God's Point of View | A Literal Creation?

Are the Six Day Creation and a Historic Adam Essential to the Christian Doctrine?

By Rev. D. Earl Cripe, Ph.D.

How important is it to the historic Christian faith that creation be literal and that Adam be a literal, historic person? It is all important. The foundation of the Christian faith, the validity of the Bible, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the hope of salvation of man depends upon Genesis' creation being literal and that Adam was a historical person. Romans 5:14 and 15 says that through Adam, death came into the world and death passed upon all men. That is because all sinned in Adam. They did not commit Adam's transgression but died because of it. They inherited sin. Adam, the father, acted and the race was affected by it. Exactly as the offense, so also is the free gift; as with Adam, Jesus Christ acted and the whole race was affected. Federal mediation is the principle that dramatizes the similarity. In I Corinthians 15:21, 22, the Apostle Paul told the philosophers and intellectuals in Greece: "For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."

If all men did not die in Adam, then all are not made alive in Christ. In that Corinthian chapter, Christ is called the Last Adam. This means that He is the New Man, or the new race of men. If there is no first Adam, there is no last Adam. Beyond that, if there was no Adam, then there was no Seth his third son; and if there was no Seth there was no Enos; and if there was no Enos, there was no Enoch; and men did not begin to call upon the name of Jehovah. If there was no Enoch there was no Lamech, which means that there was no Noah, no Abraham, no Moses, no David, and eventually no Jesus Christ. The third chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke gives a long list of genealogies. I will skip over many of them now because I do not want to weary you with all the names: "... Who was the son of David... who was the son of Abraham... who was the son of Adam... Who was the son of God." We may as well close up the Book if creation was not literal and Adam was not historic because we are preaching a doctrine of lies. If there was no Adam, there was no Jacob. If there was no Jacob, there were no twelve tribes of Israel and the Bible was written by fictitious or false people who did not even exist, or else by people who were liars, deceivers, and deranged; and so it goes.

Is the Bible Believable for Everyone?

But can all men everywhere believe the literal Genesis account; can they really? Is it not impossible for certain scientific, literary types, and skeptics to believe this account? Are we not really asking some men to believe something they cannot believe? The answer to that is "no, not at all." St. Paul answered that issue in the first chapter in his letter to the Romans when he addressed this very subject and said: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them or God has showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." (Rom 1:18-22)

There Are No Atheists, Only Liars

Then he goes on, in the first chapter of Romans, to say that they came up with evolution and changed the glory of the incorruptible God like the corruptible man and birds and four-footed beasts and the creeping things. That rebellion against authority and against one's own nature follows on the heels of the original decision to ignore God, to lie. "I cannot believe in Him," they say, "because I cannot see Him. I am an agnostic at best. I cannot know whether God exists or not." St. Paul says that it is deliberate and calculated lie, and they have no excuse.

Should We Call Unbelievers Lairs?

You may be a professed unbeliever who replies that you do not like being called a liar. If not, let me tell you something I do not like. I do not like being called a liar any more than you do; I do not like hearing the Bible called a lie; and I do not like hearing God called a liar. So, that is a game that two can play at, and it has to be played if the subject is going to be discussed. Somebody is a liar here and the Bible says it is the one who says, "I cannot know whether or not there is a God and, if there is, whether or not that God created the Heaven and the earth."

The Apostle goes on to say that when one looks at this universe and its order and how everything from the biggest system in the heavens to the tiniest atom follows a pattern; when he sees how everything works together and functions as a machine, he is seeing the evidences of a designer and a builder. If he says he does not see that, he is lying - let there be no argument about it! In the Day of God, it will come out. He chooses, for some personal reason - his pride, his desire to be recognized, his drive to get in with the intellectual set, his wanting to be praised, whatever it is - not to recognize the Creator. But he saw God all right. "He knows it, and I know it," said the Apostle. For reasons of his own he chose to lie about it, and when he made that decision he began to imagine things. His head became empty - and that is what vanity means. It means - empty. "They became empty-headed in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened. The light went out in their minds and they begin to imagine things."

How then did they give these theories of theirs sophistication?

Professing Themselves - Professing Themselves - To be Wise, They Became Fools

Fools are in charge of public education. That is not my saying; it is what the Bible is telling us. In choosing evolution instead of honoring the Creator they became fools. It was not until the intellectual light went out that their minds went haywire and weird fantasies resulted. It was then that they professed themselves to be wise. In so doing, they became fools. Then they began to propose the foul, corrupt, blasphemous, decadent theories of evolution that are being pumped into our children like sewage spewing out of a broken force main. They give to the one-celled amoebae, the algae, and the primitive soup the glory that belongs to God the Creator. We did not come from the RNA's and the DNA's and the amino acids blipping around in the primordial ooze. We came from the Great Mind, from the Magnificent Hand, from the Life Giving Power of the Almighty God. That is where we came from and that is how we got here.

Thus we see that Genesis will not permit evolution no matter how twisted and tortured the scenario. Orthodoxy is founded upon the integrity of the Biblical revelation that creation was literal and that Adam was a historic person. All men everywhere can, if they choose to do so, believe in the Almighty God. Their claims that they cannot do so are false altogether. You can believe in God. Anybody that can believe the lame, patched-together, disjointed, illogical, often-disproved, concocted theory of evolution - that not only defies common sense but every legitimate science that there is - can easily believe the Biblical account of creation. If you have the faith to believe spiritually retarded gobbledygook like that, then you have the faith to believe anything; and certainly the honorable, good, wholesome and life-giving Gospel of Jesus Christ.

A Six-Day Creation and an Historic Adam Cannot be Separated From the Christian Gospel

We cannot proceed further along the line of studying truth until we have firmly established the position of the Historic Orthodox Christian faith on this issue. Listen to it again: If creation was not literal as Genesis described it, and if Adam was not a historic person as the Bible declares them to be, then my friend, we have nothing to preach. The whole genius of the Bible is based upon the assumption of federal mediation: the father acts and the children are affected. If that is not true then there is no salvation for any of us because the Gospel premise rests squarely on the assumption that as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. I am sure that none of this bothers the unbeliever at all; particularly the malevolent types like biological science professors, philosophers, and public education architects. But anyone who professes Christianity and cares anything about that profession having biblical integrity, needs to get his thinking straight and keep it that way. The universe was created in six calendar days. Adam, the real, historic figure, is the genetic father of all men. The entire race fell in Adam. Anyone who goes in any other direction has departed from the Historic Faith, the Bible, the Truth, and the Gospel.