8.1 The Original Account
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
What is man?
What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than God, and You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet (Psalms 8:4-6). Yes, David said “Elohim – God.” The notes at Biblegateway say that Jewish “tradition” translates it as “angels.” – Another instance of humans bowing to the serpent as God’s image.
What is man? Man is the image and likeness of God, God revealed.
A Parable?
Now we come to the million-dollar question, a question I have not raised because I place no value on the reasons why it is asked. Isn’t the story of Adam and Eve just a parable? Surely, Genesis 2-3 cannot be an account of actual historical fact and detail!
The issue is not the question itself, but the reasons behind why some Christians think it is a valid question or believe that it was just a parable, that there was no real Adam and Eve. The REASON the question is raised is that big, bad, scary monster called biological evolution.
Please forgive me, I know God’s people are sheep and that we must be kind.
You Formed Me
Biological evolution is NOT science. Believe it if you wish, but understand, you are not believing science, but an empty and falsified religion, a religion that is going nowhere and will soon be laughed out of existence. Fish do not become birds, and frogs do not become humans.
For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made… My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought … Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them (Psalm 139:14-16).
Record-Keeping
Immanuel Velikovsky wrote another book titled Ages in Chaos which I also read in 1984 and which informs my approach to Biblical history. Velikovsky convinced me that Manetho stuck way too many years into his list of Egyptian history and that the Exodus actually took place at the end of the Old Kingdom – an event the Egyptian records affirm (refer to my article, Human Pre-History).
We know that writing was fully developed, though not universal, by the time of Moses and that Moses was of the tribe of Levi, the record-keepers of Israel. Careful memorization of accounts was a task of the Levites.
Faithful Passage
There is, then, a direct connection from Adam teaching Methuselah, to Methuselah teaching Shem, to Shem teaching Isaac, to Isaac teaching Amram, and to Amram teaching Moses and Aaron. The direct connection of accounts from Genesis 3 would have easily remained accurate through Adam-Methuselah-Shem-Isaac-Amram-Moses, six men trained of mind to remember the specific words they were taught and repeat them to others.
BUT – if biological evolution is a ridiculous impossibility, not found in observation or measurement, then how are we here? The primary reason why I accept Genesis 3 as a specifically accurate account of human history, however, is that Jesus and Paul did so, grounding much truth on Adam’s story.
No Scientific Fact
You see, I have no need inside, none at all, to bow myself or my thinking to the false and laughable gods of Time and Chance as if they are my creators. And I know of no scientific fact that would point me in the direction of thinking that God used millions of years to invent us. Remember, I require CSI evidence, not hard foreheads.
Science means that evolutionists have observed and measured the chemical/biological/ electrical processes by which one species evolves into another. If they have neither observed nor measured, they are not scientists, but narrators of fiction.
The electrical theory of human history gives us less than 10,000 years from the time of Noah’s flood until today. It also accepts Noah’s flood as factual history and gives us a scientific/historical explanation of how it happened. The Bible’s timeline of around 4,350 years from Noah’s flood until today is compatible with the electrical theory.
God’s Bias
Another point regarding the first chapters of Genesis is that all writers and all historians are biased, including God. Bias means that every author emphasizes some facts and ignores others. Any fact can be regarded as critical by one historian and as meaningless by another. The account of Genesis 1 was written by a very biased historian, a God who had one thing in His mind when He inspired Moses to include that record.
God is very biased towards the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word He is continuously speaking, and to His revelation. I never waste my time trying to fit Genesis 1 with science and history, but rather with the One who sustains all things.
That We Might Know Him
Genesis 1-3 is part of the history of Jesus Christ, and we study it that we might know Him, personal and real, we in Him and He in us. That does not mean that the statements of Genesis 1 are not historically accurate; it means that God did not pick and choose the facts in order to satisfy our historical curiosity, but to glorify Christ.
More than that, the entire realms of human historical and scientific thinking are filled with so much ignorance on the one hand and so much factual error and dishonesty on the other hand that it is a waste of our time entering into intellectual debates on the science of Genesis 1. We must be wrong in ways we cannot know.
The Day of History
Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heavens fled away. And there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened… And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books (Revelation 20:11-12).
When I taught world history, I began with this day, calling it the Day of History. At this moment, we will get a full and accurate account of world history, of what really happened. The truth will have little resemblance to the history we have been taught. Many will think they must have lived on a different planet.
First Cause
If you were to peruse my writing from The Jesus Secret until this lesson, you will find that I constantly refer to Adam. Why?
Part of my seeking to know God through His Word and in my heart is instinctive. As an Asperger’s man, I focus, almost with blinders on. When I am focused, I can’t stand interruptions from another person or task. For instance, I could never switch from teaching school to working construction on the same day; my mind could not make the passage. What I am focused on is the patterns, and how everything I want to share must fit in and come out from the patterns. And first things, first cause, is a huge part of any true pattern.
We Must Know a Man
Thus, instinctively, I always reach for first cause when I am attempting to know anything regarding humans. There is no question that I could write an entire book on Genesis 2-3, drawing from what I have already written but scattered throughout.
Here is my point. We have already established God’s mega-great riddle. We cannot know God without knowing man; we cannot know man without knowing God. Since I want to know God, I must also know man. And, of course, the Man we know is Jesus.
A Second Man
The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven (1 Corinthians 15:47). – And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45). – For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:21-22).
Please notice carefully: Jesus was NOT the “second” Adam; He was the very last Adam and in Him all Adam’s died. Jesus is the second MAN, and He is the second Man by His resurrection from the dead.
A Personal Decision
God did not create death. If humans die, it is for one reason only, the actions of sin that were begun by an individual and specific man making a personal decision.
More than that, Paul’s careful comparison of Adam as a specific man and Jesus as a specific man in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5 allows us to transfer every principle of genetic inheritance from Adam to his children, to transfer that same total inheritance of genes from Christ to us. We were once Adam’s children, but that old man was crucified and is BURIED with Christ (Romans 6). You and I obtain all of our genetic material only from Christ.
Human Psychosis
You see, for Christ Jesus to be a real and specific Savior, Adam had to have been just as real. Jesus did not transfer us from one made-up story into another made-up story, but from one kingdom into another Kingdom, from darkness to light, from specific reality to specific reality.
DNA science also indicates that all humans alive today are descended from one woman. That woman was Noah’s wife, a specific person descended directly from Eve.
Another incredible thing that I find is that all the psychosis of the human race, all of our life experience, can be traced out from the specific details of Genesis 2 and 3. We are not of Adam, but God is forming us out from Adam’s mess.
God’s Pro-Thesis
I do not spend so much time referring back to Adam and Eve because Paul referred back to them so often. Rather, I bring them into our picture so often for the same reasons that Paul did. First cause. We must know first cause in order to know God’s pro-thesis, and we must know God’s pro-thesis, His purpose, in order to know what He is doing with us and is about to do through us.
At the center of any answer to What is Man? are these words. God pro-knows those whom He summons by His pro-thesis, and in pro-knowing them, God pro-determines to symmorphose them together with Jesus as the revelation of Father (Romans 8:28b-29a – modified from the Greek).