In spite of being mentioned some 60 times in the Bible, many professing Christians do not believe that God’s primary enemy exists. I recently heard that approximately half of the ministers in one of the world’s top (in terms of numbers) church systems do not believe in a literal being whom the Lord calls Satan and the devil. This is an incredible statistic in that it is that very being that brought sin into the universe created by the totally perfect Godhead. In the creation sequence we find not one word written about the presence of sin. Another incredible statistic is the Biblically-stated fact that every human being is either directly or indirectly affected by sin. So, what happened? How could something not created by the Great Creator have literal life and death control over God’s most important creation.  Let us begin with creation in our search for this most important truth: “By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of His mouth …. For He spoke, and it came to be; He commanded, and it stood firm” (Ps. 33:6-9). In John 1:1-3 we are told: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was (a) God …. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” Sin exists. Did God create sin? If not, from whence did it come? Is sin, as some believe, merely the absence of righteousness? Does man create sin in his own life when he fails to be righteous? Let us “search the Scriptures” in order to answer the above-stated questions.

Beginning in the Garden of Eden, man has sought to replace God as the master of his life. In order replace his Creator, religious man must nullify the only available information about Him and substitute man’s own version of “truth.” Those most adamant about discrediting God’s Word are church leaders, whom He calls “false prophets.”  In their vain search for anything that will “prove” that the Bible is faulty and not to be taken literally, some ministers have questioned the inspired Word relative to the amount of time God used to create the universe. Let us examine the Word by which all men will be judged (Jn. 12:48) in order to see what the Creator Himself says about the creation process: “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day, wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it” (Exo. 20:11). For reasons known only to God-doubters themselves, the length of each creation day has been questioned. In the Scriptures we are told, “There was evening and there was morning” which comprised each day of creation week. God’s day begins at dusk and ends at dusk. One can search the Scriptures but will not find where God changed this day-defining formula. Nor will one find Him shortening or lengthening the time between dusks except for the “long day” He gave Israel in order to complete a battle. We are commanded to “Prove all things” relative to Truth (1 Thes. 5:21). With no information other than that which is found in the Scriptures, let us assume that a day in the beginning was the same length as a modern day.

Another attack on God’s Word concerns the origin of man. An astonishing number of churches now teach evolution as the explanation for man’s existence on earth. Labeling themselves as “Christian evolutionists,” these wiser-than-God church leaders contend that man was not “created” in the Biblical sense, but that man evolved from a much lesser entity. I will close this posting with the Words of the Lord Himself relative to man’s creation: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in our image, according to Our likeness, and let them rule … over all the earth ….’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:26,27). To be continued. L.J.