By One Man

By One Man

A compilation of evidence from Christadelphian writers demonstrating that God-directed evolution is incompatible with Bible teaching and the BASF

The issue briefly stated

Christadelphians have always believed and taught that the first man of our human race was Adam who was created by God from the dust of the ground. Eve, the first woman, was created from Adam’s side. Adam and Eve are the sole progenitors of our entire human race. God created them with a natural body of life that was very good in kind and condition. Their sin resulted in God punishing them with a physical change in the condition of their natural bodies so that they became mortal (subject to death) and sin-prone. Subsequently the mortal and sin-prone condition of their nature is physically inherited by all their descendants.

It is Christadelphian belief and teaching that the purpose of God in Christ was to remove the effects of Adam’s fall. Christ was born with the exact same nature that had come in consequence of Adam’s sin, which, like us, was his misfortune and not his crime. By his life of perfect obedience and his ultimate sacrifice on the cross he voluntarily declared God's righteousness by demonstrating that the nature he bore was by divine appointment rightly related to death, even in his case. By our own actions we become sinners and stand in need of forgiveness of sins before we can be acceptable before God. If we have faith in what God has done in Christ, recognize that as members of Adam’s race we are rightly related to a dispensation of death that has come as a result of Adam’s sin, then God is able to forgive our sins. If we consistently try our best to put the flesh to death and live to God, then we will be rewarded with immortality when Christ returns. Jesus will rule over the earth for a thousand years with the objective of completely removing the problems of sin and death that were introduced by Adam’s sin, and at the end of the millennium our human race will be completely restored to fellowship with God that was originally lost, when sin and death will be no more, all will be immortal, and God will be all in all.

These vital doctrines of how sin and consequently mortality entered into the world, and God’s plan of removing both, have been challenged by a small number of brethren. These brethren, in an effort to reconcile evolution with the scriptures, have propagated worldwide, via the Internet, the view that a race of humans evolved from primordial animals and existed both before and alongside Adam and Eve and their offspring. Adam’s offspring supposedly married into the evolved human populace whose nature was identical with that of Adam and Eve’s children. Therefore, they claim that human nature, afflicted by mortality, a predisposition toward sin, disease and suffering was in the world long before Adam and Eve. They argue that the origin of our human race is merely shared with Adam and Eve, and there was no physical change in the condition of Adam’s nature, that is inherited by all his descendants, in consequence of his sin. This means that, in their view, the nature Christ was born with, and hence the reason his Father required him to publicly put this nature to death on the cross, had nothing to do with the consequences of Adam and Eve’s sin.

Such a view would undermine the righteousness of God and completely destroy Christadelphian teaching on the atonement and the purpose of God in Christ. It is therefore a serious challenge to the foundation teaching of the Bible, Christadelphian teaching, and our basis of fellowship - the BASF and (in Australia) the Cooper-Carter Addendum (CCA).

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View attachment: ByOneMan_09May2017.pdf

View attachment: ByOneMan_Supplementary_09May2017.pdf