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Who
wrote Genesis?
Some of your Bibles will say, the First Book of Moses called Genesis.
Which raises a question people often ask, who wrote Genesis and how do we
know? We accept that Moses wrote Genesis. We accept this because Jewish
tradition has always said that Moses wrote it, and his acknowledged
authorship goes back to the most ancient antiquity, but, the most
important reason we believe he wrote it is because Jesus stated that Moses
wrote it.
If Jesus is the Truth, which we
believe He is, and not merely a product of His generation, but was instead
the Eternal Truth Himself, then when He said that Moses wrote it, we
accept it. You may recall that on the road to Emmaus, Jesus speaking of
these books, referred to them by saying "starting
at Moses and all the Prophets …" The ancient Jewish
Scriptures were divided, the first divide was the first five books, and
those first five books were the books of Moses: the Law. Genesis through
Deuteronomy is referred to as "the Law" and it is said to have
been written by Moses.
Jesus validated the traditional
Jewish view when "starting at Moses"
He taught them. In John chapter 1 it states that the Law (the first five
books of the Bible) was given by Moses. On other occasions Jesus said this
again: in both John 1:45 and in John 5:46 Jesus made that statement. And
so, we can simply accept it is true that Moses wrote Genesis. Jesus said
so. If Jesus said so and it isn’t so, then our whole understanding of
Jesus is totally wrong. It collapses.
How did he
know?
Next we ask, how did Moses get all of this? How did God reveal it to him?
In some sort of a backwards revelation? Moses wasn’t even born until
Exodus; so how could he have written Genesis? I believe that Moses
probably edited rather than actually wrote it down for the first time,
because here we have the life stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph;
obviously written in sort of diary form and passed on from generation to
generation. Don’t judge this passing down of these histories by our own
modern memories. We are the laziest group of people the world has ever
produced. I think. We don’t use our brains at all the way they did. The
easterners can repeat something perfectly from generation to generation
without losing a word. It is no threat to my faith to think that Abraham
brought his life story to Isaac and Isaac added his and passed it on to
Jacob and Jacob to Joseph and so on down. Then, Moses took all those
accounts and under the direction of the Holy Spirit, he wrote the book of
Genesis.
However, how did he know what to
say about creation? No one was there to tell him what happened before God
created man. So, we believe it was revealed to Moses. I have no problem
with that. Before we finish the lesson you’ll see why I don’t have a
problem with that. God does speak to us whenever we come to the Word of
God. From Genesis through Revelation we are dealing with the revelation of
God to us. God has spoken.
It shouldn’t be any problem for
logical people to believe that the one who made us able to speak to each
other, can speak to us. If I am made a speaking and communicating person,
it stands to reason that the person who made me is a communicating person.
If He isn’t, then I can do more than my Creator can do, and that doesn’t
fit. Therefore, I can expect to find somewhere in the world the revelation
that comes from our Creator. The revelation would have to fit all the
facts and be true to all that is. And we find that in the Bible. I’m not
going to pursue that here, but we do believe the Bible to be the Word of
God. We do believe that God revealed to Moses the creation story, which is
what we will be looking at in this study.
"Genesis"
Now, we’ll get to the title. The title is Genesis. The Jews didn’t
call it Genesis; in the Hebrew Bible it was called, In the Beginning. You
might note that those are the first three words of the book; the Hebrew
Bible titles each book by the first three words. So, to the Jewish people,
this book of the Bible is the "In the
Beginning" book. Which is a pretty good title. Genesis is
the name that was given to it in what is called the Septuagint. The
Septuagint is a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek which was done
during the time between Malachi and when Jesus was born. This translation
from Hebrew into Greek was done by seventy men; thus, the word refers to
seventy, which is where we get the name. This translation calls the book,
Genesis. We have continued to call it Genesis, also. The word Genesis
means, "origins" or beginnings.
So, this is the book of origins:
the book of beginnings. We’re right on line with the title. If this is
the book of origins, then right in this book I find the answers to my
questions concerning origins. Man has questions about God. Your little
children will probably ask you, "where did God come from?" Have
you ever been asked that? I know God always was, so He couldn’t come
from anywhere, but in order to understand my most elementary knowledge of
God, I have to go back to the book of origins. Where do we come from? We’ll
never know why Jesus saved us unless we know where we came from. I would
say that there are thousands of Christians who have never enjoyed their
salvation because they’ve never understood their origin.
The Gospel in
Genesis
Our good news of the Gospel begins with Genesis. It’s a tragedy that so
few people know about Genesis; that’s one reason I felt it necessary for
us to teach on this book. To read about our origin, our roots, we must go
to Genesis. Where did our universe come from? Genesis tells us. Where do
we stand in relationship to the universe? Genesis tells us. How do we
stand in relation to all the stars? We’ll never know if we just listen
to what they teach in school; we’ve got to go to God’s book of origins
to find out who we are in relationship to the universe. If God created
everything, and He’s a good God, how come there are such bad people? You
have to go back to the book of origins to find why there are such bad
people: how in a creation made by a good God, there could be the presence
of evil. There is no explanation of that unless you go back to the book of
origins. If there are any who have taken courses in Philosophy who are
listening to this, you may readily appreciate that these are great
questions that man is asking. The answers are in this book.
Understanding
the Bible
Furthermore, you will not understand the rest of the Bible unless you
understand the book of origins. Because here we find the origins of many,
many of the concepts that are in the Scriptures. There are more in Exodus,
and more in Leviticus, but in the first five books of the Bible you have
the seed and the root of every concept that you’ll find elsewhere in the
Bible. And when you get to elsewhere in the Bible, it assumes that you
read it in Genesis. If you haven’t, you’re at a loss. What about sin?
Sin is mentioned all through the Bible, but it is first defined for us
properly in Genesis. Why blood for example? Have you ever asked, "why
blood?" You find blood in every book of the Bible, and in the whole
theme of the New Testament is the blood of Christ. But why blood? The
answer is in the first five books of the Bible. And what about faith? Many
define faith in many terms, like the belief in positive thinking, but you’ve
got to go back to Genesis to find out what faith is. In Romans and
Galatians, Paul’s whole argument of faith is based upon the fact that
you’ve read the book of origins: Genesis. And if you haven’t, you don’t
know what Romans and Galatians are talking about. So, just by studying
Genesis, we are talking about the entire Scripture. We’re actually doing
an introduction to the rest of the Bible. Take the Patriarchs. Have you
noticed how many times in Scripture that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob keep
cropping up? How many times have you read, "He’s the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob"? If you don’t know who these people are,
you are at a loss. Again, the rest of the Scripture assumes you have read
the book of Genesis and you know what it is talking about.
The Christian
World View
It is here in the book of Genesis that a Christian forms his world view:
the view of who I am in relation to my whole world. I know where I came
from; I know who I am; I know my relationship to my universe; I know my
relationship to God; and I know where I am going: that’s my worldview.
It takes in everything. Everyone of us should be able to state very
clearly our world view. Every decision that we make in life is based on
that world view and we cannot have a world view until we’ve gotten into
Genesis and what Genesis teaches.
The Christian
Lifestyle
Genesis is where we lay down the foundation for our lifestyle. Isn’t it
interesting there is no other book in the Bible that has been attacked
more than the book of Genesis? Viciously attacked. Isn’t that
significant? You know why this is, of course? Because if you throw out
Genesis, we aren’t sure where this world came from. Throw out Genesis
and we do not have sin. Without sin, we don’t have salvation, either.
Once they’ve gotten rid of Genesis, the devil can wipe the sweat from
his brow, because there’s nothing else to worry about.
This is where the whole of
salvation has its foundation and if you take Genesis away, you have
nothing left. All you can do then is build logically on a lie. It can be
very logical, but if you’re building on a lie; it’s on the logic of
lies.
A Real History
So, Genesis is a must. Another thing I want you to notice is that they
attack Genesis as a book of legends, a book of myths. The nature of this
attack is very significant. We’ll see as we outline the book that the
book has all those genealogies: you know those long lists of names that
you hate to read when you come to them? The begats and begots? Why are
they there? Because they are history. If you go to Luke’s gospel , all
through chapter three, it shows the genealogy of Jesus. It goes back and
back until it gets to Genesis. It draws from the genealogical tables all
the way back to Adam. And then it says, Adam was the son of God. What does
that show us? It tells us that those men in those genealogical tables were
as historical as Jesus was himself. They’re not mythological beings; if
they were myths, so was Jesus. If they were myths, then so was David; he's
in the middle of it. Do you follow what I’m getting at? This is the flow
of history. Genesis is based on genealogical tables as we will show you;
it’s telling us this is history. These are historical men and you’ll
find their history throughout the rest of the Bible; that’s what Genesis
establishes from the beginning. We’re not being given myths or legends;
we’re studying actual, verifiable history about real men.
Not Exhaustive
Now that history is not exhaustive; it is not the history of the entire
human race. It is the history of a very select part of the human race: the
history of one particular family, through which ultimately Jesus Christ
would come. It is the history of Abel, who was killed, replaced by Seth,
and on down through the line of Noah, and then it branches off into Shem,
the son of Noah, and into Tera, and Abraham, and then Isaac, not Ishmael,
Jacob, not Esau, and so on though, always keeping on, always leaving some
aside, it is the story of one family, one line of people. It is an actual
history: selective but not exhaustive.
Also, it is history from God’s
perspective. God is not interested in the politics of Egypt, so, we don’t
read about that. Egypt is mentioned in Genesis, but you don’t get a
rundown on the latest political scene. You get how God was at work in
Egypt, and therefore you get the spiritual life of Abraham, but not all
the other things that he was into while he was in Egypt. So, Genesis is
elective and spiritual history, but when we say this we do not mean that
it was legend: it was actual time, space, material history from a
spiritual point of view.
Why We Are
Here
There is no other adequate explanation as to why we are here besides the
one that is found in Genesis: the book of origins. It may sound a little
bit arrogant to claim this, but when you’re right, you’re right. I’m
a little bit tired of Christians who apologize when they say they believe
in Genesis, as though they believe in some kind of disease. If you are
still in school, don’t apologize because you believe in Genesis; you’re
the only children in school who make sense if you believe in
Genesis.
Ask Questions
When I was just a fundamentalist I
was brought up to say, of course we believe in Genesis, but don’t ask
any questions, just take it on faith. I came to think that faith asks no
questions: that faith was believing what nobody in their right mind would
believe, which of course is wrong.
Then, I began to study, and I
asked all my questions. Even if it was going to lead me to agnosticism, I
asked the questions, and I found that you could ask questions, and it’s
still true. The more questions that you ask, the better it gets. How many
people have set out to destroy the book of Genesis only to be converted
and become a Christian in their effort to try to discredit it. Until you
can say with absolute certainty that there is not another explanation of
our universe that fits all the facts except the account found in the book
of Genesis, you need to study it more. You need to be able to say that.
No other religion, no scientist,
no philosopher, has ever given an explanation for our universe that fits
all the facts. You’ve heard of the "missing link"? There are
no missing links with God. What He tells us fits all the facts.
I Am Here
So, I’m faced with the fact I am here; I’m faced with me. Before I can
explain anything else, I’ve got to explain the fact that I am here. Now,
that’s fantastic. I’m standing outside of myself, looking at myself,
saying, I’m here. I’m a self-conscious person. I can think; I can
imagine. I’m a person; I’m not a machine. I’m not a bit of rock; I’m
not even an animal; I’m a person, and I’m here. The evolutionists tell
me that I came from a blob of matter, some ooze that came out of the sea.
Don’t ask them what it was, because they don’t know. They just call it
"matter", and from that it all began. Where did the matter come
from? Well, they say, it just always was. And it developed and developed
and developed until you were here. Oh, no, no way. No way. How can a piece
of matter turn into a person? They can’t explain that. If I began as a
piece of matter, then that’s all I am today. You see? You can’t get
blood out of stone; and you can’t get persons out of impersonal things.
This is reasonable. Whatever began is what is at the end. You can take
just an impersonal atom and make it as complex as you please, but at the
end it can only be a more complex atom, it can never be anymore than that.
Whatever you start with, that’s what it is.
Personhood
I am faced with me: a person. No amount of evolution could have ever
produced a person. If you start with non-person, you’re going to end
with non-person. That’s just logic. The Bible tells us that it began
with a Person. And before anything was that is, there was Someone who
always was, and that Someone was a Person, and that Person made all that
is, and at the height of all His Creation he made me a person, like Him.
Therefore, I am forced to accept Genesis just because I can look in a
mirror and think. There has to be a person who started a person.
What man has come to believe is
that we started with just a blob: a non-person. They’ve had to say,
then, that we are just blobs: that we are not persons. That is why we have
non-morals. An atom doesn’t have morals; only people have morals. So,
man has thrown out morality because of what he believes about his origin.
What you believe about Genesis affects everything in your life. If you
came from God, you have morals. If you came from an ape, you have no
morals. If you came from an ape you’re just doing what society thinks is
right. Society says one thing today, but may change its mind tomorrow. You
change your mind, too.
But, if you came from God, you
have morals, you have absolutes. So, when we come to the book of Genesis,
we are introduced to sanity. I can now understand why I’m here; I can
now understand who you are; I can understand morals; I have a way to
understand all the complexity of this universe. I can appreciate the
dignity of man; I can understand what the ability to love is - it came
from God. I can live with myself and I can live with you because I know
where I came from. All of that is in the book we’re going to look into.
An Outline of
Genesis
If you’ll bear with me, I’ll give you an outline of this book. We like
outlines because they help us to find our way around. If you can remember
the outline, you always know where you are in a book. It’s sort of like
learning a map of a country. You never get lost that way.
In the first chapter you have the
prologue to the book: Creation of the Universe and
Creation of Man.
Chapters 2-4 begin with the
expression: Generations of the Heavens and the Earth.
Chapters 5-6 begin: these are the
Generations of Adam.
Chapters 6-9: Generations
of Noah.
Chapter 10 speaks of the Generations
of Ham and Japheth.
Chapter 11: the Generations
of Shem.
Chapters 12-24 Generations of
Terah.
Chapter 25: Generations
of Ishmael and then begin Generations of
Isaac (and goes through 35)
Chapter 36: Generations
of Esau.
Chapter 37 to the end are the Generations
of Jacob.
Generations
Did you notice all through the book of Genesis, "these
are the generations of" over and over again? What does the
word generation mean? It is not to be understood as "origin";
the word "generation" means the sequel to. Because usually, by
the time it states, "these are the generations of Jacob", Jacob
has already lived. It means this is the sequel to Jacob, what came as a
result of his existence. These are his children and his grandchildren. So,
every so often, the narrative stops and brings you up to date by saying,
these are the generations of…. From there on out we study the sequel of
what happened after this guy lived and how he affected God’s ongoing
purpose in history.
And so we are going to follow the
Biblical divisions of the book and see where each person fitted into the
ongoing plan of history.
In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
When it said "in the beginning",
the Bible means the beginning of all that is. In the beginning? What of?
The answer: all that is. And in the beginning of all that is, God. The
moment you said, "in the beginning God",
then there was Someone there before the beginning. Remember what "generations
of", means? Well, in the beginning God, was the
begatter of the beginning. Right? In the beginning, in order for there to
be something made, there had to be Someone already there to make it. God.
Before the
Beginning
You will find throughout the Scripture, references to before the
beginning. And anything that’s before the beginning, must be the
Beginner: God. The very first thing a Christian finds out is that all that
he knows: me, you, the whole universe, all had a root before the
beginning. Now, that might explode inside of you later on, but we’re not
just hanging here in a meaningless universe. I am not just here in a
senseless history. We have roots that go back to before the beginning.
Before the beginning, the Beginner planned. The Beginner who always was;
the Beginner who has begun, and was begun by nobody, the Original
Beginner, did not just say, let’s have a world. Rather, He comes with
plans: order, purpose, and all that is today. Christian, you do not live
in a senseless, absurd world; there was a plan before it began and we’re
moving right on schedule to the purpose of the end.
In the
beginning God
And God was before the
beginning, then there’s a plan; there’s a purpose. If God wasn’t
before the beginning, then we live in a despair universe. You might
remember what that was like; a despair universe is insanity. Suppose you
were on a train, an express train, and you were going down tracks where
there was no engineer, and you weren’t too sure that there were any
rails up ahead, either. Every passenger on that train as it hurled through
the darkness, with no engineer, with no guarantee there are rails up
ahead, would sit on the edge of his seat expecting suicide at any moment.
In fact, to be on that train would be an act of suicide. In this world, if
history consists of hurling through the darkness with no planner, and with
no guarantee that there’s anything up ahead, then we are living on a
suicide planet.
And some of you may have come
into the kingdom of God so recently, you can remember what it is like to
live just that way: with nobody in control and unsure there’s even
anything ahead of you except disaster. That’s the hopelessness of the
world. That’s why the gospel begins in Genesis and tells us that our
existence isn’t like that. Before there was anything, there was God. He
planned something. And before there was anything, God wasn’t just
hanging there. It’s quite disgusting to find out what some people think
God looks like. He doesn’t look like anything. Because anything you know
was created and God doesn’t look like that. Therefore anything created
couldn’t portray the creator.
The Plan
God wasn’t just existing; He was planning what we call the eternal
purposes of God. Now, that plan could not change. When God makes a plan it
never changes. His plan was made in His most perfect wisdom. If you change
a plan, because you find out you’re not as smart as you thought you
were, you make adjustments based on new considerations. If God changed His
plan, He wouldn’t be God. Whatever God planned before the foundation of
the world, that plan is still the plan He’s going by. God wasn’t
forced into making His plan. If anyone could force God to do something,
then that person would be God, not God. God is the one who cannot be
forced. And God didn’t have to do it. He’s God; He doesn’t have to
do anything. God didn’t have to create; He was perfect before we turned
up. God created out of His freedom, because He chose to make manifest His
glory.
The Church
And a second reason for His creating, was that there should be a Church, a
glorious church, in which His people should be filled with unspeakable
joy. Now, we can find that plan in Scripture. I’m not teaching on that
here, so I’m not going to go into it in great detail, but we have to
know what that means, "in the beginning God."
In theological books what we are speaking of here is the "decrees of
God." Decrees are His purpose: His plan.
Number one: God decreed
(purposed, planned) to create the universe and in that universe to place
man who would be in His own image. Two: God decreed that He would permit
sin. I did not say He decreed sin; He decreed to permit sin. Sin did not
take God by surprise. God decreed to permit sin to enter. But, He also
decreed that He Himself would enter into that universe and kill sin dead
in one blow. Some people have a problem with God allowing sin into the
world. I don’t have a problem with that. If I have a problem it is with
God saying, I’m going to allow it, then I’m going to die and arise
again so it will never more again bother my people. To think that God
would plan to enter into Calvary, creating, knowing full well what would
happen, now, my problem is that He would do that.
The seriousness: you read in
Scripture that this plan went on between the Father and the Son. John 17
speaks of the glory that Jesus had with the Father before the world began.
Jesus speaks to the Father, saying, You sent me. Remember He said even as
a boy of twelve, I must be about my Father’s business.
There’s a discussion that went
on; this is a human way of putting it: the Father and the Son in decreeing
to permit sin, the Father sent the Son to die and the Son chose to come.
That is called the Covenant of Redemption: a covenant that was made
between the Father and the Son in which the Father sent the Son and the
Son chose to come. It all happened before the world began, before the
beginning. So that Jesus is called in 1 Peter 1:19-20, and Revelation 13:8
"the lamb that was slain before the
foundation of the world." Or, it speaks in Titus 1:2 of a
promise made before the world began, that we should have eternal life.
Now, when you make a promise, you have to make it to somebody. Who was the
promise made to before anybody was made? The Father made a promise to the
Son: that He would give eternal life to all who believed upon Him.
Some people say that when God
saved them, they had an experience, and that may be true, but you see,
that before time began it was already planned that you would be
redeemed. The movements of the Spirit of God were before the
foundation of the world.
The plan went on to decree that
He would judge the wicked. That is a four point plan. It’s the story of
history. It’s simple really, but it’s the under girding structure of
all history. God decreed to create a universe; He decreed to permit sin;
and He decreed that the Son should come to die for the Church and that all
of those would believe and have everlasting life, and that the wicked
would be judged at the final judgment.
The First
Decree
Genesis 1:1 is the beginning of those decrees coming into operation. In
the beginning God created. That was the first decree; you see, it’s
happening now. He already had the plan; it’s now being carried out in
actual history; God is doing what He has decreed to do before time.
He is now doing it: In the
beginning, God created. There’s the first decree. So, all that we see
and all that is, was created by Him who always was, according to His
eternal plan and purpose.
The Trinity is
Seen
In the beginning, God. Now, it’s interesting that the word God, in
Hebrew, is Elohim. Elohim is a very strange word. It’s plural. And
actually, if you were to translate it absolutely as it is written, it
would say, "in the beginning Gods created the heavens and the
earth." But, all the other parts of speech in that sentence, in the
Hebrew, are singular. Therefore, you cannot say gods, it is a plural word,
but it is joined in parts of speech to everything singular. So, it has to
be one God. But the word is plural. Right in the first verse of the Bible
it is stating that our one God who created all that is, is to be known in
a plurality. The Trinity is right here in the first verse of the Bible. In
the beginning the One God, who is a plurality, created the heavens and the
earth.
And so, who created the heavens
and the earth? Did the Father? Or did the Son? Or did the Spirit? You’ll
read in Scripture that the Father created. Yes, but, it says in John 1,
Jesus created, without Him there wasn’t anything made that was made. So,
the Son created. Yes, but it plainly says in Genesis that the Holy Spirit
created.
The Trinity created the heavens
and the earth. The Father is the originator, the planner; the Son is the
spoken Word of God, that’s His name in John 1. When you read God said,
that is Jesus Christ creating. The action of the Word created. It says
there, the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters, and
that word "was moving" is a
word that was used like brooding, like a setting hen on sitting on her
eggs to keep them warm. The Holy Spirit was brooding over the waters like
a hen hatching eggs. That’s the meaning in the Hebrew of "moving".
It’s like a mother bird bringing something to life. And it says, as the
eternal decree of God, the Son spoke it and the Holy Spirit moved upon it
like a mother bird bringing it to life. And you have a number of
references throughout Scripture to that brooding action of God. It's
always the Holy Spirit that is thus brooding over creation. You’ll find
in Psalm 33:6, God spoke His Word, and with the breath of His Mouth He
created all that is. The breath of His Mouth is the Holy Wind of God, or
the Holy Spirit. That’s who it’s speaking of.
In Job 26:13 there’s a
beautiful reference to the Milky Way. You might make a note: it says,
"the crooked serpent He made beautiful".
The crooked serpent to a Hebrew was what we call the Milky Way. If you
look at it on a clear night it does look like a serpent, unless you’ve
been brought up to think of it as spilt milk. The Holy Spirit made
beautiful the crooked serpent. When a Christian looks at the night sky, he
sees the Holy Spirit; he sees the Creator; he sees the garnishing of God
on all of creation.
So here we have the factual
history of how the Trinity brought into being our universe. In the
beginning, God, Elohim, the One who is a plural, created the heavens and
the earth.
Limited Space
The word heavens, is translated "space". In the beginning God
created space. This always blows the minds of our children whenever we say
this to them, so hold still, space wasn’t always here. Space doesn’t
go on forever, because God created space. So, space is inside of God. Now,
if you can think about that you’re a better man than I am. Because, I
can’t even think of space. The Bible says that God created space. One
author put it this way: if you could take one drop out of the Pacific
ocean and then take that drop and see it in relation to the rest of the
ocean, you would have a little idea of how our space is to God. There’s
only one trouble with the analogy; the Pacific Ocean has boundaries. God
doesn’t. If you see the Pacific Ocean as God and the drop of water as
our universe, you still aren’t adequately illustrating this because the
Pacific Ocean has a limit and God doesn’t. God is infinite. And space,
that we think is so big, is like a drop of water in the Pacific Ocean
compared with the whole of the sea. We are in God. In Him we live and move
and have our being - in space.
God is outside of space as well
as inside of it; He’s not limited by space. But, space was the first
creation of God. If you feel very small right now, keep thinking, you’ll
get smaller. He then created the earth and put it within space. From the
moment you have space, you have time, something is happening from here on
out. Within space is time. The created earth was formless, it was empty,
it was in darkness and it was covered with water. If you want to use your
imagination, think of a spinning ball, covered in water, empty of all
life, in darkness. That was the beginning of the creation of the world.
Isaiah 45:18 describes an earth formless and empty and says it’s not
going to stay that way, God intended life on the planet. Genesis 1 is only
the beginning of the creation. God moves on as Genesis tells us He did.
Then it says the Spirit of God was moving over that shapeless, empty ball
of water, the Holy Spirit moved upon it like a mother bird brooding to
bring to life.
Six Literal
Days
Then it says, in six days, God created on that ball. Do I believe in six
literal days? Yes, I do. There was one person asked, "do you really
believe that the whale swallowed Jonah?" And she answered, "I
believe it’s the word of God and if it said that Jonah swallowed the
whale, I’d still believe it."
Well, that isn’t my approach to
Scripture. I believe it’s the word of God, but the word of God is
logical. I know it’s logical, because God gave me logic and God is
logical. God would not be illogical. When I come to this six day creation,
before I make any conclusions, what is it really saying? There was a time
when I wondered if this might mean there were six great eons: great ages
of time. But, that doesn’t really make sense if you really look at it.
You’ve got to be true to what He says. What does He say was a day? Verse
five, "and God called the light day and the
darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning,"
one day. You’ve got to be pretty stupid if you don’t realize that’s
what we call a day. Day has light and when it’s dark, you call it night.
One evening, one morning, is one day.
How simple could it be? God
knew we were going to question this. So, He made it simple; it’s right
there. It’s the same thing that we mean by a day. Still, in verse 5,
there was evening and there was morning, one day. That is a very Hebrew
expression to describe what we would call a solar day, a day of
twenty-four hours. You notice it doesn’t say, the morning and the
evening, it says evening and then morning, and that is how the Hebrews
count their days: their day began at six in the evening. And this is what
God is giving as a normal day: an evening and a morning is one day. If we
had a million years of darkness and a million years of light, what would
be the point of that? It’s kind of silly, isn’t it? If we accept this
account is actual history, as we’ve shown it to be so from the genealogies,
then here are days that are literal days as we understand days.
The Sabbath
"Day"
Also, in Exodus 20, when it gives the ten commandments, it says, "remember
the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Why? Because in
six days God created the heavens and the earth and then He rested.
Therefore you rest on the seventh day. If we’re to rest on the same kind
of days that some people think are in Genesis, then we’d have a long
rest wouldn’t we before we’d go back to work?
In Psalm 136, a song sung about
history, it dates right in the flow of history, it begins with creation.
If I accept the testimony of the rest of Scripture, as well as the
testimony of Genesis 1, I’m forced to the conclusion that in six days
God created all that is.
Evolution not
even a Theory
The evolutionary hypothesis, which isn’t even a theory, it’s only a
hypothesis, establishes itself on the premise that there is no God. If
there was no God to create, then there has to be some other way for it to
happen. Whenever you deal with evolution, you’re dealing with a
religion; it’s not just science; it’s a religion based on the
assumption that there is no God. Therefore, everything just happened. It
bases all that exists on evolution from a single cell. If that’s the way
it happened they say it took an awful long time to get from there to where
we are. So, they put in billions and billions and billions of years in
order to explain it. If you suppose there is no God, and you suppose that
all things have gone on as they are now going on, you have to end up with
billions of years. And I might tell you, that anyone with eyes in their
head can see this can’t be true.
I asked a teacher one time how
come there were animals in the north pole found frozen with grass in their
mouths? The archeologists found them that way. The teacher said,
"well, it snowed, would you believe for a million years." And
there was our young mammoth standing there with grass in his mouth waiting
to be frozen. That was that teacher’s scientific explanation. Wait until
we get to the flood and we’ll talk about how that mammoth wound up
frozen with grass in his mouth at the north pole.
The Bible will tell you that it
happened just like that; that’s the only way it could happen. We are not
dealing with an earth that goes on wearing down inch by inch. They tell us
that the river in Colorado kept wearing away and wearing away until we
have the Grand Canyon. Isn’t that brilliant? They refuse to consider
that God could suck out that canyon in just a matter of seconds and then
put the river in there.
There are thousands of scientists
in America who are now saying that this earth is no more than eight
thousand years old. That is what many scientists are saying today.
Actually, it’s folly to even state evolution as a theory. It is now
scrapped by most scientists. Therefore, whenever I look at the Bible with
the limited datings that we have, we can count back about six thousand
years. I am unashamed to stand before scientists and say that Scripture
and also physical evidence shows that this earth is no more than six to
eight thousand years old.
Phony Skulls
Now, you say, what about the skulls they found? Have you ever seen them?
They showed us one, they had a piece of bone that was only inches long and
the rest was made of plaster of paris. I asked, "you mean you built a
whole skull on that piece of bone?" Oh, yes, they said man looked
like that then. I said, show me the photograph if you think that’s how
man looked. There’s a lot labeled as science that is falsely designated
that way. I can recommend a book to you; in the book it shows that all the
skulls that were pictured in your children’s textbooks have been proven
to be hoaxes. Every one of them. One was a monkey’s skull; another was
constructed from a pig’s tooth. But, because evolution is a religion and
not science, those hoaxes have never been withdrawn from our school
textbooks.
Conclusion
Again, unashamedly I say, I believe that the heavens and the earth were
created in six days, just like God said they were. The Scripture says, in
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And He did it in six
days. I believe it. And I trust that you do too.
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