Expert: Marilyn - 2/24/2004

Question
Hi Ms Marilyn,
I have read about 3 books on the creation account. Do you believe in a young earth (about 6000 years) or in an old earth (millions of years) where human history spans only about 6000 years on the old earth? This leads to another question: Do you believe in a literal six days of creation?
I know this is a complex subject, and you can answer as briefly as you like.
I am teaching 17 years old students in a secular school. I will like to discuss evolution/creation with my students.

Thank you.

Wes


Answer
Hello Wes;

The September 4th, 2006, issue of Time magazine has a very clear explanation of a theory I'd seen in Scientific American, but hadn't understood well enough to talk about it.

The article is titled:  "Let There be Light," it was written by Michael D. Lemonick, and discusses the dark universe after the inital "big bang" of light.  This fits exactly with what the Bible teaches!  The sun and stars do not come to life as brilliant sources of light until the fourth day in the Genesis account and this new theory agrees.  The article explains what scientists think was going on during that dark period and clearly says an initial burst of light was followed by a period of darkness.

I believe you can access this article at the Time magazine web site:  www.time.com

Hope all is well in your part of the world,

Marilyn

Greetings Wes;

Sorry, I forgot to answer your question about 6000 years of human history.  I think the "in the Image of God beings," such as ourselves, have been around longer than 6000 years.  Some Bible scholars arrive at the 6000 years of human history by counting the generations in the various genealogies.  As far as I know, that's the only indicator of the length of human history in the Bible.  

I think it is an error to assume that each person named in a genealogy represents every generation that has ever lived.  It is my belief that each person named was a "father" in the sense Abraham is the father of all those who live by faith.  In other words, these named represent the persons who stood out.  

For example, in my family my great-grandfather was a railroad policeman back in the 1800's.  My grandfather was a pioneer who founded a school.  My father served in World War II.  All of these men would be named as fathers because they were leaders who accomplished something.  But if my brother never does anything more important than work 9 to 5 at a non-descript job he would be skipped in a biblical genealogy.  All the horse theives and scoundrels would probably be skipped (though Jesus has a couple equivalent questionable characters in His genealogy).  Even if the horse thieves etc. sired children, they would not be considered the father of anybody.  However, if the son of a horse thief managed to overcome his circumstances and achieve noble leadership, then he would become a father.

Jesus also uses this general term of "father" when speaking to the Pharisees.  At one point He told them their father was satan!  Abraham is the father of the entire Jewish race.  So, it's my belief human history spans much farther than 6000 years and only the persons of significance or of noble character are named as fathers in the biblical genealogies.

Sorry about the ommission.

Marilyn

Below you will find a thorough answer to your question.  Here's the short answer:  I do not accept the young earth theory.  I do believe in a "literal" six days of creation, the issue is how is how a "day" is defined.  

And I have to reject the evolutionists theory of how everything got here.  Their god is chance and their faith in chance is devout, but chance is a very, very poor god and certainly no reasoned explanation of how everything got here.  

Lately, a new theory gives the god of chance, who was beginning to lose adherents, a new lease on life.  This theory states that our universe is only one of multitudes out there, somewhere.  Therefore, our universe is still possible by chance because there are so many others--it's just one of the multitudes of combinations.  Of course, there is no way to prove this theory because there is no way to see beyond our universe to any other, if they existed.  No proof, but the believers in the god of chance get to keep their faith and pretend they are also retaining their intellect.  It is important to remember that this belief in the god of chance is every bit as much a religious explanation as any other religious explanation for existence, even though it's adherents rarely recognize this truth about their own position

The strict 24-hour day, six-day week of creation theory is equally untenable by the twins reason or logic.  Not that God couldn't do it that way if He had chosen to, but that the evidence of the things He created indicates He didn't.  God is not a liar!

Please bear with me as I give you a thorough explanation of what I have learned.

First let us establish two foundations. One, God cannot lie, Hebrews 6:18.   Everything He says is true.  If you've seen the movie “Bruce Almighty” where Jim Carrey is trying to fool Morgan Freeman, who is playing God, and changes the number of fingers he has up when God says he has seven and he lifts his hand in triumph only to see he indeed has seven fingers up—all on one hand, then you have an idea about how what God says is true, no matter what.  He speaks it and that's the way it is, end of discussion.  

His creation is also true.  Because He created it, it is a reflection of Him.  “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse,” Romans 1:20.  See also Colossians 1:16.

We know God is a Triune Being, the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.  The universe is also a triune creation of unified threes:  
Time:  past present future
Space:  height width depth
Matter: solid liquid gas

Man is a triune being composed of body, soul (which is the mind, will and emotions) and spirit.  Man possesses three abilities which are reflections of his Creator:  thought, word and deed.

In I John 1:5 John tells us:  “God is Light.”  Light is both particle and wave as God is now both Spirit and Man and will ever be.  Light is one substance with three properties:  actinic—light that is neither seen nor felt:  The Father; luminiferous—light that is both seen and felt:  The Son; calorific—light that is felt but not seen:  The Holy Spirit.

Two, God has given His divine mandate for us to have dominion over the world and that includes the universe, Genesis 1:28. Having dominion is more than farming and hunting.  His divine mandate includes intellectual dominion, a scientific Magna Charta.  We are to come to understand our universe and to achieve mastery of all its various elements.   

If you agree that God cannot lie and that God has commanded us to understand our environment as part of having mastery over it, then we can agree that whatever geological or archeological evidence human beings may find in the earth, it's real. God did not plant old bones just to make life interesting for us. The issue isn't whether or not there were dinosaurs or Neanderthals, the issue is what human beings do with this information.

How do we interpret the information we discover about the world and the universe? And how does it all fit together?

We must view scientific information through the lens of the Bible in order to find truth. Also, we must take the scientific information we discover and apply it to the Bible. Leaving out the Bible leads to error and leaving out science can also lead to error in our understanding of the Bible. Scientific truth and Biblical truth should agree, truth agrees with truth.  God is after all The Great Scientist.

However, if scientific "truth" does not agree, then the error is in how the information has been interpreted or how the information has been gathered or some other human mistake, the error does not lie with the Bible. In the face of scientific truth, such as the existence of dinosaur and Neanderthal bones and the witness of vast amounts of time passing in the geological record, we have to recognize that human understanding and interpretation of the Bible might be in error. Again, the error does not lie with the Bible, but in human interpretation of it.

Let's examine Genesis 1 verse by verse.

Genesis 1:1 establishes some very important facts, some of the most important facts contained in the entire Bible.

The first fact is that there was a beginning! Until the 1960's scientists believed the universe had always existed in its present form as the ancient Greek philosophers taught.  But in the 1960's evidence of the “big bang” was discovered proving our universe did have a beginning.   

Fact 1: The universe had a beginning.

"In the beginning, God . . ." The Name translated God is Elohim. Elohim is a plural noun in form, but with a singular meaning indicating a minimum of three persons in one. So, right from the start, with His Name, God establishes He is a triune God--Three in One. El is the prefix meaning strength. The "ohim" part of Elohim means "faithfulness, to bind Oneself with an oath." So, the Name Elohim means strength and faithfulness--faithfulness beyond anything we humans expect of one another, solid reliability that will never fail and the strength to make whatever He promises come to pass.  Therefore, with His Name, God reveals His universe is not only true, but it is also rational, it will function according to Laws He has written into it and it will always do what He has created it to do—it will be faithful as He is faithful.

Here is another difficult concept for us human beings to get around: God's Word is a Person of Deity. He is the Person of God who created everything, except Adam and Eve, who were formed. "And God said," appears seven times in action creating something. Seven is the divine number for perfection, which leads us to the next fact: And God saw that it was very good! God declares all of it, including man as very good. It was not only good, but it was very good.  

God the Father is implicit; the Son appears in verse 3 as the Word of God, see John 1; and the Holy Spirit appears in verse 2.  All Three Persons of God appear in the first three verses of Genesis.

Fact 2: God is a triune Being, who IS strength and faithfulness.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
God created the material universe and everything that is in it. Nothing in it was created by chance.

There is a word in the Hebrew text that is left out of the English translation. This word is "et." If you put that word back into the verse it would read, "In the beginning God created the et heavens and the earth." The "et" is the “all inclusive,” “the everything that exists.” It's the same idea Jesus conveyed in Revelation when He said, "I am the Alpha and the Omega." God created everything from A - Z. In the word "et", the Alef and the Tav in Hebrew, is the creation of the angels as well as the material universe. The Bible gives no indication of how long angels were around before the material universe was created. That being the case, there is a HUGE amount of time in this verse.

Fact 3: God created the everything there is:  the material universe, every atom and particle, the angels and everything else. Nothing in it happened by chance.

Now we get to Genesis 1 verse 2 which throws the reader for a loop. "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

The first books of Genesis employ a type of story telling called "oriental" story telling. In oriental story telling the same story is told two or more times, each time from a different point of view or with different details. John uses this type of story telling in the book of Revelation as he retells his vision of the Tribulation, and even the entire history of the world, from different points of view. The book of Daniel does this, but it's done with a series of dreams and visions about the same thing that occur over time. Genesis does this with the story of the creation of humanity, a brief telling in Genesis 1 and a more detailed account focusing on the creation of Adam and Eve in chapter 2.  

A similar thing is happening here with Genesis 1: 2. Verse 2 is a fact that is going to be left out of the story that begins with verse 3. What is that fact? That fact is that the earth BECAME formless and empty.  My NIV Bible indicates an alternative translation in a footnote:  "was" could also be translated "became."  I choose “became” because other evidence in the Bible indicates the earth was not created to be formless and empty.

Isaiah 45:18 says that God did not create the earth to be formless and empty, but He created it to be inhabited.  The question then is:  How did the earth become formless and empty? The answer is in Isaiah 14 beginning with verse 12 and in Ezekiel 28 beginning with verse 12. This is the story of the cherub (for description of cherubim, see Ezekiel 1) called the "morning star" or Lucifer, who rebelled against God and was cast down to the earth. Jesus also testified to this event when He said that He saw satan cast out of Heaven like a lightning bolt, Luke 10:18.

In the Old Testament passages we find that Lucifer was in charge of the garden of God, Eden, before his rebellion.  He is called “morning star” a name later reserved for the Lord Jesus.  This, and other portions of the passages in Isaiah and Ezekiel, reveal satan was once a highly favored angel, in fact, he is the only angel mentioned in the Bible to ever be anointed.  We discover in these two passages that Lucifer became full of himself, probably because of the anointing which gave him more power and wisdom than any other angel ever created.  He tried incited a rebellion involving 1/3 of all God's angels and attempted to overthrow God, Revelation 12:4.   After his rebellion he was cast down to the earth and it is my belief that when he crashed into the earth it had a physical effect--specifically, the earth became formless and empty.

Scientists tell us that a catastrophic meteor strike caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.   See the article in the December 2003 issue of Scientific American.

So, in Genesis 1:1 & 2 God establishes certain facts: verse one, facts that He wants made clear right from the start and verse two, a fact that He is going to leave out of the creation story that begins with verse 3.
He leaves out this fact of the earth being made formless and empty and how it got that way because it would change the focus of the creation story from what He wants us to learn, primarily that He saw His creation as “good,” to a focus on satan and things that went wrong.  

As is typical of God, He took the event of satan's rebellion and expulsion as an opportunity to create something new.  And He viewed this new thing as “very good.”  Satan is an irrelevance, except for the useful provision of a “choice” for Adam and Eve.  Adam had dominion of the earth and the universe.  He had unique and wondrous fellowship with God, giving him access and power in the spirit world as well.  Satan was not important until Adam made him important.

Fact 4:  The earth, God's garden called “Eden,” became formless and void at some point, at that point, life that had existed previously was wiped out.

The story of the creation of the universe begins with verse 3, the FIRST day.  Notice:  the “first day” of creation is mentioned in verse 3!  Therefore, it must be the “first day!”  Another proof that verse 2 has to be a fact taken out of the main story which must apply sometime after the first day.  

On the first day God separated from Himself a point and into that point He spoke these words, "Let there be light," or “Light Be,” and outward from that point exploded the universe; an event scientists call "the big bang."  God had to separate from Himself a point because before He spoke these words there was nothing except Heaven—there was no material universe.  

This "big bang" was finely tuned. Everything about it was perfect. Every element involved from the rate of expansion to the heat produced to whatever factor you care to name were perfectly orchestrated. If one tiny thing had gone wrong the universe would not have been able to support life.

For example, if the energy of the big bang had been different by 10 to the 120th power, then there would be no life anywhere in the universe. Another example, life, as we know it, is based on carbon. To form carbon
a molecule of radioactive beryllium must absorb a nucleus of helium and build to carbon. Radioactive Beryllium exists for only 10 to the -16 seconds. The only way that carbon can be formed is if the required energies of excitation are matched exactly. And God managed this perfectly, of course, resulting in carbon being the fourth most abundant element in the universe. If there had been the slightest mistake in this, then the universe would be full of hydrogen and helium with no life anywhere. There are many other examples of how perfectly the energy, heat and rate of expansion of the "big bang" were orchestrated that reveal the work of a Master Designer.

One person described the precision of the "big bang" as comparable to the precision of an archer standing on one edge of the universe, shooting an arrow toward a target on the other edge of the universe and hitting the bullseye. An event like this does not happen by chance!

“…but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed Heir of All Things, and through Whom He made the universe,” Hebrews 1:2.  God created the universe by the power of His Word, Who is a Person of Himself, His Son.  As scientists have learned, the words “Light Be,” contain a vast amount of information and activity—an entire universe.  The Bible, as typical of it, reduces what would be for us a gigantic scientific explanation to two elegant words that sum it all up succinctly and perfectly.

Fact 5:  The perfectly tuned universe was created by the Word of God.

Now we come to another sticking point for Christians:  time.  Time as we know it is based on the rotations of the earth around the sun.  We've artificially divided it into 24-hour days which are actually slightly shorter than 24 hours.  The earth actually takes 365 and a quarter days to circle the sun.  Time, as we know it, is a construct of humanity, a agreement we've made with each other.  Even the second which is agreed to be 1/31,556,925.9747 of a year is inaccurate because the earth's rotation speeds and slows as affected by the pull of the moon, see Scientific American March 2004 issue.  The “24-hour” day is such a part of our existence that in reading Genesis 1 many Christians cannot define a “day” any other way!  Yet, an enormous amount of time, from the human point of view, passes from the moment when God said, "Let there be light," until the moment when He calls the light day and the darkness night.

Some Christians want to hold creation to a six 24-hour day OR a six "thousand-year day" week using the verses "a day is like a thousand years to the Lord,” II Peter 3:8, as the basis.   But the Bible does not support a 24-hour day for creation week. The word "day" in Genesis is a word that can mean, the daylight hours, a 24-hour day, OR it can also mean an era:  a period of time which can be days, weeks or years in length in which certain events happen. For instance, "the Day of the Lord," is never taken as a 24-hour day or even a thousand years, but the phrase is taken to refer to a specific period of time in which God will demonstrate His power in judgment upon the earth.  This “Day of the Lord” will be days, weeks or even years long.

We even use the word “day” in this manner.  We might say something like, “That never happened in my father's day.”  

The Psalmist in Psalm 90:4 and Peter in II Peter 3:8 both are trying to convey an idea of what time is like for God compared to us. They said a day is LIKE a thousand years, they didn't say a day IS a thousand years. Peter and the Psalmist grab the phrase "a thousand years" because it helps give the idea of a very long time, but the number isn't completely mind boggling like "a billion years" would be--it is a number that the human mind can accept as huge, but can also understand.

We do the same thing.  We might say something like, “well, it wasn't like that in my father's day.”  And we could say the "day of the Romans," which would refer to the whole time that the Roman empire existed and everyone would understand we were actually referring to an era.

In the passages in Isaiah and Ezekiel where we learn about satan's rebellion and his future, God compresses the events into a very few verses, but these events cover an immense period of time from before the creation of the material universe in which we live to the end of the Tribulation when satan will finally be chained and on display for people to see. These verses give us a glimpse of what time is like for God. For Him there is only one gigantic NOW.

The first segment of time in which God separated from Himself a point and spoke into that point, "Light be," thereby creating light was, from His point of view, one "day."  

The sun, the stars and the moon are not even mentioned as having been created until the fourth day!  If these earthly time-keepers were not even in existence yet, how can "day" here in the early part of Genesis s even begin to refer to a 24-hour period of time?

How vain and self-centered of us to assume that a "day," especially when there is no earth formed yet to define a "day" in our terms, is a 24-hour period for God! It is a distinctly humanistic concept to assume ourselves the center of anything, even time! I doubt many Christians realize how humanistic they are being when they insist that "day" be defined in human terms in Genesis.  No, a day in Genesis, until the creation of man, is defined on God's terms, not ours!

Christians have been trapped by humanism before.  When Galileo announced that the earth rotates around the sun, the church fathers were instantly incensed.  Copernicus, wisely understanding the consequences of his research, did not permit his work to be released while he lived because he mathematically proved the earth rotates around the sun, but Galileo, with the invention of the telescope visually proved Copernicus's discovery and because he was brash enough to make it known publicly, he faced potential ex-communication.  The teaching of the day went that man was the crown and the center of God's creation, therefore the sun and the planets revolved around the earth.  Today, such a notion seems foolish, but yet we have Christians insisting God created the universe according to our definition of a “day!”

Defining “day” in Genesis 1 in our terms places humanity at the center of time.   So, just as in Galileo's day when God, symbolized by the sun, is the center of our existence, He is, today, also the center of time, especially in Genesis 1 where no human beings even exist yet!  We are not the center of time.  We're not the center of anything—God is there.

Even in our material universe time is relative.  God said, "Let there be light," and light WAS. BOOM. Light WAS. Changes in gravity and changes in velocity at which an observor travels change the rate at which time flows. The flow of time at a location with high gravity or high velocity is slower than at another location with lower gravity. Time is different on every planet and at every location in the universe! Time is different even for astronauts in orbit around the earth!

Light is the clock of the universe. The frequency of light waves are the timepieces of the universe. The echo of the "big bang" remains as cosmic background radiation. As space stretches outward from that point where God spoke, "Let there be light," light waves lengthen and time slows. Our view of how long ago the "big bang" occurred is different from God's view of it from the beginning when time was moving faster. We're looking back at stretched light waves, in Genesis He was looking at light waves leaving that point into which He spoke.

What is time to a God who can speak, what in the Hebrew is two words, "Light BE," and create this wonderful stuff called light from which everything else is made? What is time to such a Being? As He stands at that beginning point watching light flow outward from Him, He sees a day. We look back and we see billions and billions of years. Light sped away from Him at a fantastic rate, we see the stretched waves and see a fantastic stretch of time.

How vain of us to think that a day for God is a 24-hour period! Our concept of time is defined by the rotations of the earth and its movement through the universe. How self-centered to think that time as we experience it on earth defines time for everyone else and for everywhere else! We are the created beings living on the world God gave us, we cannot dictate to Him anything.  Especially not how He will experience time!

Look at Jesus' remarks to John the Apostle in Revelation when He tells John that He will be coming soon. That was 2000 years ago. Even if Jesus delays another thousand years, it will still be soon from God's point of view. Jesus wasn't lying when He said He would come soon.  In Revelation, once again restored to His place in Divinity, He's speaking from a different point of view.

Light did not directly create matter, but supplied the radiant energy from which all matter was formed. Before there was matter, there was no time. Where there is no matter, there is no time. What is time for a God who Is a Spirit? From His point of view, from the point where He said, "Light BE," until the point where He created Adam, it's only six "days." But from our point of view--it's millions and millions of years. He lives in a realm outside of matter in the spirit, we live in material bodies in a material universe; time for Him and time for us are not going to be the same thing!

So how is God defining “day” in Genesis 1?  The words, "evening and morning," in Hebrew are also the words for "disorder and order." This gives us a clue as to how God is dividing time, as He sees it, into what He calls "days." "Disorder to order, the first day," is one way that phrase in Genesis could be translated.

Looking at it from this point of view, we see that, for God, a day is defined in terms of progressively moving creation from disorder to order in stages. He created light, He moved what initially might have appeared as a disorderly explosion of energy to the establishment of a planet we call earth and this period of time He named--disorder to order, the first day. God had an objective, He met His objective, it's the first day. God moved to His next objective, He met that objective, it's the second day and so on--disorder to order, disorder to order until He reaches His crowning act of creation: man.

The second "day" God creates the atmosphere. And so on and so on, science basically describes the events of creation in the same order as the Bible does (though they do their best to attribute the events to chance).

Fact 6:  God created the universe in six eras He calls “days.”

Verse 14 throws another loop.  Since plants were created before the sun, how could plant life exist without the sun? It is possible that these verses, 14-19 describe the clarifying of the atmosphere because plants have stabilized it and now the sun, the moon and the stars are visible where before they were not. Light has already been created. I admit to being confused about the declaration that now these lights are being created. Perhaps the wording should be, "Let the lights be visible . . .," verse 14 and "God made to appear . . ," verse 16.

I admit, of everything that I have learned thus far, I am not certain of how science and the Bible agree on this passage. My husband puts forth the theory that the sun was not yet producing light as we enjoy it today, but was producing energy that allowed early plant forms to exist and God, in this passage, moved the sun and all of the other stars from basically "dark" stars to a shining lights. I continue to puzzle this one and to search for scientific findings on this. Perhaps such information is available and I've overlooked it.   If you information on this, please let me know:  Jaizem@hotmail.com

Let us move to the next issue. Classical evolutionary theory states that creatures change from more primitive forms into more complex forms. For example an amoeba changes from a one-celled animal into a multi-celled animal. A creature living in the water changes to one who lives on land.  Science has proven that this theory is bunk. The Bible describes God moving creation toward His goals in sudden bursts of change, disorder to order, in phases, at His command, and the geological record largely supports this!   Check out David Attenborough's "Trials of Life." He points out that creation is moved forward through distinct stages, with creatures appearing in the geological record fully formed. He is rather puzzled by this, but he is honest enough to state the fact.

There seem to be a few exceptions:  the “dinosaur bird” and whales, whales seeming to be the most compelling.   http://www.talkorigins.org/features/whales/
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2001/11/01/html/ft_20011101.4.html

Scientists try to achieve linkage between the various hominids and homo sapiens, but it is my belief that each hominid species begins and ends with itself—none are steps up to humanity.  The same could be true of other creatures that appear to be transitional forms.  Here again is an area where science and the Bible seem to be in conflict and not enough information yet exists to resolve the issue.

Another point made recently in the media reveals that extrapolating facts about an animal from its skeleton alone is a tricky business and often scientists reach wrong conclusions.   The verdict is still out on the seemingly convincing evidence of whale evolution.
 
In classrooms in the United States classical evolutionary theory is still getting a lot of "air time," and many scientists do not want to give up that pet theory, but its many holes are well documented. Evolutionary theory is a religion of itself requiring more faith from its adherents than does Christianity.  These people have built their lives around evolutionary theory and will cling to it until the evidence against
it has been piled so high that they can no longer call themselves scientists and believe in it. This is what happened with the concept of the universe having a beginning. It is comforting to know that science
may be wrong about something for a period of time, maybe for hundreds of years, but eventually, after continuous study and digging, the truth is revealed. This is why, when a scientific fact appears to contradict the Bible, for example, that there was no beginning, we must reject science and cling to the Bible.

However, Christians often make the mistake of misinterpreting the Bible and rejecting truth in science. This makes Christians look stupid to the scientific community and does not advance the cause of Christ.  For example, Galileo, who was himself a devout Christian….

We forget that science, as it exists in the world today, was begun by Christians! These were Christians who took God's scientific Magna Charta seriously and started looking for answers. If you look at a list of early scientists of the modern era, starting with Copernicus, you will find that 99% (or perhaps all) of them were Christian. Science is a Christian realm and we have let it go to the pagans so now we must rely on pagans to find out these things and we have to sift through what they learn. (My soap box.)  Check out the book by D. James Kennedy entitled, “What if Jesus Had Never Been Born.”

It takes spiritual discernment to know what is truth. The Holy Spirit guides us into all truth and God promises to make the secrets of the universe known to His people who ask. We lay these matters before the Father and ask for His divine revelation knowledge to discern truth from science and to see the truth that already exists in His Word.

However, we know that limited evolution does exist. The many breeds of dogs and horses which have been "evolved" by humanity are an example. Darwin's finches which developed different beaks in order to find food in different locations are examples. But, God describes this ability and limits it in Genesis 1:24, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds . . . " The land can influence, "produce" living creatures, such as Darwin's finches, but "after their kinds," which means the finches are NOT going to turn into eagles. The finches will continue to be finches, but they have been given the ability to adapt to their environment.

Fact 7:  Evolution does exist in a limited context of “according to their kinds.”

Genesis 1:26, "Then God said, "Let US make man in OUR own Image.""

The Image of God is what? As we learn that elephants can make paintings and apes can use sign language, we might wonder what sets us apart from the rest of God's creatures. However, there are certain qualities in man animals don't share. One can be archeologically measured and that is the belief in life after death, the knowledge deep within us that we possess eternal spirits.

Of all of the sites excavated so far, no grave goods have been found in any ancient humanoid sites except homo sapiens. Neanderthals left no grave goods. A creature who is not going to continue to live, though he die, does not need to have a horse or food buried with him.

Why did God create Neanderthals and the rest? I don't know. He doesn't mention them in the Bible, as far as I've found, but He did create them. It is foolish of Christians to deny that these creatures existed. And it is blasphemous to make God a liar saying that He planted these bones as false evidence. But I do know that these creatures did not possess the "breath of life," the eternal spirit God has given to us, homo sapiens, because they did not leave any grave goods with their dead. Neanderthals and the rest of the non-homo sapiens hominids were nothing more than amazingly human-like animals.

When God breathed into Adam the "breath of life," Genesis 2:7, in the Hebrew it says God breathed into Adam the "breath of LIVES." God gave to Adam not only his own eternal spirit, but the potential eternal
spirit for every human being who would exist after him. In other words, He gave to Adam the power to beget human beings and that power is passed down to every fertile man. The sperm carries the spark of life. It is to the egg what the spark is to the wood. Both are needed to start a fire, but the life of the fire is in the spark.

Thus, when Adam sinned, the sinful nature of satan was added to the potential lives that Adam carried in his body. We are all born sinners because of this. Jesus could be born a sinless human because the sinful nature isn't passed through the woman. Jesus' “spark of life” was divine, thus He could be a sinless human being. And as the Word of God, He was probably conceived just as the medieval paintings portray, by Words into Mary's ear. It might have gone like this, "And God said, "Let the Word become flesh," " and Jesus the God/Human was conceived.

The creation story begins with Genesis 1:3 and ends with about Genesis 2:3. Then the story of the creation of human beings is retold beginning with Genesis 2:7. God does this because the points He wants to get across in this version are different from the points He wanted to get across in the first version of the story of the creation of man, Genesis 1:26-31.

The second version has more details and the focus is different. Rather than progressive moves day by day, disorder to order to God's crowning achievement, man, this second version is more personal, specific to the
human point of view and gets right to the point of man's fall.

God makes a new Eden for the man to live in and tells him that he can eat of all the trees but one. Then the Lord(YHWH, Yahweh or Jehovah) God, translated from Yahweh Elohim, announced it was not good for the man to be alone, Genesis 2:18. And then it would seem that He sought to emphasize this fact as the very next thing that He does is have Adam name all the animals. None of them were real companions for the man. God emphasizes here that we are not animals, we may have animal type bodies, but we are
not animals.

Fact 8:  Human beings are spiritual beings created in the Image of God residing in material, “animal” bodies.

God puts the man to sleep and takes from his side some flesh. From this flesh He formed a woman. There is no mention of God breathing into Eve a breath of life.  When Adam wakes up he declares Eve to be a wo-man because she is taken out of man. In my opinion, somehow God divided from Adam something that made Eve also an eternal spirit. Somehow He took a spark of life from him to give Eve life. She was taken out of man.  She was a sort of  “clone.”

(The NIV Bible uses LORD for Jehovah or YHWH and Lord for Adonai.) Jehovah is added to Elohim because a new aspect of God's nature has been revealed. YHWH is the Name God gives Himself in Exodus where it is translated "I AM" Or "I Will Be What I Will Be." He is the God who is THERE, ready to fulfill His promises. He is the God of NOW.

Jehovah is a distinctly redemptive Name of Deity. And it is interesting that the Name by which God is referred to in Genesis changes from simply Elohim, to YHWH Elohim when the second version of the story of the creation of man is being told, Genesis 2:4. The focus has now changed from the Creator God who by His strength and reliability created all things, to the Creator God who will now redeem man from his sin.

It is Jehovah who seeks out the sinners and asks them the questions that will force them to face what they have done. Of course, God is not confused about where Adam and Eve are or about what they have done. He asks them those questions for their own benefit and for ours. We see in them the patterns which human beings have followed ever since. (It was the woman's fault, the woman YOU gave me . . . etc. etc.)

God provides for the sinners animal skins to cover them, the first deaths of animals to provide covering for sin and at God's own Hand demonstrating that true redemption from sin can only come from God as God establishes the principal of offering an animal as a substitute for the forgiveness of sin, which eventually leads to the Ultimate Substitute, Jesus. (Jesus is the Greek version of the name Joshua which means "Jehovah-Savior" or "He Will  Save.") The offering of animals as substitutes only works because of the faith of the person offering the animals. It is an admission that we cannot obtain forgiveness by any works we can do.

Cain lays before God an offering produced by his own efforts while Abel offers an animal. Cain's offering is rejected because we cannot obtain forgiveness of sins by our own efforts and we must follow God's plan.
Abel's offering is accepted because he was obedient to God and recognizes that he could not do anything to obtain forgiveness.

Jehovah, as the Name of God, appears again in Exodus where Moses sees the burning bush. Once again, the attributes of Jehovah, the Redeeming God, are brought into play as God redeems His people out of bondage in Egypt. So here, in Genesis we see Him redeeming Adam and Eve, they would have to wait thousands and thousands of years before their full redemption would come to pass, but nonetheless, they experience God's forgiveness and receive His promise that one day the seed of the woman would bruise the
serpent's head.   “The seed of the woman,” of course is the first prophesy about the identity and origin of Jesus.

God also redeems the man from his loneliness as He presents the man with the wo-man and institutes marriage. The beauty of sex, in the context of marriage, is blessed by God and stated as the means of making a man and a woman once again one flesh, Genesis 2:24. Sins such as adultery and fornication are very devastating to human beings because they go against God's perfect design, pervert it and destroy it.

Since human beings are created in the Image of God, first in the man by himself and then in the man and the woman together, it is in marriage that the Image of God in human beings is made complete. Both father and mother are needed for the children to obtain the imprint of the Image of God they need to have a healthy relationship with Him. The single parent cannot model for the child the full Image of God and the child will grow up with a one sided view of God which might hamper his ability to enjoy full fellowship with God. The single parent cannot be both mother and father modeling both the nurturing aspects of God and the disciplinarian aspects, both the leadership aspects and the submission to leadership aspects that Jesus models as a Person of Deity.

Homosexuality is a sin against the Image of God because it pairs two persons of the same gender together. It is an insult to God and His Image to unify two persons of the same gender.

Fact 8:  The Image of God is first divided into male and female and then restored once again in marriage.

Once again, the division of something that was one whole into two halves which are restored in a new configuration.

God does not consider satan's fall and the results of that as having any real consequence.  Satan is a blip, a bump in the road of no import.  Adam was given authority to tell satan to take a hike, to leave them alone, but he did not choose to do this.  

The only purpose satan served in the life of Adam was to give him a choice.  God is LOVE.  What use is it if the human beings He created love Him only because there is no other choice?  We human beings demonstrate our love for God primarily through obedience to God.  God gives Adam only one rule--don't eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  And He knew the tempter existed and would, because of his hatred of God, apply the test to see if Adam would obey that rule.  Adam's answer to the test proves his love.  Adam chose to disobey and thereby reject God as LOVER, but in God's infinite mercy, He reached out to the man and woman and redeemed them.  Since then He has sought to woo every lost soul and asks us to be His witnesses in the earth testifying to the blind and suffering spirits around us that God is LOVE.

Even though Eve had already eaten of the fruit, if Adam had not eaten of it, his offspring by her would have been free of sin.  The sin nature is passed along with the spark of life, the sperm, which is the power to beget souls given to men.  The Apostle Paul tells us that it is through Adam that sin entered humanity, but he also tells us that it is through the Last Adam, Jesus, that sin will be eradicated.  Romans 5:12-14; I Corinthians 15:20-23

Fact 9:  Adam's act of sin had a real and lasting effect, not only on him, but on every potential human being who would ever be conceived by normal means.

Dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible. In Genesis 1:21 the NIV says, "So God created the great creatures of the sea . . ." The Amplified Bible says, "God created the sea monsters . . . " The King James says, "And God created the whales . . . "

Gerald Schoreder in his book, "The Science of God," explains that in the Hebrew the words translated sea monsters or great creatures are "taninim gedolim." Gedolim means "big," so the phrase means the Big taninim. The noun "taninim" has been translated as whales, alligators, sea creatures or monsters, and even dragons. But fortunately, for us, the name taninim shows up in the Bible elsewhere.

In Exodus 4:3 God tells Moses to thrown his staff to the ground and when he did it became a "nahash" which means "snake." But, in Exodus 4:10 when Moses throws down his staff it becomes a "taneen," the singular form of "taninim." In Exodus 7:15 Moses staff is said to be a "nahash" again. So, it would be safe to assume that "taneen" is the name for the general category of which snake is a member: the reptile family. Therefore, we can deduce that Gensis 1:21 actually says, "Big Reptiles" instead of sea monsters or whales.

It is interesting to note that the taninim gedolim appear before mammals, Genesis 1:24, just like the geological record shows! Bible translators, unaware of the word showing up again or not making the connection, took the discussion about animals of the water and translated taninim gedolim in that context.

So, satan's rebellion and his expulsion to crash down to the earth occurs probably somewhere in between Genesis 1:21 and Genesis 1:22. You can see now how putting that little detail into the creation story where it occurred would have thrown off the whole point that God saw His creation as VERY GOOD, verse 21.

I recommend Gerald Schoreder's book, however I do not agree with his theory on the creation of man.  It is my belief human beings have been around quite a lot longer than he espouses in his book.  With that exception, you will find the book very fascinating and informative.

Thank you for the opportunity to answer your question.  Please feel free to e-mail me at Jaizem@hotmail.com.

May God bless you and shed His riches of Wisdom, Discernment and Peace upon you,

Marilyn