“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,” said Pope Francis at a recent plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. “He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfillment.”
That’s his story.
It’s not His story.
The pope discounts the biblical account of Creation. He puts his faith in evolution – just about the time many scientists are wondering if there is anything to it.
I wonder what else he discounts from God’s Word. Is there anything sacred in the Bible?
“God is not a divine being or a magician, but the Creator who brought everything to life,” the pope said. “Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”
Let’s think about this.
The Genesis account isn’t just some Old Testament fairy tale. It is fundamental to Christian belief. It was thoroughly affirmed by Jesus. In fact, if the fall of man is just an allegory, one wonders why Jesus would have had to come to atone for man’s sin – a prophecy first revealed in Genesis.
If Jesus did not come to fulfill that prophecy, who was He?
In Genesis 3:15, we see the first prophecy regarding the redeemer who would come in the form of Jesus. In a warning to the serpent, God says: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”
This is a reference to the Messiah to come.
Jesus Himself affirmed Moses, the author of Genesis: “And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” (Luke 16:31)
He affirmed the biblical Creation account: “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Mark 10:6-9)
Perhaps the pope forgot the teaching of Romans and other New Testament books that explain Jesus came as the second Adam: “Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.” (Romans 5:14)
What exactly did Jesus come to do if not redeem man as a result of the fall?
If sin entered the world through Adam, how does the pope explain all the evolutionary death that would have to occur on earth before Adam appeared?
I don’t understand Christians who discount Genesis. It makes no sense. Nothing in the Bible makes sense without the Creation account. If the pope doesn’t believe the foundational aspect of the Bible, does he believe any of it? If he does, he really owes the Christian world an explanation of which parts of the Bible he believes and which he discounts.
As I recall my trip this month to Jerusalem, the Holy City of God, I wonder just how small the remnant of believers will be when Jesus comes again.
I also wonder if the pope believes He will come again.
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