Fundamentalist Christianity teaches four misconceptions that provide gainsayers ammunition to challenge the veracity of the Bible[1].
The Creation of the Earth–When?
First, they claim that the earth was created 6,000 years ago. Actually, this is when God created Adam, as biblical chronology supports. As Frederick Haberman points out, “The Word says, ‘In the beginning God created,’ but it does not say when that beginning was; neither does modern science know.” It is common knowledge that this earth is extremely ancient in man’s time, in the millions and not thousands of years old.
Adam was not the first
Second, Adam was not the first homo sapien created. There were indigenous races scattered all over the earth. No one knows for sure when God created them. Some of these pre-Adamic people were living literally around this new Garden of Eden, planted by God and tended by Him in preparation for Adam’s new home. Adam and his descendants were a brand new creation of mankind. To them God gave the knowledge of the arts of civilization–astronomy, architecture, agriculture, law. They would be eventually dispersed to bring civilization to many parts of the earth. Isn’t it interesting that the historical record starts about the time of the biblical creation of Adam–about 4,000 years B.C.?
To those who doubt this, I ask you two questions about Cain, the murderous son of Adam. Why was Cain deathly afraid of being sent away after the LORD cursed him? Cain cried out, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! Surely You have driven me out this day from the face of the ground…I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond [wanderer] on the earth, and it will happen that anyone who finds me will kill me” [2]. Who were these people that Cain was afraid of? The very fact that he was afraid of being killed by someone “out there” proves that there were other men before Adam’s family was created. He knew that being cast out, he would become like the other hunter-gatherers; he would be a “restless wanderer” like them with no stable home. He would be cast out into a hard nomadic life, a life full of danger and desperation. The second question is the age-old one: Where did Cain get his wife? That has now been answered.
Noah’s Flood
Third–and this is a huge sticking point to so many who have been taught this since infancy–Noah’s flood was not worldwide, but a local one. Genesis is the book of Adam and his offspring. Genesis 5: 1 says, “This is the book of the generation of Adam.” In other words, Genesis is not a record of the hunter-gatherer nomadic tribes that trod the earth before Adam was created around 4,000 B.C. It is a record of Adamite man and his world. So when Genesis states that the whole world was flooded, it is talking about Adam’s offspring’s world. But when we have been programmed to believe that the Bible teaches that Adam is the father of all men, then understanding languishes. “A universal Deluge is contradicted by many statements of Scripture and impossible to harmonize with the chronology of the Old Testament, to say nothing of the physical impossibilities and consequences” [3]. According to scripture, the patriarch Abraham is standing in the illustrious courts of Pharoah a mere 300 years after the flood of Noah. A total worldwide flood would have rendered the earth so destitute that it would take much more than 300 years for new civilizations to arrive again.
Moreover, this same “whole world” concept is spoken of in the New Testament. The scripture states that the Romans “taxed the whole world” during the time of Jesus’ infancy. We know, of course, that it was only the Roman world that was taxed, not the Americas or China. But the Roman world was their world. Does that make the Bible inaccurate? No. Seen in this new light helps dissolve all the inconsistencies used in arguments against the veracity of the Bible. One other thing to consider in this third point. God’s Law of Harvest states: Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. According to this law, there is no way that all the races of the world could possibly come out of the loins of Noah and his wife Naamah. It is totally impossible! The Chinese have chinese babies that greatly resemble their parents. The same for Africans, Indians, and Western Europeans. Something is off somewhere. Getting rid of this misconception clears up much.
The Difference Between Jews and Israelites
“The fourth great stumbling block to the critics of the Old Testament has been the assumption that God’s chosen people, Israel, were the Jews,” writes Haberman. The children of Israel were comprised of the offspring of the twelve sons of Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel. Jacob, of course, was the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham (Gen. 12). One of Jacob’s sons was Judah. Like his brothers, Judah and his offspring inherited some of the Promised Land in Palestine. It is Judah’s descendants that began to be called Jews about 500-600 B.C., more than 1,000 years after Judah’s father Jacob/Israel was born. Therefore, Abraham was not a Jew! So, all twelve tribes were Israelites, but only one major tribe came to be called Jews. It is like, all Texans are Americans, but all Americans are not Texans. And to complicate matters even more, 90% of modern day Jews are descendants of the Khazars, a Turko-Mongol tribe in south central Asia, who converted to Judaism about a thousand years ago [4]. And now they claim to be the true descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel and receivers of all the blessings promised to Abraham and his posterity! The truth is that they are not out of the loins of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel.[See Gen. 35: 9-12].
It is difficult to figure all this out. It takes much study, but it is well worth it to get the truth. KWH
- Frederick Haberman, Tracing Our Ancestors, p. 163.
- Genesis 4: 14
- Haberman
- Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe, a history of the Khazar conversion to Judaism
Immortality Road 