In the beginning...

The beginning. Always a good place to start. But, the beginning of what? God tells us in Genesis 1:1 as He begins to speak to us in His revealed Word, “In the beginning…” The apostle John, in his gospel in John 1:1, tells us the same, “In the beginning…” So let’s start our discussion of Foundations there.

It is no coincidence that Answers in Genesis has released a new set of videos entitled “Foundations”, and the timing could not be better. The very authority of Scripture is under attack, perhaps more than ever, and sadly, leading the way in that attack are Christians who want to befriend secular science and avoid “divisive” issues such as creation vs. evolution, old earth vs. young earth, and several others.

The Gospel is at the very center of our faith, of our lives, of all that is was, is, and ever will be. No mistaking that truth claim. The Gospel rests on nothing, it is all-encompassing, having several components. I have heard personally, I have read it in lots of literature, and have heard this in the very words of Christians who want to minimize Biblical authority for the sake of “getting along” or “not offending”. What I hear and read is “Don’t worry about __________, it’s all about the Gospel.”

One of the first fill-in-the-blank topics is a literal Creation spanning six literal 24-hour days. Most Christians still agree that God created the earth, the universe. And since modern science has “proven” that the earth is billions of years old, then many Christians have accepted that notion, and tried to make it fit into the Bible somewhere, most conveniently before Genesis 1:1 or between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Quotes from well-known theologians/Christians go like this: “A careful exegesis of Scripture shows literal days in the process of creation, and that the author (Moses) clearly wrote with the intention of conveying the same…BUT since science has shown billions of years, we need to make the Bible fit with what we know.”

This is alarming and disturbing, to put it mildly. But why is this so important as a component to the Gospel message? Several reasons, and I’ll be brief, so please ask for more detail if there is interest. For the Gospel to be true implies that sin is, too. And both Old and New Testaments are clear that our sin originated with Adam, a real, literal, historical, first-created man. Death began with his sin, and to marry the Bible with billions of years has to mean billions of years of death before Adam. The Gospel as we know it begins with Adam, and the promise made to him and Eve in Genesis 3:15. If Adam is allegorized or if he is the process of meaningless evolution, then really, why did Christ have to die? Christians certainly believe and accept that He did. Evolutionary fiction weaves its way throughout this topic, and billions of years is tied to evolution of man from some lower life form, and takes God out of the equation.

Theologians are apparently doing this themselves, either unknowingly or arrogantly telling God how it was. The Hebrew makes it clear (also in Exodus 20:11) that God used six days - as we think of literal days - to create this universe and humans, all to His glory. Further, God said He created all life forms to multiply after their own kinds, not through some mythological evolutionary tree.

I could go on and on. In summary for today, if God’s Word is authoritative from “For God so loved the world…” then it is likewise authoritative from “In the beginning…”


Holding fast to the name of our Creator, for His glory.