Preservation

As we near the end of the age, we are seeing God attacked on every hand, even in theological circles. He is being attacked in regards to His creation by the so-called theistic evolutionist and in the theological realm by those who say He has not preserved His Word for us today. Those in the last category would stand with us in our stand against the evolutionist, but as we shall see, the God of creation is the same God of the Bible and He has preserved both creation and His Word. God has allowed us to see glimpses of His character in creation and we can expect to see these same characteristics of God in relation to His Word.

First of all let us ponder the POWER of God’s creation. Job says in Job 26:7 that God stretcheth out the north over the empty place and hangeth the earth upon nothing. We are told that a single stroke of lightning may develop more power than the combined peak capacity of every power plant in the United States and a superbolt more than every power plant in the world combined. Light traveling at the speed of 186,000 miles per second travels the 93,000,000 miles between the earth and the sun in about 8 minutes. Some 6,000 years after creation we are just now receiving light from some of the most distant stars and who knows how many are out there we haven’t seen yet. What a tiny speck earth, and even more so, man must be in the eyes of Almighty God which leads us to our next point.

The PURPOSE of God’s creation is abundantly clear from a study of Scripture. In Psalm 19:1 we are told that the heavens declare the glory of God…., then in Romans 3:23, we are told that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. From this we can determine that the message of Creation declares God’s omnipotence, majesty and glory, but only condemns and cannot save because its message is not audible. These "words" of creation are heard internally by the conscience, but his message can never be translated into salvation but only into condemnation. The Bible is very clear that creation is part of God’s plan to declare all the world guilty and hopeless before God in and of themselves as the following Scripture passages set forth (Psalm 8:3-4; Isaiah 40:12; Romans 1:20).

Next, we see that God is PRESERVING this message of condemnation. In a very real sense we could consider God’s creation inspired in the sense that it is God-breathed or spoken into existence by God. Psalm 33:6 says by the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. No less than 9 times the phrase "and God said" is used in relation to His creation in Genesis chapter 1. Now the deist would tell us that God breathed out this creation and then just sat back and let it run on its own without any intervention on the part of God. The theistic evolutionist would tell us that, yes God created, but then He allowed the "natural process" of evolution take over without any intervention on His part and eventually through this process perfection will be attained. Even those who disagree with us on the preservation of Scripture, I think would agree with us on the fact that these ideas of God’s creation are in direct co! ntradiction to the teaching of the Word of God (Col. 1:16). God has made it abundantly clear that He will preserved His creation until the end of time (Gen. 1:14; 8:22).

This brings us to the Word. Only the Word has the POWER to convert the soul (Psalm 19:7; Rom. 10:17; I Pet. 2:23; II Tim. 3:15). Creation condemns and only through the Word can a soul be introduced to a personal relationship in a living Savior through repentance and faith. Creation can prepare the heart to be saved as in the case of Cornelius and others, but it can never save when left alone, this can only be done by the Gospel (Rom. 1:16; II Tim. 3:15; I Cor. 15:1-2a)

The PURPOSE of the Word is to remove all sense of guilt and shame and assure us that there is now no more condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit (Rom. 8:1). It is to guide, cleanse, ground and continually conform us to the image of Christ (Psalm 19:7-11; 119:9,105; Eph. 5:25-27; Col. 1:21-23; I Cor. 3:18). We must have it as God gave it or we can never approach what God would have us to be.

Finally, this brings us to the PRESERVATION of the Word. We have seen that the message of salvation through the Word is able to do that which the message of creation can never do, impart spiritual life and that more abundantly. With this in mind, let us remember the argument of those who say that God is not preserving creation, the deist and the theistic evolutionist. They say that, yes God breathed out His creation, but then let chance and natural processes take over without His intervention. As we said before, those who would oppose us in the area of Scriptural preservation would be in agreement with us that God is preserving His creation, but do their arguments against the preservation of Scripture not ring of the same reasoning? They say that yes God inspired His Word in the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, but then He removed His hand of preservation and it is now the responsibility of textual critics around today to piece back together as close as we ca! n what God inspired in the originals. This is completely contradictory to the teaching of the Word of God (Ps. 12:6,7; Matt. 4:4). The Lord Jesus said plainly that heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away (Matt. 24:35). His Word is forever settled in heaven.

As we said before, the God of Creation is the same God of the Bible. If we see certain patterns and processes in nature, we would expect to find these same things in the Word of God. So as long as we have this message of condemnation preserved for us in Creation we can be sure that God will preserve His Word because it is of far more benefit to mankind by bringing salvation and sanctification about in our lives. As long as the stars come out tonight and the sun comes up tomorrow, we can know and be assured that we have the preserved Word of God in our King James Bible.

- Pastor Bryan K. Greene