Welcome to The Creator Revealed.
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I'm Tim Standish
and I'm a scientist.
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Scientists are trained
to observe things in nature.
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And one of the things
that we observe is evil.
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Yeah, you know,
last time we talked about
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human in relational evil,
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but this time,
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we're going to talk about
evil in nature, natural evil.
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And we're so glad that
you have joined us because,
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you know, this is
such an informative series,
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and we're glad
that you're enjoying it.
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You know, before
we actually go on,
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I do want to point
out that what we call evil
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is really something that
is subject to definition.
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And we shouldn't be
distracted by the evil
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from all of that is wonderful
out there in nature as well.
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From the biblical perspective,
we do acknowledge evil,
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but we also recognize the good
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and we believe that
the good was created by God
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at the very beginning.
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Amen.
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Moses wrote about this creation
in this way in Genesis 1:31.
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He said, "Then God saw
everything that He had made,
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and indeed it was very good."
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Very good.
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"So the evening and the
morning were the sixth day."
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So now they're going
to go on into the Sabbath
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and rest and spend
that time together with God.
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I can't imagine how
beautiful the creation was.
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And yet, we see things today
that are the result of sin.
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Those, sin is evil,
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and the results of
sin are evil consequences,
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death, suffering, tears, pain.
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So God cursed the
earth because of the fall,
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because of the evil.
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Yes, Oh and human beings
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chose the evil over the good.
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It seems incredible,
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in retrospect that would happen.
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And yet,
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I know that I've made that same
decision myself on occasion.
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But and, you know, when
you think about deception,
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sometimes people don't realize
that what the devil hands us
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can be in a shiny foil
package with a beautiful bow.
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And it's nothing more
than gift wrapped garbage.
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Unfortunately,
that's the case of
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and yet we go
for it on occasion.
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And in fact, I think
we're going to talk right now
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about some gift wrap garbage.
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Okay. That's kind of harsh.
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I believe that Charles
Darwin was very brilliant man.
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And that he
understood the implications
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of what he was saying.
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And that's one of the things
that we are contemplating now.
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Because he, remember he had this
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alternative materialistic
conception of reality.
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And he wrote this, he
said, "From the war of nature,
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from famine and death,
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the most exalted object which
we are capable of conceiving,
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namely, the production
of the higher animals,
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directly follows."
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Wow.
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Well, so what Darwin is saying
is that thing that we all know,
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in our hearts is
awful, death, suffering, war,
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those sorts of things,
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that that is what
produced the beautiful things.
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Yeah.
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Whereas the biblical view,
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the reality
that's actually out there
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is that God
created all of that beauty,
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all of that wonder, and
the death, the suffering,
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that evil is an imposition
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on God's
originally very good creation.
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So these are very, very
different views of things.
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Why would a Darwinist consider
war and death to be bad?
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It's a good thing.
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It makes wonderful
things like human beings,
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and eagles and, you know,
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all of those things
that we kind of wonder about.
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What a convoluted
way of thinking though...
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Well, it is. In my mind.
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But you say that,
because you're coming at it
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from a biblical
perspective, yes.
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But from a
Darwinian perspective,
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you could not say that,
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it's the only logical thing
from a Darwinian perspective.
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I mean, you
just look at pictures
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of what's going on
in Syria, for example,
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how can anyone say war is good,
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how can anyone say
something is resulting
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that's good from that
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when you see all the
destruction and suffering?
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God has built into us
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that fundamental understanding.
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Amen. It is evil.
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And evil is a bad thing. It
doesn't produce good things.
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In fact the Bible,
again, this is Paul writing,
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in the New Testament, he says,
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"The last enemy to
be destroyed is death."
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Death is not our friend.
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Death is not our Creator,
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or part of the
process of creating us.
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Death is the enemy.
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And Jesus Christ, our Creator,
of course, overcame death.
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Now I want to
address one of the arguments
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that's commonly put forward
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about the creation
when we look at it.
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Remember, this is
what scientists do,
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we look at things
and as I said, you know,
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I look at nature
and I see evil things.
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I see things that
break for example.
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And there is this argument
out there because nature breaks,
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it doesn't work the
way we think it should do
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that somehow or
other that is evidence
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so that isn't created.
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However, that is a flawed logic.
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This is a picture here that
I'm showing of a Ford Pinto.
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Was this yours?
And no, it wasn't mine.
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Now, Ford Pintos.
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They frankly were terrible cars.
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I think anybody who's had
an encounter with a Ford Pinto,
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though they're probably a
few Ford Pinto fans out there.
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I'm sorry.
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But that they
just terrible vehicles
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and but nobody doubt,
so they were designed.
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And they were
designed for a purpose.
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That, so even bad
design is still design,
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it still requires a mind.
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The question really is,
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is the design a good
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or is the design an evil?
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Is God good when we
see these broken designs?
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So let's just take a
look at some of these things.
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Oh, this is my
beautiful dog, Jack.
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And you can see he
was so intelligent,
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so full of love.
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What Jack's doing here is
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he's actually
climbing into my suitcase.
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He knows you're
packing and leaving.
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He knows I'm packing.
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He wanted to come home with me.
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And only less than a year ago,
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I held Jack in my
arms while he died.
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And that was an
awful, awful experience.
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In fact, just
talking about it now,
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it kind of, it makes me,
it makes me profoundly sad.
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What a
wonderful, lovely creature.
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How can it be that our
bodies grow old and we die?
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How can that happen?
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Well, you know, the
wages of sin are death,
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we know that.
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So, you know,
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the Bible doesn't
ignore this suffering
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and pain that we're in.
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In fact, in Romans,
Paul also wrote this,
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he said, "We know
that the whole creation
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has been groaning as
in the pains of childbirth
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right up to the present time.
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Not only so, but we ourselves,
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who have the firstfruits
of the Spirit, groan inwardly
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as we wait eagerly
for our adoption as sons,
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the redemption of our bodies."
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You see, the
Bible provides hope,
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the same God who created us.
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Our Creator is our Redeemer,
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and He adopts us, even
though we rejected Him.
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It's an amazing.
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It's such incredibly good news.
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It's rooted in our
thinking about the creation.
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And, of course,
Paul also wrote this,
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"Through one man
sin entered the world,
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and death through sin,
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and thus death
spread to all men,
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because all sinned..."
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This is in Romans 5,
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he actually says the same
thing over and over again,
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so that we get it right.
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We can't misunderstand here.
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Death is a result of
sin. Okay, and that's...
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We can say, okay,
that's a natural result.
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You know, we separated
ourselves from the life giver.
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And it doesn't mean, you know,
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I just want to say this
in case there's somebody
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watching who thinks,
well, my two year old just died,
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he didn't sin.
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We're not talking about
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the direct
correlation of what you did.
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I mean, maybe for
the second death, yes.
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But just that when
sin entered the world,
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everything started decaying.
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It is going to be recreated.
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That's right.
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And this is one of the
reasons that death is so awful
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because it's so unjust.
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Yes.
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The righteous die
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and the sinners
die, everybody dies.
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I mean, you know, this is,
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we know this is not
the way it should be.
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Right.
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But there's another
kind of evil out there.
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And I'm illustrating
it with this viper here.
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It's a rattlesnake, obviously.
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And when we look at them,
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when we look at their
system of envenomation,
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it looks like it's designed.
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How do we account
for that as Christians?
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And the truth is, we don't know.
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We don't know how that system
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that has only one
purpose and it is to kill.
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How did that come into being?
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The problem is that
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we have too many
possible explanations.
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Yes.
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Some people say
the devil did it.
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Some people say it's
just sort of some kind of
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natural consequence
of things breaking down.
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Some people even say God did it,
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you know, God, somehow or other
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when He cursed the
earth and certainly
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He specifically cursed snakes.
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Maybe that was
it, we don't know.
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It's a mystery.
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It is a mystery,
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but what we do know is that
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there is still an awful
lot of beauty and goodness
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that is evident in the creation.
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And, oh, we also
know, by the way,
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that snakes are not alone.
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I like tarantulas,
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it kind of like a story things.
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But they do have venom
and they can inject it into.
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So you do have to...
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Don't go and pick up
every tarantula out there
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as I'm doing in this photograph.
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But just
understand, hey, you know,
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there's lots of this
that we see out there.
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But here's what
the Bible tells us.
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This is Paul again,
he's writing to Timothy,
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my namesake.
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And he says, "Here
is a trustworthy saying
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that deserves full acceptance:
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Christ Jesus came into the world
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to save sinners of
whom I am the worst."
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I could say the same
thing about myself as well.
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Yes, and that's really
what the Bible brings to us
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the promise of a
solution to this problem.
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It recognizes the
problem and provides a solution.
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And what the solution
is, is the new creation.
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And we have this wonderful view
of the new creation in Isaiah,
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the Book of Isaiah, which
talks a lot about creation,
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by the way.
00:12:00.52\00:12:01.85
Here, he writes,
00:12:01.88\00:12:03.22
"The infant will
play near the cobra's den,
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the young child
will put his hand
00:12:07.16\00:12:09.26
into the viper's nest."
00:12:09.29\00:12:10.63
Why?
00:12:10.66\00:12:11.99
Because there will be
no death, no suffering,
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that's all
going to be eliminated
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in God's new creation.
00:12:16.13\00:12:19.17
Amen.
00:12:19.20\00:12:21.87
I'm just struck by the
hope that the Bible gives.
00:12:21.90\00:12:27.84
It's not a book of sort of
idealism or made up stories.
00:12:27.88\00:12:34.32
It is a book about reality,
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the real things that
are going on in the world
00:12:36.75\00:12:39.82
that we observe all around us,
00:12:39.85\00:12:41.82
but it is also a book about
the reality that is coming.
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It tells us what the solution
to what we know is wrong is.
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Amen.
00:12:52.80\00:12:54.14
So what does this natural
evil tell us about the Creator?
00:12:54.17\00:12:58.34
Well, there are
a couple of things
00:12:58.37\00:12:59.84
that are important points
so we can pull out of this.
00:12:59.87\00:13:01.94
First, His selfless sacrifice
00:13:01.98\00:13:05.61
to overcome the impact
of sin on His creation.
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The evil makes that
whole the more meaningful,
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he suffered as we do.
00:13:13.56\00:13:15.72
And it also tells us about His
original plan for His creation.
00:13:15.76\00:13:20.03
Remember, he had
a plan of salvation
00:13:20.06\00:13:22.33
that again
reveals his selflessness.
00:13:22.36\00:13:25.53
So the created
things made evil by sin,
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reveal the
Creator's selflessness.
00:13:28.84\00:13:32.51
And that always blows my mind
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when I think about
the fact that He knew
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before He created us,
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with His foreknowledge,
things were gonna go south,
00:13:39.41\00:13:42.45
and yet He planned
before He even created us
00:13:42.48\00:13:47.56
to come down here,
become a man and save us.
00:13:47.59\00:13:51.63
Ooh! That's amazing.
00:13:51.66\00:13:53.70
Well, we are going to
take just a moment's break
00:13:53.73\00:13:56.70
and come back with a
very interesting guest.
00:13:56.73\00:13:59.80
So please stay tuned.
00:13:59.83\00:14:01.17