The Book of Beginnings

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”  Genesis 1:1

The word “Genesis” means “beginning” or “origin”.  The book of Genesis is believed to have been written by Moses.  We don’t know when God created the earth.  It is estimated by Bible scholars that man was created B.C. 10,000 or earlier (Unger’s Bible Dictionary).  Since man was created on the sixth day of the week when God made the world, it would logically follow that the world would have been created also in B.C. 10,000 or earlier.  We assume that a day was originally created as a 24-hour period of time with day and night somewhat equally divided.  I know that some people think that day and night were shorter periods of time because of the many years that the first people on earth lived (Adam lived 930 years-Genesis 5:5), but it doesn’t make sense that God would change the length of a day after the first millennium or two.  (However, in Matthew 24:22, Jesus tells us that in the tribulation, the days will be shortened, otherwise, no one would survive.)  If someone asked me to explain how those folks lived such long lives, I would tell them that I don’t have to tell them.  I take it on faith.  To be honest, I am glad that we don’t live that long.  Seventy or eighty years is enough time to know that old age is not for wimps!

Moses lived thousands of years after creation, being born about B.C. 1520 as estimated, thus, how could he write in such detail as he did in the book of Genesis.  There is only one answer:  God gave him the words to write.  Of course, Moses lived during the periods of the Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, accounts which he also wrote.  In these books, he could write from firsthand experience.  To those who do not believe the Biblical account of creation, but rather in the theory of evolution or some other pseudo-scientific manner in which the world came together, I would say that it takes more faith to believe that man came from some primordial slime which somehow knew to develop into men, into women, into giraffes, into bugs, and into every other creature that has ever lived on this planet than by the miracle of a Supreme Being.  If man evolved from some unknown substance, how did the evolutionary process know when to stop evolving?  And from where did this primordial slime come?

Nine beginnings are recorded in Genesis:  1. the earth as man’s habitation, 2. the human race, 3. redemptive revelation, 4. the human family, 5. godless civilization, 6. nations, 7. human sin, 8. human languages, and 9. the covenant people.  Genesis also records ten family histories:  1. Adam, 2. Noah, 3. Noah’s sons, Shem, 4. Japhet, and 5. Ham.  Number 6. was Terah, Abraham’s father, 7. Ishmael, Abraham’s son by Hagar, the Egyptian handmade, 8. Isaac, Abraham’s son by his wife, Sarah, 9. Esau, and 10. Jacob, both sons of Isaac.  The descendants of Noah’s son, Shem, through whose line Christ came, were those who populated Israel and Syria (the Semites).  Japheth’s descendants were those who spread across Iran, Russia, France, Afghanistan, India, Germany, and Great Britain.  The descendants of Ham, Noah’s youngest son, became the peoples of Iraq, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Libya.  Those in Islam claim Ishmael as the promised son of Abraham and not Isaac.  And we know that Jacob, Esau’s brother and Isaac’s son became the father of the twelve tribes of Israel.  These were all real people who lived real lives and demonstrated by their lives that God would have to send a Savior in order for men and women to be forgiven of their sins.

God intended for Adam and Eve to be obedient to Him, but, as the omniscient God over all, He knew that men and women could never be perfectly obedient, thus He prepared in the beginning to send His Son, Jesus, to pay the penalty for the sin of all people.  He chose to do this as Ephesians 1:4 tells us “before the foundation of the world”.  God is very far-sighted.  He knows the end from the beginning and the beginning from the end.  He doesn’t measure time like we do even though He created time as we know it.  God is not limited by the laws that govern the physical universe.  He was the One who made the laws.  He is “Elohim”, “the Strong One” who is the providential ruler over all men and women and controls the operations of nature.  No matter what the followers of the god of “climate change” believe, God is the only One who controls the weather.  He sends rain on the just and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45) and causes the sun to rise every morning and set every night.  He is the LORD God of all creation, the sovereign LORD over all, the maker of heaven and earth, and the One who forgives and blesses.  There is none like Him, and He deserves all praise and honor.  “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you” (I Peter 1:3-4).  Why would anyone desire to claim that they came from a slime pit when they could be a child of the King?