In many nations of the West, the Word of God was once widely respected and taken seriously. It’s still taken seriously in many nations in the southern hemisphere. But once the door of compromise was unlocked and Christian leaders conceded we shouldn’t take the Bible as written in Genesis, it undermined the integrity of the rest of the Bible.
Many in the church have said; ‘you can use man’s interpretation of the world to interpret the Bible’. An example of this is taking on board the idea that the world is billions of years old. This is reinterpreting the Bible. It’s revisionism. Those who follow this idea are saying the Bible is an outdated, scientifically incorrect ‘holy book’, not intended to be taken as written.
As each subsequent generations push the door of compromise open further, increasingly, they are not accepting the morality or salvation of the Bible either. After all, if the history in Genesis is not correct as written, then not only is the Bible’s integrity questioned but how can we be sure the rest can be taken as written?
Recall what Jesus said, ‘If I have told you Earthly things, and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you of heavenly things?’ (Jn 3:12).
The majority of Christian leaders and lay people within the church, in our society, do not believe in six literal days of creation. Why? Because they’ve been influenced by the world to not take the Bible as written.
Sadly, being influenced by the world has led to the church no longer being in a position to influence the world.
‘Naturalism’ is the dominant religion in our society. A view which says every law and force in the universe is natural rather than moral, spiritual or supernatural. It teaches that over billions of years and out of sheer chaos, matter evolved into everything we see today by pure chance.
Demo Evolution looks okay in static diagram BUT 4 in centre booklet.
It’s popularly believed that Naturalism is objective and scientific. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Naturalism stems from Darwin’s theory of Evolution. But remember it’s just a theory and a very flaky theory at best. Yet in schools, colleges and in the media it’s pedalled as fact. Years ago TV presenters would have said; ‘scientists believe the world to be 6 billion years old’; today it’s stated as fact yet there is no proof. Belief in evolutionary theory requires absolute faith, it’s a philosophy, an attitude of mind. It’s no more ‘scientific’ than any other kind of religious faith. Jaw Bone - to ape man - show machine screw?
Social Darwinism applies the doctrines of evolution and survival of the fittest to human societies. This spawned Frederick Nietzsche’s philosophy, which opposed everything Christ taught. He scoffed at Christian moral values such as humility, mercy, modesty. meekness, compassion and service. He believed this bred weakness in society. His philosophy laid the foundation for Nazi Germany. Similarly you can trace Marxism and other tyrannical movements like eugenics and abortion to Darwin’s theory of ‘survival of the fittest’.
Evolution is in conflict with the teachings of Christ. He should not have healed the lame and the sick if progress is measured by the ‘survival of the fittest’. Jesus taught self sacrifice; evolution is based on self preservation in the struggle for existence.
Some Christians believe evolution was God’s method of creation, but this is an inconsistent and contradictory position to hold. See P 1 of notes for an explanation.
Evolution is the cruellest and most inefficient way of creating man that could have been conceived. If God is a God of love and wisdom and power why would he devise such a wicked scheme as evolution.
The account of Creation concludes with God saying it was ‘very good’. Could he have said this if he was looking at the fossilised remains of billions upon billions of creatures in the rocks of the earth’s crust if such fossils marked the end of his Creation period.
Evolution was invented to eliminate the God of Genesis. It is the latest means our fallen race has devised to suppress our innate knowledge and the biblical testimony that there is a God and that we are accountable to Him (cf Rom 1.28).
By embracing evolution modern society aims to do away with morality, responsibility and guilt. Evolution eliminates the Judge and leaves the individual to do whatever they want without guilt or indeed consequence.
The collapse of Christianity in the once ‘Christian’ West is directly related to the issue of Biblical authority - which is directly related to the Creation account.
The battle is not one of young Earth vs old Earth, or billions of years vs six days, or creation vs evolution. No. The real battle is over the authority of the Word of God vs man’s fallible theories.
Those in the Church who do not accept God’s Word as written concerning the literal days of Creation have contributed to the Christian demise of our culture, and will be held responsible before the Lord for leading so many lives astray. They have undermined the text of Scripture because they didn’t accept the words as written.
Why do Christians believe in the bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ? Because of the words of Scripture ‘according to the Scriptures’ (1 Cor 153,4). And why should Christians believe in the six literal days of Creation? Because of the words of Scripture ‘In six days the Lord made …’ (Ex 20.11) I shall return to this in later weeks.
The real issue is one of authority - is God’s Word the authority, or is man’s word the authority?
How the church answers this question will determine the future of the nations of the world and possibly our own individual salvation. I say this because as we push open the doors of compromise where do we stop. At what point do we start to believe God’s revealed Word as being true.
Creationists are often accused of believing that the whole Bible should be taken literally. This is not so!
The key to a correct understanding of any part of the Bible is to ascertain the intention of the author of the portion or book under discussion. The Bible contains:
‘Poetry’; as in the Psalms. ‘Parables’; as in many of the sayings of Jesus, likes the parable of the sower (Mt 13:3-23), which Jesus clearly states to be a parable and He gives meanings to the seed and soil. ‘Prophecy’; as in the books of the last section of the Old Testament (Isaiah to Malachi). ‘Letters’; in the New Testament written by Paul, Peter, John, and others. ‘Biography’; as in the Gospels.
‘Autobiography/Testimony‘; as in the book of Acts where the author, Luke, after telling of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus as an historical fact (Acts 9:1-19), describes two further occasions when Paul used this experience as part of his testimony (Acts 22:1-21; 26:1-22) and finally; ‘Authentic historical facts‘; as in the books of 1 & 2 Kings, etc.
The author’s intention with respect to any book of the Bible is usually quite clear from the style and content. Who then was the author of Genesis, and what intention is revealed by his style and the content of what he wrote?
The Lord Jesus Himself and the Gospel writers said that Genesis was written by Moses (Mk 10:3; Lk 24:27; Jn 1: 17).
This doesn’t preclude the possibility that Moses had access to written patriarchal records handed down from father to son via the line of Adam-Seth-Noah-Shem-Abraham-Isaac-Jacob, etc., as there are 10 verses in Genesis (5.1; 6.9; 10.1; 11.10; 11.27;; 25.12; 25.19; 36.1; 36.9;37.2) which read, ‘These are the generations of ……’ or ‘This is the account of ……’
The most likely explanation of them is that Adam, Noah, Shem, and the others each wrote down an account of the events in their lifetime, and Moses, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, compiled these, along with his own comments, into the book of Genesis.
Chapters 12-50 of Genesis were written as authentic history. They describe the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and his 12 sons, the heads of the tribes of Israel.
It’s the first 11 chapters of Genesis that have incurred criticism from modern scholars, scientists, and sceptics?
Are any of them poetry? Answer: No. They do not contain any of the forms of Hebrew poetry and Hebrew scholars are agreed on this.
There certainly is repetition in Genesis 1, e.g. ‘And God said …’ occurs 10 times; and ‘God saw that it was good/very good’ seven times; ‘after his/their own kind’ 10 times; ‘And there was evening and there was morning, the ? day’ six times. But these repetitions are not in the Hebraic poetic form; rather they are statements of fact, a record of what happened. Written for emphasis, to indicate the importance the words are repeated. Like Truly truly / Amen Amen.
Are any of the chapters parables? No, because when Jesus told a parable He either said it was a parable, or He introduced it with a simile making it plain it was a parable, for example, ‘The kingdom of heaven is like …’ No such claim is made or style used by the author of Genesis 1-11.
Are any of the chapters prophecy? Not in their full context, although two promises of God are prophetic in the sense their fulfilment would be seen in the future.
One is Genesis 3:15, the pronouncement by God to the serpent (Satan) in metaphorical form: ‘And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel’.
The other is Genesis 8:21-22 and 9:11-17, The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man‘ …… ‘never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth’.
Are any of the chapters letters, biography, autobiography or personal testimony? If Adam knew the events of Creation Days 1-6, they must have been revealed to him by God, as Adam was not created until Day 6.
This view is reinforced by the words; ‘This is the account of the heavens and of the earth when they were created’ in Genesis 2:4a. The details of Day 7, the rest day, are included before this in Genesis 2:2-3, which completes the record of a full seven-day week, before this closing summary.
Note that creation is completed, there is no need for evolution. Creation is a finished work. Check out Col 1.16 and Heb 4.3.
Genesis 2:4b-5:1a tells us about Adam, his wife Eve, and their sons, and reads very much like a personal account of what Adam knew, saw, and experienced concerning the Garden of Eden, and the creation of Eve (chapter 2), their rebellion against God (chapter 3), and the deeds of their descendants (chapter 4 to 5:1), albeit written in the third person
This section ends with the words, ‘This is the written account of Adam’s line’ Is it feasible that Adam could have written Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a as the result of his pre-Fall conversation with God, and Genesis 2:4b - 5:1 as the record of his own experiences?
There is no problem concerning his ability to have done so. Adam was created a mature man, endowed with all the DNA, knowledge and skill he needed to perform all the tasks assigned him by God. He was no caveman!
Adam knew enough horticulture ‘to work and keep’ the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:15), and was intelligent enough to recognise and name the distinct kinds of animals (Genesis 2: 19). He (and Eve) conversed with God without having learned an alphabet, and there is no reason to suppose he was not fully skilled in writing also.
The Lord Jesus Christ referred to the Creation of Adam and Eve as a real historical event, by quoting Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 in His teaching about divorce (Mt 19:3-6; Mk 10:2-9), and by referring to Noah as a real historical person and the Flood as a real historical event, in His teaching about the ‘coming of the Son of man’ (Mt 24:37-39; Lk 17: 26-27).
Unless the first 11 chapters of Genesis are authentic historical events, the rest of the Bible is incomplete and incomprehensible as to its full meaning.
The theme of the Bible is Redemption, and outlined like this:
• God’s redeeming purpose is revealed in Genesis 1-11,
• God’s redeeming purpose progresses from Genesis 12 to Jude 25, and
• God’s redeeming purpose is consummated in Revelation 1-22.
But why and from what, does mankind need to be redeemed? The answer is in Genesis 1-11, from the ruin brought about by sin.
Unless we know that the entrance of sin to the human race was a true historical fact, God’s purpose in providing a rescue is a mystery. Conversely, the historical truth of Genesis 1-11 shows that all mankind has come under the righteous anger of God and needs salvation from the penalty, power, and presence of sin.
In other words, if you reject the creation account in Genesis, you have no basis for believing the Bible at all. If you doubt or explain away the Bible’s account for the six days of creation, where do you stop with your scepticism?
Do you start with Genesis 3, which explains the origin of sin and believe everything from then onwards? Or maybe you don’t sign on until sometime after chapter 6, because the flood is invariably questioned by scientists too. Or perhaps you find the Tower of Babel too hard to reconcile with modern linguistic theories about the development and evolution of language. So maybe you can accept biblical authority with the account of Abraham. But when you get to Moses and the plagues in Egypt, will you deny those too?
Leaving the miracles of the Old Testament aside, what about the miracles of the New Testament? Is there any reason to regard any as being supernatural or will you explain them away as symbolic?
Once rationalism gets a hold you start adapting the Word of God to fit science. There’s no end to the process. Why should we doubt the literal sense of Genesis 1-3 unless we are also prepared to deny that Moses parted the Red Sea; that Elisha made an axe head float or that Peter walked on water, or that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. And what of the Resurrection itself. Let’s not forget some liberals deny the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection.
Unless the events of the first chapters of Genesis are true history, the Apostle Paul’s explanation of the Gospel in Rom 5 and of the resurrection in 1 Cor 15 has no meaning. Paul writes: ‘For just as through the disobedience of the one man (Adam) the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man (Jesus) the many will be made righteous’ (Rom 5.19).
And, ‘For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive … And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam a life-giving spirit’ (1 Cor 15:22; 45) cf 1 Tim 2.13-14, Jude 14 James 3.9.
The historical truth of the record concerning the first Adam is a guarantee that what God says in His Word about the last Adam [Jesus] is also true. Likewise, the historical, literal truth of the record concerning Jesus is a guarantee that what God says about the first Adam is also historically and literally true.
So is Genesis to be taken literally? If we apply the normal principles of Biblical exegesis, ignoring pressure to make the text conform to the evolutionary prejudices of our age, it is overwhelmingly obvious that Genesis was meant to be taken in a straightforward, obvious sense as an authentic, literal, historical record of what actually happened.
Let me leave you with this thought. What do you believe about the end of history as it is foretold in Scripture. All of redemptive history ends, according to 2 Peter 3.10-13 when the Lord uncreates the universe. The elements melt with fervent heat, and everything that exists in the material realm will be dissolved. Furthermore, according to Revelation 21.1-5 God will immediately create a new heaven and a new earth (cf Isaiah 65.17) Do we really believe He can do that?
If we really believe He can destroy this universe in a split second and immediately create a whole new one, what’s the problem with believing the Genesis account of creation? If he can do it at the end of the age, why is it so hard to believe the biblical account of the beginning?
