Genesis Conference 2024

The Genesis Conference Opens With Worship and a Call to Trust Scripture

Everybody, if you want to get your seats, we're going to get started, it's 10 o 'clock, and we are here at the G1 conference, In the Beginning God Created the Heavens and the Earth. That's what we believe, we're going to be sharing that together with one another today.

I want to read a Bible verse because I'm a pastor and I love scripture. It's Hebrews 11 3. It says, By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

This is what we believe because scripture has declared it. So I want to welcome you here, this is our sixth annual G1 conference. This started on a day where I heard Dan Biddle of Genesis Apologetics share a quick thought at a youth conference, and I said, we have to do a conference like this every year.

And it launched, and God has blessed it and grown it, and so this conference last year we had about 520 people show up, this year we have 700 people coming to the conference, so praise God. My name is Joe Walters, and I have the great honor of being a pastor at a church called Encounter Natomas, and so we have some Encounter people here, yes, awesome, love you guys.

And I also want to just thank William Jessup. The audio video people are amazing, all the volunteers, you guys rock, and we just thank you for helping set this up, can we get a hand for these guys. We have booths in the back with resources, and we have a booth in the back that are selling shirts and sweaters, and so it looks like this, and I'd appreciate it if you guys take a look at that so we can not bring boxes of clothing home, and let's see, what else.

Oh, you know, I just want to share this. We have different types of attendees, and I would say there's like three types. We have Christians who believe the Genesis narrative of creation, and they are excited to learn more and to be able to defend the Genesis narrative.

We also have Christians that are not quite sure, they're skeptical, and we're so glad you're here, and we hope that at the end of this conference that you are going to be affirmed that the Bible is true, that the Bible is telling you what you think it's telling you, that God created the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh.

And the third type of person maybe is someone who's not a Christian, but they're learning and they're open. I just want to say I'm so glad that you're here as well, and so we hope that you hear from the Lord, we hope that you are changed today, and we're just glad and honored that everybody here is ready to learn.

So I commend you all for spending the day with us. We're going to worship, but first I'd like to just open in prayer and thank the Lord for what He's doing. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we praise you, we thank you, that you are the great creator, that every one of us have been created in your image, Lord, that you have blessed us with the heavens and the earth, that you spoke it and it was so, and Lord, that you have existed for all of time, the immutable, unchanging, sovereign Lord of the universe, and yet you know us personally, that you love us, Lord, that you have redeemed us by the blood of Christ, that you have been born in the flesh, that you have lived a perfect life, that you paid the price on the cross, and three days later you rose up in victory.

So we praise you, Lord Jesus, that you are the King of kings, the name above every name. So may we praise you today in every way possible, in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Let's worship.

Come on, let's worship Him this morning. Would you get to your feet? Let's kick this conference off by just giving praise to our God in this place. Let's invite Him in the room this morning. Let's sing together.

You give life, you are love. You bring light to the darkness. You give hope, You restore every heart that is broken. Come on, tell them today. We sing great. I'm so weak. We sing great. You give life.

You are love. You bring light to the darkness. You give hope. You restore every heart. Yes, You are. We sing great. Come on, let's lift them high this morning. Sing it. And all the earth will shout Your praise.

Our hearts will cry. These bones will tell. Yes, You are. Yes, You are. Come on, every voice, sing. And all the earth will shout Your praise. Our hearts will cry. So we sing great. Come on, let's start the day just telling them that this morning.

Just sing it straight to his heart. Tell him. We sing. One more time. Come on, tell them today. We sing great. Yes, You are. Come on, can we give Him praise in His house today? Let's try this one. God is good.

And all the time, God is good. I grew up in the church down in Southern California. My dad's a pastor. And I grew up saying that in church. And I'm not going to lie to you, I always thought it was a little weird.

I was like, that's a little culty. Like as a kid, you're not like, why are we all saying this in unison? And I think recently I've realized we say that God is good and all the time. We say that as a group to remind each other how good God's been to us.

And that's what we get to do today in this conference. And I'm so excited that we get to spend all day reminding each other and hearing about how good God is. Amen? Can we just pray and lift this day up to Him before we sing one more song together?

Heavenly Father, You are so good. And we start there. God, we start by telling You how good You are because we have nothing else to offer You. God, You've been so good to us when we don't deserve it. And Lord, so today as we learn about Your Word, as we learn about this beautiful creation that You've given us, Lord, we just start by saying thank You.

God, because we have nothing else to offer You but our hallelujah. God, so today in this place, would You receive our praise? Would You ready our hearts? Would You prepare our minds and prepare our hearts to receive Your Word?

Lord, and we start by saying thank You today. It's in Your precious name, the name of Jesus. Not by might or by strength, but by the name of Jesus we pray today. All God's people said, amen. Words fall short.

I got nothing. How could I express? That is. I could sing these songs. As I often. Every song must end. And praise You again. All that I have is a hope. Except for a heart singing hope. All God's people said, amen, amen.

You can have a seat today. All right.

Praise God. I got to tell you, I don't think there's another word that's more natural for us to say than hallelujah. It just seems like our whole diaphragm is shaped and molded to say that word, which is a praise Yahweh.

Hallelujah. So thank you, Christian, for leading us in worship. I want to introduce a friend, Dr. John Jackson. And I just got to say, spending time with him, he is just a genuine lover of the Lord. A genuine lover of people.

And it is just a joy to hear his heart. And especially when he is involved in academia. And it's an area of this country, it's an area of the world that really needs the word of God. And so I'm thankful for him and what he does.

He's the sixth president of William Jessup University. And he has a Ph .D. from the University of California. The university here has tripled in size in the last 14, 15 years. And now has a full suite of undergraduate, graduate, and online degree programs.

And is regionally and nationally ranked. He is also the author of 10 books. Most recently the best-selling book, Grace Ambassador. And speaker about leadership, transformation, and spiritual growth. John is married to Pam and they have five children.

Two sons in love. And last year my notes said four grandchildren and one on the way. Now it's five grandchildren and one on the way. So praise God for that. I want to introduce Dr. John Jackson. Give him a hand.

Truth, Genesis, and the Authority of Scripture

Thank you so much, Joe. I just love being able to be part of this experience. You know, the Lord has been doing amazing things in our midst. And amazing things in this community. But I just want to quickly do a personal thing.

How many of you grandparents in the room would say that grandparenting is a better deal all in all than parenting? Would you agree with that? Yeah. Like it's amazing. So if you're a parent here and you're going like, I don't know if I can do this.

I'm telling you, if you do not sort of destroy your kids, you will get to the point where you get grandkids. And that's the reward. Okay? That's what you want. Let me ask a quick technical question. Slides.

Am I operating them? It says to just go page down, but I'm wondering. Oh, there we go. It is. Okay. I got it. A couple more. A couple more. Okay. Good, good, good. Okay. Here we go. Now, would it be all right, usually as a speaker what you do is you sort of do a buildup and then you come in for the conclusion.

But I really believe that in a setting like this, it might be good for you to know where I'm coming from on the front end. So if I give my conclusions at the front end, would you be okay with that? And then I'll unpack some of that.

Before I do, I want to tell you one of my favorite stories. It's a story of a little girl who clearly understood the concept of original sin. A little girl who understood the concept of original sin. And the reason I know that was not her behavior, it's that she was in an art gallery.

And she was in an art gallery and she looked up at a painting of Adam and Eve. And you could see something welling up inside of her. And eventually that little girl took her fist out and she said, you ruined it for the rest of us.

And you know, something about that statement actually says something about this conference. Because I think there's some massive issues in place. Let me just start there. I want to contend that truth matters.

Truth matters. Now I absolutely believe that grace matters. And I wrote a book recently called Grace Ambassadors. I am all about followers of Jesus demonstrating and caring and manifesting grace. But we live in a world that is desperate to know that truth matters.

And I have an unflinching commitment to the authority of the word of God. It's the only secure foundation in life. And when we get cut loose from that foundation, the impacts are devastating. Truth matters.

Here's my second conclusion. If Genesis 1 to 11 is allegory, then Jesus accommodating himself to the ignorance of his audience or worse. Maybe Jesus didn't know any better. If Genesis is not true, then humanity, sin, salvation, marriage, family, history, good and evil are all social constructs subject to change dependent upon cultural norms.

Let me just test this with you. Has anybody noticed that the definition and experience of family has changed in the course of the last few decades? We're confused today. What is family? What does it mean?

What is it for? All that. We're confused. And what happens if truth doesn't matter and if Genesis 1 through 11 is just allegorical, then Jesus was accommodating himself to the ignorance of his audience and or worse yet, maybe we don't really have any foundations for the doctrines of life itself.

Here's another conclusion. To deny the historical Adam is to stand against the teachings not only of Jesus but of Moses, Luke and Paul. And again, either all those people were deceived or confused or worse yet, they were intentionally deceiving others.

So if you decide Genesis 1 through 11 is just allegory, it's just fictional, it's just sort of a grand narrative to help us be comfortable with the poetic meanings of life, what you're doing is flushing Jesus.

You're flushing Moses. You're flushing Paul. You're flushing Luke. You're flushing any of those authorities and therefore you will become unmoored from any of the foundations that they laid. And so I would just say this.

I would say the bottom line is that when you deny the truth of Jesus or the truth of Genesis, it's like unleashing an army of termites under the foundation of a wooden home. In time, everything crumbles.

What we know about free will, about sin, about salvation, about family, gender, identity and marriage all crumble in time. I think this as a pastor and as a leader of a Christian university, it is the hermeneutical issue of our day.

Now, maybe the word hermeneutics doesn't mean a lot to you. It's the principle and science of interpretation. I think the singular issue for non-Christians but also for Christians is, is Genesis 1 through 11 historically accurate or is it simply allegory and myth?

Let me give you a quick little quotation that I think will help you. Science is the description of—oh, I apologize. Science is a description of how God chooses to work most of the time, writes Russell Calborn, a professor of physics at the University of Cambridge.

We know dead bodies don't come back to life according to science. And yet Christianity is built on the observation that Jesus came back to life. I'm very happy to say that at this special moment, God was acting differently.

That's a professor of physics. B .B. Warfield said this, The unity of humanity in Adam is the postulate or the teaching of the entire body of the Bible's teaching, of its doctrine of sin and redemption alike, so that the whole structure of the Bible's teaching, including all that we know as its doctrine of salvation, rests on it and implicates it.

Let me say this to you to make it a little more clear. The God of reason and the God of revelation are one and the same. Let me say it again. The God of reason and the God of revelation are one and the same.

I don't have time to completely unpack it, but when I first got here, Jessup had no math, no sciences, in terms of majors. And so we decided a couple of years in, we were going to add a biology major.

I had a one-hour interview with a Sacramento Bee. You know, that really great, highly esteemed publication in our region. I had a one-hour interview with a Sac Bee, and the reporter consistently pressed into me with this singular question.

How can you be a faith-based university and add a biology major? Isn't the truth that you have to be a person of faith or a person of science? I am telling you, it took me one hour on the phone with that reporter to convince them, as I did a brief survey of the annals of human history, that the greatest scientists who have ever lived and who live today are people who believe in a supreme being, a God, who has revealed himself, and that to believe in a God of revelation is not to dismiss reason.

So if you're a really smart gal or smart guy here today, do not buy the lie of our culture that your brain has to be checked in order to believe in God, in order to believe in the authority of His word.

All right, so let me just talk a little bit about what I think that God wants you to receive. I want you to know that God wants you to be saved. He wants you to be grounded. He wants you to be healed.

And He wants you to be equipped. And I want you to hear this, that God is the only source of final authority and truth. In John 8, verse 31 and 32, Jesus said this, To the Jews who had believed Him, Jesus said, If you hold on to my teaching, you are really my disciples.

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. So many times we think of ourselves as people who love Jesus, but truth is optional. Can I tell you that if you love Jesus, you must obey His teaching?

If you love Jesus, you must accept Him as the truth. Truth came to the planet, and truth has a name. His name is Jesus. The consequences of denying Genesis 1 -11 are that you are denying Jesus as the Christ.

It is not optional for you to say, I believe in Jesus, I love Jesus, but I dismiss the truth. That is not an option that's available to you. You accept Jesus for who He claimed to be, you accept Jesus for what He said, or you say, no, I think He was a nice guy, a good teacher, maybe a prophet, but He was not who He said He was, which was God come in the flesh.

The reality is a lot of people say, hey, wait a minute, we actually live in a world where we understand truth differently. We used to have absolute truth, and then we moved to relative truth, but now I think we've moved past relative truth, or at least to an extreme version, we now believe in experiential reality.

In other words, it's not just that truth is relative, it's that my experience of truth is what defines truth for me. It's an extreme form of individualism. In other words, if you experience today different than me, your experience of today is the truth, well, it's the truth for you, and my truth as I experience it is the truth for me.

There's not only no such thing as absolute truth, but we can't even say that everybody in this room is experiencing relative truth. Experiential reality says every single person's experience of truth is the reality for them.

So the danger of that, I want to just give you a quote. The definition of the new tolerance is that every individual's beliefs, values, and lifestyle and perception of truth claims are equal. There is no hierarchy of truth, your beliefs and my beliefs are equal, and all truth is relative.

I'm going to leave that up on the screen for just a moment because I want you to hear this. This is the prevailing wisdom in higher education, in media, and to a lesser extent in many aspects of government today.

It is the notion that there is no hierarchy of truth, that truth is completely dependent and relative to the individual experience of truth. Dads, moms, grandmas, grandpas, students, you need to understand that's the worldview or the perspective that you're going to be taught in the context of almost every higher ed setting except for a truly biblical, Christ-centered educational experience.

That is a worldview that is in direct conflict with scripture. It's a worldview that's directly in conflict with the book of Genesis. I want to share a quote with you now contrasting that with Dr. Francis Schaeffer.

He was the founder of LaBrie in the early 1970s, ended up really shaping a whole movement. He said, if there's no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong.

By absolute, we mean that which always applies to all people, that which provides a final or ultimate standard. There must be an absolute if there are to be morals, and there must be an absolute if there are to be real values.

If there are no absolutes beyond man's ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions. Now let me just test this.

Have you been in any social settings in the last decade or so where you started to talk to somebody about something meaningful and important, and you asked them, why do you believe this? And they said, I just do.

I just do. I just believe that is now completely acceptable as the basis for a worldview. Why do you believe that? Why do you think that? Why do you behave that way? I just do. The previous quote to this one says, basically, there is no hierarchy.

By the way, if I told you today that I just believe it's okay for me to key your car, you might go, that works for you, but it does not work for me. That's one of the reasons we have laws. One of the reasons we have values that are codified in laws is because we've agreed together as a society that there are certain standards.

Simplest place to start is the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments give a basic moral framework, a basic moral foundation for life. But if the Ten Commandments don't govern you because you don't accept them, then I'm left to a culture of anarchy.

I believe the stakes are so high. They're so high that I'm willing to commit to this conference, not only being at Jessup, but I'm willing to commit to you that this conference, I think, is addressing the critical hermeneutical issue of our day.

Now, what was interesting is it was going to happen that I was going to miss this conference. I was going to be actually in Germany at a Bosch plant, the Bosch, the manufacturing. I was going to be at a Bosch factory in Germany, and a set of circumstances intervened, and I was not able to take that trip, which allowed me to be here personally.

And I'm grateful for that because I wanted to share with you the people who are leading and organizing this conference, they are pushing ahead in a really rough area of water. They take a lot of shots.

So as you hear the people who are teaching that come after me, I want you to know this. They're contending for and carrying a challenging message. A lot of our world today is pushing against them. So I want to just ask you very quickly the question, do you like bumper stickers?

Does anybody like bumper stickers? Okay, if you like bumper stickers, I want to just give you a couple bumper stickers. This was a very popular one from years ago, and it seems good on the face of it.

God said it. I believe it. That settles it. That's kind of cool, right? That fits on a bumper sticker. That seems good. Like when you read that, you go like, okay, that's awesome. I like that. But I actually think it's terribly deficient.

So here's another bumper sticker. God said it. I interpret it. And to the best of my ability, keeping in mind the limitations and filters imposed by my worldview, that doesn't entirely settle it. But it does provide a trustworthy, if incomplete, platform on which to base my values and decisions.

That doesn't fit well on a bumper sticker, but it kind of gives you a basic sort of moral orientation. Here's what I think is the truth. God said it. That settles it. Whether we believe it or not. Folks, that's the truth.

I may not like what's in Scripture. I may not understand what's in Scripture. But I want you to hear this. There is no conflict between right science and right Scripture. There is no conflict between right science and right Scripture.

We either have an incomplete understanding of science, which has been demonstrated over and over and over again in human history, or we have an incomplete understanding of Scripture, which has sometimes also occurred.

But because God is a God of reason and He's a God of revelation, there is no conflict between right science and right Scripture. I want to close with this. Genesis matters. And you matter. If Genesis is not true, then Jesus is not true.

And we'll simply devolve into whatever truth fits our personality, our circumstances, our context. And I want to say this to you very, very clearly. Truth matters. Foundations matter. Grace matters. So I want to contend today for us to live contending for truth.

But I want to contend for us living redemptively. It would be the easiest thing in the world to finish today and say, truth matters, I'm going to pound that into people. I've seen very few people in the course of my life who've been pounded into the kingdom.

But I've seen lots of people who've been loved into the kingdom. Jesus never betrayed truth. But He lived full of grace. Our calling is to be full of grace and truth. Just as Jesus was. Genesis matters.

And Jesus matters. And you matter. And so do your friends and neighbors who don't yet know Him. God bless you. Thank you.

Wow, that was amazing. I totally endorse and agree. Everything that he just said. You know, when you think about Genesis and one of the things that he was talking about is the connection to so many different important aspects and issues of everyday life.

Marriage, male-female distinction. Worship. I mean, how many of the Psalms have a worship narrative that God spoke things into existence in the creation narrative? Are we to take those pages out if we don't agree with the way the psalmist saw Genesis?

And that Jesus believed this, that Paul believes this, that Moses believes this is, wow, I'm super encouraged by that. Thank you again, Dr. John Jackson. So I also want to introduce Dan Biddle. Dan Biddle, Ph .D., is president of Genesis Apologetics.

And like I said, I met him about six years ago. And it was a godly encounter. And what he said encouraged me so much. And we've been friends ever since. And he is all in on this. And he puts his heart and soul and resources into this conference.

So I love you, Dan. I appreciate you so much. Genesis Apologetics is a 501c3 organization dedicated to training youth pastors, parents, students, and anyone who will listen about Genesis, creation, and the flood.

Daniel has authored and edited nine books and several articles on these topics. Produced two films on Genesis. Actually, I think it's three films now. And 100-plus training videos on the Genesis Apologetics YouTube channel.

With hundreds of thousands of subscribers, tens of millions of views. Daniel has given hundreds of presentations to thousands of people on these topics. Daniel's professional background includes undergraduate and graduate work in theology and apologetics.

Training as a behavioral scientist. Ph .D. in industrial organizational psychology. And 20 years' experience in expert witness consulting testimony in state and federal cases involving scientific research methods, statistics, and psychometrics.

Daniel and his wife, Jenny, live in Folsom, California and enjoy their four adult children and has a grandchild on the way. Congratulations. While Daniel has been a Christian since age 11, his position on the specific chronology of Genesis remained undeclared until 2011 when the evidence surrounding the fossil record, dinosaurs in particular, flood geology, and biblical exegesis led him to the historical position on the Genesis account.

May you welcome Dr. Dan Biddle.

Genesis 1 to 11 as Real History, Not Allegory

How are you guys doing? Well, welcome to the most attended conference we've had so far. I think we busted through the 680 mark, which is great. I am so excited to be here, you guys. And, you know, the Lord likes to be an influencer in our lives, and sometimes he has us change gears a little bit.

Well, you have in your conference notes about 40 PowerPoint slides that I was going to do, and about three days ago I got convicted to ditch all of them. So we're going to do a little stage act instead, but I'm going to try to cover all of the content that you guys have in your slides.

But I'm going to have a brief introduction first. So we have a ton of free resources in the back. If you haven't heard already, our resources are free today, all of them, as your price of admission. So go on back to the back, just our Genesis Apologetics booth.

ICR has got lots of materials, too, but the stuff in our booth today is free. We have a suggested donation of $10 per item, but it's not necessary. Please take our resources and use them. We have two different products.

The first is called the Debunking Evolution, or just go to debunkevolution .com. It's a program for 5th to 10th graders who are going through and being taught about the evolution, the top ten pillars of evolution that are taught in public school.

And then for high schoolers and college-age students, we have our Seven Myths program. It's about a two-hour training program. It's video-based and book-based. Our leading book is called Answers to the Top 50 Questions about Genesis Creation and Noah's Flood.

Our ministry receives hundreds of questions every year. We took the top 50 questions that we were asked over and over and over again and made a book on them. And a lot of the topics in that book also have videos that are on our YouTube channel.

We have about 130 ,000 people who have downloaded our Genesis Apologetics mobile app. It's available in iTunes and Apple or Google Play stores. You can get that free as well. It basically plums into a lot of our leading videos that are on YouTube.

And let me just start with a quick Bible verse, and then we're going to go into my stage act here, if you will. So 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 13 says this. For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth the word of God, which is also effectively at work in those who believe.

So look at those three words there. Welcoming the truth, not as if it's the word of men, but the truth of the word of God, and therefore it will effectively work in those who believe. So if you want God's word to effectively work in you, you have to have a high regard for Scripture.

Take it and consume it and allow it to change your life. The Bible is the only book that has supernatural power. When you receive those seeds of God and digest them, it will change your thinking and your heart and your mind, and therefore it will change your actions and your behaviors.

I was not a creationist until about 12 years ago. I came to a talk by the guy who's with your kids now. His name is Big Wave Dave is his nickname. He's in with 80 of your kids now, but I came to a talk that he gave at a local church here, and the talk was titled something like Dinosaurs Walked with Man.

And I thought this guy is crazy. What a looney tune. What person would believe that dinosaurs lived so recently with man? This is crazy, but I'm going to go see his talk. So I went in as a skeptic, but as an evidence guy.

I spent about 20 years of my career as a testifying expert in state and federal court cases dealing with research and statistics, so I knew what a good evidence package looked like. And about halfway through Dave's talk, I'm like, oh my gosh, I think this guy's onto something.

Theologically, he conveyed, he says, well, you know, Adam was the one who was created to take dominion over everything that God had just created. And then he named everything. And then when Adam fell, everything under his dominion fell with it.

And then animals turned carnivorous and turned against each other, and everything under his dominion fell. And what about dinosaur soft tissue? What in the world is this soft tissue doing inside of dinosaur bones if they're really 65 million years old?

And why is it that every people group, every major people group around the entire world, has these myths and legends about these dragon-like creatures that look an awfully high degree of similarity between continents?

Like, what's going on with this? Evidence after evidence after evidence. So I took about a 90-day hiatus. I bought thousands of dollars' worth of DVDs and books, and I plunged into everything he said and vetted it out.

I flew up to Montana, did dinosaur reach up there. I flew up to Canada, looked at the dinosaur beds up there. And about halfway through this research project, I became not just convinced but completely convinced that Genesis 1 to 11 is real history.

And I'm going to explain to you how that works, at least how I was persuaded. So let's start with the present, way, way, way over here. We've got February 10th, 2024. We can't confirm what's happening today to the millisecond, to the very second I'm standing up here on stage.

We've got YouTube and news programs and data on our phones. We know exactly what's going on today, and we can predict things and recite things with milliseconds' worth of accuracy. But if I take 1 ,000 years' step backwards, what's going on now?

We can only be certain about some things back about 1 ,000 years ago, maybe at the day level or the week level or the month level. But we have a good regard of what's going on about 1 ,000 years ago. We know the Viking Age was then, and it came and rose and kind of subsided around that time.

We know about the battled Hastings at 1066. But history is getting a little bit less specific and a little bit more hazy. If we go back another 1 ,000 years to about the time of Christ, we know that Christ lived and died and was crucified and resurrected.

We believe that as Christians about 2 ,000 years ago. Still no controversy. We have good, solid evidence there. Now what about if we go about 1 ,000 years back? Now I might start losing some of you because history gets a little bit more opaque if we go back 1 ,000 more years, about 3 ,000 years ago.

But this is the time of King David. He picked up five stones, put one in a sling like this, and threw one right into Goliath's head, knocked him dead, cut off his head. That happened about 1 ,000 years ago.

This is the time of King David. So if we keep going back, I'm going to run into Moses. Sandwiched in between 2 ,000 B .C. and 1 ,000 B .C., around 1 ,500 B .C. is when Moses lived. And Moses was the recipient of something that God wrote with his own hands.

So Exodus chapter 31 says that God wrote with his own hand on stone tablets the Ten Commandments. And on the fourth of those Ten Commandments, God wrote to Moses, or wrote this to everyone who was receiving it, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. So communication involves a sender and a receiver. The sender in this situation was God himself, the maker of heaven and earth. And he told Moses, I created in six days the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that is in them.

And then Moses conveyed that to the Israelites. So if I was one of the Israelites who was the receiver of that communication, I have some choices because God said for in six days he created everything that I could possibly see around me.

God didn't say, well God could have said it could have created in six seconds, or six minutes, or six months, but God said six days as the Israelites would understand six days. God didn't say you're going to work for six long era and take a break, or six gaps and take a break, or six million years and take a break.

God told them to order their work week with six days and then a Sabbath, and six days and a Sabbath. That's because he could have created in six milliseconds, but he chose to take six ordinary earth rotation days because he's God as the creator and he put us in charge to take dominion over the earth and he wanted us to work in that same cycle.

Six days of work, then a rest. So if I was the receiver of that communication, I have to ask myself this very real question. What did God want me to believe? When God said the fourth commandment and he wrote it on stone with his own hand and I'm the receiver of that and God said for in six days I created everything and he told that to me, am I supposed to spin that or am I supposed to receive it with the authority of God?