In reviewing a book about the “beginning”, perhaps it is appropriate to commence at the first chapter.

From the outset of this extremely well written and thought provoking study, the reader is immediately provided with the writers own personal interpretations of Scripture, where the entire Bible is described as being the Word of God which is cited as being “authoritative, sufficient, complete and inerrant”.

Concentrating on the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, the writer proceeds to demonstrate that it is impossible to understand the remainder of the Holy Bible whilst ignoring what is described as a “foundational book”.

The author asserts that, without a belief in the truth of the book of Genesis, there is no basis for our belief in the morality taught by the Bible.

Through both a Biblical and scientific approach, whilst taking Scripture at “face value”, the author demonstrates why he does not personally accept what are described as “pseudo creation theories” such as “progressive creationism”, “day-age theory”, the “gap theory” and “theistic evolution” etc..

Citing the first four words of the Bible, “In the beginning, God….” this excellent study establishes that the truth of the Bible “stands or falls on these first four words” and proceeds to reveal how the Holy Bible is effectively the Book through which we “observe and interpret the World”.

Upon this foundation, the reader is then shown how scientific facts subsequently fall into place.

Each of the “days of creation” are scrutinized in some depth and this analysis extends to include the events before, during and after the Genesis flood, culminating in the “table of nations”, the “tower of Babel” and the implications that such have upon mankind.

The study also explains the pivotal issue of how sin originally emerged into the human race and how God’s provision for our Salvation through Jesus Christ was even embraced at that very time. The entire Gospel message itself is also provided with due reference to God’s eternal purpose so evident in the book of Genesis itself.

Throughout the book, God is shown to be “central to everything” and “before everything”, with everything and everyone having a “beginning”. God Himself (cited as the key subject matter of the universe) being shown to have been there even before that time.

Despite some scientific reference, this work is extremely easy to read and holds your attention from the very first page and I highly recommend this book to everyone, irrespective of their religious or personal beliefs.

It’s profound message needs reading by one and all. Thank you for your time.

These four words — “In the beginning, God” — demonstrate to us the fact of God’s existence and the futility of believing otherwise. Moreover, they state that God was there “in the beginning,” so He was there before the creation of the world. This takes Him outside nature, and makes Him transcendent, as well as immortal. The four words tell us that everything else, other than God, had a beginning and that God was the Creator of everything else. There was thus a beginning to time itself.

It is difficult to understand a world without time, but clever physicists like Stephen Hawking have tried to get us to do so, so there is no reason for Christians to doubt the beginning of time. However, our beginning is not the beginning of the new physics, as espoused by Hawking and others. They believe that the universe began in a big bang. Thus, the universe was once concentrated into one infinitesimally small dot that exploded. Much thought has gone into the mechanism of what matter might be like in such a big bang. Hawking is well known for his “popular” stylebook, A Brief History of Time, which many have on their bookshelves, but which few have read or even understood. This is a shame, because God wants us to understand the beginning easily. There was no big bang, and no complex equations. What we need to know is, “In the beginning, God. . . .” This is at once a simple and yet profound statement. It is the statement through which the rest of Scripture is to be interpreted.

There are too many pastors and teachers today who tell us that we just need to trust in Jesus — it doesn’t matter what we believe about Genesis. But the truth of the Bible stands or falls on these first four words. Either we believe God was there in the beginning, or we don’t. The early chapters of Genesis touch on real science. There are those today who believe that science has disproved the Bible. That is because of modern theories which are opposed to what the beginning of the Bible says. But the Bible doesn’t start to argue back. It is rightly said that the Bible is not a scientific textbook. After all, textbooks are re-written frequently. The Bible remains the same, because it is God’s Word to the world. The Bible is not meant to be the book that argues for the existence of God — that’s our job. The Bible is rather the book through which we observe and interpret the world. We are meant to start from the Bible. Once we make this start, we observe that our scientific facts, as we get to learn them, fall into place.

After all, what is the Bible’s great statement about the existence, or otherwise, of God?

The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they have done abominable works. There is none who does good (Ps. 14:1).

The word translated as “fool” does not carry quite the same meaning as the English. It refers to someone who is morally deficient, as noted by the phrase, “They are corrupt.” There is, therefore, a moral wisdom about believing in God.

That is why the Bible challenges us to believe in God in its first four words. At stake here is our entire belief system. If we don’t believe in the truth of the Book of Genesis, then there is no basis for our belief in the morality taught by the Bible. The Ten Commandments become a waste of time, as does our belief in the resurrection. And without our belief in the Resurrection, then, in Paul’s words, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable” (1 Cor. 15:19).

It is no exaggeration to say that Aquinas’s model of the universe has
had a profound and overwhelming influence on Western thought, right
up to the present day. The result of this is to divorce God from His creation. It relegates all Western scientific thought to the lower story. It is possible that some academics will allow us the study of the spiritual, but these studies are confined to the upper story, and are seen to have no relevance to the world in which we live.

If modern scientific thinking allows for a god at all, it is a lower-story
god. C.S. Lewis describes this type of god — and you thought he only
wrote books about lions, witches, and wardrobes! Lewis describes the difference between Nature and Supernature in his book, Miracles, in which he describes a type of neo-Aquinianism.

Naturalism, without ceasing to be itself, could admit a certain kind of God. The great interlocking event called Nature might be such as to produce at some stage a great cosmic consciousness, an indwelling “God” arising from the whole process as human mind arises (according to the Naturalists) from human organisms. A Naturalist would not object to that sort of God. The reason is this. Such a God would not stand outside Nature or the total system, would not be existing “on his own.”

This type of god would be acceptable to physicists, like Frank Tipler. Tipler developed the so-called anthropic principle, in which he describes
how he believes the universe could only have evolved along a path, which leads to the way it is now. Any other outcome would have been impossible. Although this is not a philosophy that I can embrace, convinced as I am in the truth of God’s Word, it is interesting that this new cosmology puts man back at the center of the universe, from which he was so rudely removed. Tipler argues that there must be a convergence point for all space, time, and mass, which he calls the omega point. This omega point, once conceived in this way, then takes on the attributes of God. He says, “The logically necessary histories collectively comprising the whole of reality can be regarded as ‘emanating’ from the Omega Point in his/her transcendence.”

[quotations are referenced in the pdf version of this chapter]

[This is the second excerpt from chapter 1 of the book, which can be read or downloaded in pdf form here.]

Let’s make a statement, so that those of you scanning the first couple of pages can find what you
want to see.

I believe the entire Bible to be the Word of God, authoritative, sufficient, complete, and inerrant. In this, I include the Book of Genesis. I take the Bible at face value. Since the Bible says that God created the world in just six days and rested on the seventh, that is what I believe. I accept that these days were literally 24-hour periods of time. I believe that there are few, if any, gaps in the genealogies — I can accept none in the genealogies of Genesis 5 or 1 Chronicles 1. Thus, I believe the world to be young, compared to the millions and billions of years usually quoted. I take the earth to be about 6,000 years old.

Some wish to stretch the age to about ten thousand years, but I still think 6,000 is far more likely. Despite describing this as a young-earth position, I personally think that 6,000 years is a very long time and adequately explains verses in the Bible which refer to the earth as ancient. Six thousand years is pretty ancient to me. I do not accept pseudo-creationist theories, therefore, such as progressive creationism, day-age theory, the gap theory, theistic evolution, or any other idea that waters down a belief in the literal, historical truth of Genesis.

There! I’ve said it all. I hope you will accept that these ideas are not some sort of blind faith. I will return to every one of those statements and justify them, biblically, scientifically, or both.

The question in a study such as this is always, “Where shall we start our study?” I have been speaking and writing on creationism for well over 20 years. I used to start by tackling the science, showing that evolution is wrong. More recently, I have come to the view that the main problem in today’s church is a lack of belief in the Bible itself, so I now tend to start from the Bible’s account and build the argument from there. That is why I have written this book in biblical order, examining Genesis chapters 1 to 11, passage by passage.

But how does Genesis itself begin the account? “In the beginning, God. . . .” This powerful set of four words tells us:

• God is central to everything.
• God was before everything.
• Everything had a beginning.
• God was there before that beginning.
• God is the key subject matter of the universe.

We can say nothing about anything in the Bible without reference to God. But this phrase goes further. It declares that we can say nothing about anything, anywhere without reference to God.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/07/06/contradictions-an-extra-cainan

Genesis is a Greek word. It means beginnings. Although the Old Testament
was written in Hebrew, there was a Greek translation of the
Old Testament called the Septuagint, translated about 280 to 200 BC. In
this work, the first book is called Genesis.

As a Greek word, elements of Genesis appear in English words, especially
technical words. Thus, genetics is a study of species’ origins. We also
see the word in such English words as generation, and genealogy.
Many people will start to read the Bible from Genesis, because it is
the first book. If we made no consideration of any studies outside the
Bible, we would expect Genesis to lay down the foundations for beliefs,
history, and doctrine in the rest of the Bible. It is my contention that
it is impossible to understand the rest of the Bible while ignoring this
foundational book.

Yet there are many scholars today who attempt to explain away the
Book of Genesis. It is described by many as a myth, as legend, as moral
teaching, as allegory, or as literature or poetry. Indeed, it is probably not
an exaggeration to say that most evangelical scholars have given up on a
literal, six 24-hour period creation of the world less than ten thousand
years ago, in favor of theories that attempt to harmonize millions of years
into the Genesis account. It will be one of the purposes of this study to
challenge such aberrations of biblical interpretation.

I sometimes spend time in Christian bookshops, thumbing through
the initial few pages of books, to see what position on the creation account
is taken by authors. So that there is no confusion, let me set out
my belief on this matter right now. This might not be the scholarly way
of treating an argument. Some of you want me to examine all sides of the
argument first, then tentatively come down off the fence. I believe that
the position I take is inherently sound and have not been afraid to argue
the issues elsewhere in this study. But for now, let’s make a statement, so
that those of you scanning the first couple of pages can find what you
want to see.

Chapter One deals with the important first four words of the Bible – “In the beginning, God…” We see how these four words tell us that:

• God is central to everything
• God was before everything
• Everything had a beginning
• God was there before that beginning
• God is the key subject matter of the universe

To get the pdf of chapter one of The Six Days of Genesis, use the button below.




]]> http://sixdaysbook.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/read-chapter-1-for-free/feed/ 0 answersuk icontexto-webdev-arrow-down-128x128 http://sixdaysbook.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/six-days/ http://sixdaysbook.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/six-days/#comments Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:32:25 +0000 answersuk ]]> Welcome to the blog of the book. Here, you will find information about the book and comments on it.

The Six Days of Genesis was first published in 2005, under the title “Just Six Days“, by J6D Publishing. It was republished under its new title in 2007 by Master Books.

In September 2007, Paul was interviewed by Vic Eliason of CrossTalk Radio, on the subject of the book. You can hear the interview below:

Alternatively, download the mp3 file for later, by right-clicking on the link below, and selecting “save link as…”

CrossTalk Radio 5th Sept 2007


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