Genesis 1-12: The Beginning of Worldview Development

Genesis 1:1 - "In the Beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth"

Yesterday we began looking at the subject of worldview development.  My wife Debi defined a Christian worldview as: "how we perceive, interpret, and respond to the world surrounding us." This is a fine definition to operate by as we expand and began to develop a Christian worldview.  The question is: from what base do we build a Christian worldview? Thankfully there is one section of the Bible from whence once builds their entire understanding of scripture and the world - Genesis 1-12. 

1. Genesis 1-2 Creation- Defines the Divine Origin of the Universe, Life and Humanity.  We also see God dealing with man in a Covenantal arrangement, whereby He gracefully gave man a period of time to carryout commands pertaining to management of the creation and propagation of the human race.  Man would either avail himself of the grace available to carry out the commands, or He would ignore God's revelation and choose to rely on his own opinion.  In developing your worldview, how you understand the beginning will determine how you'll understand the end. 

2. Genesis 3-5 Fall and Redemption- Defines the origin of sin and describes the devestating effects it would have on humanity.  Humanity's fall from relationship and fellowship with God was followed up by God offering a second covenant, a Covenant of grace, whereby God would slay two animals in Adam and Eve's place.  From Genesis 3 onward, mankind could only be saved by grace through faith in an innocent substitute - foreshadowing the redemption to be won by Jesus Christ.  So we clearly see the beginning (at least in history) of God's plan of salvation, spoken to Eve in Genesis 3:15 and building up to the full Covenant of grace spelled out in Genesis 3:20-21. This Covenant of Grace would be repeated in historical fashion through God's Covenants with Abraham and David, as well as His promise of the New Covenant in the Prophetic books.  Increasingly, the Bible tells us that the Covenant of Grace was to be paid for by Jesus Christ, who in his perfect life fulfilled the Covenant of works broken by Adam. 

3. Genesis 6-9 Worldwide Flood - Noah and his family are the tenth generation from Adam's bloodline.  God's judgment fell on the world by means of the Deluge simply known as "The Flood".  If the Fall in the Garden of Eden can be considered "Catastrophe #1", we could then term the Flood as the second Catastrophic event of human history.  God decided to start all over again with Noah and his family.  By the end of Genesis 9, the episode involving Noah's son Ham uncovering his nakedness would remind the reader that the sin problem is not due to man's environment as it is with the condition of his heart.  

4. Genesis 10-11 Babel and the Sovereign Distribution of the Nations   
It is in Genesis 11:1-9 where we see the Tower of Babel incident - marking the third catastrophic event of history.  God dispersed humanity by means of differing languages.  It was also from Babel where we see the beginnings of false religion.  In Genesis 10 we see the lineage of humanity traced from Noah's three sons:Shem, Ham and Japheth.  70 nations are derived from 70 men listed in this chapter.  These 70 nations would be Sovereignly arranged in accords to what God would reveal in Chapter 12 of Genesis.  Shem's bloodline is the focal point of Genesis 11, revealing the "scarlet thread of redemption" that brings its way into the particular family of Terah and particularly his son Abram.

5. Genesis 12 The Blessing of Salvation to be revealed through Abraham and His descendant(s)
As we noted earlier, the seventy nations listed in Genesis 10-11 were Divinely arranged around the prophetic destiny revealed to Abraham and his descendant(s). (Deuteronomy 32:6)  The reason I have descendant(s) spelled the way I do is to capture the three-fold fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham.  The first leg of that promise was to be fulfilled through the bringing about of the Nation of Israel in the Old Testament.  The second leg was to be chiefly fulfilled through the coming of Jesus Christ through the bloodline of the tribe of Judah in that nation. 

The cradle of Bethlehem, the cross of Calvary and the empty tomb were to be the chief activities accomplished by the "Seed" or "Descendant of Abraham" - Jesus Christ. When Christ ascended into Heaven, the Holy Spirit was sent, the Church age was born, and the Gentiles are currently getting a spiritual foretaste of the Age to come as fellow heirs of Abraham's promise.  However the nation of Israel, though experiencing a hardening and spiritual blindness in this current Church age, has not been forsaken in God's prophetic planning. (Romans 11:1-36) The third leg of Abraham's Covenant of Genesis 12 will be fulfilled when Israel is restored at Christ's second coming.  Christ will reign upon the earth, giving Israel the chance to be the witness God called her to be among the nations. 

From these twelve chapters, the whole of the Bible and the whole Christian worldview has its start.  I would encourage the reader to make it their business to know these chapters, since everything we know about everything had their beginning in the text of Genesis 1-12. 

Noah, The Ark, and the Flood: Why its Important

The Biblical account of Noah, the Ark and the flood in Genesis 6-9 has important implications for the Christian life.  Below are some key reasons as to why we need to consider it more closely.

1. Jesus uses the Flood to explain the end times

Luke 17:26-27 ²⁶And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.  ²⁷They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.  Without a doubt Jesus was drawing parallels between the culture of Noah and the days preceeding His second coming. 

2. Peter uses the Flood to explain Earth’s Past and Future

The Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 3 warns his readers about how there will be scoffers in the last days who will ridicule, among other things, the reality of the historic worldwide flood recorded in Genesis.  He writes in 2 Peter 3:3-7 ³Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,  ⁴And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.  ⁵For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:  ⁶Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:  ⁷But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. 

The world-wide flood for instance can explain why geological features of the earth took moments, not millions of years, to form.   In fact the world-wide flood event has been used by specialists called "Creation-Scientists" to explain everything from the existence of comets, to the craters on the moon, to the tilt of the earth to the possible explanation for the dissapearance of dinosaurs.  The evidence for a world-wide flood (see last blog) can be a useful in counter-acting the humanistic world-view of evolution.  Websites such as "answersingenesis.org" are great tools that utilize the flood in describing the history and destiny of our world in light of the scriptures. 

3. It shows that God never forgets His people

Genesis 8:1 tells us that God remembered Noah.  This idea of God remembering His people is quite pervasive throughout the Old Testament.   When God is "remembering”, He is bearing forth upon Himself and in Himself the name of His people.  When one does a word study for this word "remember", it speaks of a continual granting of kindness, graciousness and compassion in extenuating circumstances.  The idea of God remembering somebody occurs in key theological and historical events throughout the Old Testament:

Gen 19:29 – God “remembers” Abraham      Gen 30:22 – remembers Rachael

Exod 2;24 – remembers the Israelites             1 Samuel 1:19 – remembers Hannah

Job 14:13 – The cry to remember Job              Psalm 132 – the cry to remember David

Undoubtedly this idea carries its way into the New Testament, where Christ’s resurrection is the prime example of “remembering”, since God did not forsake his body to see decay (compare Peter’s comments in Acts 2:27 on Psalm 16:6-8)  Indeed Christ's promise to never leave nor forsake His people is embedded in His committment and love for them. (please compare Matthew 28:20 and Hebrews 13:5)

Noah, The Ark, and the Flood - Historical and Scientific Evidence

When we read the biblical record, no other section in the entire Bible covers as much time and as many events as Genesis 1-5.  As we come into Genesis 6-9, we arrive in the section that deals with the world-wide flood that God brought upon this world in the days of Noah. Remarkably, the three chapters will cover a period of time encompassing a period of time less than 18 months (377 days for chapters 6-9). 

One of the main purposes for Moses writing Genesis was to equip the Israelite nation with a biblical worldview of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  They had to be deprogrammed from the Egyptian worldview to which they had been exposed to for 430 years, and prepare for the Canaanite worldview they would be facing in the Conquest of Joshua.  

In today's blog, we want to explore some commonly asked questions about the flood, the ark and the reliability of the Genesis record.  Hopefully the reader will see that the Bible is not only accurate and reliable in matters of faith and practice, but also in terms of its testimony about history, science and life.  

1. Was The Ark large enough to hold all of earth's species?

According to the Biblical record, when we take modern day measurements into consideration, the Ark was a vessel 450 ft long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.  It had an opening up top, near its roof measuring 18 inches.  The vessel had 3 decks with a total deck space of over 101,000 square feet or  to a holding capacity of 522 railway cars. 

One must realize that the Bible regards animals according to “kinds”, which would equate to our reckoning of animals by the modern biological term "genus".  This would lower the amount of specimens on the ark to a total of 16,000 animals.  If we calculate Noah and his sons taking shifts to oversee the entrance of the animals into the ark, we average the rate out to 2 animals entering per second.  With many of the animals averaging the size of a sheep, this all could had been accomplished in the prescribed 7 day period of 7:4,10.  The Ark could had handled up to “35,000” kinds of animals.  With our estimate of 16,000 loaded on the ark, half the space would had remained for Noah and his family. 

2. Is there any historical evidence outside the Bible for the existence of the Ark?

According to Creationist and Ark researcher James T. Hall, there have been several documented sightings of the Ark.[i]

a.    In 400 b.c. Abydenos, the historian and Berosus, the Babylonian High Priest, state that the ark was atop a mountain in Armenia.

b.    Josephus, a Jewish Historian writing in 100 A.D, speaks of the Ark being accessible on a mountain in Armenia.

c.    Marco Polo, an explorer in 1300 A.D, speaks of the Ark on the summit of Mount Ararat.

d.    In 1840 after a major earthquake, Turkish authorities list the remains of the prow  (the front end) of an ancient ship in the mountains

e.    Ed davis, a WWII veteran, reported in 1943 having seen the ark after having been led to the site by a Kurdish resident.

f.     George Greene, a worker for the American Oil Company, reported seeing the Ark perched on a steep ledge while flying overhead in a helicopter in 1952.

All of these reports speak of a large vessel, located in the same location, Mount Ararat.  All these people are from different cultures, times and places.  How could such a large ship be located some 17,000 feet upon a large mountain unless the worldwide flood placed it there!

3. Wasn't the flood just an isolated event experienced by a few people, or was it truly a world-wide event?
Native global flood stories are documented as history or legend in almost every region on earth. Old world missionaries reported their amazement at finding remote tribes already possessing legends with tremendous similarities to the Bible’s accounts of the worldwide flood. H.S. Bellamy in "Moons, Myths and Men" estimates that altogether there are over 500 Flood legends worldwide. Ancient civilizations such as (China, Babylonia, Wales, Russia, India, America, Hawaii, Scandinavia, Sumatra, Peru, and Polynesia) all have their own versions of a giant flood.

These flood tales are frequently linked by common elements that parallel the Biblical account including the warning of the coming flood, the construction of a boat in advance, the storage of animals, the inclusion of family, and the release of birds to determine if the water level had subsided. The overwhelming consistency among flood legends found in distant parts of the globe indicates they were derived, more or less,  from the same origin - the original account as we see in the Bible.  The Israelites would had been exposed to Egyptian  and Canannite flood stories.  Undoubtedly the one given in Genesis is unique, in that it was given by Divine Revelation, whereas all the others were just mere retellings by men. 

In tomorrow's blog we will consider why the flood account is crucial to the Christian faith.

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[i] Dr. James T. Hall.  The Origin of Life.  1989.