We live in a beautiful world. Where did it come from? Where did life itself start? Did this universe with all of its marvelous complexities come into existence by chance, or was it by the design and purpose of an almighty, all-wise God? The question is intriguing and fascinating as well as frustrating and baffling. We have the effect, billions of people and trillions of plants and animals with life, but where did it all start, and what caused this amazing effect?

Space exploration has offered one avenue of investigation. Bright hopes were entertained that the landing on the moon and the bringing back of rock and dust samples would assist in unraveling the mystery of the universe's origin. The exploration of the moon, although spectacularly successful, has been disappointing in yielding significant clues as to our origin. In fact, more questions have been raised than answered. It can be said that after spending more than one hundred billion dollars, we probably know less than we thought we knew before. Many of our ideas and theories have been shattered by these explorations.

For example, the astronomer can measure the approximate amount of cosmic dust which falls from stars and asteroids, through the atmosphere, and upon the earth. Such dust, falling on the earth, runs off into rivers and seas. Dust falling on the moon piles up. If the universe is four billion or more years old, as generally alleged by evolutionists, then the amount of dust, even though falling at an extremely minute rate, would be many feet thick on the moon. It was feared that the first astronauts upon landing on the moon might be swallowed up together with their landing machine in this mountain of dust. Of course when Neil Armstrong landed, the dust posed no problem whatsoever. There was hardly an inch or so, just enough for footprints. How could such a thin layer of dust support the theory of a universe with billions of years to pile dust on the moon? The evidence contradicts the theory.

The origin of the universe and of life itself is a vital subject. If I know how I came into being, it helps understand why I am here and where I am going. If I am the product of an intelligent and wise Creator, God, then I have a purpose on earth and a destiny after this life. On the other hand, if life is the result of blind chance or mere accident, as evolution teaches, then it can be evaluated only in terms of mere physical existence. If that is the case, the best we can do and expect is to enjoy material and physical things, the human relationships we establish and do the best we can with our potential in the seventy to eighty years allotted us. Life could not rise above the attitude expressed in I Cor. 15:32, "Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die." Death would end it all.

What do we know about the beginning of it all? In this chapter we will contrast the two major teachings on origins, namely evolution and special creation.

Evolution can be defined as the development of all things to their present state by a series of progressive changes, according to certain fixed laws and by means of resident forces without the intervention of a supernatural being or agency. Usually evolutionists do not need or do not want a God involved in the process. Instead, it all started several billion years ago with one simple living cell, which had within itself certain resident forces or capabilities to cope with the environment and to progress into a more complex form. How this living cell or seed arrived on the scene in the first place or how this earth came into existence and began to spin is subject to different conjectures. At any rate, from this one living cell came all of the increasingly varied developments which multiplied until we see the intricate world of nature and life around us today. An important factor is that the struggle for survival produced characteristics conducive for survival. Creatures which were not adapted for survival died out. Only the fittest ones or those able to cope with a hostile environment have survived.

The true evolutionist does not need a personal God. Late Professor Harlow Shapley of Harvard University said, "Some people piously proclaim, 'In the beginning, God . . .' I say, "In the beginning, hydrogen . . . ." From one vantage point, one might sum up the position of the evolutionist by the statement made years ago of Professor D.M.S. Watson, past president of the Zoological Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, that evolution is a theory universally accepted, not because it can be proven to be true but because the only alternative is special creation, which is clearly incredible.

William Jennings Bryan at the famous Scopes trial in Tennessee in 1924 referred to the comments of Harry E. Fosdick. The latter had written that according to biologists a man has eyes because the light waves beat on the skin and the eyes came out in answer. If he has ears, it is because the sound waves were there first, and the ears came out to hear. All the powers of man have come in response to an environment. If there had been no water, there would have been no fins. If there had been no air, there would have been no wings. If there had been no land, there would have been no legs.

Bryan commented, "Think of a man believing that, but not able to believe in miracles! The light rays beating on the skin, and the eye coming out — why did not the waves keep on beating until we had eyes all over the body? And why did the waves stop beating when we had two eyes? And, if it is just accidental, why did not one eye come on the chin and the other on the back of the neck?

"Dr. Fosdick can believe this, but he cannot believe in miracles! He says the Orient could not be converted by a gospel resting on floating axe heads and of fish swallowing men. Jesus could believe the story of Jonah, and Jesus I submit is a higher spiritual authority than Fosdick."

Actually, an evolutionist usually does have a god, a feminine deity, called Nature (mother nature) who is credited with the numerous miracles we see in our world. For example, an article appeared in Readers Digest, entitled, "Nature's Most Astonishing Animal: The Beehive." After describing some of the unbelievable acts of bees, one finds this paragraph: "As apiarists watched all these jobs being done year after year, the question arose, how did the bees know what to do? What intelligence told them the hive needed more brood cells or a new guard detachment?" A very good question, but the only answer the author could suggest was the goddess Nature, even though this answer did not seem to satisfy him.

An article entitled, "Nature's Utmosts" in Nature Magazine, describes some incredible feats of animals, birds, and fish. Repeatedly the author stated that Nature did this or that. The article concludes thus, "Nature is constantly producing with the ease of indefinite creativeness and prodigality, the most astonishing and improbable things. But when Nature really does her utmost . . . well, then, as the Irish philosopher remarked, what she produces is the impossible."

Think of how strange and contradictory it is to talk this way of a Nature-god. The god seems almost schizophrenic. She is mindless, yet has unbelievable intelligence; completely impersonal, but yet has created an amazing personality, man; "behind the scenes," completely invisible, but yet has manifested herself in millions of tangible, visible life forms. She is presently in the process of creating. Yet nowhere is this process evident. Of course the reply is that the process is so slow that it takes millions of years and, therefore, is not readily obvious. All of the foregoing represents a nebulous "god" concept, which defies logic and simple norms of reasoning.

The truth of the matter is that an intelligent design must have an intelligent designer. Evolution argues for myriads of miraculous designs without a designer, unless one wants to call nature a designer. We have arrived at fixed and inviolable laws without a law giver. We gaze at planets spinning at incredible speeds with split second precision but no architect, mathematician, engineer, or builder, who fashioned and launched them into space. We have resident forces but no one who implanted such dynamic power into the original life-giving seed and its multitude of successors.

Suppose I told you that as I was coming out of Washington, DC, I aimed my car toward Los Angeles on Route 50, and after it attained fifty miles an hour, I jumped out. Three days later that driver less car arrived at its preprogrammed destination, having kept itself on the road, observing all speed limits, making all correct turns, and all necessary stops, and all of this in accordance with resident forces and fixed laws incorporated within itself. You would brand that as preposterous. Yet we are asked to believe that a little amazing, original cell or some simple elementary form of life became so smart that it made all of the right decisions and went through all of the incredible developments correctly until it reached the goal of its journey, man himself.

Evolution involves much supposition and guesswork. Man's arrival on earth is estimated as having occurred as recent as 200,000 years ago and as early as 3,500,000 years ago, which is quite a spread of time. As an example of speculation, man's ancestor is believed to have walked on all four legs. A University of Virginia professor presumed that winters in Virginia were quite cold with heavy snow. It was uncomfortable for the ape to walk through the snow, especially for his under belly. Thus he began to practice walking on his two hind feet. He gradually became accustomed to doing that. This is portrayed as a sensible answer to how primitive man learned to walk in an upright position.

Some Christians have modified the evolutionary theory and have given it a religious flavor by saying that God originally created the world and life, but He turned the million and one odd details over to nature for development in accordance with an orderly preconceived plan. They assert that causation of life by God does not necessarily imply or require a sudden or an immediate creation.

There are various and differing views. One view states that God is the cause of all life and matter. He sowed seminal (or seed) principles in nature and matter. These, taking root, developed into the world of animals and plants. God did not create them directly but created them in seminal form. Under the general guidance of God, the final creatures were realized.

As a modern day illustration, a mighty oak tree springs from an acorn and becomes a full grown tree over 100 years or more. Who would ever think that a little, insignificant acorn contains all the marvelous potentialities of a giant oak tree. The seed in the womb grows into a fully developed fetus over a period of nine months, and a baby is born. This infant grows into an adult in eighteen years or more. What fantastic and miraculous capabilities are latent in the tiny seed in the womb. We stand in awe as we look upon the newborn child and realize the miracle of creation. Similarly, could not God have created and implanted in seed form the various kinds of life which over a period of many years developed into a final, full grown stage?

Another view which deviates from the foregoing holds that God intervened at certain critical or strategic times to create and develop new forms of life. The laws of nature were then allowed to work out their own results over the years to give us the numerous varieties and improvements of species.

It might be added that men from evangelical traditions have believed that the days of Genesis one were long periods of time, consistent with the discoveries of geologists. They include men such as Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge, B. B. Warfield, Alexander MacLaren, A. H. Strong, J. P. Lange, and Franz Delitzsch. Also, some of the older theologians, such as St. Augustine and John Calvin held comparable views. Calvin restricted the interpretation of "creation" to the initial act of God and taught that in ordering the universe over six days, God used ordinary natural means.

The foregoing views pose problems with respect to the creation of man and woman. We must ask, if the earth is four to five billion years old, as is generally held by the evolutionist, when and how did man emerge on the earth under one of the above "evangelical" views?

One view is that man's body developed from the highest form of animal life. At some final point of development, perhaps 50,000 to 500,000 years ago, God infused the offspring of a highly developed ape-like animal with a moral nature and personality. That man and that woman then became the first true human beings upon the earth which could be regarded as "created in the image of God."

Another view is that God intervened with a special act of creation as explained in Genesis 1:26-28 and 2:21-22. Thus, over millions of years the earth was prepared for man's dwelling. When the forests, mountains, valleys, coal and oil deposits, etc., reached their final purpose, he whom all creation anticipated, man, was created by a special act of God.

This view states that the first three chapters of Genesis must be interpreted literally. God created the heaven and the earth in six twenty-four hour days. He created Adam by literally fashioning him from clay and breathing life into him. He created Eve literally from a rib of Adam. Eden was a literal location where man was tempted and sinned through disobedience.

A. A literal interpretation is the simplest explanation of Genesis.

1. The days in Genesis 1 can only be interpreted as twenty four hour days. When a numerical adjective is connected with the word "day" in Scripture, such as the first day, the second day, etc., that limits it to a twenty-four hour day.

The creative work of God for each of the six days concludes with this statement, "And the evening and the morning were the first day," or the "second day," etc. (vv. 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31). This language describes a normal twenty-four hour day, marked off with an evening and a morning, or a beginning and an ending. Further, the language suggests completely finishing a certain work each day, with a finality in such action. It should also be noted that Genesis 2:1 states that the creation of the heaven and the earth over a period of six days was finished, thus stating a definite point of time for its completion; i.e., the end of a six-day period. Such language cannot be harmonized with the concept of geological ages spanning millions of years with no specific beginning or ending.

Genesis 1:31 states that "God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good." It’s difficult to reconcile "very good" with the notion that after billions of years, during which many kinds of animals had already become extinct through the struggle for existence, God contemplated His creation with satisfaction.

The foregoing interpretation of "day" is confirmed by Exodus 20:8-11. Verses 9 and 10 state that Israel was to work six days and then rest on the seventh. Why was such a schedule of work and rest to be observed or why the ratio of one day of rest to six days of work? Verse 11 explains, "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day." God Himself set up this schedule in His creation. He rested on the seventh day after six days of work. It doesn’t make sense to conclude that as God worked for six geological ages, so man is to work for six twenty-four hour days. The only reasonable conclusion is that the days in both instances (whether the creative work of God or His seventh day rest, or the work of man and his rest) are twenty-four hour days.

2. Special creative acts of God in making man and woman. God took special pains in forming a mud replica of man and then breathing life into him. It is clear that man did not become a living being until God breathed the breath of life into the mud man he had made. Therefore, he could not have come out of any preexisting living material, such as an animal. I Corinthians 11:8 states, "Man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man." Chronologically, man appeared first. After no mate suitable for Adam was found, God created woman out of a rib of man. The inability of finding a mate for Adam points to the impassable gulf between the human race and all other created forms of life. God formed the woman from one of man's ribs by a special creative act. How can you be fair to what the text says and understand these specific creative acts in a non-literal way?

3. The naming of the animals by Adam. The supremacy of man over the rest of creation is evident in that God gave Adam the responsibility of naming the brute creation. His intelligence and knowledge of creation are seen in this act. This naming infers more than just "pulling a name out of the hat," and bestowing it upon the creature. It suggests an identification of the species, their character, habitat, and all that a name generally implies. This naming took place on the sixth creative day, not long after animals, fish, and fowl were created. If the animals and the rest of creation existed millions of years before man came along (and in fact many had already become extinct), when in point of time, could Adam have given names to each one of these creatures? It would have been impossible.

The question has been posed, how could Adam have named a multitude of animals, birds, and fish in a relatively brief period of time. Several explanations may account for it. First, the high degree of intelligence of Adam enabled a prompt cataloguing of the creation. Second, a miracle could well be involved. Third, God created species, and since the time of creation innumerable varieties have occurred within these species. For example, God created a pair of horses from which have sprung the many varieties of horses from the smallest minis to the large one ton plough horses.

God is a God of unbelievable variety. All mankind has come from the first human pair, Adam and Eve, and after the Flood, from Noah's three sons and their wives. No two human beings of the four billion plus people on earth are alike. Each is an original. God makes no carbon copies. The different races, colors, cultures, etc., have all occurred within the human family. Yet this family is distinct and cannot be merged with any other family of creation.

B. Creation seems to be younger rather than older. In 1654 Bishop Ussher announced with great assurance that his study of Scripture showed creation to have taken place in 4004 B.C. In fact, he was even more precise. He said it occurred Monday morning, October 26 at 9:00 A.M. For a century or more after that, it was almost heresy to dispute that date.

Scholars now seriously question whether a dating based on genealogies (as his was) can be considered as completely reliable. The Hebrew word for "begat" in same genealogies, such as Genesis 5, includes in its definition the idea of "ancestor of." Therefore, the relationships given may be those of a family or a dynasty head, rather than a father-son relationship. This leads to the probability that the time span in Genesis 5 is much longer than might appear by merely adding up the ages of the fathers and sons mentioned.

On the other hand, even though one stretches the time period prior to the Flood by several thousand years, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the creation is a relatively young one, surely less than 10,000 years old, based upon the biblical record. It would be impossible to stretch the time span prior to the Flood up to 200,000 years or to millions of years for that matter, to fit the reported ages of fossil finds of man.

It is to be noted that the earliest Canaanite civilization dug up in Palestine is dated at about 7500 BC. Archeology suggests no evidence of agriculture prior to 5,000 B.C. and little trace of civilization in the Near East or Egypt earlier than 6,000 B.C. Toynbee, a noted historian, said that the race of man has been on earth for only 6,000 years, which encourages some to conclude that Bishop Ussher may not have been so far off in his calculations.

D. Immediate age appearance. Viewed as a literal six-day creation and a relatively young one, we are confronted with the question of explaining the obvious appearance of long periods of time or great age. We reply that the acts of creation were instantaneous and thus presuppose a prehistory that did not really exist. For example, Adam was created a mature man, equivalent in appearance to a twenty-five or thirty year old man. One minute after creation, he had a body with the appearance of having lived thirty years or more, which never actually occurred. If Cain was born one year after Adam and Eve were created, they would have been the youngest parents in the world, chronologically speaking.

The stately giant redwood tree, giving the appearance of 1,000 years of age and the full grown elephant with the appearance of twenty-five years of age, had just been created a minute before. Under this view, we have compressed time. God finished creation, the world, the animals, the mineral kingdom and man, all with the appearance of age and maturity. This would rule out the millions and billions of years with geologic history, the so-called fossil record, the ravages of erosion, the radioactive rundown, and other factors required by the evolutionary hypothesis.

E. Rate of population increase. Another factor which suggests a relatively young creation is that of population growth. Undoubtedly, the birth of fifty or more children to a couple before the Flood would not have been unusual, since man lived to about 1,000 years. Josephus mentions a tradition that Adam had fifty-six children. It appears that at Cain's time the population was quite numerous, for Cain said to God, "Everyone that findeth me shall slay me." If the world consisted of only his parents and a few brothers or sisters, he could not have talked that way. It is also said that he went to the land of Nod and built a city. A family consisting of only a few children would not have been enough to build a city.

Genesis 5 mentions ten generations. If we assume that the average family numbered only twenty children and retain the ten generations, we would have well over a billion people by the end of the tenth generation. The present population of over four billion is consistent with dating the Flood at about 2500 B.C. In the light of our present population explosion, experts in this field say that India with her present birth rate could fill five earths in a single century. China, which already has more than one billion people, could do the same. The presumption that man originated several hundred thousand years or more ago, together with the elimination of a Noahic Deluge, which the evolutionist rejects, is incompatible with any reasonable rates of population growth.

This view holds that in the beginning God created heaven and earth in a perfect condition, and Genesis 1:1 should be so interpreted. He did not create the earth empty or "void" as verse 2 asserts, but it became that way. Thus, the original creation may have occurred millions or even billions of years ago, but became "without form and void" because of some major catastrophe. It is suggested that the original creation was put in charge of Lucifer, one of God's brightest and wisest angels. The earth may have been populated by a race of angels or a pre-Adamic man.

As time went on Lucifer was lifted up with pride and embarked on an ambitious program to usurp the throne of God. Isaiah 14:12-17 and Ezekiel 28:12-19 clearly state that such a rebellion occurred, though they do not indicate the time. Also, Rev. 12:4 states that the Dragon or Satan drew the third part of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth, suggesting that one third of the angelic beings joined Lucifer in this revolt against God.

This rebellion brought down the judgment of God upon His creation. Lucifer became Satan or the Devil. The earth became without form and void and may have lain in ruins for millions of years. During this time the strata of the earth's crust gradually developed. Coal deposits, minerals, and oil were probably formed. Dinosaurs and other monsters, whose skeletons have been found, could well have belonged to this original creation. After an indefinite period of time, God began to recreate the earth. Genesis 1:3-31 describes this recreation in a period of six twenty-four hour days.

This view has been quite popular in some circles and has the advantage of giving the earth an antiquity which could be made to generally harmonize with the age given by the evolutionary hypothesis. However, it contains the very serious flaw of resting heavily on the translation of "was" in Genesis 1:1 as "became." We are told that the Hebrew word for "was" occurs 264 times in Genesis through Deuteronomy and in 258 times should be translated as "was." It would be unnatural and out of keeping with the Hebrew language to translate the word as "became."

It is more natural to interpret Genesis 1:1 as a statement of an accomplished fact, followed by a description of the methodology used in accomplishing that fact. In line with the Hebrew style, a fact is often stated first, followed by explanatory details of the method of procedure used. Genesis 1:1 gives us the fact of creation, which was complete and perfect with light, vegetation, fowl, fish, animals, and man. Genesis 1:2-31 then goes into detail to tell us the how or the method God used to accomplish that fact, together with a time table.

The creation of man illustrates this principle or Hebrew style. Genesis 1:26-27 states the fact that God created both man and woman in His own image. Genesis 2:7 gives us the how of man's creation (out of the dust) and 2:21-22 the how of woman's creation (out of man's rib).

Carbon 14 and other methods of dating used by scientists are acclaimed as accurately determining the age of dead organic substances. Carbon 14 dating is based on the assumption that the amount of C14 in the atmosphere is produced by cosmic radiation bombarding atmospheric nitrogen. This theory is dependent on the supposition that conditions through the geologic time table have been constant.

But how do we know that conditions have been constant? What were the atmospheric conditions prior to the Flood? If a water vapor canopy shielded out much of the radiation, then the C14 decay would not have been constant throughout the ages. If this canopy collapsed during the Deluge, as many believe it did, then the dating of any fossils which predate the Deluge would be unreliable. We know that atmospheric conditions changed radically during the Flood, for the age of man took a drastic nosedive after the Flood.

The Zinjanthropus boisei, or the "Nutcracker Man" was given a date of 600,000 years through one of these dating methods. But a few years ago, this fossil was re-dated by increasing the age from 600,000 to 1,750,000 years, simply through a new method of dating. The new calculation was based on the Potassium-Argon method, in which the age of a test sample is calculated by the amount of argon residue produced by the radioactive decay of potassium.

Dr. Howell, former Director of Curriculum materials in the State of Washington, relates an interesting story. He says that a petrified plank of wood was discovered in his neighborhood when he was a boy, and it was sent to a university for dating. It was declared to have been petrified for six million years. While they tapped on the plank, a square metal nail dropped out. They cleaned it up and were surprised to find the word, "Pittsburgh" on the side of the nail. How did a nail, made in a city then less than 100 years old, find its way into a plank that had been petrified 6,000,000 years? Dating methods are not yet dependable.

Where did it all come from? "In the beginning God created . . ." is not a bad idea. It definitely contains evidence that is as strong as the accidental, evolutionary theory.