A Daily Walk

Guest (Male): Evolution is presented as scientific fact in our world today, but is it really? The truth is every available fact points us toward God as the creator of the universe and everything in it. A Daily Walk is next.

John Randall: The heavens declare the glory of the Lord and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. In other words, look at creation and you can see it's speaking. There is a creator, there is a designer behind the design, there is a cause behind the effect, and it's God.

Guest (Male): How did the universe, the world, and everything in it come into being? Was there some sort of a Big Bang? Or did God do it? Open your school textbook and you might be confused on the answer to that. But if you open Genesis, you'll arrive at the truth.

That's where we're heading today on A Daily Walk, as we continue through the Bible, now entering the Old Testament. Pastor John Randall shows us today we can trust the Bible is the truth, and that includes the creation account. We'll be in Genesis 1, looking at the days of creation.

John Randall: Let's open our Bibles tonight to the very beginning of the Bible, the book of Genesis. Genesis chapter one, beginning in verse one. If you'd follow along with me as we read from God's word. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And 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."

There are some Christians who have made the mistake of straying away from the literal meaning of the book of Genesis. For some, they say it's just not scientifically possible or accurate. But I want you to keep something in mind as we proceed in this chapter, that Christianity fails a fundamental test of naturalistic science.

Let me explain: miracles, such as Christ's virgin birth or Jesus' resurrection from the dead. They do not mesh with modern scientific beliefs which require truth to be testable and repeatable. You can't repeat the virgin birth; it's a miracle. You can't repeat the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

Now, this conflict doesn't necessarily deter Christians. However, we're trusting our eternal destiny in historical facts that we have never observed or have seen repeated. They're just written down, and we have no problem with the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We believe it or else we wouldn't be here tonight. We have no problem with the essential doctrine of the virgin birth, or he would not be the savior that he is.

Yet many of those same Christians will reject the straightforward historical reading of the Genesis creation account simply because they believe it cannot be verified by science. This was not the case through most of history. Not until the 19th century did Jews and Christians begin rejecting, even in large numbers, the plain understanding of Genesis chapter one.

At that time, long-age views in geology gained prominence, largely because of the philosophy of uniformitarianism. This view denies the possibility of miraculous interventions in history such as divine creation or the biblical flood, proposing instead that only current slow physical processes may be used to explain the past.

Not wanting Christianity to appear foolish to the standard of the era's prevailing philosophy, several Christian leaders responded by seeking to harmonize Scripture's creation account with the concept of millions and millions and millions of years. When Christians reinterpret God's word to try to make it conform to secular ideas, they open the door to all kinds of compromise.

That door often leads to the rejection of fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith, which is exactly what's happening today. Through the years, wanting to be cool with the scientific community, we developed the gap theory, the day-age theory, progressive creation, the framework hypothesis, or theistic evolution. Some say God started it, but then evolution took over from there. We think if we do that, science can accept us as Christians and we don't have to be fools for Christ's sake.

Those who would advocate these explanations, theories, and hypotheses have to rearrange events described in Scripture to make it work. You never want to tamper with the word of God in that way. That is a mistake. I read it. It says it. I'm good with it. God did it.

There are at least two ways that God has chosen to reveal himself to humanity: one is through general revelation and the second is through special revelation. General revelation refers to general truths that can be known about God through his creation, through nature. Special revelation, on the other hand, refers to the more specific truths that can be known about God through the supernatural.

In regard to general revelation, the psalmist declared in Psalm 19, "The heavens declare the glory of the Lord and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge." In other words, look at creation and you can see it speaks. There is a creator, there is a designer behind the design, there is a cause behind the effect, and it's God.

According to this passage, God's existence and power can be clearly seen through observing the universe: the order, the intricacy, the wonder of creation. It speaks of the existence of a powerful and glorious creator. The apostle Paul also mentions this in the book of Romans when he says, "For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that man is without excuse."

Creation reveals who God is. God's eternal power and divine nature are clearly seen and understood by what has been made. So, with these scriptures in mind, perhaps a working definition of general revelation would be the revelation of God to all people at all times in all places that proves that God exists and that he is an intelligent, powerful, and transcendent creator.

This evening, we have the account of the creation of the universe. We read in Genesis 1:1 the declaration: "In the beginning, God created the universe." In the remainder of the chapter, you have a description of how it is that God created it. The Lord began to create when the earth was without form and it was void, meaning it was uninhabitable and unoccupied.

There was darkness on the face of it, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the deep. As you move into the days of creation, there are a couple of things I want you to understand. The first three days of creation, God is forming. In the second three days, he's filling what he's formed. He made three spheres of activity: the heavens, the landmasses, and the waters. Then he filled each of those. He spoke the world into existence, and it was so. He said repeatedly, "It was good."

It's also important to remember that the first three days of creation correspond with the last three days of creation. For example, day four corresponds with day one, day five corresponds with day two, and day six corresponds with day three. On day one, the Lord declares in verse three, "Let there be light," and there was light.

God saw the light, that it was good, and he divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night. So the evening and the morning were the first day. On the first day of creation, God creates light. He spoke it into existence. The Lord made a distinction between light and dark by calling it day and night. The only tool that God uses in creation is his word. There is power in his word. He speaks and these things exist.

A common question is raised when you look at day one: how can there be light on the first day of creation when the sun wasn't created until the fourth day? The answer is easy. God doesn't need the sun, the moon, and the stars to provide light. The Bible says that God is light. In 1st John, it says, "This is the message we have from him and we declare to you that God is light and in him there's no darkness at all."

God himself was the light for the first three days of creation, just as he will be the light in the heavens and the new earth. Revelation 22 tells us there will be no more night, and they will not need the light of a lamp or the sun because the Lord God will give them light. God's glory is going to be the illuminating factor throughout the heavens. He has this covered. He is light.

Until he created the sun, the moon, and the stars, God miraculously provided light during the day and may have also done so during the night as well. It reminds me of the words of Jesus when he declared, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life." Much more important than the light of day and night is the light, Jesus, who provides eternal life to all who believe in him.

The apostle Paul actually looks back and alludes to Genesis chapter one in the New Testament. In 2nd Corinthians, he said, "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." He emphasizes the fact that it was both historical and factual.

Just as the divine light on day one invaded the darkness of the cosmic creation, so God's grace invades our hearts darkened by sin. The light shines in and transforms us. We stand before God without spiritual light and void of goodness like the original creation in Genesis 1. We have no spiritual life, but all of that changes when God's grace comes in and says, "Let there be light," and we go from darkness to light.

He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the son of his love. On day one, God created light and darkness and called them day and night. Well, then came day two. God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the water from the water." Thus God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.

God called the firmament heaven. On the second day of creation, God created the sky, which is described in the Bible as an expanse or firmament. A firmament refers to the heavens, the sky, or the atmospheric expanse that divided waters from above and the waters below. The Hebrew word for firmament means expanse or stretched-out thinness. Since God specifically identified it with heaven, it can also be understood as space as we know it.

On the second day, God separated the primeval deep into two deeps with the great space in between. Some of the water stayed on the earth to eventually become the oceans, the rivers, and lakes, whereas other water remained in the atmosphere. God created our atmosphere, the sky, and what we would call outer space.

It is possible that before the flood, the waters above helped form a vapor-like canopy that would have created somewhat of a greenhouse effect on the earth, which would shield the earth from many harmful radiations from space. A vapor canopy would provide an ideal environment for abundant animal and plant life and for the longevity of human life. But when the flood happened, the waters above collided and came down. The flood of Noah covered the entire earth, and only a few people survived.

Then came day three, and God creates the earth and the sea. God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place. Let the dry land appear," and it was so. God called the dry land earth and the gathering together of the waters he called seas. God said that it was good. Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass and herb that yields seed and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind whose seed is in itself on the earth," and it was so.

The earth, formerly without form and void, is now fashioned and shaped by the word of God. The foundations were put into place. The water below was assigned to specific places, and the Lord called it the seas. Landmass and ocean were created on the third day. Because the water went into one place, some suggest that originally God created one great big ocean and one great big continent, and that it wouldn't be until the flood that it divided into seven continents and five oceans.

We'll find out when we get to heaven, but that is what some people say. Here's what I know for sure: there are five oceans and seven continents at the present time, and I'm good with that. I know God created it all. He also created the earth, which is the third planet from the sun and is the only planet in our solar system that contains life.

The earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23 and a half degrees in relation to the earth's plane of orbit. God just spoke it and put it where it is. The tilt causes the four seasons. During the months of May, June, and July, the Northern Hemisphere is pointed toward the sun, causing the hemisphere to warm and bring on the summer season. Unless you're here in California and you have summer and swinter.

During November, December, and January, the Northern Hemisphere is pointed away from the sun, providing colder temperatures and the season called winter. If the earth tilted at a different angle, it would have adverse effects on planet earth. In addition to that, the earth moves at just the right speed in a 24-hour period. It's moving at a fixed rate, and we don't realize it, but we're moving with it right now.

There is activity happening and we don't even recognize it; that's why we don't feel the earth spin. If the earth's spin were suddenly to speed up or slow down, we would feel it. But God keeps it just where it is, tilted the way that it is, turning at just the right speed so that we can exist. It's miraculous. Jesus is before all things and in him all things consist. The word consist means held together. He holds it together.

Can you imagine if God just took his hands off for a second? We'd just spin out into the cosmos somewhere. Praise the Lord he doesn't do that. As vast, enormous, and complex as our planet is, the Lord says, "Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool." God says the earth is where he puts his feet. Isaiah is saying God's huge.

So what's your problem tonight? He can handle it. He also created the seas. 70 percent of the planet is covered by water with an average depth of 12,400 feet. We've only explored less than five percent of the earth's oceans. The longest mountain range in the world is underwater. It's called the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, and this chain of mountains runs through the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and into the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

It runs more than 35,000 miles long. It has peaks higher than those in the Alps, and it comprises 23 percent of the earth's total surface. These are the mountain ranges under the sea. But as massive as the ocean is, it can't compare to the creator because the Bible tells us he's measured out the waters in the hollow of his hand. You think the ocean is big? God says the earth is his footstool and he hollowed out all the water in his hand.

In addition to the earth and the seas, grass, herbs, fruit, and vegetation were made. On day three of creation, before the sun was created, God created the plant life at its functioning maturity. You need sunlight for plants to grow, but on day three he just put it together. The soil did not gradually form over hundreds of years by rock weathering and other uniformitarian processes.

It was ready instantaneously by divine command. The plants didn't develop from seeds; rather, the herb was formed yielding seed. It was already mature. In the same way, the fruit trees were yielding fruit, not requiring several years of preliminary growth. It's estimated that there are some 100,000 species of plant life on the planet and an estimated 500,000 different forms of grass alone. There are a lot of them.

The phrase "after its kind" is significant because you're going to see it repeated some nine times in Genesis chapter one. In his design of creation, God guaranteed reproduction of each plant after its kind. A seed carries within it the exact same code that will reproduce the exact same thing when it's planted. A tiny acorn becomes a massive oak tree because God engineered it to produce after its kind.

Despite the widespread belief in evolution, no scientists have yet documented a single instance of true vertical evolution occurring today because things will always produce after their own kind. One kind of plant cannot turn into another kind of plant. Daisies produce daisies. Pine trees produce pine trees. You cannot plant an apple seed and get a lemon tree. Plants did not evolve; God created all of the plant kinds on day three after their own kind.

Guest (Male): We've been exploring the creation as recorded for us in Genesis here on A Daily Walk with Pastor John Randall. In the months ahead, we'll be going through the entire Old Testament with you, start to finish, and we hope you'll join the journey. You can hear it again at adailywalk.org or wherever you get your podcasts, or download our church app so you can listen through your mobile device. Just search for Calvary South OC.

When a listener takes the time to write or call, it really blesses us more than words can tell. And yes, Pastor John reads your emails and letters. The Lord deserves all the credit for anything good that comes from and through this ministry, and it's an opportunity to praise and thank him for what he's doing. Share a praise report or a prayer request at adailywalk@gmail.com. That's adailywalk@gmail.com.

Our featured resource right now is a book from Jack Marino Chen: Ensnared. This encouraging book will help you recognize spiritual deceptions, respond with biblical clarity to those who are ensnared, and point people to the freedom only Christ can give. Discover how to overcome the darkness of the New Age and occult with the light of God's truth.

The cost is just $12. You can order it right now at 877-242-0828. You can also get it online at adailywalk.org. And if you believe in what we're doing here at A Daily Walk and would like to get behind us, we'd very much appreciate your prayers and financial support. While there are substantial costs of being on the radio and internet, God has proven to be faithful to provide where he's guided us.

So we continue to rely upon him and look to our listeners for help. To make a donation today, drop by adailywalk.org or again call 877-242-0828. More of the creation account as we continue in Genesis chapter one next time on A Daily Walk with Pastor John Randall. This program is brought to you by Calvary South OC and made possible through your generous support.