Many people recognize that degeneration has occurred in Western society during the last several years. Older people often say, "things aren’t like they used to be." And they are right. Historians and sociologists agree that there has been drastic social decay over the past several decades.

Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, a famous evangelical theologian, has said:

Drugs, murder, abortion, sex perversion, lack of church attendance, immorality among politicians, crime, violence and murder constantly appear on television. Presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan has correctly said:

The philosophy behind the collapse of morality in our nation is evolution. When our nation believed in God as the creator of the world, there was a basis for laws, marriage, the home, and meaning to life. People were happier back then. But when our people turned to evolution it produced lawlessness, sexual perversion, pornography and abortion and crime. Guns have not produced violence. Evolution is at the root of the violence we see in society today.

In the Western nations, where Christian ethics once prevailed, Darwinian evolution has provided justification for many people not to take God and the Bible seriously. Evolution has given them an excuse to do many things that are wrong according to the Bible. Evolution has been used to justify many false beliefs and wrong ideas in our time.

Communism quickly embraced evolution because it made their atheism respectable. It justified their atheism. Evolution is taught as an unchallenged dogma throughout the Communist world, in China and Cuba and elsewhere.

Hitler killed six million Jews during the Holocaust in World War II. He gassed the Jews as a direct result of his belief in evolution. Hitler believed in struggle as a Darwinian principle of human life that forced the German people to dominate others. He felt that without struggle the German people would rot and perish - to use his own words.

Sir Arthur Keith, a famous evolutionist, wrote this:

Evolution convinced anthropologists that there were different "races" of humans, on different levels of the evolutionary ladder. This led them to believe that there were different levels of intelligence and ability for different races.

Evolutionist Stephen J. Gould has said that the term "mongoloid idiot" came from the evolutionist view that the white race is more highly developed than the Mongolian race. Some thought that a mentally defective child was a throwback to a previous stage of evolution.

The leading evolutionist of the first half of the 20th century was Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborne. He said, "The Negroid stock is even more ancient than the Caucasian and Mongolian...The standard intelligence of the average adult Negro is similar to that of the eleven-year-old of the species homo sapiens."

Many settlers in Australia were influenced by evolution. They thought that the aborigines were not as highly evolved as the white man. The Hobart Museum of Tasmania (in Australia) listed evolution as the main reason for the slaughter of aborigines by white settlers. In 1924 the Sunday, February 10 issue of the New York Times had a large article which said that the missing link had been found in Australia. This so-called evolutionary "missing link" was the aborigines of the state of Tasmania.

It was evolution that caused anthropologists to divide the world into "races" based on different levels of evolution. The Bible teaches that there is only one race - the human race.

The Bible says that God

Most of you will remember being taught at school that a human embryo goes through a fish stage and other evolutionary stages until it becomes human. This idea comes from evolution. This theory of "embryonic recapitulation" was first put out by a man named Ernst Haeckel.

Eventually Haeckel admitted that his theory was a fraud. Yet it is still taught in many high schools and colleges throughout the world.

As people accepted the idea that a child in the womb is just an animal going through the stages of evolution, there was less and less problem about destroying it. The more that evolution was accepted, the easier it became to accept abortion. Many abortion clinics take the woman aside and explain that what is being aborted is just an embryo in the "fish stage" of evolution. They tell the woman that her baby is not yet a human being. These women are being fed outright lies!

The theory of evolution has been used to give abortion its respectability. That’s why there is such an increase in abortions today.

Most people would not see that there is a relationship between evolution and drugs. However, the following testimony shows clearly this relationship:

If you are just an animal, a product of chance, and there is no God, why not take drugs? If evolution is true, there is no real reason not to take drugs!

Many people think America will be better when Clinton is replaced by Bush. But they are wrong because the people of America will remain the same whoever is elected. Abortion, homosexuality, pornography, drugs, alcoholism and divorce will go right on. Why? Because most people believe in evolution and humanism instead of God and the local church.

If we made a law outlawing abortion, the next generation would change that law - because they believe in evolution.

When my grandfather was born our society was built on the idea of Biblical creation. Creation was taught in every university and school in America.

What happened? First, Charles G. Finney promoted decisionism which filled our churches with lost people.

Second, about thirty years later, Charles Darwin popularized the theory of evolution. The theory had been around a long time, but Darwin made it popular. Evolution was then promoted as science. But it is not science because it cannot be proven or tested. It is a belief system about the past. It is really a philosophical and religious system. The evolutionist Julian Huxley wrote, "A religion is essentially an attitude toward the world as a whole. Thus evolution (will) prove as powerful a principle to coordinate man’s beliefs and hopes as God was in the past." Thus, evolution replaced the Bible with another philosophy for most people in our culture.

Some men, like Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, stood up against evolution. Bryan and others of his day saw that evolution would destroy Western culture. But by this time it was too late. Finney’s decisionist methods had filled the Protestant churches with lost people. Most of these lost Protestants accepted evolution. Humanistic evolution swept across America and the Western world in a few short decades.

Today we live in the burned out aftermath. Our homes have been destroyed. Our young people have become hopeless. Our churches are swiftly emptying. And many young people feel like there is no hope for them.

They are right in a sense. There is no hope offered by evolution and humanism. If the evolutionist’s view of life is right, then there is no hope for you!

Now it seems like everyone believes in evolution, but they don’t believe it strongly. They wouldn’t die for it. I believe that revival could sweep evolution away very quickly if God should send it to our churches.

Notice how quickly Communism fell in the former Soviet Union. One day Soviet Communism seemed to be the strongest movement in the world. But just a few weeks later it crumbled and was gone. A few words from President Reagan about "the evil empire," and "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," and Communism fell forever and the former Soviet Union was dissolved in a matter of weeks. God moved in history.

And I believe that God can move like that again. I have been reading about the churches in China to you. Someone asked me, "Why are you so concerned about the Chinese churches?" My answer is this: If God can do it in China, He can do it anywhere. If God can send revival under that repressive regime, anything is possible in America and the West. God has raised up 75 million Christians in Red China. God can sweep away evolution and send revival to America.

When God comes in revival, all of the false ideas of man disappear like dew on the front lawn when the sun comes out.

Yes, evolution is a big lie. A very big lie. Millions believe it. But when God comes in revival it will be crumpled like a piece of paper and be blown away in the wind.

What can happen in a nation like China, can happen in the life of an individual. I have been reading a book, The Resurrection of the Chinese Church. Those churches in China have literally been raised up and resurrected by God Himself.

And God can do that for you as an individual. God can change your mind and heart. He can sweep out the false philosophy of evolution with the drugs, abortion, racial hatred, Hitlerism and Communism it has bred and nurtured.

God can take this failed philosophy, popularized by Darwin, an old Victorian with a long white beard, and pulverize it in a few short weeks - just as He pulverized Soviet Communism. We must pray for revival to destroy the lie of evolution.

But more importantly, we must pray for you. You have been ensnared and imprisoned by this evil, godless philosophy. You may not even know it, but the real reasons you feel so lonely and hopeless is actually rooted in this wicked philosophical system. You see, if evolution were gone and Jesus Christ came into your life, you would be the happiest person on earth.

Now for God to give you joy and peace, you have to do several things:

But most important, come back here to learn more next Sunday. It will make you happier than you ever dreamed possible! I mean it. Come back and find out if I’m right. True happiness is waiting for you here. God bless you.

Scripture Read Before Sermon by Dr. Kreighton L. Chan: 
      Genesis 1:1, 25-26; Romans 1:20-32; Psalm 53:1-3; John 3:16.

Solo by Benjamin Kincaid Griffith: "Have You Any Room for Jesus?"
      (words anonymous; adapted by Daniel Whittle, 1878).