I like, as part of my personal devotion, to keep a spiritual diary where I write my reactions and conclusions after reading the assigned passage for the day. A few days ago I was reviewing these diaries dated back to 1997, when I first started my ministry as a pastor. While reading and analyzing the thoughts written back then, I found that, in fact, time helps us change and mature... Through the years, experiences, tears and joys, I've matured many of the conclusions held back then and advanced in my knowledge, something that, I guess, you have notice in your personal life too.
When I read the Bible's first words: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth", I find throughout Scripture, in a total of 66 books, more than 40 authors inspired by the Holy Spirit, and in a period of 1,500 years, that it maintains the same version in regards our origins. It has not had the need to mature or adjust its version, but from the very beginning has remained intact, unlike the versions that exclude God as the designer and originator of life, which have had to rethink, adjust and modify positions.
The Bible consistently affirms and reaffirms the reason for our existence as a species and as individuals. Through its pages, like a golden thread, from time to time reminds us where we came from so we can understand where we are going. It is therefore, the Genesis record of our origins, a defense of the foundation in which rests the rest of Scripture. Jesus himself pointed to it not needing to change, add, or adjust anything.
Are we really able to scientifically understand all the mysteries of life, the earth and the universe? As human beings, our reckless ignorance has led us to believe that with just scratching the surface enclosing the mysteries of life, the earth and the universe is sufficient argument to reach conclusions, against the scientific method, to exclude the design and power of God.
On the other hand, the claims of the Bible as the Word of God are reaffirmed by history, and the consistency of arguments and interpretations through its pages on the origin of species. How to explain this consistency? Undoubtedly the Genesis version of our origins is not the result of someone's curiosity or insomnia, but the revelation of God of his own creative work.
Regardless of our philosophical trend in regards of life, we have a common starting point: we exist. We can not deny it, and does not require science to prove it. In honesty, from any perspective desired, to explain the beginning of life requires an act beyond of what we have observed and experienced. And that's why science does not excludes God, but human beings do. The miracle of life, and the conditions beyond our immediate context that allows it helps us identifies our origin and originator. Thus, the biblical record is consistent with the testimony of nature.
To read:
- Genesis 1 and 2
- Job 38:1-21
- Job 42:1-6
- Psalm 8; 24:1,2, 33:6, 74:16,17, 89:11
- Isaiah 44:24, 45:12
- Jeremiah 51:15,16
- Amos 4:13
- Zechariah 12:1
- Matthew 19:4-6
- John 1:9
- Acts 17:22-31
- Revelation 4:11; 10:5,6
