January 1
Gen 1-2 | PS 1:1-6 | Prov 1:1-6 | Matt 1-2:12
As we begin our journey through the Bible, we come this first day to a very familiar portion of Scripture, the creation. Many struggle right from the outset with a literal six day creation. This is why a choice must be made, if God says something as fact, are we going to accept it as such, or are we going to make what is written literal as allegory so that it makes us more comfortable. This raises the bigger question as to who reigns in our lives. Do we allow God to reign, or do we and our own opinions reign? Faith is that thing that you will not break from, even if it stands in opposition to what you have been raised to think. For those who don't know, I'm a physician. Therefore I was raised and surrounded by science. Having faith in God does not mean that you remove your brain. Quite the contrary, it means that you open it up, remove your pride, and realize that when we stand in opposition to God in anything, He is right and we are wrong. In humility, we can then look into the truth. Though initially raised to believe in evolution, after studying creation vs. evolution, I have come to the belief that it takes much more faith to believe that we are the byproduct of random and purposeless processes which created everything that we see from some primordial soup, than to believe that there is a perfect and loving God, that has both the will and the ability to do anything. We dare not place limits around a limitless God. If we accept God at His word, going through the Bible will be the most eye-opening experience of your life. If we question and doubt, elevating our own opinions, then it makes for a very long year.
In Genesis 1:1, we read, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." That is a very straightforward and literal statement. Then we see a series of comments which begin with, "Then God said," and which ends with "And this is what happened". Each day of creation ends with, "And evening passed and morning came, marking the first, second, etc. day". The Hebrew word for day in Hebrew is "yom". This word is used 2301 times in the Old Testament and each and every time it refers to a twenty-four hour day. Scripture always interprets Scripture. So to make this word mean something else simply to satisfy our pre-conceived views of evolution, simply makes no sense. If we accept God who works in the supernatural, and is not confined to what we deem the laws of nature, why is the concept of a six day creation so difficult? Do we believe that Jesus rose from the grave? For our faith and hope rests in this truth. Yet this truth defies the laws of nature. Do we believe that He will come again and with His mouth defeat the armies assembled in the battle of Armageddon? Do we believe in the miracles that He performed? Do we believe the miracles in the Old Testament? Do we believe that God speaks forth truth in prophecy before it happens? The answer is hopefully yes, to those reading this. So if these are all believed and possible, why is it so difficult to believe that God could speak the world as we know it into existence in six literal days? As we move forward in the rest of today's readings, Do I believe that God literally formed the first man from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7)? Yes! Do I believe that God made the first woman from Adam's rib? Yes! Do I believe that "The serpent" deceived Eve? Yes! Do I believe that though God made the world good, sin entered into the world through this singular act, bringing with it a curse to not only man but all of creation? Yes! Do I believe that in Genesis 3:15, in the first prophecy, God speaks forth the coming Messiah, born of a virgin, who would one day defeat Satan, conquering sin and death? Yes!
If you struggle with the truth of creation, there is an excellent resource in the site, Answers in Genesis. But here are a few facts to consider. Each human has between 70-100 trillion cells in our bodies. Each cell contains six feet of tightly coiled DNA. If this DNA were straightened, each human has enough DNA to stretch back and forth from earth to the sun, 610.9 times. Though evolution claims that it took millions of years for humans to evolve to this point through the process of mutations, how does this make any sense when we take the sheer amount of DNA in our bodies alongside the fact that each and every single mutation is negative, in that it removes genetic information, rather than adding to it. The various dating equations used to date the earth and fossils require constants. But these constants are rendered useless in the face of a worldwide flood making their estimates erroneous. The findings of soft tissue in dinosaur bones, along with dinosaur fossils alongside human fossils shows that dinosaurs existed much more recently than the millions of years that evolutionists claim. The originator of every theory of evolution eventually questions the validity of their own theories once they are investigated further, from Fred Hoyle and the Big Bang Theory due to the necessity of physical forces which must have been created beforehand, to Darwin which required a plethora of missing links to have been discovered, yet were not in the time after his theory was proposed, to Francis Crick who discovered DNA, and due to its complexity, admitted that it could not have spontaneously come into being but had to be created. After being in God's Word and studying it for over thirty years, I have come to the simple conclusion, that when the Bible states that something is true, it is true. Every concern and question which I had, when further investigated with an open mind, came to the same conclusion. There are no limits to be placed around our limitless God. Though there is certainly a place for allegory in the poetic portions of Scripture, when God speaks literally it should be taken literally. May we all open our minds and see the truths that God will unveil to each of us as we pour into His Word.
Messages from Pastor Lloyd Pulley: