in culture must have had an evolution . . . there is no reason whatsoever for supposing that certain concepts require a long period to evolve.”¹⁴

In criticizing Dr. Söderblom Radin says: “For, like the most orthodox of evolutionists, he cannot bring himself to believe that the mentality of primitive people is not essentially different in kind from our own. . . . to him explicit and implicit monotheism must represent the last phases of a long and gradual development.”¹⁵

Finally Radin observes: “I am afraid that the thesis I have advanced will seem to many exaggerated, quite contrary to all the ideas customarily associated with primitive peoples. Most of us have been brought up in the tenets of orthodox ethnology, and this was largely an enthusiastic and quite uncritical attempt to apply the Darwinian theory of evolution to the facts of social experience. Many ethnologists, sociologists and psychologists still persist in this endeavor. No progress will ever be achieved, however, until scholars rid themselves, once and for all, of the curious notion that everything possesses an evolutionary history.”¹⁶

THE CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE

The Bible states that Jehovah God created man and revealed Himself to the first man. Jehovah revealed himself to other men in the centuries that followed. As men drifted away from God they conceived false gods, hundreds and eventually thousands of them, to bring to birth polytheism. But the Bible shows that monotheism was first, and the facts both from primitive cultures of today and from archaeological discoveries confirm the Bible and repudiate the theory that the concept of one Supreme God evolved from polytheism. Jehovah God is no product of evolution. When Life magazine and others teach that he is, they are spreading a message of death.

Jehovah’s servants will not stumble blindly along in the darkness of evolutionary thinking, but will testify to the truth that before Jehovah there were no gods and after him there are no real gods, only the imaginary ones of polytheism. “Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my servant whom I have chosen; that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.”—Isa. 43:10, AS.

REFERENCES

¹ Origin and Growth of Religion, by Dr. Wilhelm Schmidt, professor at the University of Vienna, pages 242, 243.

² Ibid., pages 157, 158.

³ Ibid., page 191.

⁴ Ibid., page 88.

⁵ Ibid., page 190.

⁶ Monotheism Among Primitive Peoples, by Paul Radin, pages 8, 3.

⁷ Page 100 of Leuba’s A Psychological Study of Religion, Its Origin, Function and Future, as quoted by Schmidt on page 195 of Origin and Growth of Religion.

⁸ Modern Discovery and the Bible, by A. Rendle Short, pages 24, 25.

⁹ An Outline of Ancient History, by Albert Hyma, pages 10, 11, 14.

¹⁰ Published in the Evangelical Quarterly, April 1937, and reprinted in Sir Charles Marston’s The Bible Comes Alive, pages 189-200.

¹¹ Schmidt’s Origin and Growth of Religion, page 5.

¹² Ibid., page 12.

¹³ Monotheism Among Primitive Peoples, page 7.

¹⁴ Ibid., page 27.

¹⁵ Ibid., page 28.

¹⁶ Ibid., pages 29, 30.

Marginal Observation

The first English Bible to be translated directly from the original languages was made by William Tyndale in the first part of the sixteenth century. The margin of Tyndale’s Bible gives us an insight into the state of religion at that time. At Exodus 36:5, 6, where Moses forbids the people to bring any more offerings for the building of the tabernacle because they had more than enough, Tyndale’s marginal comment says: “When will the pope say Hoo! [hold!] and forbid an offering for the building of St. Peter’s Church? And when will our spirituality say Hoo! and forbid to give them more land? Never until they have all.”