Genesis 1:1 – “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  NKJV

I had a minister tell me that he believed in God and was a follower of Jesus but could not accept the account of Genesis 1:1 as the explanation of the universe’s existence.  I cannot fathom how one can discount the Beginning and hope to attain the End spoken of in Scripture.  The Bible declares and I believe that GOD Created everything.  If I disbelieve the first declaration of the Bible, how can I believe the remaining proclamations?  If I lose faith at the outset, at what point will my faith be solidified and grounded?

Creationism is not an inconsequential topic in the Word of God. It is found in numerous passages, stated in varying ways but the clear message is GOD is the Creator of all that is.  That requires faith to believe but so do the theories of evolution and its variations.  In the Book of Genesis, we find that God not only created the heavens and the earth but all that lives on the earth including man.  I suggest that you read (Psalm 90:2; 95:5; Isaiah 42:5; 45:18; John 1:1-3; Ephesians 3:9; Colossians 1:16).  In this world there is design, and any rational mind will recognize that design implies a designer.

Most credit Charles Darwin with originating the thought or theory of evolution, but if you examine the historical record, you will realize that this thought existed long before Darwin’s work in 1859, “The Origin of the Species.”  Some of the proponents of theories contrary to the Genesis account were:

• Anaximander (610-546 BC) introduced the theory of “spontaneous generation.”
• Diogenes (412-323 BC) advanced the idea of primordial slime.
• Empedocles (495-455 BC) introduced the theory of survival of the fittest and natural selection.
• Democritus (460-370 BC) taught the mutability and adaptation of the species.
• Lucretius (99-55 BC) believed that all life sprang from mother earth rather than a specific deity.

After the birth of Christ, others advanced the theories to which Charles Darwin ascribed including Bruno, Leibnitz, and Buffon who taught that man ascended from the apes.  Then you have Swedenborg’s nebular hypothesis which was an early “big bang” theory and Kant.  Man has long sought to discount and remove God from the equation.  Much of that stemmed from a desire to remove the moral code of the Bible as a guide for life but some of it was simply disillusionment and scientific error.

The Founding Fathers were well acquainted with the various theories long before Darwin brought them together in his book where they gained incredible acceptance.  Our Founding Fathers spoke openly about God and Creation and that is evident in the Constitution as well as in their various writings on matters biblical. 

Thomas Paine, probably the most antireligious of the Founders addressed leaders in France in 1798 and denounced their educational system for teaching students that man was the result of prehistoric cosmic accidents and had developed from some other species. 

He said, “It has been the error of schools to teach astronomy and all the other sciences and subjects of natural philosophy as accomplishments only, whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the Author of them, for all the principles of science are of Divine origin.  Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discoveries to the Author.  When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an astonishing pile of architecture, a well-executed statue, or a highly finished painting…our ideas are naturally to think of the extensive genius and talent of the artist.  When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid. When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton.  How, then, is it that when we study the works of God in creation, we stop short and do not think of God?… The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism.  Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator Himself, they stop short and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of His existence… But infidelity, by ascribing every phenomenon to properties of matter, conceives a system for which it cannot account, and yet it pretends to demonstration.”  WOW!  What a statement!

Daniel Webster addressed the issue of God as the First Cause of all things and Thomas Jefferson eloquently declared, “The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces; the structure of the earth itself with its distributions of lands, waters, and atmosphere; animal and vegetable bodies examined in all their minutest particles; insects – mere atoms of life – yet as perfectly organized as man or mammoth; the mineral substances, their generation and uses; it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is in all this design, cause, and effect upon an Ultimate Cause – a Fabricator of all things, from matter and motion – their Preserver and Regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms – and their Regenerator into new and other forms.”  

Many other of the Founders echoed the same beliefs in the Divine as Creator.  Ecclesiastes 1:9 informs us that there is nothing new under the sun, and that is absolutely true.  John Quincy Adams summed it up saying, “It is so obvious to every reasonable being that he did not make himself, and the world which he inhabits could as little make itself, that the moment we begin to exercise the power of reflection, it seems impossible to escape the conviction that there is a Creator.”  AMEN!

I believe the Bible account and through the study of science and the limitations God put on the interaction of species as well as the intricacies of the human body and much more, I cannot believe there is no God.  Rather, I BELIEVE IN GOD, and HE IS CREATOR!

God bless you as you embark on today’s journey!