The Beginning

 

The Bible is pretty clear about the creation of the world (if you read it literally).

(And that's the only way you can read it. If you choose not to read it literally then it quickly becomes all up to you which bits are literal and which aren't. And you get yourself onto dangerous ground very quickly.)

 

In the beginning God made the Earth, and everything else around us in 6 literal days. And he did it only 6000 years ago.

In fact, the Bible says that Jesus made everything 4000 years before he was "born". Jesus always existed, even before the creation of the world.

 

The order of creation as detailed by Moses in Genesis 1 is inconsistent with "big bang" theory. The Bible says that the Earth was made on the first day, but the Sun, the Moon and the stars weren't made until the 4th day. So it's going to be a bit of a stretch if you think you can accommodate modern evolutionary thinking with the Bible.

 

Originally God made a fabulous garden called Eden where Adam, the first man, and his wife Eve lived in a perfect paradise.

But Eve was tricked by Satan into disobeying God, and then Adam chose to disobey as well.

This is how sin entered the world. Since then we have all inherited our sinful nature from our parents.

 

The Bible also teaches us that about 4500 years ago there was a flood that covered the entire planet, after which the mountains were pushed up to their current height.

Btw: people lived a long time before the flood (and for a little while afterwards). Adam lived to be 930 years old. That means that Adam was still alive when Noah's father was born. I wonder if he ever asked his dad what Adam was like.

And Noah lived 950 years too. 350 years after the flood, and he only died about 60 years before Abraham was born.

 

God told them to spread out and multiply on the Earth. But they had other plans. They built a big city and tried to build a tower all the way to heaven! So about 100-200 years after the flood God intervened again. This time he confused the language of men to force them to spread out and to stop them building their tower. Before this, everyone on the planet had spoken the same language.

 

And then, another couple of hundred years after that, God chose one man, Abram, whom he renamed Abraham. And then his descendants through his son Isaac, and his son Jacob (whom God renamed Israel). He chose this family to be his people. We know them as the Jews.

 

The rest, as we say... is history.

Well, actually, it's all history.

 

Reading

Genesis 1-3

Genesis 7-9

Genesis 11

Genesis 12

Colossians 1

Romans 5