Genesis Review
March 11, 2023
God’s creation began with Light. The Universe was next and the Earth followed.
Mankind was created a little later and given the responsibility of the day-to-day stewardship of everything on Earth which God had created…
Now, consider that this account was written down in such a way as to be understandable to the people of early Earth history — without a modern view complicated by all the Sciences — which we ourselves have difficulty comprehending — even with our vast accumulation of knowledge. That is to say, it is not written to be a Scientific Doctoral Thesis. Yet, I should note one thing as to its structure: It is sequential. It is an unfolding. In fact, the whole Bible is an unfolding, a revealing, and a construct to educate for our edification and restoration…
It is written to be clearly understood by everyone.
The main purpose is for us to be able to acknowledge that God created everything.
That is part of the revelation of God to us, establishing the fact that God exists, has always existed, and will always exist — God who is continually revealed in the pages of the Bible which follow,
He wants for us to know that He is there.
Speaking about God being there leads to the second chapter of Genesis… (Oh. Did you think I was talking about the whole book of Genesis? Sorry. No. Just chapter One.
Now, God had told those people, that is, Mankind, to have lots of children and migrate into all the Earth. Those children are referred to in this early writing as “the Children of Man.” Today, I think they are often referred to as “Indigenous” — who we too often look down on as inferior civilizations. However, God esteemed them as His precious people…
Now, by “we,” I mean those of us with roots in Europe. “We” have assumed a superior position by arrogantly and errantly thinking that we are listed in God’s Yellow Pages as “Sons of God.”
Well, my fellow egocentric “Masters of the Universe,” that is a delusion dreamed up by folks who have seriously misinterpreted the Bible. In fact, the original word “holy” simply meant “separate,” and in its Biblical context, separated for God.
God had finished what He wanted to accomplish up to that point. He assessed His own work as “very good,” and then, He took some time off.
Following all that, God took up another part of His plan: creating a kind of State Park and putting Adam and Eve in it with the responsibility of day-to-day stewardship — its upkeep with the helpfulness of their working together.
Now came the part of God’s plan that we might not all understand: choice.
God created us all with independent minds with the power to choose what we do with our own lives, the power of free will. We were not intended to be like puppets on strings… Believe it or not, that actually gives us all the ability to love — to love God and to love one another… or choose not to…
But uh-oh… here comes chapter Three… Adam and Eve unwisely made the wrong decision…
They disobeyed God’s one, and only one, restriction He had put on them.
When God confronted them with reality, they started to blame one another…
Adam even blamed God for giving Eve as his wife, as his helpful partner in their responsibilities of stewardship in Paradise…
Consequences…
Oh, those darn consequences that follow making wrong choices. Well, “live and learn.”
Now they had to enter a whole new world and be introduced to all Mankind — all those other bothersome people.
Well, Adam and Eve’s male progeny checked out the Daughters of Man and, low and behold, they had children too, cheerfully joining in on the mission to fill the whole Earth. (I’m pretty sure that wasn’t exactly the way God had in mind to get there.) So then, everybody was exposed to the consequences of original disobedience. All inherited that fallen Human Nature…
Yay. We get as many wives as we want.
…But did God really say…
…Anyways, everybody inherited the consequences of a fallen nature. It wasn’t all good anymore. It certainly wasn’t all bad either. However, people continued to find new ways to displease God and bring harm to one another.
For example, Adam and Eve’s first son, Cain, murdered their second son, Abel. That was basically the end of the beginning, the complete end to innocence, ending at chapter four…
Here comes the story of Noah and the Flood…I contend that the Flood was regional and not worldwide as most translations indicate. Again I take my fall back position that these accounts in Genesis are not Scientific Theses, and, perhaps conveniently, I now say that these earliest of events are not as precise as we might like them to be. *
* — https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/30369
Nevertheless, the Flood seemed to the people living in Mesopotamia like it covered the entire world: It certainly covered their whole world.
Whenever geologists and archaeologists discover the evidence of a worldwide Flood, I’ll be more than happy to admit I must change my mind. Nevertheless, I hold to the fact that people continued to get worse and worse to the point that “the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.” — Genesis 6:5–6.
No matter. What is important to understand is this:
The LORD observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So the LORD was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart. And the LORD said, “I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth. Yes, and I will destroy every living thing — all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky. I am sorry I ever made them.” But Noah found favor with the LORD. — Genesis 6:5–8, NLT.
Even today, regarding God’s perfect will for our lives, we continue to choose to go our own ways, being counterproductive, continuing to harm ourselves and others = which is exactly what it means to be “consistently and totally evil.”
So, where are we so far?
- Everything God created was very good.
- Adam and Eve disobeyed and began to blame one another.
- One brother murdered the other.
- Adultery and misogyny take root.
- Everything people “thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil.”
Well! Weren’t we asking for trouble?!?
The saddest thing is we picked up right where we left off: Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel. We tried this new tactic to avoid all the consequences of our acting out: By relying on our fallen human nature, it was decided that we could build a stairway to Heaven!
In fact archaeologists have discovered hundreds of such towers. By the way, I think that the Egyptians had developed formulas for reaching eternal life in the heavens above with their Pyramids… Unfortunately for the common folk, they were excluded… It seems a person had to be super rich to make use of those secret formulas.
Wasn’t it the same for the Aztecs and other civilizations around the world? Kind of a natural consequence of our superior thinking and technology, eh?
Well, in all such cases, no. There was, is, and always will be only one way to reach eternal life in Heaven: God’s way, His plan from the Beginning.
But who can possibly wait that long I mean c’mon. Thousands of years?!? Well, the fact is that nobody did, would, or did wait… except the faithful characters in the Bible record. (Read Hebrews 11 and see online at https://biblevise.com/heroes-of-faith-in-the-bible.)
Well, I’ve gone on long enough… probably too long to attract any readers. Nevertheless, the real Redemption Story begins in Genesis 12 and culminates in the unfolding of the New Testament. There is the beginning of the real story of God’s way of saving us from our own fallen, human nature. It’s His plan to erase the consequences of acting out on our corrupted ways. and to give us a new nature, a restored godly nature.
God has had this plan of salvation from before the Creation even began. God has always had the plan to restore people to fellowship with Him like it was in the Garden of Eden. Notwithstanding, He wasn’t about to take our free will away.
Love cannot exist without the freedom to choose.
Here’s a small little verse that has been often overlooked:
“When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the LORD God walking about in the garden…”
God walked with them and talked with them. He wants us to choose to restore that relationship.
Jesus said, “My purpose is to give {people} a rich and satisfying life.”
The question remains, “Will we ever learn our lesson? Will we accept God’s plan for our lives, or will we ignorantly and stubbornly continue to blame others for our disintegrating world?
For further understanding see this online site: https://www.crossway.org/articles/10-key-bible-verses-on-salvation
