This post was suggested by an article I recently read from Creation Ministries International. This is a ministry, as its name suggests, that specializes in the explanation and defense of the opening chapters in Genesis as being accurate, historical and authoritative. I highly recommend it and the publications it produces. You can contact them at Creation.com.
The article referred to Christians, churches and individuals alike, who, for various reasons, downplay the importance of the Old Testament, and especially the first eleven chapters of Genesis, which focuses on the idea of a special work of God as the beginning of our planet, as well as something of the beginning of our history on it.
Without getting into the article’s approach to the subject, may I suggest my own reasons why Genesis 1-11 is important and should be studied and believed, not neglected and rejected.
1. It gives an account of the origin of the earth and its inhabitants that is quite different from the science of our day. It simply says that in the beginning God created….
2. Genesis tells us that it took God six days to create everything, see also Exodus 20:11; 31:17. Evolution requires billions of years for the development of whatever was there in the beginning to develop, to evolve, into everything. I’ve never read an evolutionist who ever said where this “whatever” came from; it’s just there. Some try to get around the time problem by saying that these “days” are really eons of time. However, Genesis describes them as “evening” and “morning,” like any normal day. Further, if eons of time are really involved, then how did vegetation, which was created on the third day, survive without sunlight, which was created on the fourth day?
3. Genesis tells us that man was a unique and separate creation, not just a development from some lower form of animal. Man is not an animal; he was a distinct and separate creation from animals. Nor, as some would tell us, did God take a couple of hominids with which to form a “special relationship”. God formed man out of the dust of the ground, not from an ancestor of apes and monkeys, Genesis 1:7; 3:19.
4. Without Genesis, we have no account of why this world is so messed up, why there are wars, crime, misery in general, or how, as Paul put it, sin entered, Romans 5:12. Genesis tells us that man is a fallen, sinful creature, under the judgment of God and driven out from His presence.
5. Genesis gives us the foundation and background of the Gospel. It contains the very first promise of redemption, when God told Satan, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between her seed and your seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel,” Genesis 3:15.
There is a great deal more we could say about this. Simply put, Genesis is the foundation of the rest of the Bible. Without it, we lose most of what we need to understand it. Indeed, without it, there is little, if any, need for the rest of it.
We need Genesis.