Chapter 6 - Theistic Evolution contradicts Genesis One.

Many evangelical Christians are Theistic Evolutionists rather than Creationists, claiming that although there is clearly no hint of Evolution in the Bible there is nothing incompatible between Evolution and the Bible. I have previously pointed out that Theistic Evolution undermines faith in the goodness of God, since it makes Him the Author of death, suffering, pain and disease. Moreover Theistic Evolutionists can only make the claim that it is consistent with the Bible by not taking the first chapters of Genesis literally, arguing that they are poetic myth rather than real history. 

Creationists believe this is a compromise, and say that there is more at stake than Creation v Evolution, but one’s whole attitude and submission to the Word of God. If you can’t take God’s first words literally how can you take Him at His Word in the rest of the Bible? If you don’t believe there was a real literal first Adam who sinned and brought death to the whole human race, what basis do you have in believing in Christ, the Second Adam whose death for our sin brought life and salvation to the whole human race? 

Theistic Evolution does not come from the Bible, but in order to accommodate it and squeeze it in between its lines, the Bible’s plain meaning has to be weakened. Thus it undermines faith in the truthfulness and faithfulness of the God of the Bible, who means what He says. What if we always did this to make the Bible fit with our opinions? Would we truly be submitted to it? 

Why do they feel they have to do this? I believe they have been intimidated by the claims of the scientific establishment that claims and pronounces Evolution is a proven fact when it is no such thing. 

So let us consider the model of Creation as given by an eyewitness who was there: God, to see if it gives a coherent explanation. 

As we read Genesis 1, notice there are certain phrases that are repeated often for emphasis, because they are of special importance: 
1. “So the evening and the morning were the ..... day.” 
2. He made each living thing to reproduce:“according to its kind.”
3. “And God saw that it was good.”
4. Then God said...” ... “...and it was so.”

v1 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” 
v2: “The earth was without form and void; 
and darkness was on the face of the deep. 
And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

v3: Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 
v4: And God saw the light, that it was good; 
and God divided the light from the darkness. 
v5: God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day. 

v6: Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” 
v7: Thus 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.
v8: And God called the firmament Heaven. 
So the evening and the morning were the second day.

v9: Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. 

v10: And God called the dry land Earth, 
and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. 
And God saw that it was good.

v11: Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruitaccording to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. 

v12: And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. v13: So the evening and the morning were the third day.

v14: Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; 
v15: and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. 
v16: Then God made 2 great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also
v17,18: God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. 
And God saw that it was good. 
v19: So the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

v20: Then God said, “Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.” 
v21: So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, 
according to their kind, and every winged bird 
according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 
v22: And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” v23: So the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

v24: Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind”; and it was so. 
v25: And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

v26: Then God said: “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 
v27: So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 
v28: Then God blessed them, and God said to them, 
“Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air,
and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

v29: And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. 
v30: Also, 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”; and it was so. 
v31: Then God saw everything that He had made, 
and indeed it was very good. 
So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

First of all notice that this is written as an orderly, factual, logically coherant account, and although it carries a poetic power, it was clearly not intended to be myth, but to explain how things began. 

It has a logical structure and progression based on the initial state of things being: “without form (no structure) and void(empty).” The earth was initially: “UNFORMED and UNFILLED (v2). 
Thus in the first 3 days, God basically FORMED the earth, so that it would be a suitable place for living creatures, especially man.
Then in the 2nd 3 days, God FILLED the earth with LIFE. 


There are 4 key truths revealed by any literal reading of Genesis 1, which are reinforced and underlined by 4 repeating phrases, 
each one of which clearly contradicts any Theory of Evolution.

TRUTH (1): God took 6 days to create all life on earth.
Genesis 1 describes 6 days of Creation in which He completed His work of Creation. This was followed by a 7th day which completed the Creation Week, in which He could rest because He had finished His work. Genesis 2:2,3: “And on the 7th day God had ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the 7th day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the 7th day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” 

The repeating phrase: “So the evening and the morning was the 1st, 2nd etc.... day” indicates as clearly as language can, that these were 24 hour days. This is clearly what the author intended to convey. It is hard to imagine that he meant anything other than 
7 literal 24-hour days, with the use of: “evening and morning” followed by the number of the day. 7 indefinite periods of time do not fit the language used. To say: “If God wanted us to believe in literal days He would have made it clear”, is absurd because it is hard to see how He could have made it any clearer than He did!

Exodus 20:8-11 provides very strong confirmation that these were 
7 literal days: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 
Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the 7th day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in 6 days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the 7th day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” God Himself wrote these words in stone as part of the 10 Commandments, so we must surely take them seriously. Here God used the literal Creation week as the basis for our weeks. If not the Creation Week was not literal, then the whole logic fails. 

This means that God made life in all its forms within one Week! He completed His work in 6 days and so He rested the 7th day. But Evolution says that this happened over millions of years of painful development, as higher forms came from lower forms! 

Biblical Creationism says that the original Creation Week was of an entirely different nature to the rest of time. Within it God supernaturally made all things, but afterwards He ceased from this work of Creation and rested. Therefore He did not made anything new after that, rather all things continued according to the natural processes He had set in place which he providentially sustains and ruls over. However Theistic Evolution limits God’s original creative work to the initial Creation of the universe in Genesis 1:1 and then invokes natural processes to do the rest. Therfore it relegates all of God’s special supernatural creative acts of Creation Week in Genesis 1:3-31 to the result of natural processes. This is neither true to the Bible nor glorifying to God!

TRUTH (2): God created each major form of life separately, with the ability to reproduce themselves according to their kinds, but not to turn into different kinds. First, He made all the different kinds of plants, then fish, then birds, then land-animals and then finally man. He created each KIND of life separately in its full complexity with the ability to reproduce: “according to its KIND” (this important repeating phrase is used 9 times). He did not make one original kind of life, and then evolve all the other KINDS of life from it, as Evolution teaches. But each KIND was made as a separate Creation, with the ability to reproduce itself.

Thus instead of the Evolutionary Tree of Life where everything descends from a single common origin, we have a number of smaller trees (a few thousand), each of which represents a KIND, within which there can be much variation, but within limits. That is: one kind cannot produce offspring of a different kind. Any change can only happen within the boundaries of each kind. But God created each original kind with genetic richness that gave them the potential for variations enabling them to adapt to different environments by natural selection and so have a better chance of survival. Wheras our observations of life and fossils do not fit well into the Evolutionary Tree (there is only evidence for the tips but not the branches), they fit perfectly into the Biblical pattern of all life being divided into distinct KINDS, within which is variation.

This Biblical (‘many trees or kinds’) model is not the same as the ‘lawn model’ which is often falsely used as a strawman to represent creationist belief. In this model every animal is as God originally created it and this is clearly wrong as animals clearly have within their genes the ability to adapt to their environment through natural selection. However the Bible never advocated this static idea. It only sets the limits that they must always stay within their kinds. They can only reproduce themselves ‘according to their kind’, that is they can only mate with their own kind and their offspring will always be of the same kind. However this does not mean that there cannot be great variations within any kind.

3. TRUTH (3) - God’s Original Creation was Perfect. 
This is emphasised by the repeating phrase: “He saw that it was GOOD.” He called it GOOD 6 times, then finally VERY GOOD. If what He actually did is set in motion a cruel process of death and suffering for millions of years how could He call that GOOD? Therefore Genesis teaches that death and suffering was not part of His original Creation. This is confirmed in Genesis 1:29,30 where we see that God gave the animals to eat of the plant kingdom, not each other: “God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, 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”; and it was so.” Reading on in Genesis 3 we see that death, pain and curse only entered into a previously perfect Creation as a result of Adam’s sin as confirmed by the New Testament (Romans 5:12 and 8:19-23). 

This perfectly agrees with what we see in nature; where we see marvellous evidence of wisdom and design, but also evidence of the Fall in how animals have adapted to survive, and in the imperfections to the design brought in by mutations (copying errors). As we would expect from the Bible, all observed mutations only have a destructive effect (since they are part of the curse) and none have shown any evolutionary power through increased information.

The goodness of God’s original Creation is a necessary consquence of the perfection of His Character, but it is in direct contradiction to Evolution, which says that cruelty, sickness, killing, pain, suffering and death were there from the beginning and were an essential part of the Creation of life in all its forms. Theistic Evolution even says that all this horror was part of God’s original design and plan. It makes no sense that God could look at that God could look at all this suffering, killing, pain and death and pronounce it as GOOD! So God’s repeated declaration: “it was good” contradicts Evolution.

TRUTH 4: God created instantly. He spoke it and it was done.
The Almighty God did not need millions of years to create us. Again and again we are told: “Then God said ...and it was so.”

There are FOUR key repeating phrases that are clearly important: 1. “So the evening and the morning were the ..... day.”
2. “According to its kind.”
3. “And God saw that it was good.” 
4. “Then God said...” ... “...and it was so.”

Each of these emphatic phrases reveal an important aspect of how God created the world and we shall show that each phrase, when taken literally, clearly contradicts any Theory of Evolution. Therefore Genesis 1 was deliberately written in such a way to strongly refute Evolution as well as Polytheism. Genesis 1 can only be made to accommodate Evolution by rejecting its plain meaning. Evolution can only be made to fit with the Bible by rejecting the literal reading of Genesis 1. 

The closing statement of this Creation account in Genesis 2:1-4 confirms that this is of the nature of an actual historical account: “Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. .. This is the history (origins or genesis) of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day (time-period) that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.”

Thus we have seen that a literal understanding of the main points and emphasis of Genesis 1 excludes Evolution as a possibility. Evolution can only be upheld by discounting Genesis 1 as real history. However when other Bible writers in NT, including Jesus, Paul and Peter, refer to Genesis they always take it literally. 

Moreover we should be especially careful in rejecting the plain meaning of God’s early words in Genesis, that was precisely the main strategy of satan in deceiving man to turn away from God in Genesis 3:1: “Now the serpent said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” 

His first tactic is to cast doubt that Genesis is God’s Word: 
“Has God said it?” (v1). If that fails then he uses Tactic 2: 
“You can’t take Him literally. He does not mean it.” So when Eve confirmed that God had warned them not to eat, and if they did then they would surely die (v2,3): “the serpent said to her, “You will not surely die” (v4). 

In other words: “Well, if He said it, He did not mean it literally.” 

Most Christians may not fall for (1), but many do fall for (2). From the start satan tried to teach man (with great success) to not take God as His Word, especially concerning His words in Genesis. 

DON’T YOU BE A SUCKER FOR SATAN’S LIES!