Sunday’s Questions – Creation (Part 1)

This past Sunday I preached a sermon in our “God, I have a question” series on how did God make the world. Obviously the theme brings up the debate between creationists and evolutionists. You can hear the whole sermon by going to our church website. During the message, additional questions were submitted. I will begin answering them to the best of my ability:

If God created the world “by the word of His mouth” can we expect that same power in our daily life through His Word?

There’s really two key things we must consider when looking at the work of God. The will of God and the word of God. We cannot just take his word and apply it to any situation as if it is a magic formula. Many people think they can manipulate God with faith or scripture. This is not so. God does not bend to our will. With that said, God is the same today as he was 2000 years ago. God will act and move in our world and in our lives with the same power he had during and before the bible days. When we apply to the truth of God to the will of God, we will see the power of God!

Your key passage in Gen 1 says God created light.  Did God also create darkness, or is darkness simply the absence of light?

Yes, I believe that would be true. Genesis 1:2 says “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep…”

At the end of Genesis 1 God created man in His image and allowed them to be fruitful and multiply. In the beginning of Genesis 2 God created Adam and Eve. Aren’t there already people everywhere multiplying according to the end of Genesis 1? How are we all from Adam and Eve if there are people already created on earth?

I believe, along with many (if not most) bible scholars, that Genesis 2 is a passage giving us more detail into how God created mankind on day 6. I do not believe that Adam and Eve were secondary to other human beings created on day 6. If this were so, sin would not have passed down to all humanity through Adam. Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.” The New Testament confirms that Adam was the first man in 1 Corinthians 15:45: “So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being…”

Which came first? The chicken or the egg?

The chicken

Where do dinosaurs fit into creationism?

I believe they were created on the 5^th (water/birds) and 6^th (animals) day. They died out just like many species have. I think they died out before the flood, but there is no proof as to exactly when this happened.

Were Adam and Eve cavemen

The bible does not use the word “caveman” to describe anyone. Even the concept of prehistoric could not apply because “prehistoric” means “before recorded history.” Obviously the bible records history before the world began. It is possible that Adam and Eve lived in a cave after the fall. Frankly, had I been around in that time, a cave may have been a cozy place to live. The concept of caveman leads one to think of man evolving, and evolution does not agree with the teaching of scripture. For that matter, the evolution of man does not agree with the findings of science. Consider these facts about supposed prehistoric men:

–          The Nebraska Man – The Nebraska Man was a fabrication created in the creativity of  a scientist who worked hard to turn a tooth, found in 1922, into a prehistoric family. Scientist applied their imagination and created a jawbone, skull, skeleton, body & fur and created the “Nebraska Man” all from one tooth. By the time the London Newspaper got it, there was also a picture of a “Nebraska mom.” Sometime after this discovery, an identical tooth was found attached to a skull and body of a wild pig. One writer said, “Ironically, while scientists were attempting to make a monkey out of a pig, the pig made a monkey out of the scientists.”

–          The Java Man was found on the East Indian island of Java in 1891, and the find only consisted of a skullcap, femur (thigh bone), & three teeth. The femur was actually found fifty feet from the skullcap a full year after the skullcap had been discovered. Worse than this, Eugene Dubois also found 2 fully intact human skulls in close proximity to his original finds, but these facts were not reported at the time.

–          Henry Gee,  Chief science writer for Nature:, summarized: “Consequently, human evolution is a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices. To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story – amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”

Where did Cain & Abel’s wives come from?

As I said Sunday, Cain never had the privilege of taking a wife. We do know the bible does not give us details of all of Adam and Eve’s children. Genesis 5:4 says, “After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters.” Cain’s wife may be the most talked about wife in history. William Jennings Bryan, the prosecutor in the Scopes trial in 1929 was asked this question, and he could not give an adequate answer. There is no indication how old Cain was when he married, so it is possible he could have been 50 and married a 25 year old sister. He could have been 100 and married a 50 year old niece. The only conclusion is that Cain married his sister or another relative. Cain’s wife suddenly appears in Genesis 4:17, but there is no indication exactly how much time has passed at this point. Evolutionists, like the famed Scopes Trial ACLU lawyer Clarence Darrow, seem to think this is a big deal that supports the possibility of other people evolving. The fact is that God gave us some detail about some births (Cain and Abel) while leaving out a lot of other detail (like Cain’s sister and following relatives).

If God created the heavens and the earth why did he not create life outside of earth?

He could have. I really do not believe that life in another galaxy would disqualify any of the teachings of the scripture. I don’t think He did, but I could be wrong. Obviously the Bible doesn’t give any indication He did.

Where did the water come from Genesis  in Genesis 1:2.

If you look carefully at Genesis 1:1, God created the heavens and the earth. When he began this process on day one, water was a part of that creation. We know that water is made up of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. God created the water as a part of the beginning of the creation process.  The scripture doesn’t go into great detail, it just indicates it was a part of the “earth creation.”