Evangelist Attacks Evolution Theories

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 850, 19 December 1929, Page 8

Evangelist Attacks Evolution Theories

“ROTTEN MORALITY” DR. OLIVER IN ACTION “When people deny the Divine creation it is not because of their so-called science. It is the rottenness of their mentality, morality and veracity that is responsible for their belief in evolution. I claim to be mentally competent, and I’ll stand up to any bunch of evolutionists on earth, and don’t you forget it.” So said Dr. French E. Oliver, prominent Fundamentalist preacher and travelling evangelist, of Los Angeles, California, during the course of a scathing criticism of the doctrine of evolution at Scots Hall, Symonds Street, last evening. The subject of his address was “Evolutionists—Are They Mentally Competent?” Proceedings opened with the singing of "It’s the Old-time Heaven, but It’s Good Enough For Me,” followed by “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” A member of the audience then prayed and the Rev. A. A. Murray urged the benefit to be gained from the purchp.se of a volume written by Dr. Oliver. “We hope you will support ihe* doctor by your prayers,” he urged. “We get no help from the modernist ministers of this City.” A collection was taken up and Dr. French Oliver rose to speak, opening with the reading of the record of the creation in Genesis. "ABSOLUTE NONSENSE” “The story of creation in the Bible deals essentially with cause and effect. If the cause is great enough, it will produce all the effects,” said the speaker. “To say you believe in the Bible and yet deny the doctrine of creation is absolute nonsense. I want to say to you positively and clearly tonight, that there is nothing really scientific which is not covered by and contained in the Bible. “You are secure in the Bible. Other theories are nothing more nor less than the guesses of ungodly and not infrequently gross and licentious men. “Don’t put your faith in them against the word of the living God!" Some so-called Christian teachers thought that creation might have come by way of evolution, but in denying the Biblical account they were denying the deity of Christ, f

“This is the idea as outlined by a famous exponent of evolution,” declared Dr. Oliver. “Born of albumen and electricity the simple monad was the first living animal. It developed through the stages of a snail, a worm, a reptile, a fish, a bird, and a quadruped, becoming a monkey, developing into a baboon, which gave place to an orang-outang and a gorilla, before becoming a man.

“There now. That’s where you all came from, according to evolution! Now, I ask you, where did they get their albumen and electricity to start with? We are just as badly off with this proposition as with any other. SNAILS AND REPTILES “No snail on this earth ever gave birth to a reptile to my knowledge,” he continued. “I submit that the evolutionists are not mentally competent when dealing with these subjects. “I am not angry about the controversy on the subject, but they get hot under the collar trying to demonstrate the scientific cosmogony of creation. The whole thing is a lie from start to finish. X challenge the world to show wholte any monkey ever gave birth to a man!” “Have you ever heard of a lowly onion, sick of its strong breath and insignficant position in the vegetable world, deciding to become an orange and climbing an orange tree to do so?” he asked. “Have you ever heard of a radish climbing up a peach tree to become a peach?” The audience laughed heartily. “There are lots of things the evolutionists have never ‘heard of. The trouble with them is that they are 99 per cent, mouth and one per cent, brains.” Great applause greeted this statement. “The evolutionists get peevish and don’t like to come near when I am in town,” he went on. “They know I am dealing in hard scientific facts!” He referred to the fact that certain small fish lived in the greatest depths of the sea, where the pressure was unimaginable, and said there was no method of natural selection known by ] which they could get there. This fact proved design and that God had placed them there in the first place. He said the scientists were very stupid and slow to grasp truth. For many years they had held the theory that coral was a marine flower, and it had taken 25 years to convince them that it was the product of a small sea animal. ‘ The good old Bible has stood fast hroughout the ages.” declared .the speaker. “The trail of evolution leads us to jungle criminality and jungle bestiality. Great God! Let us go the other way!”