SURVEY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
by
Andrew Corbett
THE ACTS OF GOD
When we talk about God being the Creator, we mean that God is the Creator - ex nihilo. This means that God made everything from absolutely nothing. We accept this by faith (Heb. 11:3).
1. How did God create the world? (Psalm 33:6, 148:5)
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The word 'create' in the Bible is used in two senses. Firstly, to make something out of nothing. It is translated from the Hebrew word 'bara' (to create). Thus the Bible says that God created certain things out of nothing.
2. The word 'bara' is used in relation to what acts of God?
a) Amos 4:13____________________________________________________
b) Psalm 51:10__________________________________________________
c) Isaiah 65:17_________________________________________________
Men of all ages have wrestled with the question - has everything always existed, or did it have a beginning? Even modern science recognises that these questions go beyond its limits of discovery. Philosophy has tried to explain creation in basically two ways -
1. All matter is eternal (it has always existed).
2. There was no creation, and there is nothing real about creation now.
These explanations are hardly acceptable. The answers to these problems of origins may be found in the Bible. There has been an increasing trend on the part of science to take a fresh look at the Bible's account of origins.
The other use of the word 'create' is rendered 'made' in our English translations, and comes from the Hebrew word 'asah'. This means to make something out of something that already exists. This form of creation is often termed intermediate creation.
3. Why is Genesis 2:19 a form of this type of creation?
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Much of what God did in the first two chapters of Genesis was this type of creation. Even mankind was made through the use of existing materials.
4. Note the Genesis accounts of the creation of man and beasts. What seems to be the outstanding difference between the two? (Gen. 2:19 and 2:7)
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Though man and beast were both intermediately created, God put something into man that was 'immediately' created. That sets us apart from all other forms of creation.
5. The following Scriptures are used to support this view. How do they supposedly do this?
a) Isa. 45:18__________________________________________________________
b) Jer. 4:23___________________________________________________________
c) Isa. 14:9 - 11______________________________________________________
d) Ezek. 28:12-19______________________________________________________
This theory believes that after the judgment of God between verses one and two, God began again to create the earth. This would seem to explain how He could call forth the earth to sprout vegetation (Gen 1:11-12) if the seeds of such vegetation were remaining from a previous creation.
PROBLEMS WITH THE GAP-THEORY
The outstanding problem with the Gap Theory is that Scriptures do not explicitly teach it. Most of the theory is comprised by piecing obscure passages together to make them try and relate to the theory. When most of these Scripture portions are examined in context or even cultural setting, they don't say what the Gap teachers claim. Joined with this theory is that whatever existed prior to Adam, and was corrupted by Satan, was killed by the wrath of God's judgment.
6. How does Romans 5:12 say death came into the world?
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The result of God's judgment on these beings, claim the Gap teachers, were dis-embodied spirits - or demons, (the angels that fell with Satan were apparently confined in 'chains' under the earth, 2 Peter 2:4). Again this is only a guess on the part of the Gap teachers, for the Bible does not say that demons are dis-embodied spirits.
7. How would Isaiah 45:18 compare with this view?
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This view does not see any time gap between the first two verses but leaves space somewhere in the account for the casting out of Satan, which must have taken place before Genesis 3:1.
8. How would Exodus 20:11 compare with this view?
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Another view is that the six days actually refer to the 'ages' or periods of time. The idea is that God created through the use of evolution over a long period of time. This is referred to as Theistic Evolution.
9. How would Genesis 2:7 align with this view of an evolutionary process?
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With the first mentioned view of creation being The Gap Theory, the second view being Day=Age Theory, the third view is that the six days are literal six days. The day is used differently throughout the Scripture. It can mean the opposite to night, or indefinite periods of time (Deut. 32:35; 2Cor. 6:2). Yet, the picture given in Genesis seems to present six literal days. Five arguments are used in support of this view -
(i) The use of the term 'evening and morning' consistently means 24 hours.
(ii) Exodus 20:11
(iii) The appearance of the sun and the moon to rule the day and the night.
(iv) The interdependence of the created universe.
(v) The use of numerals before the word day.
(For further reading on this argument, refer to the notes on Genesis
in the Old Testament Survey by the same author).
How old does the Bible say the earth actually is? It doesn't! Men have surmised from the pages of Scriptural genealogies that the age of the earth is somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years old. In the seventeenth century, Bishop Ussher placed the date of creation at 4004 BC. This presumed that all the genealogies in the Bible are complete. A study of the genealogies in the Old Testament reveals that they are not complete, and this presents dangers for anyone trying to estimate lengths of time based on them. A clear example of this is found actually in the New Testament. Matthew opens up his gospel by using the typical Hebrew approach to genealogies when he deliberately uses just fourteen generations three times within Christ's own genealogy.
Others have suggested that the earth was actually at a mature age when it was created. For example, how old was Adam when he was first created? Possibly he would have looked like a mature man.
10. Why did God create the worlds? (Ps. 8:1; 19:1; Isa. 40:5; 1 Chron. 16:29)
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(1 Cor. 10:31)
Amen.