GENESIS AS PROPHECY
A close look at the Genesis story reveals that it forecasts multiple, Biblical, re-creation examples of God’s redemptive work in his people. This model of revelation bumps up against our training to view everything in linear fashion where one event follows another in a logical time sequence. It also conflicts with our training to interpret scripture like everything else we read: Literally.
While Biblical events do sometimes follow in logical order, more often than not they are not in order. That is a problem with which we need to wrestle throughout the Bible. It is just another example of our ways not being like God’s ways and we need to learn his ways so that we have knowledge to evaluate our hearts, minds and behaviors with respect to obedience to his ways.
Understanding the Bible is not like reading novels or technical documents which have order to them that creates foundations on which succeeding truths are built. That linear pattern is not clearly evident in the Bible. Biblical truths are scattered throughout the Bible in ways that appear totally random to human understanding. They are scattered, as we said in Assemble the Puzzle, across a huge table in random order, and our job is to do the work of assembling those truths. To make it even more challenging, it is not a simple, two-dimensional puzzle. It is a puzzle that has at least three, and perhaps more dimensions.
Once we accept that Biblical events are not necessarily reported or organized in forms that we can readily understand, we might be able to also accept that the events of Creation and the Garden of Eden are the basic model (i.e. shadows) of everything else that follows in the Bible. It is a story of God redeeming and recreating people who have been born into a world of dark emptiness. And God uses the imagery of creation of the physical universe to tell the spiritual story of deliverance and redemption through the Messiah.
Even though the story is first presented in Genesis in obscure imagery (e.g. darkness, light, deep, etc.) God has conveniently laid it out in linear terms (i.e. first day, second day, third day, … seventh day) that should help readers understand — provided they can see beyond the literal story to the spiritual message. But, although the sequence of days in creation are quite straightforward, the process by which God delivers his chosen people from sin is not so clear and ordered. Much reading between the lines for spiritual truth is necessary to see the spiritual patterns, and it is absolutely necessary to connect and relate scriptures located randomly throughout the Bible together in order to see the patterns of the puzzle. It is a lot of work to solve this mystery, but God has given assurances the mysteries will be revealed for those who will dig their own spiritual wells.
In this website we have done a little digging, and we have given some guidance on how to dig and where to dig. But there is still much work to be done for readers who want to develop that skill for themselves. Looking at the creation story in all of its complexity is a good place to begin because it is the beginning and because it contains references to the sequence of days of spiritual creation (i.e. re-creation) that are repeated and explained often throughout the Bible. The First Day, for example, is about new beginnings; the Third Day is about death and resurrection, and the Seventh Day is about New Covenant rest. This will only make sense, however, to those who are willing to make the effort to keep reading and digging.
We hope that the creationists would agree that the facts of the creation of the physical universe are much less important than the spiritual messages that are discovered when digging. That God created the physical heavens and earth is not unimportant, but it is less important to God and us than the fact that we are, or at least can be, new creations in God’s image. Moreover, if we can be recreated into God’s image, why would we want to bother at all with the facts about the beginning of the natural creation of heaven and earth — unless we want to display our righteousness to others through quarreling about disputable matters. That opinion may not make much sense to readers now, but it will become clear for people who have spiritual ears to hear and spiritual eyes to see. It will not make sense, however, for people who see and interpret what they read and hear with only natural, intellectual understanding.
Once readers accept that God is always speaking in ways that can only be understood with spiritual eyes and ears, and not through natural, rational interpretation, it becomes possible for them to investigate the deeper, spiritual meaning of the creation story. They will hear and read words of which they know the meaning in their worldly culture, but which do not make spiritual sense until they study the deep symbolism of the story and reconcile it with other teachings in the Bible.