You know, in today's world, again, one of the questions that's asked is, how can you believe in a loving God? Look at all the death and suffering in the world. And we've seen a lot of catastrophes in recent times, particularly when we have terrorist activity or big hurricanes that hit Mexico or the United States or a tsunami that hits Indonesia. It's interesting that in America, often on the TV channels, and you get some of them over here, But on Fox News or on CNN, they get some of these Christian leaders and they say, how can you as a Christian leader tell people how you can believe in a just, loving God when there's a tsunami that hits Indonesia and kills all those children and adults? And by and large, the answers I've heard from Christian leaders in America is, oh, we just have to have faith. And one of the reasons that they can't answer the question is because when you believe in millions of years, as I said last night, as soon as you believe in millions of years, I want to explain that again as we start here this evening. When you believe in millions of years, the millions of years applies to the fossil record. The fossil record was said to be laid down over millions of years. The fossil record is full of dead things, evidence of disease, violence, suffering, animals ripping each other up, bones of animals in their stomachs and so on. If God says all that is very good, and that's the method that God uses to bring life into existence, a man into existence, then how do you answer that question? The only way to answer it is to say, well, that's our God, that's what he does, wipes things out, destroys things, causes things to suffer, causes people to suffer, isn't he great? Got a problem. But if you take a literal Genesis, everything God made was very good, there was no death or suffering, death and suffering is a consequence of sin, It's an intrusion into a once perfect world and it's man's fault because we sinned against the Holy God. So it changes your whole perspective on things. But the majority of Christian leaders in America, as in the United Kingdom, it's not all but it's a majority, do compromise with millions of years. And you'll find even in many conservative churches, not all again, but there are many, where a lot of Christian leaders, elders, deacons, pastors, ministers will say, well, millions of years doesn't matter, or maybe the world is millions of years. But as soon as you do, you've got all this death and suffering before sin. And that's why you can't answer these questions. But let's start off with one of those genealogies. I mentioned this last night, Genesis 5. Notice how it says, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died. They really are uplifting passages to read, aren't they, when you think about that. But you know, in reality, you can put your parents' name there and your name there in those genealogies. Because death is a penalty for every single human being because we're all descendants of Adam. That's why when people often ask the question, You know, when 9-11 occurred in America, when the World Trade Center was blown up by terrorists, there were people that said, and don't misunderstand me when I say this, I'm not saying this in a light way, but there were people that said, I'm glad I wasn't in the World Trade Center, I would have died. My answer to them was, well, don't worry, your turn will come. You see, because in reality, what happened to them is going to happen to everybody. People tend to think, it's like when they ask that question about Indonesia, why would God let all those children die? That's not the right question. The right question is, why is everyone going to die? That is the right question. See, we tend to look at others' catastrophes and say, well, why did that happen? Why did they die? No, no, you need to stand back and say, wait a minute, everyone's going to die. Death is the penalty for sin. I think a lot of people don't want to put themselves in that position. I was watching on BBC News last night where they were showing the effects of nicotine on people's lungs and cancer and so on, showing some pictures to people to see what their reaction was. And one of the ladies looked at it and said, does that shock you? And she said, no, why not? Because, you know, we all think it's not going to happen to us. And I think people are like that with death. They look around, they see people dying, they know everyone's going to die, but in one sense, they don't apply it to them, they don't think about that. And you know, I even find in the church, when a loved one dies, it's easy for people to get angry at God. You know, we had a brother who's five years younger than me, a great Bible teaching pastor, who died of a horrible brain disease in Australia. And, you know, we as a family had to cope with that. And the book, How Can a Loving God, is sort of centered around that. And I'll mention that here in a moment too. But I remember my mother saying, as we walked out of the home where he was and as he died just a couple of days later, she said, you know, it doesn't seem fair. The liberal pastor down the street who doesn't believe God's word and actually teaches against the miracles and undermines the authority of the word of God, he's as healthy as an ox. And my son, who stood on the authority of God's word and was a great preacher, he's dying and he's going to die. And I said, Mum, do you realise what's happening to Robert? It's going to happen to the liberal pastor down the street. He's going to die. But our brother Robert was a Christian. And you know what he taught in his own sermons? What he taught was this. Death and suffering is normal in an abnormal world and we live in an abnormal world because of sin. And when you die, if you're a Christian, you'll be totally healed. And my brother now is totally healed and none of us in this room are. Think about that. It's a whole different way of looking at it, isn't it? It's important to look at things from a biblical perspective. But let's go through this real quickly, keeping some of those things in mind. Psalm 103, the mercy of the Lord. The Bible tells us God is an all-merciful God. The Bible tells us that God loves us with an everlasting love. The Bible tells us that God is love. And you see, when people look at that, they say, The Bible says God is love, God is just, God is all merciful. Then how can there be all this death and suffering in the world? Well, we have to start right at the very beginning. When God finished creating on the end of the sixth day, he said everything he made was what? Very good. And by the way, words can have different meanings depending upon context. When God uses the word good and describes something as very good, I'll show you in a little bit from the New Testament. Remember when someone came to Jesus and said, good master? What was his response? Why do you call me good? There's none good save, but there's a special definition of good that only applies to God. Perfect, pure, without sin, all loving, all just, all merciful. God described the creation as very good. When God describes it as very good, it is not full of death and suffering and animals ripping each other apart and cancer and How could it be? That does not fit the nature of God. You can't have millions of years and consistently believe in the Bible. So if there's a very good will, we ask those questions. Why would a loved one die, maybe from a horrible disease, cancer or my brother who died of a horrible brain disease? Why would God allow an evil man like Hitler to do what he did or those terrorists to do what they did? Or that tsunami to wipe out all those people in Indonesia. Or that hurricane Katrina that killed those people in New Orleans and places like that. By the way, you've got to pounce it right. Do you know how to pronounce it in America? Norlands. N-A-W-L-O-N-S. Norlands. It's probably as bad as the Gaelic pronunciations over here. We have a world in which there's a lot of school violence. You even have school violence here in in the United Kingdom. You know there are schools in America where you have to go through security just like you do at airports for students to get into schools. That's how bad it is. Some of you might have heard of Ted Turner. You've heard of CNN. You've heard of the liberal media from America. Ted Turner is one of the media giants. In the New York Times he was interviewed and it said this, Turner is a strident non-believer having lost his faith after his sister Mary Jane died of a painful disease. I was taught that God was love and God was powerful, Turner said, and I couldn't understand how someone so innocent should be made or allowed to suffer so. Friends, I want to say something to us here. In America, many of the leading atheists of atheist groups that oppose Christianity, leading humanists in America, claim they were brought up in Bible-believing homes. What happened to them? I suggest to you that when you really talk to them about it, They're brought up in Bible-believing homes where they were not taught how to defend their faith. They were sent to schools where they were taught a history that totally contradicted the Bible. They're only taught Bible stories at home in church. And when asked in questions like, how can there be a loving God, instead of giving a logical answer and defending the Christian faith, upholding the authority of God's Word, people didn't give those answers. And when they saw, remember I mentioned to you about Charles Templeton when I talked about the Creation Museum? Charles Templeton, Here he was, going around as an evangelist, and he was over in the United Kingdom as an evangelist in the 1950s. Went to Princeton, taught millions of years, therefore there cannot be a loving God, and wrote a book that atheist groups use today to attack Christianity. I believe that we need to really think in terms of what we've taught our children, what we're teaching our grandchildren, the answers we're giving or not giving to them. And when you compromise and you don't give those answers and you tell them it doesn't matter, whatever you believe is good, that's okay, you can believe that. That's what I said last night, you start to undermine the authority in the first part of the Bible, eventually they'll give up the rest. This is what happened to many of these people. Charles Darwin, did you know that Charles Darwin When he died, I would call him an atheist. He totally rejected God. In his biography it said that any vestige of belief in God left him when his daughter Annie died. His daughter Annie was very special to him. She had a horrible death, terrible disease. Later on, Charles would say that period chimed the final death knell for his Christianity and Charles took his stand as an unbeliever. The death and suffering issue was one of the big stumbling blocks to Charles Darwin. How can there be a loving God? And then when that happened to his daughter Annie, there just can't be a loving God. And he never got answers when he went to college. By the way, his only degree was in theology. You know that, don't you? He was not a scientist. Here's one of the students who killed his parents and involved in school violence in America. He said it's easier to hate than love because there is much more hate and misery in the world than there is love and peace. Look at our history, it is full of death, depression, rape, wars and diseases. You see, to him, that's the whole history and that's what they're taught in the schools and through the universities and by and large through the schools and universities and through the media, that our whole history is one of death. Death, struggle, that's what it's been like. It's easier to hate than love. We live in a world where we see joy but we see sorrow. We live in a world where we see life and we see death. We live in a world where we see love and we see hate. How do we explain that? How does a Christian understand that? Let's look at the Bible's perspective first of all. I went through this last night, so I'm not going to do this in detail right now, just skip over this, but if you take Genesis the way Jesus did, remember Jesus quoted from Genesis to talk about the history there, it's foundational to the doctrine of marriage, one man for one woman, and I said last night, all of our doctrines are founded in Genesis 1 to 11. If you take Genesis the way Jesus did, originally Adam and Eve and the animals were all vegetarian. By the way, in the fossil record, there's evidence of bones in the stomachs of other animals, they're eating each other, ripping each other up. So if God says they're all to be vegetarian, how could you have animals eating each other millions of years before sin? After the flood, God told Noah, just as I gave you the plants, now I give you everything. And I mentioned last night that's the reason you could eat haggis. You have to quote Genesis 9.3 and pray extra hard when you eat haggis. But things changed after the flood and the reason for that is because everything changed because of sin. You've got to remember that. Everything changed because of sin. See, if the millions of years is true, do you realize nothing has really changed? But sin changed everything. Because now death entered the world. And I like to put it this way with people. Do you realize back in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had a choice of the tree of life or the tree of death. I know the Bible calls it the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But if they ate of that tree, they would surely what? Die. So I call it the tree of death. Do you realize all through the Bible, from the beginning right to the end, there's a choice of life or death? You see that theme all the way through, don't you? Life or death, life or death, life or death. With the Israelites, life or death, life or death, life or death. Right at the end, life or death. That second death, eternal separation from God. We know what happened. Adam took up the tree of death. Sin entered the world and death is a consequence of sin. The whole meaning of death is tied up with its foundation, its origin, in the book of Genesis. The whole meaning of anything is tied up with its origin in Genesis. The first death was when God made clothes for Adam and Eve and clothed them. One of the most startling exhibits of the Creation Museum is where we have these models of skimmed animals that God has slain and clothed Adam and Eve. It's a picture of the gospel. First blood sacrifices are covering for their sin. And remember the Bible tells us that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness because the life of the creature is in the blood. Blood represents life. I'm doing this very quickly for the sake of time tonight. This is to me a picture of the gospel right here. That God was going to provide a solution to man's dilemma of sin and eternal separation from God. You see When God killed that animal, clothed Adam and Eve, we know that the Israelites were to sacrifice animals over and over and over again, but the blood of bulls and goats can't take away our sin. That's a covering. We needed a man, a perfect man, because a man brought sin and death into the world. We needed a man to take the penalty for sin and death, but it can't be anyone of us because we're sinners. So what did God do? He stepped into history to become a man. Isn't that incredible? You think about it. To die on a cross, be raised from the dead. and offers a free gift of salvation. The Bible ties the first Adam and the last Adam together. Wherefore, whereas one man sinned in the world, Adam, and death by sin, so death passed upon all men for all have sinned, if thou shalt confess to your mouth the Lord Jesus, who's called the last Adam, he's called the second man, but the last Adam, because there's not going to be another Adam. He stepped in history to take the place of the first Adam. We put all those together. Through one came death, through the other came life because of death. The Bible also describes death as an enemy. It's an intrusion. It's an enemy. And you know Romans 8 makes it very very plain that the whole of creation groans. Here's something we need to understand. I want to give you a real important point here. It was a perfect world. Now we're living in a groaning world and one day there's going to be a new heavens and a new earth. Be a restoration back to what it was like before sin. You know I believe we teach our children a lot of things incorrectly. How many times do you ever see in Sunday school literature, children's books, you see things like, look at this beautiful world God made. I've got news for you, it's a horrible world. There's a remnant of beauty, but it's a world marred by sin. I had a pastor once tell me, on the Gold Coast in Australia, and I was up on a mountain with him and he said, you know, I bring my non-Christian friends up here and I say, can't you see this beautiful world God made? I looked at him and said, what? I said, those people you're talking to are looking out there and there's man-eating sharks out there, they're gonna eat swimmers. There's jellyfish out there that'll kill you in minutes. There's octopus you can stand on that'll kill you in minutes. There's people out there getting killed in car accidents. There's people in hospitals out there suffering. What do you mean a beautiful world? Do you realize that our Sunday school books and in our children's literature, you know what I often see in children's books in churches? When they're talking about creation. Look how God beautifully made this little animal to rip the insides out of this one. We often use examples of design in regard to how animals eat each other and say, see, isn't God the great designer? Wait a minute, do you know what that's teaching the kids? That's how it's always been. That God made a world where it was nature red in tooth and in claw, which the poet used to describe Darwinian evolution, really. No, it was a perfect world. Let me give you a practical example. I'm sure most of you have been to the British Museum. Have you been to the British Museum? You know, the British Museum where they have all those archaeological artefacts they've ripped off from around the world over the years. And I was there one day, I was looking at one of those broken statues and I saw some people looking at it saying, wonderful, marvellous, inspiring, beautiful. A little boy nearby said, what are you talking about? It's all broken to me. See, there is a remnant of beauty there, isn't it? But it's broken. You know, I have people say the same thing about the world. But this is in Christian literature. Oh, wonderful, beautiful, inspiring. Isn't it a wonderful, beautiful world? No, it all looks broken to me. It's a broken world. It's marred because of sin. See, again, I think we even give non-Christians a wrong idea. You know one of the reasons that non-Christians ask those questions? You know, it's because we as Christians say, this is the world God made. By the way, in the Darwin exhibit, now I don't know if they've changed it. I want to go and have a look in the Natural History Museum. On the second floor there was a Darwin exhibit and I know they're modifying it. It's going to be interesting to see what they've done. So I'm hoping to see that before I leave on this trip. But when you walked in, they had a sign and it said this, creationists believe that God made the world and the animals just as we see them today. Wrong. But you know that's what Christians teach in their books, in their Sunday school literature. And you know what they go on to say? But evolutionists see that things change and they show you. Dogs change, horses change, cats change. Therefore evolution is true, creationists, Christians are wrong. You see how they do it? And you know what? Because of the way we teach our kids a lot of times in our own homes, in our churches, they think God made the world just as we see it today. No, they didn't. Did God make a poodle? A poodle is a degenerate mutant. It is. How could God call a poodle very good? God made the original dog and the poodle is a sin-cursed copy of the original dog. Okay, you've got to remember that. By the way, then I have people say to me, but wait a minute, you said that Adam and Eve would eat fruit and they would eat plants, well that means plants died, so there was death before sin. No, there's a Hebrew word, nefesh, Let me get my thing working here. Hebrew word, nefesh, that applies to man and applies to animals really means life spirit does not apply to plants. Plants are not alive in the sense that animals are. Plants were given for food. They're different. In fact, let me help you understand this even a little more. You can imagine taking your girlfriend or your wife on a romantic evening and going out and sitting in a field and seeing a dead tree and say, let's sit on this dead tree and have a romantic evening and hold hands and gaze into each other's eyes and look at the sunset, whatever. But would you ever take your girlfriend or your wife out on a romantic evening and say, oh, there's a dead animal, let's sit on that and gaze at the sunset. There's something different about animal death to plant death, isn't there? Something different. Plants don't have nephesh, whereas animals do. Now let's look at man's perspective on this real quickly. Man's perspective. Life arose over millions of years from inanimate matter. As the late Dr. Carl Sagan said, the secrets of evolution are time and death. Time and death, time and death. In fact, time plus death equals man. By the way, evolution puts time and death together. Millions of years puts time and death together. The Bible puts sin and death together. See the difference? For those who believe in millions of years, death, millions of years leading up to man. Not just death, diseases like cancer, thorns, millions of years before man. They find evidence of brain tumours, arthritis, cancer in the bones of organisms in the fossil record like dinosaurs. Death over millions of years. Billions of dead things buried in rock layers, laid down by water all over the earth. Now, here's the comparison. I call evolution a tree of death. That's called a phylogenetic tree. When they're talking about evolution, they have these phylogenetic trees. In other words, life evolved over millions of years. You get all these in-between forms, transitional forms, it evolves into all the different kinds. And over those millions of years, there's millions of years of death. And so there's millions of years of death associated with the onward, upward, evolutionary progression and so on. So this is the tree of evolution, called a phylogenetic tree. It's a tree of death. Now what I call the Bible's counter-creation is a tree of life because you start with life, a living God who created distinct kinds of animals and plants and they're not all joined up with transitional forms back to a common ancestor. No, it's from the Bible that God created. all these kinds, so I call that a tree of life and everything was very good. Remember, death was a penalty for sin, death is an enemy, so when you look at all these layers with all these dead things in, they had to come after sin, which is why I said it's the flood that's responsible for most of those fossils and subsequent events. However, when a non-Christian looks at death, they can say to the Christian, okay, so How can you have a God of love? Is he unjust? Is he all-powerful? If he's all-powerful, why doesn't he overcome all the death and suffering we see? Why does he let people suffer? I mentioned to you earlier, when Jesus was asked that question, good master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? His answer was, why do you call me good? No one is good, but one that is God. And I want to make a really important point here. I want you to think about this. Only Christians ultimately have a basis to make moral judgments. Non-Christians ultimately have no basis to make moral judgments. When a non-Christian says to you, God must be unjust, first thing you need to ask them is, how can you call anybody unjust? On what basis can you do that? Let me give you a practical example. I was answering the question where Cain got his wife, because originally Adam and Eve had sons and daughters, so originally close relatives married. By the way, I have Christians who say to me, You're not allowed to marry your relative. If you don't marry your relative, you don't even marry a human. Then you've got a real big problem. Anyway, I was answering that question about Cain's wife, and a guy called me up on the phone and he says, I'm an atheist. And if you believe that, that's immoral, that close relatives married originally. I said, oh, really? Yeah. I said, you're an atheist. That's right. You don't believe in God. That's right. There's no absolute authority. That's right. Everyone has a right to his own opinions. That's right. I said, you can't call me immoral, you're an atheist. You can't do that. Do you see the point? See, it's only the Christian who believes in an absolute authority who can talk about just and unjust, good, bad, good, evil, right, wrong, why? Because if there's no absolute authority, it's all relative. It's all subjective. Your opinion could be different to somebody else's opinion, and who says your opinion's right? You can't force your opinion on somebody else. Everyone has a right to their own opinions. That's happening in this culture, isn't it? Everyone has a right to their own opinion except Christians. Isn't that happening in this culture? Now, philosophically speaking, what I'm trying to tell you is the problem of evil is actually a problem for the unbeliever. It's not a problem for the believer. See, it's the believer who can say, I can talk about just and unjust, I can talk about good and bad, good and evil, right and wrong. You as a non-Christian, you logically can't do it. All a non-Christian can do is to look inside the Christian system and say, OK, then from within your system, there's an absolute authority, there's a loving God and so on. How do you then, yourself, answer the question of a just God, understanding, OK, understanding got to come from that basis. See, the first thing I do when I'm talking to a non-Christian, I want them to understand logically they're the ones that have the problem. Philosophically, they've got a problem. You don't believe in God? And who does determine right and wrong? So you know one of the problems in our culture today? You hear people talking about we need to get values back into the education system. What do they mean by values? They really mean, when you listen to it, Christian morality. But the problem is you can't have Christian morality without Christianity and you can't have Christianity without the Bible. So therefore they've got a problem. And when they say values, you mean your values or his values or her values? Whose values are the right values? Well, you know, traditionally, tradition, that's just subjective. That's just an opinion. So from a Christian system, within the Christian system, within the Christian worldview, if we have a loving God who's all merciful, yet we still see evil in the world, we see all sorts of things happening that we can stand back and say from our perspective seem unfair or unjust this little child was taken, that little 11-year-old boy that was killed by a stray bullet you saw in the news, that seems so unfair, that seems so unjust. Within the Christian system, how do we explain that? Well, if there is a loving God and he's an all-powerful God, then somehow evil events occur for reasons which are morally compendable, just and good. And knowing that God is an infinite God, And we're finite beings. Is it possible that we don't understand everything there is to know about everything and God can have commendable reasons for things that we don't understand? Tell me, is that possible? Do you know who found that out? Oh, I'm sure you've heard of him. Who was that? Job. See, Job didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. And people think that the book of Job doesn't answer the question about suffering, but it does. Because at the end of Job, Job wanted to argue with God. What did God say? Job, I'll ask you some questions. Do you know this? Do you know that? Do you know this? Were you there when I made the earth? Do you know this? Do you know that? Do you know this? Do you know that? Do you know this? What happened at the end of Job? I despised myself. I repented in dust and ashes. He basically fell down, repented in dust and ashes, and basically what he's saying is, you know what? I give up. I don't know everything. I know nothing compared to God. You know what Job really said? I'm going to let God be God. He has reasons. He's the infinite creator. I need to let him be God and not me try to be God and explain. He must have commendably good reasons. And he did. The book of Job is right there in the Bible. And we knew what was going on behind the scenes. Let me give you another example. The crucifixion was an evil event. I mean those people, what they did was terrible. It was evil. that tell me, did God have, ultimately, morally good purpose, reasons? Absolutely. Think about that. You know, there are many other examples we could use. And I want to clarify this in a moment, but take Esther. Esther is a little girl, must have lost her parents somehow. They killed by evil people? Die of some disease? We don't know, we're not told. I wonder how many people said, Why would a loving God let this poor little girl lose her parents or you know the way that they died, killed, whatever? Did God have morally good reasons for Esther? God used Esther to save a whole group of people. Think about that. God's in total control. See we're living in this sin-cursed universe and yet God is in total control. And as one of my friends says, he is yet to make his first mistake. See, even with my brother, my brother Robert, you know what's interesting? I wrote this book with all these things in plus much more and with my brother Robert, one of the things that we recognised and I said to my mother, do you realise my brother has ministered more to people in his death than in his life? Because of what happened to him, we wrote a book. I have so many people, I mean this is thousands and thousands of copies of this book have been sold in America. I've had many people say to me, You know, they've read lots of books trying to cope with some trauma or tragedy in their life. One man told me his son on the way to college was killed. He said he read many books and when he read this one, he said it really answered the questions for him and really helped him. My brother has ministered more in his death than in his life. Do you think God has had some morally commendable reasons? I don't know all the reasons, but we need to stand back and we need to let God be God. That's one of the things we have to recognize. And you know what I say to people, and I say this in this book too, some books sort of come across as if, you know, they're so pious and so on, and it's almost like, suck it up, that's the way it is. You know, you just have to trust God and have faith. You know one of the things I recognize? We are human beings. We are finite human beings. And you know, we had to grapple with my brother's death, and we grieve, and we still grieve, and we still even ask those questions. And I tell people, it's okay, I believe, to ask those questions. God, why? I don't understand. It doesn't seem right. I mean, there are things that have occurred in our lives that we say that. Lord, it just doesn't seem right, doesn't seem fair. It's okay to ask those questions because we're humans, but then we need to stand back and say, but I need to let you be God and help me to understand, help me Help me to deal with this situation, because we're dealing with it in the here and now, and it can be traumatic and awful. I understand that. But we also need to stand back and let God be God at the same time. He's in charge. And to recognise, a loved one dies, remember, it's no different to what's going to happen to every single person. See, how did Jesus respond? Remember the Tower of Siloam that fell on people? And Jesus Ask that question. It's interesting, because there are 18 people who died. Do you think they're more guilty than the others living in Jerusalem? What was his answer? Repent! How's that for an answer? Do you think these people were worse sinners than others, that these 18 would die? Here's my answer. Repent! You know what Jesus was saying? They died, you're going to die. Make sure you're ready. Because that was their turn to die. And you know, God knows the heart of every single person. I'm thinking of one of the evil kings, because of the evil that he did, God said, your sons will not rule and your sons to the third and fourth generation, whatever, wouldn't even be buried. But there's one, I don't know how young he was, very young I believe, young son, he said, he will not go through that, he'll die. but he will not suffer that curse, if you like, that judgment, because God saw good in him. God knew his heart. He knows every one of our hearts. And you know, people often come up and ask questions like, well, do all babies go to heaven? You know, I'm glad I don't have to sort all those things out. Do you know what I do? I just say, hey, do you know what Abraham said? Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? I'm going to leave that in God's hands. I don't have to try to work all those things out. When God doesn't tell us all those answers, why do we have to? We don't have to do that. Sometimes we want to think we can explain it. We want to be God. No, no, no, no. Let God be God. Trust in Him. Without faith it's impossible to please Him. Someone said, well why doesn't God tell us all these things? Do you realise how much He'd have to tell us? He's an infinite creator. What are we going to do for eternity? You can learn for eternity and there's always going to be an infinite amount more to know. So don't worry, there's plenty to do in eternity. But has God given us enough to understand? Oh, absolutely. Of course he has. You know, Jesus said, I tell you the truth, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again. If you confess in your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart God has raised him from the dead, you'll be saved. It is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgment. The Bible tells us, I saw a new heaven and a new earth. First heaven and earth were passed away. God shall wipe away all tears and there shall be no more death. But then it also talks about the fearful and unbelieving and abominable murderers and war mongers and sorcerers and idolaters and liars which have their part in the lake of fire, which burns with fire and brimstone, which is a second death. Do you realise, just as Adam and Eve had a choice of a tree of life or a tree of death, there's a tree of life and a tree of death today. Really the creation evolution issue is a comparison of a tree of life and a tree of death. Because the tree of life today, the message of salvation, is because of what happened, the death on a cross. Tree of death for those who reject the cross. The Bible says they're going to suffer a second death, which is eternal separation from God. Life and death right there in Genesis. Life and death right there in Revelation. And you see that life and death contrast all the way through the Bible. In fact, I'd like to end with this one. I'll end with a verse from Jeremiah. Remember the Chaldeans came against Jerusalem, came against the city. Jeremiah said, tell the people, this is what the Lord says, I am setting before you the way of life and the way of death. By the way, isn't that really what happened in the garden? The Lord said, I'm setting before you a way of life and a way of death. So obey God's word. Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, the famed plague. Whoever goes out and surrenders, will, to the Babylonians, will live. And you know what? Many people probably thought, I'm not going to go out and surrender. That's stupid. They needed to let God be God. They needed to trust God's word. And had they trusted God's word, they would have lived. If Adam and Eve had trusted God's word, there would be no death. Well, God knew they were going to fall because Christ was sacrificed before the foundation of the world. But there is that life and death again all the way through the Bible. Ultimately we don't know everything there is to know about everything. But what a difference it made in our lives to understand yes it's a very good world, we messed it up, God is all-powerful, He is all-loving and He could shut things down right now, He could solve everything right now, but He has morally good purposes. The Bible says it's not His world and He should perish. at all should come to a knowledge of him. God is working things out in ways that we don't understand. And while we live in this sin-cursed universe, we're going to die. We're going to suffer diseases. Death and suffering is normal in an abnormal world. You know, we've been spiritually healed because of what Christ did on the cross. For those of us who are Christians, we've been spiritually healed. We're yet to be totally physically healed, aren't we? But when my brother died, he was totally healed. One day Christ is coming back and there's going to be new heavens and a new earth and then death will be cast in a lake of fire. I know I find as I go through these things like this and understand a foundation from Genesis it really gave us some great answers as a family as we dealt with the death of our brother and I found it's given great answers to others. I've just summarized it here for you tonight but I want to show you what a difference when you take God at his word instead of taking man's ideas and compromising them with the Bible. That's why whenever I see some of these Christian leaders on television saying, we don't know why these things happen. We just have to trust God. I'm counting on the TV. Let me in. Let me in. I want to come in and tell you the answer. Well, we need to get the answer out there as much as we can. So let's just pray and we'll dismiss and we got to pack up here. So the books will be there just for a few minutes if you want to grab some more materials. And if any strong men want to come and help us pack up the screen and that apparently if we're not out of here by 1030 we get arrested and put in jail and so on away or something. So anyway let's pray. Gracious Lord we just again thank you for your word. Lord so many times we do compromise your word without even realising it unwittingly. Lord forgive us and help us to tell this dying world out there that there is a message of life. a message of hope. Help us to be able to defend our faith the way we should in today's world. Help us to be able to uphold the authority of your word, to preach the gospel, the good news, see people saved and one to the Lord. Help us to train up our own children. Thank you for the answers that you've given us. Forgive us for the times we doubt you. Forgive us for the times that we have not really let you be who you are. Help us to let you, our created, infinite, created God, all powerful, all merciful God. Help us understand what it means to let God be God. We pray to dismiss it for your blessing, keep us safe as we travel to where we're going. I ask you to bless the rest of the tour, the meetings in Inverness and Aberdeen and Glasgow and Edinburgh and other places over the next few days. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Hey, thanks for coming.