“FOUR HUNDRED MILLION years ago the spot where you and I are now standing may have been a coral reef in some warm inland sea which may have been a branch to the now cold Arctic Ocean.” In this manner one of the texts used in our own Protestant Reformed Schools introduces the unit on the “changing earth and the wealth within it.” And this is not so strange because there are no science texts today that presuppose that the earth and the entire universe is one grand creation of the sovereign God. The authors of these texts go out from the erroneous position that our earth and the entire universe is the result of many millions and some say at least a billion years of evolutionary progression.
YOUNG PEOPLE!!! We are living in dangerous days. We are living in days in which men “wax cold” and are not interested in the truth of a sovereign and creative God as He declares himself in the Holy Scriptures, the infallible Word of God. We should not be deceived by a seeming interest in the Bible but we should be able to recognize that much of the interest in the Scriptures is passing and meaningless because so many have been spoiled through the “vain deceit and philosophy of men”. So many have become enamoured with the “Vain traditions of men and have followed after the rudiments of the world.” We too must beware that we do not yield to the deceitful temptations that the world presents with its vain philosophy.
YOUNG PEOPLE!!! We should be aware of the warning that Christ gives the church as he speaks about the perils and dangers of these the latter days.
“For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” Matt. 24:24.
One of the perils of these last days is that pernicious error denominated by the tern evolution. This is a theory which will not recognize the truth of Scripture concerning the creation of the world by the Word of God. This theory is made even more dangerous today in its “watered down fashion” known as “period theory.”
In this article I propose to write on the problem of evolution, I believe that we should have a knowledge of what we are combating and what we must fight against if we are to be well-equipped as Christians in this world of sin.
I will present two fantastic theories that have been posited by unbelieving scientists to prove the existence and evolutionary development of the solar system and our earth as part of the solar system. These scientists will have nothing to do with a God who created by mighty acts the world in six days as it is recorded in Genesis 1.

NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS
In the 18th century a Frenchman, Pierre Simon de Laplace, advanced a theory that he called the Nebular Hypothesis. This theory was advanced by him because he thought this was a solution to the problem of how the solar system came into existence.
Laplace believed that the sun and all the planets were formed out of a cloud-like mass of intensely heated gas. Gravitation or the attraction of the different parts of this intensely heated mass for each other caused the nebula or cloud-like formation to take on the shape of a globe. Gradually this globular mass of gas condensed and became smaller.
Meanwhile the speed of the rotation of this globular mass increased. The whirling motion of the mass tended to make it flat at the poles. This continual contraction at the poles caused rings of nebulous matter around the center to become detached and to be thrown off into space, much like the rings of the planet Saturn.
The detached matter eventually collected into a globe which continued to revolve around the central nebula, as the moon revolves around the earth.
This theory which was intended to explain the existence of the solar system (the system of planets, meteors and comets that revolve around the sun) is no longer accepted and believed by astronomers. It is one of those passing and now supposedly disproven theories. It was accepted, however, for about 100 years but this Laplacian theory has become extinct only to be replaced by the Planetesimal Theory, which is of more American origin.

PLANETESIMAL HYPOTHESIS
The Planetesimal theory was advanced by Thomas Chamberlain and Forest Ray Moulton of the University of Chicago. They did not believe that the Nebular Hypothesis correctly explained the existence of the planets and of the entire solar system and so came up with a theory of their own.
The Planetesimal Hypothesis also makes no attempt to explain how the stars came to be where they are but only attempts to explain the existence and origin of the solar system.
According to the Planetesimal Hypothesis of Chamberlain and Moulton millions and perhaps billions of years ago, a star larger than our sun passed close enough to the sun to pull an immense cloud of matter out of the sun by gravitational attraction. This ejected material was like a “streaming knotty pair of arms of nebulous matter shot from the sun and curved into spiral appendages about it by the joint pull of itself and the passing star.” In other words, the matter was pulled after the star, but at a certain distance the pull of the receding star and the pull of the sun became balanced and the material ceased to follow the star. The effect was that the more the passing star receded, the less pull it exerted on the streams of matter and the more they were held by the gravitational attraction of the sun in the place they were located.
The larger knots on the spiral arms of matter became the center or nuclei of the individual planets that now circle the sun. These nuclei gradually fell into fixed orbits about the sun, and grew larger by pulling to themselves the scattered nebular material. This scattered nebular material was composed of swarms of dust-like particles called planetesimals, which revolved in their own orbits. Often these smaller planetesimals collided with the larger bodies just like meteorites fall into the earth now and the planets slowly grew therefore by gathering these tiny “dust-like” planetesimals. The smaller nuclei also gathered particles, and became the satellites of the planets or the small planetoids that are still circling the sun. In time all the scattered material was gathered in by the larger bodies, and the solar system took its present form.
Now the earth as one of the planets of the solar system was ready for occupancy and the process of organic evolution was ready to begin.

ERRONEIOU THEORIES
Fantastic and erroneous theories, don’t you think? But remember, only theories!
I need not comment at a great length on what I have written. I believe that it is quite evident that both the Nebular Hypothesis and the Planetesimal Hypothesis are contrary to everything that Scripture has to say concerning the origin of the solar system. These theories are certainly part of the “vain deceit and philosophy of men.”
We should also observe that the unbelieving scientist gives no evidence for the origin of the stars which are in the universe. He simply assumes their existence as we saw when we examined the above theories. The origin of the great stars and the sun itself is simply accepted as a matter of fact with no seeming qualms of conscience on the part of the formulators of these notions. It seems to me, that the theories fall by virtue of this fact.
It is often said that the evolutionist creates more problems than he solves. Here we have a striking example of just exactly such a situation.

A WARNING
We must beware, however, that these adapted theories are not “fed” to us by “Reformed” Christian teachers. We must be watchful that we are not told that God could have used these means to create the universe in long periods of time. Such a notion has become popular in our day in the attempts to make the Bible fit science, or scientific theories. Even such explanations must be understood to be false because they are contrary to all Scripture. Explanations of this kind are so much camouflage, it seems to me. We must consistently maintain that everything, science included, must be subservient to the Word of God.

A SOLUTION
As Christians we know that all these problems are solved when we say by faith:
O Lord, how manifold the works
In wisdom wrought by Thee;
The wealth of THY creation fills
The earth and might sea.

Originally Published in:
Vol. 19 No. 3 April 1959