Genesis Questions

Church Study Corner
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I’m not sure where to begin. I’ve been going around in circles. I’ve read Hugh Ross and Mike Heiser and a wide variety of other ‘old Earth’ people trying to put it all together. That puts me into a lot of evolution places but I go with ‘ID’, not evolution. Unguided gets us nowhere, even to a first life or even a universe at all.

I know there is a lot of mystery, we are given few details of the how or why God did things. I just want to be straight on what is possible…how things can line up. Remember I’ve come from a strong YEC background and this is all new to me and a huge adjustment. I started down this road because I was reading and it made no sense to me how you’d have enough people for Babel in only 100 years. That got me on this long spiral of trying to figure that out, then finding the next thing and the next thing…

My biggest questions, I guess, are timelines/genealogies and NT mentions of OT events. I apologize for being wordy, I try to make myself understood so we don’t go down a trail I wasn’t meaning to.

From the start…God makes the Earth or starts working on it after creating the Universe after however long. For whatever reason He decided to build up the Earth in layers over long times and have animals around for a long time before humans. They came, went extinct, new ones came. I don’t believe in unguided evolution of any kind so whatever happened, God was behind it. The fossil record does seem to show more complex creatures coming over long times but no intermediate connection between them and all kinds of ‘disconnected’ things having the same features. I personally think God just liked to create things! And time is no issue for Him so long times for us are nothing for Him. Maybe he wanted to let the nature he designed flow…well, naturally. So He didn’t speed it up but enjoyed the process. However long it was…it was. I can get used to that idea.

So over however many years God made creatures and molded the Earth and the tectonic plates moved the continents around and all that. This seems to be the way God formed mountains and hills. And whatever ice ages there were - which it seems nobody can explain the ‘why’ of that but I know God had some purpose. Maybe to show His glory and power or to prepare the land for agriculture. I use a lot of ‘maybes’ because I don’t pretend to know…I just have possibilities.

Okay, so whatever happened over whatever time frame before humans…that’s fine. Maybe it’s not even chronological or literal - just getting the point across that God made it all. The polemic against the ANE creation stories. The Walton Temple thing or something else. Genesis isn’t scientific, it’s not meant to be. It’s to highlight the theology and that GOD, the one God, did it all. It’s told in kind of a poetic/story way to get the point across. There are numerous possibilities there.

But then we get to humans. I think it is clear there were other humans, not just Adam and Eve. As you’ve said, who would Cain be afraid of? How would he and his wife build a city? So God makes humankind and there are a lot of them. Genetic studies claim there were never less than 10,000 people in a big long time so who knows. To get back to ‘an Adam and Eve couple’ you have to go soooo far back, like 100,000 yrs at least. Genetic studies are pretty new, though, so I look at that but I know that could change over time. Archeology has human artifacts around the world 50,000 years BC, though, and that is more established.

I guess you’re saying Adam and Eve could have come a long time after the original humankind. So these people would have lived and died - they didn’t have the Tree of Life. They were just kind of living and multiplying and I don’t know if they moved out of the area to other parts of the world? Some stayed, some left? Or God placed them in areas around the world to start with? They weren’t sinning because no commandments or rules had been given. But they did die like animals. So that death can’t be what Adam brought, right? Or was this ‘mankind’ human-like but not with the spirit God gave us so kind of in-between? Able to breed with humans and add that DNA but not really human in the sense of Adam?

So however long after the original ‘mankind’, Adam and Eve come on the scene. God makes a special place for them to be with him, a garden in Eden. They’re made special to be Jesus’ line. They get a rule and break it and out of the garden they go, bringing ‘sin’ into the greater world. Perhaps if they hadn’t God would have expanded Eden for these descendants - but He knew what would happen so He didn’t really need another plan. By virtue of being mortals with free will, we all will sin. So I don’t think it’s Adam’s sin that condemns us. I’m pretty fuzzy here.

So I guess my question here is how does this timeline work? How does it work with the genealogies between Adam and Noah? How does it work with NT mentions of Adam and Noah?

I’ll stop here to let you breathe and answer. I seriously have so much going on in my head. I know we can’t know everything, I do know that. I know there is mystery. But it seems what we ARE given should line up and that’s where I’m having trouble. It’s because I believe that I’m so determined that it works in some way. My brain just won’t rest with these things that don’t seem to make sense at all.

Thanks for taking this on. I know it’s a lot. I’ve struggled with this pretty much alone for a long time and I need somebody to walk through it with me.

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My best advice would be to try to clear your head of what you have seen or been told. Basically, start over but go slow and let it absorb. It can be hard to unlearn things.

Brandon has excellent studies here and can guide you through. Start in Genesis, find the place where it makes sense and work out from there. Start with just one thing, then the next. I believe it would be better to read the study first, and then come back with questions.

Don’t overload yourself and take good notes to refer back to. Remember, scripture is like the web, you can never get to the end. The journey is the most satisfying.

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We all have questions. This site is a fantastic place to learn and grow, brick by brick. It takes time so be patient.
Our Heavenly Father is proud of you for wanting to seek the truth!
Welcome.

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Brandon is aware of my post and actually told me to post it here. I have read a lot of the website. I still have questions.

And the answer may be that there isn’t an answer we can know because we’re not God. He knew we wouldn’t understand - that’s why he told us not to lean on our own understanding (a phrase that keeps coming to my mind over and over). There are a lot of things that ‘could have’ happened that we don’t know about that would explain things (natural or miracles), reasons God did things the way He did that we don’t know, interpretations of things that are wrong or incomplete… We are really given very few details and those can be interpreted in different ways. I know there are those who have gone through the same questions and come up with a way to deal with it and still believe. So maybe that’s what I need to hold on to - there are feasible possibilities that are satisfying to others and I don’t need to know all of it. I know of enough things that MUST be God, so I continue to believe…and yet these other things nag at me. My brain wants answers. But there will be things we just can’t know and we have to trust. And some of the reasons for those things may be simply to exercise our trust and show if we REALLY believe even though they don’t make sense to us.

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I would suggest listing your questions in a bullet point style so everyone here has a specific idea on what area we can help.

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Good idea. I do tend to put up walls of text. Or maybe just one issue per post.

Right now my big one is Genetics. Those who study this and run models have said that we have to go back hundreds of thousands of years to get to a primary ‘pair’ that could be Adam and Eve. And they say the population has never fallen below 10,000 in an even longer time.

How do you reconcile this?

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This is what I believe. Scientists typically do not keep God in the equation. In fact, they tend to disprove God. When I read and study the Bible, I always ask God for guidance in my understanding. I trust God’s word over our man-made science. Hope that helps. And remember, keep reading His Word with an open mind. God will provide. God bless!

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I agree with Kay. Science isn’t an absolute. They have been incorrect many times or give an answer based on the limited knowledge that is available at a certain time. Their opinions change due to more knowledge over time.

Without knowing what you are reading, and I know very little about genetics, it appears that these scientists are trying to find the answer to how mankind got started without any biblical knowledge at all. All from one race or tribe.
How would they know what the population was at any given time so long ago? It is built on assumptions. They know a certain thing would have to exist to fit into their puzzle and they build on it.

We know we all didn’t come from Adam and Eve. In my mind, DNA proves this. (This is probably why the scientists are trying to go back so far and find this “pair” which will not exist.)

There are other biblical clues showing the 6th day and the 8th day creation. (The creation of Adam and Eve are called the 8th day but the only thing we know for sure is it was after the 7th day rest.)

We know there was a world that was before this one which brings even more questions, and, in my mind, we can see the evidence of it by some of the structures that are here.
There are many questions that we won’t know the answers to until we sit with the Lord, and all is revealed.

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If science lines up with the Bible i call it truth. If it does not then its from satan. The Bible is all facts but ppl are brainwashed by the rockafella school system from a young age that’s went satan tries to get the young kids.

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Hey folks, thanks so much for helping Jodi out, keep it coming!

@Jodi, I’d like to put something together for you. I’ll need some time though, so hang tight and if you have any other thoughts, feel free to add them to this thread. Thanks so much!

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Def agree about a world the was. Because when was satan good? In gen 1:2 there is already darkness on the face of the earth. Where did the darkness come from? Def interesting stuff. How were peoples names already in the lambs book of life from the cast down? Many more years ahead to study lol

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Thank you everyone for responding! I’m reading and taking it in. I know science doesn’t always get it right and DNA is in its infancy as far as us understanding. Of course scientists are always very confident in what they say - even though they’ve been proven wrong before.

With the way my brain works, I want to have answers for the ‘what if’ scenarios. IF they’re right, then how do we understand it?

Everything I’m looking at is from Christians. That doesn’t mean they’re all correct but I’m trying not to get tangled up in information that I know will not line up or even try to line up to the Bible. I have looked at some theistic evolution stuff just because of the long time issue, to see how they deal with it.

I have kind of a working idea of how things worked and how they can work with ‘mainstream’ science now. If Science is wrong, all the better. That simplifies things a lot. But since it took 150 years for them to figure out Darwin was not feasible, the correction may not come in my lifetime so I need a way to think about it that will let my mind be settled.

I agree that we didn’t all come from Adam and Eve, which kind of relieves that genetics angle, I think. I believe they represented all of humankind just as Jesus did when he reversed what was brought about through the Fall. So they could have come long after the ‘first’ humans. And in typical ANE style, the story of the garden is not told with scientific precision but has embellishments and symbolism and theological truth. Real people but building a story around them that is theologically true but not necessarily literal. And a limited perspective - they had no idea about the rest of the world and any people who may be living there. They didn’t even know about that in the NT so I have to remember that God doesn’t correct those things, people write what they know. He doesn’t reveal what geography we’ll discover in the future in the physical world. He uses writers in their own time with the knowledge they have.

I’ll be interested in seeing what else anybody has for me and if it lines up with what I’m thinking at all. I really want to be able to just live in faith and in peace without this stuff making me sick with anxiety.

Oh, and I do know about the idea of a ‘pre-world’ that was destroyed. As there is so little in the Bible about that, I don’t want to rely on it as part of the explanation. I’m not saying it can’t be true, just that I’m fuzzy on that part so I don’t want it to HAVE to be true for the rest to work.

Thanks again, everyone! My brain is really good at coming up with questions and I just need help to work through it all.

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Maybe my problem is thinking we all had to come from Adam/Eve. I did more reading and now think that’s not necessary. That they are representatives, not progenitors of all. Their role was to be the line of JESUS, which they are.

While you’re thinking…my other big question is Noah. How did we get all the people and races from Noah? I think not all people died in the flood and were already spread out around the world. But there is a concerning verse in the NT about that, implying ‘all’. It may be all of the ‘known to them’ world, which is where I’m leaning. But I’d like your take on that, also. :smiley:

I think my main issues are Gen 1 & 2 and Noah being the source of all people after him.

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I’m on board with there being other humans before Adam and Eve. But then how do you reconcile that with Eve being called the ‘mother of all’?

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I’ve been thinking more (I wish I could stop sometimes!) and I’m realizing that in trying to figure things out ‘scientifically’ we are often missing the point that God can do anything. Nothing is impossible for Him (other than doing two opposites at the same time, like making a rock He can’t lift). He is not bound inside linear time like we are - He is in all time all the time, He is not bound by the laws of our universe as he is not a product of our universe. We can make guesses, science generally works for ‘us’ because He makes it work for our benefit and for the universe he wanted to make to work. Our mind is not like His mind. We will never understand the ‘why’ of a lot of things. We can’t figure out how some things can work because we don’t have His mind or perspective. We know the tiniest portion of all that is and He knows. So while it’s interesting and some truths can be learned about our existence, that doesn’t mean things have always been the way they are now or that God hasn’t intervened or rearranged in some way that can’t be detected by science or even our logic.

My mind keeps questioning why He would do things this way, why not be up front about it all - but the Bible gives us just enough, not more. It doesn’t correct those who wrote it in their time to give them information beyond what they had already discovered (geography, etc.). He chose to use humans at the time they needed to be used. Using humans limits things but He chose to do it that way…maybe precisely because He knew we would have questions and things wouldn’t make sense to us. Lots of things. And He warned us of this - He told us not to lean on our own understanding. Because it will not be able to take in all He does and has done. In these areas that don’t make sense, He’s saying, “Will you trust Me? Will you remember you are not Me and I have mysteries you have to trust Me with?” It’s hard for me to do that but it is required because our knowledge is so limited. We can’t know everything for sure, we are just making conclusions with our own limited resources.

These are my thoughts today. Maybe I’m getting to where I need to be to have the right perspective on these things. Of course we can investigate things and He did give us information we can know is true - but it seems He gives us just enough, not a lot extra. We have to CHOOSE to believe, He doesn’t make it easy because that’s coercion, not love.

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Knowing that we all didn’t come from Adam and Eve, shows the verse (Gen 3:20) has to have a different and deeper meaning then what is taught.

Eve was the mother of the blood line to Christ. Through Christ, and only Him, are we all made alive, physically by the resurrection, Him first, then us in our time, and also spiritually, those who believe in Him. (2 Corin 11:3) Why would Satan focus on Eve,? to tarnish the future bloodline. The Israelites had a specific job to do, be the beacon to the world and bring them into the fellowship with the Lord and they failed.

The other misconception is that only Noah and his family were left after the flood. Brandon has an excellent study on this showing the flood was regional, not global.
This is a topic where the scientists, as you stated earlier, try to match their narrative, some through evolution, to reduce the number of different animals, even species, and making room for them all that we see today. It doesn’t hold water.

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I’ve had similar ideas. Even remembering that God isn’t limited by linear time, there can be a way that He took a part of Eve into the past to make her the literal source of all mankind. He is in all time all the time. Why He would do it this way, I don’t know - other than to give her that distinction even though it wasn’t time for Adam and Eve to be on the scene yet. But they are also representatives of us all, not necessarily physical ancestors. And in that way, as Eve represents all mothers, she is the mother of all. And yes, the Mother of all living - those who are in Christ. Also…from Adam’s perspective, he wasn’t yet aware of there being other people. She was the mother of all living that he knew of. Beyond that, I think there is the ANE aspect - this was a polemic to answer other stories at the time, to correct them. And they use non-literal ways to do that. It was about the message, not the details.

With genetics, it’s possible God made things and/or people diversify faster in the past than they do now. If His purpose was great diversity (and look around, that is clearly something He wanted or we’d all look pretty much the same), then He could have had it go faster earlier on or in certain times (Adam/Eve and the real crux of it, Noah) and then slow to the pace we see now that we base everything on. He did that for humans, so people could adapt more quickly to the environments He wanted them in instead of waiting however long for it to happen at current rates. And because He won’t let things go too far, there are always boundaries to the diversity and amounts of change…we reached current levels that science bases models on, assuming it was always the same. But it may not have been. So fast to get there, then stasis. He could have done it a different way but He also does things in ways that show our logic isn’t his logic, our minds aren’t like His mind, and that He is God and can do things in any way he chooses regardless of if we like it or not. There are LOTS of examples of that.

I also think some things are the way they are for the thinkers among us. Some just glide over the details and nothing bothers them. For the thinkers and diggers among us, we sometimes find things that we really can’t understand. And I think some are built that way to grow our trust by exercising it - by showing us we HAVE to obey ‘lean not on your own understanding’ - because it will never be complete or infallible. Like Job…regardless of how things seem to us, there are other things in play that we don’t know about that are there to show we have to trust - no matter what.

God could have done things in different ways, ways that always make sense to us and give us no doubts at all. But then we wouldn’t be choosing Him, it would be too easy to believe. He doesn’t want it to be easy (although it is for some who don’t think deeply), he wants us to REALLY want Him, REALLY trust Him - no matter how things ‘look’. If He did things in the way we would do things, He wouldn’t be God. He’d just be a really strong and smart human. He does things in certain ways to highlight His attributes. ALL knowing, ALL powerful, Creator, outside of time, outside of the laws of the universe that he set in place… and using people in certain times in history to tell the story and accommodating to current beliefs of the times rather than distract or tell them things that people won’t figure out until the future.

Sorry for the wall of text again. I’ve been thinking so much and struggling. I’m kind of talking to myself here but I hope this makes sense.

At the end of the day, no matter how things look…we know God is real and has to be there for anything to exist, we know He is the God of the Bible because of prophesy coming true, and we know Jesus is true for all the reasons we have. Because we know these things, whatever is in the Bible is theologically true and ultimately points to Jesus, which is the purpose. The rest is just details - some of which don’t seem to line up with our current knowledge, but we’re always learning and finding that what was understood in the past wasn’t the full picture.

I just wish I could get my brain to accept that and stop with all the doubts…

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Jodi, breathe and clear your mind. Brandon is an excellent Bible study teacher. Start from the beginning with his study “the world that then was”. Read it with your heart, read to understand every Bible verse he displays he teaches you how to study the scriptures for yourself you cannot go wrong following his advice.

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Jodi, thanks so much for your patience.

I put together an article for you, and it’ll go out in today’s newsletter.

You can find it here:

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