Genesis 1-11

The first 11 chapters of Genesis are extremely important. They are the foundation for the entire Bible. Everything is started here. Man's creation, Man's fall into sin. The promise of the Savior. The line of descendants. The flood symbolizing baptism. The Tower of Babel and the breaking up of the nations.

The rest of Scripture constantly refers back to it. If in any way these chapters are not true, if they are just myths or good stories then the rest of the Bible is just a myth as well.

We teach that God made the earth in six literal days. The theory of evolution, which has never and never will be proven goes against that. They say that dinosaurs and other creatures lived on the earth before man and were even extinct before man was created. There is only one problem with that. There was no death in the world before man's sin, so how did the dinosaurs die? It would have been impossible for them to die, sin is what causes death. Therefore you either believe in the theory of evolution or you believe in the Bible, but you cannot believe in both and be honest.

Another question that comes up is how did Moses, who lived about 1500 b.c. know all of this stuff? First of all we say that Scripture is divinely inspired by God. In other words even though Moses wrote down the words they were given to him by God, therefore it is God's Word. Secondly Moses very well could have drawn on other historical documents that were around at the time and there was also oral tradition. There were stories that had been passed down through the years that were known by all the people. They could have also been a source of information. At this point people point out that by the time the stories were told to Moses they were so changed and different from the original stories that he was just writing myths. People point out the telephone game where one person tells another person something and he passes it down the line and the story the last person tells is very different from the story the first person told. So they say see we can't trust these words of Moses.

Oral tradition in ancient times was very different from the telephone game though. Stories were told within a community and everyone in the community knew the story and accuracy was considered very important. Therefore if someone started to change a story he was corrected very fast. Historians who study in this field say that stories could be passed down this way for thousands of years without significant changes being made. So there is no reason to believe that Moses was not dealing with accurate stories.

A key verse to remember in this section is Genesis 11:9 where it says the languages were confused and people were dispersed all over the earth. In the New Testament we see that on the Day of Pentecost the opposite happens. The people were all brought back together and all the languages were understood by everyone. A good point to keep in mind is that much Old Testament stuff has a corresponding point in the New Testament. I will point these out as we go along.

Happy reading

Pastor Fred