Gen. 3:10-11  "And he (Adam) said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.  And he (God) said, Who told thee that thou wast naked?  Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?"

God spoke to Adam.  When God speaks to a human, that person knows it.   Remember the moment that God spoke to you and called you to respond to him.  You knew.

Adam knew.  God was talking to him.  Instead of being glad that God was coming to the garden to see him,  Adam was afraid.  Adam didn't want to see God right then.

When  my children were small and did something they were told not to do, the fellowship with me was broken.  I was not happy with them.  I wasn't interested in why they did it,  I just wanted them to promise me that they wouldn't do that again.  They had broken the fellowship, but they had not broken the relationship.   I was still their Mother.


When fellowship has been damaged, the only way to fix it is to apologize.  The only way to fix your fellowship with God is to repent.  Tell him how sorry you are.  Admit your guilt.  

I wonder what would have happened if Adam had fallen on his knees and begged God to forgive him? But he didn't.  He blamed someone else for what he did.  Adam was not repentant.

Gen. 3:8-9  "And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.  And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?"

It must have been a dense forest for them to think they could hide from God.  God knew where to look.  He knew where they were.

In the cool of the day.  I like that.  It means that they had temperature variation in Eden.  It wasn't a bland place with static weather.  At some point in the day, it cooled off.

God walked.  I like that, too.  God was in the garden.  God walked.  Now just how that happened, I have no Idea.  Did he take on the form of the man he would someday become--Jesus?   Jesus is God.  He was here in the beginning.  (That is just  thinking point.)  I really don't think I will ever understand all I have read about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.  They are One.

In John 1:1-3 John tells us,  "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  The same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.  Do you remember that old hymn--In the Garden?  "And he walked with me and he talked with me, and he told me I was his own..."

So God said, "Where art thou?"  Where are you.  Where ever you are, God will find you.  He knows exactly what you are hiding behind.  And you can be sure it's going to take more than fig leaves to cover up whatever you've done.  It's going to take blood.

And so they both were pronounced dead.  They just didn't know what that meant yet.  But their innocence was shattered.   But wait, it gets worse.

Gen. 3:7  "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons."

The serpent was right about one thing:  Their eyes were opened.  But the serpent was wrong about everything else.  They were not gods.  They were "dead man walking"--as they call the prisoner who is condemned to die.

They were reduced to fear, crawling about finding leaves to cover up the very part of themselves that God had intended for their good, for their pleasure.  When he created them, the first words that he said to them was to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.  Have sexual relations with each other.  You were joined together:  bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.  (Gen. 2:23)  God wanted more of them.  He wanted Adam and Eve to re-plenish the earth.

God intended us to be joined.  He intended for our reproduction to be under his blessing.  He intended for us to be faithful.  To be one with each other.

But now, Adam and Eve are ashamed of their reproductive parts, hence the need for an apron.

And then they heard something.  And they hid.
   

Gen. 3:4-5  "And the serpent said unto the woman,  Ye shall not surely die:  For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."

Half truths:  The evil one spoke in half truths.  Give someone a truth to cover up a lie.

1.  "Ye shall not surely die."  Death came.   They lost access to the Tree of Life.

2.  "I know what God thinks and knows."  The serpent knew one thing.  That the tree was forbidden.

3.  "On the very day you eat, your eyes will be opened. "  Opening your eyes, meant that the serpent knew something that God didn't.  God said nothing about "Opening your eyes".        

4.  "You will be like gods, knowing good and evil."  There is one God.  Mankind will never be like God.

The devil, satan, evil one, always tells half truths that lead you astray if you listen.  Sin sounds good.  Looks good.  May even be very satisfying in the moment.  But later...there is a payoff.

In Romans 3:6, we find that, "The wages of sin is death."  Wages were not gold or money.  The people Paul was writing to all knew what a wage was.   It was a script of some sort that, for instance, Roman solders were paid with.  When they went back to Rome they could turn the script in for money.  You couldn't spend script.

Script was something that paid off "later".  In other words, the pay off "later" (the wage of sin) was death.  The pay off later of sin is eternal death.

The serpent ( the beautiful winged creature) asked Eve a question.  Eve listened.  Then she answered:

Gen. 3:2-3  "And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:  But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden,  God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it,  (she should have stopped right there) neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die."

I guess Adam told her about the tree.  (Remember, Eve wasn't even created when God told Adam about the  trees.)  I guess Adam told her they were not to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, or they would die.  Did Adam tell her that it was the tree of knowledge of good and evil?  Or as Eve told the serpent, it was "...the tree...in the midst of the garden."   Either way, she knew there was a specific tree in the garden from which she wasn't supposed to eat.

Were they standing by the tree?  Or did she follow the serpent to where the tree was--further adding to the first thing she did that was wrong--listening to the serpent?  One step at a time she was allowing herself to be led into temptation.  We do the same thing.  We listen.  We turn.  We look.  We touch.  We take a first step in a direction we ought not go.  One step at a time, we sin.  We do the thing God has told us not to do.

Then she did something that women (I'm a woman so I know how this goes,) seem to have particular difficulty with.  She made the story better.  She added something to the story to make it more dramatic.  She said "...niether shall ye touch it, lest ye die."  God didn't say that.  I don't know what Adam said.  Did he add the part about not touching it?  Or did Eve come up with that on her own?

Gen. 3:1  "Now the serpent was more subtil (subtle, sneaky) than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.  And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?"

Women love beautiful things.  Back in Gen. 2:9, God gave the garden some trees that were for beauty,  ("...pleasant to the sight...")  That was their only purpose.  The evil one knew  Eves' weakness.  The thing that you may not know is that the serpent was not a snake.  It was a beautiful winged creature--which was later cursed by God and forced to crawl on its belly and eat dust. (Gen. 3: 14)

Evil never appears wrapped in 'ugly'.  We are always tempted by something desirable.  Something that we want.  Something that we want to do.  Something that we have to have.  Something that makes us feel better than everyone else.  The forbidden things.  The evil one says, "What's so wrong with that?"

The serpent asked Eve a question.  It made her doubt.  Once you question what is the right thing to do, doing the wrong thing gets easier.

What in the world could be wrong with lingering, listening to a creature that looked so beautiful?

My husband likes to say to the young people we know, "Tell me who you are running with, and I'll tell you what you're doing."

We become like the people we listen to.

And Adam named the animals.   God gave him a job.  God  included man in his work.  He  wanted--he wants--fellowship with His creation.  (Interestingly enough, that pattern continues today.  God has included us.  We are the ones he has charged with the responsibility to spread His gospel to the world.  Christ is born;  He has died for our sins;  He is risen to make intercession with the Father.)

So Adam has Eve.

The animals have names.

The garden is full of trees and fruit vegetables and herbs.

The sun is shining.  No dreary rainy days.  The world is perfect and beautiful.

What else could you want.

Let's see how they can mess this up...the story of every person ever born--mess up your life.

Gen. 2:25  "And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed."

Let's see how they can mess that up!

But now, new animals suddenly appear on the land.  65 million years have gone by without dinosaurs. Scientifically, we find an emergence of completely new animals at the end of this period of 65 million years called the Cenozoic Era.  The time span needed for these new spices to have 'evolved' is statistically impossible.  (Remember I told you that I took a number of statistics classes at the Master's level because I was curious.)  This gives the scientific community a problem.  You only have two choices:  1.  The theory of evolution (which might work on the dinosauric age if you have a very, very vivid imagination.)  And  2:  A supernatural Creator.

Let me say one more time:  The theory of evolution, and the word 'evolution' are two entirely different concepts.  'Evolution' means change over time.  The 'theory of evolution'  means change over time from one thing into an entirely different thing.

When a scientist uses the term "Missing Link," he is talking about the link between one thing and another.  Usually the example that is used is by comparing the apes with humans. But there are billions and billions of missing links between every fossil and every dinosaur that has ever been found.

 If these links exist for any fossil, where are they?  On either side--before, or after.   A link would involve hundreds and hundreds of changes over hundreds of thousands of years--involving hundreds of thousands of fossils.  Where are these fossils called "links"?  Where are they for any fossil.   Just one example would be historic.   Links don't exist at all except in theories.  That is a fact.  

Let's go back to the verses we skipped.  They may be a review of Gen. 1:20-21.  Or it could be that Gen. 1:20-21 applied only to sea birds and sea life.  And perhaps Gen. 2:19-20 covers other animals.

Gen.2. 19-20  "And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them:  and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.  And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him."

God formed:   1.  Beasts of the field    2. Fowl of the air     3.  Every living creature  4. Cattle.

That about covers the animals.  Don't forget that when I started this blog, I told you that the creatures of the sea, and those that lived in murky dampness, were never distroyed between Gen. 1:1 and Gen. 1:2.  They lived in water and when the dinosaurs vanished from the land, sea creatures didn't.  For millions and millions of years, sea life has survived virtually unchanged.  A shark from millions and millions of years ago looks almost exactly like a shark does  today.

 But between verse one and two, almost every type of life on the land vanished.  (Birds are the only dinosaurs that remain.  They were also able to survive.  Probably by nesting on floating debris, eating fish.  The food chain for birds hadn't been completely destroyed.

I skipped the part about naming the animals in Gen.19-20.  I'll get back to that.  First I wanted to cover all the verses concerning Eve, and her relationship with Adam.

Gen. 23-25  "And Adam  said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.  Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. "

These verses have been used in millions of  weddings,  and a  beautiful song has been written using this passage.  However, I have always wondered how these verses ended up in Genesis, because Adam  didn't even have a mother or a father.    Just a Creator.   It's almost as if whoever wrote the passage (which was written much later than the particular time when Adam  and Eve were created) wanted to include the intention of God.  Whoever wrote Genesis (perhaps Moses) was certainly inspired by God.  We see God's intention  for marriage throughout the Bible.

What a sad state marriage has disolved into.  It certainly can't be called "Holy matrimony" any longer.    And certainly God didn't mean for marriage to be "cleaved." apart.   He said  "cleaved unto."

Maybe Adam never would have touched or eaten of the forbidden tree if God had left him to live alone.       There seems  to be a tendency to blame the woman.  But Eve never heard what God said.  She hadn't been formed yet.  Perhaps Adam told her, we don't know.  I certainly don't excuse her, but God didn't tell Eve not to eat of the tree. He told Adam.  When Eve presented the fruit of the forbidden tree to Adam, Adam knew what he was doing.  He ate it.  He did the one thing he was told not to do.

Gen. 2:18, 21-22  "And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone;  I will make him an help meet for him."  (21-22) And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept: and he (God)  took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;  And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man."

I think that Adam must have come out of his slumber, looked up, and said, "Wow."

We need men that follow God.  It's not hard to follow a man who follows God.  I can't help but wonder what the outcome would have been if Adam had said "No".

Genesis 2:15-17  "And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.  And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat:  But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shalt not eat of it: for in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die."

The garden got a name.  Eden.  The perfect place.  Then God gave Adam a job.  Dress it, and keep it.  That was it.  That was all he had to do.

And then God gave Adam  complete freedom--except for one thing.  "It's all yours; I did this all for you.
"
"Just don't eat from this one tree," God says.  "If you do, you will die." You have to wonder if Adam knew about dying--he didn't eat meat, there was no need for a sacrifice!   God din't create man to die.  He created him to live.  He even gave him a "Tree of Life".

But the very fact that God gave him a restriction set the order of things.  God was God the creator  He got to set the rules.  He was and is supreme.  And God said, "Don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."  He could have made any restriction such as "Don't eat turnips."  But this restriction had a particular meaning.  If you don't know evil,  if you don't know rebellion, then you can't do it.  There is nothing and no one to rebel against.

God gave Adam the freedom  to disobey.

Four kinds of trees.  And four rivers.  I'm not going to quote this entire passage.  Get a Bible and follow  in  Gen. 2: 10-14.  First Gen. 2:10  "And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted and became into four heads."

1.  Pison: Compassing all of Havilah.  Where there was gold and other precious stones.
2.  Gibon: Compassing all of Ethiopia.
3.  Hiddekel: Going toward the east of Assyria.
4.  Euphrates.

I mention these rivers to bring further attention to the validity of God's word as a historical document.  The names of some of the rivers and countries have finally been recognized by historians as real places.  We recognize their names.  They were real.  They are real.  Seventy years ago, the stories in Genesis were derided by many historians.  No more.  Archaeologists now keep a Bible in their hip pocket as a reference.  It is one of the oldest written documents that we have.  And every few years, another Biblical site is validated by archeology.

Eden was the source of the four rivers.  Sounds like an idyllic  place with natural springs that flow out to the four rivers.

In my last blog, I said that this scripture, that God breathed into man's nostrils and he became a living soul was the most exciting verse in Genesis.  In John 20:21-22 we find another similar scripture: "Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you:  as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.  And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost."  God's breath.  So we see that God's breath is His Spirit.  Jesus was God.  His breath is His Spirit.

But let's get back to Genesis.  In Gen. 2:8-9 "And the Lord God planted a garden eastward  in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.  And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every three that is pleasant to the sight and good for food;  the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil."  Four kinds of trees.

1.  Trees that were pleasant to the sight.  Beauty, simply to please us.  Dogwoods.  Redbuds.
2.  Trees that were good for food.  Nourishment, 'Meat'.  To sustain our bodies.
3.  The Tree of Life.  Eternal Life.  Which Adam never got to taste because he sinned, and was cast out
     of the garden.  " ...lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live  
     forever." Lest he should have become a 'dead man walking'.  Forever.
4.  The tree of knowledge of good and evil.  Which was not for the human species to eat.  God didn't
     plan for us to know evil.  He created us for Himself.  Perfect.

He placed man in a garden.  Heaven on earth.  A garden.

Genesis 2:7  This is such an exciting verse.  We learn of God's intent for man.  He formed him into a miraculous piece of work and then..."And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."  This is the most important piece of information in the book of Genesis.  God's intent was that the human creation that he had formed would hold "Himself".  His breath.  The essence of God.

We are the tabernacle of the Holy Spirit of God.  This is what puts us in another completely different category from all the rest of God's creation.  We are living souls.  We can hold God's breath in a place within our being.  A place that--when empty--makes us hollow.  Makes us yearn.  Makes us miserable until it is filled with God.

Adam was flesh, then filled.  The second Adam--Christ--was first God, then wrapped in flesh.  We see in 1 Corinthians 15:45 "And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul;  the last Adam was made a quickening spirit."

God's plan was to fill us with Himself.

  In this passage, the writer reviews and gives a short summary of what we have already read in Chapter one, and gives us a little extra information about the atmosphere of the earth at that time.

Genesis 2: 4-6  "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.  And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew:  for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.  But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground."

This is so interesting. No rain. Because it agrees exactly with the  scientific  description of the earth at the time  animals began to appear.  There are still places on earth where the atmosphere is so wet,  misty and foggy, that life is sustained.

Here God is describing the earth before man was created.  God says, "...there was not a man to till the ground."  In chapter 3, verse 23, God sent Adam forth from the garden of Eden, "...to 'till the ground', from whence he was taken. "  It was punishment to till the ground.  Which simply meant that from that time forward, Adam had to sweat for his food.  He had to labor to feed his family.  After he was cast out, he left the trees that were his meat back in the garden.

Day 7

Genesis 2: 2-3 "And  on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.  And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made."

Seven.  We are introduced for the first time to a number that has significance from Genesis to Revelation.  Here it seems to represent 'completeness'.  We just know it means something to God because he uses it repeatedly in his Word in other circumstances.

He rested.  We desperately need rest, but it doesn't seem to mean much in the world we live in.  One day is like another.  Everyone seems to be exhausted.  In your life, find a day and set it aside from your work. Give yourself a day  I don't know what work means to you, but for me, gardening is not work.  For me it is pure joy.  I love to set aside a time each day when I am through with my work to go outside and get my hands in God's earth.  But for farmers, planting and harvesting is work.  They need rest from it.  Whatever your work is, find time to set apart to rest.

 Sunday is another rest for me.  I teach a class.  I go to worship. I renew fellowship with other Christians.   I read.  Historically, we Christians set Sunday apart for a day of worship.

God blessed the animals.   He blessed man.  And He blessed the seventh day.  Which is Saturday.  We honor Sunday because Jesus arose on Sunday.  But God went further.  He sanctified the seventh day.  We usually think of sanctification as a work that God does in us.  He finishes us into something pleasing to him.  But here he is finishing, bringing to a full end all His creative work.
.

The thing about the meat is pretty important. Until Adam and Eve sinned, nothing had to die.   But when they do,  God is going to require a live animal for a  sacrifice, a covering for sin. ( Genesis 3:21)  He makes them coats of skins.  He sacrifices an animal to cover their sin.  Then God casts them out of the garden lest they should eat of the Tree of Life and live forever in their sinful state.  More on this later.

Genesis 1:32  "And God saw every thing that He had made, and behold, it was very good."  (Everything that he had done was perfect at this point. ) "And the evening and the morning were the sixth day."

Genesis 2:1  "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them." (Millions and millions of animals.  Millions and millions of stars and galaxies.)

We aren't getting new animals on the earth.  God was done.  Animals became prey after man sinned.  Animals have been going extinct (not evolving into other species) for thousands of years because we have not done the five things that God asked us to do.  He asked us to care for the fish, birds, cattle (mammals), earth, and creeping things.  The water, air, food for animals, soil, and the clean up crew of creeping things.

I am done with explaining the sequence of events after Gen.1:1  The word 'create' is used to describe three events.  The word 'let'  or 'made' is used for everything else.

So did you decide what REplenish means?  I think it says for certain that the Bible is the word of God.  It says absolutely that there was life before Adam.  How  could someone only a few thousand years ago write an account of the beginning of life with such accurate scientific sequence on their own?!!  That the earth needed to be re-plinished.   They had no way of knowing anything about such things.

 God revealed it.  Someone wrote it down.  Truth always stays true.  The writer didn't know about dinosaurs,  but could use the word "Replenish"  without any problem at all.  He trusted God's supreme knowledge over his own  limited knowledge.

Science that is fact--and not theory--will never be in contradiction with God's word.  Because God's word is truth that always stays true.  It never changes.  The theories of man change all the time.  I have a collection of publications that I have cut from newspapers, scientific journals, etc. that go back for over forty years that announce that "they" have changed their mind about something.  Or revised "their" theory about something.  You never have to revise the Bible.

Day six is almost over. but God speaks again to the male and female:

Genesis 1:29  And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face on the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat."

At this point, man was a vegetarian. Fruit was their meat.

God spoke to the animals and said, "Be fruitful, and multiply..."

He told us to have dominion over the fish, birds, cattle, earth, and creeping things.

Genesis 1:27  "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."  More about this later.

Genesis 1:28  " And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air  and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

So we get His blessing.  What more could a man or a woman want than the blessing of God?  And then he tells us the same thing that he told his animals:  Be fruitful and multiply... and have dominion over it all.

But in the middle of all that, he tells us to "...replenish the earth..."   Replenish?   Think about that.  Could it have been "Plenished" before this?  Perhaps between Genesis1:1 and Genesis1:2?

Re----plenish.

Have dominion.  Over five categories.  Fish, fowl, cattle, earth, and creeping things.

But these five  categories hold an even broader responsibility.

If we are responsible for fish, we are also responsible for the water they live in.  To keep it clean, pure, and uncontaminated.  We've failed.

If we are responsible for birds, we are also responsible for the air they fly in.  To keep it clean, pure, and uncontaminated.  We've failed.

If we are responsible for cattle--the animals of the earth--we are responsible for the food chain they depend on.  We've failed.

If we are responsible for the earth, we are also responsible for what we do with it.  To keep it clean, pure and uncontaminated.  To stop dumping contaminants over the surfaces that the animals, the farmers, and the world depends on for food.  We've failed.

If we are responsible for the creeping things, we have to understand their place in the food chain.  They are the cleanup crew.  When we cause imbalance in the order of life, we cause extinction of one species and overpopulation of another.  Worms clean the soil.  Insecticides kill creeping things.  Think of lady bugs.  We've failed here too.

How can God be pleased with the job he gave us to do?

So.....God said, "...Let us make man in our image...."  (Gen. 1:26)  Already God is sharing with us his divine nature. Even though the word "Trinity" is not used in the Bible, the word of God tells us about God the Father, God the Word--Jesus--who created all things that were created (John 1:1-3) , and in Gen. 2:7, God the Breath--the Holy Spirit.

And in that same passage He says we are "In his image".  "After his likeness".  You, and I are in the image of God!!!  What exactly can this mean?  Do we look like him?  How can we--when we can't even see him?  It must be something else.  Something different from all the animals that he has created.  Something unique.

I like to think that it involves 'capacity'.  Capacity to interact.  Capacity to think.  Capacity to love.  Capacity to choose.

Then he gives us our job.  He explains why he created us.  He says: "...and let them have dominion over..."

Sunday's Tulsa newspaper had an article in it on the age (strata) of the Grand Canyon.  Some say it is 70 billion years ago, (probably a misprint).  Some say it was carved 55 million years ago.  Others say 17 million years ago. Some say it is only 5 or 6 million years old.   Mercy.  All that in one article.

Fossils are dated by strata--the layer they are in.  It is a very inexact science.  No one agrees or seems to be able to rectify the vast differences in opinions concerning strata.  And we're supposed to date dinosaurs by the strata they are in?

Every fossil, every bone creates this kind of disparity in opinions.  Todays' animals aren't all that old in geological time.  Hence, the mad scramble science is having trying to tie todays' animals (by evolution theory) to the dinosaurs that vanished.

When God said, "...let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind..."  He didn't mean, "Dem' bones, dem bones, dem dry (dinosaur)  bones...". Many of these living creatures were new.   Only birds are considered scientifically to be dinosaurs.  (Look at the scaly leg of a chicken.)

Day six is ending.  But God isn't through yet.  Day six is a really big, big day.

Genesis 1:26-27 "And God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle, and all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."  This is the third time in the first chapter this word 'create' is used.

And, what about that word "us".  And "our".  It reminds me of John 1:1-3.  "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  The same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made."

More tomorrow.  Day six is a long day.  And I have a lot to say.  Bear with me.

Evolve:  To change.  We are evolving--as I said at the beginning, we are losing our wisdom teeth among other things (as a species).  But we are not evolving into something else.  If ever our species should need those teeth again to gnaw food, we would, over time, by natural selection regain them.

Natural selection.  Survival of the fittest.  Both are results of conditions.  Enough.  I could go on about this for hours.  Suffice to say, we stay recognizable.  Sharks, crickets, crocodiles...and on and on...are easily recognizable from millions and millions of years ago.  Those animals have not become some other animal.


Day six.   New animals are on their way.  Cattle for one thing.  What in the world would the human race do without cows and goats and all the wonderful things such animals provide us.  My only question is:  why would God make pigs and then deny all that ham and bacon to the Jews.  I'm glad he didn't deny bacon to Gentiles and Christians.


Genesis 1:24-25 "And God said: Let (how many times has this word appeared!!!) the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing, and and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.   And God made (the third word I mentioned: create, let and made) the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything the creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good."

Now all those animals need are names.  God is getting ready to take care of that.

We're still in day five.  God finally speaks to his creation:  Genesis 1:22  "And God blessed them, saying,  'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let (there is that word  'let'  again) fowl multiply in the earth.'"  The first words that God has spoken.

I love blessings.  "And God blessed them."  Sometimes our pastor reads a blessing from the Bible at the end of our church service. I find comfort in the fact that the God we worship started his dialog with us in the form of a blessing.  He told all of his creatures to reproduce.  God invented reproduction--and blessed it.

When you study embryonic division of cells, the miracle of the creation of life is indescribable.  One cell divides.  Then both of those cells divide.  Each new cell knows what to become.  Our God is an awesome God.

At this period in the life of the earth, new animals appear--and this is not so long ago in geological time.  Note:  We are not evolving anything new.  Animals are becoming extinct.  Hundreds of species each day.  They appear millions of years ago, then they start disappearing, not evolving into other creatures.  They died off.

And yet, all at once, an entire  plethora of animals appear on earth.  Scientists struggle to explain this.  They keep looking for missing links.  Problem is, there are millions and millions of missing links--and nothing in strata to validate an evolutionary process.  Nothing to explain the appearance of these new species.  That is, nothing except a miracle.

Genesis 1:23 "And the evening and the morning were the fifth day."

Continuing day five.

 Genesis 1:21  "And God created great whales, (behemoths) and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good."   This is the second time that the word "Create" appears.

This word will be used one more time in this chapter.  When God creates man.

There are so many things that I don't have the energy or endurance to tell you about the scientific truth of Genesis, but suffice to say, I am trying to hit the high points.  One thing you might be interested in is the Triassic, Jurassic, and  Cretaceous  periods  called the Mesozoic Era going back 245 million years ago.  At the end of this Era, Dinosaurs became extinct--and that was a very short time ago.  Wham.  Everything changed.  Almost everything vanished.  The fossil record drys up for over 60 million years.

Now,  how we are supposed to have evolved in the short time since then is a mystery to me.  This is where a good knowledge of statistics comes in handy.  If--as the evolution theorist claims--we are supposed to have evolved from something that simply vanished--it would be statistically impossible in the time left--after the Mesozoic Era--until now, to do it.

We are living in the Cenozoic Era.  And only in the tiny last part of this Era does man appear.

God was done with dinosaurs.  He started a new kind of life.  He..."created every living creature that moveth..."

Day five.  Here is where the fun begins.  The earth is ready.  The seas are ready,  The grass, flowers, and trees are ready.  The old dinosauric life is gone--with a some exceptions such as crocodiles, armadillos, crickets, numerous 'bugs'--just to name a few exceptions that made it through--and of course almost all of the sea life.

Genesis 1:20  "And God said, Let (let again) the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament (sky) of heaven."

When I looked at the dissection of birds--which sometimes swim, and fish--that sometimes fly, it is very noticeable that the fin of the fish and wing of the bird are very similar.  The tail as well.  Neither have lungs (with a few exceptions).  So if you are an Darwinist, and a Christian (which is an oxymoron to me),  this is one verse that might give you comfort.  But only on the subject of birds and fish.

  I personally believe the word  "let" was assumed.  "...Let  fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven."  Two different kinds of creatures.  Fish have gills.  Birds send oxygen directly through their bones.   One species survived the destruction in the water, the other in the air.  Birds would have made it through by nesting in floating debris.  And there was probably a lot of that.

The tide--the force that now drives the motion of the oceans is bringing creatures onto land.  Crabs, fish that prefer to lay eggs in sand and then go back to the sea.  Turtles as well.  Many creatures of the sea had no problem using both sea and land--thus providing a food source for the abundant life that is getting ready to appear in Genesis 1:21.

I absolutely love this book.  Up to here has been description, but now God is getting ready to speak out loud to his creation.  

Someone asked me, "What difference does all this make?  Why does it matter so much to you?"

If Genesis does not stand up to the test of true and validated science, then there is room for doubt in the hearts of those who are not educated on the facts of what Genesis actually says. Especially our children.  We must hold the conviction that all of the Bible is true and that it is always true.  Once there is doubt about one part of the Bible, then how do you pick and choose what is true and what isn't.  We must rectify the truth of Genesis with true science.  That is why we must know what Genesis really says and what it does not say.

That is why I got the degree in Zoology.  In Pre-med.  And took all that work in Physics, Math, and Statistics.

I knew in my heart that the Bible was the true word of God.  I wanted to know what scientists knew for absolute sure, and what they were speculating on.  What was fact and what was just theory.  I was amazed.  Over and over again in the last fifty years science has reversed course, changed their minds, and recanted their 'facts'.  The book of Genesis has remained the same.  I subscribe to Discover magazine--among others.  I stay current.  The high-school textbooks don't.


Remember, everything scientists discover--atoms, molecules, distant planets, black holes--and the list goes on and on--God made.  He already knows everything about everything he made.

The world will disparage your faith if you don't understand Genesis.  They will say that you and I believe the world is 3000-6000 years old--which obviously it isn't.  They will mock your faith.

That's why it matters.

Genesis 1:19  "And the evening and the morning were the fourth day."

So, God 'let' the lights appear.  You recall that I said that the word 'let' means to allow something to happen.  I 'let' you out of the car.   From Genesis 1:1  In the beginning, God 'created' the heaven and the earth.  It was the earth that was void, dark, and without form--not the heavens.  Now the stars are visible.  All the atmospheric junk around the earth that interfered with a clear view of the heavens is swept away.

When I began this blog, I said there were three words that I found interesting.  One was "Create".  One was "Let".   And the third was "Made," which can be best described as meaning to take something and do something else with it.

 In Gen. 1:7,  God 'made' the firmament.  (Science says the firmament is still expanding.)

 Now we come to the second 'made'.  Verse 16-18.  "And God 'made' two great lights; the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night:  he made the stars also.  And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.  And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness;  and God saw that it was good."

This is the first time the moon is mentioned.

When the moon began rotation around the earth, something strange took place.  Tides.  Tides change everything.

Genesis 1:14-15  "And God said, Let (there's that word 'let' again) there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let (let) them be for signs and for seasons, and for days, and years; And let (let) them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

There are three more verses on this subject of 'lights'. (vs. 16-18) This is the longest passage on any subject so far. Lights in the firmament.  The heavenly expanse.  I've always wondered why this was so important to God that he gave five verses on this subject and nothing on dinosaurs.  Or on the life forms in the water, or on what happened in the verses between vs. 1 and vs. 2.  But He didn't.

Perhaps, as we get ready for man to appear in this story, the lights in the firmament were a mystery that spoke of God;  He speaks of Himself through the universe.  "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handwork.  Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.  There is no speech, nor language, where their voice is not heard."  Psalms 19:1-3.

We have sunlight.

We have rotation of the earth since there is 'day' and 'night'.

We have grass, trees, fruit, photosynthesis.

Sea life is abundant.  Sea life was never destroyed.

How long did it take to rotate the earth?  How long was a day?   There is no way to know.  II Peter 3:8b puts it this way: "...one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."  The earth could have been rotating slow, or fast.  God doesn't say.  If science proves that days were longer than 24 hours.  Fine.  If science proves that days were shorter than 24 hours.  Fine.  Just be sure it is proof and not theory.  Science will be hard pressed to prove it one way or the other.

But at this point we do know some of what was there, and some of what was going on.  And the stage is being set for a world transformation.

Gen. 1:13  "And the evening and the morning were the third day."

 Jeremiah described a desolate earth in 4:23-26:  "I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light,  I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly.  I beheld, and, lo, there was no man and all the birds of the heavens were fled.  I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by his fierce anger."

Had men been there?  If cities were broken down,  someone built them.  Birds fled.  Fruit no longer grew on trees.

Did this happen between Gen. l:1 and Gen. 1:2?   God doesn't tell us.  So there isn't much use in speculating.  Archeologists have found very old human bones.  How old?  Well, that depends on methods of dating--which are not very exact.  (More on this later.)

As far as I am concerned, the story of Genesis begins when God starts over.  When the sun breaks through the darkness and light allows trees to grow, birds to fly--when "The earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so." Gen. 1:12

Gen. 1:13  And the evening and the morning were the third day.

God's word is true.  So we don't need to be fearful that science will disprove it.  Each time science finds a truth, you must be sure it is not a theory.  If it is a truth, then the Bible will support it.  If it is a theory, well that's a different thing altogether.

Darwin's theory is that all life traces back to a cell that magically appeared, replicated itself in some way, became a cluster of cells, and eventually a worm or some other micro-organism.  And then (here is the kicker) 'over time' all life evolved.  The problem is that archaeologists  find fossils--or bones--in abundance of some given creature and try to connect it in some way with another creature with no evidence of anything in between.  There are vast eons between both creatures with no fossil record at all.  No missing link is found.  Thousands and thousands and thousands of 'missing links.'  It's not just one.   I've always wondered why one species of dinosaur appears thousands of times in a layer of strata with no ancestors in the strata above or below it.  Why are some creatures found in such abundance with no 'kissing cousins' in conjunction.  Darwin's Theory of Evolution  requires great leaps of faith from strata to strata with nothing in between.  And no connection between millions of organisms.  There is no "The" missing link.

I can't conjure up that kind of faith.  I prefer to have faith in something valid.  Something documented. Like the resurrection.  Witnessed by thousands.  No missing links.

Genesis 1:11-12  And God said, Let (there's that word again) the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding fruit after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and  God saw that it was good.  And the evening and the morning were the third day.

I've always thought this was such a provocative verse.  The seed that was in itself.  What does that mean?  Perhaps that each tree had fruit with the seed inside.  Or perhaps the earth brought forth seed that was in itself.  I personally think it was both.  I think some seeds survived those first destructions.  Perhaps in pockets the waters didn't reach.  I don't know.  What I do know is that many plants--such as gingko trees--survived.  And new plants appeared.

It's probably time to say the word 'evolution'.

We are losing our wisdom teeth.  Some people are still born with four.  Some with two, and some with none.  Most people don't have room in their mouth for wisdom teeth.  We no longer 'gnaw' our food.  But this is 'natural selection'.

It used to be that if you had diabetes, you were doomed.  People died before they reproduced  But then we found cures and treatments.  As  a result, diabetes is no longer rare.  People with a gene for certain types of diabetes now live to pass that gene on.  (Of course we are also 'naturally selecting' to overeat and get diabetes.)

Things change.  They 'evolve'.  But Darwin's theory of evolution is an entirely different ball of wax.

Three word combinations:  Natural Selection.  Evolution.  Darwin's Theory of  Evolution.  Just exactly what do we know is true?  Well, let's start with the Bible.  I believe it is the inerrant word of God.

When I used to drive back and forth to the college where I taught, (55 miles each way, every day, 110 miles a day for 20 years), I drove in rain sleet, snow and fog.  The fog was the worst.  You couldn't see at all.  I would get behind a semi and drive by his tail lights praying that the person driving the semi could see the road.  It gave new meaning to the phrase, "I'm in a fog."  It was so dense on those October mornings that I literally could stretch out my arm and not be able to see my fingers.

That's part of what I think God was separating when he separated 'the waters from the waters.'  The world was in a fog.  Some animals that were left behind--and lived through the great destruction (between vs. 1 and vs. 2) probably couldn't see very far, but had a keen sense of smell to seek prey.  They were meat eaters.  Plants, for the most part, had vanished for lack of sunlight causing a huge disruption in the food chain. Plant eating animals began to die out.  Perhaps those animals that ate the plant eaters began to eat each other.  Domino effect.  Extinction happened rapidly.

Vegetation had to be able to live without the sun.  Some plants lived. Certain types lived under water.  In the fossil record there are a lot of ferns.  Plants that lived in murky conditions.

So.  Land appears.  The sun is out.  The fog is gone.  The atmosphere is cleared of ash and perhaps  debris.  (Think of the Oklahoma dust bowl as thick as dense fog.)

Genesis 1:9-10  "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.  And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas:  And God saw that it was good.

God is preparing something.  Something different is happening.  Very different than what was before.

You recall that I told you there were three words that I found interesting in the first chapter of Genesis.  The third word  that I talked about is in the Bible passage I discussed yesterday.  It was the word "made".

This word is a little bit different from 'create' and 'let.'  It means to take something that is already there and 'make' something from it.  i.e.: I made my daughter a dress.  I didn't make the fabric.  I didn't make the thread, the pattern, the lace, etc.,  I just took those things, and made something else.  Something new.  Something different.

God 'made' the firmament...out of what was already there.  The waters settled, the fog went away, the air cleared.  You could see the blue sky.

Genesis 1:8-10 "And God called the firmament Heaven.  And the evening and the morning were the second day.  And God said,  Let (there is that word again) the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place, and 'let' the dry land appear: and it was so."

Upheaval.

Mountains are pushed up from the bottom of the water.  Land masses are shaking.  Continents shifting.  Always moving.  Always changing.  God put it in motion.  It is a continual process that still is going on today.

Our world has never been static.  It is always rearranging itself.

Genesis  1:6-8

"And God said,  Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.  (Notice that the scripture uses the word "let" twice.  God isn't creating anything; he's just rearranging things.  Allowing things to happen.)

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.  And God called the firmament Heaven.  And the evening and morning were the second day."

This seems to indicate that not only was it dark, and void, and without form--but that it was a wet murky mess.  Exactly the atmosphere for some animals to survive in, and for others to die out.

Fish would have been just fine.  Fossil history includes many many species of fish as far back as you want to go.  They don't really change all that much over the millennium.  They just keep looking like fish.  Their differences are small, different perhaps, but fish just the same.

There are many animals that survived whatever happened between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2.  We have their bones.  We have their fossils.  This is why I believe that there was a "gap."  There was a period between the dinosauric age in which water life continued, but in which most forms of land life died out.  Note that I said "most."

I think it is probable that a gap occurred between verse one and two.  But this is a just a theory--the gap theory.  Many scientists who are Christians concur.  It fits the scientific evidence of the dinosaurs.

The world is entering a new stage.  It is being prepared for new kinds of animals.

As the sunlight cut through the atmospheric dust and ash, we read:

Genesis 1:3-5  "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.  And God saw the light that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.  And God called the light Day and the darkness he called Night.  And the evening and morning were the first day."

Sunlight, and darkness.  That means there was rotation.  Did rotation begin before this moment?  Did the earth rotate in twenty-four hours?  The Bible doesn't say.  Don't get into an argument about how fast, or how slow rotation was.  It was simply rotation.  There was night, and there was day.

Catastrophic events on earth can change the rotation and tilt of the earth.  We have seen that happen a number of times when volcanos and earthquakes occur.  A recent earthquake in South America affected rotation and the "time" it takes for a rotation.

Think what an asteroid would do.

Where were the North and South poles?  There is adequate evidence that our even our North and South poles have shifted.

But rotation settled in, and earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanos changed the topography of the world.

The dinosauric age came to an abrupt halt.  They began to die out.  I just bought a child's book on the "Wonderful world of Dinosaurs" by Disney that gives a great overview of the different kinds, categories, and a general time line of the dinosaurs.

There is also a section on a giant asteroid impact that says that dust and ash shot into the atmosphere worldwide and blocked sunlight.  The impact would have caused earthquakes, tsunamis and acid rain.  Scientists today think that is what happened.

I'm through with all that.  Simply wanted you to know about the "blocked sunlight", because that brings us to the second word I told you that I was interested in.  "Let."

Genesis 1:2  "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness (blocked sunlight) was on the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
Genesis 1:3 "And God said, Let..."

I take this word to be very different from "create".  You recall I said that 'create' meant to make something where nothing had been before.  Something entirely new.  But "let", put simply, means to allow something to happen.  For instance, "I'm going to stop at the corner and let you out of the car."   Nothing is created.  Someone is in control of the car.  They stop, open the door, and you get out.  They "let" you out.

Genesis 1:3  "And God said, let there be light: and there was light."   He didn't have to create it, he did that back in Genesis 1:1  The only thing God had to do was restore it.  Let sunlight pierce the darkness.

Here's what I think may have happened.  In the beginning, God created everything just like he wanted it.  It wasn't void; it wasn't empty;  it wasn't dark.  We know for a fact that there were animals.  Some looked strange in terms of what we think an animal should look like.  But in reality, we have some strange looking animals living today.

Some animals survived whatever partially destroyed the world between Genesis1:1 and 1:2.  Great forces picked many animals up and washed them into heaps.  Dirt settled and encapsulated them for us to dig up years and years later.  Great floods washed trees from one part of the earth to another.  Some of them were petrified.  One on top of the other for miles and miles.

But most of the animals that survived lived in water or in murky marshes.  They survived in a dark, void environment.  Those land animals that ate plants lost their source of food and began to die.  Which caused the food chain to begin to deteriorate.

What would cause such darkness?  Volcano eruptions that spewed ash?  Fire?  Whatever it was, when you couple an Asteroid  impact with anything else, it would be like trying to walk across a room with a shallow saucer of water without spilling it.  Slish, slosh.

Jeremiah 4:23-27 "I beheld the earth, and lo, in was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light...the mountains...trembled and all the hills moved lightly...there was no man and all the birds of the heavens were fled.  I beheld, and lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness and all the cities thereof were broken down..."

Very similar to Gen. 1:2.  But this account tells that there were men, birds, mountains, fruit, cities.  Is Jeremiah talking about what happened between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2?

The earth is covered with clues.  Asteroids in the Gulf of Mexico and Northern Russia.  Fossils.  Archaeological artifacts.  Floods.  Volcanos.  Changes in polar magnetism.  The list goes on.  The earth has been under assault for millions of years   Years counted in days.  Days counted as one rotation.  Which may not have been 24 hours.  It could have been longer or shorter.  Genesis doesn't tell us.

I believe there is no error in the book of Genesis.  The more fossils that are found, the more archaeological artifacts that are found, the stronger my conviction.

The past is recorded in the ice in the Arctic.  Huge plugs are pulled from the ice and the yearly layers look like stripes on a popsicle.  Volcanos erupt, soot fills the atmosphere and dribbles down on the ice which holds the record like a diary.  The earth reveals its secrets.  The layers can be counted in years. Volcanic eruptions from thousands of years ago can be dated.

Fossils found in the highest mountains tell us that those mountains were once a seabed. The fossils tell us of creatures that existed "once upon a time".  They were alive.  Now they are gone.

But something interesting is held in these records.  A cricket 'then' looks like a cricket now.  A shark 'then' is recognizable as a shark now.  A fly preserved in a drop of amber looks like a fly today. The list goes on.  And another interesting fact: creatures once declared extinct show up alive in our ocean depths.  It so happens that they weren't extinct after all.

So "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."  I believe he did.  How?  I don't know.  When?  I don't know.  (Certainly a long time ago.  Which some religious groups think is heresy.)  Where?  I don't know  Why?  I don't know.  But I believe in creation.  I believe in a supernatural designer.

What?  Well, that is where the controversy begins with people who take different sides of the three possibilities.  1. God, 2. Accidental event from nowhere and nothing.  3. Alien invasion

In the first group--those who believe in God--the question concerning what happened next is not agreed upon.  You can't know what Genesis doesn't say.  There are many speculations which is another story.  Let me say that I, after much study and much zoological, mathematical and chemical pondering, believe in dinosaurs (duh) and that there were probably  millions of years between verse one and verse two.  This theory is sometimes referred to as the "Gap Theory".  I definitely believe there was a gap because in verse two we find something terrible has occurred.

Genesis 1:2a   "And the earth was without form, and void;  and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

This doesn't sound like a creative work to me.

So what happened?

I don't believe that something came from nothing.   The only other possibility is that something came from something.  We were created.  The question is how.  There are two possibilities unless you believe we came from space.   (Mercy.  ET call home.)

1. God did it
2. Somehow we evolved from a spark of nitrogen that mixed with some oxygen and other stuff (that supposedly came from the same place the nitrogen did) and created a cell. This cell divided?  The science is iffy here.  But eventually enough cells hung together to make a worm.  The next step was the acquisition of a spine so a little wormy creature called the amphyoxis (probably spelled wrong) got a gelatin type of cartelidge down its back...and so on...until we got humans.  This is a very short synopsis of a tiny part of Darwin's Theory of Evolution.  The only problem is that something still had to come from something.  Well, no, that's not the only problem.

Which brings me to the first word:  "Create"

I don't really consider myself a Bible scholar.  But when I started checking on this word "create" I found that it was used three times in the first Chapter of Genesis and once more that I could find.  (If you find a Hebrew reference for other places, let me know.)

This word means "Do (design) something completely unique."
Genesis 1:1  The heaven and earth
Genesis 1:21  Great whales, creatures that move, birds
Genesis 1:27 Man
Psalm 51:10 A new heart  (David cried out to his God to let him start over.  Let him be clean again.)

Obviously, I believe in God.

There is a Creator.  Something didn't come from nothing.  There was a beginning.  Something was there before the moment of the beginning of our world.

"In the beginning, God...."  He was there.

"He...created..."

There are three words in the first chapter of Genesis that hold my interest.

The first word is 'created'.

The second is 'made'.

The third is 'let'.

From those ancient manuscripts a poet made an observation that is universal.  It is a truth that even the most simple person can understand.  It resonates in our souls:

"The heavens declare the glory of God:  and the firmament sheweth his handiwork.  Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night sheweth knowledge.  There is no speech  nor language where their voice is not heard."

My interpretation:  If you look up, look around and listen, you will see something and hear something that rings true.  Our universe is truly a miracle.  And all people everywhere see the same thing and hear in their own language.  God speaks to our hearts.

Scientists want to  find out when the 'big bang' occurred.   What ever you want to call it, it was the beginning.  When did it happen?  Where did it happen?  Who can say.  But how it happened, well that's another story.  The existence of a Creator is evident.  All of this came from somewhere--and I for one will never believe that it all came from nothing.  I believe it was "In the beginning, God..."

Why defend "Genesis"?  Well, there are three major points on which the world will challenge your faith.  There are other points,  but these are the 'biggies'.
   1.  The Virgin birth of Jesus
   2.  The resurrection of Christ
   3.  The Biblical story of creation

I will leave the Virgin birth up to scholars who are certainly smarter than I am.  But it always seemed to me that the major evidence on the subject was Joseph's acceptance of this truth.  God spoke to him through a messenger, an angel.  In their culture, under the circumstances, she would have been "put away".  But Joseph embraced her.  He married her.  He raised her child.  He helped her flee to Egypt to keep her child from being killed.

The resurrection of Christ, on the other hand, is one of the most magnificent historical events that was ever recorded by man.  Witnessed by thousands.  Not just Christians, but documented by others as well.     When Christ died, the disciples went back to the same lives that they had lived before they met Jesus.  But something happened that changed them all.  So dramatic that they gave up their lives to carry the story to the world.  And died in the process.  They didn't do this as a group;  they each one died alone.  You don't ever have to apologize for believing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  It happened.

The creation story, however, is under siege.  'They' think you are stupid if you believe it.  Like I said when I started this blog,  I went to college to find out just exactly what the scientific world knew.  I wanted to know the truth.  Once I started taking classes, I just couldn't stop.  I read everything I could get my hands on.  And my faith in this book called "Genesis"was strengthened with every class I took.

So much for background.

The ultimate question is whether there is a "God" or not.

If you say no, then you have to explain all this stuff around us.  Where did it come from.  Dirt, trees, bugs, and more precisely, humans--yourself. It poses a dilemma.   The last I heard, Stephen Hawking (the smart guy in the wheelchair with Lou Gehrig's disease,) is trying to prove that something can come from nothing.  It seems like a last ditch effort to avoid admitting there is another "something" that created all this.

If you say yes, then you must make a decision about this God.  Is he 'good'.  Is he 'evil'.

If he is evil, well, there you go.  You have to find a way to appease him.  Like they did in some of the cultures of the past.  Sacrifice babies, cut off people's heads, build the Tower of Bable.

If he is good, now that's another story.  Questions arise:  why, when,  how...  Why make humans?  When did he do it?  How was it done?  And does he want to communicate with us?  And where would you find an answer to such questions?

There are old,  old documents that address this subject.  Collected by the Jews.  One of the documents is called "Genesis".  The collection is called the "Old Testament".

"In the beginning...".  That's how it starts.

Are you still with me?  This has all been very boring, but I wanted to give you a little validation from my background.  Here's what I've learned:

1.  You don't need a college education.
2.  If you read Reader's Digest in the 50's they should have given you a degree in everything.  (Once RD started accepting advertising, well, that's a different story.)
3.  Read something.
4.  You will get interested in something.

I was teaching a class of 17 year old seniors at my church in l968 when the schools had started teaching evolution as a fact--which was disturbing  to the Christian community to say the least.  I just wanted to find the truth about what the other side knew for sure.

Ken came home, (Thank God)

If it hadn't been for fossils and carbon dating, this subject  wouldn't have been so interesting.  I was hooked.  So I started taking all the science courses they had.  The list was comprehensive and I reached the point that I either  had to graduate  or change my major.  I changed my major.  First it was zoology, then education, then it was pre-med, then math.  As long as I kept changing majors, the tuition scholarship continued.  Eventually there wasn't any way I could keep from graduating.  I ended up one course short of a bunch of stuff.  One more course and I was done.  It was just a matter of which course.

Let me say, I had student loans which came due if I quit.  The rule about student loans was that if you weren't enrolled in six hours, you had to start paying them back.  So I kept going, and going, and going. Physics, Italian... and that was when I gave up and started paying the loans back.  I just didn't have the heart to learn Italian.

Actually, learning had always been a major priority in my family.  Growing up, if you were reading a book, you didn't have to help with the housework.  Somehow, I always managed to be reading a book.   The Bobbsey Twins, then Nancy Drew, and every series that was ever published.  The classics were next.  The only time I wasn't reading was when it was raining and I couldn't get to the library.  If it hadn't been for rain, I most probably wouldn't have learned to do anything useful.

So enrolling in college was expected.  My grandmother and grandfather were farmers.  They neither one had a high school education, but all five of their children finished a college degree.  Four teachers and an engineer.  I can't imagine how difficult this was back in the early nineteen hundreds in Oklahoma.

This all seems irrelevant, but I only want you to know that everyone  in my family was disappointed that I got married and started  family instead of starting college.  So when I finally started, everyone was pleased.  "What are you going to study?"

If you are going to attempt coursework at that level, you ought to have a plan.  I didn't.  I just kept enrolling in classes from 9 till 3.  My counselor tried to get me to follow a degree plan, but it didn't fit my time schedule.  Once they paid for the tuition, I just took.....whatever.  It worked for me.  I was "going to college," so the pressure was off.

Every story has a beginning.  Mine starts in the middle--Vietnam--and goes forward and backward. Backward can wait until another day.  Forward is a story--about how I became interested in Genesis. You probably can't really just start a story without background, so maybe there isn't a way to start in the middle after all.  So this will be a middle-muddle kind of story.

When I was 18 I married a Marine fighter pilot whom my mother approved of (which was fairly critical in our family) and my father dearly loved.  They knew him.  I didn't.  It turned out to be the best decision of my life, but that's also another story.  Ten years later, he was six months  away from retirement when the Marine Corps deployed him for thirteen months to Chu Lai.  Combat.  Hanoi Hilton was a real possibility.  Most residents were pilots.  Some of them were friends.  So much for retirement.

After nine years of marriage and four children, I was alone again--which was normal everyday fare for any Marine fighter pilot's wife--if the MC wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one. Every morning the kids were off to school.  Then what?   Just how long can you entertain yourself with washing, dusting, making beds and folding clothes?  So, I enrolled in college--something I had promised my mom I would do nine years earlier. A big condition which Ken and I agreed upon when my parents gave their blessing.  Kind of.  At the time I didn't have any interest in college.  And I hadn't exactly said "When."

He left in November of '66.  By May of 67 I couldn't seem to fill my days with enough stuff to do. For the first time college seemed attractive.  I took three courses that summer, made A's, and was offered a full tuition scholarship.  So I enrolled that fall and took every course they offered from 9 to 3.  That allowed me to see my children off to school and welcome them home every day.

Each day had been a count down: 382, 381, 380,.........42, 41, 40...and he was still alive.  Maybe  God in his mercy was going to get us through this war that never should have happened.   Maybe God in his mercy was going to let Ken come home alive and not in a box.