According to the Bible, about six thousand years ago there
was a man named Adam. That man had a
wife named Eve. Adam and Eve had
children who then had children of their own and thus began human life on this
planet. And, as we say back home:
“That’s our story and we’re stickin’ to it.”
As is often the case, once an idea is formulated, we have
tendency to pull all other ideas into the realm of the first. We look for confirmation. We demand that all external observations must
exist in cooperation with the accepted truth of the first idea. We don’t look before the truth, nor do we
accept the notion that what follows the truth should contradict it. Once an idea is accepted as fact, there is
some mechanism of security within us that prevents that verdict from being
overturned. I recently read a great
book, The Unthinkable, about how
people respond in emergency situations.
One thing that researchers discovered was that people die because they
are unwilling to deny the status quo.
The building I have worked in for years has never bit hit by an
airplane, so I conclude that it is not happening now. Many died on 9/11 because they were unable to
accept a new truth. Unable to accept the
obvious reality, they sat at their desks while the building burned around them. They were unwilling to accept a new paradigm.
If we have learned anything from history, it is that it
takes a lot of persistence on the part of the proponents of new truth to
overturn old truth. Those who believed
the earth to be round faced a long uphill climb to defeat the then prevailing
perception. And let it be noted that the
biggest and bloodiest battles were sometimes fought behind the walls of religious
zealotry. Torture and imprisonment and
sometime even death awaited those who challenged the accepted truth of the day. All of which was sanctioned and carried out
under the banner of reverence for God.
Is it any wonder that science and religion don’t get along very well
together? Religion has never been a very
good dancing partner… especially when Science wants to dance to a new tune.
Sometimes new technologies are likewise banned by the
Church. One of my favorite examples is
the fork! That’s right: the fork. When the fork was first invented, the Church
forbade its use. The fork was seen as an
offense to God who gave us fingers to use.
For nearly 100 years, if you wanted to use a fork, you did so under the
scorn of Church.
I would argue that to blindly refuse to accept what is
clearly before us is absurd. God never
asks us to put away reality in order to believe. The Bible declares that all things are
possible with God… but, for some, all things are possible with God unless those
possibilities challenge what we have chosen to accept as truth. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the
theater of the Genesis story.
However, before we get to the Genesis story, we need to
first look at the beginning of truth.
What is it that we are expected to believe? To what must we commit if we are going to
discover truth? In the simplest most
basic reduced form, what must we believe?
If you were to hand a Bible to someone and say to them, “Begin here”,
where would you have them to start? Do
we start at John 3:16? What about John
14:6? What about showing them the Roman Road ? Or,
do we suggest Genesis 1:1? What is the
beginning? Are you ready? It is really simple.
In our search for truth, in our search for God, we are
required to believe only 2 things: That God exists and that He is the rewarder
of those who conscientiously seek Him - Hebrews 11:6. That’s it!
That’s the beginning of all Scriptural truth. All other truth is built upon the back of
this framework. No where does the
Scripture argue for the existence of God.
We are expected to believe. The
Bible simply says that it is obvious - Romans 1:20 -, and we would be fools to
believe otherwise - Psalm 14:1. Likewise,
there is no Scripture that argues for the age of the Earth. Why do you suppose that is? First, the answer is obvious. Secondly, it would be foolish to not
acknowledge what simple logic and observation makes clear. With that thought in mind, let’s get started.
There is a strong and vocal group that demands that we
accept the “young earth” truth. When the
Bible says that in the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth, that “beginning”, according to this
historic and well established position, took place approximately 6000 years
ago. That’s their story and they’re
stickin’ to it. All evidence must
comply. All observations must conform.
History is clear. Damned
be those heretics, like Copernicus, who would dare to believe something not
approved - the earth is flat, and everyone knows it. Imprisoned must be those, like Galileo, who
should think it wise to publish such heresies.
No evidence can ever be presented that would contradict this accepted
truth. We have built a house of cards
and all contrary winds must be dispelled. Divergent opinions must be cancelled. We cannot be wrong. Our truth cannot fail. The earth is still flat - don’t you know?
I would herein suggest that the “young earth” truth is
false; just as false as is the “flat earth” truth. And I would furthermore submit that nowhere
within the content of the Bible is the demand placed upon us to believe this “young
earth” notion.
The truth is both simple and obvious. This enormous universe, the surrounding
cosmos, this planet has been around a long, long time. There were no dinosaurs on Noah’s ark. The earth is round. And Adam was the last cave man. Whoa!
What was that? Where did that
come from?
Where did what come from?
The: “Adam was the last cave man” truth?
Well, it comes directly from the Bible.
One needn’t look beyond the first few pages of the Bible to see this
simple truth. Adam was a very unique
man. He was both the last cave man - a
brute beast - and the first soul-man “in the likeness of God”.
Stick with me here… I will play connect the dots in just a
few minutes. If we believe that the Bible is accurate, and
I personally do, then it is not difficult at all to discover and completely
accept several very exciting and fascinating facts.
Facts like:
Adam and Eve had children prior to their collapse into sin -
they were well on their way to fulfilling the prime directive…
Cain and Abel were twins…
There were cities on this earth prior to the time of Adam
that were occupied by…
I need to slow down.
I am getting way ahead of myself.
Sometimes we become so busy defending our position that we
fail to recognize the error of the place where we stand. Equally, we sometimes are so quick to gobble
down some new idea that we fail to take a moment to read the label whereon we
would see the potential toxins of artificial, man made, ingredients. Either of these two tactics will preclude us
from discovering truth.
Recently, I was reading a report about some new and exciting
developments in the field of quantum biology.
I do not herein pretend to be any sort of expert in this particular
scientific discipline. I do however find
it be fascinating reading. To summarize:
it seems as scientists are making some very remarkable discoveries. It seems as though - those even slightly
familiar with quantum mechanics will quickly make the connection - the very
life processes that we all take so for granted, things like photosynthesis, and
conscious awareness, even our sense of smell, are happening in such a way so
that very small individual atomic particles are occupying several different
places at the same time. Conventional
physics would conclude that this is impossible.
But in the realm of quantum physics this type of thing happens
regularly. One single object is observed
to be in several locations at the same exact moment in time. I bring this up for this purpose: Once again, the realm of science is just now
- in the last 40 years - catching up with an idea that the Bible has presented
as truth: omnipresence. This is just one more proof, not that I need
it, that a Creator God has built the known visible universe to function in a
very similar fashion to his own omnipresence.
It might be wise for me at this juncture to offer a couple
of unrelated to our central theme but nonetheless helpful illustrations of this
idea that “science acknowledges the
truth” whether they want to or not.
Medical science would refuse to recognize as fact that which cannot be
seen and touched. And yet, medical
science uses the placebo effect to authenticate and validate its systems of
pharmaceutical treatments. The law of
the land demands that double blind “placebo” studies be done before medicines
be approved for use. What is the placebo
effect but that someone believes that an unknowingly benign substance will affect
them physically so much so that it actually does. The entire pharmaceutical industry is built
upon the power of belief!
As another example, one need not look any further than the
field of mathematics. All of geometry is
built upon postulates that cannot be proven, but rather, must be accepted as
truth in the complete absence of so much as a thread of empirical data. The fact that the shortest distance between
two points is a straight line is one such example. The existence of a simple geometric point is
a creation that only exists in the mind.
Points don’t exist! And yet,
virtually everything around us is built upon these truths that exist only in
the mind of the designer. Some would
suggest that they cannot believe in that which cannot be seen, and yet, every
piece of architecture that surrounds us is built upon mathematic truth that
cannot be seen.
I would continue then to suggest that when anthropologists
and paleontologists find more and more evidence of very ancient man like
creatures living on this planet, we should not just dismiss these as false, nor
should we try to cram this evidence into our preconceived and accepted notion
of a young earth. Again, for emphasis,
the Bible does not require me to believe a “young earth” truth, neither is my
faith diminished one iota by believing in a “multi-million year old”
earth. Actually, quite the contrary
occurs; my faith is vindicated. Only one
small step of understanding a particular door of truth as presented in the
Scripture leads us to a brand new world of answers.
The fossil finders of our day could bring me 10,000
positively authentic prehistoric (pre-dating the last 6000 yrs.) human like
skulls and my confidence in the accuracy of the Biblical record would stand
even more certain. They could find
100,000 acres of fossilized footprints of dinosaurs side by side with
two-footed, ten-toed man like footprints and I would smile and say, “Would ya looky
there - the Bible is correct - prehistoric men were feasting on Dino-T-bone
steak!”
You see, without any doubt, I fully believe that there
indeed was a large population of man like creatures - beasts, if you will -
that lived on this earth during a time that precedes / predates Adam. I believe that the Bible would in no way rule
out that those men-beasts occupied this planet right alongside a civilization
of angels - angels that in fact built great cities. And more likely than not, that prehistoric /
pre-Adam earth was filled with animal life unlike anything that has lived here
in the last 6000 years. However, as much
fun as it is to explore this truth and now have answers to the many questions
that recent discoveries have revealed, the wise man should note that the Holy
Spirit spends very little divine ink on the subject. Why? Because
all of this truth is unnecessary to fulfill the purpose for the Word of
God. That purpose being the introduction
of a Holy God to sinful man. The Bible
is for us, not angels.
The Bible in II Peter chapter 2 speaks about men that “blaspheme in matters they do not understand.
They are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and
destroyed, and like beasts they too will perish.” We can learn much from this Scripture. We learn that men that blaspheme - something
that is spiritual and cannot be done by animals / beasts - can become like
beasts, in that they function only out of animal instinct. We see this around us in the world today. Men who are soul-less. Men who have transversed an invisible line
and are no longer in the group of men known as sinners. These men have become animals. They act not on any knowledge of God or moral
compass. They no longer distinguish
between right and wrong. They have
followed the path of those described in Romans chapter 1, even exceeding this
after having been given over by God to lives of depravity.
Men cannot give up their soul. It is God given. However, one should consider carefully this
thought: If God gave it, can He not
likewise take it away? These men of II
Peter 2 have become even worse than those described in Romans chapter 1. They commit unthinkable, inhuman crimes. They
are animals that kill for pleasure and the only way they can be stopped is in
the same manner. Animals are born ONLY
to be caught and destroyed. Not only
have they come to such a place as to think it not worthwhile to retain the
knowledge of God - Romans 1:28 - but, after God has given them over - He has returned them to
their soul-less condition, in which they are now unable to know or worship God. We in the Church do not like to admit that
such a line exists, but it does. These
men are incorrigible. They cannot be
rehabilitated. They are
un-redeemable. They have entered into a
spiritual wasteland of which the Scripture refers when it says, ”These men are springs without water and
mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them” - II Peter
2:17.
I am well aware that there is a firm resistance to the idea
of someone becoming un-redeemable, but we should not, we cannot; ignore what is
clearly and plainly set forth in the Scripture. Jesus himself spoke of a blasphemy so horrible
that there could be no forgiveness; neither in this age or the age to come -
Matthew 12:31-32. In Hebrews chapter 10
we find these words: If we deliberately
keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no
sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and
of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died
without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man
deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has
treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and
who has insulted the Spirit of grace? And in Chapter 6: “It is impossible…if they fall away, to be brought back
to repentance… [they are] …worthless and in danger of being cursed. In the end
[they] will be burned. They will
perish without God. So, if it is
possible for man to become like a beast of the field. If that is true… then why not the other way
around?
When we speak about men that have become like brute beasts,
we are not referring here to sinful man.
That is an altogether different condition. The Bible makes reference
to 4 different conditions in which men can exist. The first is beast-men… this is the category
unto which the prehistoric “cave” men would fall, as well as those we have just
identified from II Peter - unredeemable animals. This would have been the condition of man
[Adam] before God breathed upon him the breath of life. These men are without souls. Notice the comparison between when God
imparts a soul to man - noted in Genesis -, and when God gives man over to
become reprobate - see Romans chapter 1.
God is the only one that can give a soul; he thus necessarily is the
only one that can take it away. He is
the only one that can make a beast a man; likewise he is the only one, though
it is not his desire to do so (II Peter 3:9), that can make a man a beast. The second condition is man who has never
sinned and is infused with the Spirit of God… this category is referred to as a
living soul or living being. This is
Adam’s race before sin. The third is
sinful man in need of a Savior. This is
Adam’s race after the fall into sin. This condition, one which every one of us is
all too familiar, is one in which the individual has the ability to know God,
and the freedom to accept the witness of the Holy Spirit concerning God, or to
reject it, which is the blasphemy for which there is no possible forgiveness. The last condition is a man who has sinned,
but has called out to God to save him.
This is the man that has been born again… a new creation. This is man
redeemed.
Look to Genesis 2:19 - Now
the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field. Now look to Genesis 2:7 - the LORD God formed the man from the dust of
the ground... In both cases we see
exactly the same process. God formed
both the beasts (brute creatures ruled by instinct) and man from the dust of
the ground. You should notice that in
verse 7, I intentionally stopped without finishing the sentence… and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life, and the man became a living being.
I wanted you to first see that man and the animals / beasts
were brought into existence in exactly the same way. Just as the beasts of the field are alive in
the physical sense, so too was man. And
secondly, I wanted to be able to show a sequence of events in the case of
man. God first formed him from the
elements of this earth, just as he had the beasts, and at that moment this man
was equal to all other beasts. Then… and
then… and then at an understood to be immediately subsequent moment (however,
we have no way of knowing for certain how long of a time that man remained in
this soul-less condition), God breathed on man the breath, the Spirit of life
and he became something that had never been on this planet before. It is that moment, however short or long it
does not matter, before man became a living soul upon which I want us to focus
our attention. For that moment, this man
that would become Adam was… are you ready?.. Man was a beast-man… he was a
living animal without being a living soul.
This man was the last “cave” man.
And then… And then in a moment that would change everything, God gave this
beast-man spiritual life and he became Adam.
God gave Adam a purpose that the animals - that creatures of instinct -
did not, could not have. God gave man
moral awareness. God created Adam for
fellowship on a level that had never existed before. The last cave-man became the first soul-man. A man became Adam.
Now for the first time, a new class of being - a soul-man -
was given dominion over a newly renovated earth. The fact of which now brings us to the
aforementioned small step of understanding of a particular door of truth. Again, because this information is not needed
for man to come to the saving knowledge of Jesus, the Bible does not go into
great detail about it. There is no grand
narrative from which we can learn about the pre-Adam world. What we have is a gap between Adam’s world and
the world during the prior epoch of the Angels. What we have is a breach into which we may
fill with the information the Bible does give us. Also, there is much information concerning
our planet that has been clearly observed by scientific discovery that, fitting
nowhere within the historic world of the last 6000 years, fits very nicely into
this gap. Where is this gap found in the
Scripture? Between Genesis 1:1 and
Genesis 1:2. And once we step through
the door that this gap creates, answers come and the confidence of faith is
upheld.
What do we know for sure?
We know that Satan is a created being.
We know that he is of the angel class.
We know that he was given rulership here on earth. We know that he rebelled against God and along
with one third of all the angels tried to overthrow the throne of God. We know that this rebellion was unsuccessful
and that his position of authority was lost.
(Ezekiel 28:12-19, Isaiah 14:12-14) We know that all of this occurred at some
time prior to the world as it was at the time of Adam. We also know that prior to the condition
noted in Genesis 1:2 there were cities.
The earth was fruitful. There
were animals; for, the Bible says that the birds had flown away. (Jeremiah 4:23-28)
Although the Bible gives us no more information than that
cities did exist in the pre-Adam world, there have been discoveries that could
perhaps be nothing less than archaeological evidence of their existence. The underwater ruins offshore of Yonaguni, a small island southwest of Okinawa , Japan India . Current satellite mapping technologies are
producing below sea level images the implications of which we are only
beginning to understand. The next few
decades could be some of the most exciting ever as we discover that which has
been hidden for millennia. While it
might be fun to speculate further about these cities, such speculation is not
our purpose here. So we will leave this
behind us and continue on.
The period of time during which lived the great and strange
creatures that we know as dinosaurs fits very fine into this gap. Much of the substantial fossilized remains
of plant and animal life that are found around the world can be easily placed
into this gap. No longer do “young-earthers”
have to try to defend their position upon the basis of a calcified “fossil” hat
- the supposed evidence that the fossil record is young instead of very, very
old. To believe this preposterous idea
would be tantamount to believing that it was found at the very outermost edge
of a flat earth... Actually, it was
found in 1995 in Tasmania . I suppose some would argue that Tasmania is at the edge
of the Earth!
It is into this gap between Genesis 1:1 and 2 that all of
this took place. Isaiah 45:18 tells us
that the Lord made the earth to be inhabited.
Consequently, the formless and void condition of Genesis 1:2 and
Jeremiah 4:23 could not remain so.
Therefore, God would have to renovate a desolate and flooded earth and
make it hospitable for habitation once again, that the prime directive could be fulfilled and the
earth replenished. (Genesis 1:28 kjv) I don't want to make too big of a deal out of this so as not to suggest that an entire doctrine be built upon a single word of a single verse, but... Notice that the word is "re"plenish, not plenish.
There is not one deed recorded in the 6 days of Genesis
chapters 1 and 2 that is mitigated by a gap between “In the beginning” and
“formless and void”. As I have
previously suggested, my faith is supported in double measure. That’s correct: double measure. Not only do I believe, as do “young-earthers”
that God is the supreme Creator… I also believe that He is the great Rebuilder,
Renovator, and Redeemer! In a moment,
with a word - Psalm 33:6 -, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the
earth! Out of nothing came
everything. And to this very date, not
one particle of energy has been lost.
The power of God continues to touch the farthest, most remote places of
our universe… to the place known by Astronomers as the event horizon - and to
this day He continues, sustaining all things by his powerful word. Hebrews 1:3
During six days: God spoke and the darkness was peeled away
by light; God spoke and fully mature plants spontaneously came forth from
ground that had been saturated by flood waters only 48 hours before. God spoke, and animals… brand new species
that had never lived on the Earth suddenly flew and swam and lived!! In six short days, God the Creator acted as
God the Renovator and he made a planet, which would not support life,
livable. Not only that, He also moved in
the new inhabitants! Talk about an Extreme
Home Makeover!!
Let’s for a moment consider what this Earth was like as it
stood “formless and empty”. The atmosphere was toxic. This third rock from the sun, which was covered
with boiling waters that were so hot and polluted that no life could exist,
made its daily turn upon its axis beneath the wrath and judgment of God. Darkness covered the surface of the deep
waters. Then our great God of mercy and
love looked at the devastation. God’s
command pealed forth from the Throne.
Move over… The Master Architect is back in town… and on the sixth day…
Everything changed in perhaps the biggest, most spectacular way since Genesis
1:1.
