God was there in the beginning: He is outside creation
The universe had a beginning and God was there. In Genesis 1 Moses describes the creator God who had saved and led his people Israel. God is our source of information, but we need to be humble about what he does and does not tell us. He made everything we see, but the focus is not so much on the process (how God did it) but on the purpose (for His glory, yes, but for making a place where men and women can live in relationship with God).
God made everything with good purposes
We cannot be adamant about the method. Survival of the fittest and adaptation is going on all the time in our world. We need to admit that we do not know precisely how God made things so we don’t know what trace that leaves behind. Certainly there is a common designer using common materials so it is perfectly reasonable that there is a commonality between all living things. However a number of factors make the biblical God incompatible with a total evolutionary framework
• He spoke and things happened instantly. Even allowing for the poetry it does not seem to do justice to the purposeful good precise activity of God to assume he had to wait for time and chance and many failed attempts
• He made everything after its kind (species). No hint of crossing the species boundaries which evolution demands.
We cannot insist Genesis is precisely describing sequence & time periods. Nor do we know how the fall, and later the flood affected the ageing processes. So discussions about the age of the earth are not really very productive. It would seem most reasonable that creation of the basic elements of our world happened instantaneously at the beginning and then the universe we know is called to order over 6 days, but Christians do differ over how to read Genesis 1.
What we know for certain is that God was there in the beginning and more precisely that Christ was there as the agent of creation. Our best approach is to introduce people to Jesus. When they know Him as Saviour and Lord they are ready to accept His explanation about what happened in the beginning.
Listen to the full sermon here...
Wednesday 5 May 2010
Philippa Stroud criticised in the Observer
Reading this article it struck me that if the secular press were to visit most evangelical churches they would probably be outraged. Most of us in church leadership wouldn't be allowed to hold significant office in any of the three main parties. I'm not saying Philippa Stroud has the right approach though.
Read the article here
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