The Bible begins with creation. Yet most churches today, and even most Bible-believing churches, don’t want to talk about creation. They’re making a mistake. Bible-believing Christians should talk about creation, to strengthen their own faith and to be better witnesses to God’s sovereign – and awesome – power.

Creation according to the Bible

The Bible starts with these words:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. [Genesis 1:1]

Or in the literal Hebrew, the skies and the land.

The rest of Chapter One, and the first three verses in Chapter Two, describe that creation in greater detail.

But the Bible mentions creation many other times.

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy. [Exodus 20:11]

That explains the Fourth Commandment. (And in Hebrew, shabbat comes from the same root as sheva, meaning “seven.”)

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? [Job 38:3]

That you have forgotten the Lord your Maker, Who stretched out the heavens And laid the foundations of the earth, That you fear continually all day long because of the fury of the oppressor, As he makes ready to destroy? But where is the fury of the oppressor? [Isaiah 51:13]

In fact, Isaiah mentions this “stretching out” three times, and Jeremiah twice. And they usually talk about God laying the foundations of the earth, too.

So the Bible does not mention creation once only and then forget about it. The Bible mentions creation many times. Why?

1. To lay the foundation for Divine Sovereignty, and the Authority That goes with it.
2. To remind us that God blesses us every day by keeping us at the center of His Attention.

Why do churches ignore creation?

William Blake’s (1757-1827) image of creation. “Urizen as the Creator of the Material World”, from “Europe, A Prophecy”. Lambeth: Printed by W. Blake, 1794.

Churches ignore creation today for one of three reasons:

1. They do not accept the Biblical narrative as true. They let the white-smocks tell them what they believe is silly.
2. They fear the creation narrative will chase people away.
3. They believe even trying to lay an evidentiary foundation for any part of the Bible, will undermine faith.

If any of that sounds familiar, it should. Reason #1 sounds like something a Sadducee would say. The Sadducees did not believe in anything they could not see or hear or smell or touch. They didn’t accept the resurrection, for example. Reason #3 sounds like something a Pharisee would say. “If you need something to prop up your faith, then you’re not taking it on faith.” Reason #2 is neither. It is the kind of thing that any “political consultant” likes to say.

But when you ignore creation, you diminish God. The obvious problem is that if creation is not true, then God has told a lie. God cannot do that, or else He is not God. But aside from that, if God did not make the world just as He said He did, then He loses all basis for His authority. Then, too: how glorious can He be, if He acted no differently from how the wild would behave, without any interference from Him or anyone else?

Refuting reasons to ignore creation

Let us refute those three reasons, in reverse order. First: did the Apostles avoid using evidence to show the Jews that the “Jesus Christ” they spoke about was the Messiah that the Old Testament predicted? No. (Or as Paul of Tarsus often said, Mé genoito! “May it never be!” “God forbid!”) The Apostles referred repeatedly to the Old Testament. As did Jesus Himself. And the Evangelists. That was evidence that a major event, that the Jews looked forward to for thousands of years, now had come to pass.

Some will say that Scripture is one thing and extrabiblical evidence is another. But Paul told his acolyte, Timothy:

All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness, that every man of God may be fully equipped for every good work. [2 Timothy 3:16,17]

So anything we see in nature that confirms something the Bible says can only be a good thing.

Creation isn’t the only example in this context. The Assyrian Empire, mighty as it once was, sank so low that historians literally forgot all about it. Forgot, that is, until one brave archaeologist set out to find Nineveh, the ancient capital city, when all his colleagues scoffed and said no such place ever existed!

As to the second reason: Jesus once said if anyone was ashamed of Him, He would be ashamed of that person. [Mark 8:38] The same holds true of creation.

And so we come to the first reason: that people believe what the white-smocks tell them. Well, then! Jesus Himself would likely ask:

Whom will you believe? Me or the false prophets of science?

What is a prophet? One who says something ahead of others. (Greek prophétés, from pro- before, ahead of and phémi I say.) It could mean one who says something will happen before it happens. But usually it means one who gets out in front of others to say something.

And very often it means one who says something before he can show it adequately. And maybe he thinks he’ll be able to show it – and in that he is vastly mistaken.

Mistaken – or deliberately lying. Who can forget Piltdown Man? Those who “discovered” it, actually glued it together from the bones of several primates, chiefly an orangutan. Decades later, the National Geographic Society would eagerly embrace another “missing link,” called Archaeoraptor. They would learn, to their shame, that Archaeoraptor was no dinosaur, but a composite, like Piltdown “Man.” Most of the bones came from an ancient bird, they later admitted.

Such crude forgeries, evolutionists will readily admit to. They won’t admit to the more subtle frauds and forgeries that underpin their narrative. For a century and a half the scientific community have deceived themselves about how the universe, the earth, and life came to be. Christians, and especially their clergy, must take no further part in this mutual self-deception.

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