A Christian Cannot Believe in Evolution
Herbert W. Armstrong learned about the Sabbath day from his wife, Loma. In 1926, she listened to a neighbor lady read scriptures about the Sabbath. She was stunned; she knew that God expected her to observe this special day.
Mrs. Armstrong met with strong resistance when she tried to tell her husband about her incredible discovery. Mr. Armstrong was a successful businessman! He couldn’t keep a day that would make him seem strange in the eyes of his business colleagues, he reasoned. Besides, he asserted, everybody knows that Sunday is the proper day for worshiping God—all the churches say so.
With his marriage at stake, Mr. Armstrong began an urgent night-and-day study into God’s Sabbath day. There is an important reason why God challenged him on the Sabbath first of all!
A Delight
“If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words” (Isaiah 58:13).
Mr. Armstrong had to learn how to delight in God’s Sabbath day. It’s not just a matter of keeping the Sabbath; it’s how we keep the Sabbath. We must refrain from speaking our own words or doing our own pleasure. That is how to honor God.
“Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it” (verse 14). God offers a marvelous reward to faithful Sabbath keepers! He made the Sabbath day for man (Mark 2:27). Every human has an opportunity to connect with God on this day.
I came into the Worldwide Church of God when I was 25. Soon afterward, I had a job interview in the advertising field. The interview went well, and I was offered the job. But then I told the interviewer that I couldn’t work on the Sabbath day. He became angry and said, “I wouldn’t ever let religion interfere with my career!” He withdrew the job offer.
Because of stories like this, people call the Sabbath a burden. But God blessed me in so many other ways! The Sabbath is not a burden; it is a blessing! God says the Sabbath is refreshing, even for Him! After six days of creating the Earth, He rested on the seventh day (Genesis 2:2).
Jesus Christ kept the Sabbath as a weekly custom (Luke 4:16). So did the Apostle Paul (Acts 17:2). They both knew that the Sabbath is one of the greatest blessings God can give.
The Sabbath Command
So why did God challenge Mr. Armstrong to prove the Sabbath day first? Because if you don’t understand the Sabbath, you can’t understand God’s purpose for mankind!
Here’s a rundown of what is typically called creation week, although it should really be called the “re-creation week,” as outlined in Genesis 1:
Day 1: God separates light from darkness on the Earth.
Day 2: God divides the bodies of water from the Earth’s atmosphere.
Day 3: Dry land protrudes from the water. God creates vegetation.
Day 4: The sun, moon and stars become visible from Earth.
Day 5: God creates aquatic animals and birds.
Day 6: God creates land animals and man.
Day 7: God forms the Sabbath day by resting from His labor of the previous six days.
The Sabbath day is a memorial of God’s creation!
“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you” (Exodus 31:12-13). On top of the weekly Sabbath, God instituted annual Sabbaths—the holy days. God commands us to keep all of them!
“Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people” (verse 14). People lose their spiritual and even physical lives by knowing about God’s Sabbath command yet refusing to keep it! Ancient Israel was enslaved numerous times for breaking the Sabbath.
Why does God take the Sabbath day so seriously? It marks the beginning of mankind! It is the foundation of God’s way of life! If we reject the Sabbath, everything else in our lives will go off track.
Satan’s Deadliest Weapon
Since the Sabbath points to the re-creation of the Earth and to the awesome master plan of God, it would only make sense that Satan would devise a counterfeit for it. At the same time God challenged Mr. Armstrong on the Sabbath, He also challenged Mr. Armstrong on evolution.
Mr. Armstrong recounted in his Autobiography the humiliating evolution challenge he received from his sister-in-law. “‘Herbert Armstrong, you are simply ignorant!’ accused Hertha. Her words stabbed deeply into what was left of my ego. ‘One is uneducated, and ignorant, unless he believes in evolution. All educated people now believe it.’”
The highly educated of this world—nearly all of them atheists or agnostics—ridicule anyone who dares have faith in God! Professors basically demand that their students accept the theory of evolution without thinking deeply about it at all! This is Satan’s way of discrediting the Bible’s account of creation week. Students are taught that the Earth as it is today came into existence through a process that took millions of years. God says that He renewed the face of the Earth in six days!
If you can’t believe Genesis 1, then you can’t believe any of the Bible.
Is faith in God really just an unseemly quality of ignorant people? Evolution is nothing but a blind faith! Scientists believe the universe came into being because of a Big Bang or some other insane idea. They reject the existence of a Creator, even though the scientific law of biogenesis states that life comes only from life! They have never found a “missing link” fossil of a half-man, half-monkey, or anything else, yet they wholeheartedly believe in evolution! King David used a strong word to describe anyone who scoffs at the notion of God: fool (Psalm 14:1).
A Sabbath keeper is a true Christian. A Christian cannot believe in evolution! Some say God used evolution as a means to create man. That is nonsense. He created man in one day. All we must do is believe the inspired words of the Holy Bible.
The theory of evolution is Satan’s deadliest weapon. Our children go to college believing in God, but then they leave college as atheists! Something is dreadfully wrong with modern education.
God wants us to understand who He is: our Creator. He created us physically, but He is also creating us spiritually to become members of His Family. That is why God looks like a man (Ezekiel 1:26). We look like God! Animals do not.
When Mr. Armstrong started studying into evolution, he thought it seemed plausible. But when he really got deep into his studies, he discovered that it was a farce! Scientists confine their research entirely to the physical realm. They reject even the slightest possibility of the miraculous or the supernatural. That means, of course, that they deny the Holy Spirit through which God saves us. Satan is so subtle.
God performs miracles all the time. But college students today have their faith completely destroyed by the theory of evolution! We need the powerful faith of God in our lives (Galatians 2:20). God must give it to us; we cannot muster it.
Two Origins
“Actually, this is simply the study into the two possibilities of origins,” Mr. Armstrong wrote. “It threw me directly into an in-depth research of what is perhaps the most basic of all knowledge—the very starting point in the acquisition of knowledge—the search for the correct concept through which to view all facts” (Autobiography).
It’s either creation by God or the theory of evolution. Both ideas are about the origin of life! We must choose correctly. When the premise is wrong, all that follows is wrong. Mr. Armstrong said that we must view the entire world through the correct prism: creation. When we do, we are on the path to the depths of the riches of God! (Romans 11:33). We just keep learning more and more about God’s mind and understanding our loving Father.
Mr. Armstrong continued, “The two subjects—or, rather, the two sides of the same subject of origins—should be unprejudicially and objectively studied together, yet seldom are!” God forced him into an in-depth, simultaneous study of these subjects. This dual challenge changed his life and gave him a deep understanding of man’s eternal purpose.
The Bible’s account of re-creation week is astounding. God created man! We even look like Him, a clear sign that God has a marvelous purpose for us. We all have a human spirit that can connect with God’s Holy Spirit. Without that, we would have no concept of our future. God can’t convert a dog. Not even the brilliant angels have the opportunity to become God beings like we do! (Hebrews 1:5).
Our incredible human potential is to build the very mind and character of God. That’s our purpose for living on Earth, our testing ground. Without godly character, how could we share the throne of the universe with Jesus Christ? But first, we must proclaim God’s message to the world before our Savior returns. Find where that message is coming from, and get behind it with all your might!
That’s the greatest honor we could possibly have, and it all starts with proving and keeping the Sabbath day.
