The God of Creation

In my last article I wrote that the evidence did show that the earth is old and that life has been around for millions of years. I also wrote that the Genesis creation was in fact a re-creation. In a response to that article I received this comment,

Okay, your God could have been creating for millions of years during the period that you see as the gap in the Genesis record. But what method did God use? Is it possible he was using evolution?

I contend that, if there was a creator God that he created all those living things by allowing them to evolve from common ancestors. Since you reject that method what do you put in its place? What method do you think God used to create all those creatures? So far, evolution is the only method on the table. I have presented my view. You have yet to suggest an alternative. Please suggest an alternative method, and tell us why you think it is more plausible that God used this method rather than evolution. Until you do that, the debate cannot even begin. Evolution is the only method on the table. Do you care to suggest an alternative method that God might have used?

I think it’s a fair question however I think the writer has overlooked that I did speak of an alternative method and that is, God spoke life into existence just as it says in Genesis. However, since the question of God is questioned, perhaps we need to leave this discussion for the moment and look at the evidence for God. But before we do let me say again why I believe that God did not use evolution as the means by which he created. In my opinion by allowing life to evolve meant he spoke the spark of life into existence and then left it to its own devices. Some life forms lived, and some died, this is not the God I serve. But for argument sake let’s assume that He did use evolution as the means by which to create, then the writer of this question would have to consider the evidence for God just as I have to consider the evidence he lays out for evolution.

In order to say that evolution is wrong we have to prove that creation is correct. In order to do that we have to prove that God really exists and that Christ is who he said he was. To do that we have to look at the Jewish writings and their history and see what effect they’ve had on history. Now I know many would ask why, and the answer is quite simple, the argument for evolution and creation starts in Genesis and ends at the cross. If God never existed as evolutionary science and secular humanists teach then creation is indeed a myth, but if we can prove that God does exist and that Christ is who he said he was and is than evolution and its teachings fall flat and it forces those that believe in evolution to take a second look at scripture and its teachings.

When we look at ancient history we find that the ancient laws are quite similar to Jewish law. For example the discovery of the Code of Hammurabi, a large stone monument with ancient laws written on it was found in Mesopotamia. It supported the authenticity of the Law of Moses since some Bible critics had held that the art of writing and the science of law were unknown in that early period of history.

There were also striking parallels between some of Hammurabi's statutes and those of Moses in the Book of the Covenant. For example, in citing the law for personal injury, Hammurabi's statute 206 states: "If a man wound another accidentally in a quarrel with a stone or his fist, and oblige him to take his bed, he shall pay for the loss of his time and for the doctor's." The Law of Moses, for the same offense, is remarkably similar (Exodus 21:18-19).

"If men quarrel and one hits the other with a stone or with his fist and he does not die but is confined to bed, the one who struck the blow will not be held responsible if the other gets up and walks around outside with his staff; however, he must pay the injured man for the loss of his time and see that he is completely healed.

For the sake of argument the similarity between these and a few other laws got me to thinking of the possibility that the Mosaic Law in the Bible could have been taken from the Code of Hammurabi, or that both may have been a copy of something earlier.

With that in mind I went further back in history to the time Of Egypt. When I did that I found that Egypt had considerable written law as well. One document, The Instruction of the Vizier made mention of laws and sayings. This Egyptian document is often called “The Oldest Book in the World” and was originally written by the vizier in the Fifth (or Third) Dynasty which dated back to 1860 BC -1814 BC so it was possible that the Code of Hammurabi could have been copied from Egyptian law. Notice what this Ptah-Hotep (the second in command in Egypt) had to say of his life on earth.

“The keeping of these laws have gained for me upon earth 110 years of life, with the gift of the favor of the King, among the first of those whose works have made them noble, doing the pleasure of the King in an honored position.” The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep,” Precept XLIV

In Genesis 50:26 we find that Joseph also lived 110 years. So Joseph died at the age of a hundred and ten. And after they embalmed him, he was placed in a coffin in Egypt.

With that in mind I went back even further to a king called Melchizedek, a character in the Old Testament who appeared in Genesis to the patriarch Abraham. He is called "king of Salem" (believed to be ancient Jerusalem) and "priest of the most high God" in Genesis 14:18. But since there was nothing in history to validate this claim, at least none that I could find, the writing of the laws either of Moses or the code of Hammurabu may have been written or copied around 2000 B.C. or could have been taken from this ancient King.

So what about the other civilizations that interacted with Israel, what did they contribute to the evolution of society. We know about Egypt. We know that Israel left Egypt and settled in and conquered (1250-1230) the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites and Jebusites.(Joshua 3:10) Which are believed to have been nomadic people who settled in this area and developed trade routes which in turn attracted more powerful regional neighbors such as the Assyrians, babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. We see the Assyrians in approximately 740 BCE.

It is in Assyria where locks and keys were first used. The sexagesimal system of keeping time was developed. It is in Assyria where paved roads were first used. The first postal system, the first use of iron, the first magnifying glasses, the first libraries, the first plumbing and flush toilets, and the list goes on, and all this took place around 745-727 BCE

We see the Babylonians in 597-587 and we see the Persians in 539, and the Romans in 63 BCE

Now in all these exiles where Israel is conquered we see the conquering countries using Jews in their administration. We see Joseph sold as a slave, yet rises to second in command in Egypt. Under King Nebuchadnezzar, in the Babylonian exile we see in the book of Daniel he and others being elevated to positions of authority.

Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility- 4 young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king's palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians. 5 The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king's table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king's service. 6 Among these were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. 7 The chief official gave them new names: to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abednego.

Now all this happened in the fourth year of the reign of king Jehoiakim around 606 BCE. The hanging Gardens of Babylon are believed to have ben constructed around 600 BCE, so here again we see Jews in exile but in places of authority.

If you look at history beginning in the ancient world, Jewish populations have repeatedly attained a position of power and influence within the societies they lived in. Which raises the question why didn’t they excel as a nation? And the answer would be they did. Where are all the nations that conquered them? While all those that have conquered them have been assimilated the Jews still remain a viable nation. And what about the writings of these nations, while most are in museums the Jewish writings along with their language is still in use today. Which brings me to how does God or Christ fit in to all this? He does because there are many prophecies in the old testament that predict a messiah who would come and Christ claimed to be that messiah. So if Christ is not who he claims to be than all of scripture falls apart and nothing more needs to be said.

Were there others that effected history as much as Christ? I’ll come back to that later, but first we have to see if Christ is who he said he was. The first question I had to answer was, how long after Christ’s death were the scriptures written? To answer that I had to find out when he died, and according to history he died about 33 A.D. The next question I had to find out is, how accurate are the manuscripts we have today and that would be what is found in the bible compared to other ancient manuscripts. If we look at Roman historian Tacitus, he wrote his Annals of Imperial Rome in 116 A.D. His first six books exist today in only one manuscript and it was copied about 850 A.D. Books eleven through sixteen are in another manuscript dating from the eleventh century, and books seven through ten are no more, for they have been lost in time. Josephus wrote The Jewish War and there are nine copies which were written in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. Homer’s Illiad has fewer than six hundred and fifty manuscripts today and some are quite fragmented and come down from the second and third century A.D. From the time it was written to the time it was copied is almost a thousand years later. So in essence there is but a thread that connects the ancient works to the modern world.

In contrast, in 1939 a Papyri was discovered to have portions of the four gospels and the book of Acts and it dated to the third century. Another was found containing portions of eight letters written by Paul plus a portion of Hebrews which dated back to about 200 A.D. Then in 1920 a fragment of the gospel of John was found which originated between 100 to 150 A.D. or as early as 98-117 A.D. Now why was that so important? German theologians in the last century argued that the fourth gospel was not even composed until at least 160 A.D. to distant from the events of the life of Christ to be historically useful.

In comparison I found that there were over five thousand Greek new testaments in existence today. And if we categorize all the different manuscripts in different languages there are about 24,000 in existence today. After a lot of research we find that the manuscripts are 99.5% accurate from what they were written to what we have today.

With that many scriptures the next question that needed to be asked, did Jesus actually exist, we find him mentioned by Josephus. In The Antiquities he describes the death of a Roman governor by the name of Festus, a high priest named Ananias, and James the brother of Jesus, all mentioned in the New Testament. In it he writes, “A man named James, the brother of Jesus, who is called the Christ.” Josephus also wrote about Christ in the Testimonium Flavianum.

Tachitus wrote in 115 A.D. “Nero persecuted the Christians”

Pliny the Younger another Roman wrote, I have asked them if they are Christians.”

So with that I believed that Christ did exist. What about other evidence? There was an historian by the name of Thallus who wrote a history of the eastern Mediterranean in 52 A.D. and although his work has been lost Julius Africanus quotes his work in reference to the darkness that the gospels had written about at the death of Christ.

Julius Africanus says, Thallus, in the third book of his histories explains away the darkness as an eclipse of the sun – unreasonably as it seems to me.” So Thallus apparently was saying yes, there had been darkness at the time of the crucifixion, and he speculates it had been caused by an eclipse. Africanus then argues that it couldn’t have been an eclipse given when the crucifixion occurred.

Phlegon, a Greek author from Caria writing a chronology soon after 137 A.D. reported that in the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad (33 A.D.) there was a great eclipse of the sun and that it became night in the sixth hour of the day (noon) so that the stars even appeared.
33At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour

The next question I had to ask was, Were there any who did not believe before Christ’s death and who did after he arose? And the answer is yes. The first would be James the half brother to Jesus. James did not believe, as a matter of record neither did his family, but after the resurrection we find James as the head of the church in Jerusalem being stoned for his belief in Christ.

The Bible was written by approximately 40 men of diverse backgrounds over the course of 1500 years all writing about an event that would or did take place.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy = Moses.
Joshua = Joshua
Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel = Samuel, Nathan, and Gad
1 Kings, 2 Kings = Jeremiah
1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah = Nehemiah
Esther = Mordecai
Job = Moses
Psalms = several different authors, mostly DavidProverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon = Solomon
Isaiah = Isaiah
Jeremiah, Lamentations = Jeremiah
Ezekiel = Ezekiel
Daniel = Daniel
Hosea = Hosea
Joel = Joel
Amos = Amos
Obadiah = Obadiah
Jonah = Jonah
Micah = Micah
Nahum = Nahum
Habakkuk = Habakkuk
Zephaniah = Zephaniah
Haggai = Haggai
Zechariah = Zechariah
Malachi = Malachi
Matthew = Matthew
Mark = John Mark
Luke = Luke
John = John
Acts = Luke
Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon = Paul
Hebrews = unknown, best guesses are Paul, Luke, Barnabas, or Apollos
James = James
1 Peter, 2 Peter = Peter
1 John, 2 John, 3 John = John
Jude = Jude
Revelation = John

What about eye witnesses to Christ after his resurrection. In one case there were over 500

You would agree with me that the Jewish people are very stubborn. The question I had was this, how do you convince someone of the Jewish persuasion who believes in the following,

1. They had been taught since the time of Abraham to offer sacrifices for sins. And now all of a sudden the death of a Nazarene carpenter forgave sins and sacrifices were no longer needed.

2. They had laws passed down from Moses which separated them from all other nations, and now the law of Moses no longer mattered.

3. The Sabbath was to be kept holy, and now the worship was on Sunday.

4. They believed in one God or monotheism. And now all of a sudden you had God the Father, God the Son, and Gods the Holy Spirit are considered one God when all they knew was Yahweh.

5. The had considered the messiah as one who come in power and glory to set up an earthly kingdom and Christ was teaching of a heavenly kingdom

We find a man by the name of Saul of Tarsus. A Pharisee, a man of high rank in the Jewish community and one who hated Christians. So you take Saul a Pharisee who became Paul who was a teacher and lawyer of the law and lay this on him, what do you think his reaction would have been? Exactly what it was, he accused them of blasphemy a sin punishable by death which is what they accused Jesus of. What would cause a man like him to convert.

Acts 9:1-6 Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked. I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied. Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."

After he met Christ he converted and wrote most of the New Testament. His writings were written before the Gospels, about two years after the death of Christ. So we do have accurate information on who Christ was, but that wasn’t enough, I had to look now to the old testament at the prophecies that told of the coming of Christ and here are but a few. You must also understand no prophecy foretold the coming of Buddha, Confucius or Muhammad. Yet there are hundreds concerning Jesus Christ, the Messiah. All of these prophecies were fulfilled in the life and death of Christ. Also remember that all of the Old Testament prophecies were spoken, and recorded, hundreds of years before Jesus came to earth.

1. Be Born in BethlehemOT Prophecy: Micah 5:2 'But you, Bethlehem, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old.'NT Fulfillment: Matt 2:1 'After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea...'

2. Preceded by a messenger OT Prophecy: Isaiah 40:3 'The voice of him that cries in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.'NT Fulfillment Matt 3:1-2 'In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'

3. Enter Jerusalem on a coltOT Prophecy: Zech 9:9 'Rejoice greatly O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold, thy King comes to you... humble riding on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.'NT Fulfillment Luke 19:35 'They bought it to Jesus, and they threw their coats on the colt and they put Jesus on it.'

4. Be Betrayed by a friendOT Prophecy: Psalm 41:9 'Yes, my own friend in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.'NT Fulfillment Matt 26:47-50 'and while he spoke, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords... Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whosoever I shall kiss, that same is he; hold him fast... and Jesus said unto him, 'Friend, why have you come?'

5. Have his hands and feet piercedOT Prophecy: Psalm 22:16 'The assembly of the wicked have enclosed me. They have pierced my hands and my feet.'NT Fulfillment Luke 23:33 'And when they came to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him and the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left.'

6. Be wounded and whipped by his enemiesOT Prophecy: Isaiah 53:5 'But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him and by his stripes we are healed.'NT Fulfillment Matt 27:26 'Then they released Barabbas unto them and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.'

7. Be sold for thirty pieces of silverOT Prophecy: Zech 11:12 'And I said to him, If you think it is good in your sight, give me my wages... So they weighed out thirty pieces of silver for my price.'NT Fulfillment Matt 26:15 'What will you give me if I deliver him unto you? And they agreed with him for thirty pieces of silver.'

8. Be spit upon and beatenOT Prophecy: Isaiah 50:6 'I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked out my hair: I did not hide my face from the shame and spitting.'NT Fulfillment Matt 26:67 Then did they spit in his face, and hit him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands

9. The betrayal money thrown in the temple and used for a potters fieldOT Prophecy: Zech 11:13 'And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter that magnificent price at which I was valued by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the Lord.'NT Fulfillment Matt 27:5-7 'And he threw the pieces of silver into the temple... And they conferred together and with the money bought the Potter's field as a burial place for strangers.'This is a remarkable prophecy for it is God who says 'Cast it to the potter that magnificent (sarcasm!) price at which they valued me...' How could man put a price on God? It doesn't make sense until God Himself, Jesus Christ, came to earth and was valued and betrayed for exactly 30 pieces of silver!

10. Cast lots for Jesus' clothingOT Prophecy: Psalm 22:18 'They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.'NT Fulfillment Matt 27:35 'And when they had crucified Him, they divided up His garments among themselves by casting lots.'

Statisticians have calculated that for all of the above prophecies to be fulfilled in one person it is a combined probability of One chance in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000! And this is limiting ourselves to just these 10 prophecies! Jesus claimed to be the fulfillment of the Old Testament Messianic prophecies, and now we have seen that His life and death did accurately fulfill these prophecies made hundreds of years before. So with all that data in front of me and the many books that have been written that not only confirm what I had discovered but in fact produced more evidence to back up my research. The next thing I had to consider was the so called inconsistencies in scripture and what about all the social issues and injustices committed under the guise of religion.

There are supposed discrepancies in the genealogies of Jesus, mainly in Mathew and Luke. So I took a look. In Matthew he looks at it from the point of Joseph. Since Joseph was considered the adoptive rather than the biological father, but in Jewish history that would still make Joseph and his family legal ancestors whom Jesus’ royal lineage would have been traced. So here is where the two ancestral genealogies merge. For Joseph, Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David.

Luke looks at the genealogy of Mary, The son of Melea, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz.

In essence, if we look at the history of Western civilization, we find that Christianity has illuminated the greatest achievements of the culture. Read the new atheist books and make a list of the institutions and values that Hitchens and Dawkins and the others cherish the most. They value the idea of the individual, and the right to dissent, and science as an autonomous enterprise, and representative democracy, and human rights, and equal rights for women and racial minorities, and the movement to end slavery, and compassion as a social virtue. But when you examine history you find that all of these values came into the world because of Christianity. If Christianity did not exist, these values would not exist in the form they do now.

By contrast, does it make any sense to say, as Hitchens does in his book's subtitle, that "religion poisons everything"? Religion didn't poison Dante or Milton or Donne or Michelangelo or Raphael or Titian or Bach! Religion didn’t poison those unnamed architectural geniuses who built the great Gothic cathedrals. Religion didn’t poison the American founders who were for the most part not Deist but Christian. Religion didn't poison the anti-slavery campaigns of William Lloyd Garrison or William Wilberforce, or the civil rights activism of the Reverend Martin Luther King.

To sum up my findings, God in Christ is who he said he was. God exists outside of time. Since we live in a universe of cause and effect, we naturally assume that this is the only way in which any kind of existence can function. However, the premise is false. Without the dimension of time, there is no cause and effect, and all things that could exist in such a realm would have no need of being caused, but would have always existed. Therefore, God has no need of being created, but, in fact, created the time dimension of our universe specifically for a reason - so that cause and effect would exist for us. However, since God created time, cause and effect would never apply to His existence. God exists in more than one dimension of time. Things that exist in one dimension of time are restricted to time's arrow and are confined to cause and effect. However, two dimensions of time form a plane of time, which has no beginning and no end and is not restricted to any single direction. A being that exists in at least two dimension of time can travel anywhere in time and yet never have a beginning, since a plane of time has no starting point.

God said to Moses that to look upon him would mean certain death. Why does he remain hidden? Because of who he is. To put it in terms we can understand, A Creator God, if He exists, must, by definition, exist beyond the limits of the universe in order to have created it. The laws of physics tell us that we cannot make measurements beyond the limits of this universe. Therefore, scientists can conclusively determine that we cannot ever detect God using any of our instruments.

However, God is not restricted to our limitations and could choose to reveal part of Himself to us. God could not reveal His entirety to us without causing major problems in our universe. The sudden appearance of dimensions and matter from outside the universe would destroy anything in the vicinity. This is why the Bible says that nobody can see God and live. However, God could reveal His nature by communicating with humans and sending an incarnated version of Himself. This is exactly what Christianity claims - that God gave messages to humans through the prophets and sent an incarnation of Himself, Jesus Christ, who took on the form of a human in order to interact with humans directly.

With the evidence in front of me as to who God is, the argument for evolution which is the argument that God does not exist is a failed argument.