What physical laws did God use to manifest the virgin birth? Please describe the physics of how Jesus walked on water and turned water to wine? In I Kings 18, what natural phenomenon did God use to consume Elijah’s burnt offering on Mt. Carmel? How did God part the Red Sea? In this explanation please include the detailed calculations for fluid dynamics, the amount of water moved, and how gravity was suspended or redirected to accommodate a dry path across the sea. Make sure the conclusions involve only measurable scientific calculations. Which scientific processes did Jesus use to feed 5000 people with 5 loaves and 2 fishes? Why is it so important that the creation miracle be explained by natural phenomenon and not the others?

 Back to the Creation Manifesto Outline

The words of Jesus in Mark 10:6 “At the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.” This may seem innocuous in the debate, but if you look at the evolutionary timeline, mankind comes at the END of the line after billions of years of death. Jesus says clearly that mankind was created at the BEGINNING of creation. With those 11 words, there is now no room in scripture for the billions of years required for evolution.

In Luke 11:49-51 Jesus tells the rebellious listeners that they “will be held responsible for the blood of all of the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, from the blood of Abel (Adam’s son) to the blood of Zechariah.” Would Jesus attribute the blood of mythological prophets (Abel) to the rebellious generation? Would that not be similar to saying “This generation will be responsible for the blood of ObiWan Kenobi”? It doesn’t hold a lot of weight if the victim is fictional. If however, Abel was a real person and as scripture teaches is the son of the first man and woman, then we know from the chrono-genealogies within a few hundred years of when he lived and died. This certainly rules out the beginning of the world being billions of years prior.

If the evolutionary timeframe were true and mankind did not appear until the very end of the timeline, how would Jesus’ words fit with the idea that He created Adam/Eve at the beginning of creation and that Abel was a prophet at the beginning of the world?

 Back to the Creation Manifesto Outline

The Old Testament records Moses’ interaction with the Almighty in which God wrote on tablets of stone. If this is a historical encounter, then why would we expect to find a mythological interlude embedded into this bedrock pillar in western culture?  Right in the midst of giving the fourth commandment, God refers to the reason behind why Israel should only work for six days. Exodus 20:8-11 speaks clearly to the days of the week that the Israelites are to work correspond directly to the days that the Creator worked. The Israelites are told to work for 6 days and rest on the seventh because “In six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them, but on the seventh day he rested.” To say that these days are other than what is spoken of as history in Genesis is to inject one’s own theory into the actual text. If that weren’t enough, God repeats his reasoning in Exodus 31:17.

So, God didn’t create the universe in 6 ages/eras since he told his chosen people to work and rest in his original pattern. He was obviously not telling his people to work for 6 ages/eras and then resting for a single age/era. Both the creation and command to work six days and rest on the seventh are referring to literal days.

 Back to the Creation Manifesto Outline

Since Jesus was not mythical, then neither was Adam. Romans 5 and Romans 8 continue to relay the importance of death being brought into the world by a real person (Biologos rejects a literal Adam/Eve. Most theistic evolutionists reject literal Adam/Eve. ChristianityToday wrote their article, which prompted my TrojanHorse blog post, because they rejected a literal Adam/Eve. Evolution demands that a literal Adam/Eve were not the original human couple) Romans 5

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!
Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

If Adam is not literal (despite what Jesus said and Paul, Matthew, Luke, and Peter wrote), then why would Jesus have to be a literal person. In the passage above from Romans 5, Adam is contrasted directly to Jesus…If Adam is mythical, then following that logic, Jesus was mythical too according to Romans 5. We know that Jesus is not mythical, therefore, we can reject the mythical Adam view.

Romans 8 continues to confirm the Genesis account as true history when in verse 19-20, Paul says that creation was subjected to frustration and bondage to decay because of Adam’s sin. The New Living Translation says, “Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, ²¹ the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.” All of creation was subjected to the curse of sin because of Adam (and all of his offspring).

I Corinthians 15:21-49 continues this contrasting of the real person, of Adam with the real person of Christ. Adam brought death into the world, but Jesus has brought abundant life and a restoration of relationship.

Romans 6:23 reminds us to that the payment/wages of sin is death. This is New Testament confirmation of the belief that God’s proclamation to Adam was that he would experience death if he was disobedient.

 Back to the Creation Manifesto Outline

It is important to Christian doctrine that death came as a result of sin. If death, disease, and bloodshed existed for billions of years prior to Adam’s sin (as the evolutionary worldview tells us), then these things are included as something that God called very good (Gen 1:31) and the curse of Adam’s sin was not all that distinct from processes that had existed since the beginning. Genesis 3:16-19 reads:

To the woman He said, ‘I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing’…Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.

Adam’s sin brought death and pain into the world, but the evolutionary view tells us that death over billions of years brought mankind into the world. Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin.” Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death.” The evolutionary worldview tells us that by the countless deaths of billions of intermediates, human kind was brought about. The two views are mutually exclusive and cannot be reconciled.

Some will say that Adam only brought spiritual death upon himself and his descendants. This argument fails in part because, if it was a spiritual death only, then why did Jesus have to die a horrific physical death to pay the penalty for our sins? If spiritual death was the only punishment for Adam, then why did Jesus not have to die only a spiritual death as payment for sin? But Jesus did die a horrible physical death for our sin (Heb 9). He took every curse of sin upon himself in our place.

Others might say that it was just human death as part of the curse. They contend that animals have been dying for billions of years.  If it was just the physical deaths of only humans that Adam’s sin brought, then why did Jesus sacrifice an animal right there in the garden to cover their sins and nakedness (Gen 3:21)? Why was the picture of covering sins to sacrifice an animal until Jesus came (Ex 24:8)? If evolution were God’s creative mechanism, and the trivial death of animals had been happening for billions of years, would this natural/trivial process be an adequate representation of the excruciating death of the Creator of Life that the Hebrews were told to practice for thousands of years in anticipation of the Messiah (Heb 9:22)? Because the bloodshed of an animal without defect (Ex 12:5, I Pet 1:19) was a picture of the coming bloodshed from the Messiah, it does not align with the theistic evolutionary idea that the curse of sin did not also include animals. People have told me that Adam’s sin brought only human death because animal death is not really bad…it’s part of life. It’s always been part of God’s plan. But this is in direct opposition to 1 Corinthians 15:26 “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” Death is not some benign counterpart of life. It is a curse of sin. It is an enemy that we all have to face and that Jesus had to face to pay for our sins.

Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, but Yahweh provided an animal to take his place.

 Back to the Creation Manifesto Outline

Genesis 2:18-25 God brought all of the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air to Adam. Adam named them and found that none of them were suitable helpers for him. Once God had made Eve from Adam’s rib, in 3:20 “Adam named his wife Eve because she would become the mother of all the living.” This defeats the argument that there were other pre-Adamic races of people. Some old earth believers say that there were other groups of people with whom the line of Adam could inter-breed, but scripture clearly does not accommodate this view because Adam looked through all of the animals and found none of them suitable as companions. They were all animals that Adam named. In addition to this, the other groups of people would not be eligible to come under the redemption that Jesus provided. To the serpent in the garden, God said,

“And I will cause hostility between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring and her offspring.
He will strike your head,
    and you will strike his heel.”

The kinsman redeemer was promised to come from Eve’s descendants and redemption is tied to the blood. Other fictional tribes would not be blood descendants.

Acts 17:26 “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.”

From that passage, you can see that not only does Luke see Adam as a real person, but he states explicitly that there were not pre-Adamic races of people with whom Adam’s family intermarried.

If we look at the words of Charles Darwin from The Descent of Man, we see the inherent racism of an evolutionary mindset:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

Do we as Christians want to endorse this racist philosophy by incorporating evolution into our teachings?

 Back to the Creation Manifesto Outline