The Doctrine of Creation prior to Abraham.
How does Genesis 10:1 link itself to the Creation? What bearing does this have on the arguments of the evolutionists? From Genesis 10:5 & 21, how do we know that this was written after Genesis 11? What important cities were built by Nimrod (10:10-11), and in what land or plain did he dwell? Of what branch of the human family did Nimrod descend? (Grandson of Ham.) Was this branch of the family the most spiritual and godly? Did Nimrod love the Creator and want to lead his family in the worship of the Lord? To what event do Genesis 10:5, 25 and 32 refer, and how does that relate to Creation?
As the Tower of Babel was being built (Genesis 11:1-2) who was likely the man in charge? How does the Tower of Babel, disprove some of the evolutionary theories? (One source of people.) What was the declared purpose for the Tower (11:4)? Did the people really think that their tower would reach into Heaven? What is the likelihood that the Tower of Babel had something to do with Astrology and the worship of the Heavens? It is generally agreed by most Bible scholars that Nimrod was a key ingredient in the origination of various aspects of false religion. How did God’s confounding human language testify to Creation? Could it be that there was a different language given to every family mentioned in Genesis 10? That would be about 70 different languages – confusing and confounding indeed. There are a lot of languages with similarities; are there any completely different from most others? What should that event have accomplished in the hearts of those people?
(I would be curious to know what Shem and his family thought about that Tower and what he might have tried to do about it.) Assuming that Shem did not participate in Nimrod’s rebellion, what is the likelihood that his language was not changed? Was it the mere lack of communication which drove the various families apart? (The Creator did it.)
Shem to Abraham. How long did Shem live before he died? (500 years.) How old was he when his son, Arphaxad, was born? (100.) Genesis 11 describes eight generations following Shem to Abraham. Were people living as long at this time as those preceding Noah? Why? The average age of the father at the birth of his first born son was about 30, with the exception of Terah who was 70 when Abraham was born. What is 7 times 30? (210 years.) What is 210 + 100 (Shem’s age at the birth of Arphaxad) + 70 (Terah’s age at birth of Abraham)? (380) If Shem lived 600 years after the birth of his son, was he still alive when Abraham was born? Do we have much of a link between Abraham and Noah? Do we have much of a link between Noah and Seth and Adam? So is it possible that Abraham was given the actual details of Creation as known by Noah and Shem? We don’t have proof of these things, but they are certainly possible.
Abraham and Creation.
Did Abraham grow up in a “Christian” home, properly worshiping the Creator? (Joshua 24:2.) How did Abraham become a child of God? The Lord commanded him to leave Ur in the Chaldees and proceed where? What was the Lord’s promise to Abraham? (The land, blessings, and curses on those who cursed him.) By what right did God make these promises? By what power could God fulfil these promises?
It is not my intention to survey the entire Bible. I will be skipping a lot of material which doesn’t relate to Creation in some fashion. Abraham and his nephew Lot parted company and Lot moved where? From what we know, where was Sodom? Why did he want to live there? What sort of place was the area in the days of the Lord Jesus, and what sort of climate did it have? To what does “the garden of the Lord” refer in Genesis 13:10 and how did it get that description? Doesn’t this off-hand reference suggest the reality of the original garden of Eden?
In Genesis 14:9 Amraphel was king of what place? To whom does this reference take us? Also in this chapter we are introduced to mysterious Melchizedek. There are some who think that this is another name for either Job or Shem. If it was Shem, we have Abraham once again being linked to the Flood and thus to Creation. A great many Bible scholars however, teach that Melchizedek was Someone far more important. Who? In either case, we have Abraham linked very closely to Creation once again.
What does the Abrahamic covenant teach us about the authority of the Creator? What did Abraham’s faith in the Lord, in regard to his childlessness, teach about his faith in the Creator? “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Genesis 18:13. When Abraham called the Lord “the Judge of all the earth” (Genesis 18:25) was he being polite? What did he mean? What does that mean in regard to Creation? Was the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah man-made (not man-caused)? If that destruction was nothing more than volcanic, could the preceding events (angels, warning, etc.) be explained naturally? How much power would a disaster like that require? What testimony does this give to the power of the Creator? What does it say about the authority of God?
Did Abraham worship the Lord through the sacrifice of offerings? Of course, the Lord could have given him instructions to have effect, but is it possible that he had learned about them from Shem? Were the sacrifices which Abraham and his family offered any different from those of Adam and Seth? Could it be that they went right back to the Garden of Eden and the days immediately after the Fall?
How important was Abraham’s son Isaac to the fulfilment of God’s covenant with Abraham? When God told him to offer his son as a blood sacrifice, how do you think that this made him feel? Had he ever seen or even heard of someone being resurrected from the dead? When he indicated that despite Isaac’s impending sacrifice, he would still be the on-going means of fulfilling the promise, what must he have been thinking? What does this suggest about Abraham’s faith in the Creator?
By whom did Abraham make his servant swear before going to find a wife for Isaac (Genesis 24:3)? What would those words have meant to Abraham? Was his God nothing more than a tribal deity, as the evolutionists insist?
Isaac and Jacob.
Was there much temptation to Isaac, Jacob and Joseph to turn to the gods of Nimrod? Of course, it was by the grace of God that they retained their monotheistic theology, but could there have been any human or more casual causes as well? What is the likelihood that they were taught about the Creator from their childhoods? What possible reference could Jacob have been making, when in the course of his blessing on Dan, he spoke about “waiting for God’s salvation?”
There is not much material on the Creation from Genesis 12-50, but the whole book is built on the foundation of Creation and makes perfect sense in that light. The various theories of evolution cannot be easily squeezed into the logic and language of these chapters.
There is one other piece of evidence to the Creation/sin/Flood effect. Noah lived to be 950 years; his son Shem lived to be 600. Terah 205; Abraham 175; Isaac 180; Jacob 147; and Joseph, 110. Notice the constant decline in age, with the exception of Isaac, until the time of Moses and the common life span of 70 years. Not only is there good evidence of the cataclysmic changes that the Flood involved, but the math in this indicates that the time between the Flood and the Exodus was the 900 years that the Hebrew text suggests.
The Book of Genesis gives consistent evidence to the reality of the Creation and the Flood.