Reconstructed neanderthal man.
Proverbs 22:12.
When I see truth buried and lies ascendent, the words of this proverb are a solace. Although a lie may hold sway a long time, history shows that lies eventually succumb to facts. The difficulty is to know which example to present.
Should we select an example from biology? There we were taught that humans descended from Neanderthals. This has recently been refuted by DNA comparisons. The Bible position was that the humans were uniquely created. Or what of those who claimed different origins for the races? Mitochondria testing recently demonstrated that all humans sprang from a common female ancestor less than 100,000 years ago, which also tallies with Scripture which has all mankind springing from a common progenitor.
Perhaps our example should be from taken from history. Anti-christian scholars who seemed impressive in the 19th-century are largely ignored now. Research has overtaken them. For instance, although one still hears claims that Christianity borrowed its “mythology” from the pagans, those at the center of research know that this position has been refuted, so much so that opponents of Christian faith now resort to even more absurd attempts to derive Christianity from Gnosticism.
In astronomy, efforts to show a completely natural explanation for the origin of the universe have instead led to an understanding that it began out of nothing visible a finite time ago, and has stretched out since—the position the Bible took all along.
Such examples could be multiplied. False theories are impressive at their inception, but ultimately doomed by the facts. Where people persist in error, their self-deceit tends to entrap them and bring them down; but that is a theme for another blog.
The words of Christ’s opponents, like their names, are mostly forgotten. His words fill the earth. They prevailed with lies to crucify him. His truths triumphed when God raised him from the dead.
