The Creation Account
Genesis 1:1-2 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
[2] And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Introduction:
1. The first chapter of Genesis is one of the most God-Centered chapters in the Bible.
2. God is mentioned by name thirty-two times in thirty one verses.
3. Add the use of personal pronouns (I, He, etc.) and God is mentioned 43 times in 31 verses.
4. On the very first page of Scripture the Holy Spirit brings us into the presence of God and keeps us there.
5. No wonder Satan hates this chapter!
6. No wonder Satan has rallied the evolutionist, scientist, and other intellectuals with heavy artillery to discredit the Genesis account of creation in the minds of men.
7. Discredit God as the Creator and Satan has won!
8. If the Holy Spirit cannot be trusted when He tells of Creation, how can He be trusted when He talks of Salvation?
9. If what the Scriptures say about EARTH in Genesis 1 – the first chapter - can be questioned, then what it says about HEAVEN in Revelation 22 – the last chapter – can be questioned.
10. Defending the Creation Account in Genesis is essential to our Christian Faith!
1. The Creation Account Has Three Components.
1) Creation of the Universe – “the heavens and the earth”
a) The Heavens
§ Galaxies, stars, Sun, Moon, etc.
§ BIG BANG Theory:
· Scientist have proved that the galaxies are moving farther and farther away from each other at an enormous and ever increasing rate of speed which they believe started some 15 – 20 billion years ago!
· Scientist cannot agree or explain where the fireball came from or what caused it.
· SO, something came from nothing and created everything.
· Scientist do agree that there was a beginning point in time for the universe and earth.
b) Creation of the Earth
· Scientist believe that the earth began in a gaseous state and then evolved into a liquid state and later into a solid (Encyclopedia Britannica) – Where did the gas come from?
2) Creation of the Living Creatures – plants, sea creatures, animals
3) Creation of Man
2. The Creation Account And Geology.
A. Geology is the study of the earth’s crust.
· Science in general tries to disprove the Creation account
· So, Theologians have tried to tie the two together:
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B. Four models that attempt to harmonize the Bible with Geology.
1. Fiat Creationism
· Also called the young earth theory. God created the universe by divine fiat – supernatural, immediate decree!
· They contend that the earth is no more than 10,000 years old and that the creation was a 7 day process.
· They deny evolution and say that the fossil strata is a product of the flood of Noah’s day.
· They disagree with Carbon dating which dates some fossil material as many thousands of years old.
2. The Gap Theory (Most widely acclaimed)
· Also called the ruin / reconstruction view
· They believe that there was a gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 that lasted for a time long enough for man to evolve and for Satan to be cast out of heaven and come to the earth and defile the Pre-Adamic creation.
3. Theistic Evolution
· Proponents basically accept everything secular evolution proposes with the proviso that God was superintending the process.
4. Progressive Creationism
· Also called the age-day theory
· They contend that the creative days of Genesis 1 denote overlapping periods of indeterminate time.
· They base their belief on the scripture in 2 Peter 3:8:
2 Peter 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
3. The Creation Account And Evolution.
A. Evolution and History
§ God as creator ruled Western society for almost nineteen hundred years
§ Charles Darwin’s The Origin Of The Species, 1872
§ During the last 139 years since Darwin’s book, the almost universal acceptance of evolution by scientist, educators, intellectuals, and the media have produced a widespread rejection to the Scriptural account of creation.
B. DNA = deoxyribonucleic acid
1) Discovered in 1953 (20 years before Darwin), DNA is the genetic blueprint for life, holding unique instructions for building, repairing, and reproducing every living thing on earth.
2) Although human DNA appears to be the most complex of all living things, the DNA found in even the ‘simplest’ form of bacteria is still enormously complex and contains at least 3 million units that are precisely aligned in a meaningful sequence.
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3) The latest research indicates that human DNA code contains five billion letters that are specifically arranged for every person ever born.
4) Human DNA forms a double helix that is coiled together within the nucleus of every one of the sixty trillion cells that make up our body. Although incredibly small, if you were to stretch out the coiled DNA double helix it would be five to six feet long!
5) However, With today’s population of approximately 6.3 billion people you could put a DNA molecule from each person in a container the size of one aspirin tablet and have the blue print for every human on Earth!
6) To record the genetic instructions encoded in human DNA we would need more than five billion letters that would require up to three thousand volumes.
7) The odds of DNA changing from one form to another as evolution requires is basically impossible. The millions of sequences of aligned information is impossible from one life form to another!
EX: Like Building a Cadillac with computer and all electronic equipment, motor and tires in the garage!
Dr. Francis Crick, an atheist and co-discoverer of DNA with Dr. James Watson, who originally believed in evolution, concluded that life could never have spontaneously developed on Earth even over billions of years. Dr. Crick wrote a book entitled Life Itself in which he explained his new theory which states that life was actually developed through evolution in some other galaxy and was then brought to Earth from outer space by means of alien starships or by solar winds. Dr. Crick acknowledges that his theory has no evidence whatsoever to support it, but he prefers it to admitting that only a supernatural God could account for the creation of all living things.
C. Microevolution and Macroevolution
1) Microevolution = skin color; size; hair color, etc
2) Macroevolution = random mutations produce a completely
different species over time
§ A mutation is a mistake and DNA attempts to repair mistakes
§ Scientist have never observed a single mutation in the laboratory or in nature that adds information to an organism.
§ Copying errors (mutations) can only lose or corrupt information!
D. Spontaneous Generation
· Since no mutations have been found to prove Evolution, Scientist have chosen to believe in spontaneous generation rather than believe in creation by a divine being – God!
· Spontaneous Generation is the instant change of life from one form to another (man to monkey).
· Biologist have calculated the odds of this happening to be one chance in 10 to the 40,000th power.
· To put this in perspective, scientist have calculated that the total number of atoms existing throughout the known Universe of some 50 billion galaxies (each containing hundreds of millions of stars like our Milky Way) is only 10 to the 74th power!
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E. Other Material:
1) Natural Selection…….
· Many who could not believe in Spontaneous Generation, chose to believe in Natural selection
· Natural Selection requires random changes that are progressive in development;
EXAMPLE = the eye - How could the eye progressively change from one thing to another? What function would it have? Until the eye is fully formed and functional it has no value whatsoever!
2) Random Chance……..
· Random chance and hemoglobin in our blood
· Hemoglobin is composed of 20 amino acids
· There are 10 to the 650th power of possible arrangements of these 20 amino acids
· Only ONE combination will work!
· The possibility just two Hemoglobin molecules being formed at the same time is inconceivable and there are millions in one animal or person!
F. Fossils?
· Not a single fossil has been found showing a partially formed species or partially formed organ which is necessary to prove evolution.
In response to this, Darwin himself said, “I have asked myself whether I may not have devoted my life to a fantasy…I…am ready to cry with vexation at my blindness and presumption.”
G. Piltdown Man
· Claimed to have been found in the Piltdown quarry in England in 1917, this skull was suppose to prove the ancestors of man was the apes.
· For 36 years hundreds of university researchers and scientist wrote hundreds of doctoral treatises about Piltdown Man as the direct ancestor of modern man
· In 1953, when DNA was discovered, special test were permitted on the Piltdown Man skull and the outcome was that it was a fraud. Someone had purposely and fraudulently planted a modern human skull fragment on top of the jaw of an orangutan.
H. Nebraska Man
§ A little closer home….Show picture of Nebraska Man
§ Picture drawn from a single fossilized tooth!
§ Turned out to be a tooth from an extinct pig!
I. Neanderthal Man
§ No picture - BUT Remember seeing the photographs of an ape-like man with wrinkles on his forehead?
§ Turned out to be a fairly recent human skeleton of a man who had arthritis and also suffered from a Vitamin D deficiency which caused the disease known as rickets which accounted for the unusual ridges over the eyebrows and his curved leg bones.
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J. There is absolutely NO proof of evolution!
Evolutionary scientist have failed to find a single genuine transitional form between ape-like ancestors and men, despite their constant searching for the last 150 years.
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Conclusion:
Creation is absolute origination = “ereatio ex nihilo” = creation out of nothing!
“created” in Genesis 1 in the Hebrew is “bara” - it is never used in the Scriptures with anyone other than God as the subject and it refers essentially to creation out of nothing – absolute origination.
The Hebrew word used for God in Genesis 1 is = Elohim
Elohim = majestic, all powerful, distant, impersonal
The Hebrew word used for God in Genesis 2:4 is = Yahweh Elohim
Yahweh Elohim = the LORD GOD, personal, covenanting