Genesis One - Approaches Considered (2)

Genesis One
Approaches Considered (1)

In speaking of creation, Jehovah pronounced, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work. . .For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth. . .and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day an hallowed it" (Ex. 20:8-11). Jews understood that the Sabbath was literally the seventh day. Contextually they also understood the freedom to labor "six days" and the restriction to rest on day seven. Jehovah made the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh was the basis for their belief. It is seemingly redundant to inform the reader that this Sabbath day was given to the Jews of Old Testament Israel, and not to the Jew inwardly in the church which Jesus built, "It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed" (Ex. 31:17; cf. Hos. 2:11; Col. 2:14-16; Rom. 2:29). Even though we do not keep the Sabbath day holy today, we can identify it and believe the Jews were to keep it holy simply because the Bible says so. Had it not been for God's word, how did our concept of a seven day work week come about?

Evolution and long age geology has been so powerful that we actually believe that believing the world is several thousands of years old is believing in a "young earth." Of course to such fantasizing time tables of billions of years, thousands of years seem like a mere "vapor." Such philosophical arenas have entertained and captivated the modern mind of many. Gladiators of atheism march out sporting with their weapons of assumptive "evidences" (which are nothing more than godless, faulty interpretations intermixed with pseudo-science and some borderline criminal behavior). Nebraska Man, Piltdown Man, Neanderthal Man, Ramapithecus and others are illustrations of a little data with a lot of speculation and behind the scenes manipulation paraded in front of the world as "the missing link." Yet, the only thing missing was the truth, because the truth was not known or was covered up!

The fundamental difference between creation science and evolution is not so much of "true science" versus "religion," but rather how we approach the evidence with our bias. If one begins with the approach that there is no God, then one must interpret all evidence accordingly. Thus, a classic illustration is seen in the interpretation of the Grand Canyon. One approach will interpret the Grand Canyon as the work of long ages of time with a little amount of water (time + processes = reality). In contrast, another approach will formulate God + a small amount of time + a large amount of water as equally plausible. Both are beliefs, and both are based on assumptions. The difference is their approach: one leaves God out of the picture; the other sees God in the picture. Neither positions can be proven by science since science is limited to things that are observable and repeatable. While we can observe the Grand Canyon today and the processes that are presently at work, we cannot prove scientifically that those were the same processes at work in the past 200, years let alone 2000 years -those processes were not observed by us! The only way that one can know the past is by "credible testimony" that has been preserved and passed down to the present generation, and even with this one can only reach the banks of "probability." It is faith that bridges the gap to "certainty." The above truth may be troubling to some, but it need not be. We use credible testimony for nearly everything that we believe. For example, why do you believe that America was really 200 years old in 1976, or that the moon is not really a ball of cheese, or that your mother and father are really "mom & dad"? Can you recall seeing and recognizing mom and dad the day you came out of the womb? Have you personally been to the moon to see for yourself its contents? Were you in the battlefields for independence? Yet, you believe these things to be true based on credible testimony. What is more credible than God's word, and where better to begin? - Steven J. Wallace