Category: Genesis

Posted in Genesis, John

Raising Hell – Part Two

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.” Genesis 3:22b

Part of becoming a Christian for me was accepting the Bible as the final authority on every area of life and doctrine. I was brought up in the Lord by people who believed that the Bible was clear on the nature of hell’s punishment, so I never even questioned it.

The argument went something like this: Because men and women are made in the image of God they are automatically eternal beings. The great tragedy of someone rejecting Christ, therefore, was that they would live in conscious torment for all eternity. No one chooses, whether they are eternal, I was taught, it is just a by-product of being in the image of God. Everyone is born with eternal life – they either spend it in heaven with Jesus or in the conscious torment of hell with Satan and his angels.

In the last few years I’ve questioned whether this is true Biblically or if it is only a tradition of man that was passed down. The context of the passage quoted above was God putting Cherubim with swords at the entrance to Eden because He wanted to ensure that Adam and Eve would not eat from the tree of life and live forever apart from Him.

Apparently being in the image of God didn’t mean Adam and Eve would automatically live forever, but only that they had the potential of being eternal. According to the text, to live forever they would have to eat of the tree of life.

Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Eternal life is God’s gift to humanity in Christ; without it, I believe, you and I will eventually perish. It was never in God’s heart that we would be able to live forever apart from Him.

Posted in Exodus, Genesis

Patterns of Evidence

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“Know this for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they will serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions . . . In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not reached its full measure.” Genesis 15:13-16

Filmmaker Timothy Mahoney went on a journey to discover whether the exodus the Bible describes is actual history or only a myth. What he found after more than a decade of traveling all over the world interviewing top scholars and Egyptologists is patterns of evidence affirming the Biblical account.

But the evidence was not in the time period archeologists were looking in and this led to much skepticism toward the Biblical account. Because of Exodus 1:11, “They built Pithom and Ramses as store cities for Pharaoh,” scholars assumed that Ramses was the Pharaoh of the exodus, so that was the city they were excavating. Many problems became evident: No sign of a Semite (Israelites are called Semites) population, no signs of distress in Egypt, and nothing that indicated any people group who were there, up and left.

Yet other Egyptologists call the text of Exodus 1:11 an “anachronism,” something added to the text by a later editor to help their readers understand where they were referring to. What the later editor was actually saying was something like this: “This is the place where the Israelites built the store city and we know it today as Ramses.” Evidence of a similar anachronism is found in Genesis 47:11 where Joseph settles his family in Goshen and the text refers to it as “the best part of the land, the district of Ramses.” This was hundreds of years earlier than the Exodus 2:11 text, long before any Ramses could possibly have been Pharaoh, or named a city after himself.

For the last thirty years, archeologists have been digging in another city, also in the area of Goshen, but at a lower level than Ramses, called “Avaris.” This city existed hundreds of years earlier than Ramses, in what Egyptologists call “The Middle Kingdom,” and in it is found every evidence Ramses was lacking. (Mahoney’s movie is called: Patterns of Evidence)

Posted in Genesis, Isaiah, Jeremiah, John, Revelation

The Age of the Earth – Part Three

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning…” John 8:44

Satan was already Satan at the beginning; not his beginning, but our beginning. Even though God called everything He made good, there was something evil left over from another time. The story of Satan’s fall is an untold story in Scripture even though we are repeatedly assured of the presence of an evil kingdom and given many instructions on how to stand against evil and how to exercise authority over demons.

So when did he fall? Genesis 1:2 says that after creation; “The earth was formless and void.” The greatest Hebrew scholars in the world say that the word “hayah” translated “was” in this text, can just as easily be translated, “became.” (See the footnote in the 1984 translation of the NIV Bible) In fact, the King James Bible translates “hayah” as “became” in 67 other places. Is it possible that God didn’t create the earth formless and void but that it became formless and void sometime after the creation?

The Hebrew words translated “formless and void” are “tohu va bohu.” The phrase “tohu va bohu” is only used in two other places in Scripture. One is in Jeremiah 4:23 where God is describing the result of His desolating judgment on Israel’s rebellion. Because they rebelled, God left Israel “tohu va bohu.” The other place this phrase is used is in Isaiah 34:11 where God is describing the result of His desolating judgment on Edom. Because Edom rebelled, God left the land “tohu va bohu.”

What if Genesis 1:2 is describing the result of God’s desolating judgment on the earth following Lucifer’s (Satan’s) rebellion? God created the early earth perfectly and it was inhabited by angels and animals but when Lucifer fell, God’s judgment followed. We don’t know when or how long until other angels followed him, we only know that a third did fall (Revelation 12:4, 7) and that judgment did come. The earth is covered with water and darkness in Genesis 1:2, not because God created it that way, but because it became that way after Satan’s rebellion.

Posted in Genesis, Job

The Age of the Earth – Part Two

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was (or possibly became) formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Genesis 1:1-2

Here are the four reasons I believe the heavens were already in existence before the six days of Genesis one:

  1. Darkness is only on the face of the earth in verse two; it isn’t filling the universe. Job 38 describes the earth at some time after it was created as having clouds as its garments and being “wrapped in thick darkness.” (Job 38:9)
  2. When God says, “Let there be light,” on day one, He was not creating light, He was allowing the light that was already filling the universe to appear on the earth.* Evening and morning on earth are describing a solar day as the clouds dissipate enough at God’s command for light to appear again on the face of the earth.
  3. The difference between “bara” and “asah.” In Genesis 1:1, God creates the heavens; on the fourth day He only works on them. The word “create” in Hebrew is “bara,” the word used on the fourth day in connection to the stars, sun, and moon is “asah” (often translated “made”). Bara indicates something brand new while asah never involves something new, but rather something preexisting that is being worked on.
  4. On day four God doesn’t create the heavens, He only works on them by completely removing the cloud cover so they can be seen from the earth. This is similar to the work He does on the earth in day three. He doesn’t create the earth on the third day, He gathers the water so that dry land appears, and then calls the dry land, “earth.” In a similar way, on day four He doesn’t create the heavens, He removes the clouds so the heavens can be seen from the earth.

*Scofield Study Bible: “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” Comments: “Neither here nor in verses 14-18 is an original creative act implied. A different word is used. The sense is made to appear; made visible. The sun and moon were created ‘in the beginning.’ The ‘light’ of course came from the sun, but the vapor diffused the light. Later the sun appeared in an unclouded sky.”

Posted in Genesis

The Age of the Earth – Part One

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was (or possibly became) formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Genesis 1:1-2

Many have felt that a straightforward reading of the Bible leads to an earth/universe which is less than 10,000 years old. Any other explanation is often seen as a compromise with the scientific community who believe the earth is billions of years old. Do we have to choose between the Bible and what most scientists believe about the age of the earth?

Genesis One gives six days of creation and describes each day by the words, “There was evening and there was morning,” giving the impression of a 24-hour period. Some make the point that the sun and moon are not created until day four so there is no reason to believe that “evening and morning” are describing a solar day. This group would say that each day, the Hebrew word “yom,” is describing an indefinite period where God creates through a long process that is only generally summarized in the text. There need be no conflict with scientists, in this view, because Genesis One is only concerned about “who” created, not about “how” He created.

Although I have some sympathy with this argument, I think it is unnecessary when one looks closely at the text. If we subtract all six days of creation given in Genesis One, notice that we still have an earth even though it’s covered with water and darkness. Before day one, the earth is already here. The only verse that references the creation of the earth is Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Is this an introduction to what the author is going to describe as happening during the six days, or is the actual creation of the heavens and the earth being referenced before the six days? Since the earth isn’t created during any one of the six days, I think we have to conclude that Genesis 1:1 is describing the act of God in creating the original heavens and earth. If this is the case, and the heavens, including the stars, sun and moon, are already here before day one, day four cannot be describing their creation. Tomorrow I will give four reasons I believe this is true.