June 2005 - Vol 1, Issue 2

In this issue...
-- "God, Man and Animals" - Part I

"God, Man and Animals" - Part I
By Dr. John C. Whitcomb

When I was an evolutionist at Princeton University, studying historical geology and paleontology, I was told that "the reign of tooth and claw" in the animal kingdom has always been "the balance of nature." So far from being an abnormal, tragic state of affairs on Planet Earth, it has been the very means whereby mankind has come into existence!

"For billions of years," I was repeatedly told, "the struggle for existence" in the biosphere has been "Nature's way" of selecting "favorable mutations" in the gene pools of living things to bring about higher and higher levels of complexity - and ultimately man himself. This religion of humanistic, evolutionary naturalism now dominates, permeates and conditions almost all thinking in the major universities of the world - not just Princeton!

The Written Revelation of God

But the only Book God ever wrote - the Bible - gives the opposite picture! The personal, living God, Who cannot lie (Titus 1:2; cf. Num. 23:19; Heb. 6:18), Who was the only One there when life began on this planet (Isa. 45:18; Jer. 10:10-12), Who was the only One Who could design and create almost infinitely complex living organisms (Job 12:7-10), is also the One Who wrote the Bible (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:21). This Book informs us clearly and repeatedly that the world we presently experience is not the end-product of mindless evolution through billions of years. Instead, it is the result of an originally perfect design (Gen. 1:31 - "very good"; cf. Deut. 32:4 - "perfect"), which was drastically distorted - through God's Curse - because of man's rebellion against His wise and gracious plan for our lives (Gen. 3:17-19).

A greater contrast between what we see now in the living world, and what was originally created, can hardly be imagined. Before the Fall of man, and the resulting Curse of God, there was no bloodshed in the animal kingdom. Adam and Eve were vegetarians (Gen. 1:29), and so were all the animals! They were completely and exclusively herbivorous: "And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so" (Gen. 1:30).

But, we might ask, how could there have been a "balance of nature" without bloodshed? Would not the world have been quickly overpopulated with every kind of living thing? Yes, of course, except for one vital factor: an omniscient and omnipotent God was in total control of population growth rates. He also knew that the original perfection of the world would not continue for thousands of years.

The Animals in the Future Kingdom

Later revelation in both the Old Testament and the New Testament sheds very important light upon the reality of original perfection as depicted in Gen. 1 and 2. Isa. 11:6-9, for example, anticipates the perfection of the coming thousand-year Kingdom of Christ on earth (for which He taught us to pray - Matt. 6:10), when "they shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain [kingdom]: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea" (v. 9). This global absence of destruction includes the animal kingdom, for even wolves, leopards, young lions, bears and snakes will be completely harmless in the presence of lambs, kids (baby goats), calves, cows and little children. Of special interest is the amazing fact that "the lion shall eat straw like the ox" (11:7).

But how can lions still be lions if they someday will "eat straw like the ox"? The answer to this question is twofold. First, the inauguration of the earthly Kingdom of Christ will involve the sudden reversal of the stupendous miracle that took place when God cursed the entire animal kingdom on the day that Adam, the king of the earth, rebelled against his divine LORD. "For the creature [creation] was made subject to vanity, . . . [but] the creature [creation] itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom. 8:20-21). God brought about a sudden change in the genetic information code in originally beautiful and harmless animals and thus inaugurated them into what we now call "the reign of tooth and claw." Lions were still lions, and continued to reproduce "after their kind," but their tooth structure, appetite and metabolism changed drastically.

Not all animals became carnivorous, but every kind of animal experienced changes appropriate for a fallen world. This would include increased offspring to compensate for massive violence, disease, and death, which were never before known (cf. "groaneth and travaileth in pain" - Rom. 8:22). No longer were animals under man's original, total dominion. Thus, after quoting the human dominion retrospect of Ps. 8:5-8, the author of Hebrews states: "But now we see not yet all things put under him" (Heb. 2:8). One might call this the understatement of the New Testament!

The Bible therefore teaches that the Edenic curse on the animal kingdom will be suddenly and supernaturally reversed when the Kingdom Age dawns upon the earth - and lions (for example) will function again as they did at the beginning of the world.

In our next issue, we will begin by thinking of the condition of the animals in Noah's Ark.

To Be Continued...