Thesis #14: The Morning of the Seventh Day in Genesis One did not Begin Until After the Cross

This article is largely an excerpt from the book "Early Genesis, The Revealed Cosmology". In this book I present evidence to support each of my Twenty-Five Theses Where the Church is Getting Early Genesis Wrong." This article speaks to my fourteenth thesis. It may be a little hard to understand without the prior material in the book leading up to it. It also starts off a little plodding, but if you press on to the end I believe you will find the result well worth it, for it shows early Genesis to be both history and prophecy at the same time.

After the sixth day of Creation God completed His work and rested. This is described as the seventh day, or the Sabbath. The passage says that God blessed and set apart the seventh day. Genesis Chapter two reads:

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

This Sabbath rest, or completion of His work, continues to this day. We don’t see the sort of wholesale changes to the surface and atmosphere of the planet described in the passage. We don’t see whole new categories of living things spring up. We will never see another Cambrian Explosion for example, because we are in the “seventh day”, God’s Sabbath rest, even still. He has ceased ordering the physical features of the planet so as to make it sustain advanced life. He has ceased the creation of new phyla of living things. That work is completed.

Genesis never does end the seventh day, as it ended the previous six, by saying “the evening and the morning were the seventh day.” The Sabbath rest that God entered into on the seventh “day” is ongoing. I have heard it said that His finished work of creation is a shadow pointing to His finished work in Christ, who (in Matthew 12:8 et al) called Himself “Lord of the Sabbath.” As you read on to the end of this chapter I think that you will see that the full truth is even more glorious than that!

Hebrews chapter four teaches us that God’s Sabbath rest is available to believers today, one which paradoxically we must labor to enter into (because we keep trying to substitute our own efforts for faith?). We can rest from our own efforts to attain right standing with God through works and instead enter into the rest of His already completed work.

Indeed the Apostle Paul writes in Colossians 2: 16-17:

“16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:

17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.”

So the Sabbath for man (the seventh day of rest) is just a shadow of the real Sabbath- whose substance, or body, is Christ. The Sabbath for the Land (the seventh year of rest) is just a shadow of the real Sabbath- whose substance, or body, is Christ. The original Sabbath of the Creation is Christ Himself. The substance, the body, the intent, of the each of these Sabbath rests is found in Christ. He also “finished” His work to redeem Mankind. He completed the work of obtaining right standing before His Father by living the sinless life that we could not.

That is the substance of the Sabbath rest for which both Man’s Sabbath and the Land’s Sabbath are mere shadows. Unlike the shadow Sabbaths, which last only for the particular length of time assigned to each of them, the type Sabbath of Christ’s finished work on the cross is eternal.

This is the real Sabbath, or rest. It is a Sabbath which, according to Hebrews chapter four, believers can enter into. We do that when we repent of our own ways and further when we accept by faith that God’s ways are just. We do that by, rather than trying to earn our way to right standing with Him, we instead love and trust Him and the Righteousness He has provided in the penal substitution of Christ.

The way to enter into His rest is to rest from our own efforts to attain our own right-standing before God and instead learn to love and trust Him more. Every Sabbath mentioned in the law should be seen in this light, whether it is the 24 hour Sabbath of man, the one year out of seven Sabbath for the land, or the Creation’s Sabbath where God rested from His Creative works and ceased issuing “work orders” to the natural universe. It all points to Christ, the Word.

Christ is the substance, or body, of what we consider the “Sabbath” and Sabbath days are but shadows pointing to Him. This is further confirmed when we see that the Word of God was actively working in Genesis chapter one. Christ, the Logos, or Word according to the first chapter of John’s Gospel, actually created the material universe. We know this because it says in the first chapter of Colossians (and is confirmed elsewhere):

16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

The surrounding verses make it clear that the “him” is Christ, God the Son. So when Genesis chapter one shows God creating the universe and the world, it is God the Son actually doing the work - just as He also did the work of attaining right-standing with God the Father. And just as the seventh “day” never ended in Genesis, so the rest that Christ obtained for us through His atonement for our sins will never end.

It’s not a twenty-four hour period. It is not something that we have to repeat week by week, it’s an eternal rest made possible by the finished work of Christ. Trying to force the text into being about literal 24-hour creation days doesn’t point to Christ, it diminishes Him. It actually blurs the picture concerning what God is saying about Christ and the Sabbath. I will further demonstrate this when discussing when the Sabbath Day in Genesis One began.

This understanding adds new depth to the teachings of Jesus on the Sabbath. He said “The Sabbath was made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath.” It becomes a statement on law and gospel. Man was not made to earn his way to salvation by works such as keeping the Sabbath. Rather the substance of the Sabbath is a rest from our own works because The Word of God has finished the work for us. Truly the Sabbath is for Man- for His salvation!

The Book of Hebrews in chapters three and four has a long argument which touches on the Sabbath, and also on the contents of the previous chapter concerning the variation in observed time. It is a difficult passage to understand outside of the context of what we discussed earlier (in the book) regarding what perceived time would look like in a place where space was unchanging as compared to what we see in the natural universe.

These are things about the nature of time and space that humanity did not understand before the middle of the 20th century. In spite of this, several paradoxes in scripture are cleanly resolved once this understanding of space-time is applied to the passages! Generations of Christians had to accept on faith that they were true, even if they could not give a good explanation of how they were true. Today, we can explain.

Chapter three of Hebrews says “5 And Moses verily was faithful in all his house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after; 6 But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we…”

Moses was, in his life, in his acts, in his acquisition of the Law and composition of the Torah, testifying “of those things which were to be spoken after”. That is, about things which were yet to be plainly revealed. What he was saying in his own day was really meant to point to things in the future which would be spoken about long after the Torah was composed. The things in the Torah and the law were mere shadows of the reality which came to pass in our realm much later- in Christ.

Though Moses and Joshua came well after Adam and the events of early Genesis, Hebrews 3:5 says that when Moses recorded them he was testifying of things which were to be spoken of later. This is much like the diagram in the previous chapter. In Heaven, the Sabbath day had started at the last of the foundation of the world. On earth, the true meaning of that Sabbath had not yet reached earth. This is what is alluded to in the mysterious words of the following chapter (4) in Hebrews:

3 For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.

4 For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works.

5 And in this place again, If they shall enter into my rest.

So even though the “rest” was supposed to be on the seventh “day” in Genesis chapter two, God spoke over a thousand years later of men entering that rest as a future event. In one place in scripture the Sabbath rest of God began long ago, but in another place it is thousands of years later and it is still questionable whether or not they are able to enter into it. What gives?

Even if the first six days were literal 24-hour days, surely the seventh day is not. It is a rest that men had still not entered into (because of unbelief) all those generations later. It happened in Heaven long ago (“although the works were finished from the foundation of the world”), but on earth men had not entered in (“if they shall enter into my rest”). Like I showed in the diagram, time here is stretched, and we see only the foreshadowing of things which have long since transpired in the eternal sphere. Moses lived in the fore-shadow of what was to come, and when he wrote of that foreshadow it testified to the coming reality which cast the shadow.

In verse nine the passage points out that other scripture still speaks of yet another day to enter into that rest. It was not a day in the life of Adam, and not a day in the life of Moses. As the Apostle Paul writes further, starting in verse eight of Hebrews chapter four…

“For if Jesus (editor’s note: many modern versions read “Joshua”) had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day.

9 There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.

His rest is not limited to one of our days. We can celebrate one day out of seven to rest, but those days are not the Sabbath. They are only shadows of it. The true original Sabbath rest is not a particular solar day that happened on earth long ago. It is a spiritual condition we can enter today. The true Sabbath Day of rest had not begun here on earth in the time of Adam. It had not even begun at the time of Moses and Joshua, for Paul points out that it said in another Old Testament passage that there “remaineth” yet another “day”, another Sabbath rest for the people of God…..

10 For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.

11 Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.

If we believe in Him then the rest which He entered into becomes our rest. And what is the “labor” which we must do to enter in? Jesus said (John 6:29) “This is the work of God: to believe on the One whom He has sent.” We must work to have faith, rather than fall back in faith on our own works. That is unbelief, which prevents us from entering in. How then might we strengthen our belief? Well, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. (Romans 10:17).” If you truly hear what His Word says, then you will believe. You will not have to psyche yourself up to believe. You just will.

Since hearing His word is the key, hear then what His word says about the Sabbath in Genesis chapter two, and what it does not say:

1Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

3And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

Notice that though the creation was finished at the end of the sixth day in verse one, God did not end His work at the end of the sixth day. He ended it on the seventh day. The heavens and the earth were completed at the end of day six, but God did not end his work then. They were done, but God’s work was not done. He had yet one more work to perform, which is mentioned here only obliquely.

I guess you might call this a “gap theory” in Genesis that I do accept. There is a gap between verse one and two, not in the first chapter of Genesis, but in the second. Things were finished and complete on the sixth day, but God’s work was not ended then, but on the seventh day. I shall endeavor to show that what happened between verses one and two was the fall of Adam. Because of that God had one more work to do. That work, which ended on the seventh day, was redeeming what He had created in the first six days.

To demonstrate this first let us consider what is not said. The text in Genesis chapter two never says concerning the first Sabbath “the evening and the morning were the seventh day.” Notice that not even the “evening”, or start of the day, is mentioned. Many have pointed out, as I have, that the seventh day in early Genesis never ended, but now we see that the teaching of the Apostle Paul in Hebrews was that, as far as we on earth could tell, the Sabbath day never even began in early Genesis. In heaven it did, but on earth it did not happen in the time of Adam, or even that of Moses. When then did this true Sabbath, still ongoing today, begin?

In the gospel of John chapter five Christ says something quite remarkable when the Pharisees complained that He was working on the Sabbath:

16 And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day. 17 But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.

Jesus said that the Father was working right up until then, so He was going to work too! Jesus was telling them that the Father had never stopped working. He did not stop working on the seventh solar 24-hour day- either the original one or the one the Pharisees were complaining about. The Father was working continually up until that point.

Wait, didn’t the Father take the seventh day off? How then could He be working right up until that point? The resolution to this mystery is that the rest which came from finishing the work on that first Sabbath had already occurred in heaven. The manifestation of that event had not quite reached earth. Much like a radio broadcast of a live event in a distant galaxy would not reach the earth for eons of time, we understand that what which was accomplished in heaven at the beginning was now about to be received on earth.

We know that God’s Sabbath had not yet begun on earth because of what Paul said in Hebrews three and four about the order of things in the time of Moses and Joshua. Moses was testifying of things in the future, and they were looking to a future day. We know that it had still not occurred when Jesus told the Pharisees that His Father was working right up to that moment.

Sure, God had finished making heaven and earth, and the host of them, but He had other work to do, and would not rest until all was accomplished. God finished His creation, but not His work. Or more precisely, His work was finished long ago in heaven but the manifestation of it had not yet reached the earth below.

Then when did it reach this earth? When did God take His rest? When did the morning of the seventh day spoken of in Genesis finally begin on this earth?

The answer to all of those questions is the same. The work ended when Christ announced on the cross “It is finished”. His rest began on that Sabbath day. He “ceased from His labors” by resting in the ground until the resurrection! Since that time Christ and the Father have been at rest. The Holy Spirit works still, but Christ sat down at the right hand of God, as is written in Hebrews 10:

12 But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;

13 From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.

14 For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.
God was not finished with His creation until the cross. Up until then the Father had been working, and so the Son would work as well. Jesus was serving notice that as God He was not on an earthly seven-day schedule. He was on the Father’s seven day schedule. He was still on the sixth “day” and would continue His work of “making Man in our image” right up until He proclaimed “it is finished!” on the cross. Then the seventh day could begin and that day continues up until the present time.

The rest spoken of in Genesis chapter one was completed in heaven long ago (Revelation 13:8), but was not revealed here on earth until the resurrection. 1st Peter chapter one shows that Christ was chosen before the world began, but only revealed in these times…..

18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.

The work was determined in the heavenly realm in the beginning, testified to by Moses in the law, but revealed on earth in Christ 2,000 years ago. Why is the seventh day so special? Was God in need of rest? Was He really looking forward to His day off so that He could finally do all the things that He wanted to do? That is seeing God as man, but He’s not.

He did not bless the seventh day because He could finally get a rest, but so that we could finally share in His rest. He blessed the day because His efforts to deliver the things He had created and made were fulfilled on the Sabbath. This is “testifying of things not yet spoken of.” This is speaking of a day which Moses had not yet lived through.

He did additional work beyond making and creating everything. There was also His work of redeeming the human race which He created and made. He built creation with the freedom to choose other than Him, but also made a way for its errant inhabitants to be delivered from the consequences of that choice- if they repent. This work He completed on “the seventh day”, and therein He rested.

While the debate rages on whether or not early Genesis is reliable history, the truth is now being revealed with each page of this book that you turn over: Not only is early Genesis reliable history, it is also reliable prophecy! As it is written, He has “declared the end from the beginning”. Because the history is reliable you may know that the prophecy is also reliable. And as some of this prophecy has come to pass you may know by the prophecy being reliable that the history is also reliable.

After all these accusations hurled against the reliability of early Genesis by the uninformed, we at last come to understand the truth of the matter. The only thing unreliable was our ability to understand it! The reliability issue lay not in the veracity of the word, but rather in the understanding of the readers.

Get the book.

   

Thesis #7: The Heavens and the Earth were Created Before the First Day

This article is largely an excerpt from the book "Early Genesis, The Revealed Cosmology". In this book I present evidence to support each of my Twenty-Five Theses Where the Church is Getting Early Genesis Wrong." This article speaks to my seventh thesis.

Some readers might be surprised to learn that the first “day” in Genesis does not begin in verse one. A careful reading of the text shows that the first “day” does not begin until verse three. God does not create the heavens and the land on “day one”. Rather, on day one He separates darkness from light in a universe which had previously been created, as is stated in verse one. Therefore the universe had existed for an unstated amount of time prior to the first day.

I support that claim based on two things. First, in verse one the Hebrew word translated “created” (bara) is in the “Qal perfect” form. That form is used to indicate completed action. That means it is talking about something which had already happened. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The text moves on from there to say that the earth was formless and void “and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters”.

So verses one and two are like a “set-up” of the account of God’s intervention on the earth, which starts off “formless and void”. These two verses are not a part of the first “day”. Instead they are setting the scene for the account of the days, each an intervention of God in some area, which follow.

Just look at the structure of the other days. Each one starts with “And God said”. God makes a statement, creation responds, the text describes God doing something related to His statement, and then the text says (in all but the seventh day) that the “evening and the morning” of this process was day “X”. Here is the pattern of the six days….

1.    God speaks…

2.    Creation responds (sometimes recorded only as “and it was so”)

3.    God acts (sometimes only “seeing” and sometimes more direct action)

4.    Day is summed up: The evening and the morning, day X.

Each of Creation’s days starts off with “And God said”. To fit the pattern, this would include the first day. The first “And God said” is found in verse three. Therefore verse three is the beginning of the first “day”. The first two verses then can only be referring to things which occurred before the first “day” occurred.

Ok, it’s clear from the structure of the six days that day one does not start until verse three. That leaves us with “in the beginning” as something before that. “The beginning” started before the first days of creation started. How long before that? One might be tempted to ask “how long does the beginning take”? Actually I think that is asking the wrong question here.

Young earth creationists often point to Mathew 19:4 and Mark 10:6 to show that Jesus considered the creation of mankind to have occurred “in the beginning of creation”. Their thinking is that since the creation of the cosmos was also “in the beginning” then the heavens and the earth could not have been created billions of years before people. So even if heaven and earth were created “before the first day” they assume they were made in a very brief period of time.

This argument does not make sense logically. Jesus said male and female were made “at the beginning of creation” when the text shows they were made at the end of the creation “week.” So either Jesus is referring to the beginning of the creation of men and women, or He considers the beginning of creation to be when the creating is finished on the end of sixth day. Either way makes no statement about how long it took to create the heavens and the earth or how long the earth stayed formless.

In earlier versions of this work I also had more speculative textual answers to that objection. But I now think the better answer is to keep it simple. We are the ones bound by time, not God. We are the ones who have trouble with the idea that “the beginning” can take immense amounts of time while the middle and end of the story are wrapped up in a comparatively brief time. To us, it should not take vastly more time to create a world than that world is scheduled to last. But that’s us. The whole objection is based on the idea that God views time the same way we do, but that idea is explicitly rejected in scripture. 2^nd Peter 3:8 says...

“But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”

Peter asks believers not to be ignorant about just one thing, but apparently that’s too much for us! We are so wrapped up in ourselves that we just can’t get out of our own time-bound skin to appreciate things the way that God sees them. God is not bound by time. He has no problem taking fifteen-billion years to set up a story that plays itself out in tens of thousands of years. Nor to Him does the set up necessarily take any longer than the playing out. That we have trouble grasping this is no limitation on Him, it’s our limitation.

Haven’t you see elaborate patterns of dominoes which have been set up just for the purpose of watching them fall in a particular way? It may have taken hours for the creator to set up a series of dominoes which fall in a matter of seconds. The first six dominos to fall may be the “beginning” of the story playing out- but it took a lot of time to even prepare that beginning. So even we humans, made in His likeness, sometimes have a penchant for similar things. The joy comes from the setting up of the event as much as the event itself. The beginning of the event comes long after the set-up for the event. The life of the event takes much less time than the set-up.

Further, we don’t even know if God considered the set up as “taking more time”. The amount of time one perceives passing depends on the position of the observer- and remember no humans were around to observe the events of Genesis chapter one until the very end of it. From our view setting up the dominoes was a lengthy process. To Him, the falling of the dominoes may be the lengthy process. And we were not around!

In the next three chapters I am going to communicate some pretty heady stuff about time and perspective. By the end of it I hope you will see that the argument being used from Mark 10:6 is based on a flawed assumption about God and time.

To be clear, I am not advocating for the old Scofield “Gap Theory” which postulated a long gap in time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 during which a prior creation populated the earth and was destroyed. I am just saying that the test allows that there was a large interval of time between the creation of the heavens and the earth and the start of the first “day” in verse three. I am not claiming there is a missing story there.

My point is simply that the text shows that Creation’s first day does not begin until verse three. So regardless of how long the “days” of chapter one are, verses one and two happened an undetermined amount of time beforehand.

I also want to point out that the heavens are something which God creates, not something He is contained within or bounded by. 1 Kings 8:27 et al point out that “the highest heaven cannot contain Him.” God is not constrained to exist “in” Heaven. He is beyond the heavens. He may be “in” heaven in the way that I sit “in” a chair. I am not within the chair. As it is written (Isaiah 66:1) “Heaven is My throne and the Earth is My footstool”. Later on, a person of the Trinity does enter within heaven, but I get ahead of myself.

Another thing I want to point out is the condition of creation prior to God filling it with Light. It was not a good place to be. The initial conditions are not good, in any realm of creation. They are dark and foreboding. When it says “the deep” in this passage, the Hebrew word “tehom” is used. This term also means “abyss”, and can refer to subterranean waters. It is thus comparable to the Greek term used to describe the place where the spirits who left their proper abode are kept in chains (Jude 1:6), or the place in Revelation from which such creatures emerge (Rev. :11). In Luke 8:31 the demons who possessed a miserable wretch begged Christ not to send them to “the deep.” The word here again refers to an abyss. 

The initial conditions of creation were like the realms where the very worst spirit offenders are kept in custody, like some sort of other-worldly super-max facility. Perhaps the “abyss” spoken of in later scripture is a realm or void where things have been left exactly as creation was at this point. It is a space utterly lacking in the light of God’s wisdom, judgement, personality, or word.

Even vice enjoys the fruits produced by virtue, and even evil spirits dread to be confined to a place where the light of God has in no way entered. They don’t want too much of it to shine, they wish to lurk about in the evening shadows. Despite this, they dread the deep and utter darkness.

So did God create the universe as a place of evil? Consider what evil is. He created it as a place of darkness- a place which lacked His Divine light. This is not because He made creation evil, but because He had not at this point illuminated it with His own Word. Evil is not a thing in itself, it’s the absence of good in a thing. It’s the absence of God, or more precisely (since God is omnipresent) an absence of His Word. When He made something outside of Himself, it could not help but be dark until His Word was injected into it.

I know that a lot of people are convinced that God created an unfallen universe which was in a state of perfection comparable to that of heaven at its holiest, but that is not what the text says. The text says that when God creates something outside of Himself it is an undesirable place to be- until He begins to put His Word and His actions into it.

I should also mention something about Exodus 20:11 while I am on this subject, and it is a verse which I will have more to say about later. It says that “For six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth” as well as what is in them. Though the King James Version says “For in six days….” we find that the word “in” is not a part of the original text. Plus the word translated “made” here, and in Genesis, is different from the word translated “created” in Genesis 1:1.

I will go into more detail in a bit but my point is that you cannot equate Exodus 20:11 with Genesis 1:1. This is because 1) Genesis 1:1 speaks of the creation of the earth and the universe before God spoke the first day into existence in Genesis 1:3 while Exodus 20:11 speaks of God’s work on the heavens and the earth during the six days of Genesis chapter one.  And 2) the word “in” is not in the text. It is not saying that God created the world “in” six days. Rather He worked on His creation for six days. He created it “in the beginning”.

This fits a lot better with the context of the verse, where it is arguing that man should rest from his own labors on the land for one day out of seven because the Lord Himself did the same. He worked for six “days” and on the seventh He rested. Farmers do not “create” the earth they farm, but they do make it into something productive. That is mostly what the Lord did during the so-called “Creation Days.”

That is why I object to even the term “Creation Days” (I prefer Creation’s days). The Hebrew word translated “created” is not even used in regards to God’s activities on days one through four. He did most of His “creating” prior to the first day. Until the creation of Man, the rest of it was ordering the heavens and the earth He had previously created. Then He worked on them. 

For more information on the true message of early Genesis please see this book....

  

Thesis #4: Inheritance from Adam is not Where We Got our Sin Nature

When it first struck me that the formation of Adam in Genesis chapter two was at most a subset of the account of the creation of “man” in Genesis chapter one, I set off to find scriptures to invalidate the idea. After all, it seemed contrary to every version of the story in every Sunday school class I had ever heard. One of the places I felt confident that I would find scripture which refuted this rash notion was in Romans chapter five.

What I thought Romans chapter five said was that sin spread from Adam to all of mankind because we were his descendants. I thought that it said that we inherited his sin nature by virtue of our physical descent from Adam. If that were so, then the idea that not all men were physical descendants of Adam would be out the window. Adam’s main biblical role would then be the physical father of the human race, rather than the figure of Christ, who is “the firstborn of many bretheren” (Romans 8:29).

It turned out that the idea that inheritance from Adam is the mechanism by which we get a sin nature is more of what I call "theology that is not in the Bible". In this writing I shall examine the scriptures used to promote this error and show how they are being misunderstood or wrenched out of context. This article is largely an excerpt from the book "Early Genesis, The Revealed Cosmology". In this book I present evidence to support each of my Twenty-Five Theses Where the Church is Getting Early Genesis Wrong." This article speaks to my fourth thesis.

Here is the key passage from Romans chapter five:

12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned

13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.

14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come .

15 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.

Verse twelve does not say that we inherited our sin nature from Adam because we are his physical ancestors. It says that sin (God’s definition) entered the world through Adam and because of that death “passed” upon all men. Why? Was it because Adam was their ancestor? No, but rather “because all sinned.”

“Entered” in this verse is the Greek word eiserchomai and it is used in the metaphorical sense of “arise, come into existence, begin to be”. Another way to put it is to “come to life.” Sin came to life and mankind died when Adam transgressed. Paul himself used very similar language nearby, in chapter seven of Romans when he describes the role of the law and sin. Here I quote chapter seven, verses eight and nine. This time from the New International Version:

“… For apart from the law, sin was dead.9 Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.”

If you will read the whole passage you will see what I am suggesting about how sin “entered” the world. I say the same thing Paul says about the relationship between sin, death, and the law. Before he knew the law, he had life and sin was dead. But once the commandment came, sin came to life (it entered his world) and he died. What I am suggesting is that the condition Paul describes is just what it was like for those men who lived before Adam. They were alive apart from the law. They were acting out of God’s will, but there was no law and hence no accountability.

Once Adam, as the stand-in for all mankind, broke the law then sin came to life and Adam died (as the Bible defines death). If any of them had been perfect, they would not have died, but none of them were. All of them needed the protection afforded by Adam as the stand-in for all of mankind, even as we need the protection afforded by Christ as our stand-in.

Sin sprang to life. What was once dead had existence in the world. That is what is meant by sin “entering” the world. There is no need for theologians to concoct another method of entry of sin into the world besides the one Paul describes two chapters later. Sin was dead before Adam’s failure. After that, it was alive and Adam was dead. Sin entered, became alive, in the world.

That word “passed” is from a Greek word deirchomai, which means just that- to pass through or spread through. It is used to describe events like going on a journey or the children of Israel “passing through” the Red Sea. It has nothing to do with inheritance. Paul could have used the word for inheritance, kleronomeo, if he had meant that.

Notice that Paul writes that sin entered the world but death passed through the world. Sin entered the world, but did not pass through the world like (spiritual) death did. Without law, sin was dead. There was no way for it to bring any spiritual death. But it was only waiting for knowledge of the law to become alive. It was only waiting for the failure of the stand-in in order to become animated.

When Adam chose to be his own god, sin sprang to life. It entered the world by animation, as would some creature made of stone that suddenly became viable. The stones were always there, all around, but until they had life, the creature did not exist. It did not enter the world until it came to life.

Death did pass to all men. Not that the evil deeds were greater, but our knowledge that they were evil was greater. The deeds were old. The guilt was new. The shame was new. The separation from God due to willful disobedience and a stained conscience was new.

Romans 5:12 is saying that spiritual death passed, or spread through, all of mankind when Adam sinned, not because of his sins, but because of theirs. Mankind was already doing things God disapproved of, but they were doing so in a state of innocence, like children. As it says in the next verse, “where there is no law, the penalty for sin is not imputed.” That is, it is not charged to one’s account.

The souls who died before Adam’s sin are not damned to Hell. As for the souls between Adam and Moses which are spoken of, we can only hope for their sakes and the Father’s sake that they are among the captives carried off by Christ in the oblique reference made in Ephesians 4:8.

God made the man Adam as the stand-in for all mankind, as the Second Adam Christ is also. When he was given a law, the state of innocence was over. When Adam broke the law his role as stand-in for man afforded no protection for the rest of the human race.

If any of them had been perfect, it would not have mattered that the stand-in had failed. They would not have needed Adam’s protection. But because they had their own sins, they did need it, just as we need the protection of the Last Adam. At that point, death reigned. They were condemned, even before the law was given, because, as Paul points out earlier, they had a conscience, a sort of natural law put in their hearts, so they are without excuse.

Prior to the Garden no man was ever asked to live as a person who had faith in God rather than themselves. Adam was the “first man” who had that fateful choice. God decided to take man from a state of innocence to a state of responsibility. He did it with what is still the key question- do we have faith in God to determine what is good and evil, or do we wish to decide that for ourselves?

To give mankind the best possible odds, God did not start accountability with each person, from lowliest to most privileged. He started at the top. He started with the best man on earth, the one with the most ideal circumstances and possessing the greatest privilege: The one who had received the breath of God which is the Holy Spirit and the one who had daily fellowship with the LORD. The one with a spouse created of him and for him. That one would be the stand-in for mankind to see if man would, for an age, be liberated or mired.

Should he pass the test, then that one would be the one in whom God would reconcile creation to Himself. That one would begin, with his wife, a Royal Priesthood, and a Holy Nation that would take His glory to the ends of the earth. Then a Millennium of peace would be ushered in, ending in a New Heaven and a New Earth. I say that this was what God wanted the First Adam to do, because it is what the Last Adam is doing and has done. I will offer more scriptural proofs as we go on.

I remember thinking in my prior misunderstanding how unfair it seemed that we would all be condemned to have a sin nature because of the choice of Adam and Eve. But now I see that we always had that nature, and only the absence of law kept sin out of our lives. The way God choose to do it gave us the best possible odds, and humanity still blew it. This creation, which was never made to be eternal, came built in with the capacity to trust ourselves more than God. Not that God is the author of sin, but He authored choice. It is the wrong choices, the choices outside of faith, which are sin.

Man was always in need of reconciliation. From the day the first man was made and from the moment we ourselves are born, we needed to be re-connected to our Creator to produce righteousness. We can’t do it on our own. Man did not just get saddled with a sin nature when Adam came along. We had one, but we were not penalized for it. We sinned from the start, but since sin was dead in the absence of law, we were let off the hook. In the beginning the penalty for sin was not imputed because as it says, there was no law. We were not held accountable until God gave the man, Adam, a law. This command not to eat of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil embodied the very choice every man must make between faith in God or faith in self (or anyone or thing else) to determine right from wrong.

As Paul said of the idol worship of the pagans in Acts 17:30: God winked at wrong-doing (idol worship in that example) in the times of ignorance, but now calls on us to repent. God’s revelation to man is progressive, and the more we know about who He is the more responsible we are to live in that knowledge. Israel was held to a higher standard than the heathen nations around her. Christians are expected to have a higher standard than the faithless. God had given man dominion over the earth. In Adam, God began the process of progressive revelation to man.

Mankind always needed reconciliation, and Adam was the figure of He who was to reconcile us. Even as Christ was the royal representative on behalf of the whole human race, his foreshadow Adam was meant to be also. Adam was given every chance to make the right choice. God did not pick a representative stand-in for the human race who had poor circumstances. Rather, he had ideal circumstances. He had it “as good as it gets”.

Even as Christ came from a special place of fellowship with God the Father, Adam had a special place of fellowship with God- the Garden of Eden planted by the LORD God Himself with every pleasant tree that gave good fruit. There would be no deflections about poor environment or a disadvantaged upbringing that some men still use to hide behind or obfuscate the truth. The truth is that man cannot be righteous in himself even in the best of circumstances. Adam and Eve did not make the choice of faith. They made the choice of self.

And so, as verse 14 says “death reigned from Adam till Moses.” Mankind went from a state of innocence to a state of sin, and their stand-in now afforded no protection. Until the Law of Moses came there was no other law to keep in order to obtain right-standing with God through obedience to law. Man had still not, and most still do not to this day, learned the lesson that it is faith God desires. Even the first law, the commandment to Adam, was about faith. If our faith is truly in Him, our obedience will in time follow. If it is not, then no matter how determined our efforts are to be righteous by following the law, we will fail.

While the mass of mankind sought a law, a list of rules to follow in order to earn right-standing on a basis of our own choosing, one man got it right. In Ur of the Chaldees, one descendent of Adam we now know as Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. That is not to say that he was righteous, but God counted it as righteousness. Abraham did what his ancestor Adam failed to do. He believed God. And from this descendent of Adam would come another- Moses the lawgiver.

Once Moses came, God gave man The Law. Man at last had his list of rules he so coveted. A way he might keep score or have some basis of negotiation with which he might bargain with his Maker. Death did not have to reign. Righteousness could come through following the law, if anyone could do it.

But of course man can’t do that. Death reigned from Adam until Moses, but it reigned even still. That is because the law, meant to give a way to back to life, instead produced more death. But the point of all of that death, produced by more law springing more sin to life, was to make it clear to man, to all of us, how guilty we are. It was to show how hopeless it is to count on our own works to be righteous. It was for the purpose of driving us to God’s real goal: Grace obtained by faith. Let’s look at that bit of Romans chapter five:

19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.

When there was no law, it was easier for men to kid themselves in the period between Adam and Moses. They might be tempted to think that though Adam failed, they would not have in the same circumstance. In the absence of law, they might concoct their own law and their own rationalizations when they broke it. All were locked up under sin when Adam fell, but they might not see the true depth of their sinfulness absent the law. And so law was given. It put man under even more sin. It made men more aware of their sinfulness because they then had a Divine standard to which to compare their actions.

Though this enumeration of rules bound man up in sin, it also allowed man a way of escape. For if the law could be kept by a new stand-in then we might be protected, even as they were protected in the absence of law. They were protected by their ignorance of God’s requirements, but we are protected because our stand-in not only fulfilled the requirements, but paid the debt for our failure to do so in His own Person. This is another way in which the free gift of God is greater than the offense. Let’s take another look at verse fifteen:

15 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.

Here Paul compares the spread of grace to the spread of death and says that grace was spread on different and better terms. If man was in perfection instead of just innocence before “the fall”, then this makes no sense. Why did the grace of God abound “more” than the spread of death? They are on the surface quite symmetrical. Through the offense of one, death spread to the many. Through the obedience of one, grace abounded to the many. So why is the second better than the first?

The answer for the spread of grace being better is simple: Death spread to the many, but those many were already in sin, it’s just that sin was dead before Adam’s choice brought sin to life. The grace abounds more because not only does it spread by God’s gift rather than our own works, but it pays the penalty for sin whereas before sin came to life there was no penalty to pay but the potential for one to spring up was always there. The spread of sin unleashed the potential of sin that was already latent. It did not “make” the sin. The free gift took away the penalty for the sin- it removed its “potential energy” to take life.

It is the difference between living on a field of land mines which have never been activated vs. having someone detonate all of the mines safely for you. Once the mines are activated, your situation is worse, but the potential for them to cause you trouble was always there, even before activation.

The problem of the land mines becoming activated is a problem, but the solution of someone safely detonating all of them for you is a blessing which is better than the original problem of the mines coming to “life”. Not only is the “activation” threat gone, but the underlying thing that was activated is also rendered harmless.

I might add that the idea that the spread of the gift was similar to the spread of the offense makes no sense if sin was inherited by blood in the one case but not the other. The comparison makes better sense if we accept what the Bible says about who Adam was in Romans 5:14, a figure of Christ. The symmetry works if we lay aside our traditions that are not really found in the Bible (that he was the physical father of all humans). Adam was meant to be humanity’s champion and redeemer, because he was a figure of Christ. He was our stand-in. If any of us could have hoped to make it, it was Adam.

What does this say about the doctrine of Original Sin? It doesn’t change the bottom line. Mankind, disconnected from God, is inherently prone to sin. It only changes the reason why this is so. It is not so because Adam was our forebear, it is so because connection to the Creator is the only way we can be righteous. We have to abide in the vine.

Creation was designed to be disconnected from God, yet have the ability to re-connect with Him. Until that re-connection is made we choose with an imperfect moral compass. Only the absence of law in the beginning, not early man’s moral perfection, kept sin out of the world as a live force. Even the best of our motives will be mixed, tainted with sin. Christ came to reconcile the creature to the Creator.

                                                

Thesis #2: Death Existed Before the Fall

There is strain of theology which teaches that God made the initial creation perfect. That is both morally perfect and without sin and without physical death, even of animals. In this view, long associated with young earth theology, there was no death, no decay, and no sin on earth before the fall of Adam. In this view, before the fall of the man lions laid down with lambs. There was no predation. Even the laws of thermodynamics were different so that what we consider the “natural” process of decay was absent.

This is what I call "theology that is not in the Bible". In this writing I shall examine the Old Testament scriptures used to promote this error and show how they are being misunderstood or wrenched out of context. I address the New Testament scriptures such as Romans chapter five separately. This article is largely an excerpt from the book "Early Genesis, The Revealed Cosmology". In this book I present evidence to support each of my "Twenty-Five Theses Where the Church is Getting Early Genesis Wrong." This article speaks to my second thesis.

To support this idea, some believers cite the many instances in Genesis chapter one in which God describes His work as “good.” They combine that with questions like “is death something God would describe as “good?”

As we discussed in the section on the days of creation, the Hebrew word for “good” in Genesis chapter one is towb. It does not mean moral perfection. Indeed it couldn’t because the sixth day is described as “very good.” If “good” means “sinless perfection” then what does “very good” mean? How can one get better than sinless perfection? In addition, in chapter two God describes Adam being alone as “not good”, so something can be “not good” even before the fall.

Clearly creation was not perfect in some moral or absolute sense. God made the world suitable and beautiful for His purposes and that is the sense of “good” conveyed by towb. This world was never meant to be perfect, or even permanent. It was meant to be a place between heaven and hell, a place of choice between two eternities. It is the spinning coin- a temporary state with the question being on which side will it land?

The same word, towb, is translated as “fair” in Genesis 6:2 where it says that the sons of the Elohim saw that the daughters of Adam were “fair”. Does that mean that the females from the line of Adam were in a state of sinless perfection?

If God had wanted to convey the idea of “perfect” to describe His creation He might have inspired Moses to use the word tamiym which is translated “perfect.” It is used in places like Genesis 17:1 where God tells Abraham to walk before Him and be “perfect”. Abraham was only able to do on the basis of faith (just like us).

Others take God’s statement in Genesis 1:29-30 as further evidence that there was no human or animal death before the fall since the text only mentions plants as being authorized for “meat” for man and beast. These are probably the strongest two verses of scripture they have to support their view of the original condition of creation, since all of the New Testament verses they use are wrenched badly out of context. To put those two verses in context, I am going to start with the previous and connected verse:

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

It is reasonable to believe from this verse that God wanted humanity and wild animals which live on the land to be vegetarian. I get that. It is fair to say that was God’s intention. On the other hand, the text does not say that animals did not eat meat. It says that plants are what God established for animals to eat- it announces God’s intentions. It doesn’t say that predation never happened, only that the provision of plants for food (for land animals) did happen. Every parent understands the difference between what you provide your children to eat, what you wish they ate, and what they actually eat. There is a difference between your stated goals for their diet and their actual diet.

If God saying He has given plants for animals to eat somehow means that all animals ate only plants then why isn’t God saying He has provided a means of salvation to everyone evidence that all are saved? As we shall see with more detail and clarity in a bit, it is a mistake to confuse what God says He has provided as a statement about what His creation is actually doing.

Beyond all that, proponents of this view also use this passage to say that there was no physical death of any kind before the fall (some concede there might be the death of plants). The passage does not say that. It doesn’t even really say that animals never ate meat before the fall of man, much less that they never died. It is a huge leap from the idea that God’s original intention or goal for creation was for wild animals and humans to eat only plants to saying that there was no physical death before the fall. The passage doesn’t even say that sharks, fish, whales and other animals which live in the water were to eat only plants for food.

This idea that there was no predation on earth before the fall is more theology that is not actually in the Bible. It is only inferred from something that the Bible says viewed through the lens of misunderstandings about the initial conditions of creation. It is a misunderstanding founded on previous misunderstandings.

The root misunderstanding is about what this earth was supposed to be. Before the fall of man, there was the fall of Lucifer. Sin was in the universe prior to the fall of man. The Garden of Eden was a special place on the earth where God fellowshipped with Adam. It was not indicative of the condition of the world as a whole, though perhaps the world could have been lifted up to be like Eden had Adam not fallen.

Even in Eden the serpent was there, challenging God’s integrity. The Devil dares not do that in Heaven, it is only recorded that he challenges our integrity, accusing the brethren night and day. There is no reason to believe that the rest of the world, outside of the Garden of Eden, was in any better shape and every reason to suppose that it was worse.

From this evidence it is clear that God did not create the world as a place of sinless perfection without physical death or decay. He did not create the world as a place where His will must be done at all times: That is, He did not initially create the earth as an extension of heaven. Nor did He create it as a place where His will is excluded, as an extension of hell. Rather, the world was created to be the battle ground between heaven and hell where an argument is being played out between God and the Devil. The question is whether faith in God or faith in self produces true freedom.

The answer to the question becomes ever clearer to the angels: Hell lost at the cross. Its defeat is made manifest through the body of Christ, which is the church. But in vengeful rage Hell will, just before History’s end, form a compulsory collective of the great mass of mankind in mimicry and mockery of the body of Christ. But that my friends, is another journey, for another time.

So Earth was created as a place where His will can increasingly be done, not a place where it is automatically done each moment (though in the end it still will be). If those whose faith is in Him have their way, it will look more and more like heaven. If those who disregard Him have their way, it will look more and more like hell. Are we in “evening”, a “twisting away from the light”, or “morning”, a turning toward it?

Creation (minus the fallen angels) was in a state of innocence, which is not the same thing as a state of obedience to God’s will. My small children do things that would, for you or me, be sin, but they don’t see the sin in it. They are selfish without the capacity to see their selfishness. They parade around naked without seeing the shame of their nakedness. They eat candy when I want them to eat vegetables.

When animals or toddlers take from others, we don’t think of it as stealing. When a lion kills a zebra we don’t think that the lion is committing a sin. They are not morally accountable for those actions because of their state of innocence. Sin is not counted where there is no law (Rom 5:12).

The Bible defines sin in Romans 14:23. It says “Whatever is not of faith is sin.” When Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit, it was an act of unbelief. They did not have faith in what God said. Not only in that instance of disobedience, but in the desire to be able to decide right and wrong for themselves rather than trusting God on decisions about what is right and wrong.

The text implies that they had wandered around naked in front of God before the fall, but had never considered that it might be something to be ashamed of. The action was there before the fall, but the awareness of right and wrong was not present. Man was in a state of innocence, not sinless perfection.

Going back to the passage in Genesis, what it says in verse thirty should be taken in the context of what is said in verse twenty-eight. That is, the provision of plants as food for fowls, creeping things, and “beasts of the earth” is in the context of humanity being given a mandate to subdue the earth and exercise dominion over the animals.

The word translated “subdue” is kabash, and it means “to tread down” or “to conquer, subjugate, violate:—bring into bondage, force, keep under, subdue, bring into subjection.” The word translated “dominion” is from the Hebrew ra-dah and it means “to tread down, i.e. subjugate; specifically, to crumble off:—(come to, make to) have dominion, prevail against, reign, (bear, make to) rule,(-r, over), take.” In both cases these meanings are taken from the famous “Strong’s Concordance”, online version.

I note here that some of those who hold to a young and perfect earth try to skirt around the harshness of these terms by saying that man was only told to subdue the earth, not the animals. They say man was only told to “have dominion” over the animals. Then they give a very soft definition of “dominion” which does not convey the full meaning of the word in the original.

These are shady tactics. If humankind is to subdue the earth, surely the “beasts of the earth” are a part of it. Regardless, the proper definition of the word used for “dominion” also includes subjugation. They both confer a sense of “treading down”. The meaning of both of those words is very evocative of Christ giving His disciples the power to tread on serpents and scorpions. I invite you to get to a concordance and read for yourself who is giving you the most accurate and complete meaning of these Hebrew words.

The use of both of these words implies that the world was not in a state of sinless perfection, or even general obedience, to God. Rather, with the creation of the human race, things were finally in place where God could through humanity begin the process of making the earth more like heaven rather than the middle ground it was created as.

God’s plan was unfolding. Earth began formless and void, a place of darkness and confusion. That was the original state of creation. With each intervention of God into the physical world, it became more illuminated and orderly. His crowning work was the introduction of man, made in His own likeness and with the potential to share His own image, into the world. Humanity was there to complete the task of subduing it, of subjecting it, and of exercising dominion over it.

Verse thirty of Genesis One is not describing what wild beasts and fowls and creeping things ate prior to the fall of man, it is describing what God intends them to eat and established for them to eat when man finally exercises his authority according to the will of God. It is the desired outcome when mankind subdues the earth and assumes godly dominion over the creatures in it. This declaration of God will come to be reality in the Messianic age, such as is foretold in Isaiah 11:17 and again in chapter 65 where it says that “the lion will eat straw like an ox.” It will happen once man, in subjection to Christ, rules the earth according to the will of God instead of his own will.

As further evidence that this view of the matter is correct, compare the list of creatures created on the sixth day with the list that God said He provided vegetation for food. “Creeping things”, such as lizards, snakes, and small animals which scurry about on the ground, are on both lists. “Beasts of the earth”, which are considered to be wild animals, are on both lists. Fowls are only on the list of creatures for which plants have been given for food, because they were created on the fifth “day”, not the sixth. Finally, cattle (the word is behemah and in the form used here means large domestic-type quadrupeds) in all its kinds are created on the sixth day, but they are not on the list of animals to whom plants are given for food!

That last should be a giant red flag that the no predation/no death view has it wrong. Many wild animals, lizards, and fowls are known to be predators, but they are on the list that God wants to be vegetarians. Cattle and animals of that class are known to be vegetarians but they are the only category of land creature which is not on the list of things which God wants to be vegetarians.

A reasonable explanation is that cattle and such did not need to be on the list because they were already plant eaters. The other categories were rife with predators, rife with carnivores. That they were on the list of animals that God had provided plants for was not a statement of initial conditions, it was a statement of the desired goal for man whom had just been given dominion over these creatures!

Man was to set about making the earth into the kind of earth God intends for the millennial kingdom to be. We are simply ridiculous failures at it in our own strength. On our own, we can’t even fully understand the instructions, much less carry them out. We can’t do God’s will without a continuous vital connection with God.

   

Flat Earth, Young Earth, and Christian Virtue Signalling

It looks to me like the "Flat Earth" believers are beating certain "Young Earth" believers at their own game of spiritual one-upmanship. Having said that, let me be very clear that I am not impugning the motives of all Young Earth Creationists over and above my own. I understand that as a fallen man my motives, even my best ones, are always to some degree mixed- just like theirs and those of the rest of sinful humanity. People are complicated and its usually a mistake to put even members of a given class into one box- unless the box is labeled "people who need more Jesus." Still, within categories there are finer categories which apply to that set. This is why the Classification System of Linnaeus works.

With that said, there is a class of Young Earth Creationists which share something in common with those who maintain the Earth is flat. For a while I actually thought that the flat-earthers might even be a spoof of Young Earth Creationists. Then my wife pointed out an acquaintance who was a flat-earther. He was obviously sincere and what he believed was a logical outcome of how he had been raised to think about scripture and truth. I began to understand that a large number of people who claimed to be flat-earthers were sincere, and their reasoning mirrored that of a prominent segment of Young Earth Creationists. In fact, those flat-earthers were one-upping the Young Earth Creationists at their own game of spiritual one-upmanship!

In this group I am writing of there is a common thread. They wear their beliefs not just as a badge of honor, but as a symbol of some sort of superiority of faith over those who do not hold them. It goes beyond the idea that they know a truth which you do not recognize, but in some sense that holding it makes them better than you, or more faithful than you. This is true of the group at issue whether the point of pride is the age of the earth or its flatness. I have watched with amusement as the latter group turned the arguments and accusations of the young-earthers who did not agree with a flat earth against them. The very words that the Young-Eathers used against people who believe the scriptures allow for, or even indicate, that the earth is ancient are used by the flat earth crowd against them! "You don't believe God's word is literally true"; "You either believe the Bible or you don't. Your soul is in danger due to your lack of faith!"

So I think some Young Earthers are sincere on every level about the age of the earth, others are not really interested in the age of the earth as much as they are interested in having some point of pride by which they can consider themselves "more spiritual" or "more faithful" than most of the rest of Christendom. In order to separate them out from those who are sincere on every level about the age of the earth, I will call this group the "P-Young-Earthers". The "P" stands for "pride" since this belief forms the basis of their view that only those who see the scriptures as they do on this subject are true believers of God and His word. Others lack the "faith to believe what God says" as if honest disagreements about scripture are not possible on this subject.

While many P-Young-Earthers will debate evidence from the natural universe on the question of the age of the earth, it has been my experience that as a rule they are less willing to debate the scriptural evidence which speaks to the question. I have killed a number of threads by writing on an alternative view of what a certain passage is saying.

If the meaning of God's Word was really the point you would think that they would jump all over a chance to make it about the scriptures. But for these people its not really about the scriptures. It's about "virtue-signalling" in exactly the same sense that the PC-left crowd does it. They are not trying to find the truth, or solve a problem. They are trying to demonstrate that they are one of the "good people" by calling out, often in the most uncharitable terms, the "bad people" who refuse to say the right things. Their interest is in showing they are the "good people".  As a group, they really don't have a lot of interest in the nitty-gritty of the text of the Bible. They will go to a lot of work to try and prove that the best view of scripture is one that requires little work- little work in delving into the actual text and context of the Word!

I think that most of the church in America is badly misreading early Genesis. Like Martin Luther posted his 95 theses which advanced propositions where he thought that the church had it wrong, I have posted twenty-five theses about Early Genesis (and other passages) where I think the church is getting it wrong. I go into great detail addressing these ideas and exploring in length the scriptures related to these issues in the book "Early Genesis, The Revealed Cosmology." If you have access to an Amazon Prime account, the E-book version can be downloaded for no charge. And yes, the book takes some effort to sort through. If we want to think of ourselves as more noble in a way that is approved in scripture, let's be like the "more noble" ones in Acts 17:11, who "examined the scriptures daily to see if these things were so."

                             

My Twenty-Five Theses On Early Genesis

The church recently celebrated (or perhaps mourned on the Catholic side, though I should think anyone who does not relish paying for indulgences should at least be happy for the pressure to reform brought about by his effort) the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his ninety-five thesis to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. This act by a relative nobody kicked off the Reformation.

My disagreements with most churches over how to view early Genesis is not nearly so big a deal, nor so serious, as all of that. I am not counting myself as another Martin Luther, though I can be inspired by what he did that day to do something on a much smaller area. So here it is: I think that the church is getting Early Genesis very wrong. These errors are inducing some people, especially young people, to question their faith. Others never even consider that the Bible could be true because of what I view as the errors of the church in what they are teaching about early Genesis. But my most fundamental objection is that what they are teaching about the text is not what God wants them to teach about it. They are putting words in His mouth that He did not say. 

When they are not ignoring early Genesis, they are taking a very Jewish view of the it. This cannot be correct because the key to understanding the accounts is to view them through the lens of Christ. In the Middle Ages the church defended the view of the solar system advanced by Pagan Greek Philosophers. They also took a skewed view of certain scriptures to support this incorrect idea. This misplaced confidence caused the church much trouble. I see the something similar going on today with Early Genesis.

The 95 theses of Martin Luther did not try to prove all of his points in the text of the document. It was more like a series of propositions that he advanced for debate. I will take a similar view here, though the supporting scriptural evidence for all of my theses is laid out in the book "Early Genesis, the Revealed Cosmology". Some of you may think that you know of scriptures which disprove some of these theses below. I once thought so too. The book addresses them in detail. I have linked to excerpts from the book on five of the twenty-five theses so that you may evaluate whether what I say is so. With that said, here are my twenty-five theses on Early Genesis....

1. Scripture does not teach that Adam was the progenitor of the entire human race, rather his role is to serve as a shadow of Christ, and through his wife Eve begin the Messianic line. (video one, video two)

2. Scripture does not teach that creation was in a state of sinless perfection before the fall of Adam. Creation was subjected to futility (the capacity to, for a period of time, disagree with or operate in the absence of God) in the beginning with the hopes that some portion of humanity might, by the grace of God, become fit for eternity with Him in a sinless creation. (LINK) (LINK TWO)

3. Other humans existed with and likely before Adam, and they were not in a state of sinless perfection, but a state of innocence because no law with a penalty for sin had been given. (LINK)

4. Scripture does not teach that inheritance from Adam was the mechanism by which sin passed to the whole human race, but that rather the human race will always spiral deeper into sin unless connected to God. Scripture teaches that sin was always a latent condition in nature and in human hearts but was not animated prior to Adam because there was no law given to man. It is the sin of each and all individual persons rather than inheritance from Adam, which puts men under sin. (LINK)

5.  Early Genesis was neither the work of much later scribes nor written from scratch by Moses, rather Moses edited material from the heirlooms of his people- tablets of accounts from many early patriarchs in scripture. Only very minor notes were later added for clarification by those who preserved the word. What I am proposing is that a modified version of "The Tablet Theory" best explains early Genesis. The material is best understood as the accounts of the patriarchs of the Bible reporting on what they say of the generation before them. (video)

6. Whether or not the modern mind cares to accept it, the first chapter of Genesis is meant to be the account of Creation Itself. It is best understood as the Heavens (including High Heaven or the Supernatural Realm) and the Earth communicating to Adam their account of God's work within them, culminating with Man.

7. The heavens and the earth were created by God before the start of the first "day" an unknown period of time before the first day begins. The first day does not begin until Genesis 1:3. (LINK)

8. Each of the days of Creation is a "work day" for creation, not a solar day. The day begins when a Word from God enters creation, bringing illumination and reversing the trend which would otherwise occur of creation descending into darkness and chaos without His Word to order and sustain it. The days end when "it is so" in the heavenly realm and God pronounces things in the natural universe "good" (which means 'suitable' not perfect).

9. Time itself passes differently in High Heaven as compared to the natural universe. Events which seemed to have already occurred there have not yet manifested in this realm. The realm above responds to God's Word quickly, perfectly, and completely. Down here, its a process. The "days" of Genesis chapter one are not 24-hour days, in particular not on this earth because events rapidly accomplished in heaven took a long time to work themselves out here. (video)

10. The most "literal" reading of the days of Genesis chapter one would not even be 24 hour days, but twelve hour nights! That most literally describes the time between "evening and morning". What we think of as their "literal" meaning is not their truest or most literal meaning at all, because the spiritual world is more real and literal than our own world. The process I described in thesis #8 therefore applies and is more "literal" in the truest sense than a "24 hour solar day". (LINK)

11. The text of Genesis chapter one is describing each day of creation on two levels. The text is both describing  what is happening in the world we see and the world we do not see. In the realm above when God speaks a command it becomes reality quickly, and perfectly ('it was so'). In this realm, it is a process and God sometimes has to perform some additional act to make the land below on a suitable ('it was good') track to mirror what "is so" already in the realm above. (video)

12. Genesis 1:27 is not solely about the creation of Adam and Eve. The text should read "God created the Man in His own image" and this portion is referring to the uncreated Logos fusing with created humanity in the timeless heavenly realm. It is not a coincidence that Yahweh Elohim does not appear until after Genesis 1:27 for this reflects that God the Son has become incarnated, though not in corruptible flesh but as Christ is now. Therefore the incarnation was not God's back-up plan which He resorted to when things failed to go as He anticipated, rather it was His plan from "the beginning"and it was initiated in Heaven in the beginning as recorded in Genesis chapter one. (Video)

13. Scripture teaches that God the Father is not visible to men - only God can see God the Father. Therefore all of the recorded instances in scripture where "Yahweh" or "Yahweh Elohim" is seen by men were in fact God the Son coming down from heaven. The term "Theophany" or "Christophany" which refers to an appearance by God in human form prior to the Advent are all this same Person, the Heavenly Man, created in Genesis 1:27 (though the Logos was not created). God did not hop in and out of human form numerous time in the Old Testament for these appearances, but rather it happened once "in the beginning" and The Man in heaven, the Image of the Father, made these appearances. (same video as in #12)

14. The seventh day of creation spoken of in Genesis chapter one was not the seventh solar day in the life of Adam. The scriptures teach that the true Sabbath day did not even begin until after the crucifixion. The Sabbath day was blessed because in it God redeemed His creation which He had made, and this is the rest referred to. (LINK)

15. Genesis chapter two (after verse six) is not a retelling of the same account as chapter one. Rather it is a different but related account. One might be considered like "The Rise of the Roman Empire" and the other "The Life of Julius Caesar."  For example, a much more limited set of animals is created in chapter two than in chapter one. These animals are meant to be "helpers" to Adam on his mission and are thus different from wilder versions of similar creatures created in chapter one.

16. Adam and Eve were not created as immortals. The plan for those who walk with God was not physical immortality in our present bodies on this earth but rather translation into the next realm prior to death. This life is preparation for the real one, in the land above, though ultimately the two realms can be merged. Physical death existed before the fall of Adam. (Link)

17. Scripture assumes that the reader understands that there were other human beings around besides Adam and his family. The account of Cain's exile as well as other scriptures indicate that other families of humans were walking the earth, not just the family of Adam. In addition, the fairest view of the evidence is that Adam came along later, after mankind had gone astray from God's purposes for them. Adam was created to bring an already-errant mankind back toward God.

18. The "sons of God" referred to in Genesis chapter six are not angles or some other form of non-human Divine Being, or even the offspring of Cain, but rather the households of the other sons of God besides the house of Adam. Adam's offspring called themselves by the name of Yahweh, indicating they had a special and personal relationship with God in a way the other houses of men did not. Even still, those other houses of men were also "sons of God". (video)

19. The genealogies in early Genesis do not contain "gaps" as some would have it, but it is likely that the dates proposed by Bishop Usher are miscalculations.  I believe that the long-lived (because they spent time in the presence of Yahweh not because human lifespans were longer in general) patriarchs were used like calendars. Unless the text makes it clear that the next generation is a direct son, then the proper counting of the years is from birth of the patriarch to his death, at which point one of his near descendants became the reference patriarch. This method of counting would put the creation of Adam at the key period (for the rise of civilization) of around 13,100-13,600 years ago. (LINK)

20. The flood was not global in extent, but would have been global in consequences if not for God's plan to save Noah and those with him on the ark. That is, the line leading to Messiah would have been cut off and the whole world would have gone to ruin. (video)

21. Though the Divine Name and the term "Elohim" can be used more or less interchangeably to refer to either God the Father or God the Son later in scripture, in early Genesis Yahweh refers to God the Son and Elohim refers to God the Father. In the Garden they are in unity of will but it is God the son acting. Very much like during the incarnation, though they share one nature after the fall of Adam they have separate wills, which the Son must align with the Father through a process. Early Genesis is very Trinitarian. Thus in the account of the flood it is important to note whether the Father or the Son is doing the speaking to truly sort through what is happening. (Link)

22. The Ark did not contain every type of animal God created in Genesis chapter one, rather a close reading shows that it contained only animals from the more limited set of creatures Yahweh-Elohim made for Adam in Genesis chapter two. There were no Pandas or Kangaroos or even Tigers or giraffes on the ark. These were stock from the "help" animals God created especially for Adam, which were not spread over the earth but concentrated among the sons of Adam. If the house of Adam was obliterated, these special domesticates would be endangered as well. (video)

23. The place in the flood account which records that all the high hills were covered is not God the Father speaking, nor God the Son speaking, but is rather the record of Shem, Ham, and Japheth reporting what they saw. Thus the Holy Spirit is not testifying that all the mountains of the earth were covered, but rather that Shem, Ham, and Japheth reported them as covered. (video from thesis 21)

24. God was setting up His covenant using what happened to Noah. This is why God chose to bring a flood to wash away the wickedness of His chosen people the Adamites, preserving only the faithful. The answer to "why didn't God just have Noah and the animals migrate if it was not a global flood?" is that God was painting a picture of baptism. Baptism is not where the outside world is destroyed but it is where the unbelief in a believer is destroyed. A believer preserves that which is faithful in him through water in obedience to God. God could have called for migration, or a plague, or brought fire from heaven. He did all those things to cleanse wickedness from His people in the Old Testament, but none of those methods were a shadow of baptism.

25. The table of nations in Genesis chapter ten says that the nations were divided by the descendants of Noah, not that they were the direct ancestors of every member of those nations. The great bulk of humanity survived the flood, and indeed most did not even personally experience the flood because it was about judging God's special people, the line destined to bring Messiah. Indeed a close look at the text of the account of Babel (which occurred before and set up the dividing into nations in chapter ten), make it pretty clear that when the clan of Noah came down from the hills sometime after the flood they found other people in Shinar (Mesopotamia). They were the natural nobility of the indigenous people. Abraham, Issac, and Esau gathered huge personal households around them consisting mostly of non-family members.  So did Noah's more immediate descendants. These households became the core of new nations. (video)

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Every one of the theses above and more is discussed in detail in this book. If you have access to an Kindle Unlimited account then it can be downloaded in Ebook form for no charge, though I think the paper version is a better reading experience. And remember, you can be wrong about Early Genesis but right about Christ. Every Christian is a person who has admitted "I was wrong", that's essential to repentance. So there is nothing unchristian about changing your views on what the Scripture says, so long as Christ is still the point, and so long as He is still God made flesh.

Walk Like a Mesopotamian Egyptian

See here where it says ancient Egyptians were from the Middle East. This is consistent with the Table of Nations in Genesis chapter ten where the near descendant of Noah, Mizraim, is associated with Egypt. It is contradictory to what they expected to find- that ancient Egyptians were more sub-Saharan African. This is yet another data point which aligns with the view of Genesis laid out in "Early Genesis: the Revealed Cosmology."

This Christ-centered view of the text does not see Adam as the progenitor of all of humanity but rather his role was as a shadow of Christ. The role of the Adamic line was not to people the earth but to produce the Messiah who would redeem the people of the earth. The flood of Noah then was not global in extent (though it seemed like it to Shem, Ham, and Japeth who first recorded the account) but it would have been global in effect if the line leading to Messiah had perished.  It would have left the world to go to ruin.

The nations described in Genesis ten are not completely peopled by the descendants of Noah, but they are divided by them. That is to say they were a natural nobility that acquired large personal households (much like the later Patriarchs) which became the cores of these nations.

While the "Young Earth" traditional Jewish view of the text is getting harder to defend by the day the Christ-centered view of the text is being confirmed day after day. Click below for the book....