Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

[Soldier4Christ]

How could massive worldwide coal deposits form rapidly?

The first effect of the worldwide flood would have been the ripping up of vegetation worldwide and erosion on an unimaginable scale.

As the water receded from one area, vegetation would have been deposited only to be subsequently buried as the area sank and water brought in more sediment. This, layer upon layer of coal would be formed. Furthermore, it has been shown in the laboratory that vegetation can be turned into coal in as little as 1 hour with sufficient heat and pressure. A recent model of coal in as little as 1 hour with sufficient heat and pressure. A recent model of coal formation is provided by a study of the catastrophic explosion of Mount St. Helens in 1980. This explosion knocked down millions of trees which ended up floating on Spirit Lake. Underneath this layer of peat consisting of tree bark and organic matter. If that organic matter were buried by a subsequent eruption, the result would be a coal seam covered by sedimentary rock. Repeated cycles would be rapidly produce a series of coal seams with sediment on top of each seam. This small scale model shows that it is reasonable to believe that an enormous flood would rapidly create the worldwide coal seams which we find today.

[Soldier4Christ]

Is "Survival of the Fittest" part of the evolution?

Modern evolutionists have tried to distance themselves from this concept due to the obvious negative consequences of the social realm. Denying that survival of the fittest is part of the evolutionary process is akin to denying that one type of animal will drive another to extinction given the right conditions. Contrary to the rosy picture of animal co-operation which evolutionists like to portray, one type of animal has no qualms wiping out another in its quest to propagate itself. Survival of the fittest has always been an integral part of the evolutionary theory. Wild dogs introduced to Australia are endangering native species because they are more aggressive and have no natural enemies. Sounds like "survival of the fittest" doesn't it? If we are also animals who have evolved according to this basic principle of evolution, why shouldn't we extend this principle into the social realm? Why shouldn't we eliminate weaker classes of humans which are competing for what we feel we need? Evolution taken to its logical conclusion leads to a savage world akin to Hitler's Nazi Germany when the strong determine what is right. It was no coincidence that Hitler was strongly influenced by the writings of Darwin.

Does it make any logical sense that this method of death and destruction would be a loving God's method for making us???

[Soldier4Christ]

[Soldier4Christ]

Moral decay in American society accelerated sharply after 1960. There were several things that are said to account for this. The primary occurances that coincide with these events were the removal of the Bible from schools, the prevention of school sponsored prayers and the increased efforts of teaching evolution. Starting in 1960 the number of words devoted to evolution in science text books increased from less than 5,000 to over 30,000 in 1965. Immediately college entrance apptitude test scores began a sharp decline. In the next 20-30 years, Gonorrhea in children ages 15 to 16 increased; violent crime climbed; unwed birth rates grew; pregnancies in girls age 10-14 increased; divorce rates went up; and unmarried couples living together rose; drug use increased; a general rebellion against the moral standards of society. It was the era of the "flower children", rebel against everything, do whatever you feel like doing without regard for the consequences. (look at the charts located here  )

Could it be that, when our children learned that they were not really the special creation of a loving Creator, but only another animal accident created by a lightening bolt in a pond of primordial soup, that they had nothing to look forward to but death, that they decided they might as well act out their animal heritage?

[Soldier4Christ]

Many critics of the Bible say that it makes incorrect statements about science. This is simply not true. For example, ancient astronomers guessed there were about 6000 stars. The Bible says there are so many they can’t be numbered. The Bible is right and the ancient astronomers are wrong. Professor Steve Gilreath has prepared a table of some of these statements and their subsequent discovery by science. The Bible is thousands of years ahead of mans discoveries and it is never wrong.

Astronomy              Bible         Science          Gap in years

Earth suspended
in space
Job 26:7                2000BC     400BC            1600


Stars produce
 sound
Job 38:7               2000BC      1900AD          3900


Stars can’t
be numbered
Gen 15:5, 22,17   1300BC       1700AD      3000
Jer 31:37, 33:32


Stars very far
from Earth
Job 22:12             2000BC     1800AD        3800


Stars differ in
magnitude
I Cor 15:41           50AD        1600AD          1550


Universe
Ex Nihilo
Genesis 1:1,         1400BC     1900AD        3300
Psalm 33:6, 9

[Soldier4Christ]

Unrefuted evidence for earth's instant creation. An excellant set of videos that are available online for free can be obtained through the following web site;

http://www.halos.com/videos/streaming-video.htm

These vidoes take a while to download especially if you have a dial up connection but believe me they are well worth the time spent to download and to watch. The first video explains how this is possible to prove. In science there is a difference between what is considered a theory and what is considered a fact. A theory does not have to be proven. It is simply an hypothesis of a given situation. In other words an educated guess based on presuppositions. This is the classification given to evolution, a theory, based on the presupposition that there is no God.

In science a fact is something that must be proven by observing the situation and actually seeing it happen. This can be done by replicating the situation.

Evolution says that coal took millions of years to produce. In this video it is shown by replicating the conditions and actually observing the making of coal in just two weeks.

There are many other such proofs given in these videos of this same thing that proves the earth was made in a very short period not millions or billions of years that evolutionists claim.

[Shammu]

We all love to laugh, it’s good medicine. We laughed at the Queen in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”. She “sometimes believed in six impossible things before breakfast.” Similarly, I laugh at Darwinian professors who teach impossible fairy tales to their students. And there are tons of laughs in reading of the history of the pathetic attempts of Darwinists who tried to pump embalming fluid into the Lenin-like corpse of evolution. Let’s peel back the skin on this “evolution baloney” and laugh at how this sausage was made.

Charles Darwin was born into wealth, spent two years in medical school, dropping out after spending too much time in bars. He had some divinity training but failed make it as an Anglican minister. He took a position as a naturalist on a ship Beagle, which led to writing his first book. Without any evidence, he conjured up his Pangenesis theory. He assumed that species changed to other species because all cells produced gemmules. Gemmules supposedly arose by some kind of reaction to the environment. Each of these gemmules entered the sex cells of the sperm or egg (it must have been crowded in there), which later were transmitted to the offspring. Big problem! No one could find Darwin’s imaginary Gemmules and Pangenesis died at birth!

Darwin’s writings were not science but philosophical musings. He called assumptions facts and piled up conjectures upon conjectures. “Maybe” and “perhaps” form the basis of his writings

But something had to be done to keep the world believing Darwinism. Ernest Haeckel tried by faking drawings of embryos (which he claimed repeated fish to reptile to mammal evolution). But fellow embryologists in his trial at Jena University discovered his fakes. Although it is hard to believe, but Haeckel’s “most famous fakes in biology” are used as proofs of evolution in textbooks today. His forgeries are like gonorrhea, a gift that keeps on giving!

The next attempt to resurrect Darwinism came in 1872, from the British ship HMS Challenger. It dredged the ocean sediments for four years looking for half-formed fossils. None were found, and since none had ever been found on land, the evolutionary fairy tale of the gradual production of billions of fossils sedimentary strata was quietly set aside. The Challenger did provide a momentary hope. It dredged up some blob from the ocean floor and Darwinists leaped for joy. It was a live microbe, some kind of a missing link! They named it Bathybuis haeckeli after the old king of biological fakery, Ernest Haeckel. However in 1875 a chemist discovered it was not any form of life, but a chemical precipitate of sulphate of lime (gypsum). So, true to form, the discovery was carefully swept under the rug and hidden from the public.

In the meantime Darwin had returned to Lamark’s previously discarded idea, that giraffes developed long necks by stretching to reach those sweeter leaves on the top of trees. This theory died again when German biologist Leopold Weisman, in 1883, cut off the tails of white mice in 19 successive generations and the tails always reappeared. Similarly through 4000 years of circumcision, Jewish men still had foreskins. More bad news for poor old Saint Darwin! Who can rescue Darwinism? Quick, before the unwashed discover the emperor has no clothes.

Finally in 1930 Austin H. Clark tried to plug the gap with a new theory, Zoogenesis. Clark was a well-respected Darwinist at the Smithsonian Institute. He had written books and 600 articles in five languages. However to his dismay, he could never find any evidence of macroevolution in animals or plants. In his 1930 book, The New Evolution: Zoogenesis, he cited fact after fact proving macroevolution could not have occurred. He concluded therefore plants and animals must have sprung fully formed from dirt and water! The evolutionary world was stunned into silence. Clark was the Carl Sagan of his day. He supposedly knew all the answers. Quickly they buried Clark’s theory.

World famous geneticist Richard Goldschmidt attempted to come to the rescue of embarrassed Darwinians by attempting to prove macroevolution was caused by mutations. For twenty-five years he was the godfather to millions of generations of gypsy moths. He zapped them with x-rays and chemicals. He found mutations produced nothing but deformities. No new species! He concluded rats were still rats and rabbits were still rabbits. In his 1940 book, “The Material Basis for Evolution”, Goldschmidt exploded the ammunition box of evolutionary theory. He literally tore the theory to pieces. No one knew how to answer him and they cannot answer him today. He was an honest atheist who faced the facts. But not wanting to acknowledge God, he proposed a new mechanism of evolution called “The Hopeful Monster Mechanism”. One day an alligator laid an egg and a turkey hatched out! You’ve got to remember boys and girls this is science!

For the next 30 years evolutionists were dazed and in turmoil because they had 1) no proof that evolution had ever occurred, 2) no reasonable mechanism to explain evolution, and 3) zillions of missing links! They had bitter arguments among themselves about possible theories. The embarrassment of Goldschmidt’s crude “Hopeful Monster Mechanism” caused Harvard’s Stephen Gould in 1972 and a little later, Steven Stanley, of John’s Hopkins University, to “smarten up” Goldschmidt’s” ugly theory by giving it a new name, ‘Punctuated Equilibrium”(Gould) and the even better “high-fallutin” scientific name, “Quantum Speciation” (Stanley). But it was still a monster by any name.

The discovery in the 1950’s of the DNA by Francis Crick and James Watson crushed the hopes of biological evolutionists. It provided clear evidence that every specie is locked into its own coding pattern. Only variation within a kind (microevolution) can occur. Mathematicians showed the odds against forming DNA by chance were “quad-zillions and quad-zillions to one”. Evolution by chance was impossible! But atheist Crick was not ready to believe in God. He dreamed up a new theory … are you ready for this? Some unknown “space alien” sprinkled sperm in our solar system and eventually creatures evolved on some planet (Krypton?). Then these evolved space creatures built a “Noahs Ark” rocket ship and zoomed down to the earth in a long journey, to unloaded their zoo. Crick named his new theory “Panspermia.” This boys and girls is called science or….. maybe a fairy tale! Now NASA’s “Life in Space Program” believes this baloney and is spending billions of our tax dollars shooting up probes in our solar system looking for this “sperm donor”!

There you have it, the skeletons in Evolution’s closet. The kooky theories of Pangenesis, Gemmules, Lamarkism, Zoogenesis, Hopeful Monster Mechanism, Punctuated Equilibrium, Quantum Speciation and Panspermia are all just guesses. None were proven. They make good fodder for fairy tale writers. They are a barrel of laughs!

How can supposedly reasonable men believe this weird stuff and then try to pass it off as science, when it is really a cult religion? They’ve emptied out the stables and dumped it on the gullible public. Most Americans believe people with PhDs in science are unbiased, honest and seek the truth. But they are just like the rest of humanity. They can have biases, be dishonest and seek only to further their own goals, honorable or dishonorable.

The Darwinists have a well-oiled propaganda machine to keep their true goals hidden from the taxpayers who pay their salaries. They have web sites set up to deflect criticism of evolution and to further their legislative and judicial goals, which are to kill God and elevate humanism to His throne.

Cont'd next post.

[Shammu]

Darwinists know they have to hide their atheist religion from the majority of Americans, who believe in God. One of the Darwinist web sites has enlisted Jimmah Carter, our worst ever ex-president, to proselyte Christians and baptized them into The Church of Darwin (in the name of the unholy trinity, Darwin, Haeckel and Nietzsche?). These new converts are called theistic evolutionists. At the 1959 Darwinian Centennial Celebration, Julian Huxley’s keynote address focused on the total repudiation of God. Huxley was asked why the world, a hundred years ago, leaped at Darwin’s book “The Origin of The Species”. He answered it freed us from God’s sexual mores! Evolution is a religion of no God!

Darwinists have given up public debates because they’ve lost hundreds of them in the 1970s and 80s. Why did they lose? As a participant in two of them I will tell you. They lost because they had no proof of macroevolution. Amazing! No Proof! They usually tried old debate tricks of personal attacks on their opponents, i.e. “you can’t be a scientist because you believe the Bible”, etc. But they lost because audiences were shocked. Shocked that the Darwinists had no proof! And they have none today!

In editorials and letters to the editor, the Darwinist produces no proofs. So they commonly try to bluff us Okie rubes with pompous statements like, “evolution has been proved as much as gravity and it is believed by all scientists”. Get real --- sure, and the moon is made of green cheese! Its all bluff, designed to shut up critics and convert us to their atheistic religion. Hitler and his propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, would have been proud. You tell a lie long enough and loud enough and people will believe it! Unfortunately, a lot of Americans have swallowed the lie, including about half of our college graduates. Our courts and media are full of Darwinists. Their bulldog, the ACLU, is working overtime to wipe God from all of public life. Humanism over all is their goal!

Tragically the Darwinists have made great strides in wrecking western civilization. In the first half of the twentieth century, Darwinism hijacked the militant policies of Germany. The religion of Darwin, Nietzsche and Haeckel became the religion of Hitler and his Nazi gang. The result was in the murder of millions in their attempt to produce the Aryan super race and a victorious Germany. World War II was the most violent form of evolutionism ever seen.

In the last half century, evolution hijacked America and its schools and inflicted a great defeat on American culture. Crime has skyrocketed, homosexuality and gay marriage have been mainstreamed, and our morals have submerged into a cesspool. Why? Kids brainwashed with this kooky nonsense are taught that they evolved from apes, there is no God and that morals are relative. If it feels good, do it.

Not only are the Darwinians scrambling to answer attacks from creationists, but also they are also arguing with each other over their different theories. “So heated is the debate that one Darwinian says there are times when he thinks about going into a field with more intellectual honesty, the used car business.” (Newsweek, April 8, 1985, p. 80)

“I suppose that nobody will deny that it is a great misfortune if an entire branch of science becomes addicted to a false theory. But this is what has happened in biology..…I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked as the greatest deceit in the history of science.”” Soren Lovtrup, “The Refutation of a Myth”, 1987.

Edward F Blick, PhD
Emeritus Professor of Engineering
Univ. of Oklahoma

[Soldier4Christ]

The Bible gives us principles of interpretation in 2 Corinthians 4:2 and Proverbs 8:8–9:

    Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God (2 Corinthians 4:2).

    All the utterances of my mouth are in righteousness; There is nothing crooked or perverted in them. They are all straightforward to him who understands, And right to those who find knowledge (Proverbs 8:8–9).

In other words, we are to read and understand the Bible in a plain or straightforward manner. This is usually what people mean when they say “literal interpretation of the Bible” (this phrase is common among those not well-versed in hermeneutics). I try to use the term “plainly” so I don’t confuse people.

Reading the Bible “plainly” means understanding that literal history is literal history, metaphors are metaphors, poetry is poetry, etc. The Bible is written in many different literary styles and should be read accordingly. This is why we understand that Genesis records actual historical events. It was written as historical narrative.

Reading the Bible plainly/straightforwardly (taking into account literary style, context, authorship, etc.) is the basis for what is called the historical-grammatical method of interpretation which has been used by theologians since the church fathers. This method helps to eliminate improper interpretations of the Bible.

For example, I once had someone say to me (who was not a Christian), “the Bible clearly says “there is no God’ in Psalms 14:1.” When you look up the verse and read it in context, it says:

    The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good (Psalm 14:1).

So the context helps determine the proper interpretation—that a fool was saying this.

I also once had someone tell me, “to interpret the days in Genesis, you need to read 2 Peter 3:8, which indicates the days are each a thousand years.” 2 Peter 3:8–9, in context, says:

    But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:8–9).

This passage employs a literary device called a simile. Here, God compares a day to a thousand years in order to make the point that time doesn’t bind Him, in this case regarding His patience. God is not limited to the time He created—that would be illogical.

Also, this verse gives no reference to the days in Genesis, so it is not warranted to apply this to the days in Genesis 1. When read plainly, these verses indicate that God is patient when keeping His promises.

At any rate, I pray this helps to clarify why we advocate reading and understanding the Bible in a plain or straightforward manner, and why Genesis should be understood as actual history.

[Soldier4Christ]

Should Genesis be taken literally?

Creationists are often accused of believing that the whole Bible should be taken literally. This is not so! Rather, the key to a correct understanding of any part of the Bible is to ascertain the intention of the author of the portion or book under discussion. This is not as difficult as it may seem, as the Bible obviously contains:

    *

      Poetry—as in the Psalms, where the repetition or parallelism of ideas is in accordance with Hebrew ideas of poetry, without the rhyme (parallelism of sound) and metre (parallelism of time) that are important parts of traditional English poetry. This, by the way, is the reason why the Psalms can be translated into other languages and still retain most of their literary appeal and poetic piquancy, while the elements of rhyme and metre are usually lost when traditional Western poetry is translated into other languages.
    *

      Parables—as in many of the sayings of Jesus, such as the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:3–23), which Jesus Himself clearly states to be a parable and about which He gives meanings for the various items, such as the seed and the soil.
    *

      Prophecy—as in the books of the last section of the Old Testament (Isaiah to Malachi).
    *

      Letters—as in the New Testament epistles written by Paul, Peter, John, and others.
    *

      Biography—as in the gospels.
    *

      Autobiography/testimony—as in the book of Acts where the author, Luke, after narrating the Apostle Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus as a historical fact (Acts 9:1–19), then describes two further occasions when Paul included this conversion experience as part of his own personal testimony (Acts 22:1–21; 26:1–22).
    *

      Authentic historical facts—as in the books of 1 and 2 Kings, etc.

Thus the author’s intention with respect to any book of the Bible is usually quite clear from the style and the content. Who then was the author of Genesis, and what intention is revealed by his style and the content of what he wrote?
The author

The Lord Jesus Himself and the gospel writers said that the Law was given by Moses (Mark 10:3; Luke 24:27; John 1:17), and the uniform tradition of the Jewish scribes and early Christian fathers, and the conclusion of conservative scholars to the present day, is that Genesis was written by Moses. This does not preclude the possibility that Moses had access to patriarchal records, preserved by being written on clay tablets and handed down from father to son via the line of Adam–Seth–Noah–Shem–Abraham–Isaac–Jacob, etc., as there are 11 verses in Genesis which read, ‘These are the generations [Hebrew: toledoth = ‘origins’ or by extension ‘record of the origins’] of … .’1 As these statements all come after the events they describe, and the events recorded in each division all took place before rather than after the death of the individuals so named, they may very well be subscripts or closing signatures, i.e. colophons, rather than superscripts or headings. If this is so, the most likely explanation of them is that Adam, Noah, Shem, and the others each wrote down an account of the events which occurred in his lifetime, and Moses, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, selected and compiled these, along with his own comments, into the book we now know as Genesis2 (see also Did Moses really write Genesis?).

Chapters 12–50 of Genesis were very clearly written as authentic history, as they describe the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and his 12 sons who were the ancestral heads of the 12 tribes of Israel. The Jewish people, from earliest biblical times to the present day, have always regarded this portion of Genesis as the true record of their nation’s history.

So what about the first 11 chapters of Genesis, which are our main concern, as these are the ones that have incurred the most criticism from modern scholars, scientists, and sceptics?

cont'd on page two

[Soldier4Christ]

Page Two

Genesis 1–11
Are any of these chapters poetry?

To answer this question we need to examine in a little more depth just what is involved in the parallelism of ideas that constitutes Hebrew poetry.

Let us consider Psalm 1:1, which reads as follows: ‘Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.’ Here we see triple parallelism in the nouns and verbs used (reading downwards in the following scheme):

walketh          counsel          ungodly
standeth        way               sinners
sitteth            seat               scornful

As well as this overt parallelism, there is also a covert or subtle progression of meaning. In the first column, ‘walketh’ suggests short-term acquaintance, ‘standeth’ implies readiness to discuss, and ‘sitteth’ speaks of long-term involvement. In the second column, ‘counsel’ betokens general advice, ‘way’ indicates a chosen course of action, and ‘seat’ signifies a set condition of mind. In the third column, ‘ungodly’ describes the negatively wicked, ‘sinner’ characterizes the positively wicked, and ‘scornful’ portrays the contemptuously wicked.

Other types of Hebrew poetry include contrastive parallelism, as in Proverbs 27:6, ‘Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful’, and completive parallelism, as in Psalm 46:1, ‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of need.’3.

And so we return to our question. Are any of the first 11 chapters of Genesis poetry?

Answer: No, because these chapters do not contain information or invocation in any of the forms of Hebrew poetry, in either overt or covert form, and because Hebrew scholars of substance are agreed that this is so (see below).

Note: There certainly is repetition in Genesis chapter 1, e.g. ‘And God said …’ occurs 10 times; ‘and God saw that it was good/very good’ seven times; ‘after his/their kind’ 10 times; ‘And the evening and the morning were the … day’ six times. However, these repetitions have none of the poetic forms discussed above; rather they are statements of fact and thus a record of what happened, and possibly for emphasis—to indicate the importance of the words repeated.

Are any of these chapters parables?

No, because when Jesus told a parable He either said it was a parable, or He introduced it with a simile, so making it plain to the hearers that it was a parable, as on the many occasions when He said, ‘The kingdom of heaven is like … .’ No such claim is made or style used by the author of Genesis 1–11.
Are any of these chapters prophecy?

Not in their full context, although two promises of God are prophetic in the sense that their fulfilment would be seen in the future. One of these is Genesis 3:15, which was the pronouncement by God to the serpent (Satan) in metaphorical form: ‘And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.’ (NASB). Many have interpreted the ‘seed’ in this verse as the Messiah, including most evangelicals and even the Jewish Targums4 hence the Talmudic expression ‘heels of the Messiah’5. The Messiah would suffer wounds to His feet (on the Cross), but would completely destroy Satan’s power. This verse also hints at the virginal conception, as the Messiah is called the seed of the woman, contrary to the normal biblical practice of naming the father rather than the mother of a child (cf. Genesis chapters 5 and 11, 1 Chronicles chapters 1–9, Matthew chapter 1, Luke 3:23–38).

The other is Genesis 8:21–22 and 9:11–17,

    ‘And the LORD said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake … and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.’

Are any of these chapters letters, biography, or autobiography/personal testimony?

This is where we need to consider some of the subscripts mentioned above.

If Adam knew the events of Creation Days 1–6, they must have been revealed to him by God, as Adam was not made until Day 6, and so he could have known them only if God had told him. This view is reinforced by the words, ‘These are the generations of [NIV: ‘This is the account of’] the heavens and of the earth when they were created …’ in Genesis 2:4a. The details of Day 7, the rest day, are included before this in Genesis 2:2–3, thereby completing (as we might expect) the record of a full seven-day week, before this subscript or closing signature appears.

Then follow the events of Genesis 2:4b–5:1a. This section tells us about Adam, his wife Eve, and their sons, and reads very much like a personal account of what Adam knew, saw, and experienced concerning the Garden of Eden, and the creation of Eve (chapter 2), their rebellion against God (chapter 3), and the deeds of their descendants (chapter 4 to 5:1), albeit written in the third person6. This section ends with the words, ‘This is the book of the generations of Adam.’

Is it feasible that Adam could have written Genesis 1:1–2:4a as the result of his pre-Fall conversation with God, and Genesis 2:4b–5:1 as the record of his own experiences? There is no problem concerning his ability to have done so. Adam was created a mature man, endowed with all the DNA, knowledge and skill he needed to perform all the tasks assigned him by God. No cave-man he! Adam knew enough horticulture ‘to dress and to keep’ the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:15), and ample intelligence to recognize and name the distinct kinds of animals (Genesis 2:19). He (and Eve) could converse with God without ever having learned an alphabet, and there is no reason to suppose that he was not fully skilled in writing also7.

cont'd on page three

[Soldier4Christ]

Page Three

Supposed contradictions

What about the supposed contradictions between the order of events in Genesis chapter 2 and the order given in chapter 1?

There are none! See also Genesis contradictions?

If, with the NIV, we read ‘Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east …’ (Genesis 2: and, ‘Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field …’ (Genesis 2:19 with emphasis added), it is clearly seen that chapter 2 states that the plants and animals were formed before Adam. When Adam named the animals (Genesis 2:20), they obviously were already in existence. There is no contradictory significance in the order of animals listed in Genesis 2:20; it is probably the order in which Adam met the animals, while the order of their creation is given in Genesis 1:20–25. Dr Henry Morris comments:

    ‘It was only the animals in closest proximity and most likely as theoretical candidates for companionship to man that were actually brought to him. These included the birds of the air, the cattle (verse 20—probably the domesticated animals), and the beasts of the field, which were evidently the smaller wild animals that would live near human habitations. Those not included were the fish of the sea, the creeping things, and the beasts of the earth mentioned in Genesis 1:24, which presumably were those wild animals living at considerable distance from man and his cultivated fields.’8.

Concerning the names of geographical sites, we have no idea what the configuration of the land or the rivers was before the Flood, because the pre-Flood world was completely destroyed. The land areas and rivers named before the Flood do not correspond to similarly named features after the Flood.

The purpose of Genesis 2:18–25 is not to give another account of creation but to show that there was no kinship whatsoever between Adam and the animals. None was like him, and so none could provide fellowship or companionship for him. Why not? Because Adam had not evolved from them, but was ‘a living soul’ whom God had created ‘in His own image’ (Genesis 2:7 and 1:27). This means (among other things) that God created Adam to be a person whom He could address, and who could respond to and interact with Himself. Here, as in many other places, the plain statements of the Bible confront and contradict the notion of human evolution.

There is therefore enough evidence for us to conclude that Adam most probably was the author of Genesis 2:4b–5:1, and that this is his record of his own experiences with respect to events in the Garden of Eden, the creation of Eve, the Fall, and in the lives of Cain, Abel, and Seth.

The next section is from 5:1b to 6:9a, and deals with the line from Adam to Noah, ending with, ‘These are the generations [or origins] of Noah.’

The next section is from 6:9b to 10:1a, and deals mainly with the Ark and the Flood, ending with, ‘Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.’ The wording of this subscript suggests that this portion was written by one of Noah’s sons, probably Shem, as Moses was descended from Shem. These chapters read very much like an eye-witness account because of the intimacy of detail which they contain. Consider Genesis 8:6–12 and note how this contains that ring of authenticity which is characteristic of an eye-witness account. It may even have been Shem’s diary!

Genesis 8:6–12:

    6 And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made:
    7 And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth.
    8 Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground;
    9 But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.
    10 And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark;
    11 And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.
    12 And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more. (KJV).

Such meticulous details are the stuff of authentic eye-witness testimony. They have the ring of truth.

There is thus a substantial body of evidence that these portions of Genesis delineated by subscripts were written by the persons named therein, for the purpose of making and passing on a permanent record.

So then, were these first 11 chapters written as a record of authentic historical facts?
Answer: Yes, for several reasons.

Internal evidence of the book of Genesis

1. There is the internal evidence of the book of Genesis itself. As already mentioned, chapters 12–50 have always been regarded by the Jewish people as being the record of their own true history, and the style of writing contained in chapters 1–11 is not strikingly different from that in chapters 12–50.

2. Hebrew scholars of standing have always regarded this to be the case. Thus, Professor James Barr, Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, has written:

    ‘Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the “days” of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.’9.

3. One of the main themes of Genesis is the Sovereignty of God. This is seen in God’s actions in respect of four outstanding events in Genesis 1–11 (Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and the Babel dispersion), and His relationship to four outstanding people in Genesis 12–50 (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph). There is thus a unifying theme to the whole of the book of Genesis, which falls to the ground if any part is mythical and not true history; on the other hand, each portion reinforces the historical authenticity of the other.10

cont'd on page four

[Soldier4Christ]

Page Four

Evidence from the rest of the Bible

4. The principal people mentioned in Genesis chapters 1–11 are referred to as real—historical, not mythical—people in the rest of the Bible, often many times. For example, Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, and Noah are referred to in 15 other books of the Bible.

5. The Lord Jesus Christ referred to the Creation of Adam and Eve as a real historical event, by quoting Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 in His teaching about divorce (Matthew 19:3–6; Mark 10:2–9), and by referring to Noah as a real historical person and the Flood as a real historical event, in His teaching about the ‘coming of the Son of man’ (Matthew 24:37–39; Luke 17:26–27).

6. Unless the first 11 chapters of Genesis are authentic historical events, the rest of the Bible is incomplete and incomprehensible as to its full meaning. The theme of the Bible is Redemption, and may be outlined thus:

    i. God’s redeeming purpose is revealed in Genesis 1–11,
    ii. God’s redeeming purpose progresses from Genesis 12 to Jude 25, and
    iii. God’s redeeming purpose is consummated in Revelation 1–22.

But why does mankind need to be redeemed? What is it that he needs to be redeemed from? The answer is given in Genesis 1–11, namely, from the ruin brought about by sin. Unless we know that the entrance of sin to the human race was a true historical fact, God’s purpose in providing a substitutionary atonement is a mystery. Conversely, the historical truth of Genesis 1–11 shows that all mankind has come under the righteous anger of God and needs salvation from the penalty, power, and presence of sin.

7. Unless the events of the first chapters of Genesis are true history, the Apostle Paul’s explanation of the gospel in Romans chapter 5 and of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 has no meaning. Paul writes: ‘For as by one man’s [Adam’s] disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one [Jesus] shall many be made righteous’ (Romans 5:19). And, ‘For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive … And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit’ (1 Corinthians 15:21–22; 45). The historical truth of the record concerning the first Adam is a guarantee that what God says in His Word about the last Adam [Jesus] is also true. Likewise, the historical, literal truth of the record concerning Jesus is a guarantee that what God says about the first Adam is also historically and literally true.
Conclusion

We return to the question which forms the title of this article. Should Genesis be taken literally?

Answer: If we apply the normal principles of biblical exegesis (ignoring pressure to make the text conform to the evolutionary prejudices of our age), it is overwhelmingly obvious that Genesis was meant to be taken in a straightforward, obvious sense as an authentic, literal, historical record of what actually happened.
References

1. See Genesis 2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10; 11:27; 25:12; 25:19; 36:1; 36:9; 37:2. Return to text.

2. The seminal author on the colophon concepts was P.J. Wiseman, Creation Revealed in Six Days, Marshall, Morgan & Scott, London, 1948, pp. 45–53. For an excellent evaluation of this by a evangelical linguist see The Oldest Science Book in the World, by Dr Charles V. Taylor, Assembly Press, Queensland, 1984, pp. 21–23, 73, 121. Return to text.

3. This discussion of Hebrew poetry was adapted from J. Sidlow Baxter, Explore the Book, Vol. 1, pp. 13-16. Return to text.

4. Aramaic paraphrases of the OT originating in the last few centuries BC, and committed to writing about AD 500. See F.F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments, (Westwood: Fleming H. Revell Co., Rev. Ed. 1963), p. 133. Return to text.

5. A.G. Fruchtenbaum, Apologia 2(3):54–58, 1993. Return to text.

6. The use of the third person is no problem. Moses wrote the long account of his own life in Exodus to Deuteronomy in the third person, and many classical authors like Julius Caesar also wrote in the third person. Return to text.

7. Adam and Eve knew how to sew fig-leaf ‘aprons’ for themselves (Genesis 3:7). Within a few generations, Adam’s descendants founded a city (Genesis 4:17), were tent-makers, cattle farmers, musicians with the ability to make both stringed and wind instruments, and metallurgists with the ability to smelt the ores of copper, tin and iron and then to forge all kinds of bronze and iron tools (Genesis 4:20–24). Dr Henry M. Morris comments in The Genesis Record (Baker Book house, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1976, pp. 146–147):

    ‘It is significant to note that the elements which anthropologists identify as the attributes of the emergence of evolving men from the stone age into true civilization—urbanization, agriculture, animal domestication, and metallurgy—were all accomplished quickly by the early descendants of Adam and did not take hundreds of thousands of years.’ Return to text.

8. Henry Morris, The Genesis Record, p. 97. Return to text.

9. Letter from Professor James Barr to David C.C. Watson of the UK, dated 23 April 1984. Copy held by the author. Note that Prof. Barr does not claim to believe that Genesis is historically true; he is just telling us what, in his opinion, the language was meant to convey. Return to text.

10. Adapted from J. Sidlow Baxter, Explore the Book, Vol. 1, pp. 27–29. Return to text.

[Soldier4Christ]

".... all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; [2] And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; [3] And did all eat the same spiritual meat; [4] And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. " 1Cor. 10:1-4 (KJV)

My guide stopped the vehicle, pointed to the rock face and said: "Just wander over there. You will find something very interesting." I was completely in the dark, literally! It was 8:00pm in the evening, going on for winter in England. As I made my way to the bare rocky surface which loomed ever higher, my guide said: "Up above you!" It would have been nice if the moon was bright, or the torch worked. But at least I could see the outline of darkened rock in front, probably thanks to the childhood carrots my mother made me eat. So I began to climb. My guide assured me it was worth the effort. There was no-one else there, but I was not surprised. It was not only dark, it was cold. I was even more surprised when a sign emerged that said: "Don't climb this rock." too late - I was already climbing. I guess in daylight the sign was visible from below. My guide yelled: "Look up". Sure enough, beside a hollow in the rock, was another sign, barely visible. It was worth seeing! Fortunately my camera has automatic flash which did help a little.

The sign is found in Burrington Gorge, Somerset Shire, England. One very stormy day, in the 1760's, Augustus Toplady took shelter from a bitter storm. He was protected from the wind and the rain by a huge cleft in the rock, where no doubt, God used the circumstance to bring to his mind the words of what is now one of the best known hymns in Christendom. In his rocky shelter, Toplady wrote on the back of a playing card (history records it was a 6 of diamonds), "Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee; let the water and the blood, from Thy riven side which flowed, be of sin the double cure, cleanse from wrath and make me pure." The author died only a few years later from Tuberculosis, having lived only 38 years. There can be no doubt Toplady had faith in the Rock. But not the limestone rock he was sheltering in, for Toplady's rock was Christ. He was a conservative Christian minister and in his day, few would have challenged the thought that Toplady's rock was also the rock of Moses'.

There can be no doubting that the New Testament Apostle Paul insists strongly that 'Moses' rock was Christ. (1 Cor.10:4) Paul does not say, "seen through New Testament eyes, we now believe that Moses had faith in someone we now know is Christ." There can be no doubt, that Moses saw the Lord face-to-face (Ex 33:11). Yet it was Moses who the Lord used to tell us that no man can see God face-to-face. (Ex 33:20) There can be no doubting that the God who Moses saw, (Exodus 24:9-11) was God the Son, and that Moses was well aware of a Trinity in the Godhead.

We should not be surprised when the world rejects the truththat Moses received from this "Word of God", about creation , they also reject the living Word of God who Moses knew was his salvation. If you take a secular guide through Burrington Gorge today he will tell you about the age of the rock, about hundreds of millions of years of evolution and never once concede the fatal flaw of evolution. It has nowhere to shelter in the time of storm. It offers no cleft to hide in from the wrath of God's judgement. As clever and ingenious as evolutionary theories have been or will yet become, none can offer forgiveness of sin, hope of salvation, or promise of eternal life. That forgiveness, hope and promise come only from the Rock of Ages, and that Rock is Christ!

Author of Christian Research.

[Soldier4Christ]

There is a lot of information posted here in this thread that shows that evolution is false and that the Bible is accurate in it's description of creation of the Heavens and earth by God and even proves the story of Noah's global wide flood. It is your choice to believe God's word or to believe the lies and distortions of evolution, the made up stories of men that try to hide the truth of God under the guise of science.

As the author of Creation Reaseach said in the prior article in this thread, do want to put your life, your future in the faith of a rock that crumbles and disappears when weathered or would you rather put it all into the hands of the rock that will never weaken nor leave you no matter what may come?

If you want that assurance, that safe haven for eternity then why not come right now to Him. Turn to Jesus Christ right now in prayer and ask Him to forgive you of your sins and to come into your life as your Lord and Saviour. There is no time better than this very moment. Waiting any longer may be too late as we never know when that storm may come over us.