It may be the most important true-false test ever taken. Why are there so many attacks upon the Book of Genesis, especially the first 12 chapters? Those who do not wish to be part of the dispute often ask, “What does it matter whether the stories about Creation, Adam and Eve, the great worldwide Flood, Abraham, and others, are true anyhow?”
The simple answer is that every Great Doctrine of the Bible begins in Genesis, in the first 12 chapters of God’s written record. If those accounts can be proven false, then all that the Bible claims becomes suspect. After all, why should you believe the Bible if it is based on myths and fairy tales in the first 12 chapters? That is precisely why Bible disputers so studiously ignore the great mass of evidence to the contrary.
The Bible is not only accurate in its statements in the first 12 chapters, but it also further fits together perfectly with the rest of Scripture, disclosing the very Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Take, for instance, what it has to say about Creation. It not only states, “God created,” but it tells us how He did it—by “speaking it into being.” The words “God said” are contained in the first two chapters of Genesis 11 times. This is highly significant because later the Apostle John would reveal:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.” (John 1:1-3) What we casually see as God speaking things into existence is much more than that. The creation itself is inseparably tied with a Person called The Word, who is God Himself.
John did not keep us in the dark about the identity of the One called The Word, but he first tantalizes us with these words: “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.” (John 1:10) Then John reveals the full identity: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) Therefore, anyone knowing these claims about the identity of the Lord Jesus Christ is suddenly face to face with the statement that He was the Person in the godhead who created heavens and earth. But this can only be true if the words in Genesis are fact! You see, it makes a lot of difference whether Genesis is true or not.