Many people regard the Genesis version of creation and the shape of the heavens and earth, which is called biblical enclosed cosmology, as a foolish conspiracy theory or government psy-op that does not even warrant investigation.
Imagine a Christian saying that God’s Word is a psy-op! And, yet, that is exactly what a pastor friend said as much to me.
Many Christians do not want to be associated with what some call “flat earth” because they think that linking the gospel to such a controversial topic as what the Bible teaches in Genesis would place an unwelcome hurdle in front of God seekers. Do we really believe that the Genesis account of creation is more incredible than Noah’s flood, the ten plagues in Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, Joshua stopping the sun and moon, God making the shadow go backwards, the virgin birth, the resurrection, and the ascension of Christ into heaven, where he currently sits enthroned at God’s right hand?
Are we going to ignore the constant reference throughout the Bible of heaven being up, the earth below, and Sheol underneath?
God has built enough mystery into his creation and our experience of life that we are required to exercise faith in something – either what God has said or what scientists or occultists tell us.
Often the latter two options are one and the same. Science pretends to explain everything away, reducing life and creation to materialism, completing excluding the spiritual side of things, which the Bible says came first and is more real. Science has become an idol for many.
Satan desires to strip away our childlike faith in God’s words and replace it with the god of human reasoning.
Nowhere is this more apparent than when cosmology is discussed.
I have been warned by well-intentioned friends that my reputation and standing as a Bible teacher in the body of Christ has been damaged by my public profession that I believe that the Genesis account of creation is literally true.
Never would I have thought that believing the Bible is literally true would compromise my reputation with other Christians. What does that say about the condition of the modern church?
Should I be concerned about this? Would God’s honor be increased if I retracted and said that I no longer believe that what Genesis says is actually true but only has an appearance of truth? That is what the popular phenomenological interpretation tells us. Would God be glorified if I announced that Genesis is not supposed to be taken as literally true; rather, it is meant to be enjoyed as a poetic description of creation to tide us over until brilliant astronomers would discover the truth? Will God be pleased if I to put more trust in men who contradict the Bible than I do in what is written in the Scriptures?
Would not such a flip flop be detrimental to God’s honor and reputation as a truth teller?
For the sake of us Christians who live post-Enlightenment, should not the Holy Spirit have inspired Moses to write something more scientifically accurate in Genesis that would agree with modern astrophysics? Or could it be that God wrote exactly what he meant for us to know and believe because it is the truth?
God put his honor and reputation on the line in Genesis by telling us that he created everything in six days, including a heaven-earth-Sheol system enclosed in a solid dome called the firmament.
It is my privilege to stand up for what God wrote and defend his integrity and honor before a mocking world. How about you? Whose reputation are we trying to protect anyway? Ours or God’s?
