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Genesis 1 uses unequivocal language, indicating that the days (numbered—indeed, a numbered sequence of days, with an evening and a morning each) are ordinary consecutive days. In Exodus 20:11 God instituted the Sabbath commandment saying that His work of creation in six days (with a seventh day where He ceased to work) is the pattern for our seven-day week. Attempts by some Christians to stretch out the time-frame of Creation Week aim to accommodate the conjectures of historical science; that billions of years of time transpired before people came on the scene. But that ‘deep time’ incorporates geological eras represented by rock layers with fossils in them; fossils of dead (and often diseased) animals. This then puts natural evil in God’s ‘very good’ creation before Adam sinned and brought the curse of death and corruption upon the created order. This undermines the ‘big picture’ of the Gospel–i.e. an originally ‘very good’ world, ruined by sin, to be restored to a sinless, deathless paradise through Christ.  Return to Question 1

The genealogy in Genesis 5 gives a history of the world from Creation Week to the Flood and therefore a total history of creation of thousands of years (about 6,000 years by the Masoretic text). Hebrew experts unhesitatingly concur that the Hebrew of Genesis indicates that Adam was created six (ordinary-length) days from the beginning of the entire universe, with a chain of genealogies from Adam onwards giving us a thousands-of-years-old universe. Note that most of these experts are either non-theists or are ‘liberal’ Christians. Because neither group believes that the Bible/Genesis is true/inspired, they are not motivated to bend Scripture to fit with ‘science’. They are free to tell us exactly what the Hebrew means. Even if there were gaps in the genealogies (the Bible shows that there are no gaps), the time-scale cannot be stretched to accommodate notions of ‘deep time’ that are popular today. And long-age views, which all place the appearance of people towards the end of an incredibly long creation process, clash with the clear statements of Jesus in e.g. Mark 10:6 where He says they were there from the beginning. Either we accept the Bible’s chronology or we don’t, in which case the Bible is not our authority; fallible human historical ‘science’ is.  Return to Question 2

Jesus, whom the apostle Paul called ‘the last Adam’, died for all those who are ‘in Adam’ (1 Corinthians 15), so the Gospel as explained here (and Romans 5) depends on the historical reality of the Bible’s teaching here that all people on earth came from Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were the ancestors of all people, as is also clear from Acts 17:26 (all nations from one man, or ‘one blood’ as the KJV puts it).  Return to Question 3

The Bible clearly says that God took dust and made a man and took part of his side and made a woman. Since part of the Curse was for Adam to return to the dust from which he was made (Genesis 3:19), dust cannot be a metaphor for an ape that evolved into humans. The meaning of marriage rests on this historical fact, as Jesus made clear in his teachings on marriage in the Gospels (Matthew 10:3–6, Mark 10:6–9). Man did not evolve from a lesser animal. The creation of Eve from Adam’s body undermines all hope of deriving an evolutionary statement from Genesis. Furthermore, the N.T. teaching on the respective roles of men and women in the church is clearly stated to depend on the historical reality of the events as described in Genesis (1 Timothy 2:13–14).  Return to Question 4

Genesis 1–3 clearly teaches that bodily death of Adam and Eve happened only as a consequence of disobeying their Creator: ‘from dust you came and to dust you return’. The whole N.T. teaching on resurrection and the necessity of Jesus’ bodily resurrection rests upon the reality of this teaching in Genesis, that bodily death came through sin (1 Corinthians 15:21–22).  Return to Question 5

Genesis 1 clearly says that God originally created the people and animals vegetarian (vv. 29–31). (People were only permitted to eat meat after the Flood (Genesis 9:3).) Immediately following God’s statement about this, He pronounced all that He had made ‘very good’. ‘Nature red in tooth and claw’ (Tennyson) was not a description of God’s very good creation. The passages in Isaiah 11 and 65 about a future state in which carnivores and herbivores co-exist peacefully make it clear that violence, death and suffering in animals is not God’s desired state. The corruption of Paradise only happened after Adam sinned. Paradise restored to a deathless, sinless condition (Revelation 21:4) involves the removal of the Genesis Curse (Revelation 22:3). Acceptance of this historical perspective from Scripture gives us a basis for an effective theodicy (explaining why there are ‘bad things’—natural evil—in a world created by an all-powerful, good God.)  Return to Question 6

Fossilized animals show evidence of having died violent deaths, eaten by other animals, or death from painful conditions such as bone cancer, etc. Such natural evil is not consistent with God’s pronouncing His finished creation ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31). This means that the fossilization of these animals must have happened after the Fall in Genesis 3; after the Curse of sin corrupted the cosmos (Romans 8). And this means that the placement of most of the geological column under the feet of the first people has to be wrong. Again this relates to an effective theodicy. But it also provides the basis for eschatology, that there will be a new heavens and earth in the future (because this present order is corrupt). See 2 Peter 3:10–13. In Romans 8:21 we read how this present ‘groaning’ creation will be ‘liberated’ in the future, referred to as the coming restitution (restoration) of all things in Acts 3:21. This entire framework is (often unwittingly) undermined through long-age views that put the fossil record pre-Adam.  Return to Question 7

Scripture gives numerous evidences that the Flood of Noah was global (Genesis 6–9). There have been many local floods since, which would have involved God breaking His rainbow promise if Noah’s Flood were only local. Such a large boat, for which calculations show it could comfortably accommodate all kinds of the land-dwelling animals that breathed through nostrils, is totally unnecessary, even absurd, for a local catastrophe. The land creatures (especially the birds!) could simply emigrate to escape it. To suggest that it was a local inundation, or tranquil, or worse, it did not happen, contradicts Scripture. Indeed, Jesus clearly believed in the reality of the Flood (Luke 17:26–27). The Apostle Peter likened the Flood to the world-wide fiery judgment to come and also predicted today’s disbelief regarding the Flood, even the ‘uniformitarian’ philosophy of the scoffers (2 Peter 3:3–7). The Flood also gives a basis to explain the way in which much of the fossil-bearing rock could have formed after Adam sinned.  Return to Question 8

Many evangelicals will not believe the Genesis account about miraculous creation because of ‘science’ or ‘the majority of scientists’. However, ‘science’ also says that ‘dead men do not rise’, but many who disbelieve Genesis still believe in the miracle of Jesus raising Lazarus, although it is also a creation miracle (reconstructing the molecular arrangements of a rotting corpse, reversing the decay and disintegration). If Jesus, the Creator (John 1:3), can raise Lazarus, He can also create everything in the time frame that the Holy Spirit inspired the biblical writers to so clearly record. It is inconsistent to believe one, and not the other, and this inconsistency leads many to reject Christianity because they can see it clearly. If we don’t believe the Bible about the history of all things, how can we believe what it says about the miracles of Jesus, about morality and salvation, and more?  Return to Question 9