Genesis is History
Introduction
A. Charles Darwin lost his faith in the Bible when he began to question the historical accuracy of Genesis.
1. Our children are losing their faith even before they get to the university because their Sunday Bible class teachers are telling them that Genesis is mythological or at best metaphorical or prophetical, maybe even a parable.
2. The majority of preachers, pastors, and religious schools do not teach that Moses told us the truth. There are consequences.
B. Psalm 11:3 If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?
1. David writes as a prophet about the connection between righteousness and the doctrines that faith, hope, and love are built on.
2. Genesis 1-11 provide us the foundations of the rest of the Bible. Chapters 12-50 give us the beginnings of the Israelite nation and the messianic hopes founded on their national heritage.
3. Jesus and the apostles founded their teachings about salvation and the home on the history of Genesis 1-11.
I. One thing leads to another.
A. Genesis is used as a starting place for the doctrines taught by Jesus and the apostles.
1. Creation spoken into existence: Genesis 1:3 God said -- John 1:1-3, 14 In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God .... Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
2. God's word and thus His Laws are authoritative only if God really spoke them: Genesis 2:15-17 ... 3:13-19 -- John 12:46-48 Words shall judge us in the last day.
3. Bible defined standards govern morality, marriage, and the home: Genesis 2:21-25 -- Matthew 19:1-9 Marriage and adultery are defined by creation according to Jesus. All other sexual behavior is judged immoral.
4. Meaning of Life for human beings made in the image of God is defined by the Bible and especially in the creation history. Genesis 1:27-28 image of God taking dominion over the Creation; 9:6 after the flood: murder of human beings punishable by death -- John 3:16; Matthew 16:26 God loves human beings and values one soul about all the world. Luke 15 Lost sheep, lost coin, lost son all teach us of the value of a single human soul.
B. If you start with a gutted Bible without historical value or reliability, then God did not command the laws or morality of the Bible.
1. You can begin with the ever questionable and changing Theory of Evolution -- Survival of the Fittest. Man now is no better or worse than any other animal howbeit perhaps more intelligent.
2. Now every man is his own god and can judge what is good or evil, righteous or wicked. The Law of the Jungle is just as legitimate as the Law of the Country Club. Cheating on your spouse or leaving one companion when another better one comes along (hay, it is survival of the fittest!) cannot be judged. You have your truth, I have mine. There is not logical reason to condemn the boys at Columnbine school for slaughtering their fellow-students who did not please them...life is a jungle and there are many predators. It is everyman for himself Smith-and-Wesson time!
3. Without moral standards to define marriage or protect the home, marriage can be two men or two women, or men and boys until the boys grow into men. Virginity and the sacredness of marriage become a curse for every woman or man who prefers to join with every mate they are attracted to regardless of family loyalties. Without moral standards we have in your face nudity and pornography in the marketplace and every public place.
4. Without meaning, life is cheap and expendable and get abortion and euthanasia.
II. If you can redefine sin, that is the end of Christianity.
A. Dr. E.O.Wilson, Harvard Prophessor (Sociology) writes in the The Humanist, September 1982, p. 40: "As were many persons from Alabama, I was a born again Christian. When I was 15, I entered the Southern Baptist Church with great fervor and interest in the fundamentalist religion. I left at 17 when I got to the University of Alabama and heard about evolutionary theory."
B. Genesis 1-11, world history, world biology and paleontology can be looked at through two different points of view ("eye-glasses"). You can use your "Evolutionary glasses" or you can use your "Bible glasses". All the debate over Genesis 1-11 depends on which set of glasses that you use... or what set of assumptions that you begin with.
C. Genesis 1-11 is foundational for the doctrines of sin and righteousness
1. Genesis 2:15-17 in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die (dying you shall die)
2. Genesis 3:6, 11-19 ate, were cursed, v. 22-24 driven from the garden of Eden away from the tree of life.
a. coats of skins: first blood shed recorded
b. 1:29-31 all were vegetarian
c. 3:15 promise of victory of Satan
d. Abel is offering animal sacrifices in 4:1-5 according to the will of God.
3. Genesis 4:8 Cain killed Abel
4. Genesis 6:1-8 Earth filled with wickedness and God determined to destroy humanity
5. Genesis 6-9 Universal flood to destroy all humanity
D. New Testament assumes the history as stated in Genesis 1-11 as a foundation of the Salvation arguments of the Gospel.
1. 2 Corinthians 11:3 Serpent beguiled Eve
2. Romans 5:12-14 Through one man Adam, sin entered into the world and death by sin
3. 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 for in Adam, all men die
4. 1 Timothy 2:13-14 Adam was created first and then Eve. Eve was deceived and not Adam.
5. John 5:24-28 Jesus brings life to those who hear -- and on the day of resurrection, physical life to all that are in the graves.
6. Hebrews 11:7 by faith Noah prepared an ark (just as real as Abraham of chapter 12)
7. 1 Peter 3:20 Noah saved by water
8. 2 Peter 2:5 old world was not spared in the days of Noah ... neither shall we.
E. New Testament assumes the history of Genesis as a foundation of the home and morality.
1. Matthew 19:3-9 question of adultery founded on creation narrative of Genesis
2. 1 Timothy 2:8-13 roles of men and women -- and the principle of modesty and nakedness is based on Adam and Eve ......... Genesis 2:25; 3:7, 10-11 defined as shameful
a. Genesis 9:22-23 Noah uncovered his nakedness to his shame while drunk
b. Basis for the prophecy against Canaan which was to be dispossessed centuries later.
F. Jesus also quoted all other debated mythological texts as historical.
1. Sodom and Gomorrah, Genesis 19 -- Matthew 10:15; Luke 17:29; Romans 9:29; 2 Peter 2:6; Jude 7
2. Noah's flood, Genesis 6-9 -- Matthew 24:37
3. Abraham, Genesis 12 -- John 8:39, 56 rejoiced to see my day; Matthew 22:31-32 Abraham is living
III. What about the age of the earth?
A. Genealogies of Genesis and Luke cannot encompass a million or even hundreds of thousands of years. Cannot be more than 6,000 to 10,000 years by any stretch of the imagination.
1. Need to change your point of view from evolutionary to biblical -- change your glasses.
2. You would never read Genesis 1 to get the idea of a 5 billion year old earth.
3. You have to assume and look for 5 billion years to allow time for evolution. Even 5 billion years is not enough time to explain the complexity of our Creation, even the genetic code and its nearly endless potential for diversity.
B. Carbon-14 Dating
1. Developed by Willard Libbey, chemist at the University of Chicago in the 50's and given a Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1960.
2. Cosmic radiation bombards earth's atmosphere (mostly Nitrogen and Oxygen) and changes some of the Nitrogen-14 to Carbon-14 (a proton is replaced by neutron) and in the atmosphere is absorbed by plants as Carbon-dioxide and converted into sugar (hydrocarbons). All living things absorb C-14 until death and then the unstable C-14 breaks down (radiation) leaving only C-12 and C-13 which are stable and of course N-14.
3. Usefulness of this process for dating purposes depends on the ration of C-12 to C-14 which is usually 1 C-14 to 1 trillion C-12 in the atmosphere and in living plants and animals.
a. Assume that this ratio is unchanging and always has been unchanging.
b. Yet weather changes, geologic events, catastrophic changes in the biosphere can change the ratio
c. Changes in the earth's magnetic field, which protects us from harmful cosmic radiation from the sun and other sources. The field is 10% weaker today than it was in 1845 as measured by German Carl Friedrich Gauss. If so, a stronger magnetic field in the times of Noah would have limited the cosmic radiation much more and reduced the actual amount of C-14 being formed in those days leaving the fossils of that period apparently much older because of having much less C-14.
4. Even so, in 1997 an eight year research project to the investigate the age of the earth by a group called RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth), eight scientists with PhD's in Physics, Geology, Geophysics, Atmospheric Science, studied the C-14 in ten different coal layers, representing different time periods in the geologic column (Cenozoic, Mesozoic, and Paleozoic). Samples from the U.S. Department of Energy Coal Sample Bank, dated from millions to hundreds of millions of years old based on standard evolution time estimates, all contained measurable amounts of C-14.
a. Half-life of C-14 is 5,730 years.
b. There should be no detestable C-14 left after 100,000 years
c. Average of these coal deposits was 50,000 years. (Using a more realistic pre-flood C-14/C-12, ratio reduces that age to about 5,000 years.)
d. Also studied 12 diamond samples. All samples contained detectable, but lower levels of C-14. Diamonds are said to be perhaps billions of years old by the evolutionary speculations.
C. What about "Scientific community's conclusions about the age of the earth?"
1. Old earth dating methods are based on assumptions that cannot be proven.
2. 90 % of the known dating physical processes set limits of age for a very young in thousands of years and not in millions. There are more than fifty known ways to study the age of the earth.
3. A few examples:
-- atomic clocks determine that the earth's spin is slowing down 1 second per year.
-- magnetic fields of the earth are steadily and rapidly declining
-- river sediments forming deltas.
-- volcanoes: there are 600 active with many more dormant... should be more evidence of activity in over 5 billion yeas. Four active volcanoes in 5 billion years could do what these 600 are doing now.
-- helium
-- ocean salinity
-- continental erosion
-- oil and gas pressure and leaks
-- meteorite dust high in nickel would be 182 ft think in 5 billion years
-- moon dust should be mile thick, yet very shallow
-- shrinkage of the sun
-- comets should be spent in 10,000
-- radiation of Saturn and Jupiter
-- coral reef growth
-- human populations and civilizations
-- Niagra Falls erosion
-- meteor showers
-- potassium in the sea
-- leaching chlorine
-- radiogenic lead
-- uranium decay
-- Io's internal heat
-- Titan's methane loss
-- decay in Saturn's rings