The other day I received an interesting response to my answer stating that the Bible supports an approximate 6000 year history for the human race.  This person didn’t dispute the Bible, only our interpretation of it, in disagreeing with my answer.

The essence of his response was that since science has found what it considers to be persuasive evidence that contradicts the literal view of the creation account, then our traditional interpretation of the language in Genesis 1 has to be flawed.

The writer is a scientist and a Christian.  He presented a calm and reasoned response claiming that every relevant field of science is in agreement that “enormous amounts of very convincing evidence exists for an old–very old–earth and even for evolution, including humans.”

Now I’ve said before that I’m OK with an old Earth.  In other articles I’ve shown how an old Earth and young civilization are entirely compatible with a literal interpretation of Genesis 1.  But in his view the old Earth includes  animals and other life, some of whom later evolved into humans. I’m not OK with that because the Bible says that animals came along on day 6, same as man.

He went on to ask, “So what is more likely, that thousands of highly educated, highly experienced, highly motivated, life-long scientists and thinkers are wrong about immeasurable amounts of finely done, peer reviewed data or that your interpretation of a document which is thousands of years old is ever so slightly incorrect?”

Then he repeated that He’s not contesting the accuracy of Scripture, only man’s interpretation of it.

Let’s set aside the fact that most of those thousands of highly educated, highly experienced, highly motivated, life-long scientists and thinkers are non-believers who don’t think the Biblical Creation account is even a remote possibility.   We’ll consider only the believers among them, because they’re the ones who say that the Scripture is accurate, but our interpretation of it is flawed.

For all the generations from the dawn of creation until the early part of the 20thCentury, almost all believers accepted the Lord’s account of the Six Day Creation. So what is it that we’ve “misinterpreted” for all these thousands of years?

It’s About Time
All believers agree that ultimately God is our Creator.  So the basic conflict between the differing views of our origin really comes down to the time involved.  Evolution requires millions of years, but the Bible says the creation was complete from start to finish in 6 days.  Now there’s there’s only one sentence in the entire creation account that concerns time. Therefore the whole argument  boils down to a claim that for all these generations we’ve misinterpreted one sentence.  That one sentence, repeated 6 times, reads like this.  “And there was evening, and there was morning, day (1-6) “ (Genesis 1:5,8,13,19,23,31)  Furthermore, within that sentence there are only three words that relate to time; evening, morning, and day. If there’s been a misinterpretation, it has to be in one of those three words.

By the way, let’s address the Bible’s accuracy here in case you’re thinking maybe some words got changed along the way to cause our misinterpretation. According to Rabbinical sources, there are 79,847 words in the Torah, as the first five books of the Bible are called, made up of 304,805 Hebrew letters. Fewer than 2 dozen of these letters are in dispute, and then only for spelling differences. That means the Torah we have today is a 99.99% accurate copy of the one Moses originally wrote.  We know this because every letter in Hebrew has a numerical value, so every line and every column of text has a correct sum. In hand copying the text every line was checked for accuracy by adding the sum of its letters and comparing it with the correct total.  In the case of a difference, the page was destroyed, and the copyist started over.  Remember, these people were entrusted with the very words of God and took that trust seriously.

Three Little Words
With that said, let’s take a look at the three words having to do with time.

 

The Hebrew word for evening is erev. It’s always translated evening, sunset or night.

The word for morning is boqer.  There’s no question that it means morning. Hebrew speaking Jews greet each other at the beginning of each day with “Boqer tov” (good morning).

And the word for day is yomn.  As does its English counterpart, yomn can have a figurative meaning as well as a literal one.  Of its 2287 appearances in Scripture, 2008 describe a literal 24 hour day.  In the figurative sense it can mean a longer span of time, such as in the phrase “Day of the Lord “ in Amos 5:18 where it refers to the 3.5 year long Great Tribulation.

But common sense tells us that when combined with evening and morning, as it is in each of the six references of Genesis 1, it’s meant to be taken literally, a single 24 hour period, because there are no figurative applications for the Hebrew words erev and boqer. And the Bible doesn’t say there were evenings and mornings, it says there was evening (singular) and there was morning (singular). One of each.  And that means one 24 hour day.

We also have the first mention of the word day in Genesis 1:5 and it demonstrates the Lord’s intention for the word’s use.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.  God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. (Genesis 1:3-5)

This verse established the way time would be reckoned. First there was evening, the beginning of the dark period, night, and then there was morning, the beginning of the light period, day.  This cycle has repeated itself every 24 hours throughout history.

Are we supposed to believe that for almost all of human history the words evening, morning, and day  haven’t meant what people thought they meant?

How Could This Be?
In an effort to reconcile the creation account with evolution,  some believers try to give the Lord more time to do His work of creation.  They call the six days of creation by a new name, “creation days”, implying that each one is more like an age than a 24 hour period. But the accepted meanings of the words evening, morning, and day don’t accommodate this dramatic stretching of time.  The Hebrew language has other words for that purpose, so these words are never used to describe an age, especially when used together.

I also realize that some believers don’t accept the Bible as being the word of God.  They say it merely contains it.  This allows them to discard parts of the Bible with which they disagree.  Some discard the entire Old Testament, including the creation account, as little more than a collection of folk tales.  But in Romans 15:4 Paul said that everything that was written in the past was written to teach us.  In 1 Cor. 10:1-11 he cited a number of events from Israel’s history when the people rebelled and were disciplined. Then he said that these things happened to them as warnings for us on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come.  And in 2 Timothy 3:16 he said that all scripture is God-breathed, or as we would say written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.   In all these cases he had to be referring to the Old Testament, since the New testament didn’t exist yet.  Who are we to dispute this and ignore his warnings? The Old testament is the inspired Word of God, just like the New, and is meant to play an important role in a believer’s life.

But between the liberal denomination I grew up in and the public schools I attended, evolution was the only explanation of our origins I ever heard until I was well into adulthood.  Sure God was our creator, but evolution was the way He did it. No body I knew thought to even question it.  It wasn’t till I was born again at age 40 that I heard any teaching about the Creation, and then it was something I had to seek out for myself.  I’m sure thousands of you had similar experiences growing up.

In the last 100 years or so, a heresy called the documentary hypothesis has infested liberal theology.  This hypothesis makes the claim that Moses didn’t write the Torah, but that it was pieced together long afterward from writings by several unrelated groups.  Proponents of this view ask us to ignore the fact that Moses is mentioned by name in 85 verses of the New Testament, and that among them are multiple references to his authorship of the 5 Books of the Torah, including direct quotes from the Lord Himself.  Was Jesus unaware of the real authors of these passages He quoted? Was he just going along with a tradition He knew was false, or did He know that Moses had written them?

Stop And Think
As you can see, these reasons for denying the 6 day creation won’t stand the test of rational thought.  They’re just excuses people use to disregard the truth.

Most scientists don’t say, “Our science is based on universally accepted assumptions, and yet our findings disagree with the Creator’s account of what He did.   Our assumptions must be incorrect. “

Instead they say, “Our science is based on universally accepted assumptions, and yet our findings disagree with the Creator’s account of what He did.  His account must be incorrect.”

“For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?” (1 Cor. 2:16)

I can understand non-believers searching for an alternative to the Biblical account.  They have to find one in order to justify their disbelief. But how can scientists who are Christian actually think man can know more about how we were created than the One who did it, to a point where they can dispute the accuracy of the Creator’s account?

For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” (1 Cor. 1:19)

The time will come when we’ll know everything, just like God does.  At that time we won’t have to take His word for anything. As Paul said, “We will know fully as we are fully known.” (1 Cor. 13:12)  Until then I don’t believe we have the right to pick and choose what parts of His Word we want to believe.  We certainly don’t have the perspective.  “Who has known the mind of the Lord? we’re asked, Or who has been his counselor?” (Romans 11:34)

Then another sign appeared in heaven, an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. (Rev. 12:3)

And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. (Rev. 12:7-9)

And the dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name … The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. (Rev. 13:1-3)

At first glance all this looks pretty confusing, but the heads, horns, numbers, and crowns are all symbolic.  When used this way head means knowledge/wisdom, while horn means authority.  Seven is the number of perfection, and 10 denotes completion, meaning nothing is lacking. Seven is also more often used in the spiritual sense, and ten usually refers to earthly things. The seven heads and ten horns symbolize perfect wisdom and complete authority.

The facts that both Satan and the beast have seven heads and ten horns show us that when Satan is cast to Earth, he will immediately in-dwell the beast, who we call the anti-Christ.  This is the point at which the Great Tribulation begins on Earth.  Some people see the beast as a system or government, but the use of so many personal pronouns in Rev. 13 indicates the beast is a person, with all of Satan’s power at his command.  Then there’s the fact that a second beast, known as the false prophet, will build a statue of the anti-Christ, and cause it to breathe so it can speak. (Rev. 13:15)   How do you build a talking statue of a system, or a government?

The crowns denote rulership. Notice that Satan has seven crowns and they’re on his heads, while the anti-Christ will have ten crowns on his horns. Also, in the description of Satan the heads come first, but with the anti-Christ the horns are first.  The Lord tends to list things in descending order of importance. This means that Satan will rule out of his super natural wisdom, his predominant power (Ezek 28:12,17), and the anti-Christ will rule because Satan will give him the authority to do so.

The Beast Of Rev. 17
Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a desert. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns.(Rev. 17:3)

Here we see a beast ridden by a woman.  This beast also has seven heads and ten horns, but no crowns, and is covered with blasphemous names.  This beast can not be the anti-Christ but has to be another view of Satan.  We can see this because the seven heads are listed first, as they were with the dragon in Rev. 12:3.

Furthermore Rev. 17:8 tells us this beast once was (before John’s time), now is not (in John’s time), will come up out of the abyss (after John’s time).  The anti-Christ was not around before John’s time, but Satan was, and from Rev. 13 we know he’ll come back. But what caused him to go into hiding?

Condemned And Defeated
On the night before His death Jesus promised the Holy Spirit and said that the prince of this world (Satan) would now stand condemned. (John 16:11) Paul said that at the cross, Jesus made a public spectacle of the (spiritual) powers and authorities, triumphing over them by the cross. (Col. 2:15)

In his first letter to the Church John wrote about the spirit of the anti-Christ and said it was already in the world (1 John 2:18).  Paul agreed, calling it the secret power of lawlessness that was already at work in the world (2 Thes. 2:7).  In the past, Satan had enjoyed an unrestricted presence in the world.  But from John’s time on that would not be the case.  He would be limited to working in secret through disobedient men until sometime in the future when he’ll appear again to the great astonishment of the unbelieving world.  What force has  restrained him from John’s day until ours to the point where the vast majority of people in the world today, believer or not, deny his very existence?  Will the world be astonished when he appears again because they didn’t think he was real?
According to Paul, this restraining power is the promised Holy Spirit, resident in the Church.  He’ll continue to restrain the secret power of lawlessness until He’s taken out of the way (literally out of the midst) of the world.  And then at the proper time, the beast will once again be revealed to do his worst before finally being destroyed (2 Thes. 2:7-8).  Rev. 13:4 says the unbelieving world’s reaction to Satan’s reappearance will be to bow down and worship him.

The subject of Rev. 17 is mystery Babylon, the false religion.  I believe this second vision of the beast was given to John at such a late point in the Book of Revelation to provide some background on the Satanic nature of religious Babylon and show why it has to be completely destroyed.

The seven heads represent seven hills on which the woman sits. The woman signifies the pagan religion that originated in Babylon.  Later it was moved to Rome where in the 4rd century it was merged with the church and hidden behind the veil of Christianity.  The fact that no crowns are mentioned and the woman is the rider (and therefore in control) indicate that one of Satan’s strategies is to work through this false religion to deceive the world.

This is confirmed by the fact that the seven heads also represent seven Kingdoms. (Rev. 17:9)  Five of them had fallen by John’s time, one was currently in power, and the remaining one would come later. The five previous kingdoms were Egypt, Assyria, neo-Babylon, Persia and Greece. The current one was Rome, and the one to come is the one we call the revived Roman Empire.  Each one had a version of the pagan Babylonian religion that influenced the decisions of the kingdom.

The ten horns are ten Kings who in John’s time had not yet received a kingdom but for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the beast. (Rev. 17:12)  This hour is the hour of trial that’s going to come upon the whole world to test those who live on the Earth, out of which the Lord has sworn to keep us (Rev. 3:10).  The Greek word translated “from” in Rev. 3:10 means out of the place, time, or cause of the event referred to, in this case the hour of trial. The Greek word for hour also has a figurative meaning and that’s the way it’s being used here.  Figuratively it means a certain definite time or season.  The time or season being referenced is the Great Tribulation.

After the Church is gone and the restraint against Satan is lifted he’ll come out from hiding and inhabit an earthly king to rule openly again.  We first saw this in Rev. 13 and in Rev. 17 we can see it confirmed.

The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction.(Rev. 17:11)

Together Satan and these kings will take up arms against the Lord, but he’ll overcome them because He’s Lord of lords and King of kings. And when He does, we’ll be with Him.

“They will make war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will overcome them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings—and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers.” (Rev. 17:14)

In this comparison of Rev. 13 and Rev. 17 we’ve seen that Satan has been working on several levels to thwart the plan of God.  One of his most successful strategies has been to use religion as a tool. And we’ve also seen more evidence that the Church has to be gone before his end game can begin.