Hey guys, my next three posts are going to be on the concept of death before Adam... Evolution teaches that death goes back for millions of years. However, we read quite the opposite in the beginning of Genesis. The Bible has the authority on the concept of death and its relation to sin. There are definite and important reasons why we can’t fit death before Adam into the equation. Perfection In the beginning, everything was perfect. Genesis 1:31 – “And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” Deuteronomy 32:4 – “He is the rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is He. When God finished creating at the end of Day 6, He declared everything “very good”—it was perfect. We can expect nothing less of a perfect God. What was this “perfect” or “very good” creation like? Were animals dying? Was man dying? We can know these answers according to what the Bible says. Everything was originally vegetarian Genesis 1:29-30 We can obviously gleam from this passage that animals and man were not originally eating meat. Death was not part of the original creation. Also, on a side note, plants are not alive in a biblical sense. In the original Hebrew text, the words nephesh chayyah is used to describe the sea creatures, land animals, birds, and man. It applies a sense of a living soul when used. This also rules out ridiculous arguments such as skin cells dying and bacteria, etc. God is not a God of death, as we can see in Revelations 21 and 22. If a Christian wants to side with the atheistic view of a world where death existed for millions of years using the majority of the fossil layers as their evidence of slow gradual accumulation instead of a global Flood, then they have major problems. The fossil layers consist of many animals that have the remains of other animals in their stomach contents. As we’ll discuss later, Scripture tells us that sin brought about animal death, something that did not occur prior to the Fall. This rules out many of the rock layers as being evidence of millions of years because the Lord declared that everything was originally vegetarian. The Flood of Noah’s day is a much better explanation of the rock layers, which show animals eating other animals after sin. Death is a punishment Genesis 2:16-17 God gave the command in Genesis 2:16–17 that sin would be punishable by death. This is significant when we look at the big picture of death. If death in any form was around prior to God’s declaration in Genesis 1:31 that everything was “very good,” then death would be very good too—hence not a punishment at all. Some have pointed out that this passage is not referring to animal death. In one sense, that’s true: this verse was not directed toward animals. But by the same logic, this command was only directed toward Adam, yet Eve died and so do we (as Adam’s descendants) for sin. This shows the all-encompassing impact of the sin-death relationship.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 13:32:29 +0000