Biblical Reasons Why It matters Whether We Believe in Six Days of Creation or Something Else
1. The nature of God’s word. God directed the writing of a very specific and detailed account of the genealogy of the universe. Why would God direct such precision of input for an analogous story? Either the statements are true, or they are of no value.
2. What could be the purpose of Gen 1:1 – 2:4, which is identified as a “genealogy of the heavens and the earth” when they were created, if it is in fact not an account of how the heavens and earth came into being?
3. Gen 1:3 identifies a separation of light from darkness, and defines both “day” and “night” by them respectively.
4. In Gen 1:3, after defining day and night, it is recorded “evening was and morning was, the first day.” Thus, “day” (yom) is defined as the union of one period of evening (nighttime, or dark-time) followed by one period of morning (daytime, or light-time).
5. In subsequent verses, the conclusion of the account of every creative day is “and the evening and the morning were the [#] day.” Every creative day is assigned one day defined in terms of a normal rotation of dark/light periods.
6. In Gen 1:14-19, God is recorded as making “greater and lesser lights” to “rule” the “day” and the “night”. Prior to this day, there were no celestial lights created, yet the “ruling” by what we now know to be the sun and moon conformed to the “evening/morning” cycles already set by God prior to their creation.
Science has concluded that the consequence to the earth if the periods of direct sun were either lessened or increased measurably would be catastrophic and permanent. Consequently, both Scripture and natural science contradict any possible understanding of this time period other than a normal, 24-hour day.
5. Genesis states that all creatures and plants were created “after their kind”.In other words, each type or class was created directly, with the genetic information to accommodate all the variations within its kind. (ie: dog kind; with genetics to accommodate changes of size, colour, stature, fur type, eye colour, etc.)
6. God is stated to have created humans male and female. This is reinforced by Christ to have been in the beginning.(Mt 19:4)
7. The Bible says God created humans in God’s image. This would be untrue if He had placed His image into something that was not “man”, or first adapted some other creature into which He placed His “image”.
8. Gen 2:7 states that God formed man of the dust of the earth.Did He form man of the dust of the earth, or did He evolve man from some other creature? If the latter, His statement to Adam “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return,” becomes meaningless, as man did not come from the “dust of the earth”.
9. He formed first male, then formed a female from the flesh of the male.Is this true or false?Paul reinforced this as fact in his teaching (1 Tim 2:13; 1 Cor 11:8-9, 12)
10. Genesis 2:18, 20 state that man was first alone in his “kind”, and that this was not “good” for him.Woman was created afterward, specifically for man’s benefit. This does not reconcile with evolving of each gender over time.
11. All creatures were to reproduce “after their kind”, all plants to reproduce and bear seed “after their kind”. Thus, progeny would be genetically consistent with the progenitor, and remain so through generations.
12. Using Genesis 1-3 as the basis for arguments in favour of marital fidelity and continuance, for Sabbath, and against homosexuality, become invalid and meaningless if in fact these chapters are spiritual allegories rather than historical facts.
The New Testament uses creation as the basis of defining proper sexual relations (Matt 19, 1 Cor 7, Rom 1, etc.) A myth cannot validly be used to support a principle of fact. The rest of the teaching of both Jesus and Paul would be rendered suspect at best, if indeed Genesis has no historical basis.
13. The historical consistency of a 7-day week throughout “recorded” history bears witness to the testimony of the original 7-day week.
14. The Scripture states that sin and death entered the world through one man, Adam. Evolution requires death of successive generations. If indeed man “evolved” over millions of years from other creatures, which themselves evolved from unrelated creatures, death, disease, and suffering existed in the world for many years before Adam, and the statement that sin and death entered through Adam is false.
Moreover, Scripture states that death is a direct consequence of sin. (Romans 6:23)If reasoning beings did not exist for millions of years before man, yet millions of things died before man, death was obviously not a consequence of sin. Romans tells us that all of creation was subjected to death and suffering as a consequence of sin, so an argument limiting that effect to mankind after he evolved is Scripturally untenable.
15. If the creation days were really just long periods of time, portions such as Exodus 20:11 become meaningless. Must man work without ceasing for six “long ages” then rest for an immeasurably long time as the seventh “day”. This is absurd, and completely invalidated by the account of Scripture, as well as all history.
16. 100% of teaching on the Sabbath is based upon a literal 7-day creation event.
17. Genesis chapters 11 to 50 are universally acknowledged as intended to be historical. There is no difference in the writing of Gen 1 – 11. Gen 1 – 2:4 is written in the standard form of genealogies, and the rest of the book to chapter 11 is written in the form of an historical account. If we must discount the historical value of Gen 1 – 3, or 1 – 11, how can we arbitrarily assign historical value to the rest of the book?
18. Numerous other passages of Scripture refer to God having created the world and the heavens directly, and some refer to creating specific things in it. Clearly other Biblical authors understood God to have literally created things as they were at the beginning, rather than an indefinable mass of “stuff” that He acted on to develop specific things.
19. In Luke’s genealogy of Christ, he goes back to being “the son of Adam, the son of God”.Did Adam come directly from God, or did he evolve from primates? If he did evolve, what does this do to the value of the account by Luke, who named as his purpose for writing the assurance to Theophilus of the truth of those things, of which Luke claimed to have “perfect understanding”? If he establishes his “true story” by a falsehood right at the beginning, it doesn’t bode well for the integrity of the rest of his account.
20. There is neither doctrinal nor literary justification from the Scripture itself to view Genesis 1-11 as anything other than an historical account, and sufficient support for it as historical. In fact, the only reason to consider that Gen 1-11 might be other than historical is to accommodate the ideas of those who have rejected the possibility of God having created, and have sought support for their ideas in “science”. Since science does not contradict the Scripture at any point, and much of the ‘evidence” claimed to support other than a creative act ex nihilo as described in Genesis, has been shown to be inaccurate, false, or misinterpreted, and indeed is generally more supportive of such a creative event, there becomes not only no reason to question the Genesis account, but many reasons to accept it.
Romans 1:19-20 states that the entire created order demonstrates to man the existence and nature of God, and that men specifically chose to reject God and His testimony because they did not “like to retain God in their knowledge”. In their quest for emancipation from the necessary response to the knowledge of God, men have spent generations seeking ways to justify their rejection, by misapplying the knowledge they do acquire, and by lying.
Jeremiah 29:13 states “You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.” When men are honest, they will see His testimony in all His works, and recognize that He has indeed told us the truth about Himself.
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