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Guest (Male): Illustrating the possibility of God's existence. Here's Pastor Thom Keller.

Pastor Thom Keller: One day students from Albert Einstein's class came to him. They said that collectively they had decided that there was no God. Einstein asked them how much of the total of the world's knowledge did they think they possessed? And they said 5%. Einstein thought they were pretty generous in that estimate of their knowledge, but he gave it to them.

And then he said this, "Do you think it's possible that God exists in the 95% of knowledge that you don't have?" It's the same thought. You can apply all the knowledge that we have, but you're never going to get to the end. God could be hiding some place that hasn't been examined yet.

Guest (Male): There's increasing confusion and controversy in our world today of what should be plain. Our creator God exists, for you can't have life from non-life. The very clear design with irreducible complexity presupposes a designer. There are many good reasons to believe and on today's Study the Word, we'll explore some of them.

We're glad you're with us as we begin a new study in the book of Genesis with Pastor Thom Keller. In chapter one, we'll find some answers that will help to clear up the confusion. Beginning with an illustration and some background. Here's Pastor Thom.

Pastor Thom Keller: Coming into church this morning, a squirrel ran out in front of the car. You know how squirrels are. They're jumping back and forth. They always make the wrong choice. Well, this one made it, luckily. But I thought as I was coming, that's really the position that evolutionists find themselves in today. There was a day when they were gigantic squirrels and they owned the road. Nobody stood against them.

Today science, all facets of science, are just running at them full speed and those guys won't get off the road. They just hold on to that position and doggedly refuse to face the facts that science has proven. It's difficult for science to prove something that can't be proven, but science has proven that evolution cannot be true.

If you read anything on evolution today, the leading scientists know evolution is not even a possibility. Natural selection and some of those other issues are a possibility, and in fact, do occur, but not evolution. One species jumping to another, a mouse coming out of a snake's egg. It's ridiculous. It's never happened. It's never been proven.

We're in Genesis one. As a little background in Genesis before we start, there are 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New. In the Old Testament, the first 17 books are historical books, and that's Genesis through Esther. Then in the middle are the poetic books, that's Job through the Song of Solomon. Then the last 17 books are prophetic. We'll be going through the 17 historical books.

There's another shift that occurs from the New Testament that we were in to the Old, and that is language. The New Testament is written in Greek. The Old Testament is written in Hebrew. Hebrew is one of the world's oldest languages. It resembles the language of the ancient Edomites, Moabites, and the Phoenicians.

In sound, it sounds somewhere halfway between Arabic and Aramaic. It resembles that in sound, and almost all Hebrew words are from a root which usually consists of three letters. Almost every Hebrew word has three letters in it and there's either a suffix or a prefix added to it, different suffixes, different prefixes, to give it the exact meaning that the writer is looking for.

Hebrew is a great language for storytelling because of that. It's just rich in the flavor that it will present in a story. But it is not the best language in presenting abstract concepts. And that's why Greek was really a much better language to communicate the gospel in the New Testament.

The Greek language, as an example, in the classical Greek verb—and a verb is something with action, like to run or to jump—the classical Greek verb has more than 500 different forms. There would be 500 different ways of saying the word run, of making specific application. It's why when you do a study of the New Testament, if there's something that you're not really clear in what it says, to go back to a Greek dictionary and get the exact meaning of that word because they pinpoint meaning.

The word Genesis is a Greek word. If you thought you didn't know any Greek, you do now. The word Genesis means origin, source, generation, and beginning. The original Hebrew title of Genesis, before the Greek word was applied, was Bereshit, which means in the beginning.

The dating of Genesis is in itself a study. If you have a Bible that has dates in the border of Genesis, they weren't in the original manuscripts. Moses didn't go back and date when all these things happened. They were actually done by an Archbishop Usher in the year 1650 AD.

So only about 350 years ago, somebody went back and dated these things. The key dates generally are that Adam, if you take the length of the kings and all of the periods that the Bible gives and add those up and go backward, the time of Adam would have been 4004 BC. The flood would have been, according to the Septuagint, about 3000 BC.

Abraham's birth was about 1996 BC and Solomon built the temple about 1012 BC. So you have 4000, 3000, 2000, 1000, and Christ coming at zero. Isn't it interesting that the whole world revolves around Jesus? Even the dating, you'd think they would start at zero and go up. It would make a lot more sense, wouldn't it? You just keep track of everything.

They hate having God on the dollar bill, they hate having God on coins, they hate that we have God in our prayers, and yet every date and every calendar has Jesus in the center of it. All of time revolves around Jesus. The Epistle of Barnabas, which was a book that was written around the New Testament times, at the time other New Testament books were written, which did not make it into our canon, states that just as there had been 2000 years from Adam to Abraham, and 2000 years from Abraham to Christ.

This was written right after Jesus's crucifixion. As there had been 2000 years from Adam to Abraham and 2000 years from Abraham to Christ, so too there would be 2000 years for the Christian era and then the world would come to an end and the millennial reign of Christ would take place.

That's why for eons people have been saying that Christ is going to return around the 6000 mark, which we are around. I remember reading a quote by Martin Luther where he was asked about the Lord's return. He said everyone knows that Christ is coming somewhere around 2000 years AD.

We are living in a very exciting time. Jesus said no one knows the day or hour, not even the Son of Man knows, but only God knows. But Jesus did say that when you start to see these things take place, that you can know that the time is near. It's at hand, even at the door.

That theory, that understanding is known as the Millennium Sabbath Theory. The idea being that there were six days and a day of rest. God created the earth in six days and a day of rest. The Bible says that a day is like a thousand years unto the Lord. Six days, 6000 years, and a thousand-year reign of Christ at the end, which we know is in fact going to take place.

We may be very close. We could be a thousand years away, but we may be very close. The Old Testament is a story of a monotheistic religion, and monotheistic is a belief in one God. The Bible would represent and tell us that it started with a belief in one God and slid into, digressed into a belief in many gods.

Science would tell us that's not true. Science would have told us in years past that man started with many gods and then this Hebrew God came along and that group of people began believing in one God. But that's really not true. They found more recently, Dr. Stephen Langdon of Oxford University said this: "The earliest Babylonian inscriptions suggest that man's first religion was a belief in God and from that, a rapid decline into polytheism and idolatry took place."

Leading anthropologists have recently announced that among all primitive races, there was a belief in one supreme God. So the Bible again in that account is true. Moses wrote the book of Genesis, in all probability with the help of writings that had been written in advance and stories that had been passed down.

As we work our way through Genesis, we're not going to interpret Genesis. We're just going to take Genesis and what's written there to mean what's written. We're going to interpret it literally. We're going to believe that what it means to say is what it says.

It's interesting when science stands up against the book of Genesis, Genesis stands. I remember reading a story of a group of leading scientists in France in the late 1800s who came up with 50 major errors in the Bible that proved that the Bible was wrong. By the middle of the 1900s, all 49 of those 50, science had actually proved that the Bible was true. Continually, as science comes up against Genesis, Genesis stands.

Let's read Genesis 1. It says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was empty, a formless mass cloaked in darkness. And the spirit of God was hovering over its surface. Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. And God saw that it was good. Then he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness night. Together these made up one day."

And God said, "Let there be space between the waters to separate water from water." And so it was. God made this space to separate the waters above from the waters below. And God called the space sky. This happened on the second day.

And God said, "Let the waters beneath the sky be gathered into one place so dry ground may appear." And so it was. God named the dry ground land and the water seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let the land burst forth with every sort of grass and seed-bearing plant. And let there be trees that grow seed-bearing fruit. The seeds will then produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came."

And so it was. The land was filled with seed-bearing plants and trees and their seed produced plants and trees of its like kind. And God saw that it was good. This all happened on the third day. And God said, "Let bright lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. And they will be signs to mark off seasons and days and the years. Let their light shine down upon the earth."

So it was. For God made two great lights, the sun and the moon, to shine down upon the earth. The greater one, the sun, presiding during the day. The lesser one, the moon, presides through the night. He also made the stars. Don't you just love that? I can't read through that without commenting. He also made the stars.

Just kind of an afterthought. "Oh, I think I'll make stars. Poof." There they go. Can you imagine that? He made the stars just like, "And he made the stars." It's so anti-climactic. I just love that. I can imagine God saying, "Is that a big deal? Do you think that's tough for me?" No, I don't, God.

God set these lights in the heavens to light the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. This all happened on the fourth day. And God said, "Let the water swarm with fish and other life." He said, "Let the skies be filled with birds of every kind."

So God created great sea creatures and every sort of fish and every kind of bird. And God saw that it was good. Then God blessed them and said, "Let the fish multiply and fill the oceans. Let the birds increase and fill the earth." This all happened on the fifth day.

And God said, "Let the earth bring forth every kind of animal: livestock, small animals, and wildlife." And so it was. God made all sorts of wild animals, livestock, and small animals, each able to reproduce more of its own. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, "Let us, let us make people in our own image to be like ourselves. They will be masters over all life: the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the livestock, wild animals and small animals." So God created people in his own image. God patterned them after himself. Male and female he created them.

Then God blessed them and told them, "Multiply and fill the earth. Be masters over the fish and birds and all the animals." And God said, "Look, I have given you the seed-bearing plants throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food. And I have given you all grasses and other green plants to the animals and birds for their food."

And so it was. Then God looked over all that he had made and he saw that it was excellent in every way. All this happened on the sixth day. Well, it says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. We start with a supposition that there is a God. That's a stretch for some people even to imagine.

How many of you would feel unqualified to go into a debate with an atheist? Feel a little bit under the gun to go into a debate. Do you know that if you went into a debate with an atheist, you would have to come out on top? You would have to because it is impossible to prove a universally negative thought. You can't prove a negative that is universally true.

If an atheist says there is no God, and you say, "Let's say there's no God in this earth. How do you know there isn't a God on the other side of Pluto?" Well, we've examined Pluto. Okay, well what about another solar system? How do you know that there isn't one star in a solar system a google million trillion miles away from here that God isn't behind that planet? Can you prove that he isn't there?

Well, no, I can't prove that he isn't there. But you can't make an absolute claim that there is no God. You can't prove a universally true negative. It can't be done. So if he's claiming there is no God and you're claiming there is a God, you're going to come out on top of that because the most that he can say is we haven't discovered him yet.

And the most that you can say is there's a very good chance he's out there somewhere, but he can't say he isn't. You would have to come out on top. One day students from Albert Einstein's class came to him and they said that collectively they had decided that there was no God. Einstein asked them how much of the total of the world's knowledge did they think they possessed?

And they said 5%. Einstein thought they were pretty generous in that estimate of their knowledge, but he gave it to them. And then he said this, "Do you think it's possible that God exists in the 95% of knowledge that you don't have?" It's the same thought. You can apply all the knowledge that we have, but you're never going to get to the end. God could be hiding some place that hasn't been examined yet.

Jean-Paul Sartre stated that the essential problem with philosophy is this: there is something instead of nothing. Why? A simple statement, but a huge question. Why? Why is all of this? Even beyond the point of evolution. I want to say this right up front: there are a lot of Christians that believe in evolution and there are a lot of Christians that don't.

There are a lot of Christians that believe in a literal six-day creation and there are a lot of Christians that don't. There's room for both. Keep studying, keep researching, keep looking. You're not a lesser Christian if you take one or another of those positions. It's not conditional to your salvation. Believing there's a God is, but these are other points that can be worked out. Study and research, do the work.

Let's examine the question of why. Why did he do all this? The book of John gives an answer to this. John 1 says this: "He, Jesus, was in the beginning with God. He created everything there is. Nothing exists that he didn't make. Life itself was in him and this life gives light to everyone."

So when it says in the beginning God created, actually Jesus was the creator of all that there is. In Colossians, it goes even further and makes this statement: "Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before God made anything at all and is supreme over all creation. Christ is the one through whom God created everything in heaven and on earth."

He, Christ, made the things we can see and the things we can't see: kings, kingdoms, rulers and authorities. Everything has been created through him and for him. He existed before everything else began and he holds all of creation together. They talk about this dark mass that scientists have discovered in the universe. They can't even describe it, they don't even know what it is, but they suspect it's kind of the glue that holds all of the universe together.

In that dark mass, if that's true, is Jesus, because he is the one that holds everything together. So why? Why do we have a Genesis? Why do we have this beginning story? Why do we have this whole story of the creation and God going through this exercise and Jesus going through this exercise of creating? Why?

Why did God go to all this trouble to create when he would have been complete, we would think, without us? Isn't that an odd thought that we would complete God? KP Yohannan said this, "The whole purpose of the Old Testament is to find a bride for Christ." Isn't that beautiful? The whole purpose of the Old Testament, of Genesis, of Leviticus, of Exodus is to find a bride for Christ.

When you think of where we've come from in Genesis, where the bride of Christ is brought to heaven, finally that reunion takes place. It culminates in that and the beginning is right here. That in some way, God was not complete without us. God was not complete without you.

The Bible says that in marriage, God created the woman to be Adam's ezer, his completer to complete in him what he could not complete in himself. It's the same word that the Old Testament uses for the role that God plays in our lives, that he completes what we could not complete in ourselves.

But did you know in some way that is beyond my understanding, in some way we bring completeness to God? God pre-existed. God always has been. There has never been a time when God has not been. We know that the angels were created earlier because in the book of Job, it says that the angels witnessed the creation.

We also know that timing had to be something like that because Satan appears in the garden and he was a fallen angel and all of that had to happen before this garden scene took place. So the angels predated the creation of the earth, creation of the world.

It says in verse two that the earth was empty, a formless mass in absolute darkness. It says that the spirit of God was hovering over its surface and the Hebrew word there signifies a vibrant moving, a purposeful moving with a protective hovering, a desire to protect and to create.

Verse three says then God said, "Let there be light." It's interesting, God spoke all of the universe in the creation except one thing. Everything we read in Genesis he spoke into creation except one. What was that one? Man. He formed man from the dust. Everything else he spoke.

Guest (Male): Fascinating insights Pastor Thom Keller has gleaned from Genesis chapter one that remind us of his desire for a relationship with his creation and his power to bring it about. Very reassuring. And this is the first of many studies we have planned for you from Genesis here on Study the Word.

You can hear this message again by going to ccleb.com. Again, we're at ccleb.com. There are many other messages for your growth and edification there too. Or call and request a CD copy at 717-507-7862. That's 717-507-7862. Thanks for remembering that Study the Word is a listener-supported ministry. We look to listeners like you to help us provide these Bible studies on your station every day.

Here's where to write: Study the Word, 740 Willow Street, Lebanon, Pennsylvania 17046. Or call 717-507-7862. Thom Keller is the senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Lebanon and if you're in the area, we hope you'll come by for a visit. For directions and service times, go to ccleb.com.

When you get a chance, download our free Android app. Search Calvary Chapel Lebanon in the Google Play Store. Thanks for studying the word with Pastor Thom Keller. We'll get back into Genesis with Pastor Thom next time. We hope you can join us.