Introduction

Seventh-day Adventists hold that the three angels’ messages of Revelation 14 have special significance for end time events. The messages begin with the warning of judgment and the call to worship the God of creation. Why these two themes at the end of time?

The relevance of the judgment theme to the end of time is obvious – the judgment is near and all should prepare for it. But why the emphasis on creation, which happened thousands of years ago? The answer to that question can be understood in the light of a prophecy by Ellen White:

Through the two great errors, the immortality of the soul and Sunday sacredness, Satan will bring the people under his deceptions. While the former lays the foundation of spiritualism, the latter creates a bond of sympathy with Rome. The Protestants of the United States will be foremost in stretching their hands across the gulf to grasp the hand of spiritualism; they will reach over the abyss to clasp hands with the Roman power; and under the influence of this threefold union, this country will follow in the steps of Rome in trampling on the rights of conscience.¹

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the two points on which the popular churches are predicted to unite in opposition to God’s word are related to the controversy over creation and evolution.

Biblical Creation and the Immortal Soul

The biblical account of creation presents a view of human nature that does not include an immortal soul. In the creation of Adam, the body was formed from the earth, and then vivified by the “breath of life” (Genesis 2:7). This act of joining two parts into a whole produced a living being (nephesh) which is sometimes translated “soul” or “being.” The body became a soul when it became alive. There is no mention of a separate entity called a soul. Other living, non-human creatures are also described as having a nephesh and thus being “soulish creatures” (Genesis 1:21, 24; 2:19; 9:10, 12; etc). No distinction is made between humans and other animals on the basis of a nephesh/ “soul.” Neither is any distinction made between humans and non-humans on the basis of having the “breath of life” (ruach, or nishma). Both terms are applied to the creatures that were saved in the ark (Genesis 7:22), which included both humans and terrestrial vertebrates.

Although the word nephesh, commonly translated as “soul,” appears many times in the English Bible, it is clear that the biblical nephesh/ “soul” is not immortal. From the beginning, God warned Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, or they would die. God stated that the nephesh/ “soul” that sins will die (Ezekiel 18:4). The death of a nephesh is mentioned several times in Scripture, including Numbers 31:19, Deuteronomy 27:25, Joshua 20:3, 9, etc, where it is translated as “person.” The biblical “soul” refers to a person, not to a separate immortal entity that is released from the body at death.

New Testament writers frequently refer to humans as having or possessing a “psuche”, often translated as “soul.” However, there is no indication of a separate, conscious entity corresponding to the general meaning of “soul” today. The “psuche” appears to be a reference to the personality, or conscious mind, not something that exists apart from the whole person. It may be distinguished from the physical body (e.g., Matthew 10:28, Hebrews 4:12, Revelation 6:9), but is never described as a separate, independent entity. Although the idea of a separate, immortal “soul” was popular during the time they were writing, New Testament writers deny the idea of an immortal “soul” (Matthew 10:28; 1 Timothy 6:16; James 5:20). Immortality is a future possibility, promised to the redeemed at the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:53, 54). The entire Bible is consistent in teaching that there is no immortal component of humans.²

The description of human nature in the biblical creation account leaves no room for an immortal soul. Because of this, biblical creation is an impediment to use of the “immortal soul” as the basis for uniting the apostate churches. This makes it an important part of the first angel’s message.

Biblical creation and Seventh-day Sabbath

The connection between Biblical creation and the seventh-day Sabbath is simple and straightforward. The sacredness of the seventh day is identified most prominently in Exodus 20:8-11 and Exodus 31:16, where the reason for keeping the seventh day is stated. As God worked in creation for six days and rested from His work on the seventh day, so we are to work six days and rest from our work on the seventh day. The significance of Sabbath rest is affirmed many times throughout Scripture, and it is widely recognized that the seventh day is the day chosen as a special day of rest and worship, and that this choice is based on the creation week described in Genesis.

The biblical record of creation stands as a witness against any attempts to substitute Sunday for the seventh day as the chosen day of worship. This point is overlooked by many Christians who accept the Genesis creation account as historical, but who observe Sunday as holy rather than the seventh day. However, it has not been overlooked by everyone. Opposition to biblical creation is generally identified with scientific arguments, but many Sunday keepers have an additional motivation to oppose the Sabbath. Consider, for example, the following quotation:

“The Church does not accept “creation-science,” the literal interpretation of the Genesis creation record. Catholics who choose this method of biblical interpretation should be aware that their Church views it with great disfavor. Why? It teaches distrust of science and hurts religion, it is contrary to the interpreting of Scripture favored universally by scholars and by our Church, and it leads to deep prejudice and bigotry against the Catholic Church. Such interpretation of Revelation envisages that the Catholic Church must be the beast, the 666, God’s Great Enemy.³

Given the significance of the Sabbath-Sunday conflict and the role attributed to this by the prophetess, it is quite understandable that the three angels’ messages emphasize a call to worship the Creator. Biblical creation is an obstruction to the efforts to unite the apostate churches through the shared observance of Sunday. This helps explain why many churches have moved away from biblical creation and looked for another model of origins, such as one based on evolutionary theory but with the addition of divine guidance in some form. In order to evaluate this idea, it is important to carefully define the terms, such as “evolution,” and the form of purported divine guidance in the theory.

Two Main Philosophical Principles of Evolutionary Theory

Evolution, as usually understood, is the theory that all organisms are related by descent from a universal common ancestor, through unguided, natural processes that are still in operation today. These are the two principles of evolutionary theory that many scientists regard as non-negotiable. One often hears evolution defined as “change over time” or “change in gene frequencies in a population.” These concepts are necessary to the general theory, but far from sufficient. Nor are they controversial. They can be observed, and are readily incorporated into biological theories based on biblical creation. Such definitions of evolution are sometimes used as a cover to equivocate by showing that minor change is observed and then suddenly expanding the meaning of evolution to include macroevolutionary changes that have never been observed.

The general theory of evolution is usually credited to Charles Darwin’s book, On the Origin of Species, published in 1859. In reality, elements of the theory were proposed at various times and places, even as far back as the ancient Greeks.⁴ But Darwin was the first to collect the ideas into a systematic theory with a proposed mechanism – natural selection. He much admired the concept of natural law, as in the laws of physics discovered by Isaac Newton, and wanted to explain living creatures as the result of a law-like process. The result was a theory that relieved God of any responsibility for living creatures by proposing that natural laws could explain their origins. Hence the term, “natural” selection. Darwin explicitly rejected any appeal to causes other than purely natural ones:

We must under present knowledge assume the creation of one or of a few forms,—in same manner as philosophers assume the existence of a power of attraction, without any explanation. But I entirely reject as in my judgment quite unnecessary any subsequent addition “of new powers, & attributes & forces”; or of any “principle of improvement”, except in so far as every character which is naturally selected or preserved is in some way an advantage or improvement, otherwise it would not have been selected. If I were convinced that I required such additions to the theory of natural selection, I would reject it as rubbish.⁵

Changes have been made to Darwin’s formulation of evolutionary theory, but the insistence on unguided processes and the assumption of universal common ancestor remain essential to the theory. The first principle means that only natural processes can be included in any scientific explanation; no supernatural involvement can be allowed to intrude. As Richard Lewontin famously stated:

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.⁶

To admit the possibility of divine activity is to make creation plausible and evolutionary theory superfluous. It also opens the door to explanations that do not specify a mechanism. Materialists reject such thinking, and this greatly restricts their options for explaining the origins of biodiversity. The philosophical assumption of naturalism leaves something like evolutionary theory as the only possibility for explaining the origins of biodiversity.

Commitment to only natural unguided processes is the principle upon which universal common ancestry is built. If only natural processes are allowed as explanations, then one must explain the origin of life by naturalistic processes. This is so difficult, and the evidence is so strongly against it, that it is implausible to propose that it happened multiple times (polyphyly). The smallest possible naturalistic claim is that life arose only once (monophyly), and this is the choice taken by virtually everyone in the materialistic community. The usual tactic is to just assume some simple ancestral cell, and then proceed to explain how it could evolve into more complex organisms with different organs and body plans through naturalistic processes.

Explaining how a simple cell could produce the diversity of life seen today turns out to be nearly as difficult as explaining the origin of the original cell. Living organisms have information encoded in their DNA, and this information is transformed into meaning by a system of molecular machines that are complex in themselves, and which form exceedingly complex systems that are too fragile to survive unless protected by other complex systems such as a highly specialized membrane. The complex of systems is finely tuned, and sensitive to changes, especially changes that affect the way in which the system components interact. Darwinists are generally aware of the lack of experimental confirmation of macroevolutionary claims, but are unwilling to yield on the assumption of naturalism. The result is a pattern of “just-so stories” to explain what macroevolution must have accomplished. The situation is so threatening to the theory that scientists who advocate for intelligent design theory are often subjected to professional and economic sanctions.⁷

Universal common ancestry is not a conclusion drawn from scientific experiment, or even from the pattern of living organisms, but it is imposed on that pattern by the logical necessities of materialistic presuppositions. If one admits to a supernatural creator, universal common ancestry becomes superfluous, and one is free to adopt a polyphyletic view that is consistent with the actual evidence. In other words, both principles of evolution (unguided processes and universal common ancestry) are the artificial demands of materialistic philosophy, not inferences to the best explanation drawn from the empirical evidence. The actual evidence points to intelligent design and genetic discontinuity (polyphyly).⁸ Both these principles are compatible with, even inherent in, biblical creation.

Difficulties in evolutionary theory have led some scholars to propose some type of extra-natural causation, such as pantheism⁹ or appeals to a vital force, or to some self-organizational principle.¹⁰ Vitalism has been rightly rejected by most of the scientific community, but there is still an explanatory gap to fill. One way of filling it is to introduce a divine agent into the theory of evolution. This permits one to appeal to God to bridge the difficulties inherent in evolutionary theory, such as the origin of the first cell, the generation of new information, and the increase in complexity that the theory attempts to explain. This theory, known as theistic evolution,¹¹ has received a great deal of attention, especially after the Pope appeared to endorse it.

When we read the account of Creation in Genesis we risk imagining that God was a magician, complete with an all powerful magic wand. But that was not so. He created beings and he let them develop according to the internal laws with which He endowed each one, that they might develop, and reach their fullness. He gave autonomy to the beings of the universe at the same time in which He assured them of his continual presence, giving life to every reality. And thus Creation has been progressing for centuries and centuries, millennia and millennia, until becoming as we know it today, precisely because God is not a demiurge or a magician, but the Creator who gives life to all beings. The beginning of the world was not a work of chaos that owes its origin to another, but derives directly from a supreme Principle who creates out of love. The Big Bang theory, which is proposed today as the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of a divine creator but depends on it. Evolution in nature does not conflict with the notion of Creation, because evolution presupposes the creation of beings who evolve.¹²

Theistic evolution is intended to solve the problem of gaps in the natural laws, but introduces a plethora of other problems, most obviously the problem of natural evil.¹³

Is “Theistic Evolution” an Oxymoron?

Theistic evolution is the theory that God used the process of evolution to cause the production of biodiversity. This raises a problem because “evolution” means, in the minds of evolutionary scientists, that the process of production of biodiversity was not guided. Obviously, claiming that God is guiding an unguided process is an oxymoron. Despite this logical problem, a number of prominent theologians and other scholars have insisted that God did guide in the production of biodiversity. They differ, however, in what that means.

The theory of theistic evolution entails several severe theological, philosophical and scientific problems.¹⁴ One of these emerges when advocates try to explain how the process has been affected by divine activity. Arguably the most common approach is to argue that God guided the production of biodiversity by constructing the laws of nature in such a way that evolution naturally follows without any need for divine guidance.¹⁵ The motivation for this claim is to meet the demands of scientists that all explanations be phrased in naturalistic, mechanistic terms. Theistic evolution attempts to satisfy these philosophical demands by denying that God’s actions in nature are detectable. In other words, we cannot see evidence of divine activity in nature – so advocates of intelligent design must be wrong in claiming that evidence of divine activity can be seen in, or inferred from, nature.¹⁶ Critics of theistic evolution have questioned why theistic evolutionists claim that there is an undetectable, inactive divine agent somewhere in nature, who is somehow guiding the production of biodiversity and yet leaves no evidence of its existence. One might as well appeal to fairies, or vital forces, or self-organization, or an impersonal universal spirit pervading the molecules.

This form of theistic evolution runs into serious scientific problems. Nature presents many gaps, including the origin of life, the origin of new biological information, the origin of new morphological structures and body plans, etc. One cannot appeal to God’s agency in bridging these gaps if one has already committed to divine inactivity. The gaps appear to be real, and consistent with what we know of natural law, not merely due to our lack of knowledge. This problem applies to both naturalistic evolution and theistic evolution, and shows the failure of both theories.

Evolutionary Creation

There is another form of theistic evolution that does not insist that God’s actions are undetectable, but asserts that God is actively guiding in the production of biodiversity through descent with modification. In this view, intelligent design advocates could be correct in claiming that evidence of divine activity can be seen in the natural world. This form of theistic evolution could be given its own name, such as “evolutionary creation,” although the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Evolutionary creation solves the problem of the gaps in the natural world by its openness to divine action to bridge those gaps.

However, by attributing the process of “evolutionary” change to divine action, evolutionary creation implies a rather inept creator who frequently makes genetic mistakes, causing suffering, death and extinction. If God is guiding the production of biodiversity, it would seem He must be responsible for the mistakes (mutations) and genetic diseases that occur in the process. He must also be responsible for producing huge numbers of species that were not able to cope with environmental factors and have become extinct. He must also be responsible for the gratuitous destruction of countless organisms and biotic communities that are recorded in the rocks. As Kenneth Miller points out:

Intelligent design [Miller’s term for creation over long ages] does a terrible disservice to God by casting him as a magician who periodically creates and creates and then creates again throughout the geologic ages. Those who believe that the sole purpose of the Creator was the production of the human species must answer a simple question – not because I have asked it, but because it is demanded by natural history itself. Why did this magician, in order to produce the contemporary world, find it necessary to create and destroy creatures, habitats, and ecosystems millions of times over?¹⁷

Despite the problems, many scholars have endorsed evolutionary creation as the preferred compromise between the naturalism of scientism and the supernaturalism of religion.

Theistic evolution and evolutionary creation both reject the biblical record of creation in favor of an evolutionary view, and provide a natural logical basis for the two points of doctrine identified as uniting the religious world in the final conflict of Earth’s history.

Theistic Evolution and Sunday Observance

Theories of divinely guided evolution offer logical justification for rejection of the seventh-day Sabbath. Observation of the seventh-day Sabbath is textually and logically linked to God’s rest on the seventh day of creation week. If creation week is allegorical or otherwise not historically true, then God’s seventh day rest is not historically true either, and the basis for seventh-day Sabbath is negated. One could argue that the fourth commandment still enjoins observation of every seventh day, but this could be accomplished by choosing a different day of the week, such as Sunday, and observing it every week. Historically, much of the Christian church has adopted this practice, ostensibly in honor of Christ’s resurrection on the first day of the week, but tracing its origins to the Roman practice of sun worship on that day.

For the Christian, rejection of the six-day creation and seventh -day Sabbath is readily compensated by celebration of the Resurrection on the first day of the week. Commonly called “the Lord’s day,” Sunday is widely observed as a holy day, which provides a logical foundation for ecumenical unity. Adventists understand this “unity” as part of the process of forming the image to the beast described in Revelation 13.

It is true that one may accept biblical creation and yet reject the seventh-day Sabbath. Some Sunday-keeping churches accept the biblical creation account, which shows that the implications of creation are not always practiced. Sunday observance does not necessarily entail rejection of biblical creation. However, I don’t know of any Christian church that endorses any form of general evolution but observes the seventh-day Sabbath.¹⁸ Evolutionary theory simply provides no justification for observing the Sabbath on the seventh day, or any other day for that matter.

Theistic Evolution and Soul Immortality

The idea that humans have a “soul” that lives on after death of the body can be traced back to the Ancient Near East and the ancient Greeks. Plato is famous for advocating dualism – the contrast between profane matter, such as the body, and the purity of a supposed immaterial entity responsible for thought, judgment, and morals. Some of the early Christian leaders believed in a soul that was rewarded or punished after death of the body. Origen and Augustine are famous leaders who wrote out these ideas. It was Thomas Aquinas who systematized the Catholic teaching on the soul in his monumental Summa Theologica. Aquinas claimed that humans are composed of both a body and a soul. The human soul, according to him, is not material, but it is an actual entity (“subsistence”). He affirmed both the immortality (“incorruptibility”) of the soul and its conscious state:

I answer that, We must assert that the intellectual principle which we call the human soul is incorruptible.¹⁹

Thus the act of knowledge here acquired remains in the separated soul, but in a different way.²⁰

The idea of an immortal soul has become firmly establish in Catholic teaching, and has been inherited by most of the Protestant world. Catholics have found it relatively easy theologically to endorse directed evolution because they do not recognize the seventh-day Sabbath and hence have no stake in a six-day creation. However, they do require that a soul be present, and this is readily incorporated into theistic evolution by postulating that God introduced a soul into an original hominid pair who then became the Adam and Eve represented in the biblical story.

36. For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.²¹

Thus, common ancestry with the inclusion of an immortal soul fits well with theistic evolution as seen by the Catholic Church, and, increasingly, in evangelical churches as well.

Not all Christians agree that humans possess a separate entity called a soul. Some would equate the soul with consciousness and attribute it to an emergent property of an increasingly complex brain. Other Christians might disagree on exactly how God instills a soul in the human body, whether by an overt act or whether it arises in some subtle way that does not require divine intervention. However, the clearly dominant position is that expounded by the pope – that God directly acts to implant an immortal soul.

Creation, Evolution and the Three Angels

The three angels’ messages of Revelation 14:6-12 are central to the message and mission of Seventh-day Adventists. The call to worship the Creator “who made heaven and earth, the sea” and the fountains of waters is clearly a reference to the fourth commandment (Exodus 20:8-11), where creation and Sabbath are inextricably linked together. This message is clearly contradictory to theistic evolution, with its rejection of six-day creation and seventh-day Sabbath. The reference to the “hour” of judgment may also relate to the error of an immortal soul, since the judgment “hour” implies a specific, future time for universal judgment rather than each person judged at the time of their death.

The second angel’s message is that Babylon has fallen because of its use of force in imposing its corruption on the rest of the world. The close juxtaposition and sequence of the first and second angels’ messages suggests they are linked. It appears that the fall of Babylon enunciated by the second angel results from its rejection of the first angel’s message of creation and judgment. The adoption of theistic evolution by the major Christian churches provides a logical, although erroneous, basis for rejecting the message of the three angels of Revelation 14, and has the logical potential to justify the announcement that Babylon is fallen. What we observe today appears to be moving in that direction, and we may be observing Babylon’s fall in progress.

Conclusion: Darwin and the Three Angels

Darwin’s theory of universal common ancestry by natural processes challenged the basis for the seventh-day Sabbath and the distinction between humans and animals. Nevertheless, the main elements of Darwin’s theory have been incorporated into Christian theology by many leading Christian churches, including the Roman Catholic Church. This accommodation is accomplished by adding Sunday sacredness and soul creation, neither of which is supported biblically or scientifically, but are rooted in ancient pagan beliefs. By importing an idea that is based on naturalistic assumptions into Christian theology, the biblical faith has been corrupted.²² Biblical teachings on Sabbath worship and human mortality have been pushed aside in favor of Sunday worship and soul immortality, In light of this situation, the timing and significance of the messages of the three angels can be better understood, and the reason for the vigorous opposition of those whose goal is to unite the religious world in what Revelation calls the “image to the beast.” The three angels’ messages are a last message to a dying world, a message of warning against corrupt religion and promise of deliverance for those who are faithful to God’s word. Surely these are solemn times in which the last warning message must be given.