plurality of persons in the Godhead in those plural pronouns let us make man in our image and it's not angels chiming in there no it's the persons of the Godhead speaking planning acting and friends that means that human beings are infinitely higher distinct from the animal kingdom we live in a day of utter perversion of thought, where human beings are considered no higher than animals. A world we talk about, animal rights, friends, the distinction between mankind and the million kinds of animals is being blurred, as we shall see God insists that we understand those distinctions or nothing else he's going to tell us in the rest of the eleven hundred and eighty-five chapters of the only book he ever wrote will make any sense at all. Yes, Genesis one is supremely important because it tells us of the dignity of man as God originally designed and created him and therefore the purpose of our father in sending his son in the likeness of sinful man, not sinful. He was like sinful men, but he was sinless. But, friends, he was a man and is one forever. And therefore, we might even say that God, from all eternity, planned the exact physical form his son would have and modeled us after that pattern, that we might be like him, especially now when we see him as he really is. on the day of rapture and resurrection. Now, if that's all we had about the origin of the human race, that would be enough, wouldn't it? That evolutionism is impossible. Biblically, theologically impossible. But God knew that there were many other questions we have about the origin of the human race. And therefore, He gave us an entire additional chapter, Genesis two. which is not a contradiction to chapter one, but a flashback and a retrospect to fill in the blanks to answer questions that we legitimately have about exactly how were Adam and Eve created. Did they come from animals? Was there some kind of a connection with the animal kingdom? No, not at all. What about their first home? What about the work? What was their activity? And of course, What about their relationship to God, the moral test, and some other fascinating things that God wants us to know about Adam and Eve before they fell into sin. But of all the things we could ask about their environment and the beautiful types of animals and plants that surrounded them and the rivers that went forth from the garden and all the mineral deposits that tells us about that were a potential for Adam to exercise as God-given capacity to dominate the world and to extract its resources and to process them in what we call engineering and science, the reflections you see of the mind of God, again, that no animal ever remotely could demonstrate. Now, One major problem that haunts us in Genesis chapter two. I called your attention, and I know you can't see this, but I'll read it for you, and I'm sure you've memorized it. Genesis chapter two tells us something about Adam the moment God created him at the very beginning of day six, ten, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen hours before Eve appeared. We didn't know that from Genesis one, did we? If all we had was the first chapter, we'd think Adam and Eve were created simultaneously. Not so. Now we learn that Adam was created at the very dawn of day six. And when God created him, he had this special word about Adam that fascinates us and in a sense frustrates us too. Let's look at verse eighteen. And the Lord God said, It is not good that man, Adam, Adam, should be alone. I will make him a helper, comparable to him or answering to him. Now that's God talking to himself, you see, and cluing us into something he's going to do that Adam didn't know. Adam didn't know that God was going to create a helper for him at the beginning of day six. So what actually happened was that God enrolled Adam, matriculated him, at the moment of his creation, into an intensive advanced course in systematic taxonomy. Now listen to what the curriculum was. Out of the ground the Lord God formed or had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. In fact, verse twenty goes on to say that Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But here's the key. For Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him. Did you know that's one of the key statements in Genesis to convince many people that the days of creation were long periods of time? Why? Because of the typical desire on the part of immature Bible students to read into the text what must have happened on the basis of our abilities and our experiences today. That's always a disaster. In other words, how could one man name all the animals of the world in one day? This must have taken years, so the days you see must have been long, indefinite periods of time. Well, friends, listen to what God tells us here. First of all, he did not name all the animals of the world. He only named birds and mammals. That eliminates, of course, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, tunicates, kinoderms, cylindrates, mollusks, and arthropoda. which is nine hundred and ninety thousand of the million known kinds of animals. I'm sure Adam was greatly relieved to know that. Just birds and mammals, that's all. But think of that. Naming all birds and mammals of the world, while there are eight thousand seven hundred distinct kinds of birds still living, plus those that once existed that are now extinct. Mammals, five thousand five hundred distinct kinds. How could one man do this in one day? And some, in their desperate effort to defend the literal six days of creation, have suggested that maybe God just had Adam look up and great flocks of flying creatures went overhead and he just said, birds, that took care of them. And maybe mobs of mammals galloped by and he said, beasts. No, no way. Look what the text says. The Bible does shed light on our theology. Now friends, God said specifically that He would bring these birds and mammals to Adam to see what He would call them. Now watch, and whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. Now here, let's make it even harder on Adam, shall we? In the Bible, when you call someone or something by its name, it has a tremendously greater significance than what we do when we call each other by certain names. You ask somebody, well, what's your name? Jim or Tom or Bill? Well, thank you. What's Bill mean? Well, I don't know. It's just my name. That's the level to which we have now sunk in this generation. In Bible times, friends, the farther back you go, names had significance, didn't they? Abram, Abram, exalted father, got his name changed to Abraham, Abraham, the father of a multitude of people. That tells something about him. Isaac says something. Jacob says something. But listen to this name. Isaiah nine, and his name shall be called Abraham. Wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And Isaiah wasn't saying that anyone would ever call Jesus, Messiah, by those names. And they didn't. When he came, nobody said, here's wonderful. Or there's counselor. What he meant was, this is the kind of person he will be. This will be his position, his function, his character, his ministry. This describes him. That's what the Bible means by calling someone or something by his name. or his or her name. So what does this mean? Just the same thing. It means that God expected Adam to be able to taxonomically classify, identify, and characterize the uniqueness of every kind of bird and mammal in the world in one day. Well, how could he do this? Well, at the beginning of that first moment of his conscious existence on this planet, God began to bring these beautiful creatures before him, an amazing parade before the king of the earth. And every bird and mammal he saw, he saw accurately with an unfallen mind and a hundred percent pure mind, uncontaminated, undistorted by sin. Have you ever met anybody like that? No. Neither have I. And on this earth we never will. We can't even comprehend the power of the human mind as first created by God uncorrupted by sin. We've been told, friends, that today the most brilliant person in the world never uses more than one-tenth of one percent of his brain capacity in his lifetime. But here's the man who had one hundred percent use of that flawless brain with a sinless mind. And everything he saw, he saw perfectly, and what he saw, he never forgot, and thus could be able to compare and contrast each thing with every other thing in a taxonomic classification experience that just absolutely astounds. By the end of day one, he had a massive, accurate knowledge of the distinctions of function and appearance of every bird and mammal in the world. Do you know what this is? It's not an embarrassment to those who believe the days were literal. It's God's way of saying, please honor me. When I make something, Please believe me. It's perfect. And when I think of this, dear friends, I feel very miserable about myself. What sin has done to our minds, human depravity, available to accessible even to Satan, to manipulate, to cloud, to distort. We can't even comprehend what Adam's mind was like. And for that matter, Eve as well, at the dawn. of human history. Well friends, as the day wore on, this perfect man was beginning to become frustrated. Maybe about three in the afternoon, finding no creature answering to him, no conversation potential, no fellowship. He was beginning to feel more and more alone in the world. That was God's purpose, you see, to make him realize he needed a companion that could communicate with him on his level, who also would have his God's image and likeness. Maybe about three in the afternoon a gorilla appeared, and he must have smiled with great expectation here. Maybe there's hope for fellowship here. Guess what? There was no response, no smile, no animal, by the way, has never smiled since the world began and never will. You say, well, that's wrong. My dog smiles at me. Well, it is fun, you know, to project your God-given, unique human characteristics into a subhuman animal and just fantasize about things like that. You know, little children, little girls can imagine their dolly talks to them, smiles at them. Then we grow up. Or do we? Maybe by five o'clock, an ape came by. Hello there. No response. Why? No animal has ever uttered a rational word since the world began and never will. The serpent didn't talk to Eve, did it? Satan talked through it to her. The donkey didn't talk to Balaam, did it? God talked through the animal's mouth to him, didn't he? Miner birds and parrots don't talk, do they? They mimic words that are programmed into their little brains and have no rational interaction whatsoever with what comes out. None. By the way, evolutionists know this. They all agree that birds don't talk, but they're trying desperately to get some gorillas to say something. And through endless experiments, at enormous government expense, through many years, with bananas or whatever inducements to get some kind of a stimulus response interaction from a gorilla to at least say something. And most scientists have come to the conclusion very reluctantly, friends, that the reason why gorillas don't talk must be because they have nothing to say. It's awful hard to say anything either if you don't have the image of God. There's an an unbridgeable chasm between man and animal in the amazing unique capacity to communicate with abstract symbolic language. Any five-year-old child can master the basic grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and pronunciations of the most difficult language in the world. Because human beings have a unique language lobe in the brain that no animal has. By the time I was six, I was speaking fluent Mandarin Chinese as I was raised in China in the military scene there. Guess what? The most difficult language known in the world to linguists is probably Navajo Indians. And five-year-old Navajo boys can speak fluent Navajo. I thought you'd like to know that. That's amazing. That's why we could put a Navajo... on each battleship in the Pacific War, they could talk openly to each other and the Japanese never broke the code. You remember that, don't you? But think of it, dear friends. There was nobody there answering to him. And now that he was emotionally prepared for Eve's creation, God did a miracle in his body. He gave him an anesthetic. So the Creator now becomes an anesthesiologist. and then he performs surgery on his body and from the place nearest to his heart he takes out a piece of bone and flesh and from that material which of course God didn't need did he but he's going to identify Eve with Adam as in Adam all die see by one man Eve is in him like all of us are amazing theological mystery here that God is unveiling to us yes that from his body instantly came a full-grown woman, sharing the image and likeness of God with him. And friends, it is so amazing what Adam said when he saw her. He said, this is now bone of my bone. And the Hebrew word translated now, hapa'am, is thus translated like this. And now, at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man you're the greatest scientist in the godless world today can't even tell the difference between humans and animals but the first person who walked the earth never had any problems none whatever he saw the infinite difference he was overwhelmed with joy and appreciation and thankfulness to God and that is the scene for friends that introduces The history of mankind on planet earth. Question, how did Adam arrive on the scene of this earth? Well, you say, well, of course everybody knows that the Lord God formed a man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. Well, let's be careful, friends here, because the vast majority of professing Christians in the world totally reject this. They've heard the verse, they can quote the verse, but you know what they do to it? They change the meanings to accommodate evolutionism. Watch how it's done. They take the word dust and say that's a mere symbol of the animal kingdom from which God providentially, through millions of years, evolved mankind. That's officially now endorsed by the Pope, so we have a billion professing Christians locked into theistic evolutionism through his authority, an example, and guidance. And the vast majority of Protestants agree, and are theistic evolutionists, as you know, with rare exceptions. Small fellowships, assemblies here and there, that still are... committed to the literal historical interpretation of the Word of God that makes that view absurd. How do you know what dust means? Well, just take a concordance. Every time the word dust appears in the Bible, guess what it means. Are you surprised? It means dust. That's right. Ground, earth, soil, inorganic chemicals. It never means animals. Why, the next chapter, God said to Adam, dust thou art, and to dust, thou shalt return. and he didn't return to the animal kingdom. You know what happened to his body? It returned to dust. And there's no chemicals in our bodies that are not already in the crust of this earth. Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return. All right? But look at the rest of the verse. And God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. See, the authorized version, friends, at this point is confusing. It says, and became a living what? Soul. That is exactly what it does not mean. Nefesh-kaya can't mean soul because fishes are described in Genesis. One is nefesh-kaya. And they certainly don't have souls. What it means is that Adam, friends, watch carefully, wasn't a living anything until he became a living human. He wasn't a living ape into whose nostrils God breathed the breath of life. So the theistic evolutionist says this, millions of years ago, God had providentially, not miraculously, providentially evolved animals to the point where there was an ape, a male and a female ape, sufficiently anthropoid in their posture and function, into whose bodies God could breathe his image and likeness. And at that point, This ape, a male, and that ape, a female, became Adam and Eve. And in subsequent hundreds of thousands of years, we have become more erect in body posture and less body hair and bigger brain-to-body proportions, and here we are. That's the Catholic and liberal Protestant deistic evolutionary view. And God says, absolutely, no, not until God breathed into the nostrils of this lump of clay... Did Adam become a living being at all? Well, what happened? How did it work? Well, friends, if you were there in the garden, I suspect you would have seen something like this, don't you? All of a sudden, to your amazement, the ground would rise before you, shaped by invisible hands into the full-grown prostrate form of an adult man. Motionless, lifeless. Suddenly, the man begins to move. Breathe, sits up, stands, listens to God, and talks to God, possessed at that moment of every attribute any man has ever had from then till now, plus one we've all lost, namely sinlessness. He was perfect. I wonder if you missed this amazing performance and arrived an hour later and met this man in the garden. And you said, Sir, where did you come from? How long have you been here? You say, well... I'm one hour old. One hour old, you can't be. You're full grown. Oh, you apparently don't know the amazing story of my life. You see, I never grew up. I was never a boy or a baby. I had no mom or dad. I came out of the ground one hour ago right there. Would you have a hard time with that? Do you see, friends, why people today who approach the Bible rationalistically on the basis of our observational experience have a hard time with what God demands that we believe about the origin of the human race? You see, that is kind of hard to imagine because, sir, I've never seen anybody appear like that. That's our problem right there. We must take God at His word. We don't have to understand it. We don't have to experience it. We don't have to prove it. We have to believe it. Faith is the substance of things not seen. Now watch carefully how this works. God is absolutely insistent that we take this account literally. Or else in principle, all is lost. Look at this. Genesis two seven, Adam was formed suddenly and supernaturally full grown. Genesis two twenty two, Eve was created supernaturally and suddenly full grown. Matthew nineteen four, Jesus said, have you not read that he who made them in the beginning made them what? Male and female, not soul and spirit. He made their bodies, not just their immaterial aspect. That is the rejection and destruction of theistic evolution. God designed their bodies, friends, supernaturally. He did sit and breathe his image and likeness into some previous existing male and female. Apes. Otherwise, they already would have been male and female, right? First Corinthians, fifteen, thirty-nine. There is one flesh of men and another of beasts. There's no connection. genetically, historically, at all. First Timothy, two-thirteen. Adam was first formed and then Eve. Really. If you were a theistic evolutionist, what do you think that would mean? That Adam evolved first for millions of years and then women appeared? Or in the light of current trends, that women evolved for millions of years and men appeared? Guess what? You're right. If Adam and Eve didn't appear simultaneously, there would be no human race. And that's a miracle of God. But here's the most amazing statement of all, in my opinion. First Corinthians, eleven, eight, man is not of the woman, but the woman is of the man. You say, I can't believe that. I've never yet met a man who didn't come from a woman. In fact, I never met a woman that didn't come from a woman. But God says, if you believe my word, you'll take the step of faith that involves what? Childlike simplicity of taking God at his word because of who he is. A God who never lies, never deceives people, who by the Holy Spirit illumines us and enlightens us that we can enter into his majesty and his power and wisdom with full confidence of his truth. This is a big one, friends. Are you ready now? God expects us to believe, friends, that there's four different ways that human beings have appeared in this earth. Every human on this earth today got here through a mother and a father. But there once walked on this planet two thousand years ago, a man who had no human father. He was made of a woman, and his name was... Thank you. I'm glad you recognized that one. but there was once a person who walked the earth who had no human mother and her name was let's try that again her name was thank you and even more amazing there was once a person who walked the earth who had neither a father nor a mother but came right out of the ground full grown and his name was thank you God says would you believe me and I say Lord but it's so hard People will laugh at me for this. Oh, really? That's just the beginning of sorrows, friends, in this generation. In this so-called Christian nation of ours, there isn't one public tax-supported school left where any textbook is allowed to even hint that the human race did not evolve from the animal kingdom. Not one left. Are you ready for worse news? Almost all Christian institutions of lower and higher learning have compromised to some extent or other with evolutionism. And that leaves, as you might expect, a tiny remnant of people who are truly born again and truly submitted to the infallible and errant scriptures. And Jesus told us that, fear not little flock, little flock, straight as the gate and narrows the way that leads to life and still there be that find it. We're not talking just about friends Believing Genesis, we're talking about few that even find eternal life. You see, which is the basic presupposition and foundation for even opening Genesis and finding out what God tells us and believing it. Yes? Jesus said, if you don't believe what Moses wrote, how do you believe what I say? His authority is based upon the literal truth scientifically and historically of the opening chapters of the only book God ever wrote. And when we appear before the Lord at the judgment seat of Christ, the Bema, I am very sure of this. I hope you'll agree with me that he's not going to ask us how popular we are, how famous we are, how wealthy or happy or whatever. He's simply going to say, did you believe my word? Did you really trust what I told you? Did you take this as the most precious thing ever entrusted to you? Hold fast, you see, friends, to this treasure, this precious treasure. that actually begins in Genesis chapter one as the foundation for everything God builds upon it as the vast superstructure of revealed scripture Lord help us I pray even now to make a heart commitment by the Holy Spirit prompting and guiding that I might understand in a deeper way in a clearer way than ever perhaps before that you really meant