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What the Torah Says About Creation
The creation
account and subsequent events (the Fall, the Flood, the Babel Rebellion,
etc.) as described in the first eleven chapters of the book of B'resheet
(Genesis) are to be accepted as factual, historical, and
perspicuous.
Why is it important for the Believer to understand
that the Genesis accounts of Creation (Genesis 1), the Flood (Genesis 6-9),
and the Babel Rebellion (Genesis 11) are literally true? It is
absolutely imperative to understand these as real historical events for the
simple fact that if the first eleven chapters of Genesis are not literally
true, then none of the rest of Scripture can be considered true, Adam, Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, and Yeshua/Jesus are only mythological characters (or remarkable men
at best), and our faith has no basis in reality.
About 6,000 years ago the entire space-time continuum was spoken into existence ex nihilo (from nothing) by God in the six 24-hour days of special creation. This knowledge is foundational to the understanding of every fact and phenomenon in the created universe. The theories of random spontaneous creation and the evolution of species should be rejected as not only unbiblical but also intellectually untenable. As they are diametrically opposed to the known universal laws of thermodynamics, and the given fact that “something” cannot possibly spontaniously arise “from nothing,”[1] they simply cannot be accepted by any credible scientist, and are not “science” but faith in the tenets of the Secular Humanist religion.
Although I do not accept extra-biblical sources to be authoritative, it is interesting that the Gemara[2] teaches that “seven phenomena were created before the world was created, and they are: Torah, and repentance, and the Garden of Eden, and Gehenna, and the Throne of Glory, and the Temple, and the name of Messiah.”
Go HERE for an interesting discussion of a Jewish opinion of the topic of “Six Days.”
Since the Scripture specifically refers to “the evening and morning” of each day, I personally assume that literal 24-hour days are intended. However, there are those who believe they may only refer to the beginning and ending of each phase of creation. What is important is that God said it, and we should therefore accept it as Truth without having to fully understand it.
I find it of extreme interest (dare I say “pathetic”?) that there are those who self-identify as “evangelical Christians” who believe the word of “science” over the written Word of God. History tells us that the “known facts” of science have repeatedly proven to be in error. For example, in the past “science” has accepted as fact that:
• the earth is flat;
• there is a literal dome over the earth, and the dome rests on the highest mountains;
• the lights we see in the sky are gods;
• the earth is the center of the universe, and the cosmos revolves around earth;
• if we could discover it, there is a chemical formula which can convert lead into gold;
• the primary function of the brain is the production of mucous;
• the human body cannot withstand speeds of greater than 35 miles per hour, therefore, trains will never go faster than that;
• the absolute fastest speed that anything can travel is the speed of sound;
• wearing a mask will stop the pandemic spread of a virus.
So how can we account for a universe that appears to be billions of years old? How can we account for galaxies that can be measured as 14 billion light-years away if the light coming from them has only been traveling for 6,000 years?
The same way that we can account for:
• the death of every firstborn thing in the land of Egypt, but the Jews being spared (Exodus 13:15)
• the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21-22)
• God feeding Israel manna in the wilderness (Exodus 16:31, 33, 35)
• the walls of Jericho being destroyed by the sound of men shouting and shofars being sounded (Joshua 6:20)
• the sun and moon standing still “until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies” (Joshua 10:13)
• Elijah raising the widow’s son from death (1Kings 17:17-24)
• water being instantaneously tranformed into wine (John 2:1-10)
• the resurrection of Lazarus (John 11:38-44) and Yeshua (Matt 28:1-8; Mark 16:1-8; Luke 24:1-10; John 20:1-8)
The God of the Bible — the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — is a miracle-working God. And the greatest of all His miracles is the creation of the universe from nothing over the span of six 24-hour periods. If the miracle of creation is true, then God easily created the light from distant galaxies arriving at our planet the same time that He created it (the light).
There is a critical flaw in the secular theory’s timeline. It declares that life arose on the earth around 800 million years ago, with dinosaurs coming on the scene around 230 million years ago and going extinct 65 million years ago, and with fossils being slowly laid down in layer after layer of sediment. Then humans appeared on the scene about 6 million years ago. So according to secular science, death ruled the earth for over 700 million years before humans appeared on the scene. But the Bible declares that death came to the earth as the direct result of man’s sin. The Bible also declares that the very first death to occur on earth was the animal or animals that God sacrificed to create clothing for Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21). If animals lived and died before Adam, then Adam’s appearance was on top of at least 300 million years of death and desease that God calls “good” in Genesis 1, Adam’s death had nothing to do with sin, and Yeshua’s atoning death was of no purpose.
If we correctly understand the chronology of the Bible, we can easily understand that most of the the fossils that have been found (including those of aquatic creatures found on mountain tops) were laid down in the sediment under the weight of the global flood and that the Grand Canyon and the Columbia River George were eroded in a very brief period of time (perhaps as little as a few weeks) by the runoff from that flood.
If suffering and death were present in the world before the fall, if it is not true that death came to earth through the sin of the one man, Adam (Romans 5:19), then the sacrifice of the “second Adam,” Yeshua, was totally unfounded! If the sacrifice of Yeshua was unfounded then mankind has no salvation and our faith is a sham! Thus we can see that belief in the Bible’s creation account actually becomes a salvation issue!
Media Disclaimer: Presence of video or audio recordings on this website does not
necessarily indicate agreement with all (or any) of the speaker’s theological position.
Christians Who Believe This Are AGAINST the Ancient Church
Answers In Genesis Canada
But what about the geological proof that the earth is billions of years old?
What EVERY Christian Today NEEDS to Realize About Genesis
Answers In Genesis Canada
Science without physical evidence is not science,
it is opinion, even if it is the opinion of a scientist.
See links to Creation Science websites.
The “Big Bang” and the Theory of Relativity
[Although I believe that Genesis 1-11 is literally true, and that the seven “days” of Genesis 1 are literal 24-hour days that occurred approximately 6,000 years ago, I find Schroeder’s theory rather interesting.]
All that having been said, current understanding of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity holds that time as we know it is relative to the position and circumstances of the observer. Nuclear physicist Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D., has demonstrated in The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (May 9, 2002) how, by using Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, he has calculated that when viewed from the point of creation looking outward (God’s perspective) the Bible’s six days of creation are identical to the 14 billion years since the “Big Bang” as viewed from earth looking back toward the center of the universe.
“We look at the universe, and say, ‘How old is the universe? Looking back in time, the universe is approximately 14 billion years old.’ That’s our view of time and those years went by. But what is the Bible’s view of those billions of years looking forward from the beginning? How does it see time? …
“We look back in time, and measure of the universe to be 14 billion years old. But as every scientist knows, when we say the universe is 14 billion years old, there’s another half of the sentence that we rarely bother to state. The universe is 14 billion years old as measured from the time-space coordinates of the earth, that is, from our current position in the universe.
“The key is that from the creation of the universe to the creation of the soul of Adam, the Bible looks forward in time, from time-space coordinates when the universe was vastly smaller than it is today. Since then, the universe has expanded out. Space stretches, and that stretching of space totally changes the perception of time.”
The calculations are also explained in this article.
1. “Science” now accepts the unprovable theory that the universe spontaneously popped into existence through the action of quarks, but the fact that quarks exist (if they actually do, since clearly nobody has ever seen one) requires an intelligent, eternal, and infinitely powerful Designer. [BACK]
2. The Gemara is a commentary on the Mishnah forming the second part of the Talmud. [BACK]
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ANXIOUSLY WATCHING FOR MASHIACH’S RETURN,
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