Transcript Compromising Theories

Genesis Chapters 1-2
Creation:
Foundation of Our Faith
Dr. Heinz Lycklama
[email protected]
www.osta.com/messages
Biblical Creation
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The 7 C’s of History
Comparing Gen. 1-2 and Rev. 21-22
Creation According to Gen. Chapters 1-2
OT/NT References to Gen. Chapters 1-11
Compromising Theories
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Gap Theory
Theistic Evolution Theory
Progressive Creationism
Day-Age Theory
Framework Hypothesis
Conclusions
Questions and Answers
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The 7 C’s of History
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Creation – Ex Nihilo, Gen. 1-2
Corruption – The Fall
Catastrophe – Noah’s Flood
Confusion – Tower of Babel
Christ – First Coming
Cross – Sacrifice
Consummation – New Creation, Rev. 21- 22
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Contrasts Between Old & New Worlds
Probationary World (Gen.)
Eternal World (Rev.)
Division of light and darkness (1:4)
No night there (21:25)
Division of land and sea (1:10)
No more sea (21:1)
Rule of sun and moon (1:16)
No need of sun or moon (21:23)
Man in a prepared garden (2:8,9)
Man in a prepared city (21:2)
River flowing out of Eden (2:10)
River flowing from God’s throne (22:1)
Gold in the land (2:12)
Gold in the city (21:21)
Tree of life in midst of the garden (2:9) Tree of life throughout the city (22:2)
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The Author of Genesis
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“These are the generations of
...” marks termination of one
narrative, beginning of another
Different original authors, Moses the editor
Gen 2:4 “this is the account of the heavens
and the earth when they were created”
Gen. 5:1 “This is the book of the generations
of Adam. ...”
Gen. 6:9 “These are the records of the
generations of Noah. ...”
etc.
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Creation According to Gen. 1-2
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Gen. 1:1, In the beginning
God created the heavens
and the earth.
Significance of 1st verse
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Written by God
Refutes false religions and gods
Three key concepts:
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2.
3.
Days of Creation
Kinds of living organisms
And God said …
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To Begin the Discussion …
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In 1903, a British philosopher, Herbert Spencer,
made a profound scientific statement:
“Everything in the universe can be
explained by five basic things - space,
matter, time, force, and action.”
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Spencer, an evolutionist, was a contemporary of
Charles Darwin, the British scientist credited with
popularizing the concept of evolution. He
(Spencer) was given a prestigious award by the
British Science Society at the time. This was
considered to be a major contribution to science.
And it is, until you realize
that …
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What Does The 1st Bible Verse Say?
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Moses, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote in
Gen. 1:1:
“In the beginning (time) God (force) created (action)
the heavens (space) and the earth (matter).”
What makes this even more remarkable is the fact that
Moses was educated in the tradition of the Egyptians.
They believed that only the ocean existed at first. An
egg/flower appeared and the sun god was born. The sun
god had four children, of whom one was Geb (the earth).
They believed that the earth was a flat disk afloat on the
river of the ocean. None of this mythology of the time
was included in the book of Genesis.
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Gen. 1:1 Refutes Man’s False Philosophies
Philosophy
Refuted Because:
Atheism
The universe was created by God
Pantheism
God is transcendent to that which He
created
Polytheism
One God created all things
Materialism
Matter had a beginning
Dualism
God was alone when He created
Humanism
God, not man, is the ultimate reality
Evolution
God created all things
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Model of Creation
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The Bible is the inerrant Word of God
God is Creator
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Man is created
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In God’s image – Gen. 1:26-27
Creation is dependent on God
Man is fallen and dependent on God
Creation and Science must be coherent and consistent
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Six days of Creation – Gen. 1:1 – 2:3; Ex. 20:11
Creatures created/reproduce after their kind – Gen. 1 (10 x)
God reveals Himself in Scripture (Special Revelation)
God reveals Himself in nature (General Revelation)
Jesus and NT authors refer to Gen. 1-11 as history
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Two Creation Accounts
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Gen. 1:1 -> Gen. 2:3. Written entirely by God
Gen. 2:4 -> Gen. 5:1. Written by Adam
These two accounts appear to contradict each other
in the order of certain creation events
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Gen. 2:19 “And out of the ground the Lord God formed
every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and
brought them to Adam to see what he would call them ...”
This seems to conflict with Gen. 1:24-27 where God
clearly created animals before He created man
However, the proper translation of Gen. 2:19 states that
“God had formed” since there is no distinction in Hebrew
between the past tense and the past perfect, since the
context provides the real meaning
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Created in Six Days
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Gen. 2:1, “Thus the heavens and
the earth, and all the host of them,
were finished. And on the seventh
day God ended His work which He
had done, and He rested on the seventh day
from all His work which He had done.”
Ex. 20:11, “For in six days the Lord made the
heavens and the earth, the sea, all that is in them,
and rested the seventh day.”
Ex. 31:17, “… for in six days the Lord made the
heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day …”
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@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
The Creation Days
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Evolution demands long ages
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Bible: literal days
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Narrative versus poetry (VSO v. SVO)
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Meaning of ‘Yom’
Yom with a number
Evening and morning
Gen. 1:14, “Let there be lights in the firmament … “
Ex. 20:11, “For in six days the LORD made …”
Words used to indicate time
In the beginning created God the heavens… = VSO
Genealogies (Gen. 5, 1 Chron. 1, Luke 3)
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Creation Days Quote
“Probably so far as I know,
there is no professor of
Hebrew or Old Testament
at any world-class university
who dares not believe that
the writer(s) of Gen. 1-11
intended to convey to their readers the ideas that
creation took place in a series of six days which are
the same as the days of 24 hours we now
experience…”
Professor James Barr, Professor of Hebrew
at the University of Oxford.
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Creation Days Quote 2
“To summarize, liberal scholars of both
19th and 20th centuries admit that the text of
Genesis is clearly meant to be taken in a
literal, historical sense, although they deny
its claims to speak accurately to our
space/time cosmos.”
Douglas F. Kelly (Professor of Systematic Theology) ,
Creation and Change, 1997, p. 51.
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Creation of Distinct Kinds
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Gen. 1: 11(1), 12(2), 21(2), 24(2), 25(3)
Ten major categories of organic life
created “after its kind”
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Plant kingdom - grass, herbs, fruit trees
Animal kingdom - sea monsters, other marine
animals, birds, beasts, cattle, crawling animals
Man “kind”
One kind cannot transform
itself into another kind
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Definite and distinct categories
There is variation within a kind
These “kinds” still recognized today
And God Said …
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And God said:
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And it was so:
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e.g. “and there was light”, Gen. 1:3
And God saw that it was good:
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Gen. 1: 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26, 28, 29 (10x)
e.g. “let there be light”, Gen. 1:3
e.g. “the light was good”, Gen. 1:4
Gen. 1:31, “And God saw everything
that He had made, and behold, it
was very good.”
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Creation Principles
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Appearance of age/history
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Mature from its birth, including Adam and Eve
Gen 2:1, Thus the heavens and the earth were
finished, and all the host of them, were finished.
Death came with sin
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Fossils appeared after the curse
Rom. 5:12, Therefore, just as sin
came into the world through one
man, and death through sin, and
so death spread to all men
because all sinned—
Rom. 6:23, For the wages of sin is death, but …
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@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
OT References to Creation
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Ex. 31:17 (Moses) “It is a sign between Me and the
children of Israel forever, for in six days the Lord made the
heavens and the earth …” - six-day literal creation
Josh. 24:2-4 (Joshua) “ … your fathers, including Terah,
the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, …” accepts Gen. 11 account of Abraham’s ancestors
II Kings 19:15 (Hezekiah) “You have made heaven and
earth.” - speaks of creation
1 Chron. 1:1-28 “Adam, Seth, Enoch, …”
repeats genealogies of Gen. 5, 10, 11
Neh. 9:6 (Nehemiah) “You have made
heaven, … the earth and everything
on it, the seas and all that is in them,
…” - refers to Creation
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@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
NT References
to Gen. 1-11
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Every NT writer refers to the
early chapters of Genesis
Jesus Christ referred to each of
the first 7 chapters of Genesis
e.g. Mark 10:6-9 -> Gen. 1:27
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Almost all NT books have references to
Genesis 1-11, especially Gen. 1-2
Every chapter of Genesis 1-11 except
chapter 8 is referred to somewhere in NT
Every NT writer accepted these early
chapters as historically accurate
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@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
Removing Genesis 1-11
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Removes true history
Removes the foundation
from all future history
Rejects the teachings of
Peter, Paul, other Biblical
writers, Christ Himself
e.g. in the Gospels, Acts,
Romans, Corinthian letters,
Hebrews, Revelation
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Eventually leads to apostasy
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@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
Compromising Theories
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Genesis 1-11 as our foundation
Compromises and the
Problems with them:
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Gap Theory
Theistic Evolution
Progressive Creation
Day-Age Theory
Framework Hypothesis
Conclusions
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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Which Foundation Do You Trust?
Genesis 1 As Allegorical?
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Make the account figurative, ahistorical, or supra-historical, and
ultimately non-descriptive
This treats the Genesis account as a
demythologized poem, sung to the
glory of the creator God
Or a cosmology, like many other epic
and legendary cosmologies of the day
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Genesis 1 As Historical
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Accept Gen. 1 as a chronological
account of something that actually
happened in creation
Gen. 1 and 2 offer us correct and
satisfactory information concerning
prehistoric time
It goes beyond the reach of available
historical sources and offers not mythical
suppositions, not poetical fancies, not
vague suggestions, but a positive record
of things as they actually transpired
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Compromising Theories
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Many people believe that God used
evolution as His means of creating the
universe and everything in it
Numerous attempts have been made
to reinterpret the Bible in order to
make it compatible with the
theory of evolution
The problem is that of TIME!
How to get a few billion years
into the first chapter of Genesis?
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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Compromising Theories (cont’d)
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Dr. Duane Gish:
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“The concept of a frog being turned
into a prince in an instant is a fairy
tale, but the assertion that a frog,
given 300 million years, can turn
into a man, is considered science.”
Many “Christians” are so convinced that
evolution is true that they feel they need to
harmonize the Scriptures with “science”
Are we willing to change the Scriptures every
time a scientific theory is debunked or modified?
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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Gap Theory
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Gap between Gen. 1:1 & 1:2
Earth populated long ago by
organisms that were destroyed
and preserved as fossils
Is. 45:18; 2 Pet. 3:5-6 used as “proof texts”
Assumes that the geological ages
occurred before the creation week
Assumes that a cataclysm terminated the
geological ages
After a long time, God then proceeded to
re-make or re-create the earth in the six
literal days described in Gen. 1:3-31
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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Problems With Gap Theory
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Death before sin
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The fall of Satan after the geological ages
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Gen. 1:31 makes clear that Satan had not yet
rebelled
Scientific problems with the Gap Theory
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Organic evolution produces death
No evidence of a monstrous cataclysm
Biblical problems with the Gap Theory
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Ex. 20:11, “… in six days the Lord made heaven
and earth, the sea and all that in them is …”
Sun needed for life, but not created until 4th day,
Gen. 1:14-18
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Theistic Evolution
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Creation by continuous
evolutionary processes,
initiated by God
God revealed the fact of Creation in
Scripture, but left the method of Creation
to be worked out by scientists
Attempt to accept the “fact” of Evolution
Approved by none other than the Pope!
Sometimes referred to as “Biblical evolution”,
creative Evolution, etc.
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Problems With Theistic Evolution
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Creation of distinct kinds precludes
transmutations between kinds:
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Ten major categories/kinds identified
in Genesis 1 (“after his kind”)
1 Cor. 15:38,39 “... one kind of flesh
of men, another flesh of beasts ...”
No concept of evolutionary continuity
Too many missing fossil links
Mutations appear to be undirected
Humans are modified animals,
rather than created in God’s image
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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Theological Contradictions
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God’s omnipotence - can create in an instant,
does not need eons of time
God’s personality - “man in His own image”, why
wait until the tail end of “geologic time”?
God’s omniscience - fossils indicate extinctions,
misfits, and other evidences of “poor planning”
God’s nature of love - “natural selection” is not
loving
God’s purposiveness - creation and redemption of
man. Why waste billions of years?
Grace of God - struggle for survival, fits with
“humanistic” salvation by works
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Progressive Creationism
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God created universe via Big Bang
Over billions of years, our solar system formed,
resulting in the formation of Earth
Diversity of life on Earth is a result
of God creating “kinds” of organisms
sequentially
Due to their sequential creation these
various “kinds” of organisms appear
in the fossil record in the order we observe
The newer species still in existence were “specially”
created and not genetically related to the older kinds
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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Progressive Creationism (cont’d)
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Semantic variant of “Theistic Evolution”
God intervened on various occasions to
create something new, i.e. evolution
needed some help
God placed an eternal soul in a humanoid
form at the proper time
Implies that God’s creative forethought
was insufficient
Involves discontinuous
evolutionary processes
initiated by God
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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Day–Age Theory
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Attempt to accommodate Genesis to geology
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Events occur in the same order as Gen. 1:
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Interpret creation so that ages of geology
correspond to the history of creation, i.e. days
must correspond (more or less) to geologic ages
Inorganic universe
Simple forms of life
More complex
forms of life
Man
But time periods much longer than a day:
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2 Pet. 3:8 “… a day is as a thousand years …”
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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Problems With Day–Age Theory
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Proves nothing because assumptions cannot
be validated
Must accompany “Day-Age” with “Theistic
Evolution” or theory of “Progressive Creation”
Unacceptable on exegetical or
scientific grounds:
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Proper meaning of “day” and “days” [Hebrew yom]
Contradiction between Genesis and geological ages
Identification of geological ages with evolutionary
suffering
Variations of “Day-Age”
“A text without a context is a pretext.”, Henry Morris
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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Proper Meaning of “Day”/“Days”
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Hebrew “yom” does not have to mean a literal
day, could mean a “very long time” 2 Pet. 3:8,
“thousand years as one day”
Translated as “time” 65 times
Translated as “day” 1200 times
Plural translated as “days” 700 times
Literal meaning is usually best
Other meanings can be gained from the context
Genesis 1 is written very carefully using
words/phrases such as “first day”, “second day”,
“evening and morning”
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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Meaning of “Day”/“Days” (cont’d)
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When limiting numeral is used in OT (200
times), it always means literal day
God called the light day, and the darkness night
(Gen. 1:5)
Precludes a geologic age
Vegetation can’t survive for a geologic age
without sunshine
Gen. 1:14-19 -> divide day from night
Ex. 20:8-11, fourth commandment “six days, ...
seventh day ...”
2 Pet. 3:8 “a text without a context is a pretext”
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Contradictions Between Genesis and
Geological Ages
Uniformitarianism/Evolution
Bible/Catastrophism/Creation
Matter existed in the beginning
Matter created by God in the beginning
Sun and stars before the earth
Earth before the sun and stars
Contiguous atmosphere/hydrosphere
Atmosphere between two hydrospheres
Land before the oceans
Oceans before the land
Sun, earth’s first light
Light before the sun
Fishes before fruit trees
Fruit trees before fishes
Woman before man (by genetics)
Man before woman (by creation)
Rain before man
Man before rain
“Creative” processes still continuing
Creation completed
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Identification of Geologic Ages
With Evolutionary Suffering
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Evolution is random, wasteful, cruel
Inconsistent with nature of God
Geological ages provide framework for evolution
Geologic systems and epochs are identified on
the basis of fossils found in the rocks
Evolution is the basis for interpreting the fossil
record, and the fossil record is the basis for
establishing and identifying the geologic ages
An example of circular reasoning!
God is not the author of confusion
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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What The Bible Says About
Death and Suffering
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God pronounced it all very good in Gen. 1:31
No death and suffering before the fall:
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Gen. 3:14-19 “... cursed is the ground ...”
Rom. 5:12 “through one man sin entered, ... so
death spread to all men”
Rom. 8:20-23 “... whole creation groans ...”
1 Cor. 15:21-22 “... by a man came death, for as
in Adam all die ...”
Rev. 21:4-5 “... no longer any death ...”
No fossils before the fall
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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Framework Hypothesis
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Does not treat Genesis as history
Treats Genesis as a literary framework
Hebrew poetry comprised of parallelism
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e.g. synonymous parallelism in Ps 19:1-2
e.g. antithetical parallelism in Prov. 28:1
Alleged stylized framework in Gen. 1
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Days 4-6 parallel days 1-3
Days 1-3 refer to days of the Kingdom
Days 4-6 refer to days of the Rulers
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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Summary
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Even professing Christians seek to harmonize
Scripture with the assumed evolutionary history
of the earth and man
Gap Theory, Theistic Evolution, Progressive
Creation, Day-Age Theory and the Framework
Hypothesis all fall short of this goal
Some treat Genesis 1-11 as allegorical,
liturgical, poetic, supra-historical
These force one to reject Genesis
as either scientific or historical
Expunging Genesis 1-11 cuts out the
foundation of the entire Biblical system
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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Genesis 1-11 As Literal History
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The style of these early chapters of Genesis does
not suggest a mythical, allegorical, or poetical
approach
The view entertained by our Lord Jesus Christ
The inspired writers of the NT not only referred
often to the narrative, but made doctrinal
arguments which depend upon the historical
validity of the Genesis account
The Bible teaches that the Creation of the
heavens, the earth, and the inhabitants thereof,
was for the glorification of Almighty God
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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Origins Found in Genesis 1-11
Heavenly Bodies
The Earth
Animal / Plant Life
Human Life
Law
Marriage
Sex
Roles in the Family
Childbearing
Sin (need for Salvation)
Forgiveness
God as Provider of
the Sacrifice
Suffering and Death
Clothing
Work
Crime & Punishment
Freewill Offerings
God’s Universal Judgment
The Fossil Record
The Rainbow
Weather Patterns
Change of Seasons
Languages
Agriculture
Civilization
@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
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Conclusion
Creation is an essential truth
spoken of in the Bible
Col. 2:8 “See to it that no one takes
you captive through philosophy and
empty deception, according to the
tradition of men, according to the
elementary principles of the world,
rather than according to Christ.”
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@ Dr. Heinz Lycklama
Questions?
Dr. Heinz Lycklama
[email protected]
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