Ask Mr. Religion
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Some serious hermeneutical hopscotch is needed to deny the literal meaning of the six days.
1. The ordinance of the Sabbath is now doubtful if six days is not literal (Ex. 20:11).
2. If the First Adam is allegorical, then the Second Adam is as well.
3. A literal Adam is required in Romans.
4. The Apostle clearly described Adam as the first human sinner—not whatever millions of human-like beings in the presumed evolutionary chain.
5. Death came through Adamic sin, an explanation from Scripture that is cast aside in the notion of millions of years of death and destruction prior to Adam assumed by evolution.
The context of Genesis 1 clearly shows that the days of creation were literal days. First, yôm (day) is defined the first time it is used in the Bible (Genesis 1:4-5) in its two literal senses: the light portion of the light/dark cycle and the whole light/dark cycle. Second, yôm is used with “evening” and “morning.” Everywhere these two words are used in the OT—morning and evening— either together or separately and with or without yôm in the context, they always mean a literal evening or morning of a literal day. Third, yôm is modified with a number: one day, second day, third day, and so on, wherein everywhere else in the Old Testament indicates literal days. Fourth, yôm is defined literally in Genesis 1:14 in relation to the heavenly bodies.
In Mark 10:6 we have the clearest—but not the only—statement showing that Our Lord was a young-earth creationist.
Therein He states that Adam and Eve were at the beginning of creation, not billions of years after the beginning.
Belief in millions of years undermines the Bible’s teaching on death and on the character of God. Genesis 1 teaches six times that God called the creation “good,” and when God finished creation on day six, He called everything “very good.” Man and animals and birds were originally vegetarian (Genesis 1:29–30), plants are not “living creatures,” as are people and animals). But Adam and Eve sinned, resulting in the judgment of God on the whole creation. Instantly Adam and Eve died spiritually, and after God’s curse they began to die physically.
The serpent and Eve were changed physically and the ground itself was cursed (Genesis 3:14-19). The whole creation now groans in bondage to corruption, waiting for the final redemption of the saints (Rom. 8:19–25), when we will see the restoration of all things (Acts 3:21; Col. 1:20) to a state similar to the pre-Fall world—there will be no more carnivore behavior (Isaiah 11:6–9) and no disease, suffering, or death (Revelation 21:3-5)—there will be no more Curse (Revelation 22:3).
To accept millions of years of animal death before the creation and Fall of man contradicts and destroys the Bible’s teaching on death and the full redemptive work of Christ. It also makes God into a bumbling, cruel creator who uses—or can’t prevent—disease, natural disasters, and extinctions to mar His creative work, without any moral cause, yet calls it all “very good.”
Scripture teaches that death is the result of the Fall. Evolution says that death is the mechanism of improving the gene pool. According to evolution, then, death is good, and part of the world which cannot be eliminated. Death is no longer the intruder that the Scripture says it is.
Leviticus law says that death is bad. Life is part of the camp, and death is to be outside the camp. If Our Lord conquered death, how can evolution be true, when evolution says that death is how progress comes to the world? Revelation 21:4 tells us explicitly: death shall be no more. One possible answer is that the Fall is only resulting in spiritual death, not physical death. This is inconsistent with Genesis 3 when compared with Genesis 5. The refrain “and he died” is a reflection on the curse of the Fall. Revelation tells us that the first death and the second death are related, but for the grace of God. Christianity proclaims that physical death is wrong. When will you get over the death of your loved one? Ultimately, at the Resurrection! Christianity is never reconciled to death. If evolution is true, then God pronounced death good. This is blasphemous.
The problem with wanting to be respectable in society by believing in evolution is that the resurrection of Christ, the miraculous nature of the virgin birth, the miracles of Christ are all equally distasteful to the secularists as is creation.
What is at stake here is the authority of Scripture, the character of God, the doctrine of death, and the very foundation of the gospel. If the early chapters of Genesis are not true literal history, then faith in the rest of Scripture is undermined, including its teaching about salvation and morality.
AMR
1. The ordinance of the Sabbath is now doubtful if six days is not literal (Ex. 20:11).
2. If the First Adam is allegorical, then the Second Adam is as well.
3. A literal Adam is required in Romans.
4. The Apostle clearly described Adam as the first human sinner—not whatever millions of human-like beings in the presumed evolutionary chain.
5. Death came through Adamic sin, an explanation from Scripture that is cast aside in the notion of millions of years of death and destruction prior to Adam assumed by evolution.
The context of Genesis 1 clearly shows that the days of creation were literal days. First, yôm (day) is defined the first time it is used in the Bible (Genesis 1:4-5) in its two literal senses: the light portion of the light/dark cycle and the whole light/dark cycle. Second, yôm is used with “evening” and “morning.” Everywhere these two words are used in the OT—morning and evening— either together or separately and with or without yôm in the context, they always mean a literal evening or morning of a literal day. Third, yôm is modified with a number: one day, second day, third day, and so on, wherein everywhere else in the Old Testament indicates literal days. Fourth, yôm is defined literally in Genesis 1:14 in relation to the heavenly bodies.
In Mark 10:6 we have the clearest—but not the only—statement showing that Our Lord was a young-earth creationist.
Therein He states that Adam and Eve were at the beginning of creation, not billions of years after the beginning.Belief in millions of years undermines the Bible’s teaching on death and on the character of God. Genesis 1 teaches six times that God called the creation “good,” and when God finished creation on day six, He called everything “very good.” Man and animals and birds were originally vegetarian (Genesis 1:29–30), plants are not “living creatures,” as are people and animals). But Adam and Eve sinned, resulting in the judgment of God on the whole creation. Instantly Adam and Eve died spiritually, and after God’s curse they began to die physically.
The serpent and Eve were changed physically and the ground itself was cursed (Genesis 3:14-19). The whole creation now groans in bondage to corruption, waiting for the final redemption of the saints (Rom. 8:19–25), when we will see the restoration of all things (Acts 3:21; Col. 1:20) to a state similar to the pre-Fall world—there will be no more carnivore behavior (Isaiah 11:6–9) and no disease, suffering, or death (Revelation 21:3-5)—there will be no more Curse (Revelation 22:3).
To accept millions of years of animal death before the creation and Fall of man contradicts and destroys the Bible’s teaching on death and the full redemptive work of Christ. It also makes God into a bumbling, cruel creator who uses—or can’t prevent—disease, natural disasters, and extinctions to mar His creative work, without any moral cause, yet calls it all “very good.”
Scripture teaches that death is the result of the Fall. Evolution says that death is the mechanism of improving the gene pool. According to evolution, then, death is good, and part of the world which cannot be eliminated. Death is no longer the intruder that the Scripture says it is.
Leviticus law says that death is bad. Life is part of the camp, and death is to be outside the camp. If Our Lord conquered death, how can evolution be true, when evolution says that death is how progress comes to the world? Revelation 21:4 tells us explicitly: death shall be no more. One possible answer is that the Fall is only resulting in spiritual death, not physical death. This is inconsistent with Genesis 3 when compared with Genesis 5. The refrain “and he died” is a reflection on the curse of the Fall. Revelation tells us that the first death and the second death are related, but for the grace of God. Christianity proclaims that physical death is wrong. When will you get over the death of your loved one? Ultimately, at the Resurrection! Christianity is never reconciled to death. If evolution is true, then God pronounced death good. This is blasphemous.
The problem with wanting to be respectable in society by believing in evolution is that the resurrection of Christ, the miraculous nature of the virgin birth, the miracles of Christ are all equally distasteful to the secularists as is creation.
What is at stake here is the authority of Scripture, the character of God, the doctrine of death, and the very foundation of the gospel. If the early chapters of Genesis are not true literal history, then faith in the rest of Scripture is undermined, including its teaching about salvation and morality.
AMR