Recent Creation Is a Vital Doctrine
by Henry Morris, Ph.D.

There is no aspect of creationism which is under greater attack by evolutionists than the Biblical doctrine of recent creation. The evolutionist, knowing the weakness of the scientific case for evolution, almost always directs his own argument not against creation per se, but against recent creation and its corollary, flood geology.

As a result, many people who consider themselves creationists have been intimidated against this Biblical concept. Instead, they try to cling to the 19th century evolutionary compromise now known as the "day/age theory" and "progressive creation. Some take refuge in the "gap theory," hoping they can ignore the problem by pigeon-holing the evolutionary ages of the geologists in an imaginary gap between the first two verses of Genesis. Both theories attempt to accommodate the geological ages, even though it is the geological ages which provide the main basis and framework for evolution. We "young-earth creationists" are an embarrassment to both the progressive creationists and the gap creationists and so they urge us to acknowledge that recent creation is merely an optional interpretation which is unimportant and expendable.

But this we cannot do. As a strictly scientific question, divorced from any Biblical or theological considerations (as presumably, in a public school textbook or in a scientific debate) the date of creation can and should be treated as a separate topic from the fact of creation. This does not make it expendable, however. It is an important and basic issue that deserves serious study in its own right, strictly in terms of the relevant scientific data. When the Biblical and theological data are also considered (as in a church or other Christian context), the doctrine of recent creation becomes critically significant, integrally interwoven with the doctrine of creation itself. Outlined below, very briefly, are a few of the reasons why the doctrine of recent creation is vitally Important to true Biblical Christianity.

Historical Reasons

"Progressive creationism" is not a modern interpretation developed to bring the Genesis record into harmony with modern science, but a very ancient concept devised to impose a theistic connotation upon the almost universal pagan evolutionary philosophies of antiquity. The primeval existence of the cosmos, with matter in some form present from eternity, was a dogma common to all ancient religions and philosophies, seeking as they were to function without an omnipotent, holy, eternal, personal, Creator God. Compromising monotheists, both in ancient Israel and in the early Christian church, repeatedly resorted to various allegorical interpretations of Scripture, involving some form of protracted creation, seeking to amalgamate creationist/redemptionist theology with pagan humanistic philosophy. Almost inevitably, however, such compromises ended in complete apostasy on the part of the compromisers.

If it were not for the continued apathetic and compromising attitude of Christian theologians and other intellectuals on this vital doctrine of recent creation, evolutionary humanism would long since have been exposed and defeated. The world will never take the Biblical doctrine of the divine control and imminent consummation of all things very seriously until we ourselves take the Biblical doctrine of the recent creation of all things seriously.

Neither in space nor in time is our great God of creation and consummation "very far from every one of us" (Acts 17:27).
---JESUS IS CREATOR! JESUS IS LORD! ---