Wednesday Night, Feb 22, we will be discussing the Origins of our World.  For the first 1800 years of Christianity, most of the “Christianized” world assumed that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” in 6 literal days and rested on the 7^th day. But in 1859, Charles Darwin published a book called “On the Origin of the Species” where he proposed a theory of evolution based on his observations of various animals found on the Galapagos Islands off the coast of South America. By 1870, Darwins theory was being accepted as fact in the scientific community. Many atheistic philosophers seized this opportunity to get rid of God in the public marketplace of ideas. Over the next 100 years, the Bible accounts of creation were written off as myths and evolution was being taught as the only truth. So now, whether you are studying physical science in middle school, biology in high school, geology in college or watching “Nature” shows on TV – you are constantly reminded that the universe is billions of years old and that all life forms have evolved to their present condition over millions of years.

      Needless to say, this caused a major shift in the way most Christians looked at their world. Obviously, devout Christians could not buy the atheistic idea that there is no God and that everything that we see in the world today is a result of a cosmic explosion called the Big Bang. So, generally speaking, Christians have accepted one of four explanations for the origins of the world.      

      1- THE GAP THEORY – proposes that millions of years of creation happened in the “gap” between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Gap theorists believe that the “was” at the beginning of verse 2 should have been “became.”  So Gods original creation BECAME “without form and void” or ruined when Satan and his demons fell to the earth and caused major destruction. The 6 Days of Creation in Genesis 1 are actually a re-construction of the world by God. This view was made popular in the Scofield Bible published in 1945.   

      2- PROGRESSIVE CREATION – Each creation day in Genesis 1 is not a literal 24 hour day. Each day stands for a period of time that may have been millions of years long. In these periods of time, God created the various life forms that we see today.

      3- THEISTIC EVOLUTION – The sequence in Genesis 1 is very similar to the evolutionary time line taught by many scientists. The only difference is time. God used long periods of time that He called “days” and evolution as His method for developing life on earth.

      4- YOUNG EARTH CREATIONISM – YEC’s believe in a literal interpretation of of the Bible in general and Genesis 1 in particular – that God created the earth in 6 (24 hour) days – and that the earth is roughly 6000 years old.  

      On Wednesday night, we will be talking about these ideas and why they matter.  But to get ready for this study, please participate in the following poll:

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