Creation Day 6, Part 2
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2018 · 16 September 2018
Genesis 1: 26-27, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female, he created them.” I would like to conclude about fossils before I talk about the text.
There is a scientific book called In the Beginning is written by Walter Brown, who is a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For 21 years, he was the chief of science and technology studies at the Air War College and professor at the Air Force Academy. He has exposed, as have many others, the lies of evolutionists trying to make their case. He says that fossils of apelike men are grossly overstated.
For example, it is now universally acknowledged that Piltdown man was a total hoax, and yet it has existed in textbooks for more than 40 years. Prior to 1978, the evidence for Ramapithecus consisted of a handful of teeth and jaw fragments, and Ramapithecus was one of the largest categories of transitional ape man. We now know that it came out of some teeth and jaw fragments. It is now known that Ramapithecus was just an ape.
Scientists now believe, that Ramapithecus was probably the extinct relative of an orangutan, nothing more. You find some interesting information about that in a book by Roger Lewin called Bones of Contention. One of the other supposed transitional forms is called Nebraska man. The only evidence for Nebraska man turns out to be a pig’s tooth. Quite an overstatement of false facts.
And the skulls of the Peking man are considered by many experts to be the remains of apes that were systematically decapitated and exploited for food by man. The classification Homo erectus is considered by most experts to be a category that should never have been created with regard to them. They show that this animal should never have been classified as Homo or manlike.
And then australopithecines, found most in South Africa, are quite distinct from humans. Several computer studies of the australopithecines have shown that their bodily proportions were not intermediate between man and living apes at all. Further study of their inner ear bones that were used to maintain balance show a similarity with those of chimpanzees and gorillas but a complete difference with those of humans.
One of the fossils, a three-and-a-half-foot-tall, long-armed, 60-pound adult called Lucy – you remember the discovery of Lucy – was initially presented as evidence that the australopithecines walked upright in a human manner. However, studies of Lucy’s entire anatomy, not just a knee joint, now show this is not true. Lucy, swung from trees and is an ape, not a woman.
What did really happen is recorded for us in the Bible. Let’s go back to Genesis 1. According to verses 24 and 25, day six featured the creation of land animals. Cattle, would be domestic and tame. Creeping things are all the creatures low to the ground. Beasts were four-legged, non-domesticated animals. And then in verses 26 and 27, we find the creation of man, instantaneously by God.
He created Adam full-grown and then as Genesis 2 indicates, later on created a helper, Eve, full-grown and fully functioning as well. Now, everything that was created before the creation of man, was to provide the environment in which man would live and in which man would enjoy the blessing of God and for which he would thank and praise God, the creator of it all.
There’s another component that is wonderfully mysterious and it is introduced to us in verse 26 by the words “then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.’” And verse 27: “And God created man in his own image, in the image of God.” And then, in Genesis 5:1, “In the day when God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.” This is man’s unique identity.
We are now introduced for the very first time to the fact that God is a Trinity, and of course it’s been hinted at because the word for God, elohim, has a plural ending. Now we’re suddenly introduced to the great reality that there is an executive divine committee. In the gospel of John in the New Testament, we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” That is Christ.
God uses language that reveals He is communicating with others. He is in communion with others in this creation. This is a clear, unmistakable reference to the Trinity, though the fullest clarification doesn’t really unfold until the New Testament. You can’t fully understand the Trinity until the second person of the Trinity, is incarnate and until the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, comes at Pentecost.
There are in the Old Testament passages that indicate communication between the members of the Trinity. For example, in Psalm 2:7 the psalmist writes, “I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, “You are my Son; today I have crowned you.” There the Father, was communicating to the second member of the Trinity, the Son. That was fulfilled in the incarnation of Christ and referred to in Hebrews 1.
Later on in Psalm 45:7, again the Father is speaking of the Son. He says, “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” There is communion between the Father and the Son. Look at Psalm 110:1, “The Lord says to my Lord” –“The Lord [being the Father] says to my Lord [being the Son]: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.’”
Look at Isaiah 48:16. Here is communication between the members of the Trinity. But until you come to the incarnation, you don’t see the full identity of the second member, and until you come to the book of Acts with the coming of the Holy Spirit, you don’t see the full presentation of the third member, the Holy Spirit. But here you have, back in Genesis, an indication that God, by nature, is in relationship to Himself.
God had a divine purpose before the world began and that divine purpose was to take a bride, as it were, for His Son. God the Father desired to give to His Son an expression of love in a bride that would be a redeemed humanity to be given to His Son to love and adore and praise and glorify His Son and also to serve Him forever. That eternal purpose of God unfolded within the council that is God within the Trinity.
1 Peter 1:20 says, “Christ was foreknown [which means predetermined] before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in these last times for the sake of you.” So Jesus, who has appeared in these last days for your sake, to die on the cross, to rise again, to be your Savior, was planned before the foundation of the world. So before day one of creation, before He created people, redemption was already planned.
So God’s whole saving purpose, was something God promised long ages ago. The Greek says before time began. When did time begin? On day one. So before day one, God had already planned the gospel. God promised that He would choose some, that He would grant them faith, that He would give them the knowledge of the truth, that He would produce in them godliness, and that He would grant them eternal life.
The question is: To whom did He promise it? We weren’t even created until day six. He didn’t promise it to angels. We don’t know precisely when, but He didn’t promise salvation to angels because angels don’t experience salvation. The angels who sinned and fell out of heaven fell forever and there is no salvation for those angels. So to whom did God make a promise of salvation before time began?
Let us look at 2 Timothy 1:9, “who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before time began.” Here, it says God had a purpose that involved Christ Jesus from before time began. So He must have been discussing then with Christ the necessity of an incarnation, the necessity of a sacrifice for sin, and all of that.
Before there was any creation, in the council of God, the plan was there for a redeemed humanity who would bring glory by means of the incarnation and the sacrifice of the second member of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. We know from the New Testament that they would be redeemed by the work of the third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, who would convict their hearts of sin and regenerate them and grant them the new birth.
And at that particular point they would be transferred from death to life, they would become God’s own. Ephesians 1: 3-4 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.”
So the divine decree unfolded before time began, before anything was ever created. And this was from the council of the Trinity. Verse 4 says He predestined us. He did it because of His own will. In fact, look at John 6:37 and John 17:6, repeatedly, Jesus refers to every believer as those whom the Father has given him. Jesus says, “All that the Father gives to me will come to me and I will lose none of them.”
In John 17:24 Jesus prays, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” The Father wanted to show His love to the Son and He determines that the way to express that love is to create and redeem humans and then bring them to glory so they become like Christ before the universe was even created.
Philippians 3:20-21 says, “The Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body.” 1 John 3 says we’ll be like Him for we see Him as He is. And so the Father is going to make us literally replicas of Jesus Christ, who will radiate His glory, and we will praise Him and honor Him and glorify Him and serve Him as well forever. That is the Father’s love gift to the Son.
1 Corinthians 15 says when the Son receives that redeemed humanity from the Father, when the Father gives the Son that redeemed humanity, when we are all there and time is no more and we are all in the presence of God and when the Father gives the complete redeemed humanity to the Son, 1 Corinthians 15 indicates that the Son turns right around and gives it all back to the Father so God is all in all.
And what has been achieved by that is a redeemed humanity along with holy angels populating the new heaven and the new earth forever, for no other purpose than to serve and praise and glorify God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, who is worthy of glory. In Revelation 13:8 and 17:8 where twice it refers to believers as those whose names have been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life.
Only one component in the physical universe lasts forever and that is man. For only man in the end mattered to God ultimately. Everything else was only created to provide a world for man which would cause man to praise and thank and glorify God. And put God’s wonderful power on display and God’s wisdom on display and God’s intelligence on display. It was only man that was the product of intra-Trinitarian communion.
What is the image of God? Man was sort of shaped and formed like God. He was created on a divine pattern. That means we are created on an eternal pattern, which is not true of anything else that was created. We do share biological features with the rest of the creatures. But we are not highly evolved apes. We are transcendent in our significance because we have been created in the image of God.
And above all, the image of God indicates the ability to personally relate to someone else, especially to God Himself. Being able to know Him, being able to love Him, being able to obey Him, being able to worship Him. The image of God can be summed up by the word “personal.” We live and move on the basis of relationships. We understand love. We understand sharing thoughts, attitudes, ideas and sharing experiences.
And that is why when God created man, He immediately said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Why? Because the image of God is personhood, and personhood can only function in relationship. God Himself never existed as a single, lonely, solitary, isolated individual. He has always existed in a family. He is the Father. The second member is the Son. The third member is the Holy Spirit.
God can see, hear, and smell according to Genesis 8:21, He can touch and He can speak, whether or not He has actual physical eyes, ears, nose, hands or mouth. Furthermore, when He has designed to appear visibly to man, He has done so in the form of a human body, such as in Genesis 18, and the same would be true of angels. They are spirits but there are occasions when they take on bodies.
Relationship are actualized in communication, thus language. Only human beings are specifically designed to acquire just a range of language systems that we see manifested in the world’s 5,000 plus languages. Second, he was made as king of the earth to rule and subdue creation. And third, he was made as propagator of the human race to populate the earth, and fourth, he was the recipient of rich and plentiful blessings all around him.
Noam Chomsky research, on the uniqueness of the human species in regards to language is so convincing that he is not welcome in evolutionist circles. Human capacity for language is a door into the eternal realm. It demands the recognition that we have been created for communication with one another and communication with our Creator who made us in His image. God communicates and so do we. Let us pray.