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.