Creation is Essential to Faith in the Authority of Scripture
Have you ever wondered why some Christians stress the importance of believing that God created the heavens, the earth, and all life in six literal 24-hour days about 6-thousand years ago (Exodus 20:11a)? After all, you have trusted Jesus as your Savior from sin so you can go to heaven. Why does it matter if you believe in evolution? This article will present the first of three reasons why it is important for Christians to believe in Biblical Creation because it is critical to the authority of the Bible.
This post is the second in a series of articles answering why Creation is important. The first reason why it is crucial to believe in Biblical Creation is because it is essential to Biblical authority. This post will discuss the authority of the Bible and how the Creation vs Evolution debate relates to Scriptural authority.
If you would prefer immediate access to a more in-depth study on the importance of Biblical Creation to Christian faith, you can get “Why Creation Matters” on Amazon as a Kindle eBook or paperback.
This article discusses the importance of believing in Creation based on the teachings of Scripture in the Bible. It will not address scientific arguments. For science-based articles on why you should believe in Biblical Creation rather than evolution, please see: “Is Evolution Science or Religion?” and “How Evolution is Like a Fairytale”.
Biblical / Scriptural Authority Defined
We will begin our study of why believing in Bible Creation is important by defining Biblical / Scriptural Authority. “Biblical Authority” refers to the Authority of the Bible. “Scriptural Authority” refers to the Authority of Scripture and is synonymous with “Biblical Authority.”
“Scripture” means “writing,” and is used almost exclusively to refer to the sacred or holy writings of a religion, most commonly those found in the Bible. Within Christianity, “Scripture” refers to the 66 canonical books of the Bible.
What is “The Authority of the Bible”?
“Biblical Authority” or “the Authority of Scripture” is the foundation of the Christian faith. “Scriptural Authority” refers to the Bible being the way God has revealed Himself and His Will to the world. The writings of the Bible were given by God (1 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21) and are all 100% true, accurate, and authoritative in the original writings.
God has authority and is in control. As our Creator, sustainer, redeemer, and judge, God has the power and right to define right and wrong, condemn and forgive sin, control events in the world, and determine our eternal destiny. God has communicated to us through His Word the Bible and holds us responsible to obey His revealed Will.
The Bible is not a history book or a science book but is 100% accurate when it addresses history and genuine science. The Bible is the ultimate authority and only source of absolute truth (John 17:17). If the Bible clearly teaches it, then it is true. If any belief conflicts with the Bible, then the conflicting belief is wrong.
Believing Biblical Creation is essential to Faith in God’s Word
The first reason faith in Biblical Creation is important relates to the Authority of the Bible. We need to believe in Biblical Creation because that is what the Bible clearly teaches. To deny the truth of a literal 6-day creation is to deny the truth of God’s Word. If the Bible were wrong about Creation, how could we trust anything the Bible says?
The Bible is God’s revelation to mankind. God has revealed Himself to us through the Scriptures, telling us everything we need to know about the origin of the heavens and the earth, life and death, and suffering and salvation. The Word of God tells us who we are, how we got here, how we should live, and how we can go to heaven.
Genesis 1-11 is History
In Genesis 1, the beginning of the Bible, God revealed how He created the heavens and earth, and everything in them, in six days then rested on the seventh day. The reality of this truth is preserved in our 7-day week. Genesis 2 elaborates on the creation of the first man and woman on the sixth day.
Genesis 1:31 informs us that God saw that everything was “very good” at the conclusion of the 6th day, but it did not stay that way. Genesis 3 tells of the entrance of sin into the world through the temptation of Eve and the disobedience of Adam. We are told that sin resulted in toil and death, and a curse upon the earth.
Where sin goes, sorrow follows. Genesis 4 tells of the first murder. Cain, Adam and Eve’s first child, rebelled against God and killed his younger brother, Abel.
Genesis 5 provides us with the genealogy from Adam to Noah. In addition to highlighting the pattern of life followed by inevitable death, this chapter provides the information needed to calculate how much time passed between creation and the flood (1,656 years).
Genesis 6 records the increasing wickedness of mankind, which resulted in God’s decision to destroy the earth with a flood. But “Noah walked with God” (Gen. 6:9) and “found grace in the eyes of the LORD” (Gen 6:8). So, God called Noah to build an ark to save his family and 2 of each kind of air breathing animal.
Genesis 7 and 8 record the events of the flood. In chapter 9, God blessed Noah and his sons, and repeated His command to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. God also promised them that He would never again destroy the earth with a global flood and said the rainbow would be the sign of His covenant.
Genesis 10 is often called the Table of Nations, because it lists the descendants of Noah’s three sons, their families, and the nations that came from them.
As one would expect following a global flood that reduced the human population to 8 people from one family, following the flood everyone spoke the same language. Genesis 11 records how the people of the post flood world agreed to build a city and tower to stay together rather than spreading out and filling the world as God commanded.
God recognized their common language as a powerful tool, which could be used to further their rebellion. So, God caused different family units to speak different languages. Once their ability to communicate was confounded, the people scattered abroad and filled the earth, thus fulfilling God’s command.
Those who accept evolutionary teaching claim that these first 11 chapters of the Bible are wrong. They deny that they record actual history. They claim that these chapters are just poetry and myths.
However, Genesis 1-11 is written in historical narrative style, it is not poetry, and the Bible later records many people (including Jesus) referring to these chapters as literal history.
Creation is Taught Throughout the Bible
The doctrine of creation is not limited to the book of Genesis. It is taught in many other Bible passages as well. For example:
- For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day . . . (Exodus 20:11a)
- And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD, and said, “O LORD God of Israel . . . Thou art the God, even Thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; Thou hast made heaven and earth.” (2 Kings 19:15)
- For all the gods of the people are idols: but the LORD made the heavens. (1 Chronicles 16:26)
- Thou, even Thou, art LORD alone; Thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and Thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth Thee. (Nehemiah 9:6)
- The sea is His, and He made it: and His hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker. (Psalm 95:5-6)
- Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the LORD his God: Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is . . . (Psalm 146:5-6)
- For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God Himself that formed the earth and made it; He hath established it, He created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited: “I am the LORD; and there is none else.” (Isaiah 45:18)
- He hath made the earth by His power, He hath established the world by His wisdom, and hath stretched out the heaven by His understanding. (Jeremiah 51:15)
- And he said unto them, “I am an Hebrew; and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land.” (Jonah 1:9)
- And Jesus answered and said unto them, “For the hardness of your heart He wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Mark 10:5-9)
- “And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:26-27 / NKJV)
- . . . they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, “Lord, Thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is:” (Acts 4:24)
- . . . We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein: (Acts 14:15)
- For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: (Romans 1:20)
- Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. (Hebrews 11:3)
- For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: (2 Peter 3:5-6)
- And sware by Him that liveth for ever and ever, Who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein . . . (Revelation 10:6)
To claim that the Biblical account of creation and the flood are not true is to say that the whole Bible is filled with errors. It would mean that Jesus, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, John, Peter, Paul and others in the Bible were deceived and erred.
Rejecting Biblical creation in favor of evolution undermines Biblical authority. It denies the infallibility of Scripture and accuses God of lying. If you accept that the Bible contains errors, how can you know what is true and what is not? How do you know what to trust? Some people use this as an excuse to believe or reject different parts of the Bible as they see fit.
Some well-meaning people, trying to preserve the authority of Scripture while also accepting evolution, try to find a compromise between evolution and the Bible. They may try to insert a gap between the first two verses of Genesis 1 (the Gap theory), may say that God used evolution in His creation (theistic evolution), or believe that the days in Genesis were long ages of time during which evolution occurred (the day – age theory).
There are many variations in these attempts to reconcile evolution and the Bible, but they are all fundamentally flawed and require the Bible to contain errors. They all claim that the fossil record was formed before Adam and Eve lived and deny the truth of a global flood in the days of Noah (as Peter predicted in 2 Peter 3:3-6). They all make the evolutionary teachings of fallible people more authoritative than the infallible Word of God.
A catastrophic global flood as the Bible describes in the days of Noah is sufficient to explain the fossils and layers in the “geologic column” described by modern geologists. In fact, a global flood explains the geological evidence better than uniformitarianism and evolution. For more information on the science, please see: “Is Evolution Science or Religion?” and “How Evolution is Like a Fairytale”.
The Bible Testifies to Its Truth
Believing in evolution requires rejecting the infallibility of Scripture and Biblical authority. Yet the Bible testifies to its truth:
- Forever, O LORD, Thy word is settled in heaven (Psalm 119:89).
- Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of Thy righteous judgments endureth forever (Psalm 119:160).
- That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, . . . (Hebrews 6:18)
- Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. (2 Peter 1:20-21)
Jesus also declared that the Bible is all true:
- For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled (Matthew 5:18).
- Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth (John 17:17).
Claiming that the Bible contains errors would mean that Jesus was wrong, which would mean that Jesus was just a fallible man. Believing that Jesus was just a fallible human who erred in His teaching denies faith in Jesus as the Son of God.
Denying faith in Jesus as the infallible Son of God would mean that His death was just an ordinary human death, which could not pay for your sins. This would mean that you are still in your sins without a Savior.
Summary
Faith in the truth of supernatural creation of the heavens and earth, and all life, in 6-literal days thousands (not millions or billions) of years ago is important because that is what the Bible teaches. Accepting evolution over long ages of time denies the truth of scripture and Biblical authority.
Trusting the ever-changing words of fallible people more than the infallible, unchanging Word of God is a form of idolatry. Those who try to blend these mutually exclusive beliefs together do not please God and will not be respected by evolutionists.
If you want to please God and do His Will, you must trust in the authority of the Bible, including Biblical creation.
Continue reading the next article in the series, “Creation is Essential to God’s Identity“
If you have not already done so, you might like to read the first article in this series, “Why is Biblical Creation Important?“
Or if you would like immediate access to a more in-depth study on the importance of Biblical Creation to Christian faith, you can get the book on Amazon. “Why Creation Matters” is available both as a Paperback and as a Kindle eBook.
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