Reply To Rewriting Modern Standards

This is a reply to a comment I got from Mr. Pete Murphy on my most recent article "Rewriting Modern Standards part 1".

First of all I would like to thank you for commenting on my blog. I’m sorry it took me so long to reply. I am always glad to hear other peoples’ opinions and to discuss them. I would however prefer in the future to be sent comments with footnotes so that the facts stated can be researched and verified.

You have brought up some great food for thought, such as: Can people know what God’s will is? Does God’s will change through time? What about today’s population growth? Can someone be opposed to abortion and still be against large families? Can human intellect conquer disease and extend life? Is overpopulation going to destroy our earth? This has been a hard comment to reply to because of all the questions it brings up. So I will try my best to answer them as concisely as I can.

First of all you stated, “You seem very certain about what is God’s will. That’s dangerous.” “Open your eyes to what’s happening in the world around you and don’t be so quick to proclaim to know God’s will.” When talking of God’s will you seemed to allude to the fact that people can’t know His will. Yet the Bible says in Romans 2:18 “And know His will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law.”
I have not made a personal revelation but rather stated what God’s will is as proclaimed in the Scriptures. I’ve found John Piper very helpful in explaining the two types of God’s will as demonstrated in the Bible. First there is His Sovereign will or His will of decrees…
“He does according to His will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay His hand or say to Him, “What have you done?’” Dan. 4:35

“That’s the first meaning of the will of God: it is God’s sovereign control of all things. We will call this His ‘sovereign will’ or His ‘will of decree.’ It cannot be broken. It always comes to pass… The will of God is God’s sovereign governance of all that comes to pass. And there are many other passages in the Bible that teach that God’s providence over the universe extends to the smallest details of nature and human decisions.” (John Piper)

Here are the verses he used for showing God’s Sovereign will: Romans 12:1-2, Matt. 26:39, Act 4:27-28, 1 Peter 3:17, Matt. 16:33, Prov. 16:1, and Prov. 21:1.

John Piper goes on to explain God’s will of command. “Now the other meaning for ‘the will of God’ in the Bible is what we can call His ‘will of command’. His will is what He commands us to do.” Jesus said in Matt. 7:21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.”

Piper shows in 1 Thess. 4:3, 1 Thess. 5:18, and 1 John 2:17 what some of the commands of God are: holiness, sanctification, sexual purity, and to give thanks in all circumstances.
 Psalms 143:10 says, “Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God; Your Spirit is good. Lead me in the land of uprightness.”

When Matthew Henry was speaking on Psalms 143:10 in his commentary of the Bible he stated this, “It is the desire and endeavor of all God’s faithful servants to know and to do his will, and to stand complete in it.”
So as you can see we can know God’s will of command for us. It is not dangerous to proclaim God’s will as stated in the Bible. The Danger comes when we don’t do His will. (Deut. 28:15-19, 1 Kings 13:21)

You also stated, “Is it not possible that God blessed mankind with a high procreative capacity to sustain him through the early years when our death rate was extremely high and that he also blessed with an intellect capable of conquering disease and extending our lives? Now that this high procreative is no longer needed, is it now also possible that God expects us to use our intellect to rein in this excess capacity to prevent destruction of the environment he created for us?”
First when are you starting you’re timeline? If you start in the beginning of the world you’ll find throughout the Bible many references to people living much longer then today’s world record. For instance, Noah lived to be 950 years old, Adam was 930 years old when he died, and Moses died at the ripe old age of 120 years old. So you see they should have worried about overpopulation back then. Today the Average life expectancy of the world is about 66 years. http://www.wholesomewords.org/

Second you are assuming that God needs’ our help, yet He was the one that created the universe in only 6 days. “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Exodus 20:11 He has never needed our help to do anything. We are His creation not the other way around. Also He didn’t create this world for us. He created it for His own glory. ‘For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.’ Romans 11:36 ‘For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.’ Colossians 1:16

We are not able to conquer disease or extend life. Only God can do that. Whatever man has “accomplished” it is with the help of God alone. You are going on the assumption that procreation is no longer needed. Why is that? I have searched the Bible and found not a scrape of evidence to support that speculation. At every turn it goes back to who is in control, God or man? We have no intellect save what God has blessed us from the beginning with, nor do we have the right to decide what is excess or not. Only God has that right since He was the one who gave us the command to multiply in the first place. Genesis 1:28 was the very first commandment to be given to our first parents Adam and Eve. ‘Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; 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.”’

Here is a passage from Martin Luther’s works that explains in more detail, (vol. 45, The Christian in Society II, The Estate of Marriage, pages 15-18)
“For this word which God speaks, ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ is not a command. It is more than a command, namely, a divine ordinance which it is not our prerogative to hinder or ignore. Rather, it is just as necessary as the fact that I am a man, and more necessary than sleeping and waking, eating and drinking, and emptying the bowels and bladder. It is nature and disposition just as innate as the organs involved in it. Therefore, just as God does not command anyone to be a man or a woman but created them the way they have to be, so He does not command them to multiply but creates them so that they have to multiply. And wherever men try to resist this, it remains irresistible nonetheless and goes its way through fornication, adultery, and secret sins, for this is a matter of nature and not of choice.

In the third place, from this ordinance of creation God has himself exempted three categories of men, saying in Mathew 19:12, ‘For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.’ Apart from these three groups, let no man presume to be without a spouse. And whoever does not fall within one of these three categories should not consider anything except the estate of marriage. Otherwise it simply impossible for you to remain righteous. For the Word of God which created you and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply,’ abides and rules within you; you can by no means ignore it, or you will be bound to commit heinous sins without end.”

So if God didn’t create this world for us, (Rom. 11:36 & Col. 1:16) and He has never needed man’s help, (Is. 45:12) and throughout the Bible we see people living at times double today’s average life span, (Gen. 5:5, Gen. 9:29, Deut. 34:7) and if all the wisdom that man may have is from God alone, (Psalm 2:6) and God not man is in control, (2 Chr. 20:6) then what you have just stated can’t be true according to the Bible.

In your second paragraph you stated that, “Do you not understand that, even today’s rate of population growth of about 1% per year, if unchecked, within another 1,000 years our population would be so great that every drop of water on earth would be locked up in the make-up of human flesh? That’s a preposterous scenario, but proof that there is a limit as to what our planet can support and we’re rapidly approaching that limit.”
I started researching some more and found something very interesting; we are (contrary to popular opinion) shrinking in population to a dangerous point of non-existence.
“On the global scale, falling fertility rates already have decreased the population growth rate—from more than 2.0 percent to 1.5 percent a year over the past 30 years. Experts expect this trend to continue, so that by the end of this century the world’s population will stabilize at 9 to 10 billion people.”
http://www.worldbank.org That is if we don’t count in natural disasters, diseases, and wars, which are impossible to calculate.

http://www.wikipedia.com/ states that in the 20th century alone 70 million people died from famines. They stated that, “Most famines however are caused by a combination of political, economical, and biological factors.” 30 million died in China alone through 1958-1961. Not by overpopulation. Throughout articles on overpopulation we hear “could”, “might”, “can”, and “may”. Those words don’t make things facts, just assumptions.

If you round the whole world’s population to 6.5 billion with 8 people in each family, and you give each family one forth of an acre, you get 1,250,000 square miles of land. America is 3,718,711 sq. ml. Granted that is not counting in lakes, inlets and rivers, but it does show how small the population really is in comparison of the whole world. But even if that wasn’t true the fact still remains that we as finite humans do not have the power or the right to control the population.

This is what I was talking about in my article when I said, “As finite humans we tend to cry, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” even before we check for facts. God is all knowing and our provider. We are to be good stewards of the land and use its resources wisely. If there did come a time that we needed food do you not think that He would provide it?”

In your third paragraph you gave me two choices, “And consider this: there are only two ways that the population can stabilize, as it eventually must – through a lower birth rate or a higher death rate, or some combination of the two. If you do not favor a lower birth rate then, be default, you are choosing a higher death rate. It is those of us who favor stabilizing the population who are actually pro-life. It is those who denounce efforts to reduce the birth rate who are engaging in a culture of death.”
Here again you have left out the most important answer to all life’s questions, God. If God commands He will enable! I cannot choose one or the other for one very important reason; I’m not in control. The Lord is the one who knows who will die and when. He is the one who chooses how many children each family will have. Not me.

John 7:16-17 states my case best when Christ said, “My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent Me. If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority.”

So please don’t take my word for it or discard it before you have searched the Scriptures to see if what I say is true and then hold fast to what the Word of God says. Let the Bible say what is right and what is wrong not the world or statistics.

Lastly you stated, “Those opposed to stabilizing the population accuse the rest of us of promoting abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and all sorts of horrible things. I don’t deny that there may be such nut cases around but it’s a gross injustice to paint everyone who is concerned about overpopulation with the same brush. The vast majority of us believe in attainment of a lower birth rate by means that leave individuals free to choose the size of their families.”
I hope I didn’t seem as though I was accusing people who don’t have many children or that have decided not to have any, to be put in the same barrel as those that are pro-abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, etc. It was and is my aim to call their attention to something that is creeping into the church and is becoming part of the “Modern” Christian theology. God made man to “be fruitful and multiply”, so no matter how concerned Christians maybe of overpopulation they shouldn’t try to alter what God has created.

Throughout your comment you have given me no proof of your theories with the use of Scripture or with references. In my article as well as in my reply I have given you scripture, quotes from godly men, as well as references to statistics and other articles. I pray that you have found my reply clear, concise, and backed with scripture (in context).

God Bless, L. C. Bryan