Foundations in Genesis | Rapp Report Weekly 0033 | Striving for Eternity

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Today we have a message from dr. Anthony Silvestro from the equip NorCal fire this is going to be on the importance of the book of Genesis Hope you enjoy this

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Welcome to the rap report with Andrew Rapaport where we provide biblical interpretations and applications

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This is a ministry of striving for eternity For more content or to request a speaker or seminar for your church go to strivingforeternity .org

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So this morning we'll be talking about my favorite book of the Bible Genesis in the title called foundations

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So as pastor Steve said I'm not a real doctor. I'm a dentist so So I hear that all the time of the streets

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So I I've been a dentist for for quite some time now longer than I care to admit Shows my age a little bit

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I went to a small private school for for college where I was a double major in math and chemistry

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So I've got some science backgrounds and as I said, I'm a practicing dentist right now my wife Julie Who supports me wonderfully in both the office and in ministry and then we have one son

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Anthony the third You've seen kicking a soccer ball probably last night So we're gonna have a few screens here of some things

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I want you to think about an association for each one of these work clothes laws

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Originally, everyone is made male or female biblical marriage

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One man one woman Death As a result of sin the concept of a week

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God the Creator And this list can go on and on and on it's been all hour doing this

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So what do all these biblical concepts have in common? Obviously the foundations found in Genesis So we understand work

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Now, sorry work is not part of just the fall We were supposed to tend the garden right but what happened is work became laborious as a result of sin

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And we see that in Genesis 3 Clothes why do we wear them and thankfully we all wear them right comes from Genesis laws

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We see the first commands given to Adam in Genesis 2 Everyone being made male and female now.

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Look I know that there are certain genetic mutations that happen today Hermaphrodites and whatnot, but part of God's original creation was everyone made male and female

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Biblical marriage one man one woman we see this coming from Genesis 2

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Where Eve was brought to Adam? Concept of a week.

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Have you thought about this? We understand astronomy where we get a day because of what not because of the

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Sun which was created a for we get a day Because of the Earth's rotation on its axis right one rotation gives us 24 hours

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We understand a month Because of the cycle with the moon We understand a year because that's the amount of time it takes for the earth to go around the

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Sun But where does a concept of a week come from? Genesis 1 it's the only place that comes from see what

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I find ironic Is that while the atheists are trying to take God out of everything and trying to remove?

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Everything they possibly can I'm trying to figure out what they're gonna do with the work week Like I think

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I shorten it to five they're gonna because seven days only comes from the Bible So they got some work to do if they're gonna try to eradicate

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God out of everything animal sacrifice Would you believe it had its start in the garden and we're gonna talk about that a little bit later, too

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And then obviously God the Creator comes from Genesis But today we have a major problem in the church

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Not your church But most churches today and What is this problem?

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It's the problem of of us and if we can do one thing today Let's eradicate the term

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Bible story from our vocabulary Let's erase that completely and let's instead use

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Bible historical accounts or Bible history Because that's what this is.

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It's history because when we use the term story today, what does that sound like?

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Fiction fairy tale fable, right? So so that's the connotation today. We have to get away from the word story and use

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Bible historical accounts And we see this especially in Sunday schools everywhere

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We're using the term story with children and the thing is is that children especially if your kids go to public school

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They're getting Bible stories in church and then they're being taught the truth in school

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That's what's happening So we've got to be really careful with our language And so we have something like this where we've all heard this story right, so the princess kisses the frog and the frog turns into a prince and we all understand that to be a fairy tale and This is the type of story or fairy tale that the

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Bible is being accused of giving and We are unfortunately propagating at times with our language

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Now one thing I think was really funny about this is that in the end? I I would agree that this is a fairy tale right that the frog turns into a prince and yet evolution teaches that amphibians turned into You can't make this stuff up So but the whole point we've got to teach

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Bible history accounts And and I hope we can gain an appreciation this morning that these are his historical accounts that we see in Genesis And then we teach them as fact because we're gonna find that this is the underpinning of the entire

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Bible What we see happen in Genesis 1 through 3 Leads to what we find through the restoration in the rest of the

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Bible and so here's one great story Historical account

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I was gotcha So Noah's Ark is God describes the ark in three verses here in the

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Bible in 614 through 616 make yourself an ark of gopher wood make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and outside with pitch and This is how you should make it the length of the ark shall be 300 cubits.

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It's with 50 cubits, and it's height 30 cubits You shall make a window for the ark

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And you shall finish it to a cubit from above and set the door of the ark in its side You shall make it with lower second and third decks

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Now when we understand cubits there's a Standard cube and there's a royal cube the standard cubit was around 18 inches per cubit the royal cubit was somewhere around 21 to 23

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Inches we're not really sure what it is Basically an ark is going to give you somewhere between 450 and 500 feet long

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That's a massive ship That's not this little Thing the little tugboat

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In fact if you go visit the Creation Museum From answers in Genesis in Kentucky you will see a ship that is 510 feet long that they built because they believe it was based off the royal cubit

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So let me ask you then when we walk through Sunday school Or we walk through our children are our

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Bible bookstores, and we see kids books on the flood and Noah's Ark Do we see pictures like this?

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Now that does not look like a ship to me What about this one now other than the cute pandas who my favorite animal?

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Does this look like anything I mean at least they've got a few splashes of waves right I mean something like a flood

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But these don't accurately depict a Bible historical account

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This makes it look like what a fairy tale a fictional story Instead we need to be showing what

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Noah's Ark probably looked like a massive ship With actual dimensions that can handle waves up to a hundred feet according to research

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It was about 20 years ago and think about this when the

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Bible especially the book of Genesis is questioned by people It's usually gonna be questioned.

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Why because of science or some science out there, right? That's that's often the interplay that we see where I think that we gained a little bit of an appreciation yesterday

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And and we're gonna see that the rest of the morning today that God and science are perfectly compatible in fact it goes even further than that because God Created science why

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I? believe in large part because it's part of the Dominion mandate as We are to have

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Dominion of his creation and understand his creation better They gave a science to help us do that and Yet what we're finding is that science is often put into this category that is against the

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Bible and So when this is done when people say that you can question the Bible because of some of the science out there

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Then they can also question many other things in the Bible especially some things that we would hold very near and dear to our hearts things like the virgin birth

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Things like bringing dead people back to life Which has happened to every single believer here today, how about walking on water?

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Turning water into wine or maybe even Jesus himself being raised from the dead I mean we as Christians believe some pretty crazy things we believe in a talking donkey an axe head that floats

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Right that all seem to fly in the name of against conventional science

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But this creation versus evolution issue, which is really what undermines

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Genesis and Attempts to undermine the entire Bible, and I want you to think about this for a moment

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Why so Andrew when he was speaking yesterday? He went over Romans 1 verses 18 to 22, and he said that everyone knows the true

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God exists by his creation Wouldn't it make a lot of sense as to why?

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The biggest attack on the church today would be evolution

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The very creation that testifies to his existence that nobody can deny is

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The one thing that is being attacked today What's interesting is that when we look at different issues within the church we can have discussions about eschatology

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I'm sure not. I'm sure that not everybody here agrees on on end times I'm sure not everyone agrees about certain other topics in the

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Bible and we would still consider ourselves with an orthodoxy on some very minor topics and People try to say this about creation evolution but I would tell you that this debate is different vastly different and Why is that?

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Because when we're talking about things like end times, what is each of our starting points? It's the

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Bible Right, we are starting with Scripture the place we're supposed to start in any debate

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But is that really the starting point for evolution? It's not

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Because I would say this if we look through the Bible, how do we get an age of the earth?

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Well, we get it by adding up genealogies. So you thought when you read Genesis 5 it was like counting sheep to go to sleep right and Instead no

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God put Genesis 5 there for a reason Where so -and -so begat so -and -so begat so -and -so begat so -and -so and soon you're asleep

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No, it's there for a reason and it's to show that they're they're actually real people and That we have a string of real people connecting

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Adam The first man all the way to what we read in 1st

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Corinthians 15 To be the last Adam Jesus Christ and when we add up those genealogies and historical accounts

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From Adam and Eve being created on the sixth sixth day All the way to Jesus we get about 4 ,000 years

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We know Jesus was about 2 ,000 years ago. Hence. We get about a 6 ,000 year age of the earth

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That is our starting point when we believe in Evolution and millions of years.

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Where does the millions of years come from? We're gonna dive into this here in a few minutes. And this is what

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I want you to think about here Where does the millions to billions of years come from? Does it come from starting with Scripture?

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Or does it come from somewhere else? See when we talk to evolutionists professing

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Christians who believe in evolution They will do everything they can to try to reinterpret passages in the

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Bible To come up with their millions of years But make no mistake about it.

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It was not their starting point Their starting point is what secular science says and they're trying to take that and impose it into the

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Bible Very we have to be very clear on this distinction

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We also see that in the Bible ten times the beginning of Genesis.

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God says he created everything after its own Kind to reproduce after its own kind Does he ever say he takes a kind and changes it into another kind?

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No, so evolution. Where is its starting point? Is it the Bible or is it somewhere else?

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Right, so these are things again we got to keep in mind here and Obviously, this is where the underpinnings come from and and what the resultant is

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Is that when our starting point is the Bible we understand that we're not made after monkeys Or something like a monkey.

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We were actually created in the image of God we share certain communicable attributes with God and Being created in the image of God he is our absolute authority and Thus he can be our absolute authority on things like moral issues, which

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Andrew covered yesterday One of the great apologetic apologetic arguments we can use

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But if your starting point is evolution That means you at some point came from something like a monkey

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You know you as scientists would today say that we share a common ancestor with the monkey -like creature

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Which if you trace it back far enough in time it brings us all the way back to something like pond scum

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That had no reason other than random chemical chance Reactions that did nothing but obey the laws of chemistry and physics to come together and Eventually create everything we see today.

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Where does morality come from? This was the point that Andrew was making yesterday

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When when you mix the vinegar and baking soda it just is how does that all of a sudden translate into morality and the thing is is that when we talk about the law of Christ and His word and we talk about law of evolution these are in direct opposition to one another

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They cannot be amalgamated. Let me assure you I tried for years

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To try to amalgamate the two they don't go together so we have guys out there like atheist

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Lawrence Krauss atheist Lawrence Krauss who is a physicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio Then moved on to Arizona State It got real famous down there and one of the things secular scientists say is that through certain reactions?

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We can't get above iron on the periodic table of elements So where did all these big -time heavy metals come from that we see out there today of which some of which are in our bodies?

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That we couldn't exist without some of these heavier elements in us And so what science says some science says is that you must have had stars that exploded

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That were capable they were hot enough capable of making these elements threw them out in the universe somehow some of them landed on earth

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And that is what became part of us. So you got guys like Lawrence Krauss who says well We're just recycled stardust forget

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Jesus He didn't die for us stars did Yep, exact quote if anybody wants to know where it is.

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I can email it to you. You'll see you'll listen to him say it So in essence, we're just stardust bumping in a stardust if evolution is true

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Pond scum dirt, I'm not sure which but is there a problem if you have dirt putting a hole in pond scum

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All right. I mean it sounds ridiculous. But when we understand morality Why would murder be wrong if evolution is true if survival the fittest is true?

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So, why would murder be wrong, why would abortion be wrong homosexuality who cares right pornography racism

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All these things are fine without a moral standard if our underpinnings are really just random chemical reactions in the ground

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And we weren't designed by God Why does any of this stuff matter Again, all stuff that Andrew covered yesterday and these are the underpinnings we see them in in Genesis So let's understand

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Genesis in time a little bit better when we take the Bible And it's word that this earth and the universe are only about 6 ,000 years old and we divide

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The time up that we see in the 6 ,000 years. We see that we had creation corruption catastrophe and confusion

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So those you familiar with Ken Ham and his seven seas of history Well will recognize these we see

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Christ in the cross and then in the end we see Consummation and we know that this period is a 6 ,000 year period

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Genesis is About 2 ,000 years of that history What we read in the beginning of Genesis in the first 11 chapters is a third of all

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Bible history and the reality is

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God's plan of redemption as I said earlier is based on what happened in Genesis Genesis is the key to understanding what we see in the rest of the

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Bible going from a literal six -day creation to Adam and Eve To the fall and the promises of a

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Savior we see all of this in just the first three chapters See in the beginning God created perfectly

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Us being the pinnacle of his creation. I mean think about this billions of trillions of stars that we know of today

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That in Genesis on day four he just says he made the Sun the moon Oh and the stars also as like an afterthought and then he gets into the birds of the air and the fish of the sea and the beasts of the earth and then he comes to the pinnacle of creation the crowning glory of his creation

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Human beings created in his image and he did this perfectly

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He did not design death in his original creation because what did he give for every one of us as food including the animals?

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fruits and seeds and plants as a read in Genesis and Then what happens?

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Adam and Eve sin Through their sin brings in death disease pain suffering thorns and thistles all the bad things we see today are brought into creation and Then the rest of the

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Bible we see the plan of redemption So let's break this down a little bit further now

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Genesis 2 verses 15 to 17. We talked about laws starting in Genesis and this is where it starts the

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Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to Work it and keep it and the Lord God commanded the man is saying you may surely eat of every tree of the garden

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But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat From the day that you eat of it.

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You shall surely die So who did God speak to here Adam Eve wasn't created yet.

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What would happen to him if he ate of the tree? He would die

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Okay, we're gonna come up to this in just a moment now So now we get to the fall

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Genesis 3 1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the

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Lord God had made He said to the woman did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

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Now obviously it's good to have a few verses here, right? What happened next after that command is

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God said that Adam needed a helper Rather than just create

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Eve right away. What did he do? He paraded the birds of the air The beasts of the earth all in front of Adam for him to name one after another as I walked past him

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Beasts of the earth included monkeys and chimpanzees and apes

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None of which were a suitable helper for him. So God showed Adam None of them were suitable helpers and then he created

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Eve Brought him together into marriage and there's one of the verse

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I'm gonna leave out here in just a moment And I'll bring up in just a moment So the serpent said to the woman did

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God actually say you should eat of any tree in the garden? We're not sure where Adam is right at this moment

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He's probably right next to her we'll find out a couple verses later that he was certainly there to take the fruit from her and Not throw it away, but take another bite himself

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So we're not sure when he arrived on the scene he was probably the entire time but we can't be dogmatic about this

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But I want you to notice something here the serpents challenge was Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

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What's wrong with this? Was that the command actually given?

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No What I find so interesting about this verse and I could talk for days about just Genesis 1 through 3

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What's so interesting about this verse is that? Think about when we listen to guys like Joel Osteen out there or in your neck of the woods

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Bill Johnson Right who uses because Joel doesn't actually open his

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Bible. I don't think I've ever seen that right but Bill Bill Attempts to use scripture and they just change it just a little bit and What does it do it makes the whole thing?

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Wrong Now without being dogmatic here either what exactly happened did

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Adam not teach his bride correctly. Did she just not listen correctly? We don't know but something got lost here, right?

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Because in the very next verse and the woman said of the serpent We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden

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But God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden Neither shall you touch it lest you die

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Okay Okay, did Eve get it right no, so something's wrong here, too and Just then the serpent sees his opening right?

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She wasn't armed with scripture With God's Word there and the challenge comes but the serpent said of the woman you will not surely die direct contradiction to what

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God said For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil

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So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was delight to the eyes and that the tree was To be desired to make one wise she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate

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Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths at the end of Genesis 2 after the animals were paraded in front of Adam and he names them and Then God puts him to sleep

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Creates Eve out of his rib brings him to her as his wife the last verse of Genesis 2 verse 25 says and they were naked and not ashamed and you're like Whoa, what's this verse doing in here?

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Right? It just seems out of context until we read to the next chapter where it says that their eyes were opened and They knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together immediate spiritual death

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Now there's a lot of guys out there a lot of false teachers out there that would say that it ends right there spiritual death but if we read through Genesis 3

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We get to Genesis 3 19 as God is is talking about the curse through of creation

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Cursing the serpent above all else. He ends with this. He says for you are dust and To dust you shall return the promise of future physical death

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So yesterday when both Andrew and Mark talked about God's mercy and Andrew specifically talked about the mercy

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God gives us in every breath that we take That's exactly what happened here in the garden as R .c.

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Sproul says in his book on the holiness of God Could God have killed Adam and Eve right then and there?

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sure But he let them live another day and another day and another day

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As a result of his mercy Same thing that we see today in the world

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I'll also point out one other thing here Workspace based righteousness, where did it start from?

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They sewed themselves fig leaves to cover it up Probably never saw that one before it

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What's interesting though is when we see this in Genesis 1 through 3 and God's cursing creation from Genesis 3 7 through Genesis 3 19

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We see a little light that is inserted right in the center of it in Genesis 3 15

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And he says this and I will put enmity between you and a woman speaking to the serpent here and between your seed and hers

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He will crush your head and you will strike his heel Who is God talking about here?

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Jesus the Savior the future Messiah Take away for the sins of the world.

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We're gonna get back to that in a moment Genesis while it's being taught as a fable by many people

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We need to understand what the New Testament actually teaches about Genesis see every writer of the

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New Testament books and All except three small New Testament books gives a direct reference the beginning of Genesis Assuming it is literal history we see numerous accounts of the creation account original sin

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Adam and Eve Noah's Ark the flood being mentioned throughout the New Testament as historical accounts in the

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Bible One of these is a real important one first Corinthians 15

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Verse 45 so it is written the first man Adam became a living being the last

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Adam a life -giving spirit The spiritual did not come first But the natural and after that the spiritual the first man was of the dust of the earth the second man is of heaven

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We have Adam being linked to Christ Adam has to be literal

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Has to be literal So it's not just in the genealogies that we see this which is not only in Genesis 5

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But we all see in two of the gospel accounts But we also see in both

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Romans and first Corinthians here that Adam is is Forever linked to Christ first Adam and last

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Adam So we're gonna diverge from this for a moment and we're gonna wrap all this up here in a little bit

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So how old is the earth we said earlier? It's about 6 ,000 years We get 2 ,000 years when we read the

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Bible literally By adding up genealogies from Adam To Abraham get about 2 ,000 years from Abraham to Jesus get about 2 ,000 years and from Jesus to today

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We get about 2 ,000 years about 6 ,000 years. There's some great treatises out There annals of the world by Archbishop Usher is a fantastic book

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If you've got time to read a book about this thick he goes through a nitty -gritty detail I know he comes up with his not only year of 4004

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BC, but comes up with an actual day and time He believes to be correct But unbelievable research and I'm not gonna be dogmatic about that either but unbelievable on a research

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He's done with biblical sources in the Bible as well as extra biblical sources and good historical accounts out there to come up with his date

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And to verify the date What's really cool about the genealogies just understand some things about it is there's some great charts out there

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And it's a little hard to see on this screen here, but when we have Adam who lived to be 930 years old

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If you draw a line down from the end of Adams life he was old enough That he could have directly spoken with Lamech Noah's father

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It's fascinating and we go on further that if we look at Shem Who is one of the three sons of Noah on the ark

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That Shem Lived long enough to know Abraham or could have known Abraham just by stacking the genealogies in fact to get from Adam to Moses who wrote the first five books of the

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Bible You've only got to go through six different people to get there coming alive now, isn't it?

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Yet while we have all of this from the one witness of creation the one witness of origins

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We then look at secular scientists that say well The universe is really 13 and a half billion years old and then after a period of cooling we had the earth develop

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We had the earth develop and that's about four and a half billion years old And so we have a lot of professing

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Christians today that try to take these millions of years that they don't know how to combat And they try to add them in somewhere

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Into the Bible. So what they're trying to do is again not use the Bible to come up millions of years they're trying to take the millions of years from secular science and import it into the

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Bible and they've got some problems here because when our genealogical record gives six thousand years from Adam on day six all the way to today there's not any places that you can stick millions of years in and And that's why they've come up with some different theories out there the two most prominent ones being day age theory and gap theory

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Gap theory you may have heard as ruin reconstruction. That's one of the terms they use Lucifer's flood theory

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Those are all very related very close So we'll talk about how to combat these here day age theory.

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This is the idea that if I would say It took me a day to drive to wherever to Utah You would understand what

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I meant by the context of the word day If I would say that back in my father's day, he had to walk uphill in his bare feet both ways to school

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You would understand that context era time if I said that I I went to the park during the day

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You'd understand that context right same word three different three different meanings But all based on the context of the sentence around the word

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So, let's look at the word Yom, which is usually translated day, but sometimes translated era of time

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The word is used somewhere around 2300 times in the Old Testament What's interesting is the only place it's questioned is where?

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Genesis, of course So when we understand the context of the word day again, we understand what it means depending on the context of the sentence around it

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When we look at Hebrew texts the word Yom means a 24 -hour a day when it appears with several things

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The word morning the word evening and an ordinal number There's a difference between ordinal and cardinal numbers right ordinal is first or second or third

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But we know that the word Yom means a day when we see this So, how does it used in Genesis 1?

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Outside of Genesis 1 we see that day plus an ordinal number occurs 410 times

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Evening and morning the words evening morning together without the word day occurs 38 times

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The words evening and morning together with the word day occurs 23 times

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Outside of Genesis 1 and night with day occurs 52 times in each one of these instances when we see this guess what the word

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Yom means a Literal 24 -hour day. So now let's look at Genesis 1

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God called the light day and the darkness he called night and there was evening and there was morning the first day

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Okay, Genesis 1 8 and there was evening and there was morning the second day So what do we think

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God's trying to tell us? First day think it's a day second day.

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He should understand it. It's a day third day case. You're a little thick in the head It's a day fourth day fifth day

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Six day like what's your problem? This is a day Right. I think

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God made this very clear And what's interesting is that when you have people that ask you well, do you really know that in this instance?

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It's still a 24 -hour day. I love to ask this question to people Okay, if you were

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God How would you tell us If it was only a 24 -hour day, like what what other modifiers could you possibly use than what we see here?

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To clearly communicate. It was a 24 -hour day because I think God did a pretty clear job right here in telling us

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And if that's not enough to convince you

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I've had this conversation with with numerous pastors over the last several years. I Love to ask this question, too.

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I'll ask a pastor. What is Exodus 20? Thankfully, most of them can tell me it's where the

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Ten Commandments are given to Moses and I say that's correct I say you believe in Exodus 20 in the

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Ten Commandments, don't you and they say yes, and I say well That's good because you know God did speak these to Moses and inscribed them inscribed them himself in the stone tablets when he gave him to Moses And they would say yeah, and I'd say that's wonderful So in Exodus 20 verses 8 through 11, how would you deal with this?

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Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it. Holy six days. You shall labor and do all your work But the seventh day is a

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Sabbath to the Lord your God On it. You shall not do any work neither You know your son or your daughter know your male or female servant or your animals nor any foreigner residing in your towns

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For in six days the Lord made the heavens the earth the sea and all that is in them But he rested on the seventh day.

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Therefore the Lord blessed a Sabbath day made it. Holy our work week

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Six days and resting on the seventh is modeled after what a literal creation week

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It's hard to look. It's hard to be honest and look at Genesis and think that these are errors of time

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When God himself references creation week while he's giving Moses to Ten Commandments.

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I Think it's very very clear here And so what we see is that when we take the days of creation being literal 24 -hour days and Adam being created on the sixth day and Then we can start adding up six thousand years from then

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We get a six thousand year old earth so then he had some people get really really clever and they came up with what's called a gap theory and So the gap theory goes like this.

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It says in the beginning God created the heaven the earth. That's Genesis 1 1 And then it says that and the earth was without form and void

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Genesis 1 2 and then they say Oh, we see a gap.

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So somewhere in here God created decided to destroy the creation and Then he recreated again, and that's why you see the earth was out form and void

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Nowhere, do we see this in Scripture? Nowhere is this reference in Scripture. In fact when you look at the the the

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Hebrew what's called a valve consecutive It shows that these Genesis 1 1 just 1 2 are linked together.

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This is not a new Story, so to speak these these go together. Genesis 1 1 and 1 2 and You can read more about this if you want to get into the technical

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Things on this which is not a good thing to do in a conference like this. I think this just reset

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You can go to answer Genesis website and they've got some wonderful articles that will explain this out really well but the point is is this is that when you take a gap of millions of years and put it between Genesis 1 1 and Genesis 1 2 and You don't have

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Adam being created until later What is going on in this gap of time?

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Well, you would have death pain disease thorns struggle suffering extinctions

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All placed before what? Adam and Eve sin major major problem

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I Will tell you that if there's one thing that you get out of this entire talk this morning. It is this

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Death is a result of sin Death is the last enemy to be destroyed 1st

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Corinthians 15 26 God did not use a bad thing over millions of years

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Killing and killing and killing and killing and killing to finally get to human beings the pink of his creation

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So whether you understand all the specifics of gap theory or even the day -aged theory

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Just remember you can't have death before sin. We can't have a fossil record.

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That is millions of years old signifying millions of years of death and disease and suffering

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That would have occurred before Adam and Eve sin somewhere after 6 ,000 years ago having said all that it's really fun to go to some of Passive some passage of New Testament, right?

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So Jesus speaking in Mark 10 6 here. He's asked about marriage and How does

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Jesus so I gave an entire talk in this at our conference in New Jersey a couple months ago when we give apologetics if We can't remember details give

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Bible verses use the authority of God's Word and I think Jesus gave a wonderful example here.

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He was asked by the Pharisees about About marriage and divorce and what did he do?

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He goes back and quotes from Genesis 1 Genesis 2 and he says here from the beginning of creation

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God made them male and female and then goes on but the point here is is this if Adam and Eve were created on day six so you got beginning a time you got day six and then you got six thousand years and Jesus says that Adam and Eve were created very near the beginning of creation.

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This would make a lot of sense but if you have Adam and Eve being created

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But before that you have a time that goes way out there of billions to billions of years Then you have

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Adam and Eve and then you have 6 ,000 years and Jesus said from the beginning of creation

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He made them Adam and Eve male and female. Does that make any sense here? No, it seems to contradict what what

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Christ has in his Word and Mark we see in Mark 13 19 that man's suffering started very near the beginning of creation

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Again, this makes sense if Adam and Eve are placed very near the beginning What about Luke 11 verses 50 to 51 where it's indicated that Jesus placed

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Abel Who he calls the first to shed blood? very close to the beginning of creation

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All these consistent with a literal interpretation of Genesis and so as I said earlier gap theory as well as Any other theory out there like day age has to be wrong because they all put death before sin

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Which we know from the Bible can't happen The gap theory makes God's very good in Genesis 131 include death and destruction

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So when God looked back at his creation every day, he says and it was it was good Right and then at the at the end he says

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His creation is very good when he got done This implies a perfect creation

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Would he call it very good if he had millions of years of death disease suffering?

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We have a fossil record that is full of cancerous bones. We see even in dinosaurs Would that be considered very good?

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And so the reality is is we can trust God's Word. We can trust Genesis. I can't tell you how often times

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I walk into churches and I listen to to people who say they believe

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God's Word and then they make excuses for there being a Genesis And and I'll share one quick story here

45:52

I was speaking at a Lutheran Church right by my home I do a lot of filling in for pastors in in my hometown and I go there once every three or four months and speak at the church and I did one talk on creation versus evolution at the end of at the end of my talk one of the older ladies of the church

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Stood up during the Q &A and asked well, don't you think God could have used evolution? And I said no just well, why not?

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I said well just like I said earlier God said he made everything out to reproduce after its own kind.

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He didn't take a kind for another kind She says well, don't you think there could be errors or if something's wrong in the

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Bible? Now me who's you know used to being on the streets and things just come out really quickly.

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I said ma 'am. Are you saved? Quickly look back at the pastor and seemed okay but But I quickly changed the subject

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I said look here's the issue if you are going to arbitrary Arbitrarily look at any aspect of the

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Bible and say that this could be an error Then you can't take any part of it to be true

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You have to question your own salvation because you're you're basing your salvation on the Bible being true in certain passages

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And you're gonna look at other passages and say it's not Possibly true. Well, we've got a problem

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And so this is why it's so important we get this right because I can tell you I see people all the time

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Who say they believe the Bible and then question Genesis and you ask them further questions and talk to him a little bit

47:31

Because when we're on the streets, even if somebody says they're a Christian, I'm gonna talk to him the same way

47:36

I hope they would talk to me Right, you want to know where they're coming from and I can tell you once you ask a few questions

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You start finding out that that something's off in their theology Things are off John MacArthur has said many times

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Tell me what someone believes about Genesis and I will tell you what they believe about the rest of the Bible.

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I Can tell you this is true So we look at original sin.

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It ruined a perfect paradise and because of that sin all the bad things came into the world and our very salvation depends on Jesus being real depends on Adam being real who

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Jesus is linked to through the genealogies We see in Romans 5 the first Adam in the last

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Adam So without a literal creation a literal Adam and Eve literal original sin literal physical death through sin

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Where's the need for a Savior? One of the fun questions

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I like to ask And I shouldn't even say fun because it's actually really really heartbreaking When I was doing the finishing touches on on my book that came out about a year and a half ago

48:50

It's in the back. I Was at a Starbucks now, I don't like to have Starbucks, but Starbucks is a great place of conversations

48:58

I'll give you it's just set up here set up a MacBook And you wear a shirt something about God on it.

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Like people will talk to you. It's great And I was sitting down I'm doing some finishing touches on my book on the computer

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And I'm listening to two guys to the table next to me who were speaking back and forth And it sounded like one was discipling the other and and when they were getting ready to get up and go

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I heard the one say hey, I only got a few minutes left to get going I decided to chime in and I said hey guys I couldn't help but overhear you talk and it turns out that one was a pastor and he was discipling a new believer and And so I talked a little for a few minutes and he goes well, so what are you doing here?

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And I said, well, you know, I'm actually finishing my book on on Biblical creation and biblical apologetics and presuppositional apologetics and and how we use this in biblical evangelism

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Then he goes. Oh, I go Do you do is there something you don't agree with he goes?

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Well, you know, I don't know how much I'd believe in a in a young earth the way you might believe And I and I go

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I'm sorry to hear that pastor I Got a question for you. Why did

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Jesus have to die? Never thought about this.

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I Mean, okay without something ridiculous. I mean, why didn't why didn't Jesus just get put in a corner for timeout?

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Get the rod a few times. I mean why death? Why because that was ascribed as the punishment of sin all the way back in the beginning

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That's why and so after the pastor stumbled and says well

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I don't understand your question. I said, okay, let me try it again Why did why did

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Jesus have to die? I mean he had to die, right and he goes I know you're trying to trick me here and all but I go to the pastor.

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I assure you I'm not trying to trick you and then I gave him the answer. I just gave to you There's a disconnect

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Right to understand the gospel To understand his death on the cross and what it means to pay that penalty of sin and that arise from the dead

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Proving that not only he's human by human blood drug, but he's also God that paid that penalty on the cross

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We have to understand why it was death and it goes back to the beginning goes back to Genesis If we think that death occurred

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For millions to billions of years before Adam Neve sin That death would somehow be a good thing that God used

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Why does he call the last enemy? To be destroyed. Why did he have to conquer it on the cross?

51:55

Through his death burial resurrection Again, Genesis is completely linked with the very gospel of which we are being saved

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So as we finish up here because you know, I know Andrews keeping time on me as he always does I got just a few minutes left

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There's a great story to that I'll probably let him tell you that later and then I'll correct it after that So Original sin

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Adam and Eve realized that they were naked they cover themselves with fig leaves, right the first the first Showing of workspace righteousness, right?

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They cover themselves and they quote -unquote hid from God Now here's another great linking here for you

52:43

Andrew in talking about Romans 1 yesterday said that everyone knows the true

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God exists by his creation and Those who don't acknowledge him are suppressing the truth in their sin, right and So I want you to have a picture of this of what this suppression looks like Because when when when we talk about suppression, this is an active force of suppression

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I want you to think about on one of your beautiful beaches here or or your swimming pools Stand in a swimming pool and take a beach ball and try holding underwater

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You have to forcibly hold this down And the harder you push the harder it right?

53:29

This isn't this is active suppression that's going on What did

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Adam actively do here? He hid

53:44

Before we were believers and we sinned. What did we do? We attempted to hide the exact same way

53:53

You know, we see this going again all the way back to Genesis Of course

53:59

God looked at their workspace righteousness and said well, that's not good enough Because what did he do right after that he made garments of skin animal skin

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For Adam and his wife and he clothed them. And so we see the first animal sacrifice happened right there in the garden and that animal sacrifice

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Then set the standard for what we see in the entire Old Testament all of which being a foreshadowing of what

54:34

The sacrificial lamb on the cross Again where is its foundation?

54:43

Genesis So you guys being out here in in California you you love movies, right you love

54:52

Hollywood, I'm sure no All right. Now be honest. How many people know the the the game six degrees of Kevin Bacon?

55:01

Remember that game, right? So for those of you don't know this this game Kevin Bacon's been a lot of movies

55:06

It's like a role like a like a side role guy and the game used to go like this They would say they would give an actor's name and you would have to take that actor and connect them to Kevin Bacon through movies

55:17

So you connect this actor to another actor who in this movie together and then this actor who is with this actor in this movie?

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And then this actor is in this actor and you can always get to Kevin Bacon within six steps it's a wild right and And you know the game was that if you could do it in less steps than the other one you win the game and Here's my challenge to you today

55:40

Think of any biblical doctrine See how long it takes you to connect it to Genesis And I think you're gonna find you're gonna do every one of them in one to two steps.

55:54

You're gonna beat Kevin Bacon So we've got two options for the history of death in this world as we close up here

56:02

When we don't take the Bible literally we have creation we have millions of years then we would have

56:08

Adam and Eve and This presents the problem because sin is after Adam and Eve but yet Death would be put before Adam and Eve would be put before their sin

56:19

Ever my I've repeated this now. I think four times right now. It's an important concept Therefore what effect does the fall really have?

56:29

Not so much When we take the Bible at its word we see six perfect days in creation

56:35

We see the fall from sin and as a result we see death and we know that Christ conquers death in the end

56:49

Order of creation is a problem as well in the Bible. We see that the earth was created before the stars

56:56

Evolutionists would say that stars came before the earth by many billions of years. The Bible says birds came before reptiles

57:04

Evolution says reptiles were before birds in the Bible The earth was made of water first and the dry land appeared in evolution.

57:12

It was once a fiery mass Eventually cooled and water somehow appeared in the Bible. We have land plants and then the

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Sun Which would not be a problem because the Sun was created on the fourth day pretty quickly and there was already light present

57:26

We didn't need the Sun for light because light was already there from the beginning In evolution says the Sun would have been first then many billions of years later the earth and the land plants and Obviously in the

57:35

Bible, it's man before death and evolution says death leading to man Evolution and the

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Bible are not compatible whatsoever billions of years not compatible whatsoever

57:51

But we still have some guys that say well What about plants because if Adam and Eve and the animals were eating plants?

57:57

Well, then you're killing plants and they're dying, right? Not so fast See there's a word called nefesh that is used to describe

58:09

What people it's like the living breath what people and animals have it was not ascribed to plants

58:16

Plants are said that they they say they wither that they don't actually die in the

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Bible not in the same sense So we aren't killing plants and we eat them unlike some of the vegans

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That are out here in California Because everything starts here guys, and then it comes across the country and comes to us in,

58:35

Ohio And then we know we can blame you from two years earlier Plants do not scream when you eat them, but you're not hearing the cauliflower yell what you're chewing in them

58:49

It is ridiculous but This I think is the most important part here and and we're gonna explore this a little bit further in my second talk

59:00

Is when you compromise with millions of years? When you put death before sin

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When you say that death was used by God To create everything we see today all the way up to the pinnacle of his creation us human beings

59:16

How do you explain tragedy? Because if you Put death on God and you say that he is the author of death

59:28

Then all the death and the suffering in this world be whose fault God's Instead we know that that's not true.

59:37

What does the Bible say? death and suffering is our fault very very important distinction here

59:48

So on that I thank you. We are here the rest of the day today.

59:54

We'll be here all day tomorrow Andrew will be coming up next to speak about About Bible and Bible texts and their authenticity and I'll be talking about after that and finish up a conference with how to answer all those

01:00:09

Objections that you will hear on the street or from family members or friends. And so we're gonna go over over those things today

01:00:16

I want you to know that we as striving fraternity are here to help and just Because when we leave here does not mean you cannot reach out to us.

01:00:24

Pastor Steve is our contact info We have it on the back if you guys have any questions at any point call us email us

01:00:31

We are happy to help and anything we can possibly help you guys with going forward so our hearts are about equipping and teaching and for you guys to be sent out and Go and do this

01:00:44

This evangelism is not for the specially called. There's no everybody is specially called everybody and So we want to equip and that's where our hearts are is is we're here for you guys.

01:00:58

So, please I Know the lot of speakers at conferences don't want to be bothered. That is not us.

01:01:03

We want to be bothered Please come bother us. Come talk to us. Come ask us questions. That's what we're here for the next couple of days

01:01:10

I'm gonna go over a couple of books real quick So I'm gonna start with mine because I really it's shiny and his aren't shiny

01:01:21

His are a matte finish so So, you know on the origin of species

01:01:28

Darwin's book I decided to rip off Darwin on the origin of kinds and These are the actual finch drawings of Charles Darwin and You know,

01:01:40

I wanted a theist be able to pick up this book and get tricked and start reading it But you know one of the things we want to do in this book is we wanted to be able to give you an answer

01:01:50

In every question that you could possibly get we know that the number one reason why people don't evangelize

01:01:55

Christians Don't evangelize is because they are afraid of the questions or challenges that they will be asked It's why we're gonna go over a number of them today, but they are in this book

01:02:05

We mix together biblical evangelism pre suppositional apologetics We'll go into a lot more detail than what

01:02:11

Andrew was even able to cover yesterday did a marvelous job yesterday You're gonna get a lot more of the underpinnings of it in this book As well as how to answer those most frequently asked questions if you master what's in this book

01:02:23

You will have nothing to worry about you can talk to the layman or a PhD scientist the exact same way

01:02:31

It is remarkable and I'll teach you some of those things today Again all at a lay level.

01:02:38

I know pre suppositional apologetics sounds difficult We took a long time to break this down into very simple concepts for all of us to use

01:02:45

What do they believe is pastor Andrews first book There's kingdom of the cults out there.

01:02:52

It's a fantastic fantastic book what Andrew does is he goes through Their own documents their own sources and shows you what they believe

01:03:03

There's nothing out there like it It is a fantastic resource in understanding some of the apologetics of where these false religions come from And then what do we believe is again, you can read

01:03:15

Wayne Grudem You can read Andrew Rappaport This you can get done with Very very easy book and I encourage you to look at that I also encourage you to sign up for our free newsletter in the back

01:03:30

I'm so you can keep an eye on what's going on and some of the new things with striving for eternity on that I thank you

01:03:39

This podcast is part of the striving for eternity ministry for more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church