Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, before the radio ministry of Pastor James W.
Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of Florida.
Our prayer is that these have our Bible study programs to bring the law to a scraving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and enable the slaves to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Savior.
Now here's your host, Pastor James W.
Knox.
And a very, very pleasant good day to each and every one of you.
I'm Brother James, and I greet you once again in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
And I welcome you once again to the Preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast.
I want to say a special thank you to those of you who listen to this program faithfully over our home base station here in Deland, Florida.
And I know that many of you do not attend the Bible Baptist Church.
I know that many of you attend uh all well, all different churches throughout our community.
And I'm happy about that.
I am I am thrilled to know that you are comfortable listening to this Bible teaching program while remaining a help and a blessing in the church that you attend on Sunday and through the week.
That's really exciting to us.
We don't think we're the only people going to heaven.
We're not part of that crowd.
We don't believe that we're right and everybody else is wrong.
We're not part of that crowd.
We believe Jesus Christ is the way to heaven and everybody washed in his blood will make it by the grace of God.
We're just happy to be able to be an encouragement and provide some instruction and blessing to all of God's people throughout our community, and we're really happy to have you on board.
I mean that.
And we thank you so much for listening and for praying for us and for telling others about the program and passing the word along that people can listen in.
And we trust, learn, and be helped.
We started on the last broadcast to look together at the material that is found in a very, very uh old booklet.
I don't even know where I got it.
I've I've had it in my library for uh for a couple of decades now, and just pulled it out the other day and began to read over it and look at it again.
Uh it's a little booklet called Mistakes God Did Not Make.
And it was such a blessing to my heart that I wanted to pass the material on to you.
And what's the what's contained in this booklet are just a common sense, factual arguments, and reasons for belief in a creator, and of course for rejecting the silly theory of evolution.
For example, when God made mountains, he did more than make scenery for us.
Without elevated lands there can be no drainage, and earth would be largely swamp and shallow sea.
Water supply, wind, rain, and temperature depend on mountains.
Without them, most of our minerals and metals would never have been utilized.
The radius of the earth is nearly four thousand miles.
If any considerable area of the earth's surface were heaved up, one tenth of one percent of that radius, snow and ice would collect through the ages until the earth crust collapsed or the earth became lopsided.
Of course we have mountains more than four miles high, but they are cone shaped, and glaciers carry snow and ice down to melting level.
The Bible says in Isaiah chapter forty and verse number twelve, Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains and scales, and the hills in a balance.
I know who to you?
That's God.
That's his work.
We have great table lands, but God who weighed and measured them, and fixed the melting point of snow, kept them below the danger line.
Just a little mistake of a thousandth part of the Earth's radius.
And this planet would be interesting to look at through a telescope, but that would be about all you couldn't live here.
Scientists say that far above us is a layer of ozone that screens out certain rays from the sun which would otherwise destroy all earthly life.
It seems that God overlooked nothing.
I'm glad this matter of a filter of ozone between sixty and two hundred and fifty miles above us was not left for some cosmic urge or fortuitous coalition of forces to attend to.
You can hardly trust spontaneous eruption of primordal unrest to shield and protect us from destruction.
Now it's well known that the depth and density of the atmosphere modifies our temperature just as altitude does.
It must be clear then that any mistake that gave us deeper or shallower atmosphere would make most of the Earth an oven or a refrigerator.
Death Valley is below sea level, has a record temperature of one hundred and thirty four degrees in the shade.
It is obvious then that a high plateau would be excessively hot if it had the depth of atmosphere that Death Valley has.
No one knows for certain how deep our atmosphere is.
NASA has given us some information and made some guesses, but it's pretty tough to believe much of what comes from any government agency, but the gases range from fifty to two hundred and fifty miles.
Judging from the flight of meteors that burn up while passing through the air, the atmosphere must be at least one hundred miles deep.
Assuming this is correct, it must be apparent that a mistake that made it one percent deeper would make life as we know it impossible.
A mistake that made it one percent shallower would certainly leave much of the earth covered with snow and ice.
It would mean snow in the equatorial highlands.
God did not make that mistake.
The axis of the earth in relation to the plane of its orbit.
Now try and picture that in your mind.
The axis of the earth, that's the line running running directly through it.
Imagine that in your mind from North Pole to South Pole, just draw a line.
The axis of the Earth in relation to the plane of its orbit, that's the equator, the equatorial line, is tilted at an angle of twenty three point five degrees.
Now what does that mean?
Well that makes the sun appear to come north in summer and appear to go south in winter.
This is what gives us four seasons in the temperate zones.
If that axis had been tilted forty five degrees instead of twenty three point five degrees, the temperate zones would have a torrid zone heat in summer and frigid zone cold in winter.
If the axis were vertical to the plane of the orbit, January and July would have the same climate, and ice would accumulate until the seas would be either dry salt beds or too salty for marine life.
If the axis of the Earth were horizontal to the planes of its orbit, the Earth would be a crazy jumble of fierce heat followed by deadly cold, followed by fierce heat, followed by deadly cold, with prolonged night on one half of the planet and prolonged day on the other.
It is doubtful if any life could withstand the extremes.
The Moon goes around the Earth, always presenting the same side to the Earth.
If the Earth did not spin on its axis but always presented the same hemisphere to the sun, the Earth would be as dead as the Moon.
The planet Mercury doesn't spin, and astronomers calculate that on one side it's hot enough to melt lead, while on the other side it is severely cold.
From this we may reason that if the Earth did not revolve, no life would be possible on either side.
Then there's the speed of the Earth.
Now the speed with which the Earth moves around the sun could be slower or it could be faster.
Astronomers say if it went slower, it would be drawn nearer the sun, and all life would eventually be destroyed.
By the same reasoning, if it went faster, it would go farther from the sun, and we all freeze to death.
You know the conclusion to these matters in my mind is found in Psalm 14, verse 1.
The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.
How can you believe in a theory of evolutionary chance when one failure in all of the chances would result in the destruction of life on the planet?
Our sun is one of the smallest stars in the universe, but it is exactly big enough and exactly far enough away to support rather than destroy life.
Now, I don't think that's a chance.
I don't believe that's an accident.
No one knows exactly how much heat comes to the Earth from the sun because we don't know how cold the Earth would be without the sun.
From absolute zero up to the heat under the direct rays of the sun would be over six hundred degrees.
If we take that as a basis, five percent more or less heat would ruin the world.
Thirty degrees more heat would roast meat under a glass cover under direct rays of the sun.
Thirty degrees less heat would usher in a glacial age.
If the sun were smaller, cooler, or farther away, a five percent mistake.
That'd not be too much for scientists to make, but it would be too much for God to make, and he didn't make it.
Moons are somewhat commonplace in our solar system.
Saturn has nine.
Jupiter has thirteen or more.
Romantic people may feel that Earth has been discriminated against, but a mistake in the number of moons or the size and distance of the one we have might be disastrous.
For example, if the moon were half as far away, or twice its present diameter, great tides would wreck most of our harbors, submerge low lying islands and coastal plains, and drive inland a hundred miles on some rivers.
Some who love darkness rather than light would prefer to have no moon, or one much smaller farther away, but such a moon would not raise sufficient tides to cleanse our harbors and shorelines.
That all the adjustments of distance, size, altitude, temperature, revolutions, poise, and behavior of the elements happened by chance is as unlikely as to suppose that a blind printer, not understanding our language, standing before cases of type would set up by chance the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights.
It's impossible for thoughtful people to observe the cruelty in nature and believe that a god of love and pity planned it that way.
A careless creator might have left man to wonder why he designed such carnival slaughter as nature read in tooth and claw, one poet termed it.
God didn't make that mistake.
He saved our faith in his goodness by disavowing all responsibility.
He said that the flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.
In fact, without a sixth chapter of Genesis, it would be difficult to reconcile the pity of God with the cruelty of nature.
After earth life went wrong because of sin, the destroyers would have destroyed other living things, and then they would have starved to death.
But God set destroyers destroying destroyers to keep life from ceasing on the earth long ago.
Vegetation could not long survive if no enemies held worms and insects in check.
It is a wise god who set the blood temperature of birds higher than mammals, thus making more food fuel necessary.
In the case of insect eating toads, frogs, and bats, because of hibernation they must eat enough in six months to sustain them for a year.
Some birds destroy their own weight in insect pests and larvae in one day.
A pair of wrens will destroy more foes of man in a day than a man could kill with a club in a month.
Less hungry insect eaters would be a disaster.
It would be quite impossible for man to provide winter quarters for these fiends and friends, and so God sends the birds south, the bats, frogs, and lizards and toads into hibernation.
Men who are willing to relieve God from the overwork, as they imagine, in the past have adopted in lieu of a creator, an abstraction called evolution.
And I don't keep up with all the frequent revisions of this hypothesis, but its sponsors credit it with having given diversity of form and equipment to a million kinds of animals.
If it has done all that, if it's done half of what's claimed for it, then it has manifested a wisdom that rivals deity.
If evolution originated the pitiless horrors of nature, then it has manifested a cruelty that rivals the prince of demons.
That's how one writer termed it.
For example, destructive forms of life must be held in check.
Evolution is assumed to have worked very leisurely, taking thousands of years to make noticeable changes.
Yet if insect destroyers of vegetation had arrived ten years before their destroyers, that's all, just ten years, Earth would have been a desert.
If creatures evolved haphazard, some creature would have evolved an equipment, enabling it to kill or starve all others.
The skunk has an equipment that makes it immune from the attack of all informed neighbors, but it has a colossal stupidity, and is so restricted in diet and speed that its multiplication beyond narrow limits would mean starvation.
Evolutionists have talked more or less convincingly about the survival of the fittest, but they've been strangely silent about the handicapping of the fittest.
Why?
The most charitable assumption would be that they have never noticed it.
It would be a bold teacher who said that evolution would handicap the fittest.
For every item of equipment that enables any animal to threaten the existence of its neighbors, there is some hazard or handicap that prevents it from doing so.
I've never known a buzzard to be killed intentionally by any other creature.
Yet buzzards are so restricted in their diet that they are comparatively scarce.
On the other hand, quail outnumber buzzards a thousand to one, though they are hunted by many killers.
If the animal birth rate of any group of animals exceeded the death rate by only one percent for 1,500 years, okay, now think with me.
If the birth rate, the animal birth rate of any group of animals, exceeded the death rate by only 1% for 1,500 years, that group would be multiplied by more than a million, not a million more, but a million times more, and their competitors would be crowded out.
Would any blind force or unseeing law preserve such a delicate balance?
I say no.
I don't believe it.
I believe in God.
Suppose the rabbit, in addition to its present equipment, its great speed and quickness and agility, evolved the quills of a porcupine, the artillery of a pole cat, or the fangs of a viper.
Potentially, ten rabbits in ten years might multiply to fifty billion and not be more prolific than some that that I've owned, I've raised rabbits, they multiply like rabbits.
If unchecked by destroyers, these rabbits, with their fangs or quills, or odor, if unchecked, they would multiply until every edible plant was eaten, and then litter the land with their bones.
Ask the people of Australia.
Years ago a few rabbits were left on an island in the South Sea, an island where they had no natural enemies.
In a few years there was left on the island neither plant nor rabbit, only their bones.
If crows had the speed and talons of a falcon, or progeny as numerous and easily cared for as pheasants, most other bird neighbors would speedily disappear.
Did you know the gannet lays but one egg?
Hawks lay two, quail as many as fifteen, some sea turtles two hundred, some fish several millions.
It would have been most inconvenient if the evolutionary Santa Claus had been careless with his gifts.
If the birth of human quintuplets had been the rule, rather than the rarity, well you figure out where we'd be today.
Grasshoppers sometimes darken the sky with uncounted millions, and by any law of mathematics that multiplies insects by eggs there should be ten times that many next year.
But there are not a tenth as many.
You see, God has set this creation up so all the destroyers have hazards and handicaps that enable them to be destroyed, for which we may give thanks.
Blind force never hung a handicap on any creature to preserve a balance, and without such handicaps, evolution would destroy itself.
Now there are so called gospels that would defeat themselves in their realization.
Some missions have been more concerned with health than holiness.
As a result of their benevolent ministrations, more pagans are born than saved.
Think about that.
Thoughtful people are beginning to suspect that scientific paganism may destroy the peace of the world.
There is a charity that breeds loafers.
Have you looked around lately?
There is a mercy that fosters crime.
Have you picked up a newspaper recently?
There is a pacifism that invites pirate piracy and assault.
Have you considered what has happened to American interests around the world in recent years?
There is a social program that penalizes the frugal and puts a bonus on the profligate.
Have you pondered the results of the great society and the welfare state?
God made no such mistake.
He never planned that health, peace, or prosperity would be the heritage of families or nations that defy him.
Many kind-hearted people, with a pitying concern for the underprivileged, as they call them, have been misled by movements that undertake to save people with soap, soup, salve, social security, and scholarship.
No Christian can be indifferent to poverty and hardship or sickness, but God's plan is that ministering to the physical needs of the unsaved shall be an incentive to repentance, not a removal of the heartache that brings one to repentance.
The Bible says in the book of Romans the goodness of God leadeth the good.
Repentance.
Any ministration or mission work that convinces the sinner that sin is not so bad after all is the devil's work.
Any preaching that urges sinners to cheer up rather than repent is not God's gospel.
I'm afraid there are many who would usher in utopia by giving more pay for less work, by having more spending and less earning, by having more culture and less restraint, by having more revelry and fewer headaches.
That sort of gospel is more concerned with a man's dinner than with his deliverance from sin, and it will not get the job done.
It is called successful if its joiners respect themselves, even if they do not respect God.
It's a devil's substitute for the real thing.
God never sent anyone on a mission of appeasement to coax recalcitrant sinners to be respectable.
God told us to go into the all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
That Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures.
Not just his death, but his death for our sins.
Not just his crucifixion on the cross, but the reason for that crucifixion, our sins.
Christ died for our sins because of our sins, to pay for our sins, Christ died and was buried.
And the third day, Jesus Christ the Lord rose from the dead according to the scriptures.
Now feed a man who is hungry, if you will, and clothe a man that is naked, if you will, and give a man a helping hand who's down and out, if you will.
But if you do all that and do not demand that he repent of his sin and trust the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal savior, you have not done God's work.
In fact, you've hindered it.
God is the creator.
I believe not only in him as creator, but in the creator as savior.
How about you?
Have you ever trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?
There's no other way to heaven.
There's no other savior.
And that savior Jesus Christ said, Ye must be born again.
Thanks for tuning in today.
Join us every weekday for another episode of the Preaching of the Cross Radio Podcast.
For hundreds of hours of in-depth expository Bible teaching, please visit our YouTube channel, James W.
Knox Sermons, our sermon audio page, Bible Baptist Land, or our website, Bible Baptistteland.com.
Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.