IN THE BEGINNING OF ALL BEGINNINGS

When you open the Bible to the first book, the first chapter and the first line, you will notice that not a word is said here about Christ dying for our sins, or about His resurrection from the dead or the Second Coming. There is no mention of the state of the dead or the day of judgment, or even the seventh day, the Sabbath. The first words of the Bible do not speak of all of the above, since all these doctrines and the truths associated with them would make no sense apart from what the first words tell Bible, namely: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Creation is a fundamental truth of Scripture. All other biblical teaching - the incarnation, the cross, the Second Coming and other doctrines - is based on the truth that our world was created by the Lord. Therefore, the theme of creation is not only presented in the first pages of the Bible, but also in the first five books of Moses, in the prophetic books, Psalms, Gospels, Apostolic Epistles, Acts and Revelation. It must be emphasized that in almost all cases the theological context requires a literal understanding of this truth. For example, Paul wrote that “death reigned from Adam until Moses and over those who did not sin, like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the future” (Rom. 5:14). Paul does not simply connect the literal Adam with the literal Jesus. The very context of Romans 5 connects this link to the Plan of Salvation, a core doctrine that we also take literally: we are fallen beings who face either eternal death or eternal life—literally! Jesus Himself quoted words from chapters one and two Genesis: “He answered and said to them: Have you not read that He who created in the beginning made them male and female? And he said, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh, so that they are no longer two, but one flesh” (Matthew 19:4-6). If Jesus took creation literally, how foolish would it be for us to take it otherwise! Our very name, “Seventh-day Adventists,” directly refers to a literal seven-day creation. Although some people wish to incorporate the theory of evolution into our theology, Seventh-day Adventists know that this is impossible because it would destroy everything we believe in. A "Seventh-day Darwinist" is not and cannot be a Seventh-day Adventist. This quarter's lessons explore the doctrine of creation presented in chapters one and two. chapters of the book of Genesis, as well as the relationship of this doctrine with a number of our other views, including morality, sin, marriage, stewardship and more. In addition to emphasizing the literal nature of the creation story, the manual will again show how the central message of the Bible is based on the historical truth of creation. Take the Gospel, for example. According to the evolutionary model, the Lord incarnates into an advanced ape, created through a terrible, painful cycle of killing - the so-called natural selection, all in order to abolish death, the final enemy (see 1 Cor. 15:26). But how can death be an enemy if it is one of God's chosen means for the creation of man? After all, if the Lord used evolution, He had to use up more than one “man” erectus", "Heidelberg man" and "Neanderthal" in order to finally obtain a person corresponding to His image ("homo sapiens"). If evolution really took place, then Jesus was coming to save humanity from the process by which God created us. Here we can see that mixing biblical truths with extra-biblical views creates a logical absurdity, and the honest seeker of truth should be concerned about this issue. As we study this quarter's lessons, we will see why the truth of a literal seven-day creation week is essential to everything we believe, and why compromise on this issue leads to compromise on everything that makes us who we are. p>

L. James Gibson - Director of the Research Institute Geoscience (www.grisda.org) (Loma Linda, California), author of several articles on the relationship between creation and science.