Exploring Creation Theories: A Deep Dive into Genesis 1 and the Origins of the Universe

This is gonna be a continuation of what we did a couple weeks ago, where we've taken a deeper dive, look into Genesis 1, into Genesis 2, but I have six pages of notes to cover and only like 30 minutes, so we'll see how this goes. But I have a fun note apparently I didn't get ready, so again we're gonna be. We're gonna be looking at this through the eyes of the young earth creationist theory and the old earth creationist theory the way they interpret what Genesis 1 says. So we're gonna basically go through all of Genesis 1 and at certain points I'm gonna stop and talk about what we're seeing and what is actually being said. So if you have Bibles, I recommend you open them up to page 1, which is Genesis 1, and follow along. I am going to be using the English Standard Version. I think most of the Bibles here are probably NIV, but that's just the version I typically use, so your wording may be a little bit different and but that's okay. So Genesis 1 reads in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. So by heavens and earth, that is very old language. The way that we would describe that now would be the skies in the land. This was written for ancient people who had a different way of looking at things, and we'll discuss that more later on. So these first couple verses. I'm gonna be very brief on Verse 2, the earth was without form and void, the darkness was over the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. So this is just basically saying that the earth was here, but it was empty. There was nothing here, nobody was here except for God. Now, as we get into verses 3 through 5, this is gonna be day one of creation. I'm gonna read all of day one of creation and then we'll actually read day 2 and then day 3, and then we'll stop and look at this. So I'm gonna be continuing in verse 3, which is day one. Something else I need to note, or I would like to note, is at the beginning of each creation session it starts with then God said, and then it ends with then it was evening and morning, or there was evening and morning. So that is your beginning and ending for each creation session. We will see that in day 3 and day 6. There'll be a slight variation to that, but that is how we know how they identified days. So verse 3, and God said let there be light. And there was light. And God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night, and there was evening and there was morning the first day. So, continuing on to day 2 and verse 6, and God said let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters. And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so, and God called the expanse heaven, and there was evening and there was morning the second day. Okay, so that's kind of confusing, but I'm gonna wait to explain that after we get through day 3. So day 3 continues in day, or in verse 9, and this reads and God said let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear. And it was so. God called the dry land earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called seas, and God saw that it was good. There is a little bit of difference because we're still in day 3, but there is a special creation on day 3 and that continues in verse 11. We'll see. It starts with and God says we know that this is another creation. So verse 11 reads and God said let the earth sprout vegetation plants yielding seed and fruit trees bearing fruit and which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth. And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit and which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning the third day. So let's pause here and start to take a look at what is actually happening. So the best way to explain what is happening here is on day 1 through 3, god is creating what some people call realms, but what I like to call landscapes. So in day 1 he created day and night. So now we have that difference between day and night. Day 2 that's where it got a little fuzzy, when the waters were separated by waters and expanse and all this. You have to kind of understand the way the ancients would speak or the way they understood things. So they had to believe that they lived under a dome, like literally a dome, and above that dome was water. And then we also had water here under the dome, which are the seas. Well, why did they believe that? Well, two reasons. One reason if you go outside and look up in the sky, what do you see? Blue, water's blue. What also comes out of the skies every now and then is rain. So they believed that there was a dome over us that held back the waters, but every so often God would let the waters come through in the form of rain. So this expands the separation of waters from waters. They believed that there was a separation from the waters above and the waters below, as in the sky, and the waters on the earth. But we also have to realize that, like I said in verse one, they believe that heaven was another way of saying sky. In ancient Hebrew they didn't have a word that meant sky, they used heaven. They didn't have a word that meant space or outer space, they used heaven. So there is actually three levels of heaven that they believe at least three. First level of heaven is our sky, our atmosphere, where we live. This is heaven in their opinion. We now know, we have modern science and all this other stuff. We know what this is, but in their belief this was heaven. But then you had the second level of heaven, where that would have been outer space. That would have been the dark, that would have been the sun, the moon, the stars, that would have been the second level of heaven. And then you had the third level of heaven, which would be the heavenly realm, where God and the angels and all that lived. So they had this different interpretation of this whole expanse and the waters. So basically, all this is talking about is God created the skies, that separated the waters from earth, or the land and the waters. That would be outer space. So that's what this is meaning. So basically, god created the sky, and that's the easiest way of saying it. So I said a lot of words. Just say that means God created the sky. And then, day three, god separated the waters from the land. So basically, god brought the land forth out of the waters. So the waters were here, the whole earth was covered in water. God brought the land up out of the water. So three different landscapes. You have basically three different levels. You have the upper level, which would have been technically the second level of heaven, so you have the outer space. So day and night which would be up in that area. Then you have the skies and then you have the land. So you have three different levels, three days, three landscapes. So let's continue on reading through days four through six and we're going to see these same three landscapes repeated, but this time God's going to be filling those landscapes with inhabitants. So day four starts in verse 14. And God said Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth. And it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars, and God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth To rule over the day and over the night, and the two lights to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning. The fourth day. So continue day five and verse 20. And God said Let the water swarm with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens. So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves with which the water swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let the birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day Now, day six, and verse 24. And God said Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things and beast of the earth according to their kinds. And it was so. And God made the beast of the earth according to their kinds, and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Okay, brief intercession here. So, as we seen at the end of day three, there was a special creation where God created the plants and the trees and all that. Well, now here in day six, we have another special creation. So that's what we want to go into next and that begins in verse 26. Then God said Let us make man in our image, after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image and the image of God. He created him Male and female. He created them and God blessed them. And God said to them Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth and every tree with seed and its fruit. You shall have them for food. And so, into every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made and, behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Now, I could have skipped some of that, but I wanted to make sure I read all of verse 1 or all of chapter 1, genesis 1 in its entirety. So you guys aren't thinking I'm cheating on anything here, because now let's go back and look at what we've seen through days 4 through 6. So, like I said, day 1 through 3 was the creation of landscapes. Day 4 through 6 was filling those landscapes. So day 1 was the creation of day and night. Then, on day 4, god filled that day and night with the sun to rule over the day, the greater light than the lesser light, the moon and the stars to rule over the night. So day 1 was the creation of day and night, but day 4 was the creation of the sun, the moon and the stars. And the same way, in day 2, god created the skies over the waters. Well, then day 5, god filled that sky and those waters with the birds and all the sea creatures and then, continuing on into day 3, he brought the land up out of the waters. And then on day 6, god created all the animals that inhabited the land, so all the animals that lived on the land. But, as you remember, on day 3, there was a special creation of the plants and the trees. Well, there was also a special creation on day 6, which was humankind. So I want to talk about this more as we get into this. But first we actually need to finish the creation story, because even though this is the end of Genesis 1, the creation story goes into Genesis 2. So I'm going to read Genesis 2, 1 through 3, and this will finish up the day 7, because they only had day 1 through 6 in Genesis 1, for some reason. So I'm going to read this and this is Genesis 2. So thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them, and on the seventh day, god finished his work that he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. So you may notice that at the end of day 7, there's no reference to Then there was evening and then there was morning, because day 7 never ended. There's a lot of debate on this, whether day 7 isif we're still in day 7, or if day 7 was ended. I've heard a lot of different opinions on that, but they're pretty much just that opinions. So that is something that you may want to consider investigating yourself. But for what we're doing now, we don't have time to go into that, because we need to look at this again through that young earth creationist and old earth creationist theories the way they look at things. And to start off, we need to remember that these two belief systems, they are simply based on interpretation. So we just read the entire creation story and there's just the way they view what actually happened and what was actually meant by the words that we just read. And so, as we look at the young Earth creationists, let's remember that their belief is that what we just read, all of that happened in six literal 24-hour days. So put that perspective Right now. Imagine this Earth was formless and void. Nothing was here except for God. And then, at 12 o'clock am this morning or tomorrow morning, however you want to look at it Monday morning until 11.59 pm on Saturday. So, before we come back here and meet again, god will create everything, as in the skies, the Earth, all the animals, all the fish, everything and anything that will ever be created in the world for all of eternity was made within those six days. So, as we now, before we come back next week, god will have created everything in that type of brain. That is what the young Earth creationists believe. Is that possible? Absolutely. God has the power to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants. I mean, he has the ability to do whatever. So if that is the way God wanted to do it, he could have done it that way. Do I believe he did it that way? Not necessarily, but we also have to remember that the young Earth creationists believe that what we just read the creation story, it was literal, historical fact, and it's not poetry, it is not parable, it is not prophetic vision and it is not mythology. This is historical fact. This is exactly what happened. This is what the young Earth creationists believe. Again, is that possible? Yes, but here's my biggest argument against it is what we just covered the fact that the way the creation story is structured, the way it is created, it was developed in a way where you had that parallelism. You had day one through three matched up perfectly with days four through six, where these are creating the landscapes and then four through six is filling those landscapes in perfect order. Again, could God have created everything that way? Yes, he could have. But that leads into my next argument, and this could sound weird, but it leads to the question what human was here on Earth to witness the creation of this story, or this creation of the Earth, this whole creation story? And that might sound kind of blasphemous, but that's not how it's intended. My intention is the fact that where did the story come from If there was nobody here to witness what happened? How did we get the story in Genesis? Where did it come from? Where did it originate from? Well, history tells us that Genesis, the book of Genesis, the entire book, was written by Moses. But that's kind of ironic, because Moses wasn't even born in the Bible until Exodus 2. Exodus is after Genesis, so all of Genesis was written by a man who, according to the Bible, wasn't born until after Genesis was written or after the stories of Genesis happened. So where did Moses get these stories from? Well, obviously he got them from God. Moses was in close relation with God. He spoke to God face to face. It's very possible, it's very probable, to make the assumption that God gave Moses this story and Moses recorded it, as well as all the stories in Genesis. He recorded them in a book that we now call Genesis. Well, I mean, I think that's a safe bet. I think anybody would be hard-pressed to make an argument against that. But then it leads to the question who says that God had to give Moses the exact play by play of how he created the earth, when he could have just given him a nice structured overview that gave the entire creation story without giving all the details, just kind of bundling up in a nice little package in order for us to have something that is more easily digestible? Because, let's be honest, there's a lot of creatures out there that could fall into multiple areas, like the otter. The otters live most of their lives in the water, but they're a mammal, they are technically a land creature that just lives in the water Almost all of their lives. Then, to go even a step further, there are birds that do all three. They fly in the skies, they have their babies on the ground, but then they find their food under the water. They dive underwater, swim underwater to catch their food. What's that about? So God doesn't give us these, like all the answers to all these questions. This is just a overview, a structured story to help us understand how God created everything. So I don't think it falls into exact historical fact for that reason. But let's look at it from the aspect of the older creationists, who come from a completely different area of belief, where they believe the universe was created billions and billions years ago. The earth was created I think it was 4.5 billion years ago but then Adam and Eve weren't created until about 30 to 70,000 years ago. Well, the biggest argument against them and this isn't necessarily my argument, but it does make sense is, as Christians we believe that death didn't enter the world until the original sin, until Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. That's when sin entered the world and therefore that's when death entered the world. Before that there's strong argument that there was no death. But if you look at that from an old earth creationist standpoint, they believe that all the dinosaurs died off 65 million years ago. Well, how could they have died at all if Adam and Eve weren't even created until 30 to 70,000 years ago? That math doesn't add up because technically they couldn't have died until at least 30 to 70,000 years ago. So their whole argument just kind of falls apart in itself and just crumbles on itself. Let me keep talking about this here. So yes, when it comes to dinosaurs I can have a whole talk just on dinosaurs, but we don't have time for that. You've got nine minutes. Yeah, I don't have time for that because I want to get into Genesis 2 a little bit further. So maybe someday in the future talk about that. I don't know, we'll see. So, for the sake of time, we're going to skip that tropical, we're going to walk around it, we're going to avoid it and we are going to talk about Genesis 2, because actually Genesis 2 is a different creation story. I don't know if anybody has ever noticed that, but I mean okay, so the first three verses of Genesis 2 technically tag on to Genesis 1. You remember the whole chapter versus that was all put in by man after the fact, and somebody dropped the ball in that one and they put it the chapter marker in the wrong spot. So technically, genesis 2-4 would be and a lot of people's opinions the beginning of Genesis 2, but this is almost like a different creation story and I don't have time to read all of this. But there are two sections that I want to read and I'll point a couple things out that I also think it's very eye-opening. So I want to read verses 4 through 7 first, and this reads these are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created and the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up. When did that happen? In our first creation story, that was the special creation at the end of day three. So, but this is talking about before that even happened. So just keep that in mind. So continuing on, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land and there was no man to work the ground and they missed was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature. So this is already a different version, because this is saying before God even created the plants, he created me. Well, in our first version and in Genesis 1, the plants were created day 3, man wasn't created until they sit as a special creation. But now this is saying man was created before plants and all that. So it's already contradicting Genesis 1. So the next part I want to cover is verses 18 through 20. And this reads Then the Lord God said it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Now, out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So this could be interpreted different ways. I admit that. But the way I look at it and the way I read this, man was alone. So God created man before the plants and all that. Well, this is saying that he also created man before all the animals and the birds and everything else. And man was alone. And God didn't want man to be alone. So he created all these other animals and birds and everything else to find something suitable for the man. Apparently, he didn't create dogs, because dogs are supposed to be man's best friend. He created all these other animals and he brought them to the man and the man named them, and all this, and everybody's heard this story too. Well, you could also interpret this that everything was already created and then God just brought each one of them to the man to have him be named them to find a perfect helper. But just the way it's worded, I feel like that's kind of a stretch. I believe it is a little bit more along the lines that man was alone and so God created all this stuff for man. So why do I even bring this up? Why am I trying to contradict Genesis 1 and Genesis 2? Well, I'm not trying to contradict the two because, well, can you continue on if you stayed with Genesis 2,? This is where God put Adam and Deep Sleep, took out one of his ribs, created a woman, found a perfect helper blah blah, blah, blah, blah. Everybody heard that story. So the woman blah blah, blah, blah. But everything else you've got is very good detail about it. Yeah, just letting you know. Yeah, time, shall we? Yeah, time, I don't have time to go into the blah blah, blah, blah, blah. I get you Anyways. So why am I bringing up these contradictions? I'm not trying to say that there is even a contradiction. I'm just trying to point out the fact that Genesis 1, after reading Genesis 2, genesis 2 is more fuel for the fire, to say, than Genesis 1 is just an organized, structured overview of the creation story where, as you get into Genesis 2, it's going into the details about how God created me and how God created woman, how God created the living creatures. I mean, again, it's still not going into great detail because there are so many different animals and creatures and things that God created. There's no way he could put all of that down in a structured or a play-by-play description of what he did. I mean, that's just impossible. So I think this is just more fact, that this is not necessarily poetry, but it kind of has its own structure as far as it's not historical facts. Now you could read this and be like I disagree. I think this is exactly how it happened. That's fine. Again, it doesn't matter. This is not a salvation issue. It doesn't matter which side of the coin you fall on this. I mean, as long as you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he came down to earth, that he was born of the Virgin Mary, that he suffered death for our sin, that he was resurrected, if you believe that you have salvation. Whether you believe God created the earth in seven days or six days or in 60 days, or in 100 days or 6,000 days, it doesn't matter, it really doesn't. It's not a salvation issue, it's all about interpretation. But I just think it's very interesting to dive into it and hook the bear and see what comes out of it. So Very good job. So I set the tire for 33 minutes because I thought you'd ramble and you have 152 left. So I say that you did 39. That's worth it. I did six pages of notes in 30 minutes. I think somebody should buy me a steak dinner. I'm not. She probably would buy you a steak dinner if you talked about women, but she probably would, probably. But I was able to get it out of the window and see what else is there. Thanks,