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1. What does it really matter what I believe about creation? 2. Does it really matter if I believe that story about Adam and Eve and the fall of man? 3. Where did Cain get his wife?
1. What does it really matter what I believe about creation?
The educational establishment in the United States, and most of the rest
of the so called "civilized world is sold on the theory of
Evolution. Most of us have been taught in school that the Universe just
happened by chance, and that the earth and everything on it, including
man, evolved over a period of some 4-5 billion years. It is taught for
the most part in our high schools and universities as the absolute
truth. In fact, any disagreement with this theory will find you branded
as a backwards, brain dead, superstitious fanatic, not worthy of any
acknowledgment of intelligence. So, just what does it matter what you
really believe about creation? Does Genesis have any real relevance to
my life? Is it non-intellectual to believe in a literal 6-day creation
from absolutely nothing?
First, it is not true that only uneducated, wild-eyed,
fundamentalist types are the only ones who believe in a literal 6-day
special creation of God. Many very capable scientists believe in a
literal interpretation of Genesis. It is also false that science has
"proven" evolution. In fact, all the evidence points to a
special creation, and not a chance evolution. Many evolutionists have
admitted that there is not one shred of proof that evolution is true. So
why is it that so many of them still grasp to that straw? Because they
refuse to believe in God, and would rather believe in something that is
as improvable as evolution, than to admit that there is a God to whom
they are accountable. I guess they figure that if they ignore God long
enough, that He will just go away.
Secondly, our belief about creation affects our whole world-view.
If one believes in evolution, that we are all just by-products of
chance, without any purpose or destiny, we will live our lives
accordingly. That is why our school systems are churning out high school
graduates that cannot read or do simple math. Or why our youth are
becoming more increasingly violent, sensual, and anti-authority. On the
other hand, if you believe that the universe is the special creation of
an all powerful God, and that man is created in His image and likeness,
and that every human that has ever lived it going to have to stand
before Him and give an account of their lives, than one would live a
very different life than the evolutionist. Or at least they should! A
creationist would believe in absolute truth, and that morality is
established by God, and not by what we feel or think.
Now, there are some who would try to mix God and evolution,
theistic evolution it is called, but all that is, is trying to live in
two different worlds in an attempt to offend neither God or man. The
only problem with that is that you end up offending both. Nobody likes
fence sitters.
So yes, what you believe about creation will affect the way you
live. It will shape your whole world-view, how you relate to other
people, and how you view morality. You might say it is the foundation
upon which everything you believe is built upon.
Some web sites that deal with science and creation are:
2. Does it really matter if I believe that story about Adam and Eve and the fall of man?
Can it really, possibly, matter if I believe that story about the first
man; the serpent, the garden, and all that other stuff can it? We don't
really have to take that story literally do we? Isn’t it all really
just a fairy tale made up long ago just to explain how people really
ended up on this planet?
The story of Adam
and Eve and the fall are crucial to the rest of the Bible. What we
believe about it is pivotal to the acceptance of the Gospel. Without
this story in the first three chapters of Genesis, the whole plan of
redemption laid out in the pages of Scripture makes no sense. Without
the fall, there is no need for a Savior. Without the fall there is no
sin. Everything God does from Genesis chapter 12, to Revelation chapter
22, has no real point. This story is the starting point for God’s
dealings with mankind.
The first thing that the Bible tells us about man is that he is
created in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26,27). In Gen. 2, God
placed man in the Garden of Eden and gave him only one law, “From
any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you
eat from it you will surely die.” (Gen.
2:17). The next thing you know, Satan shows up in the serpent, and gets
Eve to believe that God is really holding out on her by not letting her
eat of the fruit. So she tries it, gets Adam to eat it, and suddenly
they realize that they are filled with guilt and shame. God curses first
the serpent, then the woman, and finally the man. But in the midst of
the curses, God gives the first promise of one to come who would break
the curse (Gen 3:15). Everything else in the Old Testament is done to
set up the coming of this promised one, called the Messiah. Then in the
New Testament we see the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension
of this Messiah in the four Gospels. Then in the remaining books of the
N.T., we see how we are to go about winning others to the Messiah, and
how to live our lives, until his return.
All of this ties right into the story of Adam and Eve. Moses
believed in the literal interpretation of this passage (Ex. 20:11).
Jesus also believed in the literal interpretation of this passage as
well (Matt. 19:4; Mark 10:6). Many other passages refer to God as the
creator of heaven and earth, and everything that is in them. So either
these stories are true, or they are not. Original sin then, is not
man’s problem, but his environment is. Also, if this story is not
true, we have no need for Jesus, because we don’t need a savior, we
need someone who can lead us to a better social structure. We don’t
even need the Bible, because it’s whole premise is built upon the fact
that man disobeyed God and fell from His grace. If that is the case we
can just can the Bible, because the whole thing is built on a lie.
But the story of Adam and Eve is true, man really did fall, and
God really did bring about a plan to restore man to Himself. Jesus
really did atone for our sins, and we really must put our faith and
trust in what He did on the cross as the total payment for our sins, or
we will spend an eternity in the lake of fire!
3.
Where did Cain get his wife?
A real bone of contention with some people, and in their mind, a
proof of the unreliability of the Scriptures, is this question of
Cain’s spouse. She has got to be the most thought about woman in
history. But again, so what? What’s Cain’s "ole lady" got
to do with me?
During the famous "Scopes Monkey Trial" in 1925, ACLU
lawyer Clarence Darrow laid a Bible down in front of opposition attorney
William Jennings Bryan, and asked him if he could explain where Cain got
his famous bride from. Bryan was unable to answer Darrow, and gave many
people the notion that the Bible couldn’t stand up to scientific
scrutiny. And if you cannot defend the very foundations of Scripture
(Gen. chs. 1-11), then it makes defending the rest of the Word that much
more difficult.
So where did Cain get his wife? The story of Cain and Abel, and
the events surrounding them is told in the fourth chapter of the book of
Genesis. Really, it is even carried over into the first five verses of
chapter five. Many people have read it and made several assumptions that
the Bible never brings up. But before we get into any of that, let’s
look at Gen. 1:26-27 …Gen.
1:26 - 28 (NASB) Then God
said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and
let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and
over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing
that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the
image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God
blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful
and
multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of
the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that
moves on the earth.”
As you can see in the above passage, God created man, and He made
one male and one female. Chapter 2 goes into the finer details of how
God created the first man and woman. Chapter 3 tells how they disobeyed
God, and were cursed with death. Then in chapter 4 we see them having
children. All of this sequence is very important, because the whole plan
of redemption revolves around it. The New Testament makes it clear that
death entered into the world through Adam, and that all Adams
descendants are sinners (Rom. Ch. 5). Jesus came into the earth to
redeem Adam’s descendants from the curse of sin. And since He died
only for the descendants of Adam, no one outside of that family
tree would be eligible. Are you beginning to see why it is so
important what we believe concerning evolution. If man evolved over a
long period of time, then the story of Adam and Eve is not true, and the
whole ministry of Jesus was a sham. If you cannot accept the first few
chapters of the Bible, it’s impossible to accept the rest of it. So it
is vitally important to know the first 11 chapters of Scripture, for
they are the foundation.
So, lets get back to Cain. We see his birth in Gen. 4:1. And
right after that we see his brother, Abel, coming on the scene (vs. 2).
Now, many have made the assumption that these are the first children
ever born, but the text does not say that. It may well be true, but the
text does not require it. They also assume Adam, Eve, and their two sons
are the only inhabitants of the earth, so when they get to the part
where it reads about Cain’s wife (vs. 17), they freak, and want to
know how that is possible. For the answer to that we need to go the Gen.
5.
Gen.
5:1-5 (NASB) This is the
book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, He
made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and He
blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created. When
Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a
son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.
Then the days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight
hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days that
Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.
Looking at the above passage, one could almost think Adam
didn’t have any children until he was 130, and that his name was Seth!
But that is not what it is saying at all. The only thing the Scripture
is dealing with is the birth of Seth. That is why it doesn’t mention
Cain and Able. And we also see that Adam had other sons and daughters.
It doesn’t say how many children he had, but when someone lives to be
930 year old, that could be a LOT of kids!
So we can assume from all the evidence provided by these first
five chapters of Genesis, that the sequence of events might have went
something like this: 1.
Adam and Eve are created by God and commanded to populate the
earth. 2.
They disobey God and are cursed, and all their children after them. 3.
They start to have children, Cain and Abel being just two of
them, and their children marry each other and have more children. 130
years later Adam and Eve have a particular son named Seth. They still
continue to have children. 4.
Sometime prior to Seth’s birth, Cain kills Abel. He runs away,
fearing vengeance from his family. He is probably already married,
perhaps even has children of his own, and more than likely take them
with him when he goes to the land of Nod. 5.
While there, he has relations with his wife and a particular son,
Enoch, is born. Nothing in the text says Cain found his wife there, only
that he had relations with his wife there, which produced Enoch. Now,
you may ask, how does all that jibe with the Bible’s prohibition
against incest.
Lev. 20:22 (NASB)
"Cursed is he who lies with his sister, the daughter of his father
or of his mother." That seems pretty much like God is against
that sort of thing, doesn't it?
But that law was given about 2600 years after Cain. God did not
make His laws retroactive, either. So why did He allow it then, but
forbid the practice of marrying a close relative later. The reasons are
not that hard to ascertain, especially in the light of the study of
genetics that is available to us today.
We know that the law today forbids marriage to a sibling, because
the dangers of genetic disorders are so high. The closer the relation,
the higher the risk of passing on serious genetic defects to the next
generation. That is why in many cases of incest with very close
relatives, the child is born with a serious mental or physical defect.
But that was not the case with the first couple. First, they were
created by a direct act of God. Adam was formed from the dust of the
Ground and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Eve was
formed from a rib from Adam’s side. Both were without defect, and God
looked at his newly formed pair and said it was good (Gen. 2). Secondly,
they were placed into a perfect environment. The Earth was covered with
some type of protective canopy (Gen 2:1-6) that kept a uniform
sub-tropical temperature over the entire planet (even evolution agrees
with that). It would also have acted as a filter for harmful radiation
from the Sun, and probably increased the amount of oxygen in the
atmosphere. The children of that couple would take many years to begin
to experience any serious birth defects. That is probably why the
pre-flood race had an average life span of 920 years (Gen 5), and why
those life spans began to shrink so rapidly after the flood.
Even after the flood, it was about 600 years before God gave the
law against marrying a close relative, because it was necessary to
continue the species. Abraham was married to his half-sister (Sarah).
Isaac was married to his first cousin (Rebecca). And Jacob was married
to his 2nd cousins (Rachel and Leah). But by the time of Moses, the
average lifespan was pretty close to what it is today, and to protect
the newly developing nation of Israel, God put this law into practice.
So, it’s really no big deal about where Cain got his wife. All
you have to do is to be able to do a little simple math, understand
“the birds and the bees”, and just simply trust what God his said in
His Word.
4.
Does it really matter if I believe in a literal six-day creation, or
that it took millions of years?
Science tells us that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old,
so how can we possibly take the story about the six days of creation
literally? Shouldn't we view it as some type of allegory, and leave the
origins of the earth up to the scientists?
That might be a good idea if the scientists happen to know more
about the origins of the universe than God, but if you examine their
track record, you will see that that isn’t true. Today’s
evolutionists refute almost every thing Darwin wrote about in his book
“The Origin of Species”.
Almost every piece of so called “scientific evidence” that was
presented at the Scopes Trail in 1925, has been rejected as either
fabricated, or simply untrue. Even today there is no uniform agreement
as to the origin of anything among evolutionists, although they try to
put on a unified front before the public.
Many Christians balk at the idea of refuting “scientific
evidence” regarding creation, age of the earth, origin of life, etc.,
but will stand against the scientific world regarding the Deity of
Christ, His resurrection, His return, etc. Why is it that in this one
area, creation, we are so ready to throw in the towel to the secular
scientists? It’s funny that we are afraid of being called anti-science
on that subject, but not on other maters of the Scriptures.
Evolution, contrary to popular opinion, is not real science, but
a philosophy. It is based on the premise “there is no God”, and
builds its conclusions from that. It is scientifically impossible to
prove or disprove the existence of God, so whichever side you take, you
have to take it by faith. Evolution tries to wrap its faith in the
blanket of science, in an attempt to seem legitimate. Many evolutionists
have stated that their theory is unsubstantiated by the evidence, but
that they accept it by faith, because they refuse to believe in God. In
fact many have stated that the evidence points to an intelligent
designer, but because of their determination to reject God, they
continue in their belief in creation by random chance.
Many scientists however, do believe in a literal six-day
creation, as accounted for in the first chapter of Genesis. They start
from the premise that the Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God,
and that the story of creation is literally true. They believe that the
account of the creation of man, the worldwide flood, the tower of Babel,
are all literal, true, events. They believe that if science disagrees
with the Scripture, than we need to look at the science that was used,
and not attempt to modify the Bible. The idea that all scientists are
evolutionists just isn’t so. And many more are coming to believe in
creationism, because that is where the evidence really points.
So after looking at all the evidence of creation, one still has
to make a decision of faith, since all the evidence is circumstantial.
Evolution or Creation. Either one is based on ones belief in God. As I
heard Mr. Ken Ham of Answers In Genesis Ministries say, we have before
us two reports about creation, one is from man, who does not know
everything, and who was not there. The other is from God, who does know
everything and who was there. Who’s report are you going to believe?
The answer to the question of what this has to do with me is
simple. It shows where you place the most faith. In infallible God, or
fallible man. Where does your faith lie?
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