On pre-History, Creation, and Evolution.
A cursory glance through the various timelines of the ancient civilizations shows that I have chosen to use biblical chronology and the historical records of the ancient world, rather than, as most modern history references do, dates harmonized with current evolutionary theory. There are several reasons for this.
First of all, evolutionary theory is a modern theory which has been imposed upon the historical records of the ancient world, and where they disagree, the historical records are assumed to be false or exaggerated or tampered with. This distrust of the historical record in favor of a theory which comes millennia after those records were written is unique among standard analysis of historical texts, and therefore its trustworthiness should be taken with a grain of salt.
Second, evolutionary theory is constantly changing because as a scientific theory, it has problems. The more research that has gone into the theory, the more its inherent flaws and inconsistencies have come to light, rather than the other way around. This is exactly what happens to every false story, as any judge will tell you who has ever seen the story of a witness go through cross-examination. Examination either highlights errors or affirms truth. The truth of evolutionary theory has been far from affirmed, and with every passing year, the mountain of inconsistencies it must climb to be proven true grows ever greater. Under these circumstances, to teach it as an absolute certainty would be folly.
Third, historical references which include timelines based on evolutionary theory are legion. Any public library will have these resources available. Fourth, and perhaps most important to me, is that the Bible is the infallible Word of God. In many places in the Bible, we are told that God cannot lie, but that Satan is a liar and the father of lies. Now if it is true that the Bible is the Word of the God who cannot lie, then why did He tell us a lie concerning the origin of the world and all the creatures that inhabit it? I do not believe He did lie to us. Jesus taught from Genesis as if it were authoritative, as did the Gospel writers and Paul. Nevertheless, for many years I believed as I had been taught, that the earth was billions of years old and the Genesis account, well, I never tried to harmonize the obvious inconsistencies. I just accepted both as true. But one day I was reading in Romans, and verse 5:12 stood out to me:
“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned--.”
I realized that if death entered the world because of Adam’s sin, and Paul was teaching that this was the reason for Jesus Christ coming in the flesh and dying for our sins, then the fossil record could not have been laid down prior to Adam’s sin. Because whatever else fossils are, they are all dead, that is undisputed. I realized that I couldn’t continue to believe that Genesis was false and Romans was true; I either had to believe that Genesis was true and Romans was true, or I had to believe that Genesis was false and Romans was false. I chose the former.
I have since discovered that I am not alone, and that many highly qualified scientists share my belief that the earth is in fact created by God according to the history outlined in Genesis, and that fossils, dinosaurs, and star-light can all be explained with the physical laws of the universe and the historical account of Genesis in harmony. Books that help with this can be found from Answers in Genesis, also listed in the bibliography.
Therefore, the timelines in this book agree with biblical chronology and with the historical records of the ancient world, beginning with the most ancient of them of all, the first eleven chapters of Genesis.
