words, edited slightly, taken from Messages From My Heart (W. A. Criswell, Ph.D., REL Publications, 1994, pp. 30-35).
First, when I walked through the door, I saw on the right a long poster entitled, “The Histomat of Evolution,” and then the sub-title, “Ten Thousand Million Years.”… So, I looked at the page, and on the inside read, “Line of Descent from Amoeba to Man.” Supposedly from the amoeba evolved the unsegmented worms; then evolved into invertebrates; then primitive sharks; then amphibians; then reptiles; then mammals; then monkeys; then apes; then the Piltdown Man – I especially noticed him [So did I. The reconstructed hoax of the Piltdown Man was there when I went to the Museum in the late 1940s and was still there when Dr. Criswell went in the 1950s. But in 1956 it was discovered to be constructed from a piece of the skull of an ape that had been dead less than fifty years, painted deliberately to make it look ancient, and foisted on the public as a “Piltdown Man’]; and finally, [in that hall] man evolved into man. The forward to that poster at the beginning of the “Halls of Evolving Life” said,
The subject of evolution has been considered as being opposed to religious principles. It is becoming increasingly evident, however, that a wider dissemination of the scientific data of biological evolution will have only one result – the building of a new and greater faith in life…
Do you see? In the foreword at the beginning of the Halls of Evolving Life the writer said that evolution opposes “religious principles” but builds a new and greater faith in life. But it doesn’t build faith in God! It is a repudiation of God. It leaves God out. It empties the universe of God. For a while men will follow religious ceremonies that have been emptied of their meaning – but not for long. After the religious content has been emptied…of its revelation and of its truth, it is not long until thinking men abandon those religious forms completely. And that will happen to anyone who embraces atheistic, materialistic evolution! You may be religious for a while. Your children may have a half-way form of Christianity – but after a while they will give it up altogether. Why? Because it has no meaning, it has no relevancy, no answers to the questions of life. The writer of that plaque at the beginning of the Halls of Evolving Life said, in effect, “Give us time and we will build a greater world and a greater faith in life.” But God says an altogether different thing about mankind. God says we were created perfect, but then fell into sin, and from that fall we cannot redeem ourselves. Then God gives us the unfolding of the great plan of the ages in the redemptive sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. But let us go into the museum.
We are now entering that great museum. One of the great halls in the museum is called the “Hall of Evolving Life” – and we are going inside that wonderful hall to see unveiled before us the forms of evolving life.
So we enter the hall. And what do I see? First, there is a skull of a New World Monkey. Then by the side of that there is a skull of an Old World Monkey. Then by that there is the skull of an ape; and by the side of that is the skull of a man. The skulls of the monkeys look like monkey skulls to me – animal skulls. The skull of a man looks like a man’s skull.
The second exhibit is this: first, there is the skeleton of a man. Next to that is the skeleton of a chimpanzee. To me, the skeleton of a man looks like the skeleton of a man, and the skeleton of the chimpanzee looks like the skeleton of a chimpanzee. In the next exhibit the leg bones of eight or nine animals are shown. All of this was supposed to demonstrate the evolution of life.
I could not believe that trained scientists would try to demonstrate such a far-reaching doctrine as the theory of evolution by just putting behind those glass windows several skeletons that can be found almost anywhere in the earth.
It would be as if you looked at the houses you see in the world. You noticed that they all have floors, ceilings, walls, windows, and doors – so you classified and arranged them according to an ascending scale. Here you have a little dog house. Next you have a big dog house. Then you have a shack. Then a little house, and then a mansion. Finally you have a castle. And when you get them all arranged, from the smallest to the largest, you say, “See, this castle evolved out of that little dog house.”
Someone may object, “But you’re talking about inanimate things, things that are not alive, and non-living things do not evolve.” When I say that little dog houses do not evolve into castles and you say that it is because they are not living objects, that is not any more ridiculous than when the evolutionist says that life sprang spontaneously from dead and lifeless matter. Yet that is what the evolutionist would have me believe, when he says that all the living organisms in the world evolved from a protoplasm that spontaneously came to life from inanimate chemicals.
Why, this exhibit of bones proves not a thing in the world. If you are looking for meaning in this exhibit, it is this: When God made all the various forms of life, He gave to each one the finest construction. God did not change one original being into different “kinds,” but gave the best to each one.
“And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:25).
“And God saw that it was good.” God chose the best form and gave it to the animals He created. God chose the best form and gave it to the man He made. That is all those structural likenesses indicate. But as for one evolving out of the other, there is no semblance of proof in it at all.
Now let us go to the main exhibit in the “Halls of Evolving Life.” This was the exhibit I had been looking forward to seeing for a long time. There it was, entitled “The Ascent of Equus,” the evolution of the horse. The caption under that headline read, “The Ascent of Equus – beginning Eohippus.” The Greek word for horse is hippos. So Eohippus means “Dawn-Horse” – the first horse at the dawn of time. Beginning with Eohippus, the exhibit traces the supposed changes of the horse through presumably forty-five million years of natural evolution and a few hundred years of domestication. We would now see, in this exhibit, forty-five million years in the evolution of the horse.
My fingers tingled, my eyes dilated, my mind quickened! What a great exhibit I was going to see!
I came into the room where the “Dawn Horse” was located. This is what I saw. There were five exhibits of skeletons of horses. Number one: “Pliocene Horse – Plesippus Shockonenis” – Early One-toed Horse which, the sign said, lived two million years ago. I looked at the skeleton and it was the skeleton of a horse. Just an ordinary horse. Just a horse! I looked at the sign and read it again: “Early One-Toed Horse of Two Million Years Ago.” Well, the “one-toe” was just a hoof, exactly like any horse’s hoof today!
The second skeleton was a Pleistocene Horse, Equus Occidentalis – a Western Horse. The sign said, “Western Horse of California Fifty Thousand Years Ago. Extinct Before Historic Times, from Rancho La Brea Pleistocene Asphalt Deposits.” I looked at that horse and it had one toe, just like the other horse. But the sign never mentioned that, and the second skeleton looked exactly like the first one, just a little larger and, supposedly, one million nine hundred fifty thousand years later.
The third exhibit was a domestic horse from today, labeled as such. The fourth exhibit was the skeleton of a draft horse. I looked at it and I said to myself, “Surely there’s something more around here than that! There’s bound to be something more than this, because they are demonstrating to me fifty million years of the evolution of the horse, the ascent of equus, and all I see here are just five skeletons of horses.” So I looked around and found something else. Over by a rail there was a little glass case with a sign that read: “Eohippus Borealis – Northern Dawn Horse – Earliest known ancestor of the modern horse. Lived in North America during the Lower Eocene, fifty million years ago. The remains are fragmentary. Only recently do we find fossil material complete enough to permit construction of a mounted skeleton.” In other words, the model they had built was just guesswork. The card went on to say that the head of that animal did not belong to the body, but was just put with the body in order to display it there in the case. The sign continued: “Striking Difference: Tiny size. Thirteen Inches High. Long body with Arched Back. Four Functional Digits on Front Feet, Three Functional Digits on Hind Feet. Teeth and Feet Indicate a Browsing (that is, it ate leaves and bark) Rather than a Grazing Animal.” So, we have it there in the little glass case, a little animal no bigger than a large cat with four toes on its front feet and three toes on its hind feet.
The horse is the classic demonstration of the evolutionists used to support their theory. If you ask an evolutionist to demonstrate with fossils any species that evolved from “lower forms” he will point to the prize exhibit – the horse. They say that the great draft horses we know today evolved from what looks more like a large cat than anything else. I will admit, if this is a true representation, they have demonstrated their theory.
But there is more to be said. The little “Dawn Horse,” with four toes on its front feet and three toes on its hind feet, supposedly lived fifty million years ago. The next fossil was that of the “Pliocene Horse” that they say lived two million years ago, which looked to me just like a horse today. Evolutionists have to account for forty-eight million years of time, and in that forty-eight million years of time they must find the missing links between that cat-sized animal and the horse as we know it today. Where are those missing links? That is why I went to the museum. I wanted to see those missing links. They are not there!
The second fact is this: the arrangement of those fossil skeletons is purely arbitrary. They are arranged in order completely by fancy. They pick out an animal and they say that this particular animal evolved into another animal of another type. That is not so. There are no “missing links” between different types of animals. All of these species belong to the same “kind.” They do not show evolution of one “kind” of organism into another “kind” of organism.
The third fact is my main point. In the same fossil stratum where they have found the so-called “Dawn Horse,” in that same stratum they have found a real horse, an actual horse, a horse like a modern horse. Why doesn’t the evolutionist put that horse in his exhibit? They say that this little animal evolved into a horse. But there was already a real horse, like the ones we see today, side by side in the same pasture, and at the same time! This is no proof of evolution!
My last declaration is this: the evolutionist is deceived by his own arrangements of these fossils. Today, as I look, I see a little Shetland pony. And, then, there are the great Clydesdale horses. There is also the zebra, the saddle horse, the Arabian horse, the thoroughbred racer. They are all living together right now. And they are all of the same “kind.”
“And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:25).
Let us suppose that all the types of horses I have mentioned, that are living together on the earth today died and were buried and their bones became fossils. Oh, what a case for evolution that would be to these “experts”! Look here – a little Shetland pony! Look there – a great Clydesdale! “Oh,” they would say, “Our theory is proved. The little animals evolved into the big ones.” Not so. They all lived at the same time. That is my point. They were all contemporaries. They all lived at the same time in history.
And so it is. The amoeba is the contemporary of man. The worm is the contemporary of man. The amphibian is the contemporary of man. The fish, the reptiles, the birds, the beasts of the field – all of them are the contemporaries of man. They all exist simultaneously, at the same time. And when they were first created, each “kind” appeared suddenly by the creative act of God. They appeared complete and whole just as God made them, and just as we read the account in the Bible.
“And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:25).
That is an edited version of a sermon by the great Dr. W. A. Criswell, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas for more than fifty years. But my question, as I close the sermon, is this – why do men believe in evolution? I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon that my mother took me as a child to the museum, and to the very exhibits of which Dr. Criswell spoke. Years later my mother was converted. After she became a true Christian, I asked her if she still believed in evolution. She said, “Robert, I don’t know why we ever believed such a crazy thing!” It is my prayer that you also will come to Christ, be converted, and become a real Christian, as my mother did.
Christ died on the Cross to pay the penalty for your sin. He arose physically from the dead to give you life. When you come to Christ you will be converted. Then you will know that the Bible is true when it says,
“And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:25).
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.
(“All Things Bright and Beautiful”
by Cecil F. Alexander, 1818-1895).
(END OF SERMON)
You can read Dr. Hymers' sermons each week on the Internet
at www.realconversion.com. Click on “Sermon Manuscripts.”
Scripture Read Before the Sermon by Dr. Kreighton L. Chan: Genesis 1:20-25.
Solo Sung Before the Sermon by Mr. Benjamin Kincaid Griffith:
“All Things Bright and Beautiful” (by Cecil F. Alexander, 1818-1895).