1. What is the story of creation? The first thing we need to know is that the story of creation written in the Bible, is the revealed truth of God. People say that man wrote the Bible. And in the sense that human fingers wrote down its words, that is correct. But the words, the message, the meaning of the Biblical account of creation did not come from the mind or thoughts of man. It was revealed to man from the mind of God. So much do I believe this that I believe that when this account of creation was first written down, thousands of years ago, there is no way the person writing it could have possibly understood a fraction of what he was writing down. So profound, so eternal, so powerful and ahead of its time is the story of creation that it could not have been simply “thought up” by people. God revealed this truth about how the world and the universe came into being. And this account of the beginning of all things has stood the test of time to our very day.

2.      Yes, in our day the account of creation told in the Bible continues to stand up to every attempt to discredit it or prove it wrong. Science in some form or another has been around for a long time. And something we need to realize about science is that science owes its very existence to the story of creation in the Bible. Yes, science is the investigation of the world around us. Science is the human attempt to understand the things that exist. And most everyone considers science to be a good and noble pursuit of man. People just take for granted that it is good for humans to try to understand the world around us. But something we need to know is that we get this attitude that science is good from the story of creation. Yes, the creation story has planted in the human mind several thoughts about the universe and our relationship to the universe.

a) First the creation story tells us that the universe is good. The Bible says repeatedly that God created, then looked at what he created, and saw that it was good. This is important because science would not exist without this fundamental belief that the object of scientific study, that is, the world and the universe, is good.

b) Secondly, the creation story tells us that the world is not only good but understandable. God created the universe with reason and laws that make it orderly. An apple always falls down from an apple tree because of the law of gravity that God imbedded in the world. Science could not exist without this orderly creation of things. If the world were random with apples sometimes falling up, sometimes down and sometimes sideways, Isaac Newton would have had nothing to discover.

c) And finally, science owes its existence to the idea that God created man with the role and purpose to understand the world God made, rule over it and use it for good. The story of creation tells us that God placed us here in His creation to have “dominion” over it, to “subdue” nature and use it for good. This fundamental belief, that humans are supposed to experiment and understand and use creation for good lies at the heart of science. Science would not be science without this Biblical truth.

3.      And so it is funny to me (funny both in the peculiar sense and the ha-ha sense) that scientists who owe their field of study to the Bible's account of creation, sometimes propose theories that attempt to prove the truth of God's creation wrong. In our day the theory of evolution is the latest scientific theory that some scientists propose as proof God did not create life. But we need to know that evolution is only the latest flavor of scientific theories that have run counter to the Biblical account. Before evolution, every scientist worth his salt believed in the static or steady state theory of the origin of the universe. This theory, held for decades states that everything that is, always was and so there never was a beginning. When scientists held the steady state theory they were certain that there never was a time when there was nothing and that the idea that at one moment in time, God created something out of nothing was wrong. Then, lo and behold, with the invention of telescopes and other new technologies, scientists began to observe that the universe is expanding. So by observation and mathematical calculations science discovered that the universe has not always existed. In fact the universe can be traced back to a specific moment when, everything was at one point. And at that one point there was a big explosion of sorts. And the universe, as we know it, came into begin. This theory called the big bang theory has since been confirmed and it shocked the scientific world and scientists everywhere. But although it shocked scientists, it did not shock theologians. Theologians who have long held that at one moment, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, looked at the scientists and said: “What took you so long? God revealed this to us in the Bible thousands of years ago!”

4.      I believe that the theory of evolution will meet the same fate as the steady state theory did. That is, while it is a good theory that may explain how God changes things in the world for good, the theory of evolution in its extreme teaching will go the way of many of yesterday's scientific theories. Indeed, scientists are already questioning the idea that all life evolved from lower forms of life. Biologist Edwin Conklin is one of these scientists who doubts that evolution explains the presence of higher forms of life on earth. He put it this way. He said (and I quote) that “the probability of life originating by accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary originating from an explosion in a print shop.” The point for us to understand here is this. Science is good because God intends for us to investigate and measure and observe the world around us. But when science proudly announces it has figured everything out and that the Bible is wrong, just wait. Yes, just wait. For in time scientists will claw and scratch, struggle and climb their way to the top of the mountain and find the truth. But when they do, they will find that the truth of the Bible has been sitting there on that mountain top all along.

5.      The Bible begins with these words: “In the beginning God…” These four words are, to me, the most important in the entire story of creation in the Bible. For these four words tell us that all things in heaven and earth have their beginning in God. Before there was an earth or a heaven, before there was a plant or a tree, before there was an organism of life anywhere, there was God. One day science will measure and experiment, study and observe its way to this truth. Until then, let us wait and believe God's Holy Word. And let us rejoice! Because we already know that “The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the work of his hands!” Let everyone say Amen!