What is Christianity Wiki

Jump to: navigation, search

Next Part 3'

The How, Why, and When of Creation, Part 1

In the beginning God created everything, everything. St. Augustine wrote in his Confession , “For you created them from nothing, not from your own substance or from some matter not created by yourself or already in existence. But from matter which you created at one and the same time as the things that you made from it since there was no integral of time before you gave form to this formless matter.” There was no pre-existing material. Nothing is in existence that God didn't create. John 1:3 , “All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.”

There isn't anything that exists that God didn't create. That's a very, very clear scripture. Go back to Genesis 1 for a moment, and I want to remind you of something that's very important. All creation began and ended in six days, clearly. There's no argument about it. Look at chapter 2, verse 2, “By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.” He created the entire universe out of nothing, from no pre-existing material, and He did it in six days. We know that from verse 5.

The first day he created light and it says there was evening and there was morning, one day. Just to make sure you don't miss it, He says it was one, and then just to make sure you know exactly what He means, it was the kind of day that has an evening and a morning. What kind of day is that? That's basically what we call a solar day. It's just a plain old normal, common, everyday day. Now I want to tell you something. God did all this in six days, verse eight says there was an evening and a morning on day two, and verse 13 says there was an evening and a morning on day three, and it goes all the way down that way.

Verse 19, there was evening and morning on day 4. Verse 23, there was evening and there was morning on day 5, and verse 31, there was evening and there was morning on day six. He's just talking about six normal, common days; just like we understand days to be. The whole of creation, folks, was over on the sixth day, and the Bible, and this is very important to know that the Bible always speaks of creation as a past event. Mark that in your mind; the Bible always speaks of creation as a past event. Evolution speaks of creation as continuing; it's always going on; it's never how the bible refers to creation.

Hebrews 4:3 says, “His works were finished from the foundation of the world.” Hebrews 4:10 , “For the one who has entered His rest has Himself also rested from His works.” The Bible always views creation as completed and finished. It is a past event. God finished creation, never adding to that original creation. On the seventh day He rested from creation, and He's continued to rest from creation. You say, What's He doing now? Not creation; conservation. You want to get the flow? Creation, Genesis. Conservation; He upholds all things by the word of His power.

Millennial kingdom, restoration; when he restores the earth as we know it and the universe back to its edenic or near-edenic character. So you have creation, conservation, restoration. Finally, recreation is the new heaven and the new earth. But creation is a past event; conservation is a present one. Restoration is a future, millennial one, and recreation is the new heaven and the new earth. The creation work that's past, and the Bible always speaks of creation as a past event; it is not an ongoing event. Evolution demands ongoing transition, even theistic evolutionists who say they believe the Bible have the evolutionary process of necessity going on and going on and going on, and ostensibly bringing new things to life.

But God created everything in six days, there's no evolution in that chapter, there's not a hint of evolution anywhere in this chapter. There's no place for an evolutionary theory because you have days. Verse 31, “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” Now God finished His creation in six days and He said “It's very good.” Now what does that mean - nothing was bad. Nothing bad would mean nothing was inferior, nothing didn't survive, nothing sort of – like the plants you plant - nothing died out. You know why; there was no death, there was no death.

You see when God finished His creation He looked at all of it. In fact it says several times he saw that it was good. And He looked it all over in verse 31 and saw that it was very good. Nothing was inferior, nothing didn't survive, nothing had died out or had been killed in the struggle for the survival of the fittest. If creation had involved some evolutionary process, then God would have had to have said the good made it to the end. He didn't say that, and how could there have been billions and billions of evolving years, billions of years of struggle and death and survival in a world where there was no curse.

In a world where there was no death; you don't even have death until Genesis chapter 3. The apostle Paul makes it absolutely explicit in the book of Romans that it was through sin that death entered the world. There was no sin in that perfect creation. There was no sin; there couldn't have been any death, so there's no place for plants and animals to die. No Fall, no sin; no sin, no death; no death, no evolution. The Fall came and introduced death, and death introduced the law of thermodynamics, entropy, the disintegration and disorder. But at this point no such thing existed.

So there's no way that you can inject evolution legitimately into this text. Just another thing, when God made everything, He made everything full grown. The old “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” You want the answer? Do you know the answer? - the chicken, full grown. God didn't just throw seeds in every direction, and unborn life species. He created an absolutely and completely full-grown, full-matured creation that was capable then of reproducing itself, sustaining its life, and that's why He said it's very good.

Next Part 4'