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Creation
Understanding origins in the book of Genesis is foundational to the rest of the Bible. If Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 don’t tell us the truth, then why should we believe anything else in the Bible? If it says in the New Testament that the Creator is our Redeemer, but God is not the Creator, then maybe He’s not the Redeemer either. If it tells us in 2 Peter that God Himself will bring about an instantaneous dissolution of the entire universe as we know it, that God in a moment will uncreate everything, then that has tremendous bearing upon His power to create. The same one who with a word can uncreate the universe is capable of creating it as quickly as He desires.
So what we believe about creation, what we believe about Genesis has implications all the way to the end of Scripture, implications with regard to the veracity and truthfulness of Scripture, implications as to the gospel, and implications as to the end of human history, all wrapped up in how we understand origins in the book of Genesis. The matter of origins then is absolutely critical to all human thinking. It becomes critical to how we conduct our lives as human beings. Without an understanding of origins, without a right understanding of origins, there is no way to comprehend ourselves. There is no way to understand humanity, as to the purpose of our existence, and as to our destiny. If we cannot believe what Genesis says about origins, we are lost as to our purpose and our destiny. Whether this world and its life as we know it evolved by chance, without a cause, or was created by God, has immense comprehensive implications for all of human life.
Now there basically are only two options: you can either believe what Genesis says, or not. And that is no over simplification. Frankly, believing in a supernatural, creative God who made everything is the only possible rational explanation for the universe, for life, for purpose, and for destiny.
Now the divine equation given in the Bible, in contrast to nobody times nothing equals everything, the divine equation is found in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” We don’t know how it could be said any more simply or more straightforwardly than that. Either you believe God did create the heavens and the earth or you believe He did not. Really those are the only two valid options you have. And if you believe that God did create the heavens and the earth, then you are left with the only record of that creation, and that’s Genesis 1, and you are bound to accept the text of Genesis 1 as the only appropriate and accurate description of that creative act. So again, we say you’re left really with two choices: you either believe Genesis, or you don’t; you either believe the Genesis account that God created the heavens and the earth, or you believe they somehow evolved out of random chance.
Looking at the account of Genesis 1:1 for just a brief moment, the words in that first verse are quite remarkable, and they are indicative of the incredible mind of God. God says in that first verse everything that could have been said about creation, and He says it in such few terms. The statement is precise and concise, almost beyond human composition.
A well-known scientist named Herbert Spencer died in 1903. He discovered that all reality, all reality, all that exists in the universe can be contained in five categories: time, force, action, space, and matter. Herbert Spencer said everything that exists, exists in one of those categories: time, force, action, space, and matter.
Now think about that: time, force, action, space, and matter. That is a logical sequence. And then with that in your mind, listen to Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning” – that’s time – “God” – that’s force – “created” – that’s action – “the heavens” – that’s space – “and the earth,” that’s matter. Everything that could be said about everything that exists is said in that first verse. Now either you believe that, or you don’t. You either believe that that verse is accurate and God is the force, or you believe that God is not the force that created everything. And then you’re left with chance or randomness or coincidence.
This is more than just a secondary issue. Someone wrote a letter to the president of the Promise Keepers – and we are not particularly singling them out, except that the illustration is so clear because of the response they wrote – asking them about their stand on the creation issue. The assistant to the president responded with this statement, quote: “You need to know that the ministry of Promise Keepers takes no stand on issues like this. In fact, we specifically try to avoid such debates. Our efforts are designed to bring men together based on the historically essential doctrines of orthodox Christianity as represented by our Statement of Faith, or to focus on things that unite the body of Christ, instead of those which tend to divide it. “Since different churches and individual Christians hold varying views about creation, it is one of those things we believe falls under the category of secondary doctrines, secondary doctrines such as spiritual gifts, eternal security, and the rapture, et cetera. In short, when it comes to subjects like creation, we believe Christians need to extend grace to each other as summed up in the statement, ‘In essentials unity, and non-essentials liberty, and all things charity.’” End quote.
Now that’s a pretty aggressive statement about the secondary nature of a belief in the Genesis account, isn’t it? It doesn’t address the issue that if you don’t believe the book of Genesis, you’re not believing the Bible. We are not trying to throw aspersions on that organization, but simply to say that this is what is generally the view of the majority of Christian people. Whether the world was created by God or evolved by chance without cause has been debated a long time, it’s been debated since Darwin. But the debate comes down to this: either you believe the Bible, or you don’t; either you believe the book of Genesis or you don’t.
And if you don’t believe the book of Genesis, then what do you believe? Well, in most cases you believe in naturalistic evolution. There would be some who would be theistic evolutionists who would say, “Well, God sort of launched it all, but then evolution took over.” And they would deny that the Genesis account is accurate in saying that God created in six, 24-hour days. Progressive creationists would essentially say the same thing, that creation did not occur as Genesis says, but rather it was over long ages, and God sort of progressively injecting Himself into the process did some creative work alongside the evolutionary process. Those views – theistic evolution, progressive creationism also deny the straightforward text of the book of Genesis.
So we say again, you either believe Genesis, or you don’t. If you don’t, you have some options. You can be a theistic evolutionist, or you can be a naturalistic evolutionist. Among Christians, there are some who are theistic evolutionists; but among those who make up the unbelieving world, they are naturalistic evolutionists. And so, they are left with the incredible notion that nobody times nothing equals everything.
Douglas Kelly, who has written on this subject with great insight, says, “There is no doubt that the biblical vision of man as God’s creature whom He made in His own image has had the most powerful effect on human dignity, on liberty, on the expansion of the rights of the individual, on political systems, on the development of medicine, on every other area of culture. How different,” he writes, “from the humanistic viewpoint of man as merely an evolved creature, not made in God’s image, because there is no God. Such a premise has enabled the Marxist totalitarian states conveniently to liquidate millions of their citizens because of the assumption that there is no transcendent person in whose image those citizens are created, no being to give those citizens a dignity and a right to exist beyond what the state determines.” End quote.
This point has been explored at length by Baron Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn of Austria, who may be the century’s greatest scholar on questions of liberty and totalitarianism. He has written a very important book called Leftism Revisited: From De Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot, which deals with those issues, and in it he shows that apart from the belief that mankind is created in the image of a transcendent God, the divinely derived dignity and liberty of human beings completely disappears. He says, “For the genuine materialists there is no fundamental, only a gradual evolutionary difference between a man and a pest, a noxious insect.” End quote.
And his conclusion is: “The issue is between man created in the image of God and the termite in human form.” He’s right.
We have two options: either we evolved out of the slime and can be explained only in a materialistic sense – meaning that we are made of nothing but the material – or we have been created by God and made in His image in a heavenly pattern. And the debate is not just biological, it’s not just biological, it’s moral, and it’s spiritual. The debate gets to questions about man’s dignity, about man’s nature in the image of the heavenly pattern, the image of God. It asks questions about the issue of control: “Who is sovereign in the universe? Who is in control?” It asks, “Is there a universal judge? Is there a universal moral law? Is there a lawgiver? Are people to live according to God’s standard? Will there be a final assessment of how men and women live? Is there a final judgment?”
You see, these are the questions that evolution was invented to avoid. Evolution was invented to kill the God of the Bible, not because evolutionists and materialists and naturalists didn’t like God as Creator, but because they didn’t want God as Judge. Evolution was invented in order to kill the God of the Bible, to eliminate the Lawgiver, to eliminate the inviolability of His law, the binding standard for human thought and conduct. Evolution was invented to do away from universal morality and universal guilt and universal accountability. Evolution was invented to eliminate the judge and leave people free to do whatever they want without guilt and without consequences.
If we just kind of summed up these two alternatives, the materialistic view would say, “Ultimate reality is impersonal matter. No God exists.” The Christian view says, “Ultimate reality is an infinite, personal, loving God.”
The materialistic view says, “The universe was created by chance, without any ultimate purpose.”
The Christian view says, The universe was lovingly created by God for a specific purpose.
The materialistic view says, “Man is the product of impersonal time, plus chance, plus matter. As a
result, no man has eternal value or dignity nor any meaning other than that which is subjectively derived.
The Christian view says, “Man was created by God in His image, and is loved by God.
Because of this, all men are endowed with eternal value and dignity. Their value is not derived ultimately from themselves, but from the source transcending themselves, God Himself.”
The materialistic view of morality says, “Morality is defined by every individual according to his own views and interests. Morality is ultimately relative because every person is the final authority for his own views.”
The Christian view says, “Morality is defined by God and immutable because it is based on God’s unchanging, holy character.”
The materialistic view says about the afterlife, “The afterlife brings eternal annihilation, or personal extinction, for everyone.”
The Christian view says, “The afterlife involves either eternal life with God, or eternal separation from Him; either the glories of heaven, or the terrors of hell.”