Literal 24 Hour 6 Day Creation

Balck hole and the Cross

I heard a story one time about a little girl in Sunday School where they were learning about creation.  She asked her Sunday School teacher – “Why did it take God so long?”  She was asking why did God take 6 days and not just a millisecond to handle creation.  This has obviously stirred much discussion over the years of whether what is brought to us in Genesis 1 is literally six 24 hour days, or is what is described for us in this account a period of an undisclosed amount of years.

These Are Not Six Literal 24 hour Days in Genesis 1

The Gap Theory says that the Genesis account records long periods of time.  This is actually the view that Scofield takes in his study bible.  This theory teaches that there is a “Gap” between verses 1 and 2 in Genesis 1.  One of the things they use to support their theory is the use of bara in verse 1 is speaking of a different creation – that creation had already taken place – than what follows after.  This view also holds that (Isa 45:18) says that God didn’t intend for the earth to be “void.”

The Day Age View understand the “days” to be age-long ages.  This probably gained popularity when geology was being pushed.  This also is looked at as Solar Days Theory, which says that they are actual 1 solar day with long gaps between the days.  “The word day when used with a numerical adjective in the Pentateuch always indicates a solar day.  Why would Genesis 1 be an exception?  (They) say that morning and evening is a figure of speech for beginning and ending (Ryrie 211-212).”

Progressive Creationists, or can be considered theistic evolution, says that there is a supernatural Being who is the force and power behind the long process of evolution.  This theory is the one held by most in liberalism and Roman Catholics.  In essence God permitted natural process of evolution over long periods of time.  These use science and the bible as their basis.

Moses Records in Genesis 1 six Literal 24 Hour Days

On the seventh day (Gen 2:2) “God ended his work which he had made and he rested.”  In the Law is incorporated the same example, where man is commanded to rest on the Sabbath (the seventh day).  God doesn’t say to rest for an “age” or “long period of time”; he says to rest for one day (literal).

In (v. 3) we are told that “God said let there be light and there was light.”  This is a form of light that is not the sun.  The earth did however rotate around the source as there was day and night.  However, in (v. 14) we are told that God created the sun and the things which go with it.  Now that was the third day, but on the second day God created all plant life.  We do understand that plant life takes sunlight to be sustained and survive and grow.  If there was a “gap” or an “age” between “day” two and three – it seems that God would have needed to create plant life again.

The Hebrew term bara  “occurs some 55 times in the OT and carries the idea of instantaneous miraculous creation (Phillips 38).”  God is communicating to Moses, whom he is dealing with in literal days in time, and having Moses to write the creation account in terms that he is familiar with.

In (Gen 1:14) we find the terms day and year which indicates literal days which progress into the various seasons (years).  We also see “day” and “night” – these would be meaningless without the rotation of the earth as we know it today bringing about a literal 24 hour day.

Words carry meanings and using the wrong meaning leads to serious trouble.  To start that “trouble” in the first chapter of the bible could be bad as you journey through it.  The bible says what it means – (Isa 5:20) “Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”  It seems like more work to deny the literal 24 hour day in the creation account than to except it like it is.  “In favor of the literal 24 hour day view is the fact that the term YOM with an ordinal adjective means 24 hour days wherever this construction occurs in the OT.  It is also the NORMAL understanding of Exodus 20:11 (BKC 28).”

*Sources: Bible knowledge Commentary; Philipps Commetary on Genesis; Ryrie’s Basic Theology

Origin of Man #3

The theory of the billions of years that it takes to bring about life as we know it today is another principle.  Evolutionists would have us to believe that with enough time anything can happen at least once.  This theory runs contradictory to the second law of thermodynamics.  Dr. Morris calls this law the Energy Decay Law.  He says, “The evolution model must find some means of accommodating or explaining it.  The second law of thermodynamics states that there exists a universal principle of change in nature which is downhill, not uphill, as evolution requires (Morris).”   Nature left to itself drifts toward disorganization.  Energy in the cosmos remains constant but the energy necessary to do useful work is always decreasing.  “This runs directly contrary to what evolution teaches, and during the billions of years entropy was increasing; the law was not suspended (Ryrie).”  Dr. Lisle says: 

The laws of nature are uniform. They do not (arbitrarily) change, and they apply throughout the whole cosmos. The laws of nature apply in the future just as they have applied in the past; this is one of the most basic assumptions in all of science. Without this assumption, science would be impossible. If the laws of nature suddenly and arbitrarily changed tomorrow, then past experimental results would tell us nothing about the future. Why is it that we can depend on the laws of nature to apply consistently throughout time? The secular scientists cannot justify this important assumption. But the Christian can because the Bible gives us the answer. God is Lord over all creation and sustains the universe in a consistent and logical way. God does not change, and so He upholds the universe in a consistent, uniform way throughout time (Jer 33:25).

The Bible says in James 1:10, 1 John 2:17, and 1 Corinthians 7:31 that this earth; this world is passing away.  The language used speaks to its passing in the past, present, and future tenses.  The Bible actually predicts the law of entropy.  In our schools our children are taught bits and pieces of the evolution theory, we must provide them with all the facts (remember evolution is a theory and not fact) and they can make decisions as to what is truth.

     When we look at the Bible account of the creation of man in Genesis chapter one verses 26-31 we see clearly that man didn’t just come about by some cosmic accident billions of years ago.  This is something however that we must believe and receive as truth, just as one would receive and believe the evolution account as truth.  All the events leading up to the creation of man illustrate that God is preparing the earth to receive the capstone of all creation – man!  Man is the supreme product off the assembly line of God’s creative process.  Evolution has fervently tried to prove a relationship between man and animal.  Even though there are certain chemical and structural relationships it is obvious that the differences between man and animal are mind boggling.  Man is a physical marvel; (Psalm 139) says that man is fearfully and wonderfully made.  In the average human beings there are around 300 trillion living cells, each have life giving properties that are able to do amazing things.  Life giving blood flows through the blood vessels in the body that are sixty million miles long, powered by a heart that beats 100,000 times a day.  That didn’t just come about by mere chance.

     Man is also a mental miracle.  Man has incredible mental powers.  You can’t discuss Biology with a monkey or even the current political affairs.  Man is able to create and choose, whereby animals just react to stimulation.  Man can write a book, develop a computer program, and compose music.  Man can communicate intricately where animals just grunt and howl in a simple signs and motion communication.  There is infinite separation between animals and humans.

     Man is also a spiritual wonder.  Genesis 1:25 says “God created man” and three times in that verse that Hebrew word “bara” is used.  It means to create something that had not previously existed – creatio en exihilo – something from nothing.  There is a God-consciousness about man; there is a God-likeness about man as he was created in the image of God.  This is where modern psychiatry goes astray.  They tell us that to understand man we must look down to the animals.  The problem with doing that is one will never understand man looking downward; only upward, which is to God and His word.  There will never peace and contentment in the soul of a man until men come to know personally this God who is man’s creator.  Inside in the heart of man is a God-consciousness which has been given to him that is not in an animal.  That is why one will never see a pig on its knees with tears in its eyes asking God to forgive it, nor will one see an elephant starting a church.  Man is created to glorify God and worship God.

     In 2 Corinthians 4 Paul draws a picture between the incomplete earth and the sinner before salvation.  He says “For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”  God created man in the image of Himself in one moment of time which He created man out of nothing but by the words of His mouth, and He did not perform this creation over a period of billions of years.  Man-kind is born into this world with an imputed fallen nature.  His natural inclination is to sin.  In our post-modern society with moral relativism on the grow man has chosen to become immoral and in turn has grown farther away from His creator.  There is pleasure in sin, but it is just for a season.  Rejecting the truths of God’s word is sin.  There is something intensive and attractive about sin.  With the rejection of God’s truth, one is an open target for deception (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12).  Deception is always moral before it is intellectual.  People have an intellectual problem in their relationship to God because they have a moral problem with their relationship to God.  How one behaves affects what one believes.

     People can be deceived to the very point they wind up in damnation.  It all begins with believing not the truth of God’s word and the existence of God Himself.  Then one doesn’t believe he is a sinner in need of a Savior and that leads to rejecting the truth that Jesus Christ died for his sins, which leads to being deceived.  With sin and immorality comes the need to remove any responsibility and accountability, and to do that one must do away with the absolutes of God; do away with the authority of the word of God.  When a person rejects the truth and chooses sin over Jesus they become promoters of what they have chosen.  Just like Eve in the Garden of Eden when she pushed the fruit on Adam (Genesis 3:6). 

     Evolutionists have chosen to reject the truth of God’s word and have fallen for the deception of the lie’s, they want everyone else to believe what they believe.  It is very important that we equip our children as they go out into the school system, where there is a hidden agenda being pushed.  Our brothers and sisters in Christ we must equip so that they are ready to give an answer for the hope that is in us.  The fact that energy and matter cannot be destroyed or created should drive us to search for the truth.  Charles Ryrie says in conclusion and summation of the subject at hand:

“The biblical record alone gives us accurate information about the origin of mankind.  The act of creating man was based on the deliberate counsel of God.  Though, all that God had done up to this point He pronounced as good, creation was incomplete without man.  Man was no afterthought, but the result of deliberate forethought on the part of the Godhead.  And after God created man, he said that everything He had made was very good.”

God did not have to create man, He did so for good and sufficient reasons, and creation fulfills that purpose.  God desires to be glorified and worshiped.  Only human beings are capable of obeying God consciously and willingly and thus glorifying God most fully.

I pray that this has been a blessing to you as well as equipped you to give a defense for our wonderful Creator and Sustainer – The Lord Jesus Christ!

Origin of Man #2

Our friends in the evolution camp hold to the theory that each cell has come from a division of another cell which was existing.  That being the case, one must ask where that first cell came from?  Did it come from a meteor explosion or creatures from outer space?  That is where other than biblical sources leave that more distant arena beyond our reach.  The scientist that helped discover the structure of the DNA molecule also held the theory that life came to earth on a space ship (Nobel).  Wayne Grudem comments: “It seems ironic that brilliant scientists could advocate so fantastic a theory without one shred of evidence in its favor.”  So evolutionists don’t know where matter came from.  That is one of the principles of evolution. 

     The bible teaches that God created everything out of nothing.  This is the term known as “creatio ex nihilo” as described in Genesis chapter one verse 26, where God made something brand new.  John 1:3 says “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made.”  Colossians 1:16 “For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible…”  Phillips comments by saying “This statement flatly contradicts Gnostic teaching concerning the impossibility of any link between God and matter.”  Science seems to know nothing of origins.  T.X. Huxley a promoter of atheism and evolution was obliged to say “It appears to me that the scientific investigator is wholly incompetent to say anything at all about the first origin of the material universe.”  If the truth is to be told, matter either has to be eternal or we must accept the eternal God’s word about it.

     Some of the other principles held by evolutionist are that the first cell sprang to life from non-life.  Again I paraphrase Darwin by saying this theory states that the first cell came by way of the perfect temperature in the perfect lake with just the right amount of chemicals and possibly a lightning strike at the right time of day.  That puts us in a: which came first the chicken or the egg situation.  If for instance this theory is correct once we had a little baby, who would care for it?  It puts it in contrast with God’s clear teaching on the subject in Genesis 2:7 where we are told that God formed Adam out of the dirt and breathed life into him.

     Another principle is that living cells reproduce with mutations that will bring about new species.  Dr. Henry Morris says “The problem is that mutations are harmful, not helpful!  Mutations spreading through a small, inbreeding population would most likely destroy the population long before the imaginary beneficial mutations would ever occur.”  The mutation principle is the theory of “survival of the fittest.”  God has told us in His word that He uniquely created different species and they reproduce after their own kind (Leviticus 11:14-22 and Genesis 1:11, 24).  Every creature has their unique purpose, and one creature never becomes another creature.  An elephant doesn’t ever mutate into an eagle. Wayne Grudem comments:

“The vast and complex mutations required to produce complex organs such as an eye or a bird’s wing (or hundreds of other organs) could not have occurred in tiny mutations accumulating over thousands of generations, because the individual parts of the organ are useless unless the entire organ is functioning.  But the mathematical probability of such random mutations happening together in one generation is effectively zero.  Darwinist’s are left saying that it must have happened because it happened.”

I will post the remainder of this Monday.  Until then happy 4th of July!….

Origin of Man

     My son came home from school one day when he was in the fourth grade and asked me: “Dad if we came from monkeys why is there still monkeys.”  I don’t think the question of evolution could have been asked any better or any more profoundly.  Our society today seems to find it necessary to push this false teaching that man wasn’t created but rather has come about through millions of years of evolving.  I wonder if this has anything to do with society’s lack of regard for human life; or better yet the sanctity of human life.  After all if man did come from animals then it should be alright to act like animals.  The problem with the concept that man is more animal-like, is that man does things because of his imputed sin that animals don’t even do.  This begs the question, did mankind come about by a process of evolution, or is man the product of the Creator?  One of the most widely debated forums today is the question of how man originated.

     Origin is a very important concept to properly understand.  A wrong understanding will affect your behavior and how you view things in this world.  When you don’t have a concrete belief of a starting point for the beginning of man you have no sense of identity or self worth.  We all need a mentally satisfying explanation of where we come from.

     Clearly there is an underlying common theme to all of life.  Inquisitive people will naturally wonder why this is so.  Until the time of Darwin, over 130 years ago, most scientists considered the underlying commonality of all living animals to be evidence of the handiwork of their common Creator.  It seemed quite reasonable to these that God would use the same underlying principles to design and create the various kinds of animals.  Dr. Menton comments:

Today, evolutionists insist that the underlying similarity of all animals, including man, and our ability to arrange and classify them into groups, is compelling evidence for their progressive evolution from a common ancestor. They insist that there is simply no other thinkable explanation for their similarities. Evolutionists argue further that the degree of similarity between any two animals attests to their degree of evolutionary “relatedness,” and thus how recently they separated from a common ancestor. They are quite certain, for example, that the similarities between apes and humans prove they evolved from a common ape-like ancestor “only” 2 or 3 million years ago. By comparison, evolutionists say we are far more distantly “related” to our insect “relatives.” The Living World exhibit at the St. Louis Zoo at one time had a sign by a dish of fruit flies that confidently declared: “humans and flies had a common ancestor 630 million years ago.” This hypothetical “common ancestor” is not identified because no one has the slightest evidence of what it looked like, or even if it existed at all!

When it comes to similarities between animals and humans, evolutionists ignore certain facts if those facts do not fit into their scenarios.  Careful examination show remarkable similarities between humans and animals that have been labeled as “distant relatives.”  For example the squid isn’t even close to being similar to a person, yet the eye of the squid is very similar to that of a human being.  This is a difficult argument to prove on the part of the evolutionist.  After all there are similarities in a canoe and an aircraft carrier; yet they are very distinct.  A kite, even, compared to a 747 jumbo jet, they both have characteristics that make them fly but they are both also very unique.

     I was able to obtain a public school biology text book not long ago and noticed quickly that it contrasts evolution with the biblical account of creation.  This book says:

“For thousands of years, most people believed that each separate species of organism had been specially created.  This view was set forth in the bible’s book of Genesis.  From time to time philosophers proposed that the living world changed over centuries, but by the mid-seventeenth century most of the western world took the word of Genesis literally and believed that animals and plants were created during the six days of creation.  From about 1750 on, however, many people became convinced that species changed over the ages (Camp).”

This book went on to talk about Charles Darwin the Father of the Theory of Evolution; a man that actually studied theology, and even as a young person believed in creation.  Did Charles Darwin believe that each species was a special creation of God?  He actually says:

“As many more individuals of each species are born that can possibly survive; and as , consequently, there is a frequently reoccurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in a manner profitable to itself, under the complex and varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving and thus be naturally selected .  From the strong principles of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.”

Presented with the facts more and more scientists are rejecting the theory of evolution.  I must ask: does it sound like Darwin even believes what he wrote?

     What is evolution?  It means a change in any direction.  There are actually legitimate uses for the term even though in Evangelical circles the word is negative when used in relation to origins.  Evolution in relation to origins “theorizes that several billion years ago chemicals in the sea, acted on by sunlight and cosmic energy, formed themselves by chance into one or more single-celled organisms, which have since developed through beneficial mutations and natural selection into all living plants, animals, and people (Ryrie).”  So when we talk of evolution in relation to the origin of man, evolutionists tell us that mankind came about by a series of mutations and natural selection.  Basically a “blob” in the swamp somewhere turned into a tadpole and that progressed and formed and boomed until here we are in 2009 intelligent man flying to the moon and building computers, and a handful worshiping the one true God.

Thanks for reading this part – I will continue with more tomorrow.  The High School text book I was referring to is:

Camp, Karen; Biology: A Journey into Life; Saunders Pub, page 249