Bible Study on Genesis - #1 - Introduction to Genesis – Mike Mazzalongo | BibleTalk.tv (Full Transcript) -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGYXECrADcY
shared by Michael Johnson
Alright. Here we are, Genesis. First lesson. The title of the of the series is Genesis, the foundation book of the Bible. And I want to mention also that we're going to be using a resource book, or I have used the resource book entitled The Genesis record by Henry, Dr Henry Morris. And so there's a lot of material that I'll be talking about that I have used his book for. And if you want to go further or deeper, or you you want more information, you know, I highly recommend this book. You can get it from the library, or, get it online, so on and so forth. Great book. This class that we are doing is not going to be a line by line study, because if we did a line by line study of Genesis with its 50 chapters, we'd be here two or three years. So we're not going to do a line by line study. We're going to try to take important sections out of every chapter to follow a main theme all the way through the book, so that you'll be very familiar with the book. We'll try to answer some of those questions that come from the book itself, but mainly we're going to try to reflect the main theme of Genesis and work our way through everybody's got a worksheet that you have. And those who may be watching this on video, you can go or online on our Bible talk.tv You can go to Bible talk.tv and you can download the print out, even the transcript, eventually, for your use. And of course, that's absolutely free, all right. Major objectives in this study three. I have three particular objectives, first of all, to build faith. Build your faith in this book as an inspired work of God. It's of all the books in the Bible. It seems that Genesis is the one that is attacked most often as being non inspired, or, you know, it's a myth, or it's a fairy tale, so it's dismissed, especially in the modern day. So I want us to have confidence and faith that this is an inspired book of God. Second objective to answer some of the commonly asked questions about Genesis. I mean, who wrote it? It's at the beginning of, you know, beginning of time, who, who was there to write it, and so on and so forth. So we'll trace the history of how it was written and and other questions that stem from this particular book. And then, thirdly, understand the importance and the purpose of this book as part of the Bible. Why did God give us the book of Genesis, very important now, as I say, you can stop me and ask questions, make comments as we as we go along, if there's something that you think of, or perhaps a question or something maybe that you can add to the class as to what we're doing. Please don't be shy. I'm glad to take your your input. All right, let's talk about the importance of the book of Genesis. Every book of the Bible is inspired by God. Paul says this among other places, but Paul says this In Second Timothy chapter 316, you know, the entire all the book of the entire work of God is inspired all scripture, rather, is inspired by God. That's the way he says it, All scripture. Notice he says all scripture, not just some scripture. And especially when Paul was writing this in Second Timothy, not all of the New Testament had been recorded. So he was referring back to the, what we call the Old Testament. And he was saying, all of it is inspired, not just the prophets, not just the first five books of the Bible, all of it is inspired. And that remains true even to this day. Now, in the New Testament, the Gospels and the book of Acts, there are these kind of books, the kind of books that help us understand the rest of the books. If we didn't have the Gospels, we'd have a hard time understanding the book of Romans or the book of Ephesians, right? So the Gospels and the book of Acts really give us the basis for understanding all of the other epistles in the book of Revelation. All right? Well, in the same way, the point I'm making is the book of Genesis really helps us understand the rest of the Bible. If we didn't have the book of Genesis, a lot of the things that we teach wouldn't make any sense. So in the Old Testament, no other book is more fundamental to understanding not only the Old Testament, but the New Testament and the rest of human history as the book of Genesis. Now the reason for this is that Genesis is the book which contains the vital information concerning the origin of all things, and therefore the meaning of all things. And. You know, these things would not be accessible to us if God had not revealed and preserved them in the book of Genesis. Matter of fact, the word Genesis means origins. So what you're reading, when you read the book of Genesis is you're reading the book of origins. Where do things come from? So historians and scientists, they can only speculate about the origins of life and culture and nations, but the Bible actually contains this information, so that, you know, we can look back and see an accurate picture of the world at its beginning, before recorded history actually began. And so the book of Genesis describes in detail 1414, origins that cover the beginning of time to the formation of a people to carry out God's plan of salvation. You know a lot of people that say, Well, I don't see you know this nation mentioned in Genesis, and that nation mentioned, well, the purpose of Genesis was to explain the origin of many things, including the origin of God's people. Not just the origin of, you know, how various nations were formed, but basically the origin of God's people. That's the theme that runs through the entire Bible, doesn't it? We see, you know, different nations come and go here and there, but the Bible is really just interested in showing us God's people and what happened to them. The rest of the history is simply a backdrop to that. So these origins that I'm talking about here are the foundations from which we can understand our societies as well as our environment and even the spiritual condition that we're in today. So this lesson here tonight, I'm just going to briefly go over all of these origins. All right, ready? So Genesis, origins, first origin, the Genesis gives us the origin of the universe. Only the book of Genesis accounts for the origin of matter, space and time. Every other religious system, every other scientific system or philosophy, every one of them, begins with eternal matter or energy in some form that is somehow developed into our present state. So, you know, the theory of evolution starts with what? Well, it starts with the Big Bang. It starts there. But the Bible starts even before then the origin. Where did the Big Bang come from? How did that start? So only the Bible gives an account of where original matter actually came from, okay? All right, Genesis gives us the origin of order and complexity. Universal observation has stated that orderly and complex things tend to naturally devolve into disorder and decay, right? Something starts nice, your brand new car, right? This has happened to me, my brand new car. It's working perfectly. It's a GM product. What could possibly go wrong, right? And I'm driving it, right, and there's a truck that goes by, and I hear peek, and you know what's happened to my new car, right? I've got a chip in my window staring me right between the eyes. There goes my new car. And that's the same with everything, right? Our new carpets, our everything brand new, begins to devolve, all right? And so the Bible gives us the the origin of order and complexity. Where did the order begin? We know that in nature, in people and in objects, everything eventually falls apart. Genesis provides the source for the establishment of the original order and complexity of life.
This is important because all we're able to study is the rate of decay, not the origin of order. Do you ever think of that scientists? What they're studying is how things are falling apart. That's all they can do. All they can do with the stars is count them. All they can do with the stars is tell us how far they are, or if they're you know how fast they're disintegrating, that's all they do. That's all they can measure. But the Bible gives us where these stars began and how they began, where man began, where you know, where everything began. And so the Bible gives us the origin of order and complexity. Number three, the Bible gives us the origin of the solar system, Genesis. Therefore, so science, as I say, can count and study the stars, but science has not found a satisfactory explanation for the beginning of the stars. What's the best they can do? The best. I mean, this is. Latest best, right that I've read, anyways, the latest best that they've come up with is the Big Bang. That's the latest theory, believe it or not, the Big Bang. It all started with a big bang. Nobody can nobody can explain. Well, what made it go bang? Nobody can explain. Well, where did it come from? Where did the things that made it go boom, where did they come from? Nobody. Scientists simply put that aside and they say, Well, you know, it was always there. That's usually the answer. Matter was always there. And then one day, boom, it blew up. And then it evolved into who we are, who we are today. The thing that we have to remember is that the Big Bang is not a cause, it's an effect. So people are the world's greatest scientists, some of them are saying this effect is what caused everything that we have. That doesn't make any sense, doesn't it? But Genesis, on the other hand, explains when and how the solar system was created, and more importantly, it explains why
it was created,
why it was created next.
Genesis explains the origin of the atmosphere and the hydrosphere, the combination of liquid water and oxygen and nitrogen, that kind of atmosphere that sustains life, has only been found in its present state here on Earth. I mean, scientists say, you know, they've looked as far as they can look, and they still haven't found it. Genesis explains, again, the how, the who and the why, that this unique mixture came to come, came to be, if you wish, here on Earth. So the origin of our environment, that we have that sustains this kind of life, Genesis explains the origin of life itself, how living systems could develop from non living chemicals. Today continues to be a mystery to materialistic philosophers, and will always be. In other words, if your thinking is that animate object, we're animate, right, right? We're animate. We're animated. We move, we think, we feel. You know how a creature like us comes from an inanimate object? How can we come from a rock or a piece of dirt? And yet evolution teaches that in the beginning, there were just inanimate objects, and yet somehow these inanimate objects came together and rubbed up against each other. You know, I'm being simplistic here, of course, but somehow these inanimate objects produced animate objects living, in other words, a bird came from a rock. Again, I'm simplifying it, but basically, that's, that's what's, that's what is being explained. Genesis, on the other hand, explains the process and the order of the appearance of living things on Earth, from inanimate to animate, and what and what happened. How this happened? Number six, Genesis explains the origin of man. This Bible book provides the true answer as to the origin of man. Now, universal observation states that complex things tend to decay and become disorganized. But in the face of this, evolutionists try to explain that in the midst of this universal experience, the most complex and orderly creature, man has actually arrived at in the reverse order, in other words, from decay and disorganization, has come man.
You see when I you see how crazy that is.
So from decay and disorganization comes complexity and order. Well, that's just nonsensical Genesis explains the origin of man as a perfectly complex and orderly being at his creation and then joining the creation in its eventual demise. And it also gives the reason why. In other words, Genesis explains that man began as perfect, complex, competent, and then began to disintegrate. Evolution turns that upside down and says there was disintegration and decay. And from this disintegration and decay came man. And guess what? While everything else on earth is going to pot, man is getting better, he's evolving again. Doesn't make any sense, and Genesis explains to us how the world began. And. How man began as a complex, perfectly created creature or human being, put it that way, and then, with time, began to disintegrate. And the Bible, or Genesis, tells us why this happened. Number seven, the origin of marriage. Again, Genesis records the universal and stable institution of marriage and the home in a monogamous, patriarchal, stable society, that's what Genesis presents, polygamy, infant side, adultery, pedophilia, divorce, homosexuality, all of these things come later as this original model began to disintegrate. I mean, I know sometimes it's a little discouraging. We look at our society, you know, gay marriage is being legalized in various states.
We see all kinds of immorality being, you know,applauded in the media and so on and so forth. But you know, I mean, it goes back a long time. It's not just our generation, not just our generation. If we want to see sin, just go back to when the Roman Empire existed. You'll see a very decadent, cruel society. The beauty of Genesis, when we read it, is we find out why this has happened. What's going on? All right. Number eight, moving on, The Origin of Evil, the cause and effect model is demonstrated in Genesis, showing how evil not only entered the world and it entered the world as a concession to free will, but also how it caused the ultimate degeneration of a world originally created as perfect. And so Genesis not only explains the origin of decay through evil, but it also introduces God's ultimate plan to deal with the evil in the world. All in Genesis. Amazing book number nine, the origin of language, the gulf between the chattering of animals and the abstract symbolic systems of man is completely unbridgeable by the evolutionary process. Evolutionists have not explained to us yet how monkeys or dolphins or whatever went from the gibberish that they speak to the intelligent, logical, you know, moral thinking that humans, you know, they can't find the missing, you know, the missing link. They can't find the link between the two. Now you can teach an animal to mimic sound. You can teach an animal to repeat, you know, conditional responses. Just parakeets say all kinds of things, right? But you cannot train an animal to give an opinion. And I've never seen a cat tell time. I always tell people I believe in evolution. When I see a cat being able to say, hey, it's 20 after 12 time for lunch. Okay, so we're unique in that way, and Genesis explains and accounts, not only for language in general, but also for national language. Why are there different languages? Genesis has the seed of understanding as to why that happened and how it came to be. You know, some people say, Why you expect me to believe, you know, that tower of Babel thing and you expect me to believe all of that so fantastic to believe. And I say, not any more fantastic to believe that than to believe that all of this world here came about simply because of an accident. Every accident that I have ever witnessed in my entire life has always caused trouble, something, you know, we say we had an accident, something gets broken or spilled or damaged, to say that all of the complexity of life is the is the is the result of accident. Accidental. You know time, what they call time and chance, time and chance. You if you want to believe in time and chance, go ahead. You know the argument is, if you give it enough time and enough combinations, eventually you'll come up with a human being. Well, really, I don't think so. All right, keep moving. Number 10, the origin of government. Genesis gives the account of the development of the orderly maintenance of society. And as a matter of fact, in Genesis, you have, you know, every stage in the process. It begins with the Patriarchal age, where the patriarchs, where the head of families, moves on to the tribal stage, moves on to the national stage and the worldwide stage. Genesis explains the normal and the word evolution isn't a dirty word, by the way, it's. Know, things do evolve. You know, people evolve. Things evolve, you know. But what we're talking about is development. And so Genesis gives us the natural development of government. It also gives us the origin of culture. It describes the beginning of the main entities which we now associate with organized culture. And I mentioned a few. Urbanization, metallurgy, music, navigation, textiles, agriculture, animal husbandry, writing, education, ceramics, all of these things are described in Genesis, the beginning of you know culture, and what you know develops culture, a number 12. Number 12, the origin of nations. Scholars today recognize the unity of the human race. That's the big discovery, by the way. The latest discovery is that you know what all human beings come from, like the same the same root didn't used to be like that the evolutionists, you know, there's the, you know, branches, you know, this type of human, that type of human, and this type of human, kind of survived. This type of human died at you that was the original thinking. Now, all of a sudden, archeologists are finding, you know, and not just archeologists, but biologists who are studying the human human cells, right, are realizing, well, wait a minute, all human beings all comefrom one source,not only that, they say, and we're finding out that that one source is somewhere in Northern Africa, the Middle East. They can't deny it, and that's what they're finding. The science speaks for itself. Oh, the Bible has given us that story, you know, it's called Adam and Eve, it's called the garden, you know. And we know somewhere where it is. And so science is simply proving what Genesis has been teaching for years, and only the book of Genesis explains this in adequate fashion. The Book of Genesis gives us the origin of religion. There are a lot of different religions in the world, but all share the idea that there must be an ultimate truth and some sort of direction in life. Genesis explains the origin of this characteristic of man's consciousness, as well as the origin of true worship and the true God of all origins. And so we find how religion begins in the book of Genesis and how it becomes mutated. You know, as different things go off in different directions. And finally, number 14, the origin of the chosen people. No other people have had such a long and sustained historical background as the Jews. Genesis gives the origin and the purpose that this nation was to play in God's overall plan. Now the book of Genesis talks about other cultures and other nations, but focuses really on the Jewish nation. And so the book of Genesis is the foundation of true history, true science and philosophy, because it describes where we came from, and how we arrived at where we are today, spiritually and physically. All right, one other little point I want to make here, and that is Genesis and the Bible itself. Not only does Genesis provide a foundation for our understanding created world and society itself. It also is a foundational book for the understanding of the rest of the Bible. Now I don't state that as just a personal opinion. The Bible also makes this point, people like Adam and Noah and Abraham and Jacob are continually referred to throughout the rest of the Bible. Without the Genesis, we would not know their role or their purpose in God's plan. So remember that when people are trying to dismiss Genesis as a myth and so on and so forth, if you eliminate Genesis, you don't have the foundation book of the Bible. Did you know that there are over 200 quotations or allusions to Genesis that are in the New Testament? 200 times we quote Genesis. Every one of the New Testament authors refers to a passage in Genesis, one to 11, every one of them, Jesus himself refers to Genesis chapter one to 11, at least six different times. I mean, if Jesus himself is quoting Genesis, we should be very careful before we dismiss that as a, you know, as. Important book. Now I say this because there's a great effort in the world, and sometimes by some in the church, to mythologize the book of Genesis, especially the parts dealing with creation. Genesis was written as a sober and fact based history of the origin of the world and man, when we try to reduce any part of it to myth or allegory, we undermine our faith, because the foundation of our faith begins in Genesis. I mean, after all, you know, Paul says all scripture is inspired by God. All includes, includes Genesis. Okay, very important. Now you'll notice there's a list on the back of your your worksheets. And as I mentioned before at the beginning, those of you who are watching this on video, you can go to Bible talk.tv, and just go to the Genesis series. And at the Genesis series, you can download the worksheet, and perhaps later on, even the transcript of this, of this lesson. But for those of you who are in the live class, here a wonderful list. Here scientific facts or principle in one column, the date that they were discovered by man, by scientists in the middle column, but where they were spoken of in the Bible in the right column. So, for example, you know that there is an infinite number of stars. This was discovered. The idea of this was discovered in 1940 put forth as a scientific proposal in 919, 40, but it's already stated in Genesis 15. And by the way, Genesis was written, I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll talk about this in another class. But Genesis was written by Moses. Okay. He's the one that put it together from oral records and so on and so forth. And Moses lived 1400 years before Christ, roughly 1400 years so we're talking 3400 years ago. The Bible is already talking about this idea of the of the stars. I mean, I'm not going to read it all to you. You can. You can read them there. But what's really interesting to me is that the idea that air has weight, and this was scientifically discovered and proposed in the 16th century, and yet it's written about in Job chapter, chapter 28 or that, or that oceans contain fresh water springs discovered in 1920 but mentioned in Job 38 so, you know, there's 2030, different examples of this. And this is just a, you know, just a very, very short list of of these particular things. Okay, so that's our introductory lesson to Genesis. We haven't touched the text yet. I just wanted to give you an idea that we're not talking about Genesis as a myth. It's an inspired work of God. The Hebrew writer says to us what that we believe, how by faith, that God created what is from, what is not. So the Bible tells us you're to believe what God gives us in the Book of Genesis, not through reasoning,but through faith,through faith and faith is accepting God's word at his word. I believe what God is telling me here. Why? Because he's asking me to accept it as such. But there's plenty of information and plenty of proof that demonstrates that Genesis is an inspired book, and we'll get into that. And the great stories in there about the about the patriarchs and how all this fits together to point to Christ. Alright, well, that's our class for this time. We'll get into the next next lesson, next time we meet. Thank you very much. Applause.
——————————————————————————————
Copyright Disclaimer
This content is sourced from public domain materials, Creative Commons-licensed works, or is used based on the principles of fair use. We do not intend to infringe upon any copyrights. If you believe your copyright has been violated, please contact us through the customer support widget in the bottom-right corner or email us at [email protected]. Provide detailed information regarding your complaint (specific steps are available in our Copyright Policy at https://accuratescribe.ai/copyright). We will address and resolve the issue within 24 hours of receiving your complaint.
Export
ChatGPT
Summarize and chat with this transcript
Translate
Translate this transcript to 134+ languages