Evolution III

Evolution and Ecology

THE PILGRIMS:
The Pilgrims came to these shores as refugees. They were refugees from an environment of persecution. They came to America to establish an environment conducive to the free and scriptural expression of the Christian faith. They came in peace and they came to establish a land which would be at peace with God and man. They made peace with the natives, and the nation they founded has had an enviable record of peace throughout most of its recorded history. Only in this century, as our repudiation of our Pilgrim heritage has gone to completion, have we been constantly plagued with wars and rumors of wars. However, although they came in peace, when the Pilgrims stepped ashore, they carried both their Bibles and their muskets. To them it was not a contradiction. To them peace was not attained by either gun control or disarmament. To them, peace was a gift of God, a blessing from God to those who were, themselves, at peace with God. As the Lord, Himself, declared in Isaiah 45:7, “l form the light, and create darkness: l make peace, and create evil: l the Lord do all these things."

The Pilgrims were also staunch Calvinists. They believed that God had appointed not only their salvation, but their destiny as well. They came in faith, in the conviction that God and God's providence was with them, fulfilling God's purposes in them and through them in all that they did. Although they considered themselves as children of destiny, yet they were not fatalists. Therefore, they carried the muskets. To put the point into perspective, let me recount the classic comment on that issue. A Pilgrim preacher was asked on the way to church why he carried his musket. It was argued that if he sincerely believed his own theology of predestination, the musket wouldn't be necessary. After all, if his appointed time to die was come, it was come, and no musket could possibly make any difference. The preacher wisely assented. The questioner then pressed him, "Well, why do you carry the musket?" to which he replied, "In case I meet an Indian whose time has come." In this issue, our last in the series on evolution, we will expose the fallacies of both gun control and disarmament.   

ECOLOGY: 
We have already dealt with in past issues the relation between Marxism and Evolution. We have seen how Marx postulated seizing control of the world's environment to control the process of evolution and evolve the "New Soviet Man" and "The New World Order." Then, we examined why Marx called for the "Public Schools" as a means of subjecting all children to a controlled evolutionary environment where, by statist indoctrination, they could be conditioned to accept and fit into that "New World Order." Although the public school system is over a century old (Marx didn't invent communism, he only proclaimed it), the more recent "Ecology Movement" is its perfect complement. For while the public schools were instituted to control our children's minds, their mental and social environment, the "Ecology Movement" is being instituted to control the exterior environment of our planet. Ecology openly expresses its concern for our environment. We shall examine how thorough that concern is and how it fits in with the theology of evolution and with the eternal drive for the one world Marxist state of anti-Christ. 

CONTROL: 
To the uninitiated, the ecology movement seems to be little more than a Boy Scout drive to pick up beer bottles. Actually, the least concern of the movement is to actually clean up anything, as is testified by the mounds of garbage left after each "Ecology Day" happening. It's all right for communist folk singer, Pete Seeger, to cruise the Hudson River complaining about the pollution, and it's all right for liberal churchmen like Norman Vincent Peale to puff him as a responsible steward of God's creation, but Seeger is infinitely more at home entertaining at Carnegie Hall (as he was recently, commemorating convicted Soviet atom bomb spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg) than he is fishing old tires off river bottoms. The name of the game is CONTROL of our total environment, and that is CONTROL of about everything.   

POPULATION CONTROL:  
As one probes behind the doomsday scare tactics and other propaganda of the movement, one soon becomes convinced that their only interest in beer cans is strictly limited to the contents. Amazingly enough, the first major program of radical reconstruction of the environment called for by the movement is comprehensive POPULATION CONTROL, a far cry from monitoring smoke stacks! One of the worst judgments of God on America is that women are now paying doctors for the privilege of having their own babies murdered in the womb. At the other end of the spectrum of life, a California doctor was recently acquitted of administering euthanasia to an elderly patient. Some states such as Florida have even considered legislation to legalize the practice. That many states have enacted liberal abortion laws, that the Supreme Court has struck down antiabortion laws and that the courts are in the process of forcing reluctant hospitals to provide abortion services are well recognized facts. What is not always recognized is that this can be primarily attributed, not to the "Women's Liberation" movement, but more properly to the Ecology movement. The mythical scare of overpopulation of our environment has made population control a cause celebre with the radical ecologists. Conjuring up a vision of an overcrowded, starving, resource-depleted planet, rampant with disease, famine, and starvation, the ecologists are seeking to stampede us into a program of birth control, abortion, euthanasia, and other forms of even more radical population control. While Mao is murdering millions, reminiscent of the depopulation schemes of the French Revolution, and India continues to proliferate her millions, population control is being imposed on the Americans who at present are not even reproducing themselves, a significant historical sign before the downfall of any society. That America, which can best support a larger population, is the object of this attack demonstrates that the real object is control. As for the "Myth of Overpopulation," that is adequately exposed in Rushdoony's book bearing that title.

THE ENERGY CRISIS:  
The so‑called "Energy Crisis" recently afflicting Americans is a by‑product of the "Ecology Crisis." Production of energy has been deemed detrimental to the environment. Our tremendous and abundant energy resources have been effectively locked up behind an "Ecological Curtain" more impervious than the "Iron Curtain," as we are now breaching the latter to develop the Soviet Siberian oil fields at our expense. Why this does not create pollution in Siberia remains a mystery. While nuclear power plants are equated with the bomb, and strip mining of coal is termed rape of the earth's crust, no new oil refineries have been built in over five years, and electrical power plants haven't fared much better. While the beginnings of the Alaska Pipeline lie rusting on the tundra, and offshore drilling and production of oil becomes a thing of the past, and unemployment rises to depression levels, the "Ecologists" are bringing America to a standstill. While things may not appear much cleaner, the "Ecologists" have not been laboring in vain. We have government programs of energy allocation, threatened rationing systems, price controls, excessive regulation and an imminent federal takeover and outright nationalization of the nation's energy production. The CONTROLS are there even if the energy is there no longer.

POLLUTION:
The automobile is an American institution. The automobile is an American way of life. The present expression of our freedom of movement and individuality is largely a result of the automobile. Ecology has crucified the automobile as the "Polluter" and has threatened to replace a banned automobile by public transportation. The automobile companies are not faring much better. The bureaucratic drive for a "safe" environment in our automobiles has turned car interiors into a jungle of belts and buzzers. However, the "pollution crisis" has really achieved the bureaucratic takeover of the automobile industry. Cars are now only manufactured in Detroit; they are designed in Washington. Brakes are poorer, starting is harder, efficiency is down as prices and gas consumption climb ever upward. Another ecological contribution to the ecologically created energy crisis. 

LAND USE: 
The essence of Marxism is the abolition of private property. The most enduring form of private property is the land. The federal government already owns over one‑third of the nation's real estate in the form of National Parks, National Forests, National Seashores, and so forth. One might note that this land was garnered in by the government for ecological considerations to preserve our environmental heritage. Through the present ecology movement, the government is now moving to seize in one fell swoop ALL the lands of these United States. Under presently proposed legislation, through a "Land Use" bill, the federal government will oversee and regulate and thus effectively nationalize every last acre in the nation. It will control the sale, use, buildings, and development of every individual plot of land. Every kitchen garden and chicken coop will become the domain of some federal bureaucrat. The people will keep the deeds to their property, which will entitle them to pay taxes thereon as the government exercises all the prerogatives of ownership. In some European nations, citizens have deeded homes and property over to the government as private ownership became a liability. In the USSR, all land is owned by the state.  "Land Use" will sovietize America from sea to sea. 

OSHA:  
In 1970, Congress passed the Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act. The act, as might be expected, is the ultimate government effort to decree a safe and healthy environment in all the nation's work places. Congress has given the executive a blank check, and they are still writing. By the end of 1972, there was a seventeen‑foot stack of confusing and contradictory OSHA regulations, written in legal double talk and bureaucratese. As a former plant engineer, I can testify that any effort to sincerely comply swiftly became a veritable nightmare. American industry, once the showcase of free enterprise, is becoming so over-regulated that it is becoming little more than an extension of the federal executive, which sets its wages and prices, regulates its work force through the Labor Department, its products through consumer legislation, and now its manufacturing facilities through OSHA. America is in an economic crisis but not for lack of controls. Again, the rule or ruin philosophy of the government is apparent-just as apparent as the fact that CONTROL is the thing. 

THE MANIFESTO: 
The Communist Manifesto outlines a ten-point program for the implementation of Marxism in a developed nation. Between the ten points the manifesto postulates total government control of just about everything. This, of course, is the essence of "Totalitarianism," that is, "TOTAL" government control. As was noted earlier, "Ecology" provides the cover for the implementation of much of that control. The second point of the manifesto is "a heavy progressive or graduated income tax," which will, of course, be necessary to finance the huge bureaucracy required to exercise the control. The first point is "Abolition of property in land," being accomplished by "Land Use" programs. The sixth point is "Centralization of the means of transport in the hands of the state." This is being accomplished by the emphasis on Public Transportation to replace the "polluting" automobile, and the takeover of the automobile industry, to say nothing of the I.C.C., the F.A.A., and Amtrak. The seventh point states, "Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State." The federal takeover of the nation's industries and means of production is well under way through OSHA again, to say nothing of the threatened nationalization of the "Energy Industry" and the Railroads. If nothing else, the "Ecology Movement" is fast turning America into a Marxist State. The equation as always reads "EVOLUTION = ECOLOGY = MARXISM." When will even the Christians learn to quit flirting with this heresy of heresies!

THEOLOGY:  
The Bible teaches that man's problem is sin. Man's problem is declared to be his corrupted and depraved nature which he inherited from Adam. Jeremiah said, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it." David said, "Behold l was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." Christ said, "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things COME FROM WITHIN, and defile the man." That is just the issue here, man's problem is internal, not external. It is his nature, not his environment, that is the root cause of the curse he labors under. Thus Christ directed Nicodemus that "Ye must be born again." Man needs a new heart before he needs a new environment. The problem of man's environment is an extension and product of the problem in man's heart. Any attempt to place unregenerate man in a regenerated environment soon leads to the corruption of the latter, as many welfare and Urban Renewal projects have testified. Until man, himself, is a new creature in Christ, he cannot inhabit a new creation. It is at this point that we see the radical cleavage between the historic Christian faith and the modern apostles of ecology and environmentalism. They say that man's problem is totally with his environment. Man is considered to be totally the product of his environment. Man is not thought of as conceived in iniquity and born in original sin and in need of a new birth. Rather, man is thought of as a blank sheet of paper on which only time and experience have made their marks. Man is not responsible; his environment is. The criminal becomes the victim; society becomes the culprit. The criminal is to be understood, not punished; society is to be condemned and revamped. Is there waste and pollution? The answer is not to promote individual responsibility and good stewardship. Is there a high rate of industrial accidents? The answer is never more responsibility, care, and caution in the employees. Rather, in these and all other cases, the answer is to, by dictatorial control, create an environment in which both pollution and accidents will be impossible. So now, we have the Environmental Protection Agency, OSHA, and dictatorship. As human nature continues to degenerate, and total depravity keeps getting more total, and as an X‑Rated society continues to flourish amid "situation ethics" and the "New Morality," the problem of man's sinful nature lies ignored. 

GUN CONTROL:  
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with guns. Guns are weapons. There is nothing wrong with weapons. The Old Testament saints that carried and used weapons are legion. Weapons are merely a more efficient way of exerting force. There is nothing wrong with force. God, Himself, is the Almighty, an omnipotent force, and how often doesn't the holy, just, and righteous God of the Scriptures demonstrate and display His power to the destruction of His enemies and the deliverance of His saints. The problem as always is the individual wielding the force, the man behind the gun. It is out of those desperately wicked hearts that murder comes, and not out of the barrel of a gun. The Biblical answer is to punish the criminal. The Biblical answer is to execute the murderer. The Biblical answer is to exact justice, enforce God's law, and punish sin. The evolutionary answer is to control the environment. The evolutionary answer is to create an environment where murder is impossible. The evolutionary answer is GUN CONTROL. That criminals disobey gun control laws and that gun control paves the way for dictatorship is never a part of the theory that claims that man is basically good. 

An interesting New Testament insight into "gun control" is the occasion of Peter's swordsmanship in the Garden of Gethsemane. Unfortunately, this incident is usually misunderstood as an argument for gun control. Actually, it demolishes any scriptural grounds for gun control. The first obvious fact is that someone, an apostle yet, who lived and walked with Christ for three years, carried a sword as a matter of course. That at least one of His disciples went about armed was apparently no offense to our Lord, as it was never rebuked by Him. Neither can one argue that Peter strapped it on for that occasion only, and that Christ had no opportunity to correct him. Christ was betrayed and taken by conspiracy. Peter was not wearing the sword on a dangerous mission for which he had judiciously prepared. Peter wore it as a matter of course. Peter was not rebuked for wearing it. Peter was not rebuked for using it. Peter was not asked to put up his sword because armed defense is immoral. Jesus said if armed defense was necessary, His Father could presently send him more than twelve legions of angels, and God cannot sin. Peter was commanded to put up his sword in fulfillment of Scripture (Matt. 26:54) that the Lamb of God, slain from the foundations of the world, might offer Himself up as a ransom for many. 

DISARMAMENT:  
Everything that can be said for individual gun control can be said for national disarmament. James says concerning the causes of war, "From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?" Homer Lea, one of the greatest military minds that this republic has ever produced, discusses the fallacies and delusions of disarmament in his book, The Valor of Ignorance. Lea asks, "When will that Golden age be ushered in upon this unhappy earth and arbitration…substituted for…force?" He answers, "Only when arbitration is able to unravel the tangled skein of crime and hypocrisy among individuals can it be extended to communities and nations…As nations are only man in the aggregate, they are the aggregate of his crimes and deception and depravity, and so long as these constitute the basis of individual impulse, so long will they control the acts of nations.” 

“When, therefore, the merchant arbitrates with the customer he is about to cheat; when trusts arbitrate with the people they are about to fleece; when bulls and bears arbitrate with the lambs they are about to shear; when the thief arbitrates with the man he is about to rob, or the murderer with his victim, and so on throughout the category of crime, then will communities be able to dispense with laws, and international thievery and deception, shearing and murder, and resort to arbitration."

 Lea concludes with, "Nevertheless, paradoxical as it may appear, while man cannot arbitrate peace into the world, he can lengthen the periods of peace by preparation for war."   

Christ, foreseeing the continued degeneration of human nature toward the end of the age, prophesied, "And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars."  In contrast, our State Department is committed to the Marxist, evolutionary ideology. In an official publication entitled A World Without War, they promote disarmament as the means of creating an environment in which war shall be no longer. 

ANTICOMMUNISM:  
Communism is total warfare. War on every front, theological, ideological, cultural, political, and so forth, as well as military. Everything from art to music to sports becomes a weapon. One would think that the answer to that might be abolish communists, to abolish communism. Unfortunately, our leaders are committed to the abolition of war, not the abolition of communism. Mao-Tse-Tung has said that "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." The reaction has not been against Mao, but against guns. The solution sought has not been to abolish Mao but to abolish guns. 

CONCLUSION: 
What is the answer to all of this? Obviously, Christianity is paying heavily for its denial of absolute creation and its compromise with evolution. A return to, and a militant defense of the historic, orthodox Christian faith is imperative, but in the meantime, the Christian is faced with an increasingly oppressive, powerful, and anti‑Christian government, that is arrogating to itself all the prerogatives of God. In the September issue of "The Pilgrim," we will discuss the relationship of a Christian to evil government, and explore the question, "Can Christians REBEL Against Wicked Government," always remembering that we are called to OBEY GOD RATHER THAN MEN!   AMEN.