March 1 – LD 9,
Day 4: Our Father Created All Things in Six Days!
by Rev. G. Van Baren
Read: Hebrews
11
Genesis 1 and 2 present
the simple, clear, testimony of the great work of creation by our Almighty
Father. In six literal days (each identified as beginning and ending with
evening and morning) He fashioned all things within His great universe.
It did not take our Father millions or billions of years to finish the
work. It was finished in six days. The word “day” almost always
refers to a literal day in Scripture. The few exceptions are clearly
identified (as in Gen. 2:4). God speaks also of the days of creation in
His great law: the Ten Commandments. God said that we are to rest on the
seventh day, for “in six days God created the heavens and the earth and rested
the seventh day.”
This is an essential
truth which can be contradicted only with severe consequences for the
interpretation of all of Holy Scripture. Scripture is completely
infallible or it is fallible in some or many of its passages.
Presbyterian and Reformed Churches which began with a denial of the literal
creation days, soon were led into a pattern of denying
or “reinterpreting” many other passages of Scripture. Many heresies have
been introduced in this way.
The creation account has
in it a simple beauty in describing the great work of creation. The
beautiful statement is included with the days of creation: “And God saw every thing
that He had made, and, behold, it was (very) good.” There was no sin, no
evidence of the curse or of death in all of that which God had made.
There is clearly
presented also an order in that creation: God creates a “stage” for his
work—especially on the earth. He forms the plants needed to sustain
life. Then He created animal life from lower to higher forms.
Within each “kind” there could be and would be changes seen over a period of
time. But one “kind” did not evolve into other “kinds”.
The climax of this
creation was the formation of Adam (means “dust”) from the dust of the
earth—and Eve (the first woman) from Adam’s rib. Adam was made the head
of creation and all mankind. Gen. 2 points out also that the creation was
at the same time the establishment of the marriage relationship. From the
beginning, God made one man for one woman as long as they both would
live. When questioned about divorce, Jesus insisted, “From the beginning
it was not so.”
It is humbling to realize
that the Almighty God who did all this, is my Father for Jesus’ sake.