Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so. Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” ~Genesis 1:26-31

We live in a time when the biblical view of the creation of man is being called into question; an onslaught of attacks against the very consideration of it by the evolution ‘thought police’. Ever since Charles Robert Darwin published his book, The Origin of Species in 1859, the secular humanists have been denying God and the divine creation of man. But more alarming than the challenge of the biblical view from the secular world is a growing chorus of voices coming from the religious world who are ready to toss aside the biblical view and embrace a secular humanistic view—These religious people are intimidated by the (so-called) scientific world so they surrender the clear Word of God in pursuit of being accepted somehow by the scientific community.

Once we buy into the premise and multiple theories that it is impossible for man to have been created by God; a Great Designer and that this was all just a great explosion from an uncertain origin with unavailable data, drawing far-reaching conclusions that don’t occur in nature today and then we somehow evolved from a simple singled-celled organism [which modern science has now proven this simple one-celled organism to be marvelously complex in structure] into the complexity of a McDonald’s drive-thru. The world needs the church to speak the truth in our generation, not compromising the Word of God by denying the Biblical account of the creation of man, rather embracing it, choosing to prove by your life that you are indeed the result of a divine spark as the Word of God says:

"I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.” ~Psalms 139:14

Consider this; the consequences of other options…

Evolution-thought bears fruit: No purpose or meaning to life, no belief or understanding of destiny and eternity. Secular Humanism (atheistic-thought) also bears fruit: Man is his own best and only hope and must save himself from himself. Man is his own god, the center of his own existence. Man must ignore all impulses to search for and understand his creator, his origin and his purpose.

The Apostle Paul spoke of this mistaken view of man in Romans chapter 1:

"Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man–and birds and four-footed animals… Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen." ~Romans 1:22-25

Always beware of any man that tries to impress you with his education and intellect while informing you he came from a monkey.

We have more than a generation, indoctrinated from their youth to believe that humans are the product of multiplied accidents of nature. Nothing greater or with any more significance than to have simply and naturally evolved. This affects how we view our lives; the purpose for living. This might even account for the advent of the lost generations, X and Y and the highest teenage suicide rate in history. One scientist absurdly quips… “I once was an amoeba in for a swim, And then I was a tadpole with my tail tucked in. Then I was a monkey in a banyan tree, and now I am a professor with a Ph. D.” We are told the universe itself will eventually burn out and the vacuum of space will swallow up any evidence that man ever existed. We will simply fade into nothing, as nothing, from nothing. And we wonder why we need self-esteem classes taught in our schools subsequent to evolutionary biology class. The outcome of this philosophy has also borne fruit and has been well document throughout the last half century. Children bearing children, children killing children, killing themselves, children walking into schools with guns and bombs to kill on a massive level. It is no wonder we have teenagers getting pregnant and then going to a “convenience” doctor for an abortion, who then stops the beating heart of a baby, extracts the remains, tosses the fetus into a garbage can and calls it P.O.C. (products of conception). It should be no wonder we live in a nation void of a conscience and lacking in moral integrity.

Adolph Hitler was a Darwinist and killed 6 million Jews in his quest to better and perfect the species of man on the earth—the Aryan race. In the midst of his research, Richard Evans, Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge, and author of The Coming of the Third Reich observes, “Richard Weikart’s outstanding book From Darwin to Hitler shows in sober and convincing detail how Darwinist thinkers in Germany had developed an amoral attitude to human society by the time of the First World War, in which the supposed good of the race was applied as the sole criterion of public policy and ‘racial hygiene’. Without over-simplifying the lines that connected this body of thought to Hitler, he demonstrates with chilling clarity how policies such as infanticide, assisted suicide, marriage prohibitions and many more were being proposed for those considered racially or eugenically inferior by a variety of Darwinist writers and scientists, providing Hitler and the Nazis with a scientific justification for the policies they pursued once they came to power.”

There is a modern prevalent school of thought as well. The government, the schools and the media have imparted to our children that they are nothing more than evolutionary freaks of nature. Now as the seeds of this thought pattern have come to fruition throughout two generations, it is apparent that we have raised a generation that believes it unreservedly and who live their lives as a reflection of those beliefs. Perhaps the only rational conclusion to the view that man came into existence by perpetually evolving from lesser organism into such wonderful beings; from societal animism to a higher civilization. The school of thought that we derived from and answer to no higher authority and, as such, we make our own rules, break our own rules and, in the end, face no eternal consequences. The world-view that we can behave anyway we desire with impunity, because, after all, who expects anything transcendent of descendants of beasts.

However, the Word of God has given us a very different picture of the origin and destiny of man:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” ~Genesis 1:26

WE ARE CREATED WITH A DIVINE DISTINCTION

Man is different than all other animal creatures. There is a distinct nature to man in comparison to everything else…

1. Conversation: Nothing else ever created merits conversation. Nothing else is created in the image and likeness of God, though all bear the thumbprint of the creator—Man is the apex of God’s creative works.

2. The creative process: We were designed by the will of God (not by chance). We were formed by the hands of God (not by nature). We were given life by the breath of God (not by evolution).

"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” ~Genesis 2:7

WE ARE PRODUCTS OF A DIVINE DESIGN

1. Man was designed to be Blessed: In Genesis chapter 1 the creation of both man and woman as a reflection of the image and likeness of God is given in one verse…

"So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” ~Genesis 1:27

The very first thing God does after creating Adam and Eve and bringing them into His presence… (In verse 28) “Then God blessed them…”

"To you first, God, having raised up His Servant Jesus, sent Him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your iniquities.” ~Acts 3:26

2. Man was designed to be Reproductive: God made one pair of humans and intended for this pair to populate the earth. We were designed to reproduce. However, this isn’t just about reproducing people, it is also about reproducing faith, character, and integrity. One generation was to pass on the story to the next. One generation was to reproduce obedience and moral integrity to the next. However, as a result of Adam’s disobedience, instead of righteousness being reproduced, sin was passed from one generation to the next until Paul writes, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” We were designed to see births into the kingdom of God as we plant the seed of God’s Word in the hard soil of the world. If we are not reproducing as a church then we are not fulfilling our divine design.

3. Man was designed to Produce: From the moment of creation man was given a ministry, a job to do in serving God. Man was never created for a lazy life of leisure but to tend to the garden God had given them. God wanted them to have dominion over the animal kingdom, to manage and utilize the mineral and vegetable resources that God had given them. God designed us to produce more from what He gave us. In the parable of the talents the master expected the servant to do more than simply maintain. God has given each of us something to work with and He designed us to be productive.

4. Man was Designed for Dominion: We were designed to have dominion, to subdue and use for our good all that God has placed at our feet.

Following is a classic example of, however ludicrous it may be, but nonetheless mainstream American intellectual evolutionary thought…

Tenured bioethics professor at Princeton University, Peter Singer, a devout Evolutionary Darwinist believes that man is just like any other animal. He believes that parents should have the right to kill newborn babies that are born with birth defects such as Down syndrome and hemophilia because killing a defective newborn is not the same as killing a ‘person’. He believes that sex with animals and dead people is OK as long as you get consent from the animal beforehand or from the dead person before they died. Otherwise it is simply biology. For statements that should land Singer in an institution for the criminally insane, he has been haled by the liberal media in our generation. The New York Times says of Singer, “No other living philosopher has had this kind of influence.” –The New Scientist credits Singer with creating “a moral framework for the modern animal rights movement.”

Not only were we designed for dominion over the animal kingdom, and vegetation, I believe we were created to have power over all the power of the enemy; we were designed to dominate the Evil One. God challenges us to take dominion over “every living thing.” Satan is not a physical being, but he is a living presence upon the earth. He lives to bring death and destruction, and he looks to dominate man. We were not designed to be dominated by hell, but to take dominion over the devil—and we must take it. Instead it seems, sinful humanity had become dominated by nature: grains for alcohol, leaves for tobacco, cocaine, heroine, etc.

WE WERE CREATED TO HAVE A DIVINE DESTINY

Consider this…

God created man with the intention of enjoying fellowship with Adam and Eve. Even after sin entered the picture God is depicted as walking in the garden in the cool of the day. It is understood that this was God’s normal practice and only the introduction of sin interrupted the daily visits. We were created to live in relationship with God—that is our destiny. Sin changed the picture, but sin did not destroy our destiny.

"In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. ” ~John 14:2-3

Why is that important? Because it tells us that our fate is not to die and cease to exist, but to pass from the mortal to immortal, from the corruptible to the incorruptible and to be in the presence of God. That is our divine destiny if we have been born again through the saving power of Jesus Christ. There is an eternity that awaits every man, woman, boy and girl. We will either spend eternity fulfilling our divine destiny, or we will spend eternity earning the wages of our sins, and that is an eternal damnation, an eternal separation from the very One we were created to live in relationship with.

"What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, All sheep and oxen—even the beasts of the field, The birds of the air, and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth!” ~Psalms 8:4-9

• Far from the fairy tale of evolution, the Scriptures, as well as our own spirit, declare that there is a divine distinction in our creation.

• We were created with a divine design, and we were created with a divine destiny.

• We each have a date with eternity, we cannot deny it, we cannot delay it, and we cannot deter it.

We were created with Infinite destiny and purpose. The Christian worldview provides meaning and purpose for human existence. The father of evolutionary thought, Charles Darwin, and his wife, Emma, had a little girl who was the joy of their lives. However, little Annie Darwin fell ill. In 1849, Annie caught scarlet fever along with her two sisters, and her health thereafter declined; some authorities believe that she suffered from tuberculosis. Despite the best efforts of the doctors, she died. The Darwin’s’ grief was profound and deep. Charles was inconsolable. Twenty-five years later he wrote that the thought of her still brought tears to his eyes. Those of us who are parents can empathize with the Darwin’s’ anguish. Charles Darwin grieved, and well he should have.

“Anne was… the apple of her proud father’s eye, his favorite child,” he confessed to his friend and cousin William Darwin Fox. “More than any of the other children she treated him with a spontaneous affection that touched him deeply; she liked to smooth his hair and pat his clothes into shape, and was by nature self-absorbedly neat and tidy, cutting out delicate bits of paper to put away in her workbox, threading ribbons, and sewing small things for her dolls and make-believe worlds.”

Her death at age ten was a terrible blow for her parents. Charles wrote in a personal memoir “We have lost the joy of the household, and the solace of our old age… Oh that she could now know how deeply, how tenderly we do still and shall ever love her dear joyous face.”

The fact that he mourned the loss of his daughter exposes a fundamental contradiction in the worldview he spent a lifetime propagating. Darwin’s evolutionary thought purports to explain the existence of the universe in which there is no room for concepts like “meaning” or “purpose.” The human species “happens” to possess certain biological traits that enable us to survive. And if any part of humanity should perish through some natural or man-made calamity, it will simply be added to a long list of “non-survivors.”— like, for instance, little Annie Darwin. There is not room for Charles’ sentiments expressed, “how tenderly we do still and shall ever love her dear joyous face.” The very statement betrays everything. Imagine having to face the fact of your own belief system in the midst of a personal family tragic crisis—looking into the postmortem eyes of his precious little Annie Darwin, the once palpable spark of divine life now vanished from here vacant eyes. One can only imagine the dark doubts that must have clouded Darwin’s mind about the meaninglessness of his own life’s view — that Annie’s life, however joyous and bright, somehow did not live up to the brutality of ‘survival of the fittest’, that there is no room in nature for the strong protecting the weak, that his theory has no room for compassion and meaning. That to be true to his theory he must admit that his little girl succumbed to meaningless elimination from the evolutionary chain to protect subsequent generations from her weaknesses and inferiority. Yet in the end, he alludes to one certain truth—not willing to face a meaningless existence without the hope of eternity, “How tenderly we do still and shall ever love her dear joyous face.”

While Christians surely mourn the loss of their loved ones, the Apostle Paul taught that we “do not grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.” That’s because we recognize a spiritual purpose and a future that transcends our mortal lives. And we can rest assured that every precious life—like little Annie Darwin—is endowed by our loving God with infinite value. Our children are not simply evolving life forms, but children of God created in His image with His distinctive divine spark. They are not left without purpose and meaning to their existence—generation-X and Y needs direction and significance. So God, through His Son has tasked us to lift them up in His presence and give them hope and destiny—to tell them the truth, that they are fearfully and wonderfully made.

"But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear;” ~1 Peter 3:15