Category Archives: Creation

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January 23, 2024

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Creation, God

Is God in Everything?

“God is in everything.” Those words sparked a lengthy conversation about the relationship of God to the physical universe. Christians who make that statement do not mean the same thing a Hindu or Buddhist might mean by a similar statement. The Christian might mean that since God is Creator of all things then all things contain an active part of God. Therefore, His being can legitimately be said to be in all of His creation. This asserts more than the existence of evidence of God’s creative work in the things He created, but that all things contain a part of God. This asserts that a piece of God is present in every created thing. Is this a Biblical assertion?

The Bible teaches that God is present everywhere. “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?” (Psalm 139:7) “Can anyone hide himself in secret places, so I shall not see him? says the LORD, Do I not fill heaven and earth?” (Jeremiah 23:24) God is present everywhere in His creation and His presence fills all His creation. God is truly present in all places simultaneously. The Biblical teaching of the unlimited presence of God is not the same as the teaching that God is present in everything

The Bible teaches God is present everywhere while also remaining completely distinct from His creation. God is everywhere, but God is not in everything. Declaring that God is in all things blurs the line between creature and Creator, a line which the Bible draws clearly. Aside from the incarnation of Jesus, the Divine and the created are never described in the Bible as co-mingled. God is greater than all the world and is higher than the heavens. He cannot be contained by the universe or even by Heaven. (1 Kings 8:27) Isaiah 40:22 says, “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.” Isaiah shows God is separate from His creation. He sits above the earth. He spreads out the heavens. He is infinitely greater than all His creation.

Isaiah 40:25 asks, “To whom then will you liken Me, or to whom shall I be equal?” If God is in everything and everything contains the Divine, then what could be wrong with portraying God as a Sun, an elephant, a calf or some other created thing? Only because God is not in any of those things is it wrong to represent Him by an image of them. God is not in all creation, but “above all.” (Ephesians 4:6)

Understanding that God is always present with all His creation in all places and at all times while also always separate and distinct from His creation is not easy. The distinction is difficult but important. To mingle God’s being with His creation is to elevate the creation to the level of the Divine and to diminish the infinite, limitless God until He becomes equivalent to His creation. God is not equal with any or all of His creation. He is infinitely greater than all His works. None dare lessen His greatness. All must marvel at the infinity and intimacy of God who transcends all creation and remains present with each person.

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May 2, 2023

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Creation, The Bible

Does the Bible say anything about Pangea?

Pangea is the name given to the super continent believed to be the single landmass from which the present day continents broke apart. Evolutionary science says Pangea existed two to three hundred million years ago. The continental plates slowly drifted apart and into their present positions. As they continue to move they will eventually bump into each other to form a new super continent.

The existence of Pangea seems plausible to those who look at the map and imagine the continents as pieces of a puzzle. The American continents appear like they would fit snugly into contours of the African and European continents. If the Bible is true one would expect to find in it some mention of a fact as significant as the existence of an original supercontinent. Does the Bible say anything about Pangea?

First, the Bible can be true and not mention the original shape of Earth’s landmasses. The Bible does not claim to speak about every subject known to man. Much that is of great importance to humans is not addressed in the Bible. Scripture does not teach basic mathematics. The Bible counts, but it says nothing about the relationship of Pi to the circumference of a circle or about the principles of Pythagoreans theorem. These are incredibly significant facts used in many professions and that affect the construction of many structures. Also, huge portions of natural history are ignored by the Bible. Though Scripture speaks of ants, locusts, goats and badgers, the Bible says nothing about kangaroos, armadillos, monkeys or dolphins. The list of important things the Bible does not talk about is much larger than the Bible itself. However, the Bible makes no claims to be the source of knowledge about every thing in this world. The Bible claims to tell everything people need to know about how to be right with God and how to live in the way God requires. The Bible can be true and also be silent on many things of importance to humans.

Second, the Bible does speak of an event which suggests how a super continent could have existed in the beginning and how the continents could have moved to their present location. Scripture does not say God created the world with one, massive super continent, but Genesis 6 through 9 describes a worldwide flood which could have broken that continent into several pieces.

The Bible says that during the flood the fountains of the great deeps were opened up. (Genesis 7:11) Some creation scientists speculate those fountains were underground reservoirs of water which pushed through the earth’s surface and began to push the continental plates apart. The movement of water from under the ground and the pressure of the water pushing through the cracks in the crust combined to speed up the movement of the continents. This drift would have continued during the flood and gradually slowed down after the flood waters were gone.

To be clear, the Bible does not describe Pangea or the spread of the continents. The Bible says the fountains of the great deep were opened up. From that statement some creation scientists have deduced a possible explanation for continental drift and the break up of the single super continent. Though the Bible does not answer all our geological questions, Scripture does tell us everything we need to know about salvation, eternal life and how to please God with your life. Everything the Bible tells us is important and trustworthy, even if it doesn’t tell us everything we want to know.

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February 8, 2023

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Creation, Sin

When did God Make Carnivorous Animals?

Genesis 1 describes God’s creation of all things, including the creation of every kind of animal. In Genesis 1:30 God says, “To every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food.” God then declared the entire creation to be “very good.” Initially all animals were plant eaters.

Genesis 3 records the rebellion of humanity against God and the subsequent curse that fell on all the world. Many conservative Bible teachers believe animals began to eat meat as a result of the curse. The Bible does not say when certain animals began to be carnivorous. Passages like Isaiah 11 which speak of carnivores being restored to their original herbivorous condition and Romans 5 which says death came because man sinned. These passages lead to the conclusion that no animal ate the flesh of another until after man sinned. After man’s sin some animals became carnivorous. Whether the transition to carnivory was gradual or instant is unknown.

Those who study zoology (the science of animals) know the digestive system of a meat eater is quite different from that of a plant eater. To survive on a meat based diet the creature has to be able to eat and digest the meat. This requires unique features in the teeth, jaws, stomachs or intestines of carnivores. When God cursed the world did He renovate the innards of certain animals so they could begin to eat meat? The Bible does not say.

Most carnivores are able to live on a plant based diet. Relatively few obligate carnivores (meat eaters which can only survive on a predominantly meat based diet) exist. Cats, snakes and lizards are a few kinds of obligate carnivores. The majority of meat eating animals also have a diet containing a large percentage of plant based foods. Bears, dogs and apes are carnivores which also eat varying amounts of plant matter. A slow transition to carnivory can be imagined for those animals which are not obligate carnivores. Conditions in the cursed world may have required them to begin eating meat and the process of adaptation allowed those better able to process meat to survive and pass on their unique genetic features. Knowing man was going to sin God could have built into the genetic structure of many creatures the ability to process meat.

God could also have redesigned many animals at the same time He redesigned certain plants to bear thorns and thistles. A Divine re-plumbing of certain creatures to enable them to survive on meat is not an unreasonable assumption. The curse of Satan included a radical redesign of snake structure. The serpent was created with legs, but was cursed to crawl on its belly. For this to be a sustainable transformation something greater than mere amputation had to happen. The structures supporting the leg bones, muscles and tendons had to be removed and new structures put in place (assuming they were not already present) that allowed the snake’s muscles to push its scales backward, thus propelling the animal forward. This design change also required a change of the animals DNA or only the first generation of cursed snakes would have been legless. If God had not changed the serpent’s DNA its offspring would have been legged because the genetic code would have included the originally created instructions to form the the embryo according to the originally created, legged design. God’s curse of the serpent shows that the effects of the curse were much greater than might be thought. Thus, speculating Diving intervention to massively redesign other animals is not unreasonable.

Nothing can be said with certainty about how and when animals began to eat other animals. The Bible does not tell those details. The Bible does tell of a time when that process will be reversed. Isaiah 11 describes the conditions of the world after the return of Jesus to establish His kingdom on this earth. During that kingdom, “The cow and the bear will graze” and “the lion shall eat straw like the ox.” (Isaiah 11:7) When Jesus rules on the earth He will renovate the world to remove much of the curse. He will radically alter the behavior and internal physical structures of animals so even obligate carnivores will eat hay. Who is to say He did not perform similar alterations when He cursed the world because of sin?

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January 28, 2022

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Creation, Satan, Sin

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When Did Satan Sin?

The Biblical account of Adam and Eve’s sin describes a serpent tempting Eve to disobey God. This serpent is understood to be Satan. (Revelation 12:9; 20:2) Satan is the originator of sin, but he was not created sinful. (Ezekiel 28:15) Satan was created perfect by God, and sometime after his creation he sinned. When did this happen?

The Bible does not give a definitive answer to this question, but Scripture does give a few indicators that help identify the time period in which Satan sinned. Ezekiel 28 says that Satan was in the Garden of Eden, was beautiful, was one of the cherubim surrounding God’s throne and was perfect until the day he sinned. Isaiah says Satan’s first sin was an arrogant desire to become greater than God. (Isaiah 14:12-14)

Satan’s sin must have taken place sometime after the sixth day of creation. Satan could not have fallen before the events described in Genesis 1 because the Bible says that God created all things in six days. (Exodus 20:11) The angels were most likely created on the first day of creation when God created Heaven and Earth, since the angels watched the creation of the earth from the beginning. (Job 38:7) Satan is an angel and must have been created at the same time as the rest of the angelic creatures.

Satan must have sinned after the six days of creation because Genesis 1:31 says that at the end of the sixth day, “God saw everything that He had made and behold it was very good.” Nothing in the context of Genesis 1 limits Genesis 1:31 to only the things God had made on the earth, or only the things in the garden of Eden. Genesis 1 starts with, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” and continues with an unbroken sequence of Divine creative acts in which God made all things. Therefore, everything in heaven and earth must be included in the evaluation, “very good.” A sinful, rebellious angel would not be considered by the Holy God to be “very good.”

Satan sinned sometime after the creation week and before the sin of Adam and Eve. The Bible does not tell how much time elapsed between creation and the fall. Some scholars think Adam may not have sinned until nearly 100 years after creation, because he fathered Seth at the age of 130 years. Cain and Abel were born after Adam and Eve sinned and then grew to adulthood before Cain killed Abel. After Abel’s murder and Cain’s exile Eve gave birth to Seth. Therefore, Adam could have been as old as 100 when they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. The Bible does not tell how much time elapsed between Satan’s fall and the temptation of Adam and Eve. Satan’s rebellion against God could have been as late as 100 years after creation.

The fact that Lucifer ministered around the throne of God suggests that some time elapsed after creation before Satan sinned. He probably did not rebel on the 8th day of the world’s existence. Satan sinned sometime after the creation was completed but before Adam and Eve sinned. Satan was not created sinful, but in his pride he rebelled against his Creator.

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February 9, 2018

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Creation

Does it matter how old the earth is?

A person’s belief of the age of the earth reflects a belief system. Priority is given to either the claims of science or the claims of the Bible. The age of the earth matters for the Christian because of what the Bible says about the origin of the earth, of humanity and of suffering. If the Bible is not historically accurate about the age of the earth then it’s reliability regarding the sin of man is suspect.

The inclusion of a long period of time before the creation week recorded in Genesis 1 does great damage to the literal reading of Genesis 1-3. An earth populated with animals for millions of years before the creation week presents significant theological problems concerning death, decay and destruction. If the fossil record is the record of an ancient earth that existed before Adam and Eve, then death and disease were common before the events recorded in Genesis 3. If death existed before sin, then death is not the punishment of sin. If suffering existed before the creation of man, then suffering is not a consequence of sin.

If the earth is millions or billions of years old, there is much in earth’s history that is not revealed in the Bible. While the Bible never attempts to present a full history of all mankind- it does not contain the history of China, Greenland or South America the Bible does present a history of the origin of the world, the formation of humans and the spread of sin. If the Bible leaves out huge gulfs of time, there is abundant space to question the reliability of the Bible for understanding the nature of humanity. If the historical record of the Bible has major gaps, then that calls into question the BIble as a valid historical record. This matters because sin, salvation and the promises of God are connected to a historical context. Jesus is a historical figure whose history is traced from person to person all the way back to a historical Adam. If the Bible is not reliable as a history book, does it present an accurate historical picture of Jesus?

This question matters because it shapes how a person reads the Bible. If the Bible is a reliable historical record, then great weight will be placed upon its genealogies and historical markers. If the Bible is not to be read literally, or if its history is a series of homilies intended to teach spiritual truths, then the chronological data in the Bible will have little importance in the discussion of the age of the earth. This question matters because the inclusion of millions of years into the history of man undermines the reliability of the Bible when it discusses the origins of sin and suffering. If the Bible cannot be trusted as an accurate historical record of the earliest days of man, can it be trusted when it discusses Abraham and Moses, Israel, Babylon, the Roman Empire, the apostles or Jesus? If the Bible does not present in Genesis an accurate, literal record of the history of the world, when does it begin to do so? If the Bible is not trustworthy to teach of how man sinned, how can it be trustworthy to teach how man is saved?

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January 31, 2018

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Creation

Does the age of the earth matter?

Creationists insist the earth is less than 10,000 years old. Evolutionists and theistic evolutionists insist the earth is much older, about 4.5 billion years older. The disagreement over the age of the earth is just one part of a much larger debate about the origins of the universe and the formation of humanity. Why do some Christians make such a huge deal about the age of the earth? Does it really matter to Christianity if the earth is a few thousand, a few million or a few billion years old?

Many people are familiar with the basis for believing the earth is very old. Various techniques calculate the age of the earth from the amount of radioactive elements remaining rock. This process measures the difference between how much of a particular element (like Uranium) was originally in the rock and how much is present in that rock today. Because the rate of decay from a radioactive to a stable element is known an estimated age of the rock can be calculated. Calculations have yielded ages of rocks over 4 billion years.

Those who believe the earth is young base that conclusion on the historical information included in the Bible and the work of men like James Ussher. In the 1600’s Ussher, the Archbishop of the Anglican church in Ireland, used the Bible to create a detailed chronology of mankind. He added together the genealogies listed in Scritpure, calculated the length of time from Abraham to Moses and from the Exodus to the Babylonian captivity. He concluded the Biblical data showed that the earth was created 4,004 years before the birth of Jesus. Other Biblical scholars have examined Ussher’s chronology and the Biblical data. Though some have come up with different dates for creation (J.B. Lightfoot concluded the earth was created 3,929 years before Jesus), many have reached the conclusion that the Bible puts the creation of the earth approximately four thousand years before Jesus’ birth.

The question of the age of the earth cannot be answered in isolation from presuppositions and interpretations. None are unbiased observers. The presupposition that elements present in a rock today can be used to determine the age of the earth requires the scientist to presume the earth formed through natural processes without Divine intervention. The supposition of a Creator immediately affects the examiners ability to understand the results. For example, a Creator could have created rock with quantities of radioactive isotopes and stable elements that give the appearance of greater age. The presupposition that a Creator made everything opens the scientist to the possibility that the Creator revealed Himself to man in some way. Thus, a holy text, like the Bible or the Qoran, which claims to be the very words of the Creator gave much importance in considering the origins of the universe. How a person answers the age of the earth reflects a belief system, or at least, it reflects the influence of a belief system. The age of the earth matters because what one believes about the existence of a Creator matters.

To be continued . . .