God created all animals to eat plants… and it was so!

 Genesis 1:29-30, 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. 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.

Creationists are sometimes chided for believing that all animals were created to be herbivorous.  The usual criticism is that the fangs and claws of predatory animals that exist today were obviously designed to kill and eat the flesh of other animals.  Furthermore, due to the design of their digestive systems, most predatory animals couldn’t even survive on a vegetarian diet.  In summary, the sharp teeth of the T-rex weren’t designed to eat coconuts!

The assumption that sharp teeth = predator is overly simplistic.  Evolutionists seem to have a superficial grasp of advantage or adaptation - that is, they look at the survival benefit of a particular trait, then claim that trait evolved in order to convey that benefit!  For example, some might say male birds evolved bright feathers to attract a mate or male lions evolved large manes to protect their head and neck when fighting for dominance.  It’s about as scientific as saying Michael Jordan grew tall in order to play basketball.

Another misunderstanding held by many is the belief that the highly adapted creatures we observe today aren’t substantially different from their ancestors.  Critics have asked, for example, how did freshwater fish species survive the Flood when all the fresh and salt waters were mixed together?  The flawed assumption behind this criticism is that the modern species of fish have exactly the same range of tolerances to salt and temperatures as their ancestors had in Noah’s day.

I believe the creationists’ understanding of Scripture better explains what we observe in the world today.  God originally created plants and animals “after their kind” (Genesis 1:11, et al).  Every modern species we observe today belongs to one of these originally created kinds but modern animals are the products of centuries of changing environments and adaptation.  Today, the species that exists may not look like any of their created ancestors.

I sometimes use bears as an example of kinds and species.  Both creationists and evolutionists agree that all modern species of bears are descended from a common ancestor.  Creationists might call this the “bear-kind” (ursa).  What did the original bear look like?  If we could see this creature now, I think we could probably identify it as some kind of bear but did it look like a panda?  A grizzly?  A polar bear?  It would have shared characteristics with each of these species but I suspect it wouldn’t have looked exactly like any of them.  

God created a bear-kind with the genetic potential for diversity.   As bears spread out around the world after the Flood, natural selection began its work.  Traits well suited to one environment allowed members with that trait to survive while members without that trait died.  Eventually, all the cubs born in that environment possessed only the most beneficial and the population became a new species.  In Asia, some bears became pandas; near the North Pole, some bears became polar bears.

Here’s a question, though: what did the ancestral bear eat?  Pandas almost exclusively eat bamboo while polar bears primarily eat seals.  Both species have sharp teeth and claws.  Both have descended from the same common ancestor.  So, clearly, the ancestral bear did not have the same dietary restrictions as either of these descendants.  Likewise, sharp teeth on a dino or fossilized dung containing bits of bone may be evidence that a critter ate meat, but it’s not proof that it always ate meat or that God always intended for it to eat meat!

I’m not surprised that unbelievers believe in a theory that is so muddled and unconvincing.  What surprises me more, though, is that people who claim to be Christians also believe the same things.  Theistic evolutionists often apply the label of “myth,” “allegory,” or “parable” to the creation account.  They do this to try to make Scripture compatible with the corrupt theory of evolution.  But when we read Genesis 1:29-30, where God clearly tells the man that plants would be food to him and every animal, what do they do with the phrase, “and it was so”?

When God created the animals, He commanded that plants were to be their food.  The Bible clearly says, “and it was so.”  In other words, God said it and it happened!  All animals ate plants - even the ancestral bears, cats, wolves, and other predators.  I believe this comports with other passages that say death follows sin and was not what God intended.

Some people may ask why I would make a big deal about this point?  I believe that evolution is a religion of death.  The very idea of the “survival of the fittest” requires that the unfit don’t survive.  It is the struggle to live that supposedly drives evolution.  The death of one species, gives rise to a new species.  It’s the circle of life.  Evolution almost makes death seem noble which makes evolution one of Satan’s most successful lies!

The Bible says the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).  Death is the judgment that God spoke to Adam because of his disobedience.  But the judgment wasn’t on Adam only, but on the entire creation.  God also cursed the ground for Adam’s sake (Genesis 3:17-19) and even now, the whole creation groans under the Curse (Romans 8:22).

Evolution makes the Bible seem nonsense.  Evolution says that the history of the earth before the appearance of man was defined by death, disease, and struggle.  Death is the way things are and, when Homo sapien finally appeared, they were mortal just like everything else.  This backward way of thinking has led many Christians into gross error in their interpretation of Scripture.  The YouTube channel, Inspiring Philosophy, made a comment bordering on heresy.  In a video titled, TOP TEN Biblical Problems for Young Earth Creationism, they made the following claim:

The implication numerous scholars have pointed out is Adam and Eve were already mortal and the only way they obtained immortality in the Garden was eating continuously from the Tree of Life. To make them mortal again, all God had to do was prevent access to this sacred tree. But that means humans were already mortal before the Fall and only granted immortality through a special fruit – not because they were created with immortal bodies….  This is also supported by the fact that Adam is called dust, which is an idiom in the Bible to denote that one is mortal. In Genesis, it might just be metaphorical language to denote that he was a mortal human – meaning Adam was mortal before the Fall which implies death was a possibility before sin entered. [bold added for emphasis]

Yikes!!  What terrible hermeneutics!  

The gospel is seen in the entire Bible, even in Genesis.  When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit, they were ashamed and tried to hide themselves.  They tried to cover their nakedness with fig leaves but the Bible says God killed an animal and covered them with the skin of the animal.  What a sobering realization must have set in for the first couple when they looked upon that dead animal and saw the terrible consequence of their disobedience. 

That act ushered in an era of sacrifices where the shedding of blood was made to cover our sins (Hebrews 9:22).  The practice continued until the appearance of Christ - the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world (John 1:29).  His was the final sacrifice and now our sins are covered by His blood and righteousness.  Praise God!!

So you see, it is a big deal.  Understanding that God commanded the animals to eat plants was part of His plan that there would be no death - not even the death of animals.  The death of animals is evidence that He judges sin.  Christ’s death on the Cross was His plan to deal with sin.  We also have His promise of a restored creation where there is no more death.  

God said it, so I know it’s so!!

What Does Noah Have in Common with Barney?

Do you remember Barney the Purple Dinosaur?  My daughter loved watching Barney while she was growing up.  I mean, she really loved it. She would dance, sing the songs, and be mesmerized the entire ½ hour the show was on. My wife and I didn't mind so much because Barney was a decent show. It taught lessons like sharing, playing nice together, picking up after yourself, and other things kids need to learn. I guess a lot of parents felt the same way because Barney, at least at that time, was enormously popular.

So what does any of this have to do with Noah? I'll tell you. Have you ever been in a kids' Sunday school class where they told Bible stories about Noah, or Daniel, or David? They sometimes color pages with little cartoons of Bible characters. They sing songs and play Bible themed games. They hear life lessons about being nice to other people, obeying your parents, and worshiping God. These are all things that Christians parents should want their kids to learn. It's a lot like watching Barney.

My daughter is 31 now and doesn't watch Barney anymore.

I think Churches sometimes do a disservice to kids by talking about the Bible the same way they talk about a fairy tale. They might not say it's a fairy tale, but they teach it with the same trappings and trimmings as kids see on Barney. It has the music, the games, and it always seems to end with “a moral to the story.” In their little minds, I'm not really sure how kids can be expected to distinguish between Bible stories taught in this manner and other fairy tales like Barney, Mother Goose, or Aesop's Fables.

When these same kids start school, what might happen? Ask yourself this question: If I wanted to learn about science or dinosaurs or the universe, where might I look? Really. Think about it for a second. Name some places where you might learn about science. Next ask, If I wanted to learn about morality or religion where might I look? The answers seem obvious. Like it or not, if people want to learn about science or “facts,” the first places they think to look are schools or text books and if people want to learn about religion, only then would they look to the Bible or the Church. People tend to only think of the Bible as a book about religion. If they want to learn about the “real world,” then you have to go to school or turn to science.

We are telling kids that schools are important and will teach them things they need to know about the world. We believe it ourselves. So when these kids go to school and hear that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago, there really was no Flood, and men used to be apes, I think they're apt to believe it. Worse yet, these things directly contradict the “stories” they heard in Sunday school. On Sunday, they sing songs like, “♪Oh God said to Noah, 'There's gonna be a floody floody....'♪” Then they go to school on Monday and hear that there really was no Flood. Which do you think they'll believe? The nursery rhyme or the “facts” they learned in school?

Simply telling children that we don't believe in evolution isn't enough. Imagine a group of kids going to a museum and seeing the fossils of dinosaurs, seeing stone tools used by “ape-men,” and reading that these things lived hundreds of thousands or even millions of years ago. To them, these are “facts.” This is “evidence.” When a confused child asks his Sunday school teacher if dinosaurs really lived millions of years ago, the well-meaning teacher might answer, “Oh, we don't believe that.” Then the child might ask, “No? Then what do we believe?” and the teacher answers, “We believe that, '♪God said to Noah there's gonna be a floody floody....'♪” You can see how that's not convincing.

Christ called us first to preach the gospel. He then commanded us to make disciples. Preaching the word is only half the job; we also must be teachers. When we teach the Bible to children, I think we should approach the task in much the same way that kids learn in school. We don't just talk about a man named Noah. Instead, we explain that he was a person who lived in history. When they find a fossil (probably of a shell), it's evidence that this place was once under water – just like the account of Noah tells us. Instead of showing cartoons of Noah's Ark with Noah standing on the deck of the Ark in a raincoat surrounded by a menagerie poking out of every window, we need to show them scale drawings of what the Ark might have looked like. When they ask us about fossils of dinosaurs or Neanderthals, we need to show them how these things are explained by the Bible.

Making lessons interesting and understandable to kids is fine. But above all else, we need to be sure that they understand that the “stories'' from the Bible are real events that happened in history. David, Daniel, and Noah were real people just like their moms and dads are real. We need to explain that Barney is just a character like Sponge Bob.

Kids grow up and they stop believing in Barney.  We don't want them to grow up and stop believing the Bible.  Noah is really nothing like Barney.

Some comments on the creation week: Day 2

A while back, I taught a short series on creation for my Sunday school class. It was supposed to last for the summer and I had planned on covering several topics like the role of creation in evangelism, various ways some Christians reinterpret Genesis in order to fit it with popular scientific theories, and how to answer some of the more common objections people raise against creation. One lesson I had planned was to cover the days of the creation week, giving a short description on what happened each day. However, there were so many questions asked and such interest shown that the single lesson I had planned ended up being stretched over 5 lessons.

It was during that time that I realized that, even though the language of Genesis 1 is straightforward and easy to read, many Christians don't stop to consider the full impact of what is happening on each day – not so much from a spiritual perspective but rather from a physical one. To that end, I thought it would be worthwhile to have a short series of posts, each covering one day of the creation week. This isn't meant to be a treaty on the subject. Instead, I hope to simply open a few eyes to the realization that what is being described were real events that literally shaped the world. Even so, the posts will be a little longer than usual.  I apologize in advance and only say that I will do my best to make them worth the while to read.

In this post, we’ll be looking at the events of Day 2.

Genesis 1:6-8, And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Surprisingly little details are given for the events of Day 2. Since the details surrounding these events are so scant, we can only speculate about what these creative acts might have included. However, we must be careful to not hold out our speculation as doctrine. Some things that have been theorized seem reasonable. Some are musings. We can employ science here but we are limited since we are dealing with a unique event that wasn't observed. We can trust the clear text of the Bible but our scientific theories are suspect.

As was my practice in my day 1 post, I’m going to break this passage down verse by verse.

v. 6, And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 

There seems to be 2 things being discussed here.  First, God says there will be a firmament in the midst of the waters.  Other translations describe this as an expanse.  The second thing we see is that this firmament divided the waters from the waters.  I point this out here because I want to be clear that the firmament seems to be distinct from the waters above and below it.  We will discuss this more after we look at verse 7

v. 7, And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

We can see, then, that there is the firmament, and that there are waters above and below it.  With that in mind, let’s consider what is meant by these two things.

We know that God will soon be creating living things on the earth so it would not be unreasonable to suppose that He is preparing the planet to support them.  The “expanse” or “firmament” seems to be the space occupied by plants and terrestrial creatures (including us). Therefore, God possibly created the atmosphere here with its composite of various gasses.

We are certain that water existed on the first day. Since water is hydrogen and oxygen (H2O), then we can say those elements were created on Day 1. If God is creating breathable air on Day 2, it is likely similar to the air we breathe now. Besides oxygen, the air would have contained nitrogen, argon, carbon (as in CO2), neon, etc. So the elements of the periodic table are being created ex nihilo in the order that God has chosen to introduce them in the creation and not necessarily in the order of simple to complex as predicted by the Big Bang. More will be introduced as God creates the dry land and living creatures.

The firmament is also where weather occurs. In Genesis 2:5, we are told that it did not rain on the earth during the creation week but perhaps here God is creating clouds (we'll talk in a moment about the waters above the firmament). At the very least, God likely created the mechanisms that would govern weather in the future – things like air pressure (a necessary consequence of having created air), evaporation, etc.

“The waters below” the firmament, I assume, are the seas.  Perhaps I’m wrong but it seems fairly obvious.  The biggest controversy surrounding Day 2 is over what is meant by the “the waters above” the firmament. There are at least 3 mainstream theories:

The Mundane Explanation

The waters above could simply be clouds and the firmament is the expanse between the earth and the clouds. Such a reading fits the text well and needs little additional explanation.  It should be noted that such a belief would imply that the Bible accurately described clouds as being made of water.

The Canopy Theory

Some creationists believe the waters above represent a type of canopy, either of dense clouds or ice. By the way, I've often heard the canopy itself referred to as the “firmament” but the text is clear that the firmament is the expanse between the waters. Proponents of this theory believe the canopy collapsed at the time of Noah and was the source of much of the Flood waters.

This interpretation of the text carries a few difficulties. Such a canopy, for example, would obstruct our view of the stars described on Day 4. Of course, some old earth creationists suggest the sun and stars were created earlier and could not be seen. The sun could only be perceived as diffused light (described on Day 1) and it was not until Day 4 that the clouds were cleared and the sun, moon, and stars could be seen clearly.

There are also some scientific difficulties with a canopy. Of course, I never let prevailing scientific opinion trump the clear meaning of the words of the Bible. The Bible does not explicitly state there was a canopy and there is no other reference to it later in the Bible. I haven't seen a compelling argument for the existence of such a thing. I don't endorse this interpretation but I can't entirely reject it either. Perhaps clouds were more dense prior to the Flood – though not necessarily a solid dome of ice.

While most creationists do reject this idea, there are a few staunch proponents of this theory and have built elaborate models around it. Perhaps the most notable proponent is Carl Baugh who has made some dubious, scientific claims about the effects of such a canopy – things like how it was the canopy that allowed antediluvian people to live for hundreds of years.

Humphreys' Model

In his “white hole cosmology,” Russell Humphreys has proposed that, when God divided the waters, He used the “waters above” as the raw material to create the rest of the universe. This position would mean that the initial earth was huge and most of it was stripped away to form everything else. Again, the Bible doesn't explicitly say this happened so I cannot say dogmatically his view is correct. It could fit the text, though, and Humphreys has made several successful predictions with this model.

Of course, it's possible for a little of each of these theories to be true or that none of them are true. The “waters above” must mean something and since we cannot determine a precise meaning from the text, we should be careful not to wed ourselves to any particular theory as though it were scripture.

v. 8a, And God called the firmament Heaven.

The Bible seems to use the word ‘heaven’ in three different ways.  It sometimes means the near-earth atmosphere, where the birds fly.  We sometimes call this the sky.  

Heaven can also mean outer space, where the sun, moon, and stars are.  Unfortunately, we sometimes call this the sky also.  I might say something like, “Look at all the stars in the sky.”  I say unfortunately because, when we use the same word to describe inner and outer space, it allows critics to make straw man caricatures of our beliefs. We'll discuss this more when we discuss Day 4.

Finally, the Bible also calls the abode of God, heaven.  In 2 Corinthians 12:2, for example, Paul makes a reference to the third heaven.  

In this passage, I believe it’s the first meaning of heaven that is being used.  

v. 8b, And the evening and the morning were the second day.

The passage ends with the usual demarcation; it was evening and morning. All the things done by God in this passage, whatever they may include, were all accomplished in a single, ordinary day.

10 Scriptural problems with theistic evolution

I believe the Bible so obviously tells us that Genesis is intended to be literal history that evolution believing Christians have to ignore or reinterpret whole passages of Scripture in order to make it fit with their secular understanding of our origins. A while back, I wrote a series rebutting a video titled, “10 Biblical Problems for Young Earth Creationism,” by a group called Inspiring Philosophy.  It was actually one of many examples of similar claims, where old-earth, theistic evolutionists try to convince us that the Bible really doesn’t endorse a recent, miraculous, sudden creation. 

To me, the fact that so many such claims exist are evidence that the Bible seems to plainly confirm a six day creation.  It is only for that reason that evolutionists have to go to great lengths to explain why the Bible doesn’t really mean what it so clearly seems to say.  Rather than waste my time rebutting any more of their questionable hermeneutics, I thought it would be fun to point out ten passages from the Bible that are extremely problematic to compromising Christians.

Let’s get to it.  Here they are in no particular order:

#1: 2 Peter 1:20, “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.”

We see here, immediately, that the Bible was written to mean what it says.  There’s no hidden meaning.  There’s no secret code that can only be uncovered with scientific inquiry.  The most obvious meaning of any passage is likely the intended meaning and there’s no need to look for a deeper meaning - especially a completely contrary meaning - every time a passage doesn’t comport with our personal beliefs.  

When Jesus was criticized by the Pharisees, who would accuse Him with some minute point of the Law, Jesus often responded by saying, “Haven’t you read….” followed by a passage relevant to the subject at hand.  In every instance, He relied on an ordinary understanding of the passage to prove His point.  He never had to say, “What that really means is….”  

Keep this first point in mind as you read through the rest of the verses on this list.  You may have heard responses to some of these points before but maybe you will see how many sound like “private interpretations” of Scripture.

#2: Exodus 20:9-11, “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” 

In the midst of the Ten Commandments, when the LORD gave the Law to Moses, He commanded that His people should observe the Sabbath.  They should work for six days and rest on the seventh in the same way He worked for six days and rested on the seventh when He created the universe.  Do you think the Jews had to stop and ask themselves, “How long does God mean by a ‘day’?”  

To say this passage somehow means billions of years is the epitome of a private interpretation.  A billions of years old universe is a relatively new idea, one that has only existed a couple of centuries.  The modern methods evolutionists have used to guess at the age of the earth are methods that weren’t available to the ancients.  Theistic evolutionists must believe in an interpretation of this passage that the first readers could not possibly have known.  

#3: Genesis 1:29-30, “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.  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.”

To believe in evolution, a Christian must believe that death, disease, and suffering existed millions of years before Adam appeared.  They mock creationists for believing the sharp teeth of T-rex would have originally been used to eat plants and not other animals.  Of course, creationists believe this because that’s exactly what this passage says.  God gave every single beast of the earth plants to be its food “and it was so!”  It is not creationists who should be embarrassed for believing this; it is the compromising Christians who should be ashamed for denying the clear words of the text!

#4: Genesis 7:21-23, “And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.”

Some evolutionists claim the Flood is a completely fictitious event.  Theistic evolutionists, on the other hand, aren’t so quick to completely accept that such a vividly described account is mere storytelling.  Instead, they assert that the Flood was a local phenomenon, limited to the Mesopotamian Valley.  It was only “universal” in the sense that it killed all humans - because all humans lived in just that area.  

I agree that if there were 1,000,000 people in the world, and they all died in a single catastrophe, you could say that event killed all the people in the world - regardless of how widespread it was.  However, this same passage says every animal outside of the Ark also died.  Did every beast and bird in the world also live in the Middle East?  You can see how this seems to confirm that it was the entire world that was flooded.

#5: Genesis 47:7-9, “And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, and set him before Pharaoh: and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou? And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.”

When Pharaoh met Jacob for the first time, he apparently took note of Jacob’s great age.  At 130 years old, Jacob may have been one of the oldest people Pharaoh had ever met.  However Jacob claimed his days were “few” compared to the long lives of his forefathers.  

The Bible attests to extremely long-lived people from before the Flood.  Genesis 5:27 tells us of Methuselah, for example, who lived to be 969 years old.  Theistic evolutionists claim these seemingly long lives are actually symbolic numbers that convey some deeper meaning (i.e. some private interpretation).  In this passage, Jacob seems to confirm they’re meant to be literal.  He is saying his actual age of 130 was small compared to the antediluvian saints who lived for several centuries.

#6: Luke 3:23-38, The genealogy of Jesus

There are two genealogies of Jesus given in the Bible.  Most scholars agree one is maternal and the other paternal (by Joseph, the husband of Mary).  The genealogy in Luke traces all the generations of Jesus back to Adam, “the son of God.”  If the generations are meant to be consecutive (which I believe they are), it would be difficult to stretch them out a couple hundred thousands of years to when evolutionists claim the first modern human appeared.  Besides that, though, Luke is confirming that Adam was a literal person, created by God.  He had no ancestors before him.

Here’s the real problem that Luke’s genealogy brings to old earth interpretations of the Bible.  Most critics claim many figures of the Old Testament were fables or symbols.  My question, then, is when did these generations stop being myths and start becoming real?  Was it Adam, Noah, Abraham, or David?  Were they all myths all the way down to Jesus?  If that were the actual way to understand the Bible, how could I be sure Jesus was a real Person?  He could have been a “mythical character used to convey some deeper meaning!”  I have to shake my head.

#7: Mark 10:6-8, “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.”

When asked about divorce, Jesus answered the Pharisees by quoting from Genesis.  Not only does He talk about Adam and Eve as though they were real people, Jesus also asserts they were made at the beginning of the creation.  Adam and Eve were made during the creation week and marriage has continued since then for all of history.

According to theistic evolution, the universe has existed for billions of years and the first humans appeared only 100,000-200,000 years ago.  In other words, the “creation” happened a long time ago and humans only arrived at the tail end of history.  This secular idea is in direct contradiction to the plain words of Jesus.

#8: Romans 5:12,17, “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... For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)”

The Bible is clear that death is the consequence of sin (Romans 6:23) and that sin entered the world by one man, namely Adam.  Death has reigned since Adam but Christ has conquered death and we shall reign with Him in life in the New Jerusalem.  Amen!!

According to theistic evolution, death was in the world long before Adam.  It was not the product of sin but the deliberate method that God used to create everything.  Death reigned long before Adam because that was how God wanted it!

These two views are diametrically opposed and we must decide which is correct.  I will side with the clear words of the Bible.

#9: Acts 17:24-26, “God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;”

According to the evolutionary idea of human origins, there was no literal Adam.  Homo sapiens are an evolved group that descended from a “not quite human” species of Homo and no single being could be identified as the ancestor of all modern people.  

When Paul was speaking to the Greeks on Mars Hill, he was preaching to them about the one, true God.  In this passage, he seems to confirm the creation account - that God made the world and everything in it and that all people of the world have descended from a single man.  

#10: Genesis 1:5b, “... And the evening and the morning were the first day.”

In the entire first chapter of Genesis, the Bible punctuates each day with a similar phrase - it was evening and it was morning, the first day and et cetera.  Some critics will claim the word day can mean something other than an ordinary, 24-hour day.  That’s true, but when it’s modified by the words, “evening and morning,” as well as with ordinal numbers, “first day, second day,” it becomes extremely difficult for day to mean something other than an ordinary day.  

Consider 1 Samuel 17:16 which says, “And the Philistine drew near morning and evening, and presented himself forty days.”  What can this mean except that Goliath came out every morning and evening for forty days?  Consider, too, the reverse; what would the terms “evening and morning” mean if the days are meant to represent long periods of time?  

To suggest the days of Genesis are meant to be anything other than ordinary days is a textbook example of assigning a “private interpretation” to the passage.

CONCLUSION

Just as Jesus said to the Pharisees, I say to you now.  Read these passages for yourself and ask yourself what they mean.  I’m not claiming there is a secret meaning.  I’m not telling you there’s a different way to understand the plain words of the Bible.  I’m telling you the Bible speaks for itself.