by The Rev. Mark Buetow
Scientists this week announced that they’ve found what they call the “missing link.” No, it’s not a problem on our website. It’s a cute little animal fossil named “Ida” that is supposedly 47 million years old and shows very clearly a specific branch in the human evolutionary tree. At some point, little mammaly things split, one branch becoming lemur-like creatures and the other branch becoming monkeys, apes and finally humans. Scientists are really excited because they say this proves beyond doubt that their evolutionary theories are right and unquestionable. Remember, the theory of evolution suggests that all life evolved from some glob of proteins that was floating around billions of years ago. From some one celled organism, more complicated life developed. Fish things became crawly things and those became all kinds of organisms. Eventually, you get to “Ida” the little fossil they found which is part-lemur with some “human” characteristics. The missing link! Evolution is proven! God is dead! Blah, blah, blah!
As always, the Word of God demolishes the wisdom of men. In the book of Genesis, it clearly states that when the Lord spoke His Word to create, He made everything “according to its kind” and everything He made He said would reproduce “according to its kind.” Those words are important! They teach us that apple trees make apple trees, petunias make petunias, cows make cows, and people make people. People don’t come from monkeys and birds don’t come from dinosaurs. Our heavenly Father, in all of His infinite creative genius, made our wonderful world with all its diversity of life by the power of His Word. That includes Man, whom God’s Word clearly says was crafted by the Lord Himself and into which He breathed the Spirit of life to make Man a living being.
But the evidence! The fossil! It proves evolution! The Christian faith is doomed! The book of Genesis really must be a made up mythic story! Nonsense! Little “Ida” the lemur fossil doesn’t prove anything. Evolutionary scientists have long suspected there was some relation between man and other primates and mammals and now they suppose they have this “missing link,” this missing piece of the puzzle. But that’s no missing link. Show me a fossil that’s part fish and part mammal. Show me the fossil that proves some form of life between a fish and a tree. For being a link in the human chain, Ida sure has a big tail! The fact of the matter is this: evolutionary scientists have a certain understanding of how they think life has evolved and when they find some fossils, they are very good at making the evidence conclude what they already think has happened.
Don’t be fooled by the propaganda. The demand to be shown a “missing link” is a challenge presented by those who believe what God’s Word says about our origins. For these evolutionary scientists to claim they’ve found the “missing link” is a direct attack upon the Christian faith. It’s as much as to say, “See? Science is right. The Bible is wrong. Christians are stupid. Faith is silly. God doesn’t exist. Evolution is how things really work.” The fact is, those who trust in their theories of evolution rely upon a huge amount of faith and trust in their view of the world. It’s faith at least as much as a Christian has to trust in God’s Word. There isn’t space in a little article like this to refute evolution at every point but believe it when I say there are plenty of intelligent scientists who don’t buy it. In any case, genuine science is in the business of experimenting and collecting data and the fact is, you can’t prove evolution anymore than you can prove creation because nobody can create something from nothing.
But the Lord can! He can and did create everything out of nothing. The problem with evolution is not simply that is denies the book of Genesis. The problem with evolution is that it assumes humans are no more special than the creatures they supposedly evolved from. It supposes that death is the natural order of things. It denies that there is a personal God who made us and takes care of us in favor of thinking everything happens by random chance. Against all this we have the testimony of Christ Himself who is God in the flesh. What is unique about the faith of the Christian Church is not that we believe there is a Creator, but that the Creator took on flesh, came to His creation, and saved us from the sin and death we brought that ruined this creation. Christians acknowledge that things are not right with the world but the One who made the world has come down to us and put things right by His death on the cross and His resurrection. Evolutionary scientists look at the suffering and problems of this world and say, “Well that’s just the way it is.” There’s no comfort there! No peace. No wonder these crazy theories are believed by so many: they’re a tool of Satan to confuse and cause despair.
What we need is not a “missing link” in the monkey tree but a link from us to God. Evolution says there is no such thing. The Word of God says that “missing link” is not missing at all. It’s Jesus Christ! He is the link, the connection between us and God because He Himself is true God and Man. It is Jesus who lifts us up out of the pit of sin and death which we caused ourselves to fall into and raises us to the heavenly places at the right hand of the Father. Where evolution assumes things will get better or at least be different for no particular reason, the Christian faith is not afraid to confess that this world is passing away and only getting worse. But the Good News is that in Christ we have not just biological life, but spiritual and eternal life forever with the One who loved us and made us and has remade us in His Son. So they found a “missing link?” Don’t let that bother you! The Word of God will always have the final say. And it doesn’t say you share a common past with some monkey thingy. God’s Word says you have been created uniquely by Him and it promises that you share an eternal future with Him in Jesus Christ.
