IF WE ESSENTIALLY “gut” the first chapter of the Bible and teach that the word “day” really doesn’t mean day–but vast eons of time, how can we trust anything else we read in Scripture…?

The starting point for Christianity is not Matthew 1:1, but Genesis 1:1.  Tamper with the Book of Genesis and you undermine the very foundation of Christianity.  You cannot treat Genesis 1 as a fable or a mere poetic saga without severe implications to the rest of Scripture.  The creation account is where God starts His account of history.  It impossible to alter the beginning without impacting the rest of the story–not to mention the ending.  If Genesis 1 is not accurate, then there’s no way to be certain that the rest of Scripture tells the truth.  If the starting point is wrong, then the Bible itself is built on a foundation of falsehood.  In other words, if you reject the creation account in Genesis, you have no basis for believing the Bible at all.

If you doubt or explain away the Bible’s account of the six days of creation, where do you put the reins on your skepticism?  Do you start with Genesis 3, which explains the origin of sin, and believe everything from chapter 3 on?  Or maybe you don’t sign on until sometime after chapter 6, because the Flood is invariably questioned by scientists, too.  Or perhaps you find the Tower of Babel too hard to reconcile with the linguist’s theories about how languages originated and evolved.  So maybe you start taking the Bible as literal history beginning with the life of Abraham.  But when you get to Moses’ plagues against Egypt, you deny those, too?  What about the miracles of the New Testament?  Is there any reason to regard any of the supernatural elements of biblical history anything other than poetic symbolism?  (John MacArthur)

“For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them…”  Exodus 20:11

–Mike Benson