Welcome to our Fall Open Study Series The Bible & Creation

Welcome to our Fall Open Study Series The Bible & Creation See our website at www.reasonforhope.org

Reviewing the Genesis Account of Creation

Model of Genesis Creation Action • God said _____________ • Commanded action takes place • Full grown animals with ability to reproduce • Full grown plants; fruit on trees; humus in soil • Stars with light visible on Earth • God acknowledges and approves the result (“It was so”&“God saw that it was good”) • “Evening & morning, ________ day”

Biblical Looks Back at Creation Tonight’s Study: Do Other Bible Passages Help Us Properly Interpret The Creation Account?

Human Theories Regarding the Bible Account of Creation

Theories Held By Some Brethren • Day - Age Theory (Shane Scott article) • Gap Theory (several past restoration writers) • Puts gap of vast time after Gen. 1:1 or 1:2 • Robert Milligan & George DeHoff advocated view • John Clayton promotes “Modified Gap” • Donald England “Multiple Gap” = Revelatory days • Progressive Creationism (Hill Roberts) • God acts, world reacts, obstacle stops, God acts... • Non-World View (Donald England - Harding) • Says Bible intended no world view, time, method... • Framework Hypothesis Theory • Says creation account is only literary device

Is There Any Way To Test These Theories By The Bible? Let Us See How Bible Writers Interpreted Creation Account As They Referred Back To It In Other Passages Of Scripture

Genesis 5:1-5 1This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; 2male and female created he them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. 3And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: 4and the days of Adam after he begat Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters. 5And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.

Genesis 5:1-5 • Two measures of time used in the same context: Day and Year • Consistent rules must apply to both • If figurative, are years groups of ages? • Obviously, literal sense of both day and year best fit the context • Related Question:How old was Adam when he died? Literally 930 years? • How old was the Earth when Adam died?

Exodus 20:8-11 • 8Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; 10but the seventh day is a sabbath unto Jehovah thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11for in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore Jehovah blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Exodus 20:8-11 • Parallels six days of creation to six days of work during time of Moses • “In six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that in them is” • Parallels seventh day of week in Moses’ time to seventh day of creation week • Stresses sanctifying seventh day (by humans & animals), not just a period of sevens • Affirms literal interpretation

Exodus 31:14-17 14Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that profaneth it shall surely be put to death; for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. 15Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a sabbath of solemn rest, holy to Jehovah: whosoever doeth any work on the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. 16Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. 17It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.

Exodus 31:14-17 • Parallels six days of creation & seventh day of rest to week in the time of Moses • Emphasizes sanctification & holiness of the seventh day, not a period of sevens • Result of disobeying was death: Serious • “For in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He rested, and was refreshed” • Affirm literal interpretation

Psalm 33:6-9 • 6By the word of Jehovah were the heavens made, And all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. 7He gathereth the waters of the sea together as a heap: He layeth up the deeps in store-houses. 8Let all the earth fear Jehovah: Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. 9For he spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.

Psalm 33:6-9 • Creation of heavens & earth accomplished by the word of Jehovah • Affirmed of earth (inanimate creation) • Affirmed of inhabitants (animate creation) • Causes all to stand in awe of God because of power shown • “He spake and it was done” • Not “He spake and it began to happen” • “He commanded and it stood fast” • Not “He commanded and the process started” • Compare Hebrews 4:3

Immediate Power of Word Affirmed by Appeal to Creation • Psalm 148:1-5 • “For he commanded and they were created” • Hebrews 11:3 • “Worlds have been framed by the word of God” • Hebrews 1:1-3 • “Upholding all things by the word of his power” • Revelation 4:11 • “Because of thy will they were & were created” • Reason Jesus called “the Word” (Jn. 1:1-10)

Matthew 19:3-5 • And there came unto him Pharisees, trying him, and saying, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said, Have ye not read, that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh? • Mark 10:6 • But from the beginning of the creation, Male and female made he them.

Matthew 19:4 & Mark 10:6 • Jesus said male & female made by God “at” or “from the beginning” • What beginning? • “From the beginning of the creation” • False if “Day/Age” or another view is true affirming billions of years process • Only way Jesus statement can be true is if creation account is interpreted literally • Either Jesus made mistake or it is literal

Mark 2: Word of God in Action • Sick of palsy brought to Jesus (paralytic) • Jesus said, “Thy sins are forgiven” • When were his sins forgiven? • Power to forgive confirmed by healing • When did physical healing take place? • Miraculous action characterized by: (a) instantaneous fulfillment of desired result (b) not explainable by natural law • Same true of granddaddy of all miracles

Modern Voices of Confusion

Ed Fudge on the Creation Account "We should learn to read the Bible to hear its message to us, not to ask it questions which those who wrote it never remotely intended to answer. That is especially true when reading Genesis and Revelation, both of which discuss the frontiers between time and eternity. Compared to other ancient Near-Eastern accounts of origins (Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite and Ugaritic), Genesis 1-3 uniquely proclaims fundamental biblical truths: God exists separate from and before his creation; God made all that exists; God made humans in his image to care for the rest of creation as good stewards; humans are to live in creaturely dependence on God; when humans abandon proper relationship with God, all creation suffers. The arguments of the past 150 years, about 'how' God created and made all that exists, could not have been farther from the mind of the author of Genesis.” Ed Fudge’s "gracEmail" of 1/24/01

Donald England (Harding professor of Chemistry) "The statements, 'God created' (Genesis 1 and elsewhere) and 'God spoke and it was done; He commanded and it stood fast' (Ps. 33:9) do not explicitly rule out some sort of process. Now, if the days of Genesis are taken as 24-hour days, then that certainly rules out any process extending over vast periods of time"(A Christian View of Origins, 1972, p. 110).

Hill Roberts Genesis and The Time Thing (page 18) “This Big Bang theory is now the standard explanation for how the energy and matter resulting from the beginning came to be distributed as it is today.... Genesis affirms the fact of the beginning but not the process. Therefore there can be no conflict between Genesis and science as to process. However, the physical data does argue strongly for a beginning consistent with Genesis. In this, the data supporting the Big Bang theory is the Bible believer’s friend and the atheists’ nemesis.”

The Birmingham News (4/12/2002) One of those is Lord I Believe, a group formed 15 years ago by Hill Roberts, chief scientist at NASA and defense contractor SRS Technologies, through his church, Weatherly Heights Church of Christ… "My faith is that nature and the Bible both come from the same author and hence will not be in conflict," Roberts said. For example, Roberts doesn't see a conflict between the Bible and scientists who say the Earth is 4.5 billion years old…. The Big Bang theory that the universe was created with one big explosion doesn't pose a conflict with many scientists who believe it's really an explanation of what happened after God commanded the formation of the universe…. "The Big Bang doesn't violate Genesis 1 at all," said Roy Young, a NASA astronomer in Huntsville who is working with other space agency centers on a way to deflect near-Earth asteroids. He is one of the speakers for Hill's group.

A Harmonization of God's Genesis Revelation and His Natural Revelation by Hill Roberts Of the second day (page 2): “Now once again God lets this environment He's created do what He created it to do: make or shape (assah) the earthen surface. The Earth was going through a process of cooling as it stabilized with a surface of solid materials and an atmosphere with a particularly unique substance — water.”

From same source regarding day three: “How long did this take? For God to pronounce His Will for the land and the plants not long, a day seems to be just right. How long did it take for the land and the plants to accomplish His will? However long His natural laws decreed. The natural history of these first plants indicates that it covered quite a bit of time by our clocks, but for God 'twas a mere blink of an eye. We are on God's clock in Genesis 1. Evening, and morning, and God is ready for day four.”

Strange Questions of Doubts "Are we to assume that the evening and morning described by Moses are from the viewpoint of a hypothetical observer standing in the timezone of the future Garden of Eden, where man would later be created on day 6? For someone standing in another timezone, the grass might have actually been commanded to grow on day 2 or day 4 from their point of view, I suppose, instead of day 3 (if they happened to be on the other side of the International Date Line)…. I also take the literal interpretation of 'days', but I can't answer my own questions! It sounds like there may be others with the same questions, but I haven't seen any watchmen address them yet. Since the Sixty-Seven assert that these issues are indeed 'matters of faith' (i.e., something our soul's salvation depends on), I'm sure that together they can fully and completely answer these questions once and for all for all literalists.” --- Stephen Houchen ---

Denial of Literal Creation Account “Astrophysics has measured stars millions of light years away. This implies that millions of years have gone by for those light particles to get here.” “The rate of the expansion of the universe could have only fallen within certain parameters for the creation of stars, etc. to have been possible, due to gravity. This is another way of measuring the age of the universe. Of course, God can do anything, but there is good evidence that He worked within certain laws of physics He designed and created. For further info, see Hugh Ross' The Creator and the Cosmos.” Shane Scott, Markslist, 1995

Next Week’s Study: Does It Make A Difference What We Believe About Creation

Welcome to our Fall Open Study Series The Bible & Creation