Paul says, "Stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught" (2 Thess. 2:15). Do we stand fast, or do we waver? What we are seeing in our society is an outward expression, in more and more of its naked ferocity, of the rejection of God and His absolutes, and the growing belief that only human opinions matter.

The reason for much of the conflict throughout the church at the present time is that people are fighting over their opinions. It is not a matter of opinion, yours or mine. It is what God says that matters. The basis for our thinking should be the principles from His Word. They must determine our actions.

To understand this, we must also appreciate that Genesis is foundational to the entire Christian philosophy. One major difficulty in our churches is that many people do not trust Genesis. Consequently, they do not know what else in the Bible to trust. They treat the Bible as an interesting book containing some vague sort of religious truth. This view is destroying the Church and our society, and it is time religious leaders wake up to the fact. Not to take Genesis 1 through 11 literally is to do violence to the rest of Scripture.

As Professor James Barr, a renowned Hebrew scholar and Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oxford University, said in a personal letter on April 23, 1984, "So far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1 through 11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience; (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story; (c) Noahs flood was understood to be worldwide and extinguished all human and animal life except for those in the ark."

Please note that many, if not most of these "world-class" scholars do not believe in the Bible or Christianity anyway, so they are not interested in "wresting" the Scriptures to somehow try to make their religion fit with evolution. They are just expressing their opinion on the plain meaning of the text. Disbelieve it if you wish, but it is impossible to make out that it is saying anything other than what it does say. We can see now that those who say that the clear teaching of Genesis is not what it actually means are not doing so on the basis of literary or linguistic scholarship, but because of partial surrender to the pressure of evolutionary thinking.

Chapter Six - Genesis Does Matter

Chapter 6

GENESIS DOES MATTER