Home \ Online Books \ Jesus Christ Creator

What we believe concerning man's origin will influence our feelings and actions today and will ultimately influence our belief about the destiny of man. If evolution is true, man is simply the result of his evolutionary ancestry and does not have a fallen nature; instead, his actions are merely the result of his animal ancestry. Freud says we must do what we can to get rid of the beast in man. But if man never fell, if he is simply the carry-over from his animal ancestry, then there really is no need for man to have any system of morals, for he is not a moral being. He is simply the highest animal in the animal kingdom. This philosophy is the basis for some of the problems we have in the world today.

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines man as simply the highest of the beasts, the highest form of the animal kingdom. If man is the highest of the animal kingdom, still evolving, there is no more hope for man than for parakeets, penguins or platypuses.

In opposition to evolution, the Bible maintains the salient importance of man, separate and distinct from animals. What we believe and accept concerning the premise of man's origins will ultimately determine all of our actions. If we firmly agree with what God has to say concerning the origin of man, we will live a life more pleasing to Him. The purpose of this treatise is to strengthen that faith in God's Word.

CREATION OF MAN

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him: male and female created he them. And God blessed them and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Genesis 1:26-28

Does God say, let man be one of the fish of the sea, one of the fowl of the air, or one of the cattle of the earth; let him be related to all the animals on the earth? No, He instructs man to have dominion over these creatures. The purpose of God in creating man was that he would be distinct from the animals. Nothing happened to man until God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life - then man became a living soul. God did not do this with the animal kingdom.

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 soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

Genesis 2:7-10, 15-20

Notice something about Adam: God did not create a baby and wait for him to grow up. On the day Adam was created he possessed all of his faculties, reflected intelligence, and was full-grown with all the appearance of age. That tells us something about God's creation. When He created the tree, probably it had growth rings. When He created the mountain, it may have had the appearance of erosion and other indicators of age. Genesis 1:9 says that God caused the waters to gather and the dry land to appear. Some mountain-building probably occurred and possibly some erosion. In any case, the dry land and the mountains would have gained an appearance of age. Adam, created on the sixth day, could see light coming from stars created on the fourth day, though apparently millions of light years away. God created a full-grown, developed universe.

Adam named all the animals, but he did not find anyone who met his specification for a mate. Adam was totally unique. There was no help meet for him. "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept:" and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto man" (Genesis 2:21-22). This is a most interesting portion of Scripture and probably one of the most scientific texts in the Bible. Investigation with frogs and other animals has led to some interesting results. Every cell in the body contains the same genetic structure. The nucleus of the skin cell of a frog can be used to replace the nucleus of an egg and eventually cause a tadpole to hatch. The cell, even though a skin cell, has the full template for the entire structure of a frog within it. In other words, every cell in the body has the same template. We do not as yet understand enough about this experiment to transfer the nuclei of skin cells to human eggs.

However, this scientific information suggests something about the method God used to create Eve. He took from Adam a rib. Some people charge the Bible with inaccuracy because men now have the same number of ribs as women, but this is a specious argument. If I lose my hand, my children will still be born with two hands. Adam had one less rib than Eve, but their offspring inherited the proper number of ribs. God took this particular portion of the body because it contained bony substance and fleshy material. From this He could perform a cell reduction (taking half of the chromosomes) and create woman. He could have created woman instantaneously of dust as He did Adam, but He chose to take a rib from Adam. Why?

1) This negates the possibility of theistic evolution or any other evolution. God says He took a rib from man and created woman. In biology we learn that the male has an X and Y chromosome, the female two X chromosomes. These separate and recombine to make makes and females. In taking a rib from Adam God was able to take two X chromosomes and create a female. Suppose He created woman first? She has only two X chromosomes - where would He get the Y? This parallels the uniqueness of the Lord Jesus Christ, born of a virgin. There is such a thing as parthenogenesis in rabbits, of course, with a female giving birth without the help of a male, but she always produces a female. One uniqueness of Jesus is that Y chromosome.

2) Adam was created first; then God taking the rib, produced a female. Why is that important? It demonstrates the uniqueness of Adam's existence, for Adam came not from a woman. Every other male in this world came from a female. Why did God go to all the trouble to do it this way? It demonstrates the unity of the human race. Notice what Adam says in Genesis 2:23: "And Adam said, This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."

Have you ever wondered about the fact that on the day God created them, He created only one individual? Adam and Eve were one: the same genetic constitution, one individual, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. That is why Eve could partake of the fruit and not plunge the whole human race into sin; Adam was the one held responsible. If God had created man from the dust and woman from the dust, Adam and Eve individually would have had to fall. Jesus Christ could come to save because Adam fell, and as all men die in Adam, so in Jesus Christ all men can be reborn into God's family and be made alive (Romans 5:12).

Adam is the individual responsible for the fall of the human race. Eve fell in Adam, for he is the racial head, the one held responsible. This principle is important concerning the fall because our salvation is based upon it. Adam fell into sin, and every man born into Adam's family was born to die. Thus every man must be reborn into God's family through Jesus Christ in order to have eternal life. As in Adam all are children of Satan, so in the second Adam, Jesus Christ, all become children of God. Without man's unity and fallen nature we would not have one way of salvation obtainable by all men.

Why be concerned with how man and woman came into being? God was very specific in how He created man and what He designed and created for him - so specific that we can take no position other that that He created them perfect. "Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright" (Ecclesiastes 7:29).

God created Adam and Eve and gave them the genetic potential for all people on the earth today. Unfortunately, many men do not choose to believe this, but would rather say that somehow man evolved from a lower form of life. Or they may take the position (as some do) of a theistic evolutionist and say that two apes for some unknown reason fell on their knees; they looked upward, God mistook that for prayer, and He created man and woman. Or perhaps somehow God allowed them to evolve and, when they were ready, gave them a soul. in opposition to these variant possibilities, we must accept what God says or accept theories which go counter to the Biblical account.

THE FOSSIL RECORD

Does the fossil record present a problem in the origin of man? Anthropologists, constantly uncovering human bones, tell us exactly how long ago they think these people lived, what they were, where they lived and the importance of their place in man's ancestry. How do they obtain all this information and how trustworthy is it?

We begin with the Cambrian strata, supposed to be the oldest rock strata containing fossils. Note first a major mystery in the fossil record: the outburst of life in the so-called Cambrian period, though there should be billions of years of evolution represented before this. Tremendous amount of Precambrian rock were laid down, yet they contain only single celled fossils. An index fossil is a particular type of fossil presumed to identify rock formations or strata. The great index fossil of the Cambrian rocks is the trilobite, presumed to be one of the earliest forms of life. Trilobites are really very complex little animals with a nervous system, compound eyes and jointed legs. The eyes in some species incorporated advanced principles of optical science. They certainly are not primitive animals. Evolutionists claim that once life evolved to the one-celled animal, we were more than halfway to man. A trilobite is much farther up that scale, yet we have no record of evolutionary development before it. Trilobites and most other invertebrates are found represented in the Cambrian strata.

My files include a photograph of a particular fossil acquisition in the Cambrian strata. About twenty little trilobites are imbedded in rock in what appears to be a sandal print. This presents a slight problem. The sandal print had to be formed while the trilobites were still living; no other logical explanation can be conceived. However, after scanning this photo carefully one paleontologist at the University of Utah stated that the whole print must be a new type of trilobite that we have never seen before. He is talking about trilobite fossils in what would appear to be a ten-inch sandal print which has deeper impression in the heel mark area than in the toe.

The uncovering of other fossils in Texas tend to make man contemporary with dinosaurs if the findings are accepted at face value. For instance, human prints were located in the same strata with dinosaur prints in the Paluxy river bed in Glen Rose, Texas. In locating the eighth track in one series, we pumped out the water and scraped off the debris until we came to the rock sheet on the bottom, where we found the print in limestone. This human track crossed a three-toed dinosaur track, and one could discern fainter prints going on out into the river. Recently a gentleman who is continuing work on this project has found four good size tracks, approximately sixteen inches long and nine inches across, revealing toes. As more research is completed in the Glen Rose area, a number of questions concerning man will be answered.

How do we confront the claims of those scientists who state that the remains of pre-historic men have been found? The Neanderthal man was for many years considered one of man's ancestors. Evolutionists suggested that he lived some 80,000 years ago - the dating depends upon which book one reads. Recently it was discovered that Neanderthal is really not much different from modern man. Because a Neanderthal skeleton used 80 years ago as a basis for museum displays had a diseased spine, scientists concluded and the world believed man did not always walk upright. Then they found skeletons from Neanderthals which stood perfectly upright. Subsequently the first skeletons with the curvature of the spine were re-examined and found to have suffered from a form of arthritis. In essence, we located an early human ancestor with an arthritic problem.

Study the skull of the first Neanderthal. Byron Nelson took the side view and compared it to a painting of the Revolutionary War here LaFayette. He found that one can put his features on the skull without any difficulty at all. A Neanderthal skull can be made to look very modern or very primitive depending on how the reconstruction is made. If skull capacity means anything, the Neanderthal man has a capacity larger than modern man, about 1600 cc. Modern man has somewhere between 1200 and 1500 cc. If brain capacity means anything, Neanderthal man would be more intelligent than modern man. Brain capacity may not be the whole answer, but Neanderthal has been identified as very similar to modern man.

The Peking Man has an interesting story. Records and accounts of several men such as Boule and de Chardin, avowed evolutionists who were on the scene in China, state that they never found any fossil men there. They merely found skulls of macaques and gibbons and a few perfectly human skulls. Then the personnel changed on the dig itself, and the third or fourth leader started making extraordinary proposals for the skulls found. A major problem exists today: none of these skulls is available. Drawings and casts of the skulls exist, but the actual skulls were supposedly lost during World War II. Frankly, we are entitled to doubt "scientific" claims when the evidence is missing and the story has progressively improved through the accounts of the individuals who headed up the various excavations.

Java Man, Pithecanthropus Erectus, was found by a man named Dubois. Pictures in the museums and reconstructions of the complete body, including all of the hairs of his head, suggest that the specimen must have been quite intact. One never gets the impression that excavators found only a piece of skull cap, a femur, and a thigh bone! Dubois reported thirty years after the original disclosure that the skull cap of the Java Man was nothing more than the skull cap of a silver gibbon. He also found in Java the large-brained human Wadjak skull. But he hid it for 30 years because his interpretation contradicted its obvious significance. Yet Java Man is still presented in textbooks as one of our ancestors in a long, long line of evolutionary development.

An individual found a tooth in a Nebraska field. He mailed this particular tooth back east to some scientists who were fascinated with such an amazing find. Here, they felt, was proof of early man on the North American continent. This was their first evidence, so they published an article concerning the significance of the find. The London Daily Illustrated News displayed a full-page spread on Nebraska Man - Hesperopithecus Harold Cookii - Harold Cook's "Ape of the West." They reconstructed this creature from his tooth, exhibiting his exact shape, even to the extreme brow ridges and the broad shoulders. More significant was the fact that they reconstructed not only his form, but that of his wife as well. So here are Mr. and Mrs. Hesperopithecus, reconstructed from a tooth. Back in Nebraska they were able to find the entire jaw bone. Then they fit the tooth into the jaw bone - to their horror, the jaw bone was that of a pig. Well, men will make mistakes; such is scientific frailty.

You are probably aware of Piltdown Man, which has a perfect skull cap of a man and an ape-like jaw bone. Unfortunately, they do not match. One is fossilized, one is not. One has been fossilized for a length of time, whereas one is modern. The teeth of the ape have been filed down to make them look human in appearance. For some thirty years this was reported as the greatest proof for evolution. The original skull was not accessible, but casts and drawings were placed in many museums. Some time later, determining that the skulls should be carefully re-examined , scientists applied fluorine and other tests. Skull pieces were shown to have different ages. The Piltdown Man in reality was composed of the jaw bone of an ape and the skull cap of a man. This hoax, presented in all of the textbooks, was decisively unmasked by Kenneth Oakley and published in magazines and scientific journals. Scientists claim that with new modern dating methods such a mistake could never be made again.

Zinjanthropus is reconstructed from 400 fragments of skull, the largest of which is the size of a silver dollar. One who views a good picture of the skull usually wonders what it could be, for it doesn't really look like any type of skull. Yet it is said to be from one of our ancestors. An interesting corollary to the problem is the lava flow immediately under the bed in which Zinjanthropus is found. Under Zinjanthropus they found Homo Habilis, supposedly a more modern man. Evolutionists explain that this bed is overturned, and thus the Zinjanthropus is indeed one of our ancestors - some one and three quarter million years old. The lava flow underneath, when dated by potassium-argon, gives a lesser age of 1.3 million years. Problems are involved in the dating of lava flows by potassium-argon. Recently a lava flow formed in 1801 in Hawaii was dated by the potassium-argon method and found to have an age of 230 million years. Since the lava flow took place in modern times, one wonders about the accuracy of this dating system. Certainly there is strong evidence against the acceptance of the potassium-argon dates given to Zinjanthropus.

We will never know three things about Zinjanthropus from looking at the pieces of skull. One, we will never really know what his fleshy parts looked like. Two, we never know if he had the capacity to think. Three, we will never know if he had the capacity to speak. These are the three criteria for man. In fact, if Zinjanthropus were living today, we might find him caged in a zoo with a special name for him and other supposed ancestors of man. Or we my find him a type of man which has become extinct before our time; we will never know for sure by merely looking at the bones.

Ramapithecus was built around a few fragments, some of which are teeth. Scientists say the teeth are humanoid, human-like. But there is a baboon living in Ethiopia today which has the same teeth as Ramapithecus. How can we decide whether the teeth really belong to an ancestor or to one of these baboons?

We have the tendency to think that if something is primitive, it is very old. In fact, when looking at a skull, anthropologists consistently judge that the older it is, the more primitive it must be. However, such a conclusion cannot be gained just from looking at the skull itself. What, then , is the significance of picking up skulls and fragments of skulls? What can we really learn by looking at a few bones? Not very much. When we consider that many of these creatures are reconstructed from a few teeth, a jaw bone, a small piece of skull, what is really being demonstrated? When one realizes that scientists cannot date the skull itself to determine how old it is, nor directly date the strata (sedimentary layer laid down by water) in which it is found, what is the significance of the ages placed upon these creatures?

In discussing and looking for primitive man, anthropologists seem to proceed with one preconceived idea in their minds - man has evolved. Because of this, they have tried to demonstrate the ancestry of man. With this basic assumption they present what they claim as evidence to support the idea and have made conclusions depending upon the assumptions involved. Nothing is ever said about the missing links between birds and reptiles, between amphibians and reptiles, between vertebrates and invertebrates, although a great deal of time is spent talking about the missing link between man and the ape. Even here the evolutionists cannot agree as to how man came about. Some say that man and the ape have a common ancestor; some suggest that man and the ape evolved through the same fish; some insist they can trace the ancestry back through separate fish down to separate protozoa; some would tell you that man evolved from the chimpanzee, or from the orangutan or from the gorilla. (One man actually proposed that this explains the origin of the races: the white race from the chimpanzee, the oriental from the orangutan and the Negro from the gorilla). These are ideas being proposed by science as to how man came into existence.

POPULATION PROBLEMS

How long has man been on the earth? The Bible states that man was created in God's image. The Bible declares that man was created perfect, lived on the earth and fell into sin; after a great Flood which destroyed sinful man, the race started over again with Noah and his family. Biblical chronology would indicate this new beginning some 4300 years ago. To obtain that figure, trace back through the genealogies. Most Bible scholars put the date somewhere between the last 4000 to 6000 years.

Suppose we begin with Mr. and Mrs. Noah 4300 years ago, work out the formula and determine whether the Bible is reliable in regard to population statistics. We will have to account for the present population of three billion people living on the earth in the last 4300 years. Let us discount the fact that Noah and his wife had three children who in turn had wives. We will also discount the fact that Noah lived 950 years and reckon that he lived only 43 years and died. That means Noah only lived long enough to see his own children and died before he saw his grandchildren. Here we have solved two problems: overlapping generation - we now have 100 generations of 43 years each - which in turn solves that age-old problem of the generation gap. If a man and his wife only had two children, the population would not increase but would always be two, so we will give them two and a half children per generation. You must subtract for those who die in each generation, but in doing so you still can develop a formula that will quite conservatively produce the present population of the world, over four billion people, in the last 4300 years, beginning with two people and two and a half children per family per generation. The annual growth rate of that population would be one half of one percent. The present growth rate is two percent per year. So even with one-fourth of the present birth rate the biblical framework is reasonable. These estimates are quite approximate, of course, for population growth rates are affected by many factors.

What about the evolutionist? They will tell you that man lived on the earth one million years ago - some say two million, some eight million. Judging conservatively, we will estimate the evolutionary age of man to be one million years. Begin with two people, Mr. and Mrs. Zinjanthropus, or Mr. and Mrs. Australopithecus. Working with the same formula of no overlapping generations and two and one-half children per generation, you will find that the present population of the world should be 10²²⁵⁰ (the number 1 with 2250 zeros after it, a huge number). Fill all of the world, all of the oceans and all of the solar system with people until they extend as far as our most powerful telescope reportedly can see, four billion light years away, and you will account for 10⁷⁸ people. If evolution is to be reasonable as an explanation for man's origin, we would expect from the evolutionary assumptions to find a vastly larger population living on the earth today than we actually observe.

Not wanting to be accused of being unfair, let us give the evolutionist another formula that would account just for the number of people living today. Instead of two and one-half children per generation, substitute 2.002 per generation, just enough for the population to grow a little each year. Four billion people are then produced at the end of one million years. But even with this formula over four trillion people have lived and died in the last million years. Where are their remains, the bones and the fossils? Human skeletons are very rare, whereas by this formula they should abound throughout the earth. The Biblical framework remains the more reasonable of the two.

EARLY MAN

We often become overly concerned about men with primitive appearance. The Bible says mankind began with a perfect pair. Beginning with Mr. and Mrs. Noah and their three sons and three wives, we began to produce a diversification of people upon the earth. Diet and environment created people that looked different from other people. Rather than beginning with primitive man and working up to the complex man of today, we are saying that man was more complex, more perfect, in the past. Man has degenerated as time has gone on.

Some anthropologists believe that civilization cannot be older than 6000 years. If primitive man is older than that, how did he suddenly develop a civilization? Even primitive tribes normally have highly sophisticated cultures. Cultural anthropologists feel that civilization started about 5000 years ago. Physical anthropologists ignore this and, finding a primitive arrowhead or bone, try to determine what the man was like. Life and its activities cannot be reconstructed from a bone or an implement.

In 1971 a man's skeleton was found in Cretaceous strata in Utah. The findings of the skeleton would tend to disprove the dating of the Cretaceous period at 100 million years ago. However, since the skeleton was pushed over by a bulldozer, it cannot be absolutely determined whether it was washed into the strata, dropped into a cave, or existed at the alleged time the strata was deposited. As creationists we try to take an honest approach to these matters: we are not going to say we have proved our point in this matter without substantial evidence. The evolutionist, however, in many areas has glossed over the evidence. Even when showing the discrepancies, he continues to make claims to support his thesis. A careful reading of Darwin's Origin of Species will demonstrate the abundance of "Let us suppose," "if we assume," "let us pretend," "if." Phrases such as these are used some 187 times in one chapter, and toward the end of the book Darwin implies that if we have followed him this far, it is not very difficult to go one step further and assume the next step. In essence, what have we gained? A lot of assumptions.

In his book Implications of Evolution, G.A. Kerkut, as an evolutionist, asserts that "to change a present day reptile into a mammal, though of great interest, would not show the way in which the mammals did arise." Thus it would not prove that reptiles turned into mammals because no one was there in the past to see it, and so, unfortunately, this cannot be confirmed. Kerkut reports that evolution is based on seven assumptions - all of them unproved and unverifiable. He concludes his work (and this is an evolutionist writing, a professor of biochemistry), "The evidence that supports the general theory of evolution, ameba to man, is not sufficiently strong enough to consider it as anything more that a working hypothesis." It is not even good enough to be a theory! Kerkut does not believe in creation, but he has demonstrated to the world that evolution is not proved. When we come to the origin of man, we will have to rid ourselves of some of these preconceived ideas.

A MARRIAGE PROBLEM

Suppose man did evolve from two apes. Somewhere in that life span and that same locality a female would have to evolve together with a male. If they did evolve, were somewhat compatible and produced children, where would the male get his wife: He would have to marry his sister. Even if we start with a small group, as most anthropologists suggest, we still have that same limited choice. The taboo against marrying a sister began about the time of the Egyptian kings when they began to intermarry in order to continue the kingly or divine line. Intermarriage, of course , has a tendency to reproduce the bad traits in man. The Bible, however, begins with Adam and Eve, both perfect and without this problem. They had the same constitution, producing offspring and living 930 years. The Bible says Adam lived 800 years after Seth was born and produced sons and daughters. Even if we grant them just twelve sons and daughters, many of them could be much older than others, perhaps 400-500 years apart. Intermarriage begins, and Cain has a tremendous potential of choices as to whom he is going to marry. In addition, the children of Adam and Eve are going to be more perfect than those living today. The evolutionist, then, lacks the conditions necessary to explain where the first men got their wives. The Biblical account provides them completely.

THE CURSE OF CANAAN

These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread. And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and was drunken: and he was uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years. And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.

Genesis 9:19-29

Many people believe that this passage explains the origin of races. They suggest that the Negro comes from Canaan because the black color was his curse. But notice two things: verse 22 "And Ham the father of Canaan," and verse 24, "And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him." It was Ham who saw his father and Ham who told his two brothers. Yet Noah says, "Cursed by Canaan." Why?

Ham was not involved in some gross immorality. The Bible simply states that Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father. The other two sons, Shem and Japheth, took a garment and, walking backwards, covered their father, not observing his nakedness. Previous to this action Ham evidently walked in, saw his father, came out and said, "Look at our dad. He has been telling us that we ought to be good boys, yet he is in there drunk." This was not an act of immorality on Ham's part, but disrespect.

Who is Canaan? In the tenth chapter of Genesis we find that Canaan is the youngest son of Ham. Why was he cursed? The answer, in accord with Jewish custom, is suggested in I Samuel. When David slew Goliath, Saul asked, "Whose son is this that I may honor him?" Saul knew who David was, for David had played the harp for him - in fact, Saul had offered David his armor. But now Saul wanted to bless David for his great victory over the Philistines. How did he do it? By blessing Jesse, David's father. By laying blessing and honor on the father, Saul blessed the son. Likewise, when Joseph blessed Ephraim and Manasseh, he also blessed himself. Blessings go back one generation - and this would be equally true of a curse. Had Noah cursed Ham, he would have been placing that curse upon himself. Yet he wanted to curse Ham and all his descendants, so he placed the curse on the youngest son of Ham, which reverts back a generation, covering Ham and all of Ham's children. This also eliminated Shem and Japheth from the curse.

In review, Noah could not have cursed Ham without cursing himself and bringing that curse upon his whole family, so in order to curse Ham he cursed the youngest son of Ham, Canaan, who would have the same background, interests and material mindedness as his father. The curse of the youngest son Canaan covers all his brothers and comes back a generation to his father Ham, but it protects the two other sons of Noah.

What is the curse? Certainly not that Ham changed color instantaneously. The curse is a prophecy. Realizing Ham's attitude, that he was not one who would honor his father, Noah says, ". . . a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." Some people interpret "servants of servants" to mean a slave. But note other similar Biblical expressions. The Lord God is Lord of lords, which means He is the highest Lord of all lords. He is the King of kings, the highest King of all kings. Paul says he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, one of the highest Hebrews because he was of the tribe of Benjamin, one of the two tribes of the southern kingdom who remained true to Jerusalem and did not revolt. A "servant of servants" simply means the highest of all servants, not a slave. Because of Ham's mental attitude, Noah realized he was materialistically minded. A glance at the descendants of Ham will demonstrate that. "Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel . . . Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh . . . " (Genesis 10:8-11). These people built cities. You do not find that description of the descendants of Shem or of Japheth. Noah realized the implications of the mind of ham, concerned with materialistic things and knew that his children would also take up that attitude and interest. A pioneer who builds a city does not have time for reading, education and luxuries - not even to study the things of God. So the curse here is upon a materialistically minded people.

The Bible never mentions the word "race." Which is a man-made term. Instead, the Bible speaks of nations. The descendants of Ham are probably the oriental and colored peoples, for a careful study of history reveals that the descendants of Ham are those who have built the major cities - the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Babylonians and the Assyrians. These were the firs large major empires. The curse is not a curse of color, for color is nothing more than a genetic variation. Why do brown, white and black rabbits exist? They are produced by a genetic variation, as in varied eye colors or the colors of flowers. The different skin colors of man on this earth are simple genetic variations.

The descendants of Ham, steadily concerned with materialistic things, have provided man with all the major technologies. Dr. Arthur Custance, an anthropologist in Canada, states that from the descendants of Ham we can trace most of the technologies of mankind with few exceptions. The airplane has been traced to them, the toothbrush, writing, arithmetic, ship building and many other inventions which we consider part of our civilization.

By contrast, the descendants of Shem are concerned with spiritual things. The Bible says, "Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant." The descendants of Shem include the Israelites or Jewish people. They had the responsibility of taking the message of God to the world, but they failed. The Lord God originally planned to present His message to the high priest, who would then pass it to the Levite priest; he would give it to the twelve tribes, who would pass it on to the world. But Israel kept that message to themselves, and thus God found it necessary to go to the Gentiles.

"God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem." Traditionally the sons of Japheth have been the ones concerned with the intellectual and philosophic things of man. They do not invent much, but they improve on someone else's invention once given to them. "By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations" (Genesis 10:5). The descendants of Japheth (the Gentiles) at the time of Christ were given the responsibility of presenting the message of Christ to the descendants of Ham and Shem.

Thus there is one race - the human race - all descendants of Noah, all concerned with different things because there are various individuals comprising this race. You will find this true today.

At Babel a tower was built, resulting in a judgment and a scattering of nations. Until the time of Babel there was something like a melting pot of people. One had a choice of marrying a descendant of Japheth, Ham or Shem, and all lived near the one community. At the tower of Babel and immediately afterwards, the people scattered and burst into seventy nations (Genesis 11), spreading themselves over the face of the earth.

A family goes to one area and begins to build a civilization. They are similar in appearance, for by heredity children tend to look like their parents. The children only know what they are taught, which in turn they teach their children. The descendants of Ham begin to build cities. Later the descendants of Shem capture these cities. The descendants of Japheth do not accomplish much until they improve upon the other civilizations. Those who stay close to the cultural center continue to learn and develop. Those who pioneer and go farther away become less cultured and less civilized. As people move farther and farther away, back into areas such as Africa, they carry less and less civilization white them. Being hunters like their father Nimrod, they develop cultures based upon hunting. This does not mean that they are any less intelligent because they are hunters.

Claude Levi Strauss, a leading evolutionary anthropologist, finds no evidence that man is any less intelligent in one area of the world than in another. In the most primitive cultures man's intelligence is equal. There is no evidence of the evolution of man's mind. So-called primitive tribes living in remote areas have complex languages and cultures. After they quit pioneering, settle down, and build their cultures, then perhaps they think about God. Only they do not remember the God who told them about the Flood; they do not remember the God of Noah. But they know there is a God and thus begin to set up a religion because they see other people establishing religions. Accounts of the past have been handed down by word of mouth. Eventually someone decides to write down all these accounts and traditions. Instead of having an account of the Flood, they come up with myths like the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic. These have some truth in them but have been perverted by time. The farther away people get from the original center of civilization, the more tendency to create variants. We find, however, in all of the ancient tribes, all of the so-called primitive tribes, very strong cultural behavior. They are really not primitive; we just consider them so because we compare them to our standards.

Anthropologists repeatedly point to the findings of skulls representing primitive man - with the shape of the skull apparently reflecting its age. They seem to forget the effects of the environment and diet upon the shape of the human skull. Feed a child a diet in which he has to chew a great deal and the shape of the skull is formed accordingly. Feed another child soft foods and the skull is again formed quite differently. Deficiencies in vitamins and minerals likewise cause changes in the shape of the bones and skull. It is a mistaken idea to assume that the uglier the skull looks, the more primitive it is. The shape of the skulls considered in this writing have the look of primitiveness with the ridges and extensions of the brow, but these could be accounted for on the basis of dietary deficiency as well as effects of the environment.

Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal remains found in Europe in the area of the culture cradle have a larger brain capacity than modern man. Like modern man, their skull capacity is larger than those in more remote areas. However, brain capacity does not seem to mean much in classifying skulls, although we do have averages which we consider for man. There seems to be evidence that the brain capacity of man in the past was larger. At a distance from the European cultural center one finds smaller skulls, ones that look more primitive. Yet one can find each of these ancient types in individuals living today. These skulls are simply nothing more than degenerate forms of Adam and Eve and of Noah, scattered from this cultural center in the last 4300 years.

CONCLUSION

When attempting to look for some type of ancestor, when endeavoring to demonstrate evolutionary development, man reflects preconceived ideas when parading various fossil evidences. But his evidence is not strong enough for us to discard our Biblical framework. If we re-evaluate the findings with an open mind and look at the mistakes and problems, we will find that the Bible gives us a very good perspective from which to examine the claims of anthropology.

As far as the origin of races is concerned, there really is no such thing. We are all one race, the human race, descendants of Noah and his sons - Ham, Shem and Japheth. Man is material, intellectual and spiritual, and he must keep these three aspects of his life in balance to be effective. As man rejects God, pursuing goals for his own wants and pleasures, he encounters the problems of today. If man is going to learn anything about his origin, he is not going to find out much by looking downward and trying to determine where he came from. He will not discern the true meaning of his origin until he bows humbly on his knees and looks to God. He will then not only understand his origin, but also his destiny.

This is the message we have to proclaim. God created man perfect, but man fell into sin and had need of forgiveness. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator, came and died on the cross as Saviour, providing the payment for man's sin. And He is coming again to judge man. We must realize the unity of the human race, that we are one people, and that each one needs the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the responsibility of the Christian to tell the world.