The Bible as Genuine History
The highly contested nature of Genesis, i.e., whether or not it is an absolute historical record, or it is a simple allegory, myth or just some collection of campfire stories told by ancient shepherds or nomads? Nevertheless, the nature of Genesis has been the content of secular and theological debate and discussion for centuries. This debate overflows the total aura and message of the Bible and demands an answer. Of course, the enemies of an inerrant, inspired Biblical record and the absolute authority an almighty, omniscient Creator have always been opposed to Genesis as real history for obvious reasons, and they have to be for their godless position to be consequential at all.
If the record of Biblical origins is flawed in any manner, then the balance of Biblical narrative is flawed as well, and our faith and our preaching is in vain. This includes the prophecies of Jesus Christ, His redemptive work on the cross and the promise of His second coming, among many, many other salient issues that comprise our faith. The fact of the matter is that the most important book of the Bible is Genesis, the most important chapter of the Bible is Genesis 1 and the most important verse of the Bible is Genesis 1:1—everything else is based on the reality that this is genuine history.
In our contest with historical naturalism today (evolutionism), we must be able to defend the legitimate authority of the Genesis account of origins in all areas. And as a reminder, I have learned that the primary topics at issue today are the age of the universe and the verifiable record of a worldwide flood event about 4359 years ago. Our primary methods of documentation for either of these events is either through the use of human calculations that are terribly inept falling into the biased category of biased human opinion, or through the record provided in Genesis—the Word of God! Ken Ham has said repeatedly that we must either trust the words of fallible man who were not there in the beginning and are only using their worldview to predict their account of origins, or the Word of the Creator God who was there in the beginning, did the work of creation Himself, and gave eye witness accounting to Moses for us to read.
The Apostle Paul reminds us that our weapons in this debate are not carnal but are mighty through God for the pulling down of strongholds, and evolutionary naturalism is definitely a formidable stronghold. That we are to cast down any imaginative philosophy that opposes the knowledge of God, and thereby bring every thought that would influence our worldview into the captivity of the mind of Christ. It is only from this foundation that we can accomplish anything redemptive in our work for Jesus Christ!
I remain yours in the thrill of serving Jesus.
GTS (Isaiah 40:28-31)
