When I finally grasped how important Genesis is to Christianity, society, and the meaning of life, I felt like someone had just opened the door to a vast treasure room. How precious the words of Genesis suddenly became! I had once dismissed them as part myth, even as a Christian. So when others step through that door of understanding by correctly connecting Genesis to vital truths, I know the exhilaration they feel. I share with them a passion for believing and defending six-day creation, a real Adam, and the global Flood. Genesis conveys real history—and science confirms it.
One good reason for creation ministry concerns Adam. Christians who swallow the secular story believe that mankind evolved from reptiles and fish through natural processes. In reality, no discovery proves that man shares ancestry with anything other than mankind. Both modern humans and buried remains show that people have always been people. And the Bible supplies the genealogy from Adam to Jesus. 1 Corinthians calls Jesus the last Adam, adding, “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.”1 If the first part of this verse were mere myth, then why trust the last part? Those who assert that we evolved from primates instead of descending from Adam sever the biblical connections between Adam and Jesus, Adam and us, and between Adam and death as a sin-caused intruder into a once “very good” creation.
Attacking Genesis destroys some Christians’ confidence in the rest of the Bible. Many evangelical churches lose most of their youth! The evolutionary story that sounds so scientific at first intimidates young ones into doubting Genesis. Closer inspection reveals that evolution merely masquerades as science, like a book titled Impressive but filled with blank pages.
Gospel preachers rightly teach that Jesus sacrificed Himself in our place when He endured the cross.2 But sadly, some think that Genesis doesn’t matter, even though it teaches death as the penalty for sin, the very reason Jesus had to suffer. Some Christians agree with secular teachings like millions of years of creature death and fossilization. But Christians who adopt this story must reject the plain words of Genesis spoken by the Creator. In other words, evolution undermines Genesis, which leaves the gospel with little or no logical or historical foundation.
Since 1970, ICR origins research has shown how science confirms Genesis. Lord willing, we will continue to share the good news that the risen Lord Jesus, the last Adam, really is “the way, the truth, and the life.”3 After all, Genesis contains the right record of where we came from and why we so desperately need salvation.
References
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
