The Battle for the Beginning

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Battle For Beg

The Battle
for the
Beginning

STUDENT'S GOAL

Copyright © 2003
PBI Publications

Answer the following as you read
The Battle for the Beginning
Creation, Evolution and the Bible
By John MacArthur

The Battle for the Beginning

Introduction

  1. Thanks to the theory of evolution, is now the dominant of modern society.
  2. is the view that every law and every force operat- ing in the universe is rather than , spiritual, or .
  3. The notion that natural processes can account for the origin of all living species has never been and never will be established as fact. Nor is it “” in any true sense of the word.
  4. Carl Sagan borrowed divine attributes such as , eternality, and , and he made them properties of the universe itself.
  5. Sagan’s religion included the belief that the race is nothing .
  6. According to his , humanity occupies a tiny outpost—a pale blue speck in a vast sea of galaxies.
  7. The naturalist’s religion erases all and accountability, and it ultimately abandons all hope for .
  8. If there is no personal to whom humanity is accountable and if the survival of the fittest is the governing law of the universe, all the principles that normally regulate the human conscience are ultimately .
  9. The moral catastrophe that has disfigured modern society is also directly traceable to and the rejection of the early of .
  10. Of course, theological have long espoused evolution. They have never been reluctant to deny the literal truth of on any issue.
  11. The result is that over the past couple of decades, large numbers of have shown a surprising willingness to take a com- pletely non-evangelical approach to the early chapters of .
  12. A handful of scientists who profess are among those who have led the way in this revisionism-most of them any skill whatso- ever in biblical interpretation.
  13. Much like the and chaos that results from naturalism, all sorts of mischief ensues when we reject or compromise the literal truth of the biblical account of creation and the of .
  14. Moreover, if we didn’t fall in Adam, we cannot be redeemed in Christ, because Christ’s position as the Head of the redeemed race exactly Adam’s posi- tion as the head of the race.
  15. What creationists (including, to a large degree, even the evangelical ones) are doing with Genesis 1-3 is precisely what religious liberals have always done with all of Scripture— and the text to make it mean what they want it to mean.
  16. The framework hypothesis starts with the view that the “” of creation in Gen- esis 1 are expressions that have nothing to do with time.
  17. Naturally, advocates of this view accept the modern scientific that the formation of the earth required several years.
  18. Those who embrace the framework hypothesis view have in effect made an authority over .
  19. And Scripture always speaks with absolute .
  20. It is a serious mistake to imagine that modern can speak more authoritatively than on the subject of origins.
  21. Moreover, if Scripture itself treats the creation and fall of Adam as events, there is no warrant for treating the rest of the creation account as or device. Nowhere in all of Scripture are any of these events handled as merely .
  22. was introduced as an atheistic to the view of creation.
  23. was devised to explain away the of the Bible-not be- cause evolutionists really believed a Creator was unnecessary to explain how things began, but because they did not want the of as their .
  24. The lie is so pointedly antithetical to Christian truth that it would seem unthinkable for evangelical Christians to with evolutionary science in any degree.
  25. So-called evolutionists who try to marry theories of modern science with biblical may claim they are doing so because they love God, but the truth is that they love God a little and their academic reputations a lot.
  26. Scripture cautions against false “”-particularly so-called “” knowledge that opposes the truth of Scripture.
  27. In Scripture the Creator Himself has revealed to us everything for and .
  28. The conflict is not between and , but between the confident faith and the willful skepticism.
  29. is a mere theory-and a questionable, constantly changing one at that. Ultimately, if accepted at all, the theory of evolution must be taken by sheer .
  30. Again, a biblical understanding of the creation and fall of humanity establishes the nec- essary for the Christian world-view.
  31. If Genesis 1-3 doesn’t tell us the , why should we believe anything else in the ?
  32. Since creation cannot be or in a labora- tory, is not a trustworthy place to seek answers about the origin and fall of humanity. Ultimately, the only reliable source of truth about our origin is what has been revealed by the himself.
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Creation: Believe It or Not: Genesis 1:1

  1. It’s hard to imagine anything more absurd than the naturalist’s formula for the origin of the universe: times equals .
  2. Ask the typical naturalist what he believes about the beginning of all things, and you are likely to hear about the theory–the notion that the universe is the product of an immense .
  3. The most basic dogma of naturalism is that everything happens by processes; nothing is ; and therefore there can be no per- sonal Creator.
  4. therefore can provide no basis for believing that human life is particularly valuable or in any way significant.
  5. We are witnessing the abandonment of moral and the loss of humanity’s sense of .
  6. If is true, are just one of many species that evolved from common ancestors.
  7. In fact, if everything evolved from , nothing “” is real.
  8. Naturally, all radical advocates are evolutionists. Their system is an inevitable byproduct of evolutionary .
  9. Ingrid Newkirk, PETA’s controversial founder, says, “

    .”
  10. Clearly, Ms. Newkirk is more outraged by the killing of chickens for food than she is by the wholesale of human beings.
  11. “Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, and .”
  12. And if a human being is nothing more than an in the process of , who can argue against the animal-rights movement?
  13. If random had occurred differently, apes might be running the planet and humans would be in the zoo.
  14. Evolution is as as it is .
  15. Naturalism essentially teaches that over time and out of sheer , matter evolved into everything we see today by pure .
  16. John Ankerberg and John Weldon, point out that , time, and constitute the evolutionists’ holy .
  17. The evolutionary idea not only strips man of his and his value, but it also eliminates the ground of his .
  18. The only legitimate sense of the word chance has to do with probability.
  19. is not an intellect that designs the pattern of mathematical prob- abilities. Chance determines nothing. Mathematical probability is merely a way of what actually does happen.
  20. In effect, have imputed to chance the ability to cause and determine what occurs. And that is an irrational concept.
  21. “”–a belief that everything is entirely without meaning, without logic, and without reason–is the only that works with naturalism.
  22. Abandon and you are left with pure .
  23. Get rid of and you erase all fear of the of sin.
  24. Either there is a God who created the and sovereignly His creation, or everything was caused by chance.
  25. Even the most basic principles of , physics, and suggest that chance simply cannot be the force that has brought about the order and interdependence we see in our universe– much less the diversity of life we find on our own planet.
  26. does not deserve to be deemed true ; it is nothing more than an irrational –the religion of those who want to sin without guilt.
  27. Nonetheless, the of naturalism goes largely unchallenged today in and .
  28. There is no viable of the universe without God.
  29. Without Him, we are left with only the notion that everything emerged from without a cause and without any reason. Without Him, we are stuck with that absurd formula of the evolutionists: .
  30. The Words of Genesis 1:1 are and beyond mere human composition. They account for everything evolution cannot explain.
  31. The evolutionist must practically assume the of , , , space, and (or at least one of these–and then he or she proceeds from there to hypothesize about) how things have developed out of an originally chaotic state.
  32. Genesis 1:1 accounts for all of Spencer’s categories. “In the beginning”–that’s . “God”–that’s . “Created”–that’s . “The heavens”–that’s . “And earth”–that’s .
  33. In the first of the Bible God laid out plainly what no or cataloged until the nineteenth century.
  34. Either you God did create the heavens and the earth, or you He did not. Ultimately, those are the every reader of Genesis is faced with.
  35. Even among the best scientists who have left their mark on the scientific world, those who think and make honest confessions about origins will admit that there must be a intelligence.
  36. If the God of did not create the heavens and the earth, then we have no real answers to anything that is truly . Everything boils down to those two simple options.
  37. “Either we have out of the slime and can be explained only in a mate- rialistic sense, meaning that we are made of nothing but the material, or we have been made on a .”
  38. There are, of course, several accounts of cre- ation from pagan sacred writings. But they are all , fanciful, and , featuring hideously ungodly gods.
  39. Therefore if Genesis is , we might as well assume that no God exists at all.
  40. The starting point for is not Matthew 1:1, but Genesis 1:1.
  41. If the starting point is wrong, then the itself is built on a foundation of falsehood.
  42. Once sets in and you start adapting the of God to fit scientific theories based on naturalistic beliefs, there is no end to the process.
  43. All of the history ends, according to 2 Peter 3:10-12, when the Lord the universe.
  44. Frankly, believing in a supernatural, God who made everything is the only possible rational for the universe and for life itself. It is also the only basis for believing we have any or .
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How Did Creation Happen?

  1. clearly teaches that God the out of nothing.
  2. Evolution turns the event into a process that spanned of years and is still not complete.
  3. If the is not billions and billions of years old, we can discard theory from the outset.
  4. The hypothesis that the is billions of years old is rooted in the premise that what is happening now is just what has always happened.
  5. This idea is known as .
  6. The uniformitarian sees for example, and assumes that the sediments that formed them resulted from the , slow settling of particles in water over several million years.
  7. The opposite of uniformitarianism is .
  8. Catastrophism means a large stratum of sedimentary rock could actually be the result of a single flash .
  9. But a moment’s reflection will reveal that the record is to explain by any uniformitarian.
  10. Scripture expressly uniformitarianism in 2 Peter 3:4.
  11. The plain teaching of Scripture is that this world’s has not been one of natural and processes form the beginning.
  12. Large-scale catastrophic forces are the only really plausible for some features.
  13. Scripture says, for example, that when the Flood began, “all the of the great were up” (Genesis 7:11).
  14. Christians who the biblical text to try to accommodate the uniformitarians’ old-earth do so unnecessarily.
  15. One rather obvious fact ignored by many is that the was mature when it was .
  16. He made with already-mature fruit (Genesis 1:11). He made chickens already grown. He created Adam full grown and fully of marriage and procreation.
  17. We certainly expect people who reject and despise God to ac- cept the notion that the universe has existed for and .
  18. But it is and to see how the idea that the earth is billions of years old has begun to dominate even the Christian community.
  19. If we insist on a literal six-day and a young for the uni- verse, they claim, we will sacrifice our credibility and weaken our testimony to those educated in the theory of .
  20. Despite all the uncertainty surrounding the big bang, Hugh regards it as an “unshakably ” fact, and he insists that it sheds necessary light on the true meaning of .
  21. Ross also advocates a scheme of long eras that he claims harmonizes perfectly with the of Scripture.
  22. Ross treats many similarly theories as indisputable facts.
  23. Ross’s conclusion is inescapable that his own arbitrary is the main by which he which scientific ideas are established facts and which are mere theory.
  24. Ross clearly does believe “that God’s revelation through is...on an equal footing with His revelation through the of the .”
  25. Thus Ross implies that , like , is a revelation, able to make people wise unto salvation and thor- oughly equip them for every good work.
  26. Ross claims the classic evangelical view of a literal six-day creation and a young earth is rooted in a faulty “single theology,” which he defines as “the belief that the Bible is the authoritative source of .”
  27. Furthermore, nothing in Scripture suggests that we need to know about God is to us in nature.
  28. simply puts God’s glory on display in a mute testimony that declares His , power, , and to all—and leaves them without excuse if they ignore or reject the God of the Bible.
  29. Scripture is a sufficient revelation; is not.
  30. Scripture is clear and ; is not. Scripture there- fore speaks with more than nature and should be used to scientific opinion, not vice versa. should, there- fore, be the rule by which we science, rather than the reverse approach.
  31. So Ross is actually suggesting that theories (or at least some of them) ought to be esteemed as as biblical revelation.
  32. Allowing for some possible , it’s inconceivable that the date for Adam’s cre- ation could be much more than thousand years ago.
  33. Consequently, the will not support a date for the creation of man earlier than about B.C.
  34. The stresses the sudden and immediate ex nihilo creation of everything in the universe. It was all created in a very time, despite it’s incredible and complexity.
  35. The whole point of Genesis 1-2 is that God’s creative , like the universe itself, is to the human mind.
  36. Absolutely nothing in the text of Genesis 1:1-2: 3 speaks of or long geological in the creation process.
  37. The Word of God still stands after thousands of years, while the theories of secular science dramatically with every new generation.
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Light on Day One

  1. The first day of creation and delimits what the Bible means by the word throughout the of the first chapter of Genesis.
  2. The word “day” is sometimes used in Scripture to speak of an indeterminate of time.
  3. Nothing in Scripture itself permits the that the days of creation were anything other than literal twenty-four-hour .
  4. To accommodate our understanding of Scripture to and theory is to undermine authority.
  5. Augustine the notion of an ancient earth as vigorously as any modern critic of old-earthism.
  6. What the biblical account aims to stress is the majesty and of the Almighty One who accomplished so much, so perfectly, in so short a time, with nothing more than His .
  7. The creation of time is implied by the words “In the .” The begin- ning of what? itself.
  8. Along with the , God created . Out of nothing, in an in- stant, the universe—with all its space and matter—was made by God’s .
  9. Day one is notable for one thing: . Of all God’s creation, the thing that most clearly and most closely approximates His is light.
  10. As day one from eternity, we find the earth in a and bar- ren condition.
  11. Three are used in verse 2 to describe the original state of the earth. It was “without , and void”, “darkness was on the of the deep”, and “the Spirit of God was hovering over the of the waters.”
  12. So these words speak of and desolation. They describe the earth as a place of form or inhabitants—a , barren place.
  13. The gap theory has one over most other old-earth views: It al- lows for a straightforward literal interpretation of the creation of Genesis 1. But the theory is accepted by relatively few today, because the and theological problems it poses are enormous.
  14. According to Scripture, it all began in total . Not only was the universe barren and utterly uninhibited; it was also engulfed in total absolute .
  15. The word “” in Scripture is an expression used for the .
  16. Water, so to the nourishment of the life that was to come, was already earth’s most feature.
  17. The Spirit of God enveloped it, it, and guarded over it. He was the creative agent who would oversee out of the formless- ness and the of the void.
  18. God was directly and involved in every of creation.
  19. All of this speaks of an , instantaneous creation by divine decree. Thus absolute sovereignty is in the very of creation.
  20. This planet is the of God’s creative . It is the para- dise He created as a for creatures whom He would make in His own —the very pinnacle of His creative work.
  21. After the creation of the original universe, the most significant fea- ture of day one is the creation of .
  22. What form this took is not clear.
  23. Douglas F. Kelly writes:
    “On Day One light day and night; on Day Two the “firmament” the upper waters from the earth, constituting an atmosphere or “breathing space”; on Day Three, the waters below the heavens are collected into seas, and thus from the dry land.”
  24. The picture this suggests is that of someone who comes to items in a dark room, and before he does anything else, he on the light.
  25. The creation of light also inaugurated the measurement of earth’s by of day and night.
  26. The of everything we see is a result of how light reflect off objects.
  27. Amazingly, light cannot be by the human except when it interacts with matter.
  28. Nothing known to us in the universe moves faster than the of . Light in a vacuum travels miles per second. But no matter how fast you are moving, the speed of light to be the same speed as if you were not moving at all. It’s apparent does not change. Nothing else in the has this property.
  29. Creation itself, in its state, was a of the goodness of God. No aspect of creation this up more clearly than the cre- ation of light.
  30. It was never God’s as Creator that there be perpetual visible light with no .
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When He Marked Out the Foundations of the Earth

  1. In Proverbs 8, the voice of speaks. This personification of wisdom is regarded by most commentators as one of the classic Old Testament references to God the , the Second Person of the .
  2. Those first three days of creation were . Each day is marked by a significant that occurs.
  3. On day one, as we saw in the previous chapter, was divided from . On day two, a firmament divided the above the earth from the waters below. And on day three, the land was separated from the sea.
  4. The word “” is the Hebrew word raqiya. It speaks of something that is out.
  5. The expanse in-between-the firmament- the earth’s breathable .
  6. God called this expanse (v.8). It seems to refer primarily to the immediately above us—the atmospheric .
  7. The word firmament is also sometimes used to signify the heavens beyond earth’s atmosphere.
  8. Apparently there was no atmosphere on the earth in the beginning, but on the day, God it into existence.
  9. Some creationists, including Henry Morris, believe that “the waters above the firma- ment” was a protective that remained in place until the of Noah’s time.
  10. This might explain why prior to the Flood it was common for humans to more than hundred years.
  11. Other scientists, however, including some who hold views of creation, believe the theory poses more problems than it .
  12. Notice that day is the only day in which God does not expressly say of His work, “It was ” (cf. Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25).
  13. The stage of creation that began on day two wasn’t until day three, when dry emerged from the water and the earth was made for living.
  14. As day three dawns, the earth is still , uninhabitable, and not in its form. Its entire surface is still covered with . But by the end of the day there will be not only land, but also vegetation.
  15. Many who deny a literal creation claim that such rapid changes are not possible. That might seem to be a powerful and persuasive if we were talking about processes. But Scripture is describing the creative work of God, with whom things are possible (Matthew 19:26).
  16. Ultimately, no about the origin of the universe is tenable without an all- and all-powerful Creator.
  17. Therefore it should not tax our when we read that dry land and plant life rose up out of the in a day’s time at the behest of our sovereign God.
  18. After the firmament was created, the earth was still completely in .
  19. The waters surrounding the earth were into one place, and at the same time began to appear. The land was instantly dry, too, because that is what God .
  20. Scripture gives a account of how the land from the sea and its boundaries were set. The action is always directly to God.
  21. As author and biochemist Michael Behe has pointed out, evolution can deal only with “systems that are already .” By definition, that which does not function simply cannot “”
  22. Before any evolution can occur, some type of organism would first have to be directly and immediately.
  23. Vegetation of every kind instantly at His Word. Three Hebrew nouns are used.
  24. Notice that God created plants, not merely . He made them , already fully rooted and developed, already bearing fruit and seed, already .
  25. Each organism has a unique structure, with and chromosomes that determine all its characteristics.
  26. Absolutely nothing in this section of —and for that matter nothing anywhere in the —suggests that any living species from another species.
  27. In fact, it is fair to say that this crucial phrase, “according to its ,” clearly the very heart of the evolutionary idea. It debunks the notion that all life from a common source, and it sets a on the degree of difference between any creature and its offspring.
  28. Those are fundamental principles, and they the whole basis of the evolutionary theory.
  29. Henry Morris writes: Furthermore, many require pollination by , but insects were not made until the day of creation, which argues against the possibility that the days of creation could have been ages.
  30. Anyone who looks at creation without recognizing the infinite behind it is willfully .
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Lights in the Heavens

  1. Naturalistic has always struggled to explain all the and planets that exist in the universe.
  2. The entire account in Genesis 1 is told from an perspective, underscoring the centrality of this tiny planet in the creative of God.
  3. Even the creation of the is recounted from an earthly perspective, so that the and appear as two great lights, while vast of stars appear as lesser luminaries, being mentioned almost as a footnote in verse 16: “the also.”
  4. The entire panoply of heaven—including the , the , the , and countless —was complete and fully functioning on the day God made it.
  5. From our perspective, it appears that the are fixed in place. They are not. They move vast at incredible . But they are .
  6. On day , God created the sun and moon to be permanent heavenly . The source and creator of the light was still , but from now on there would be light-bearing that would perpetually shine their light on the earth at the proper intervals and .
  7. There were two “great lights”—a greater light (the ) to rule the , and a lesser light (the ) to rule the .
  8. The sun, of course, light, while the moon merely light. But from an earthly perspective, both are light .
  9. The distance from the earth to the sun is about ninety-three million . At that distance, it takes about eight and a half for light to travel from the sun to the .
  10. The moon the earth like a far-off satellite in a slightly elliptical orbit that varies from 221,000 miles at its point (the perigee) to 252,000 miles at its point (the apogee).
  11. The , like the sun, helps keep the perfect of earth’s life-sus- taining environment.
  12. Scripture gives a second reason why God created the , moon and . These heavenly bodies would not only mark the passing of days and nights, but they would also be permanent : “Let them be for and seasons, and for days and years” (Genesis 1:14).
  13. The sun determines our . The moon determines the . And the stars, sun, and moon all determine our seasons and Our whole is thus determined by the stars, and even seasonal patterns are determined by the sun and moon.
  14. The of our days and even our patterns are set in perfect harmony with the amount of time it takes the earth to complete one full . Even the precise tilt of the earth’s is vital in maintain- ing earth’s seasons.
  15. Since the actual stars and and their functions are so much more infi- nitely grand and intricate than any model, they must have been designed by an infinitely mind.
  16. Days and are respectively the shortest and the mea- sures of time definitely fixed by the movement of the heavenly .
  17. The third and perhaps most reason for the heavenly bodies is to pro- vide permanent fixtures that illuminate the earth.
  18. By whatever means God had previously illuminated the earth—whether it was a light source, a disembodied and diffused light, or latent from the initial creation—it was no longer necessary.
  19. From day four on, became the chief of light and energy on earth. But most of the sun’s energy comes to us in the form of light. Almost every segment of the light is es- sential for life on earth. That means earth’s vegetation works like “lungs” for the taking the carbon dioxide emitted by other living crea- tures and converting it back to nutrients and .
  20. Each star in the heavens is from all others.
  21. Like and snowflakes, they reveal the vast diversity reflected in God’s wisdom.
  22. If the universe is no more than ten thousand years , as most young-earth cre- ationists believe, and as the author believes Scripture plainly teaches, how can we see that theoretically should have taken of years to reach us?
  23. Scripture indicates those are stars out there, and what we are seeing is actually from the stars, not an illusion. So it appears that at the moment of the star’s creation, God accelerated the light so that it would reach the earth in an .
  24. C.S. Lewis wrote: If the solar system was brought about by an accidental , then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an , and the whole evolution of was an accident too.
  25. The only reasonable explanation for the and our solar system is what we read in Scripture: “ set them in the of the heavens.”
  26. And that is why it ought to be the most thing in the world for us to at the expanse of the heavens and what the psalmist wrote, “The heavens the glory of God; and the firmament his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1 KJV).
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An Abundance of Living Creatures

  1. By day of creation, earth’s environment and the heavenly realm were , and from here on the creative work of God consisted primarily in filling the earth with living .
  2. Scripture makes a clear distinction between and life. They have structures, biological systems, and the ability to after their own kind. But they do not have life, and that is why plants and trees are never referred to as “living creatures” or “living ” in the sense Scripture uses those expressions.
  3. If were correct, we might expect to find God sea creatures from some life form—some or algae.
  4. In verse 21, the Hebrew noun in the expression “every living thing” is , the same word translated “soul,” in the King James Version of Genesis 2:7 “the Lord God formed man of the of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the of life; and man became a soul.”
  5. There is a clear and very specific emphasis on the vast array of God created. What is described here is antithetical to the notion that God made simple that developed through process into more complex ones.
  6. He also created “every winged according to its ” (v. 21). Again, this speaks of the immediate creation of every variety of creature. As clearly as possible, the biblical text states that all of them were created together by the command; not one species evolved from .
  7. “And God saw that is was ” (v. 21). His own is reflected in what He made. Even in our fallen state, we can see His goodness when we observe how carefully and He designed what He made.
  8. He made all these marvelous creatures for His own good , and He continually every detail of His creation by a loving, sovereign .
  9. All living organisms have three amazing properties.
    A. First, they are .
    B. Second, they are .
    C. Third, they are .
  10. The and complexity of creating something with all those capa- bilities is still out of reach for modern .
  11. God built into His creation means by which every He created could .
  12. The mention of procreation in this context the notion that the Biblical language is merely a account of how things evolved. Scripture is expressly that God completed His creation of all the sea creatures and before He gave the order to .
  13. Multitudes in the political and world today decry that fact as mere religious . They fight to it from being taught in .
  14. Every living thing has a complex code stored in its that determines its fundamental characteristics.
  15. There is no information that can enable an organism to transform itself into something it is not.
  16. The more science discovers about , the more of a problem it poses for the of evolution.
  17. Genetic is carried in DNA; a DNA molecule is the larg- est molecule known to .
  18. are short sections of the DNA strand.
  19. The amount of detailed that can be contained in so small a structure is remarkable—equal to several libraries.
  20. Where did this genetic information come from? It certainly didn’t come out of . It should be obvious to all that it didn’t just fall into place by or by random chance.
  21. What about ? We know that genes sometimes . Changes occur in the structure that cause in the appearance of creatures.
  22. The late Dr. A.E. Wilder Smith, a British chemist who strongly defended biblical cre- ationism, wrote: If a kind of amoeba is to develop up to a primate, that primeval cell will have to gather all sorts of new information on how to make kidneys, four chambered , cerebra and cer- ebella etc. Is it legitimate to assume that such incredible amounts of information arose out of thin air, that is by pure ?
  23. Coded information such as is found in the structure of every living be- ing does not arise by . It is not by nothing. It has a , and that source must be an intelligent .
  24. Honest must admit that all of life had to be by an immensely intelligent mind.
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Beasts and Creeping Things

  1. When day began, God put a touch on the He had created for man.
  2. God’s creative work was , accomplished by nothing more or less than His creative . He simply gave the for things to appear–“and it was so” (v.24).
  3. Modern biologists classify biological species by a hierarchy of categories called the system. Every creature is designated by , phylum, , order, , genus, and species.
  4. The Hebrew word translated “cattle” is a word that speaks of and animals that are capable of being .
  5. All three were made on the same day, by the same fiat.
  6. Common are remarkable creatures. Their system is a great wonder of design.
  7. It is a wonderfully efficient design, converting , which we cannot digest, into –milk, cream, butter, cheese, and a long list of products.
  8. The cow seems to have been especially to serve the needs of . Fully and easily bred, they can live almost anywhere people can live. They are God’s gift to humanity.
  9. Another animal that seems specially designed for maximum to man is the .
  10. Their makes energy-efficient for both hot and cold weather. It is breathable, fire-resistant, and even when wet–superior in many ways to all other fabrics.
  11. Surely one of the Creator’s main in creating these gentle animals was for the of the human race.
  12. may also be included in the group of animals classified by Scripture as “cattle.”
  13. Camels are workers, able to carry large of a thousand pounds or more in the desert where is scarce.
  14. Among the “ thing(s)” included in Genesis 1:24-25 are countless forms of , worms, arachnids, , small mammals, and other amazing creatures.
  15. Another amazing creature is the .
  16. The wide of ant species is phenomenal. Nearly ten thousand differ- ent species of have been catalogued, and most believe there are thousands more species that have not yet been studied.
  17. God created in such abundant variety for a host of that are ultimately beneficial for the whole .
  18. “Creeping thing(s)” would also include . The reptile world is full of .
  19. “Creeping thing(s)” includes much, much more. And every species would make a won- derful study. All of them come equipped with remarkable mechanisms–built-in , armor, chemical defenses, and other amazing means of .
  20. The final category named in Genesis embraces all other land creatures: “the (s) of the earth.” This no doubt would include elephants, , tigers, giraffes, , wolves, coyotes, and other and long-legged animals that would not fit the categories of “cattle” or “creeping thing(s).”
  21. The dinosaurs may have perished when earth’s changed severely after the Flood. Severe environmental and changes may explain this, and the same types of changes may also explain the extinction of all the species.
  22. If you scan the of the universe at night and all the wonders it holds, you will be brought face to face with the glory of the Creator. Everything in creation reveals the of the Creator.
  23. Scripture that there was no such thing as prior to Adam’s fall. Death is the result of . Of course that means that prior to Adam’s fall, none of the animals were . They did not and kill one an- other for .
  24. This first of creation on day six completes the earthly God was making for . Earth was a . Everything was .
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Man in God’s Image

  1. The creation of the race was the central object of God’s creative purpose from the .
  2. The human race is still at the of God’s for the entire material universe. We know this because Scripture says everything else will eventually .
  3. Except . God created to glorify and to enjoy Him forever. And when every other of this universe is long gone, a vast multitude of the redeemed human race will in the presence of the Lord forever.
  4. Adam, as we see from the text, was and created by God. There is no way to do justice to the text and maintain the notion that Adam from some already-existing of animal life.
  5. So the man and the were each created — both of them by and acts of God.
  6. A change in the creation process occurs at this point. Verse 26 starts with familiar words: “Then said.”
  7. But now for the first time the expression “Then God said” is followed by personal pro- nouns: “Let make man in image.”
  8. This speaks of the creation of in terms that are uniquely Scripture deliberately employs such pronouns in order to stress God’s connection with this aspect of His creation.
  9. The fact of multiple Persons in the has been hinted at in the Hebrew word for God that is used in of the first twenty-five verses of Scripture, because elohim takes the form of a plural noun in Hebrew.
  10. The same truth is unfolded with even more clarity in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, which begins with an echo of Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning was the , and the Word was with , and the was God.
  11. By putting all those passages together, we see that all Members of the were active in creation.
  12. The was overseeing and decreeing the work. The eternal was “with God” and involved in every aspect of the creative process. And the was brooding over the waters, which also suggests the most kind of hands-on involvement in the process.
  13. First, was created to bear the of his Maker. “Let Us make man in image, according to likeness” (v. 26).
  14. It explains why the Bible places so much stress on the fact of God’s hands-on of Adam. He fashioned this creature in a way–to bear the of His own likeness.
  15. Because the image of God is unique to , it must describe some as- pect of human nature that is not by animals.
  16. Clearly this deals primarily with man’s attributes–our self-con- sciousness, our consciousness, and our consciousness of others–espe- cially our consciousness of God Himself.
  17. Before the image of God in man was by sin, Adam shared in a and undefiled way all the communicable of God (those qualities of the divine nature that are capable of being reflected in creatures).
  18. But above all, the image of God can be summed up by the word . We are .
  19. That is why when God created man He immediately said that it was good for man to be . The image of God is , and person- hood can function only in the context of .
  20. And when God made us in His , He therefore made us as –that is, He made us for having particularly with Him.
  21. All true relationships have ramifications. And it is at this point that God’s communicable attributes come into play–marred though our and ethical sense may be because of humanity’s fall into . We still know from wrong in a basic sense. And all of this is what makes us from the rest of creation.
  22. Physically, we are made of elements—the dust of the earth. But our personhood is —and that does make us like God.
  23. This is one of many ways the of God is displayed even in the physical of our race.
  24. It was not merely who bore the image of God, but the did, too—as well as all their .
  25. The truth that humanity was made in the of God is the starting point for a understanding of the nature of man. It explains our urges.
  26. Yet the doctrine of would utterly erase this truth from the col- lective of the human race. That is why the against evolutionary theory is one cannot afford to abandon.
  27. A second for which Adam and Eve were created was to the earth.
  28. The lie has brought even this under attack, as society now seeks to and legitimize fornication, easy , homosexual relationships, and other that undermine the sanctity and uniqueness of the marriage relationship.
  29. The relationship is here established as the first and most intimate of all relationships between humans. The two “become flesh,” uniting in a bond that is designed to every other relationship, no matter how close (“a man shall leave his father and mother”).
  30. It appears from the of Genesis that when God created other living species, he created them all in . But when it comes to the cre- ation of beings, Scripture is clear that He made only pair.
  31. Eve was part of God’s from the beginning. Her cre- ation merely stresses the fact of how she was—and how uniquely she was for with Adam.
  32. Man had been created for , and he still needed a per- fect mate for the relationship.
  33. Eve was made to be a for Adam (vv. 18, 20). This is not talking about help.
  34. Adam was to , propagate the human race, and the earth with people.
  35. It is a unique and beautiful of God’s love for humanity, that He created us with the ability to and thus more creatures made in His image.
  36. A purpose for which God created the human race is: We were created to be the recipients of and from the hand of God.
  37. “” here speaks of something more than a consecration.
  38. That is still God’s for the human race. He wants us to Him and to the rich of His creation.
  39. And in case, all the enjoyment and in the world were his in a untainted by or evil.
  40. Finally, the human race was for and given a mandate to exercise over the rest of creation.
  41. Man was by God to be the sovereign of the . He was literally instructed to the planet, take , and over everything God had placed on earth.
  42. Whatever Adam each living creature that was its .
  43. Another was assigned to Adam. He was made the in Eden.
  44. Of course, this task was given to him before he into sin. That means there was no yet, so there were no , and the environment was .
  45. In Douglas F. Kelly’s words: But the dominion of Genesis man both to and to subdue nature, so as to shape it in a direction that will the beauty, order and of its Creator.
  46. Himself will return to regain that dominion and Himself as the of this world. He has already defeated the of evil at the .
  47. And yet even humanity has managed to take dominion over creation to an amazing degree, devising that allows us to cultivate only a of the earth’s potential and still grow enough crops to feed the world.
  48. But we do not yet see all things subjected to him. There is still war and and . Most of the technology has developed has created new while attempting to old ones.
  49. Scripture says the will reign with Christ in an earthly kingdom for a years (Revelation 20:4). The earth will be as a paradise.
  50. During that kingdom, humanity will finally get a taste of what life in could have been. With reigning and the effects of sin mitigated, earthly life will be as close to as a world tainted with could ever know.
  51. And a Man–the man –will have over it, with His saints finally sharing the dominion man was originally created to enjoy.
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The Rest of Creation

  1. The day is unique. It is an exalted day, because God it and it.
  2. In other words, God’s of activity on the seventh day made that day holy, and this is reinforced by the fact that He expressly declared it to be a day.
  3. Genesis 2:1-2 indicates that the of the seventh day stems first of all from the fact that God had the work of creation. The entire work of creation was . There were no loose ends to up.
  4. This argues powerfully the evolutionary , which suggests that creation is a work still in .
  5. The first law of thermodynamics rules out the possibility of ongoing creation, and the second law of thermodynamics the possibility that an ordered universe naturally from chaos.
  6. The first of thermodynamics deals with the of energy.
  7. The only way to increase the in an energy-using system is for an force to do work on that system—adding , , or kinetic energy to it.
  8. If the universe is a closed system, its and must have come from a source, just as Scripture teaches.
  9. The second law of thermodynamics states that the total of in nature is increasing. Entropy is a measure of the randomness and in a system.
  10. All , even closed ones, are subject to the second law of thermodynam- ics. applies to in nature.
  11. The Bible consistently says that God it all in six days, and Genesis 2:2 says that on the seventh day He His creative work. There is no creation of matter or energy; in His perfect wisdom designed the universe so that what He created would be and will remain functioning as long as it serves His purposes.
  12. A whole universe now existed where had existed only a week earlier. It was a vast full of countless wonders, each of which displayed the glory and of a good and perfect .
  13. Having His work in consummate perfection, God . Don’t get the notion that God was weary or needed to recoup His . The Hebrew word translated “” in Genesis 2:2 (shabat) simply means that He from creative work. The imagery is like that of a master who, having completed a , pauses to admire and on his finished work.
  14. Specifically, ceased His creative activity. This doesn’t mean that God His providential working or that He ceased altogether. He merely “” from the work of creation, permanently ending that aspect of His work.
  15. Scripture is that , and from it we learn that created everything in six days; then He from creation on the seventh day.
  16. It is worth noting that in the context of the creation account no men- tion is made of any rest for . There were no governing what Adam and could not do on the seventh day of the week.
  17. So everything about Adam’s life he sinned was precisely what the Sab- bath laws pictured. In a sense, Sabbath observances were de- signed to show in what life in was designed to be.
  18. Since the restrictions were in nature, they were abolished under the Covenant along with the rest of the Covenant’s priestly and ceremonial commandments (Colossians 2:16-17).
  19. Nonetheless, the week did establish a permanent pattern for the rhythm of all life. God made us in His , and He us so that we thrive best under a pattern of work and rest that closely His activities during creation week.
  20. To summarize what Scripture says about God’s , then, it was a rest from the of creation while God delighted in the goodness of everything He had made.
  21. Again, there is no reason, no cosmic reason, no reason, no mathematical reason, and no reason for seven-day weeks. There is only reason: God Himself that order in the pattern of His creation.
  22. On the other hand, if we believe what the says, then every seventh day is a and a reminder that God created the entire universe in week.
  23. God’s of the seventh day His blessing on all of creation.
  24. John Calvin dealt with that very question: By his own intention, then, man corrupted the nature he had received from the Lord; and by his fall all his posterity with him into destruction.
  25. God, although absolutely over all things, is not the or instigator of sin. He did not sin, encourage it, it, condone it, it, or otherwise countenance it.
  26. Fallen creatures themselves full responsibility for their sin. God’s at its completion was impeccably . Evil spoiled its goodness after God had creating.
  27. You simply will not find anywhere in Genesis. It isn’t there. The whole of the account, from the first day through the seventh, underscores the truth of an , direct creation, fully and completed to in a week.
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Paradise Lost

  1. Genesis 3 is one of the most vitally chapters in all the Bible. Genesis 3 explains the of the universe and the of humanity. In other words, the revealed in Genesis 3 is the necessary for a true and world-view.
  2. Evolution offers no for the dilemma, much less any solution to it. will never be able to that question. In fact, pure evolution cannot account for anything that is or spiritual.
  3. If naturalistic is correct and there is no , neither can there be any inviolable principles that govern the universe.
  4. Scripture says we were made in the of God but are creatures, with an inclination to sin.
  5. G.K. Chesterton wryly referred to the doctrine of original as “the only part of theology which can really be .”
  6. Our first ancestor, , deliberately God. Somehow his sin defiled the race, and now every one of his natural has inherited a love for sin and a contempt for true .
  7. So, nothing we can do for ourselves will free us from the of sin. Adam’s had a catastrophic effect, not only on him and his , but also on his , including you and me.
  8. The whole creation—including the human race is now subject to a kind of , which no amount of enlighten- ment, environmentalism, psychology, , or technology will every be able to reverse.
  9. All of this stemmed from Adam’s one of disobedience (Romans 5:19). Adam’s sin not only his offspring, but also the rest of .
  10. We learn by Scripture with Scripture that this was really Satan, masquerading as an .
  11. God did not make evil. Satan’s must have occurred some- time between the of creation (marked by that glorious day of rest on day seven) and the events described in Genesis 3—which appear to have come very soon after the of Adam and Eve, before they had any offspring.
  12. From elsewhere in Scripture, however, we learn that was an who fell when he was lifted up with .
  13. The passage in clearly states that this was once an angel, one of the whose role was heavenly worship.
  14. Lucifer means “,” a fitting name for the anointed cherub who covers. And the for which he is condemned is a that arose from his own . It is the of pride.
  15. And the he was lifted up with pride, he fell. He did not alone. According to Revelation 12:4, a of the angels in heaven went with him.
  16. In other words, God Satan to confront Eve. This in the garden was not an event that somehow derailed the plan of God.
  17. Satan’s strategy in Eve is the same strategy he always uses. He is a and the father of (John 8:44).
  18. The gist of all temptation is to cast on God’s and to subject it to human .
  19. God’s had been on their perfect freedom to eat from all the trees except one. Satan’s turned the emphasis around and stressed the , implying that God was fencing them in with .
  20. Satan’s was the utter destruction of the first couple, even though he was to have their best interests at heart.
  21. Satan’s strategy was to portray God as narrow, , uncharitable, and too restrictive–as if He wanted to human freedom and deprive Adam and Eve of and pleasure.
  22. Eve was of Satan’s strategies, so she replies naively– God to some degree.
  23. The fall was from the instant Eve began to . At this point, Satan knew he had and he pushed for total . Immediately, he suggests that he more than God.
  24. At this point, Eve was faced with a clear . She could either God or believe the . That is the same that has confronted ever since.
  25. Satan was to Eve that the only reason God could be so re- strictive, forbidding them to eat from that tree, was because there was a flaw in His .
  26. The reptile’s promise (“you will be like God”) is the of all religion. Numerous cults, ranging from Buddhism to , are based on the same .
  27. Eve saw features of the forbidden fruit that seduced her. First, “the tree was good for .” Second, she saw “that it was to the .” Third, she saw “a tree to make one .” Thus she was by “the of the flesh, the of the eyes, and the of life”–everything in this world (1 John 2:16-17).
  28. Adam appears, from where we are not told, and discovering that his wife had already the Lord’s command, he with her. There is no of how Adam was to do this. But Adam’s guilt was , not less, than Eve’s.
  29. Sin instantly destroyed Adam and Eve’s . They it strongly. They suddenly were self-conscious about their . They felt ex- posed. This manifests itself in about their .
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Epilogue: Blessings From the Curse

  1. At the end of Genesis 3, Adam and Eve are out of paradise and sent forth into a , sin-cursed world. But Genesis 3 isn’t merely a ending to the creation story; it is also the beginning of the saga that fills the rest of Scripture.
  2. In fact, the story of God’s Creation is more glorious than all the combined glories of the creation.
  3. God could have done that with , and no one could ever have faulted His .
  4. From the moment of their , Adam and Eve were that something was now seriously . They were feeling and . But while they were , God was already them, with a merciful intent “
  5. The Lord’s to Adam was therefore not designed to elicit ; it was designed to the conscience of Adam for Adam’s sake–to elicit a .
  6. Adam’s reply was a pitiful attempt to evade for his own sin, but it is typical of the when confronted with his guilt.
  7. God’s reply to the of Adam and Eve was a threefold . He spoke first to the , then to the , and finally to .
  8. And then the Lord told Adam he was to a life of labor and sweat, the cursed earth, to which he would one day in death. So Adam and Eve were and and their lives were made difficult. More significantly, they were to , just as God had forewarned them.
  9. First of all, God’s words to Eve clearly imply that as a race would . Eve would give birth to Adam’s . Even though pain would accompany childbirth, the very mention of childbirth proved that God was not going to Adam and Eve and the of the human race along with them.
  10. A second reason for is found in God’s words to the serpent. The curse God pronounced against the reptile included a that the woman’s would crush the serpent’s head.
  11. But the greatest blessing that is bound up in the curse is the of Christ, the , the Seed of the woman—the One who would the serpent’s head. Consider what is about Him here.
  12. First, He would be the of the woman. Second, there would be between Him and the serpent. Third, the Seed of the woman would . Fourth, the would triumph.
  13. So it was not only the serpent who the Seed of the woman, but God Himself dealt a dreadful blow, pouring out His full against sin upon the person of His own innocent , who bore a world of that didn’t even belong to Him.
  14. In other words, we are clothed in the of Christ. There is a beautiful picture of this in Genesis, where, after pronouncing the curse, God gave Adam and Eve more suitable than the fig leaves they had stitched together.
  15. In a similar way, , whose atoning blood was shed for us on the cross, provides His own as a that covers all those who Him as Savior.
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