The book of Genesis gives the context for the whole of the rest of the bible. Every important doctrine and every important human development has it's beginnings in Genesis 1 - 11. If one does not appreciate this, one could find oneself having beliefs which are inconsistent when scriptures in the bible as a whole are considered.

So, let's take a short look at Genesis, Chapter 1.

In Genesis 1:1 - Genesis 2:3 God explains to the Israelites through Moses how He made the earth and the heavens and everything in the earth and in the seas in six days. The straight-forward reading of these verses is that each day is of 24 hours and the geneologies in the bible put creation as being about 6,000 years ago.

Before we look at Genesis 1 in detail I should perhaps consider the Hebrew word 'yom' which is translated 'day' in our English bibles.

Firstly, the word 'yom' in the original Hebrew language, when used with 'evening' and/or 'morning' and/or when used with a number, anywhere in the bible, is always a 24 hour day!

I should also mention that if God had meant 'yom' to be 'long ago' or meaning a long timescale there are many words and word constructs that He could have used.

For instance if God had used 'yamim', the plural of 'yom', either on it's own or with 'evening' and 'morning', then it would have meant 'days of evening and morning'. In other words 'many days' and so could have been a vast age.
Another word God could have used is 'qedem' which would have transmitted the thought 'days of old', again suggesting a vast time period.
One other word that God could have used is 'olam' which if added to 'days' would also have meant 'days of old'.

This is by no means exaustive but just serves to show that if God had meant the days of Genesis 1 to be long time periods He could have done this very easily and unambiguously and would not have confused the Israelites!

Despite this, many people believe God was short of language skills and used 'yom' in a manner where He did not intend the context He gave to be taken into account!

If we ignore the sentence construction and the context in which the word 'yom' is found, then 'yom' can mean a 24 hour day; or cover a time period longer than 24 hours, like in my father's day (although the event referred to within "my father's day" can be minutes long!); or it can mean a time less than 12 hours (daytime). Some people want to ignore the context and have 'yom' in Genesis 1 to be longer than 24 hours, perhaps millenia. Others like some theologians in Martin Luther's day think that God being omnipotent would not need 24 hours to put some trees on a minor planet in a backwater of the universe and so 'yom' must be less that 24 hours; ie., minutes or seconds! If the context is to be ignored then all three viewpoints are equally valid, of course, and you'd have to do this everywhere else in the bible!

But the natural way to understand the meaning of 'yom' or any other word is according to the context of the sentence that contains it. Without a clear statement elsewhere in the document there is no reason to think otherwise! And the context of day being used with evening and morning and with a number means that these are 24 hour days!

Now let's go back to the actual creation information in Genesis 1. A close look at the beginning (Genesis) according to God reveals a few things that SOME people may miss!

GEN 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

At the start God sets up the reader and tells her/him what He is going to talk about.

We are going to get information on how He made the heavens and the earth.

GEN 1:2 Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep. God's Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.

The translations all say it was without form or formless (same thing) and empty or void (same thing) so it seems to be the concensus that the world was in an unfinished state as first made by God. (He also made us in His image and that's how we do things too! We get the raw ball of clay and then fashion it into whatever our creative talents bring to mind!)

We see here that at the beginning of creation God had made a raw world covered with water and would use that as the basis for the rest of creation. And, in Genesis 1, verse 3, God creates the next thing He needed in the sequence; light.

Gen 1:3-5 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Notice that there was darkness but no light. God in making light and setting the earth spinning made the first day. This is totally contrary to the idea of billions of years, as night and day should have been going on all that supposed time! But this was the first day!

Next, we see Him moving the water around to make 'space' for other things.

GEN 1:6-8 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

This is interesting in that first we see God making 'space' after he made matter (the earth)! Secondly, we see that there is enough water over the surface of the earth to use some of it to surround the expance/heaven/space. You'll see the significance of this a little later. It's obviously not a small amount of water!

Meanwhile let's look at what God does on Day 3.

GEN 1:9-13 Then God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land “earth,” and the gathering of the water he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them"; and it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, the third day.

So God made seedlings, trees and plants and all other flora at all stages of development before there was any life in the oceans! God's version of creation we see is fundamentally different from that of the "big bang evolutionists" where the first life starts in the oceans. The two are not compatible. There is no possibility of a 'primordial soup' in God's creation. Spontaneous creation of life from non-life has been proven to be impossible anyway (information cannot create itself), and you will see even more elements of incompatibility with evolution later on!

Now let's continue with Day 4.

GEN 1:14-19 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

So God makes the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day of creation after the earth was made on Day 1 and God says the trees were in existence before there was a sun to warm the earth. Only by one day I know, but nevertheless this order of events does not fit with evolutionary thinking! According to cosmic evolutionary theory the sun was made before the earth and there was no life on the earth till 1 billion years after it was made! The big bang and biblical creation are not compatible! Also, if these days are eons of time, how did the trees survive?

You should also notice that the expanse/heaven is where God places the Sun, moon and stars. And therefore, the water that God divided from being over the earth, He placed on the outside of the universe! That had to be water which was many light years deep to completely enclose a universe 87 billion light years across, in all directions! That detail does not fit with cosmic evolution either!

One other observation about this day. Since God creates the sun, moon and stars on day 4 (Exo 20:11) this means that those who believe in billions of years and also say they believe God, need a theory for what destroyed and eliminated the 'universe' that existed before God made this one!

Selah!

GEN 1:20-23 Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.” God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

Another interesting twist compared to the evolution myth is that birds and fish are made together on the same day and also two days after the trees are made! This is interesting because the trees and plants had to survive those two days without any polinating birds. Now if this was a 48 hour stint we don't have a problem, but if it was thousands or even millions of years?!

GEN 1:24-25 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

In the next stage of God's creation, He creates all the land animals and creeping things; insects, etc.; on Day 6.

So according to God, dinosaurs are not created until Day 6 with all the other land animals. As I believe God that all animals were vegetarians this is not a problem but if you are a theistic evolutionist who sees these as eons of time I wonder how you would explain these animals being made with man on Day 6? God passed all the kinds of animals He made on Day 6 before Adam for him to name them. This would have included dinosaurs!

Finally on Day 6, God creates mankind.

GEN 1:26,31 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. ....
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. ....
God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

So Adam and Eve are made on Day 6 and God says it's all very good. If everything that God made was created in those six days, as I understand it, about 6000 years ago, there's no problem. Archeologists tell us there are thorn bushes found lower in the fossil record that dinosaurs and men higher than dinosaurs. So according to this men sinned and thorns came into being before dinosaurs died out! And, according to this, men survived longer than dinosaurs probably because of their intelligence! The fossil record agrees with the bible record!

On the other hand, if there had been a world with death and disease and mayhem before Adam even turned up, how was this good? If Adam was standing on a graveyard of fossil bones with cancers and arthritis and with death red in tooth and claw all around him, how can God then tell Adam that this is not just good; it's very good? And then one has to believe that God has the audacity to blame the existence of death; plus thorns on plants; on Adam, even though they are in the fossil record of millions of years before he arrived, supposedly!

Obviously nothing in the last paragraph fits with a good God whose word is truth and who says what He means and means what He says. And it portrays a fossil record that is at variance with the bibilical record. It calls God a liar.

It's actually the paragraph in "red" that is wrong and it's GOD in his word who is telling the truth! God does not lie!

Oh, by the way, if you use a KJV bible and you think that God told Adam to replenish the earth which means 're-fill', I should point out that word usages have changed a lot since 1611. In those days replenish meant 'fill' and the original Hebrew word indeed means 'fill'. There was no pre-Adamic civilisation!

In this article I've concentrated on Genesis 1 but in finishing I'd like to give three quotes from other parts of the bible. Firstly....

EXO 20:8-11 “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.

Here we read one of the laws set out in the Old Law Covenant that God made with Israel, and see that it is based on the creation events in Genesis 1.

With His own finger God wrote that He made everything in the universe in six days. We see the events of those days described in Genesis 1! God confirms that it's not a myth or a metaphor or poetry! And He confirms that there was nothing in existence before those six days!

Logically, if the days of creation are thousands of years or millions of years then this command's days have to be of a similar length! How is Israel supposed to do this? God would have to let them believe a lie and think that they were only 24 hour days! Not my God! His word is truth and the days have to be 24 hour days.

And secondly.....

Rom 8:19-22 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

You will notice the bible tells us that the whole of creation is waiting to come out of bondage to death and decay with us, when we receive the glory of the children of God. So we know from this that the second Adam, Jesus, paid for it's freedom when He paid for ours! This could only be the case if the whole of creation was put into bondage by the first Adam when he sinned!

If the creation is not suffering from death and corruption because of the first Adam's sin but rather it's death and decay is normal and good, then it cannot be rescued through the atonement of the second Adam. Thus we know therefore, that death came to ALL of creation when Adam sinned; and therefore no death or disease or carnivorous animals existed before Adam sinned!
IT WAS ALL GOOD! VERY GOOD!

And finally...

MAR 10:6-9 “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

In this incident in Jesus' life He tells us that Adam and Eve were created and the institution of marriage was made "at the beginning of creation". If the worlds were made a few thousand years ago, with Adam made on Day 6, then this makes sense. But, if the worlds were made billions of years ago, with mankind coming on the scene a few thousand or even 200 thousand years ago, then Adam would be at the tail end of earth's life, not the beginning!

So my conclusion is this - I believe that God is good, means what He says and made the earth and the heavens in six, 24 hour days, about 6000 years ago, just like He wrote, and Jesus said, and Holy Spirit inspired!

....

Best wishes for Grace and The Peace of Jesus.

Attlee.

Creation-VS-Evolution 1 Click Here
Creation-VS-Evolution 2 Click Here
Mt St Hellens Eruption Fallout Click Here
Creation videos- Surtsey, etc. Click Here
Fossil Thorns and other things (Video) Click Here
Creation Snippets on YOUTUBE (Videos) Click Here
Cosmology, Constants & The Big Bang Click Here
Seeing Distant Stars In A young Universe See 'Chapter 5' Here
Sauropod Dinosaurs Sculpted by Earlier Men Click Here
Historical Support For Dinosaurs Pt 1 Click Here




Article Index