Eternity In Their Hearts: Is Anthropology Covering Up The Truth?
1867 a Norwegian missionary named Lars Skrefsrud and a colleague from Denmark were in India looking for new tribes that had never heard the name Jesus Christ. They discovered a huge group of 2 ½ million people, a single tribe, living north of Calcutta that had never had any contact with either Christian or Jewish influences. The Santal spoke a unique language, but Skrefsrud had a great ability to learn languages. In a surprisingly short time he was able to speak their language fluently. He began telling them about Jesus. What he said absolutely electrified the Santal. One of the elders stood up and said to the people, “What this stranger is saying proves that Thakur Jiu has not forgotten us after all this time.”
Lars Skresfrud was amazed. In Santal, the word Thakur meant genuine and the word Jiu meant God. The Genuine God. He asked them, “How do you know about this Genuine God?” They answered, “Long, long ago our forefathers knew him.” Skresfrud asked, “If you know him, why don’t you worship him instead of the sun, and evil spirits?” Their answer was startling.
The Santal told him an ancient story that had been handed down through countless generations. It sounded very much like the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden, but it didn’t stop there. It went on to tell how the founders of their race had started on a long journey. They came to a range of mountains and couldn’t find a way through. The Santal said their ancestors became discouraged. They stopped trusting in the Genuine God. They said, “The spirits of the mountains have blocked our way. We must bind ourselves to them if we are to get through.” And this they did. Soon they found a way, probably through what is now known as the Khyber Pass. Open before them were the plains of India.
From that time, the Santal felt obligated to fulfill the oath that their forefathers had made to the Maran Buru, the evil spirits of the mountains, though for untold generations they had lived where mountains could not even be seen. The Santal believed that this oath and worship had created a terrible rift between the Genuine God and their tribe.
In time the name Thakur Jiu had been applied to the sun. But this is not what their forefathers had told them. In the ancient past, the Santal knew that the Genuine God was distinct from His creation. Though He could see all, He was not to be seen with human eyes. He made all things. He set everything in its place and nourished all things from the great to the small, but their relationship with Him had been broken. They were overjoyed to know that the Genuine God had sent His Son to tell the world about His deep love, to die for their sins, and make a way for them to come back to Him.
Skrefsrud and his colleague were overwhelmed with people who wanted Jesus to be their Lord and Savior. During those first decades, Skrefsrud personally baptized 15,000 people of the 85,000 who were baptized. Long, long ago the seed of Eternity had been planted in their hearts.
King Solomon wrote mysterious words. In Ecclesiastes 3:11 he says that God has placed eternity in our hearts. Within each one of us is a hunger for the eternal, for something so perfect, beautiful and good that it will never disappoint or pass away. We can tell ourselves that it’s just a fantasy, but the hunger is still there and everything is measured against it. Every love, every ambition, and every achieved desire ultimately fades away, because nothing is enough to fill our hunger for eternity. This hunger is the source of many broken hearts, because perfect love can never be found in another human being. One writer asked the profound question, is it possible to hunger for something that does not exist?Did the hunger for a perfect love only come from romantic novels and films, or is it the whisper of eternity in our hearts?
The Bible teaches that God Himself is absolute Loving Perfection and the source of all that is good. Our hunger for perfection is really a hunger for Him. Maybe you don’t believe that. Maybe a broken heart has made you give up hope. Could you imagine something with me? Imagine that there really is a perfect God who is perfectly in love with you. And this God wants you to know Him, because in knowing Him you will experience the ultimate fulfillment of all your hopes and dreams. But you might respond, “I can’t imagine that. If He’s real, where is He? I don’t see him. All I see is darkness and evil.” Is it possible that He has been there all along, but we have been blinded to Him by the greatest swarm of lies in history? Let me tell you a story.
In the late 1700s, when the British arrived in Burma, now Myanmar, they found as expected that the Burmese were devout Buddhists. But deep in the mountains there were other tribes. The Burmese hated them, considering them savages. Worst of all, they refused to accept Buddhism. They clung to their ancient folk religions.
The Karen people insisted on believing in a Supreme God whose Name was Y’wa. In a thousand villages there were teacher/prophets who constantly reminded them that the way of Y’wa was entirely different than the ways of the nats – the evil spirits. In the folk religion of the Karen there were ancient hymns to the One True God. These are some of their words:
Y’wa is eternal, his life is long.
One aeon – he dies not. Two aeons – he dies not.
Aeons follow aeons. He dies not.
Oh, my children and grandchildren, the earth is the treading place of the feet of Y’wa.
And heaven is the place where he sits.
Y’wa formed the world.
He appointed food and drink.
He appointed the “fruit of trial.”
Mukawlee deceived two persons.
He caused them to eat the fruit.
When they ate sickness, aging and death came upon them.
Amazing words. Strangest of all, among the Karen there was a very ancient tradition – that someday a brother from far away would bring to them a book that had been lost that would tell them how to know the One True God.
The ancient stories of God’s eternal witness about who He really is come from around the world. But Darwin’s theory of evolution, now seriously challenged by leading scientists as being mathematically impossible, has brought horror into the human race. What do I mean by that? I’m not talking about its teaching in the classroom. That’s bad enough. I’m talking about the way it has been used to create swarms of lies that have hidden the truth.
After Darwin’s theory appeared, many intellectuals clamored to apply it to every area of human life. One of those areas was anthropology. Here’s the way early anthropologists applied Darwinism to the development of a belief in one God. To them it was impossible to imagine that monotheism had been the original form and that belief in many gods had come later. So they created a hypothesis.
They said religion began with the idea of the human soul which meant ghosts. Out of fear, early man thought he had to offer sacrifices to keep ghosts under control. This led to fetishes and nature gods, rising finally to polytheism. As human society evolved into having rulers or an aristocracy, religion followed behind with the creation of a hierarchy or pantheon of gods. Finally, the idea of a king appeared. This led to the creation of a Supreme Being or monotheism. This hypothesis was drawn up by an anthropologist named Edward Tylor.
In the early 1900’s dozens of young anthropologists spread out across the globe with the goal of proving his theory. Initially, it appeared that he was correct. They ran into thousands of beliefs in spirits, taboos, sorcery and magic. They came up with the term “animism” to describe this lowest stage of religious development. And all the great evolutionary philosophers were pleased. It was obvious that religion had developed mentally just as biological forms had developed physically. But soon a problem began to arise, a tiny fly in their philosophical ointment.
As these young researchers continued their work, they started asking questions such as, “Who made the world?” So many of the primitive tribes had the same answer, a single Being who lived in the sky.
“Is he good or bad?”
“Oh, good, of course.”
“Show me the idol that represents him.”
“No, no, he must never be represented by an idol.”
The researchers came up with the name “Sky God” to describe this very ancient belief. But they all knew that this would fly in the face of the leading Darwinian anthropologists. You don’t advance your academic career by disagreeing with the current wisdom, so they significantly downplayed what they were discovering. Virtually the only man who was willing to write the truth was important 19th century Scottish historian, folklorist and anthropologist, Andrew Lang. The Andrew Lang Lectures at the University of St. Andrews are named after him. But in writing about the importance of the Sky God, he stood almost alone.
Then in the 1920’s a ground-breaking study began. An Austrian scholar named Dr. Wilhelm Schmidt decided to compile a list of every “alias of the Almighty” (as he called it) that had been discovered around the world. Schmidt was staggered. The list took twelve volumes totaling thousands pages. Ninety percent or more of all primitive religions contain clear acknowledgement of One Supreme Being. Schmidt’s work was first published in 1912 and completed in 1955. Since then at least a thousand more examples have come to light (Dr. Schmidt’s condensed English translation published in 1935, The Origin And Growth Of Religion is available here).
Later, a writer named Foucart gave a full scale treatment to this subject in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. I quote: “The nature, role and characteristics of this universal Sky God may be concealed under the most diverse forms, but he is always more or less recognizable to the historian of religions and always identical in essential definition…the Sky God has reigned everywhere. His Kingdom still covers the whole of the uncivilized world. No historical or proto-historical motive can be assigned as a cause, and neither the migration of races, nor the diffusion of myths and folklore affords the slightest justification of the fact. The universality of the Sky God and the uniformity of his essential characteristics are the logical consequence of the uniformity of the primitive system of cosmogony.”
What was the response of academic anthropology? Predictably, they preferred their swarm of lies.
What is God’s attitude toward all those who have so misled and destroyed humanity? The Apostle Paul in the first chapter of his letter to the Romans, writes this: But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.
Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.
So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen.
Stern and frightening words. Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world? The answer is here. As a race, we walked away from the truth about our Creator. Why has God allowed such evil and suffering to go on for so long? I don’t know, but I do know this. He has shown who He is and how much He loves us in the most amazing way. He came in the Person of Jesus, His Son, to suffer with us, to pay the penalty for our sins and give us citizenship in His eternal kingdom. But we have to want it. We have to stop believing the swarms of lies. There’s something else. Though it has gone on for thousands of years, the suffering and evil in this world will not go on forever. God’s Kingdom of Heaven is coming to earth. Jesus proclaimed the beginning of that Kingdom in this world when He walked among us. How did He describe its amazing value?
In Matthew 13:44-46 He said this: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
What is Jesus saying? If you could see the Kingdom of Heaven as it exists right now, if you could walk in its streets, if you could hear the singing, if you could experience God’s Presence for a single minute, you would do anything to get there. If it meant selling all you had you would do it. If it meant suffering you would go through it. If it cost you your life you would give it. But that Kingdom is represented in this world right now by all those who have given their lives to Jesus, its King. Eventually, it will arrive in the fullness of total power. Everything lovely in this world is simply a whisper of what is coming. To be a citizen of the Kingdom of God is the greatest possession that a person could ever have. Everything else is going to pass away.
In Hollywood, when I was running TV series I would get stacks and stacks of headshots, photos of young actors, beautiful women, and handsome men, all desperate to become stars. But along with them, I would get photos of older men and women who had once been beautiful with dreams of stardom. Many had given their lives to achieve that dream. Some had walked away from husbands, wives, children, homes, happiness itself. Finally, the dream had died and they were struggling to survive.
But even more lost were so many who had achieved their dreams. Over my career as a Hollywood writer and executive producer, I have known stars and extremely wealthy people, some of whose faces have been on the covers of magazines. With only a few exceptions they have been miserable, angry, and unfulfilled, damaging to themselves and others. The celebrity appearance of success and happiness is a complete fraud, one of the greatest lies ever presented.
So many successful people in Hollywood have given their hearts and souls to the wrong kingdom. They thought they had found the hidden treasure. But after they had sold everything to get it, they watched it turn to dust. What happens when you have gained everything and it isn’t enough? Out of emptiness flows every form of addiction. Out of emptiness comes self-destruction. In each one of us there is a hunger that only God’s Presence can fill. It is a hunger for Him and His Kingdom.
To become a citizen of God’s Kingdom will cost you nothing, because the price was paid by Jesus Christ on the Cross, when He gave His life to pay for your sins. But there is more. To live as a citizen of God’s Kingdom in this world, to be a true follower of Jesus, the King, will mean that you give up the right to worship yourself. It means you stop being your own self-pitying idol. No longer will you be under the control of the lies that are destroying you. True freedom comes when you give your broken heart into Jesus’ nail scarred Hands and enter His Kingdom. That happens when you repent of your sins and ask God to help you stop doing all the things that you know are wrong. It happens when you ask Jesus to forgive you and be the Savior and Master of your life. To become a citizen of God’s Kingdom will cost you every false thing that you have worshipped. A man named Jim Elliot, who gave his life to tell others about Jesus, wrote these words: “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
One last story. In Central Africa, the ancient name for the sky-god in the Bantu language is Koro. When missionaries finally reached the Mbaka Bantu tribe the message they brought about Jesus Christ and eternal salvation in Him was accepted quickly with great joy. But why? The missionaries were puzzled. What the Mbaka told them was stunning. Here is what they said:
Koro, the creator, sent word to our forefathers long ages ago that He has already sent His Son into the world to accomplish something wonderful for all of mankind. Later, however, our forefathers turned away from the truth about Koro’s Son. In time they even forgot what it was that He accomplished for mankind. Since the time of the forgetting, successive generations of our people have longed to discover the truth about Koro’s Son. But all we could learn was that messengers would eventually come to restore that forgotten knowledge to us. We resolved that whenever Koro’s messengers arrived we would welcome them and believe their message.
The stories that I’ve told you in this episode and many more are found in a wonderful, well-documented book entitled, Eternity In Their Hearts, written by the late missionary anthropologist and researcher, Don Richardson. In it he tells the true story of God’s witness to the most primitive tribes on earth and how modern theorists have consciously ignored the truth. I strongly recommend it. I leave you with a most important question. Have you met Koro’s son, Jesus? A new life is waiting for you in Him.
