Matthew 19:4-6 And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE, and said, ‘FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH’? “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”
Mark 10:6-9 “But from the beginning of creation, God MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE. “FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH; so they are no longer two, but one flesh. “What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Gen 2:24 For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.
Eph 5:31-32 FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.
The above verses are related according to a time in history. Is this important, and if so, why?
I believe it is essentially important for several reasons, and the greatest of these reasons is that we need an accurate knowledge of our history less we present a different Gospel. It is no mystery that marriage is a representation of the Gospel (Eph 5:31-32) and that marriage by definition is from the beginning. So why is this important?
We first should have an understanding of why the beginning is so important. The beginning begins in the first chapters of Genesis which include six days of creation of which God calls "very good." (Gen 1:31) Nearly every Christian will tell you he or she believes in creation, but what many also believe is that creation was not done in six, twenty four hour days, but rather creation was a part of a naturalistic process of evolution, and that God watched over this process until its completion.
I will not go into great detail of what this belief holds to, but I will give an explanation of the two opposing views that Christians hold to. They are typically referred to Young Earth Creationists (YEC) and Old Earth Creationists (OEC).
The YEC are six day creationists, who hold to the literal passages of the Genesis which are six, twenty four hour days. They would be better served to be recognized as six day creationists.They believe this is very clear as the passages of creation all say "evening and morning" of a day. This would give ANY reader an understanding of the text in that a 24 hour day has a morning and an evening. This would also place all that God created in a time span of around 6000 years. We know this by reading the genealogies from a historical Adam and historical time line of the Bible and using simple mathematics to count the years until where we are today.
The OEC have yoked to the findings of secular scientists and the theory of Darwin's evolution. This secular scientific model places the universe to around 13.7 billions years old, and the Earth at 4.5 billion years old. OEC claims that God orchestrated the process of evolution with the understanding that eventually we would have an Adam and Eve created to complete the Biblical narrative. There is a growing belief in OEC by some who believe Adam and Eve are archetypes of humans and not actual persons. It is my opinion that the secular evolutionary model would take as much faith to believe as the YEC model, since the evolutionary model of "beginning" is a theory of men, and not an observable fact.
Why is there a problem between the views? I certainly believe the greatest challenge from those opposed to YEC is the correlation of a extended time period and death. If the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and creation included species of animals before Adam, then it places to significance for death in the Gospel. If animals preceded Adam through an evolutionary process, then death occurred before Adam's curse of sin.
I understand that some OEC will say that animal death is not the same as the death of humans, and that the passages are referring to spiritual death, but then this is where I believe marriage plays a very important role in not only the Gospel, but the very events leading to the Gospel. The OEC must account for death in their model. They must also account for the fact marriage is from the beginning.
So lets start from the beginning...God created Adam from the dust of the ground on the sixth day of creation (Gen 2:7) and gave him a suitable helper. (Gen 2:18) He caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep and created Eve from one of his ribs.(Gen 2:22) Adam proclaimed a vow of what God had done for him. (Gen 1:23) and God cemented this union as the foundation of all unions between one man and one woman. This is the definition of marriage. This is exactly where the Lord Jesus Christ points to marriage definition. Read the beginning verses at the top of this page again. We cannot get around any other way that the Lord Jesus Christ was talking about the beginning.
According to the YEC model, the beginning is on the sixth day of seven in where God rested on the seventh day. There is no other days before these days. The evolutionary model accounts for billions of years before the "beginning". Yet, the YEC model calls for all things of the naturalistic world being created in just six days. If the evolutionary model is correct, then that would place death before Adam and Eve. However, the first recorded death of ANY animal was after both Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
I personally believe that we should not put a 6000 years time stamp as YEC claims. While it is true that the geneoligies of Adam are around 6000 years, we simply have no record of the time between the seventh day and the day Eve was tempted (Gen 3:1) Also, was Adam's life span starting when he was created, or when he bit into the fruit? Therefore, I like to put a question mark between chapter 2 and 3 of Genesis. Could this have been millions of years? If both Adam and Eve were "naked and unashamed", then who is to say how long they were content with each other in the very presence of God up until they were tempted by the enemy. Not only that, they had no concept of "death" other than what they knew of the forbidden fruit. It is believed that had they not eaten of the fruit they could have lived for all eternity.
And that is the crux of the matter. If sin brings death, then death could not have been a part of an evolutionary model since it would require the death of many evolutionary processes of 4.5 billion years. It is also VERY important to note that according to the law of marriage, death is the ONLY way a marriage can end. No where do we read in all of scripture that anything other than death terminates the one-flesh bond of a marriage.
Romans 7:2,3 For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man.
I understand that the OEC argument believes that there was death before death came into the world.(Gen 3) They will also tell you “animal” death is not the same as what they believe. Unfortunately, they are false because animal death came first after the Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden fruit.
Gen 3:21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.
This was the first spilling of blood required to cover both Adam and Eve. The Lord slaughtered an animal and covered both Adam and Eve.The same spilling of blood was required on the Passover before the Exodus. Blood from an animal was always required for the remission of sins. But glory to God on High, who sent His only begotten Son, the LAMB OF GOD, to shed His blood on our behalf, defeating SIN on the cross and defeating DEATH by rising from the dead.
Romans 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.15 But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many.
Hallelujah!
The following video is from Wretched ministries that illustrates the fact that the Gospel gets watered down by OEC. What is significant is that they are very specific in the narrative that you cannot have the Gospel without the historical Adam and Eve. But would ministries and men such as Wretched and Albert Mohler understand that OEC redefines marriage?
https://youtu.be/hORqhukBmUk
The claims of the age of the earth cannot help but undermine that marriage can end in any other way then death. As we already know, the Gospel is transformed and watered down by the evolutionary model, and I would suggest that the definition of marriage is also watered down and disclaimed by "Christians". It is a fact that many Christians will make a claim that after the resurrection polygamy was done away with, and that marriage was as it was in the beginning...but when it comes to divorce...they capitulate. It is no surprise to me that the two greatest obstacles to the Gospel today are seated in how the enemy destroys lives by destroying marriage truth and by using the evolutionary model to discredit biblical creation. We cannot deny the fact that sexual immorality spawns from the total discrediting of the definition of marriage. If marriage is one man and one woman as the Lord said it was from the beginning, and I believe it is, then what does it say to the humankind attempts to discredit the historical Adam and Eve?
We cannot have the Gospel with out the six day creation model, and we cannot have the Gospel without marriage definition as one man and one woman for life. Scripture does not lie. The Lord Jesus Christ does not lie. You either believe this or you do not. There is no middle ground in either YEC or marriage. I pray you take the time to read the scriptures and soak in the love of Christ. His creation is fearfully and wonderfully made, and you who read this fall into as one of His creation. God bless you!
In Christ's love,
Neil
