Love Worth Finding

Adrian Rogers: Humane Society literature has claimed for decades and I quote, "There is no rational basis for maintaining a moral distinction between the treatment of human and other animals." Now what they're trying to do is to raise animals to the level of humans, but what they are succeeding in doing is lowering humans to the level of animals. And that has all kinds of ramifications.

Guest (Male): Welcome to Love Worth Finding featuring real truth that never changes from acclaimed pastor and Bible teacher Adrian Rogers. In simplest terms, the belief behind the animal rights movement is that there's no difference between man and animal. But scripture says otherwise.

According to the book of Genesis, both man and animals were created by God separately. Neither evolved from the other. What are four distinct contrasts between man and animal? Well, if you have your Bible, turn to Genesis chapter one, we'll start in verse 26 as Adrian Rogers begins with part one of "What's Wrong with Animal Rights?"

Adrian Rogers: Just when you think that something more crazy, more wild and weird than we've ever heard cannot come, it comes. And that's something today that we're faced with called animal rights. Now I want to talk to you as we talk about a Christian worldview about what's wrong with animal rights.

But first of all, let's just jump into the Word of God and let me just get your motor running by reading a few verses from the book of Genesis, which you know is the book of beginnings. Chapter one and verse 26. And God said, "Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

And then look in chapter three and verse 21 if you will: "And unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skin and clothed them." And then look if you will please in Genesis chapter nine, verses one through three. And God blessed Noah and his sons and said unto them, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth."

"And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things."

Now it may sound silly to you that we would even discuss animal rights and say what's wrong with animal rights. But if you listen for a while you'll find out that it is not silly. You see, there are those who believe that men were not created in the image of God, but that we just came out of some primordial ooze or slime.

They can never tell us where the ooze and the slime came from, but we somehow just evolved out of all of this. So we're animals. Being animals, all animals are created equal. I want you to know that I love animals. The creatures of God, every creature of God, I love all of God's creation in case you think I've got something against animals.

But what we're talking about is something, friend, that is more than foolish. It's literally getting to be very sinister. As a matter of fact, there's an organization called PETA, P-E-T-A. That stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Do you know what these people did?

They went to a Chinese restaurant and bought six lobsters in Maryland to prevent them from being murdered, dismembered and eaten. And then they put these six liberated lobsters on a plane, flew them to Maine and released them. Now they have some five million dollar budget and this is one of their budgetary expenses, liberating lobsters.

Ingrid Newkirk, who is the director of PETA, has said this and I quote, "A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy." A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They make no difference. PETA's chairman declared, "We feel that animals have the same rights as a retarded human child."

Now some of these people have gotten quite violent. If all they did was to put silly things in books, that would be one thing. But one man was arrested while trying to murder the president of a medical research company with a remote control bomb. Radical activists have set fires to research labs.

Fried Chicken restaurants have been torched, fur stores have been burned down, women wearing fur coats have been subjected to spray paint attacks, turkey farms have been burglarized, medical records have been stolen, zoo employees have been assaulted, butcher shops have been vandalized. Arson, property destruction, attempted murder, burglary and theft—all of these are considered acceptable crimes by these animal rights activists because a rat is a pig is a boy. No difference.

The Humane Society now says that a breakfast of bacon and eggs is a breakfast of cruelty. They call McDonald's McDeath. But they say that beef cannot be eaten or cows killed for their leather, even exploited for milk and cheese. The eating of fish, chicken or even snails is to be banned.

They would not want you to buy a goose down pillow, wear a wool suit or a silk blouse. Geese are not to be plucked, sheep are not to be sheared, silkworms are not to be harvested, and cockroaches too have a right to live, they say, because they are efficient little garbage collectors. They believe that wearing animal fur is no different from the Nazis who made lampshades of human skin.

It's amazing, but these people are dedicated. And you wonder, how could this happen in America? How could we come to this place? Well, that brings the question: is man just a clever animal who can stand erect, who has a thumb juxtaposed to his five fingers, a little bigger cranium, a little more gray matter? Is that all? Is there no intrinsic difference?

You see, they reject the idea that I read to you from the book of Genesis, that God made man and told man to have dominion over the works of his hands. Their goal is to set all animals free from all human control and domination. Gary Francione, a law professor whose business is litigating animal rights, would not even allow an animal to suffer if the research led to a cancer cure.

Let me quote him. He's a lawyer: "I don't believe it is morally permissible to exploit weaker beings even if we derive benefits." Now we've heard of racism, there's a new term speciesism. Speciesism. The animal liberation people say that we are bigoted if we say that human beings are more important than the quote "other animals".

Let me quote: "It can no longer be maintained by anyone but a religious fanatic that man is the special darling of the universe, or that other animals were created to provide us with food, or that we have divine authority over them and divine permission to kill them." Now what that is, folks, is a statement that flies directly into the Word of God. That's not just some other roundabout philosophy. That is a challenge to the Word of God.

Michael Fox, quoted in the Washingtonian, put it this way succinctly and I quote: "There are no clear distinctions between us and animals. Animals communicate, animals have emotions, animals can think. Some thinkers believe that the human soul is different because we are immortal, and that just becomes completely absurd."

That's what he's saying. It's absurd to think that men have immortality and therefore they're different from animals. That's what they believe. Humane Society literature has claimed for decades and I quote: "There is no rational basis for maintaining a moral distinction between the treatment of human and other animals."

Now what they're trying to do is to raise animals to the level of humans, but what they are succeeding in doing is lowering humans to the level of animals. And that has all kinds of ramifications. Here's a very interesting thing. The scientist today, I'm talking about the secular scientist, most all of them believe in research with animals.

They believe that you can take animals and be as humane as possible, but use animals for example in research to find a cure for cancer or whatever. And the scientists believe this. The animal rights people say you have no right to do that because an animal is the same as a human being. The secular scientist says that is foolish, there's a difference between human beings and animals.

And then they ask this evolutionary scientist what is the difference, and he can't say. He knows there's a difference but he doesn't know the Word of God. And so he's in a quandary. There's an irony about it. He knows the difference but if he believes in evolution, I want to tell you, the animal rightist has it.

He's got him. He can't argue with him because the scientist cannot say I believe that man is the special creation of God. Now some scientists do, but I'm talking about your secular scientist. And so they're really in a quandary. Now that is compounded by the deception of the New Age.

You know, we used to think that all of the New Age business was just mere foolishness, a passing fad that would go away. But we now have come into what is called the Age of Aquarius or New Consciousness or Cosmic Humanism, New Globalism, sometimes it's called a World Order. Where did this come from?

It came from Eastern religions, Hinduism. And in the Hindu religion, the Eastern religion that is now pervading the West, God is impersonal. They don't believe in the Yahweh, the Jehovah, the El Shaddai that we believe in. They speak of God as energy, as the all-pervading reality.

Hinduism and pantheism, they don't believe there is no God, they believe everything is God. The air we breathe is God, the flowers are God, the plants are God, the trees are God, the sky is God, I am God, you are God, dirt is God. You are dirt because you are God and dirt is God.

It's all mixed up. So when they believe that everything is God, then what does that do to morality? If everything is God and God is everything, there is no good or no evil because all all is the same and the idea of good and evil is only a figment. That's what these folks believe.

That's New Ageism, it's pantheism. And what you have now in this animal rights thing, you have to understand from whence it comes. It is a synthesis, an amalgamation and homogenization of evolution, secular humanism and Eastern religions. It did not just happen with a group of college students who are looking for something to do.

Now this is compounded by those who are not into the animal rights movement nor are they into the New Age movement. They are materialists, they are secularists, period. I picked up an article, here's the title of the article: "Life is Sacred gets us Nowhere". And here's some of the things this article said in our paper here, in our city.

Life—is there life on Mars? Maybe a minute bacterium. Should a woman have aborted a twin fetus well on its way to life? And what about frozen embryos? In the public mind as big as kittens, but actually a few cells a pinhead size. Nobody knows when life begins and what do we mean by quote "life"?

A cell has life, any cell—of a cabbage or a horse's ear or a worm. "Ah, but they aren't human cells, no. And it makes sense to differentiate between our own species and another. Or does it?" she asks. Insects aren't to us the same as serious animals, but even the line between plants and animals isn't as clear-cut as you might think.

Going on as if all life has a right to survive us as long as possible obscures too the mighty usefulness of death. Mice and deer are general vegetarians; how sad then that their wicked enemies eat them. Yet when the weaker hardy beasts are no longer picked off owing to a lack of tigers, the strain declines.

Field mice outgrow their food when the falcons leave them alone. But that doesn't make our decisions any easier. It makes them harder because, listen to this now: "There are no absolute rules. Not even my species right or wrong. We have to make decisions, agonizing decisions about which habitats, which animals must be preserved and which people."

"From tiny fetuses that should or should not be kept going to the old who may or may not be allowed to go on in peace." Do you see where they're coming? You see what she says? "What is life?" Saying that life is sacred, she said that doesn't answer the question.

And then she concludes this article by saying, "But it is time that we realize that saying life is sacred gets us nowhere. It is the beginning of the argument, not the conclusion." Now that's secularism pure and simple. So we've got to make agonizing decisions not only as to what kind of animal life will survive, but which babies will live and which older people will live.

So what I'm trying to say to you, ladies and gentlemen, is this: that we're not talking about something that is merely foolish. They do not have the basic core of Christian belief, biblical Judeo-Christian ethics that we have believing the Bible is the Word of God. We have lost a generation and now the courts, the colleges, the institutions, the universities do not come from the same base that we come from.

Now let me just point out two or three things to fix your minds and get them straight as we talk about this question: what's wrong with animal rights? First thing I want you to notice is the creation of man and the animals. Go back to Genesis chapter one.

And God said, "Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Now notice verse 27: "So God created man in His own image. In the image of God created He him; male and female created He them."

Now folks, we need to go back to the early pages of God's Word. How did everything get here? Only three possible answers. One is godless evolution. We started out as primitive protozoa and then became unsegmented worms and then became a fish and then an amphibian, then a reptile and then a bird, then a mammal and then a man.

You believe that, go ahead. I reject it for logical reasons as well as theological reasons. I reject it for moral reasons. But godless evolution, that's one answer. The other is theistic evolution. People say, well it's not godless evolution, God did it. God made it that way.

Friend, you can't ride one horse in two directions. That will not fit the Bible, there's no way that you can make it fit the Bible. It is impossible theologically, philosophically, analogically to read this Bible and believe in what some call theistic evolution. The third alternative is that God created man and woman just exactly as God's Word says.

I believe that. I've been amazed how anxious man is to make a monkey of himself. All right, so you see the creation of man and the animals. Now here's the second thing I want you to see is the comparison of man and the animals. Man is like an animal, but he is not an animal.

Now some think because we compare with the animals that therefore we are animals. For example, there's a similarity in design. Men and animals are designed somewhat alike. I took a course in college in human anatomy and physiology. One of the things that we did in that laboratory was to dissect a pig.

It'd been soaked in formaldehyde so you didn't know you had a surgeon for pastor. But because the pig has a very simple digestive system, we were able to see the various parts. You find the heart, the liver, the lungs, the stomach; these parts of the pig just to help understand the very elementary things.

Men and animals have a basic design, but that doesn't mean therefore that man evolved from the animals. All buildings have a basic design. A doghouse has a floor, walls and a ceiling. A mansion has floors, walls and a ceiling. So since a doghouse has floors, walls and a ceiling and a mansion has a floor, walls and a ceiling, isn't that proof positive that the mansion evolved from the doghouse because you can see the similarity in design?

No. All that means is the same architect designed them both. That's all that means. Because both of them would live in the same vicinity, planet Earth. Now not only are men and animals similar in design, but they are similar in diet. We eat the same thing.

Look in verses 29 through 30 of this same chapter. And God said, "Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." And the word meat here simply means food.

He's not talking in this place about animal flesh, later on he will. "And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat." And it was so. So men and animals have a similar diet.

Some men and some animals eat basically the same thing. Now does that mean therefore that man evolved from the animals because we have the similar diet? A motorcycle and a limousine both have carburetors. So anybody can see that the limousine evolved from the motorcycle, is that right?

No. They just burn the same fuel. There's another similarity: not only in design and diet, but in death. Both men and animals die. And God said to Adam in Genesis chapter two verse 17, "If you disobey me, you'll surely die." And the animals die. Men die and animals die.

And the writer of Ecclesiastes, the great Solomon, said in Ecclesiastes 3 verses 19 through 20: "That which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts. Even one thing befalleth them; as one dieth so dieth the other." The man dies, the animal dies. Yea, they all have one breath, so to the man hath no preeminence above a beast for all is vanity.

Now you certainly have to take that text in context. He's not saying that a man is no better than a beast, but he's saying when it comes to dying, a man has no preeminence over a beast.

Guest (Male): In coming up Monday we'll hear part two of this important message. I hope you can join us then. Now maybe as you've listened today you have questions about who Jesus is, about what he means to you, about how you can start a relationship with God through Christ.

Go to our discover Jesus page at lwf.org/radio and find resources and materials that can answer questions you may have about your faith. Again go to lwf.org/radio and click the tab that says discover Jesus.

Carry Vaughn: Hi, this is Carry Vaughn and this program has been brought to you by Love Worth Finding, a non-profit ministry showcasing the powerful preaching and teaching of Pastor Adrian Rogers. We operate solely through the generous gifts of individual supporters just like you.

To give a gift today, call 1-877-LOVEGOD, that's 1-877-LOVEGOD. Or write to us at Love Worth Finding, Box 38-600, Memphis, Tennessee 38183. You can also connect with us online by going to lwf.org/radio.

There we offer helpful resources inspired by the timeless teaching of Pastor Adrian Rogers. Additionally, you can sign up for daily emails, donate to the ministry and learn more about how to become an ambassador of the word. Thank you so much for listening today. Be sure to join us next time for more profound truth simply stated right here on Love Worth Finding.

Guest (Male): We were so encouraged by this student's response to what he got out of our new online course, "How to Deal with How You Feel". He wrote, "Personally it helped me understand my feelings and learn how to explain them clearly without grudges, resentment, bitterness and anger. I think it will also help me know how to deal with other people's emotions from a biblical standpoint."

At Love Worth Finding, we love to inspire and equip you with messages and resources for your daily Christian walk. And when you donate to the ministry this month, we want to send you a copy of "Reconciliation with God". Based on the powerful messages of Adrian Rogers, this first volume in the Timeless Truth series addresses the universal common ground that makes us human.

It also offers insight into how to have a flourishing relationship with your Creator. To request a copy of the book, call us at 1-877-LOVEGOD. And thanks for your generous support of Love Worth Finding.