The creation of humanity in God's image and the subsequent commands given to Adam and Noah, highlighting the distinct status of humans compared to animals. It begins by examining Genesis 1:26, noting the plural "us" as an early hint of the Trinity and emphasizing that humans are created with intelligence, emotions, and will, possessing a moral awareness absent in animals. The message then contrasts God's initial provision for Adam (vegetarianism) with the expanded diet for Noah (including animals) in Genesis 9, introducing the prohibitions against eating blood and murder. The sermon argues that the prohibition against eating blood, rooted in its sacrificial significance, and the mandate for capital punishment for murder, both stemming from humanity's creation in God's image, are foundational principles for all humanity, not just the Jewish people.
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Good morning. Beautiful day. What a beautiful audience. Will you turn with me please to the book of Genesis chapter one. Our brother Paul last night started us off in a New Testament passage. And I would like to begin in the Old Testament with Genesis chapter one and verse twenty six. I want to talk to you this morning about Adam and Noah.
And then this afternoon, and maybe Sunday morning about Adam and Eve, and then eventually get on to another pair of people in the early chapters of Genesis, Cain and Abel. We begin with Genesis one, verse twenty-six. I'm reading from the New King James Bible which is very similar to the King James but with the modern present-day grammar and sometimes vocabulary but you'll find if you're following in the King James very close identity if you're using another translation more recent translation you may find some differences verse twenty six then God said let us make man in our image according to our likeness Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth. and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, See, I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed. To you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food, and so it was.
And it was so. And God saw, then God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Let us make man in our image, said God. And the very fact that plurals are used in verse twenty-six is one of those very early suggestions of a Trinity. The Old Testament did not teach. specifically that God was in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Old Testament emphasized the oneness of God. There is only one God, and it emphasized that in a world that was often pagan, usually pagan, and worshiping multiple gods.
And the Old Testament presented the great truth that there is only one God. The New Testament expands that and tells us that in that one God, There are three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but still only one God. And so we call that the doctrine of the Trinity. The word Trinity is not used in the Bible, but the doctrine is certainly quite clearly taught. When you combine the Old Testament emphasis on the on the oneness of God and the New Testament emphasis on three distinct personalities. But there are hints of the Trinity in the Old Testament, and one of them is right here in verse twenty-six. Let us make man in our image the use of a plural even even the name Elohim is a plural word actually and the old scholars of the Old Testament days pondered over that and decided that that was some sort of plural of majesty or they invented some grammatical term to explain why it was a plural the real reason of course was that it was a foreshadowing of the greater truth that was yet to come And man was created in the image of God after the likeness of God.
Now that's not a physical image because God does not have a body as we do. He does not have arms and legs, mouth, eyes, ears and so forth. Very often you find God described in the Old Testament in the human physical terms, the ears of God or the eyes of God are upon us or the hand of God, the right hand of God and so forth. to help us understand a little bit, but that's drawing back from the human being back to a description of God. This passage says that man is made in the image of God and can't be talking about a physical image, must be talking about a spiritual type of thing, maybe more the elements that are involved in personality, intelligence, the ability to think.
God has that, and so does the human being. emotions, the ability to feel, to love and to hate, to be angry, to be compassionate, that's a part of personality. God has that ability, and so do we. And then will, the ability to choose, to make decisions. God created human beings with the ability to make decisions. And so we have these same elements of personality that he has, intelligence, emotions, and will. We're also created in the image of God in the sense that we have an ability to know right from wrong. Animals don't have that. One animal can kill another animal, and there's no moral question involved.
He is not breaking the Ten Commandments. He's not disobeying God. He has no concept of what is right and what is wrong, and the animal is not made in the image of God. the matter of freedom of choice of course i touched on that when i spoke of the will animals don't have any freedom to reject god or or obey god to make a decision whether they will or will not walk with god they behave exactly as they were created to behave and animals do not rebel against their creator human beings do they have the freedom to do that as a part of their being created in the image of god and then adam and eve were created with a holy sin-free nature, like God, without sin.
But when they rebelled against God and sinned against God in the temptation, the image of God in the human being was marred so that it is no longer... undefaced no longer with that sinlessness that nature that is not inclined to sin but man is born with a nature that puts him in rebellion against God and that intends to make him sin now we still have the image of God but it is a defaced image it is not the same as it was when Adam and Eve were created now in verse twenty six it also says let them have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air over the cattle and so forth.
And this tells us something about the status of human beings when they were first created and still is in the sight of God. We are, of course, subject to God and lower than God, but we are created at a higher level than the animal kingdom. And the human race has the right to govern the animals, to control the animals, to domesticate the animals, to hunt and fish the animals, and to shoot them and to feed on them and so forth. We have dominion. We are created to have dominion over the animal kingdom. The book of Psalms tells us that the human race was created a little lower than the angels. In other words, the angelic creation is a higher level than the human creation, and the animal creation is on a lower level yet.
Now go on to verse twenty-eight. We'll come back to this passage when we start talking about Adam and Eve again. I'm passing over the... statement male and female created he them in verse twenty eight now God blessed them Adam and Eve and God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion there's a lot of verbs compounded here but essentially there's two basic commands given here to Adam and Eve one of them is to multiply to fill the earth with people, to populate the planet. And the second command that is here is to have dominion, to take dominion over the animal kingdom.
So there's two essential commands given here. The multiplication command and the dominion over the plant life command. And then in verse twenty-nine, there is a provision made, three basic statements here, in other words. that apply to Adam and Eve. And the provision is a provision for food. God says to them, I give you all the plant life for food. He doesn't say anything here about animals. He says, I give you the right to eat all the things that grow, the corn and the soybeans and the apple trees and the orange trees and everything else, all of the trees that yielding fruit and all of the plants and so forth.
that is food for the human race. And it would seem from this passage that up until the days of Noah, a man was vegetarian, or at least was supposed to be. Verse thirty, you have to read it rather carefully. He doesn't say, and every beast of the earth. He doesn't say, and I give you the right to eat animals, cattle and sheep and so forth. He says, also to every beast of the earth have I given the plant life. I've given the animals the right to eat the crops. the vegetation that grows. I've given it to you and I've given it to them. Now let's turn to the ninth chapter of Genesis.
And I want to make a comparison now between these two passages. And I've spent a moment on the first one in order that we can compare the instructions that were given to Noah when he came out of the ark. In the sixth chapter of Genesis you have the flood. Oh, you have a good thousand, fifteen hundred or more years have gone by. By the time Noah comes along, we don't have much of a history of that. It's all compressed in the Bible into a very few chapters. But a lot of time has gone by and the human race has become very wicked. And then God destroyed the human race. And now he's going to start over with Noah and Noah's wife.
And Noah and his wife had three sons and they were married. So you have these eight people. Three sons, three daughter-in-laws, and Noah and his wife coming out of the ark. And now God says to them, now let's get going again. And in verse one of chapter nine, God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The King James says, replenish the earth. And almost identical wording to what God said to Adam. I want you to populate the earth. I want the population to spread across the face of the earth. you know when they got to the Tower of Babel and they set up a government organization to resist this purpose to stay together to deliberately not spread across the face of the earth that God sent in that confusion of tongues and brought in languages so that they would have tend to have some animosity toward each other and would begin to move out across the earth as he intended it was the intention of God that the earth be populated with people and then He says in verse two, and the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the air and all that move on the earth and all the fish of the sea they are given into your hand.
This is that dominion again over the animals. Sometimes the Bible says all scripture is profitable and sometimes it becomes profitable in different ways. And many years ago when my wife and I were serving in a missionary capacity in eastern Canada and Prince Edward Island, I was visiting in a farm home, and I came into this farm homes there often have porches, and in order to get to the kitchen door, which is the door they would use, you'd have to go across a little porch, and I walked in the first door, it so happened nobody was home, and I thought maybe nobody's home, but I thought I'd knock on the door anyway, so I walked into the first door and onto the porch and was going to go across to the second door to knock on the inside kitchen door.
There were no bells there in this farmhouse. And I got halfway across this porch. It was about the size of this platform here, maybe a little bit longer. And I hadn't noticed. There was quite a fierce-looking dog down on the end of the porch there. And he started coming over after me and snarling and growling. And I guess I had been studying this passage because very impulsively I said, stop. I said, don't you know that the Bible says that you're afraid of me? And he backed off like that. I went and knocked on the door and went out. But I haven't tried that again. There are times when it pays to quote scripture, all right.
And the Bible does say that. And I've learned since, of course, that if a dog comes after you, don't turn your back on the dog. He does have a tendency to be afraid of you. If there's two of them and they start circling you. Some of the more profound Bible scholars may be able to help you, but I don't know what to do in that case. In verse three, every... In verse... See, you have here the same pattern. Then in verse one, you have the multiplication. In verse two, you have the dominion over the animal kingdom. And then in verse three, every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. For I have given you all things even as the green herbs.
Now you have an expansion here. This is not what God said to Adam. He didn't say to Adam, you can eat the moving things. He said, you can eat the stationary things, the things that grow out of the ground, the trees and the plants. The moving things here are the animals and the birds and the fish. And God says, now all this becomes permissible diet for the human race. The same way, even as I gave you the green herbs, now I'm giving you the animal food, and that becomes part of your permissible diet. So we have then an enlargement over what God had commanded or allowed earlier. And with this enlargement now, you have a couple of necessary limitations being added by God.
Things he didn't need to say to Adam because he did not give Adam the right to eat animal food, but he does give it to Noah. And the first of these limitations is in verse four. Don't eat the blood. It's all right to kill the animal, to slaughter the animal, and eat the animal, but don't eat the blood. You shall not eat flesh with its life. That is, it's blood. Now, there's no explanation given of this here to Noah. I want to talk about it a minute because I don't think I've ever heard a preacher or Bible teacher discuss the matter of eating of blood at all, yet there are some passages in the Bible that relate to it. First of all, there is an explanation given in Leviticus XVII. Now, you may or may not wish to turn to these passages.
I have a number of references that I want to share with you, and you don't need to turn to them if you don't want to. You can just listen to them. Or you can jot them down. I would suggest you take some notes on some of these passages because I think that later on you're going to say to yourself, I wish I'd remembered what he said about that or where to find that in the Bible. Some of these things are going to come back to you and you want to know where to get them. And either you could take notes on a separate piece of paper or beside the reference here in Genesis nine or in the top of the page at the bottom, jot down these cross references so that you can find them. and the two of them in connection with verse four Leviticus seventeen Leviticus seventeen verses ten eleven Leviticus seventeen ten and whatever man of the house of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn among you who eats any blood I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people.
For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. Now we have the explanation of why God told Noah not to eat blood. He had set aside the blood for sacrifice. It had to do with the altar. Of course, centuries later, it would have to do with the death of the Lord Jesus. the shedding of the blood of Christ by which we are saved. But for those many centuries, it had to do with animal sacrifices. And the life of the flesh, God says, was in the blood. I'm not prepared to explain that medically, but the statement here is in the Scripture, and he's given it to them upon the altar, and therefore, God says, I don't want, he says, this is the Jewish people in Leviticus XV, I don't want you to eat blood.
In a lot of societies, it's quite common to eat blood. Not so common in the United States, but in some of the European countries, blood pudding is very frequently eaten. When we went to Newfoundland and started our service there, many years ago, folks there often ate blood, and in one form or another, usually in the form of a blood pudding. This is the reason it was prohibited here in the law in Leviticus XV. Now, the New Testament touches on this subject. In Acts chapter XV. By the way, before we leave Leviticus XV, notice verse... God says, I will set my face against that person. I hadn't noticed this phrase until this morning, just reviewing some of these passages this morning, and I looked again at this, and I hadn't noticed this phrase.
I will set my face against that person. There are some things that God is very hostile about. We usually think of God as loving and gracious and kind, and so he is. But there are some things that God is quite hostile about, and evidently this is one of them. or at least it was for Israel. Whether it applies to us, we will discuss that in a moment. But I'd like you to notice that phrase. I will set my face against that person because it tells us something about the character of God. Now the book of Acts chapter fifteen. We'll start with verses nineteen and twenty.
Now in Acts fifteen you have a sort of a convention in Jerusalem, a gathering together of the church there with representatives who had come down from Antioch to deal with a doctrinal question of whether a Gentile who got converted to Christ had to adopt the Jewish religion. Almost all of us are Gentiles. There may be some here with Jewish ancestry. But most of us do not have Jewish ancestry, and a Gentile is anybody who is not a Jew, the nations, or Gentiles. And when the first Gentile started getting converted, there were people that came from Jerusalem and said, oh, now, in order to be a Christian, a Gentile has not only got to believe in Jesus, but he's got to start all the Jewish practices, circumcision and temple worship and all the offerings and everything else that was Jewish.
And they came to have a big dispute about this thing, and they decided, let's go back to Jerusalem where these people came from, and let's sit down with the apostles who were still living, and let's get this thing settled. And so they had this big discussion that's recorded in Acts, and you come to verse thirteen, and now James, who was perhaps the leading brother in the church there at that time, gets up and makes a speech. Peter has already talked. Paul had already talked, and now James comes down to a conclusion. And in verse nineteen, he says, therefore, I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God.
That is, he said, let's not ask the Gentile converts to become Jewish in their religious practices. Don't think that's necessary. See, this decision affected us today. If they had gone the other way, all of us would be very different than we are now. We would be searching the Old Testament and practicing all the Jewish things, and that is not the way God intended, and James saw that. But he says there are some exceptions that. We're not going to impose Judaism upon these Gentiles, but we are going to ask them, I think we ought to ask them for three different things. First of all, that they abstain from things polluted by idols. That is, we ought to ask these Gentile converts, not to eat animals that had been sacrificed on pagan altars.
You know, when they sacrificed an animal, you didn't burn it all up. You usually made a meal out of it. Parts of it were burned and the rest were eaten as at dinner. So he said, they shouldn't eat those things because that's going to be an offense. And second, we should ask them to abstain from sexual immorality. They've got a turn away from sexual fornication and so forth. And thirdly, from things strangled. That is, if you take a chicken and you strangle it instead of chopping its head off, the blood is still in it. And he said, they shouldn't kill their animals that way because then the blood will still be in it. And third, he said, or fourth, really, from blood. Don't eat blood. We should ask them not to eat blood.
And then he gives the reason why. He says, for Moses has had throughout many generations those who preach him in every city, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath. He says, now all through the Roman Empire, there are these Jewish communities, and if the Gentile Christians start doing these things, that's going to be an offense to those Jewish communities. All right, now, how does that apply to us today? You might say, well, I live in a rural area in Iowa, and there are no Jews around here at all, so obviously I'm not going to offend any Jewish synagogues, so this passage does not apply to me. Well, that may be true as far as Acts XV goes. But it still leaves the question of Genesis nine open.
Because when God said to Noah, don't eat blood, he was not talking about offending Jewish communities. He was not talking to Jews. He was talking to the world. Noah is the ancestor of every one of us. And that which God addresses to Noah becomes God's message for the whole world, for the Gentiles. And so I wouldn't be legalistic about this thing, but my own thinking is it is probably wise that Christians do not eat blood or things containing blood primarily because of the passage to Noah reinforced by this passage in Acts fifteen just two more verses here in Acts fifteen verses twenty eight and twenty nine The congregation all agreed, the apostles all agreed with James in this conclusion, and they decided to write a letter and send it by Barnabas and Paul, I'm reading in verse twenty-two, and Judas and Silas, leading men among the brethren, these four men were to take this letter and carry it to all these new Gentile churches that had been started on Paul's and Barnabas' first missionary journey.
And part of that letter is in verse twenty-eight and twenty-nine. For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things. No greater burden means it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us that we don't burden you with circumcision and all the Jewish regulations and all that. We're not going to load you down with that. We've been loaded down with that and it doesn't work. And we're not going to put that on you. So you are liberated from that. You become a Christian and follow the Lord Jesus, and never mind adopting the Jewish religion. But there are these necessary things, verse twenty-nine, that you abstain from things offered to idols.
Don't eat sacrifices that have been put on a pagan altar. And from blood, and from things strangled, and from sexual immorality, those four things. Abstain from things offered to idols, abstain from the eating of blood, Obstain from eating animals that have been strangled instead of having their throats cut or some way that loses the blood. And fourthly, abstain from sexual immorality. Keep yourself pure. If you do well, the letter says, if you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell. Well, so much for that subject. Now let's go back to Genesis nine. And we got down to verse four. In verse three, we said that God made a new provision for the people of the world.
They were now allowed to eat animal food. That had not been allowed to Adam, but it is allowed to Noah. But with that new provision, God says there are two limitations here about that result that have to be said now because of this new privilege I've given you. The first is, I don't want you to eat blood. And the second is, I don't want you to kill human beings. That's what verse five amounts to. surely for your life blood I will demand a reckoning from the hand of every beast I will require it from the hand of man from the hand of every man's brother I will require the life of a man whoever sheds man's blood by man shall his blood be shed for in the image of God he made man now this is a limitation here verse Three had said every moving thing that lives shall be food for you.
Verse five said that does not include human beings. Human beings are moving things, but you can't kill human beings. You can kill animals, but you can't kill human beings. Murder is prohibited. It is all right to kill a cow or a chicken or a pig that is not murder. but it is not all right to kill a human being because the human being is made in the image of God. The animal is not. Now notice here the very strong distinction being made between animals and human beings. According to the Bible, man is not an animal. According to almost all of our scientists today, at least those who manage to get on national public radio and public television and wherever national geographic and all that sort of thing man is just another animal maybe the the best of the animals but still essentially another animal the Bible says man is not an animal man is separately created from the animals and it is not right to kill a human being because he is made in the image of God notice the reasoning given here in
the end of verse six for in the image of God made he man now this is what what God is saying here is that if you murder a human being the penalty is death if if an animal kills a human being the animal is to be put to death I think we usually do that If a bull charges a human being and kills him, I think in most of our states, that bull would be put to death. An animal that fights a human kills him would probably be put to death. And this is what was commanded here, but it's also commanded of a human being. In verse five, from the hand of every beast, I will require it from the hand of man.
From the hand of every man's brother, I will require the life of a man. Let me explain that last part of verse five here. From the hand of every man's brother. What he's saying is that if, say, somebody kills my sister or my brother, this would say is my job to go and execute that person. Now, that would be illegal in our society today. You can't do that. That's up to the courts and the police now to do that. But police departments are a fairly recent invention. They only go back a few hundred years. For the great stretch of human history, there was no such thing as a police force. And there were courts in that type of thing. But the enforcement of punishment rested with the kinsman, with the relative, with the closest relative.
I remember reading a story in Time magazine years ago about a real problem case that had come up in a German court. There were a lot of Greek immigrants working in Germany then, and there probably are today, had come there as laborers. And somewhere in the mountains of Greece, a man had raped a woman, and then he'd gone to Germany and got a job. And in the culture of the Greek mountains, the brother or uncle of that raped girl had the job of executing the rapist. And it was perfectly legal and right in the culture in which he was from. He had gone to Germany. and he'd sought out that rapist and he'd murdered him, killed him, which in Germany was murdered.
And he was on trial because he had murdered this man. And you had a clashing of cultures there. I don't know what the outcome was. I never found in a later issue of time how the trial turned out. You can see the problem that arose there. because of it. But that was the standard that was set in the Bible, and you have this nearest kinsman performing the act of execution. And you get into Jewish law in the Old Testament, the Jewish history. It was the job of the nearest relative to go and perform the judgment. And the murder was allowed to flee into a city of refuge. There were six cities of refuge set up in the Holy Land, three on the West Bank of Jordan, and three on the East Bank.
And if he could escape, he would go into the city of refuge, and the elders of the city of refuge would bring him out and put him on trial. And if it was determined that he had not intended to murder that person, that it was a spur-of-the-moment thing, it was a bar-room brawl or something, and he had no premeditation to murder him, then he was allowed to stay in the city of refuge until the high priest died, and then he could go free. But if it was determined by the elders of the city of refuge and he had plotted that, he had intended to kill that man and he'd killed him, then they would kick him out of the city and the brother of the murdered man would attack him and put him to death. That was the Jewish system of justice based on this passage. And of course, I don't know if you ever studied the matter of the kinsman redeemer.
You read some of the old commentaries. You read about Christ being the kinsman redeemer and it's hyphenated. because the word kinsman and the word redeemer are the same word there. It was the kinsman who provided the redemption of somebody who was being bought out of slavery or whose farmland was to be repossessed by the family, just like it was the kinsman who was to execute justice. And so you have a tangling up of these two meanings in the one word, and the Lord Jesus is our kinsman redeemer. Well, here was the justice system in Genesis nine. And the the shedding of blood was uh... was required for the life of the one who had committed murder and the argument was based on the fact that the human being was made in the image of god now today the people who oppose capital punishment are using the same reasoning as god gives for it they are saying oh you you shouldn't execute the murder after all he's a human being he's made in the image of god put him in prison for life if you want to But don't execute him while he's made in the image of God, and you shouldn't kill him.
God says the man he murdered was made in the image of God, and therefore he should be executed. Rather interesting, isn't it here? That God uses the argument about the human being made in God's image as a basis, a foundation for capital punishment. And now this is in Genesis nine. This is after the fall. after Adam and Eve sinned, after the image of God and the human being has been defaced, so that the image is rather marred and scarred today, and yet God says still, that human being is made in the image of God, and that image is still there, scarred though it may be. The New Testament also picks this up in James chapter three.
A little epistle to James, the third chapter, and makes reference. to the fact that the human being is created in the image of God in verses eight to ten James is talking about the tongue the unruly tongue not talking about using guns and bombs and knives he's talking about the damage you can do with your tongue James three verse eight for no man can tame the tongue it is an unruly evil full of deadly poison With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in the similitude of God.
Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing, my brethren, these things ought not to be. With the tongue we curse human beings who are made in the likeness of God. You know, you hear people turning to somebody else and saying, damn you and cursing them, maybe using God's name with that. And James says, we ought not say that about any other person. We ought never damn another person because that person is made in the image of God. These things ought not to be. A very strong presentation there of the effect of God's image and how that should affect our behavior and I think we would also conclude today that if we're not allowed to kill a person made in the image of God and we're not allowed to curse a person made in God's image then we also conclude that it would also be wrong to own that person or buy him or sell him it's all right to own a cat or a dog it's not all right to own another human being that would be slavery and that is not consistent with the human being created in the image of God Now, this strong Bible emphasis that man is not an animal needs to be
compared with Darwin's doctrine, the evolutionary doctrine that man is an animal. You, high school kids, I'd like to say a word to those of you that are in high school. Someday you'll go away to college, many of you. And if you start taking biology courses or geology courses, you'll soon start running into problems. You believe the Bible, you believe the Word of God, and you'll start hearing things that you can't quite understand that seem to contradict the Bible. You may get a helpful professor, or you may get a professor who's very hostile to the Scriptures, who delights in destroying the faith that your father and mother planted in you. There are professors in some of these universities who are out to shipwreck Christian young people, whose goal in life is to destroy what their parents have given them.
And there are many people that go away to college. and their faith is damaged. This happens sometimes even in Christian colleges. There are sometimes professors, and I've met some of them who seem to be determined, even in a Christian college, to upset the young person and to show them that his parents weren't right about some things. That happens. And you will run into problems, especially in biology and geology courses, where the prevailing view of science seems to contradict the Bible and seems to say, that evolution is right. And you may come home and talk to dad and mom about it and discover that they really don't have the background to answer those problems.
They're not schooled in biology. Maybe your dad has worked like a slave to get enough money to send you to college, and he may never have had that privilege himself. And he's not an authority. on some of those issues that you're going to run into. And your local elders in your assembly may not be very knowledgeable on those issues too. And you may not be able to get the answers that you need. It may be that you'll be out of college for many years before you'll find some of the answers to the problems. And at that point, I want to say to you, don't give up your faith just because you run into some problems that seem where the professor seems to be so impressive. Just remember that there are some things that those professors in those classes are not going to tell you.
There are some issues that your parents understand a lot better than some of those professors. And one of them is this whole issue that man is not an animal. You see, the Bible teaches this and you hold on to this. Adam and Eve were separately created from the animals. And they were created in the image of God. God took the clay and he made the body of Adam, and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. That's exactly contrary to what evolution teaches. Evolution teaches that the life was there first and gradually the body evolved, but the life was in it all along the way. The Bible says that God shaped the body, and then God breathed into that person's life.
And what the professor will not tell you is that the darwinian doctrine has has created terrible damage in this world just take this take some of our cities today where where people are killing other people for the sake of a five dollar robbery want to steal five dollars kill the person Shoot him. In Chicago, in some parts of Chicago, it's dangerous to get turned off of the interstate highway. If the expressway is closed and detoured and wrecked and you have to turn off it, you might find somebody trying to charge you toll to pass through the other streets of the city. If you don't show up, you can get killed. There are dangerous places in many of our cities today where human beings are acting like animals.
And I think it's a very... sensible thing to realize that sooner or later, a nation becomes, behaves consistently with what its intellectuals have been saying for years. And when American intellectuals have been teaching kids in college and schools for decades now that man is essentially an animal, they shouldn't be surprised if men start behaving like animals. That's what happens. And that's what's happening to our society. Our society is acting out its Darwinian doctrine. that men are animals behaving like that. On a much larger scale, Hitler took the natural selection principle of Charles Darwin and applied it to politics and he said that his race was the master race, the Aryan race, and it was all right to kill Jews and gypsies because it was a part of the natural selection process and it was purifying the human race by eliminating what were those branches of the race that he considered to be the weaker branches of the race it was natural selection it was a breeding process that he was teaching and it was not based on the Bible not based on the sanctity of the human being but it was based on the Darwinian doctrine
of the right of the superior branch of the race to stamp out that weaker branch of the race and hence the Holocaust. But the evolutionists don't tell you that the Holocaust is a direct result of the Darwinian doctrine. They don't tell you that because they haven't got an answer for that. But you bear that in mind when you get off in a college. And even just this last week I was reading at a book on a textbook on sociology or economics or sociology or something where it started talking about the laissez-faire days of the economy in the United States when the prevailing doctrine was that the survival of the fittest applied to businesses and if a powerful entrepreneur could stamp out some weaker businesses and could swallow them up by fair means or foul that was all right because that was good for the economy of the country.
And so you have those days when some of the great powerful businessmen were essentially tyrants that acted what would today be considered very illegally, but then was considered proper. Well, that was social Darwinianism that is not accepted today, and even this last week, this week that we are still in. The United States government has indicted some Wall Street characters who have used that type of tactics to make money. And now we believe in a lot more government regulation because we see that we cannot give to powerful businessmen the right to do anything they want in the name of social Darwinianism. So when you talk about biology, you also have to realize that these principles apply to a lot of other aspects of life.
And when people start teaching that man is an animal and just the descendants of animals, They shouldn't be surprised if he starts acting this way. And the Bible gives us this very strong principle that the human being is different. He is not like that. It is wrong to kill a human being. And now we have then the basis of capital punishment laid down here in the scripture. And this is a command given to the Gentiles in verse six. Whoever sheds man's blood by man shall his blood be shed. We don't object to the fact that the method of doing it has changed from the nearest kinsman to the police department and the courts. But we believe that the principle of capital punishment should not be taken out of our society.
That it is disobedience to God to eliminate capital punishment from the laws of the land because God gave this command to Noah. and giving it to Noah, he was giving it to all of the race. If he had given it to Moses, then we could say that's Jewish, that's for the Jews, it's not for the Gentiles. But he didn't give it to Moses, well, he did give it to Moses, too. But he gave it to Noah, and giving it to Noah, before there was any such thing as Jews, it applies to all of the race. And I should say in connection with this, of course, that the Bible then goes on to modify this command with two modifications. First of all, under Jewish law, it teaches us that it was proper to recognize degrees of