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Genesis
09-14-08
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Intro: Video “Genesis: Apollo 8 Creation Story” If we step back from life for a second we see with wonderment the world around us. If we could step into outer space we would see with awe the vastness of it and our existence would be questioned. Why am I here? What is my purpose? Do I matter at all?
Chapter one will give us an overview of creation. Chapter 2 will give us an in-depth account of the creation of man. We are not going to go to in-depth or too slow. We are going to go through at least one verses today.
Genesis 1:1-5 (NKJV)
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
I. The Beginning of all things 1:1-2
A. In the Beginning (1a)
1. Christians do not accept the creation story as a Myth
If Jesus is the son of God then He can authenticate the Word of God.
Jesus quotes this
Mark 13:19 (NKJV)
19 For in those days there will be tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the creation which God created until this time, nor ever shall be
Mark 10:5-6 (NKJV)
5 And Jesus answered and said to them, “Because of the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept.
6 But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’
In the beginning—a period of remote and unknown antiquity, hid in the depths of eternal ages
If there is a beginning there will be an end
God controls the beginning and the end
2. The universe is not infinite
1959 survey republished in Scientific American - “no beginning” now “beginning”
A survey was taken of leading American scientists in 1959, was recently republished in Scientific American -- the most widely read science journal in the world. Among the many questions asked was, "What is your concept of the age of the universe?" Now, in 1959, astronomy was popular, but cosmology -- the deep physics of understanding the universe -- was just developing. The response to that survey Two-thirds of the scientists gave the same answer: "The universe had no beginning”
They reprinted it because virtually all scientists now say the universe had a beginning
Thermal Decay – heat flows from hot bodies to cold – eternal universe would already be uniform & cold
Heat always flows from hot bodies to cold bodies. If the universe was infinitely old, the temperature throughout the universe would be uniform. It isn’t; therefore, it isn’t infinitely old. The universe had a beginning. And it is destined for an ending.
The most profound discovery of modern physics is that we live in a finite universe. Now scientists from all walks say, “In the beginning”.
3. How old is the universe?
How long ago did the "beginning" occur?
Was it, as the Bible might imply, 6000 to 10,000 years, or was it the 15 billions years that's accepted by most of the secular scientific community?
Old Earth?
What about carbon-14 dating?
14 elements can alter the speed of half life – Water, air, pressure, electricity, radioactivity, and Light etc.
It has complete decay in 250,000 years yet many times it shows up beyond the so called ice age of millions of years.
Radiometric dating?
Steve Austin, PhD geology, had a rock from the newly formed 1986 lava dome from Mount St. Helens dated. Using Potassium-Argon dating, the newly formed rock gave ages between 0.5 and 2.8 million years.3 These dates show that significant argon (daughter element) was present when the rock solidified.
Age seen in strata of earth?
Petrified tree going through 7 layers of strata supposedly covering millions of years
Numerous eco systems fossilized in the same area
Good explanation is the flood
Young Earth indicators
Earth’s Magnetic Field: Earth’s magnetic field half-life is calculated to be 1,400 years. Based on measurements taken from 1835 to 1965 estimates an age of less than 10,000 years. If extrapolated back 200,000 years, the joule heat generated would liquefy the earth. [Thomas G. Barnes, Origin and Destiny of the Earth’s Magnetic Field, Institute for Creation Research, 1983. After revisions for magnetic reversals, etc., Dr. Russell
Humphreys confirmed these results. (John D. Morris, The Young Earth, 1994.)]
Salinity of the Oceans: The sodium, uranium, nickel, magnesium, silicon, potassium, copper, gold, and bicarbonate concentrations in the oceans are much less than would be expected if these elements and compounds were being added to the oceans at the present rate for thousands of millions of years.
20 billion tons of dirt and rock erode into the oceans each year
Only 1 billion are removed by plate tectonics like subduction – billions of years 14 miles deep with sediment
Nitrates and uranium do not break down or recycle like salt. Implies oceans are a few thousand years old. (Henry Morris, SA Austin, Dr. Humphreys, et al.)
Biological material decays too fast - DNA
Natural radioactivity, mutations, and decay degrade DNA and other biological material rapidly. 17 DNA experts insist that DNA cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years, yet intact strands of DNA appear to have been recovered from fossils allegedly much older: Neanderthal bones, insects in amber, and even from dinosaur fossils
ILL - 2004 Wyoming T-Rex that had spongy bone marrow was said to be 70 million years old
Old Universe
Since the universe must be at least as old as the oldest thing in it, there are a number of observations which put a lower limit on the age of the universe. These include the temperature of the coolest white dwarfs.
Stars being billions of light years away
God could have created universe with age but why?
Speed of light is slowing down
(cDK)
If light were billions of times faster at the beginning, and slowed down in transit, there would be no more problem.
If true, virtually all aspects of traditional physics are affected, including the presumed steady state of radioactive decay used to measure geologic time.
Since most nuclear processes are mathematically related to the speed of light, a faster ‘c’ might well mean a faster rate of radioactive decay
Barry Setterfield charted all documented measurements of the SoL since the 17th century
Early in 1979, an Australian undergraduate student named Barry Setterfield, thought it would be interesting to chart all of the measurements of the speed of light since a Dutch astronomer named Olaf Roemer first measured light speed in the late 17th century.
Setterfield acquired data on over 163 measurements using 16 different methods over 300 years.
Setterfield expected to see the recorded speeds grouped around the accepted value for light speed, roughly 299,792 kilometers /second. In simple terms, half of the historic measurements should have been higher and half should be lower.
What he found defied belief: The derived light speeds from the early measurements were significantly faster than today. Even more intriguing, the older the observation, the faster the speed of light. A sampling of these values is listed below:
- In 1738: 303,320 +/- 310 km/second
- In 1861: 300,050 +/- 60 km/second
- In 1877: 299,921 +/- 13 km/second
- In 2004: 299,792 km/second (accepted constant)
Others recently propose this theory as well
Dr. Joao Magueijo, a physicist at Imperial College in London, Dr. John Barrow of Cambridge, Dr. Andy Albrecht of the University of California at Davis and Dr. John Moffat of the University of Toronto have all published work advocating their belief that light speed was much higher – as much as 10 to the 10th power faster – in the early stages of the "Big Bang" than it is today.
(It's important to note that none of these researchers have expressed any bias toward a predetermined answer, biblical or otherwise. If anything, they are antagonistic toward a biblical worldview.)
Albert Michelson, Class of 1873 US naval academy, was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in the sciences. In 1881 he measured the speed of light as 299,853 km/sec. In 1907 he. In 1923 he measured it as 299,798 km/sec. In 1933, at Irvine, CA, as 299,774 km/sec.)
A team of secular scientists including the famed physicist Paul Davies publicized a paper in Nature magazine in 2002 that claimed “light has been slowing down since the start of the universe.”
A New Perspective
This curve would imply that the speed of light may have been 10-30% faster in the time of Christ; twice as fast in the days of Solomon; and four times as fast in the days of Abraham. It would imply that the velocity of light was more than 10 million times faster at creation.
Light slowed from 186,000 miles per second to 38 miles per hour
In February 1999 the Harvard Gazette published an article about the slowing of light to 38 Miles an hour
An entirely new state of matter, first observed four years ago, has made this possible. When atoms become packed super-closely together at super-low temperatures and super-high vacuum, they lose their identity as individual particles and act like a single super- atom with characteristics similar to a laser.
Such an exotic medium can be engineered to slow a light beam 20 million-fold from 186,282 miles a second to a pokey 38 miles an hour.
Quote - "In this odd state of matter, light takes on a more human dimension; you can almost touch it," says Lene Hau, a Harvard University physicist.
They think they can slow light to 1 centimeter (Little less than ½ inch) per second or 120 feet per hour
What could account for this drop?
Bullet shot would always approximate the same speed but what if conditions changed?
What if you shot the bullet into a heavy wind or Jell-O or water?
The collapsing of the universe – Red shift
Greater viscosity of Dark matter – only seen by its effects on gravity and light
B. God Created or Elohim created (1b)
Elohim vs. Yahweh
Creation extols God’s transcendence and the power of his spoken word; thus Elohim is preferred, whereas Yahweh commonly is associated with the particular covenant agreement between God and Israel (Exod 3:15; 6:2–3).
Plural use of God but singular use of verb – but not polytheism
The gods are creative – The gods is creative
Compound unity – multiple elements make up the one part
1. God created
The Bible teaches that there is only one creator: Isaiah 44:24, yet it also shows each person in the Trinity as being the creator.
Isa. 44: 24 "This is what the LORD says--your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself,
Jehovah says He made the heavens by Himself and even asks the rhetorical question, “Who was with me?” He is implying that no one else participated in creation with Him.
2. Jesus Christ created
Colossians 1:15-17 (NKJV)
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
John 1:3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
Jesus cannot be in the category of created beings. If Jesus created all things that were created then He Himself could not be created. He cannot create Himself. You cannot create if you do not exist
3. The Holy Spirit created
Psalm 104:30 When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.
Job 33:4 The Spirit of God has made me, And the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
C. God Created from Nothing but His Mind (1c)
Created—not formed from any pre-existing materials, but made out of nothing
In particular ˓āsåâ is used where “making” involves existing material.
Also bārā˒ always refers to the product created and does not refer to the material of which it is made. For these reasons commentators have traditionally interpreted the verb as a technical term for creatio ex nihilo (“creation out of nothing”).
We create this way only by making new thoughts but God made new never existing material
“Create,” however, does not necessarily mean an altogether new thing. For example, Ps 51:10 reads,
Psalm 51:10 (NKJV)
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
“Create [bārā˒] within me a new heart”
A heart not like the one before or renovated from inferior material but an entirely new heart.
No part of the corrupt world is being changed or used but an infusion of God perfect holiness
D. The heaven and the earth (1d)
The universe and the solar system – next week the second thought on the age of the universe
God is distinct and is greater than anything in the universe
Since God is Creator of all that exists, he is antecedent to it, distinct from it, while yet intimately involved with it.
He is not part of the universe – Pantheism
The implications of this are great.
1. Everything that exists must be under God’s control
You can have peace
All Creation must be in subjection to the Creator. Forces of nature, enemies, creatures and objects that became pagan deities—none of these would pose a threat to the servants of the living God.
2. Everyone that exists must be accountable to God
Personal creator mandates personal conduct
The account also reveals the basis of the Law.
How foolish it would be to have any other gods before Him
If indeed God was before all things and made all things, how foolish it would be to have any other gods before Him! There are none. If indeed God made man in His image to represent Him, how foolish it would be to make an image of God! If indeed God set aside one day for rest from His work, should not man who is walking with God follow Him? The commandments find their rationale here.
From here on out we are just going to take it a day at a time