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Although man was not present at the beginning of the universe,GOD WAS! Therefore, only God can reveal why and how He created the universe; and He has done so in His special revelation, the Bible. (526)

It [creation by fiat] is a matter of fact revealed in the Biblical revelation of the Creator Himself. (526)

Our belief in the historicity and accuracy of the record of creation in Genesis 1–2 grows out of our faith in God, our Creator and Redeemer, and in His written Word. (527)

We are to exercise a personal reliance on Him, as thus present and thus speaking to us—a reliance on His faithfulness, in what He says to us concerning His character and doings in creation. 4. Candlish, An Exposition of Genesis, 14. (528)

In their unguarded moments humanists admit that their theories of evolution are based on blind faith, not on facts. (529)

D. M. S. Watson, Professor of Zoology in London University, said: “Evolution is a theory universally accepted, not because it can be proved to be true, but because the only alternative, ‘special creation,’ is clearly impossible.” (529-530)

God says it is a fact of life that all people know they are created by God, but they desperately suppress that knowledge (Rom. 1:18–19), because of their rebellion against God. (530)

“God remains the inescapable premise of human thought. Because God is the Creator, every aspect of the universe and of man is structured by God’s creative act and eternal decree, and therefore reflects His law and order. Men cannot escape Him nor can they shut Him out. If they attempt to think without Him as their premise, they simply reintroduce His attributes in the form of miraculous potentialities and processes which reduce science to irrationalism and self-contradiction.” 9. Rousas J. Rushdoony, The Mythology of Science (Nutley, NJ: The Craig Press, 1968), 44. (530)

Suppose we think of a man made of water in an infinitely extended and bottomless ocean of water. Desiring to get out of the water, he makes a ladder of water. He sets this ladder upon the water and against the water and then attempts to climb out of the water. So hopeless and senseless a picture must be drawn of the natural man’s methodology based as it is upon the assumption that time or chance is ultimate. On
his assumption his own rationality is a product of chance. On his assumption even the laws of logic which he employs are products of chance. The rationality and purpose that he may be searching for are still bound to be products of chance... It will then appear that Christian theism, [i.e., faith in the God of the Bible], which was first rejected because of its supposed authoritarian character, is the only position which gives human reason a field for successful operation and a method of true progress in knowledge. 10. Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1955), 102–3. (531)

The two pillars upon which our faith in the Bible as the infallible Word of the Creator rests are: (1) The objective witness of the Bible to its own authority; and (2) The internal witness of the Holy Spirit in the Christian to the Bible’s authority. (531)


Scripture is authoritative because God is its author, and he is its author because…it was given by inspiration from God.…It is, however, by “the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts,” that we become convinced of that authority. 12. Murray, “The Attestation of Scripture,” 44. (532)

We will never understand ourselves without understanding our origins; therefore, we cannot understand ourselves without faith in Christ and His Word. (532)

Genesis 1–2 is a special revelation from God explaining how and why He created the universe....(1) Genesis 1–2 stands in close relation to the rest of the book of Genesis....(2) The characteristics of Hebrew poetry are lacking; and the marks of historical narrative
characterize it. (3) The New Testament and the Old Testament regard specific events mentioned in Genesis 1–3 as actually having taken place: the creation of light by God’s Word (2 Cor. 4:6); the presence of thorns as a sign of the curse in Genesis 3 (Heb. 6:7, 8); the creation of the world by a Divinely-spoken Word (Ps. 33:9); the separation of land and firmament by God’s Word (2 Pet. 3:5); the creation of the universe out of nothing (Heb. 11:3); the creation of the world in six days and a Sabbath (Ex. 20:11); the creation of Eve out of Adam (1 Cor. 11:8). (533)

Understanding the Biblical truth of creation is essential to understanding everything else in the Bible. (533)

What the Bible teaches about creation is this: God created the universe out of nothing by His powerful Word, in six days, for Himself, and pronounced it very good. (533)

First, God created the universe (Gen. 1:1)....He is not an impersonal force that pervades everything. He is the living and personal God, who speaks, plans, “rests,” and asks questions. He is the sovereign God, who created the universe as He pleased for His own purposes. (534)

Second, God created the universe out of nothing (Gen. 1:1)....God made this entire universe, not out of any preexistent materials, not out of a part of Himself, but out of absolutely nothing....Only God can d0 such a thing. (536)

Because the earth, including everything in it, was created out of nothing, ex nihilo, it is totally dependent upon its Maker....We will never understand life and will not be able to live life to the fullest, unless we first admit to our total dependence upon God in Christ for everything. (538)

Third, the universe was created by God’s powerful Word. ...God spoke and it was done! God spoke and gave everything in the universe its existence, meaning, place, value and relationships. (538)

Whatever God’s creative Word commands happens! That Word “is such an unfathomable demonstration of God’s almighty power that it is far beyond our ability to comprehend its full reality.”15. Aalders, Genesis, 1:56. (539)

Fourth, God created the universe in six days....When Exodus 20 says “six days” it means six days! Nothing else fits the context of Genesis 1–. Forcing the whole geological age theory into the six day structure of Genesis 1 is not only poor exegesis, it is like trying to squeeze a size twelve foot into a size four shoe. It just will not fit! (539)

To say that the earth was created out of nothing is to say that the earth was created with the appearance of age. God created the universe suddenly and instantaneously out of nothing; and when He created it, it had the appearance of maturity, of having existed for a long period of time....When God created Adam, He created him with maturity. He appeared fully mature immediately upon his creation. (540)

During the six days of the creation week, God displayed His goodness toward His creation by providing it with those things essential to its life, but which it could not produce itself. He shined LIGHT into the world’s darkness. He put ORDER into its void. And He put LIFE into its emptiness. The earth is in the grip of God’s generosity and control (Ps. 135:5–4). Therefore, the Christian can feel secure in this universe cared for by God (Ps. 104:14). (541)

Light penetrated the darkness and existed alongside darkness. They were distinguished from each other as two separated created factors. (542)

God brought order into His creation by differentiating between oceans and the atmosphere. (542)

God transformed the fluid mass of earth into its present form, differentiating between land and oceans, which did not develop by themselves, but which were formed by the sovereign power of God. (542)

On this day God created the sun, moon, stars and planets to separate the day from the night, to serve as signs to mark seasons, days and years, to give light to the earth, and to govern the day and night. In other words, God created the sun, moon and stars to enable man to live an orderly life by schedule, plan and calendar.(543)

On this day God created birds and marine life, including great sea creatures, such as whales. He ordered them to be fruitful, increase in number and fill the oceans and the earth. (543)

The animals came forth by God’s direct creative power. In creating them, He differentiated between “cattle,” i.e., livestock and domesticated animals, “creeping things,” i.e., animals that move along the ground, and “wild animals,” i.e., animals that roam the forests and fields. (544)

Also on the sixth day, God created man and woman as the crown of His creation. (545)

With Genesis 2:1 our attention is focused on the results of God’s entire work of creation, which is now complete. The result of God’s creation of the universe out of nothing was a transformation of the emptiness, formlessness and darkness of things into the entire organized universe as we know it. (545)

God’s creative work was completed on the sixth day. He no longer works at creating out of nothing, but at governing and sustaining His creation (Heb. 4:10)....Having created everything out of nothing, and having taken six days to organize what He had created, God now relates to His creation in providence and redemption, sovereignly ruling, generously providing for and graciously redeeming His creation (John 5:17). (546)

Having finished His creation, God “rested” on the seventh day of the creation week....He glories in His perfect work....Because God rested from His work of creation on His seventh day of creation week, He ordained that mankind should rest from its weekly employments and recreations on the seventh day as a blessed and holy day, in which God’s people enjoy spiritual and covenantal “rest” with God Himself, in communion with Him (Heb. 4:1–0), and in the worshipful adoration of their Creator, Redeemer and Covenant Lord. (546)

The New Testament preserved the weekly Sabbath for God’s people by changing the day from the seventh to the first day of the week to commemorate the resurrection of Christ. (547)

Fifth, God created the universe and everything in it for Himself....He does all things for His own glory. (547)

Sixth, God pronounced His entire, finished creation very good (Gen. 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). His creation is good because it is beautiful, orderly, organized and full of life. (549)

Since God created the earth and universe “very good,” there can be no dualism, no neo-platonism, in our thinking. Neo-Platonism is an old pagan Greek philosophy that taught that material-physical things are base and to be despised, while the truly important things are the subjective, the “spiritual,” the contemplative, and the “heavenly.” (549)

This view is totally repugnant to the Biblical view of creation. We must never forget that it was the material universe which God pronounced good. It was life, physical and spiritual, in all its wholeness, as God made it....It includes the created desires and needs we as human beings have. Jesus took upon Himself human flesh. He will return physically to raise our physical bodies from the grave. (550)

Biblical creationism and evolutionism are two antithetical views of understanding the universe. Evolution is based on the philosophy that teaches that the universe is governed by chance. It believes that life has the inherent power to improve itself; that matter is eternal and uncreated; that all geological and biological processes have moved along uninterruptedly at a constant and uniform rate of speed; and that man is the ultimate value in the universe, who remains, nevertheless, an animal “beyond freedom and dignity,” to use B. F. Skinner’s words. (551)

Chance does not govern the world, God governs it (Dan.4:35). Life does not have the inherent power to improve itself, Christ must hold it all together (Col. 1:17). The entire creation is utterly dependent upon God’s hand each moment of its existence (Ps. 31:15). Matter is not eternal and uncreated (Gen. 1:1). It had a definite starting point when God created the universe out of nothing (Heb. 11:3). All geological and biological processes have not moved along at a uniform rate of speed (Gen. 7:19; 2 Pet. 3). (551)

The relationship between creation and redemption must be clearly understood. The Creator has become our Redeemer. Only the Creator can be the Redeemer, because the earth is His alone....The reconciliation accomplished by the death of Christ is not limited to human beings; it applies to the whole order of creation....The point is this: “Not only is sinful man reconciled, but the created order which has been made subject to vanity because of sin (see Rom. viii:20f) will share also in the fruit of the mighty act of atonement on the cross.” 35. Herbert M. Carson, The Epistles of Paul to the Colossians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972), 47. (552)

It is essential to Christianity to believe that Adam and Eve were the first human pair, from whom the entire human race has descended. If this were not so, the integrity of the Bible would be at stake, for the Bible assumes and teaches time and again that Adam and Eve actually lived (Matt. 19:4; Rom. 5:12–21; 1 Tim. 2:13). (553)

Furthermore, it is also essential to believe that Adam and Eve were created in sinless maturity—morally, mentally, physically,emotionally and spiritually. If, in actual human history, there was no transition in history from innocency to guilt, there can be no transition in history from guilt and wrath to grace and forgiveness, and Romans 5:12–21 falls to the ground as pure fantasy. (553)

According to Biblical chronology, the time of Adam’s creation was approximately six thousand years ago. (554)

Genesis 1:26–28 and 2:4–25 explain the creation of man and woman which took place on the early earth in Eden. The early earth, according to Genesis 2:4–6, was like a cosmic green house—warm and humid. Moisture came up from the earth rather than
falling from the sky. There was probably no rainfall until Noah’s Flood....In the midst of this early earth God created the Garden of Eden, where He created man and woman (Gen. 2:8–15). (555-556)

The most important thing about Eden was that it was “Eden, the Garden of God,” (Ezekiel 28:13)...Eden was God’s home on earth. Jehovah-Elohim lived in this garden on earth. (556)

Eden may have been located somewhere in the general area of Turkey, Armenia, and Persia (Genesis 2:10–14). It is difficult to know for sure. (557)

The creation of the first man and woman was a special, direct and personal act of the triune God. (557)

The creation of man and woman was special in that it was preceded by solemn divine counsel. Before man’s creation, God said,“Let US make man in OUR image.” The three Persons of the Trinity counseled together regarding the creation of man and woman. It was direct in that instead of simply commanding the earth to bring forth man, God immediately brought him forth...It was warmly personal: “God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” (557-558)

We must conclude, then, that the human body and the human soul-spirit are intimately related to one another; that both are indestructible (inasmuch as the body too, after its
resurrection, will exist indestructibly for ever and ever); and that it is only in death that the two are (temporarily!) separated—until Christ’s second coming. In earthly life, and in everlasting life on this renewed earth-to-come, there is an essential unity between body and soul, so that the word “body” often indicates the whole living personality in Scripture, and the word “soul” is often used to refer to the whole man. 42. Francis Nigel Lee, The Origin and Destiny of Man (Philipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1974), 34. (559)

God created Adam a mature, intelligent and good man, whom he immediately placed in an exalted position of great responsibility and privilege and work. He was created mature physically, intellectually, morally, emotionally, and spiritually. (561)

Being the image of God, they were created with minds that could think rationally.... Because sin had not yet distorted their thinking, they used their minds to make correct
judgments and to draw true inferences, because their thinking was based on God’s Word, which they applied to their lives in judgments and inferences. (561)

The point is this: we must learn that we are to involve ourselves in all branches of science, knowledge and in every field of endeavor, if we are to obey God’s dominion mandate in all the earth. (562)

This statement teaches us that it was possible for flawless Adam and Eve to sin against their Creator, for two reasons: (1) They had liberty of will to choose whatever they desired; and (2) They were capable of changing from a state of flawlessness to sinfulness. (565)

To say that the first man sinned because he was “left to the liberty of his own will,” is to say that he was not forced in any sense or by anyone to sin against God. (565)

God has given human beings the freedom to choose whatever they want to choose (Matt. 17:12)....The central issue with reference to man’s will is whether or not human beings have the freedom and ability to choose good or evil, God or Satan, whenever they take the notion to do so. (566)

Before the fall into sin in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had both the FREEDOM and the ABILITY to choose to do good and to serve God, yet they were capable of choosing evil and of sinning. (566)

However, after the fall, and because of the effects of the fall, man’s will changed.... Therefore, fallen man still has the FREEDOM to choose good or evil, Christ or Satan, but he has lost the ABILITY to do good and the DESIRE to choose good, because of the effects of the fall on the descendants of Adam (Rom. 5:12–21). (566)

Therefore, since the heart of unconverted man is totally depraved, unlike Adam’s pre-fall, pure heart, and since the will chooses what the heart dictates, all the choices of the unconverted man will be sinful. Left to himself in his own depravity, he will never choose to do good in the sight of God. (567)

However, the regenerated person, transformed by God’s grace, has the FREEDOM, ABILITY and DESIRE to choose and to do good, and to follow Christ because the Holy Spirit in regeneration has given him a new heart on which is written God’s Law and which is filled with God’s Spirit (Jer. 31:31–4; Ezek. 36:25–8). Although the regenerate person now has the new ability to desire, choose and do good, he does not do so perfectly because he remains a sinner until death, when he is perfected in holiness (Rom. 6–; 2 Cor. 5:17; Phil. 2:13; John 8:34, 36; Rom. 6:18, 22; Eph. 2:10; Rom. 7:21). (568)

[1] Eve and Adam are both the IMAGE OF GOD, and together were given the DOMINION MANDATE. (568)

[2] God so loved the very thought of woman that he created her and made her exquisitely lovely in every way. (569)

[3]Eve’s sexual identity is presented in close conjunction with her being in the image of God. Her femaleness is included in that image. In fact, normally, it is when the male and the female come together in one fleshness that the picture illustrated in that divine image is complete. (569)

[1] Being made from Adam, Eve is like Adam: a physical-spiritual being. (569)

[2] In the instant of her creation she stood before Adam in Paradise, resplendent in her full bloom of mature womanhood....Woman, like man, is the result of special divine activity. God’s thought is expressed in her female being. God loved the thought of women, so he created women. (570)

[3] Although she was made from Adam, Eve’s creation was unique, as was Adam’s creation. This teaches us that one sex is not more ultimate than the other... (570)

[4] Because Eve was created from Adam, Eve could not exist without the prior existence of Adam....Moreover, Adam named Eve (Gen. 2:23; 3:20). To give someone or something a name in the Old Testament is to have authority over that who/which is named. (570)

Adam named Eve, “Woman” (Gen. 2:23). The Hebrew word for woman is formed by adding a feminine ending to the word for man. To name Eve, “Woman,” is to call her the counterpart of man, without whom, man is not ordinarily complete. Nor is she ordinarily complete when she stands alone as a self-sufficient female. She must
always seek to find herself and the meaning for her life in terms of her man. (571)

Adam also named woman, “Eve” (Gen. 3:20). The name, Eve, means “the mother of all living.” (571)

[1] Woman was created by God to be man’s “help-meet,” i.e., a help as before him,” or “a MIRROR.” (571)

“[S]he mirrors him so that a man finds himself not only in relationship to God but in terms of a woman. The woman is called his ‘help meet,’ his mirror; and even as he mirrors God, she mirrors him. He understands his responsibility by looking to God, and he can see how he is fulfilling his responsibilities and proving his obedience in relationship to his wife as she mirrors his nature and responsibility.” 54. Rousas J. Rushdoony, Toward A Christian Marriage, ed. Elizabeth Fellersen (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1975), 14. (571)

[2] Francis Nigel Lee puts it this way: “[T]here is the aching pain of unfulfilled love in the side of every man until he finds relief in the returned love of a woman, and until he in blissful marriage cleaves to his wife and becomes one flesh with her—hus recovering
his lost rib." 56. Lee, The Origin and Destiny of Man, 18. (572)

[1] Satan saw that the best way to seduce Adam was through Eve. (573)

[2] Eve’s sin was essentially less profound than Adam’s and consequently, it was not her sin, but his which thrust the world into perdition (Rom. 5:12). Apparently, she was constitutionally less well adapted to offer resistance to this temptation than Adam. She is stronger facing temptation with Adam, than standing alone. The same is true of man. (573)

[3] Eve probably lived for hundreds of years and had many children. Her days must have been tedious and exacting and her suffering terribly painful. To be thrust thereupon into a world in which nothing had yet been provided for woman must have been an awful contrast to the beauty of Paradise. Eve was removed from her estate, her home. Her feminine fullness was completely ravaged. (573-574)

[4] First, woman will experience sorrow and anguish in conception and childbirth. E. J. Young notes: "For woman the bearing of children is to be a difficulty. Her conception is not what she might have desired it to be, and not what God had originally designed for her. It was the divine plan that man should be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Eve, however, had disobeyed God and sought for enjoyment contrary to God’s law. She therefore will be punished in her sexual life, for not only will her pregnancy be
unpleasant, but her entire life. The pains which will come to her will threaten her own life, she will go down to the very gate of death before her children come into the world; and throughout the remainder of her life she will be reminded by sorrow that her life is not filled with the enjoyment which she had once erroneously believed would be hers. 58. Young, Genesis Three, 124. (574)

Second, woman’s desire will be “for her husband.” If we compare the word, “desire,” in Genesis 3:16 with its use in Genesis 4:7, we can interpret this curse in this manner: because of sin, the woman will struggle with the inner desire to domineer man, to make him what she wishes. (574)

To summarize: fallen woman will struggle with a desire to dominate man; and fallen man will struggle with the desire to abdicate his loving headship over woman. The fallen woman’s life will be filled with heartbreak because of her own anguish and guilt and from man’s insensitivity to her needs. (575)

Into the profound soul of this woman God sowed the seeds of a glorious faith, and by means of it again permitted a heaven to arise before her. (575)

The meaning of our human personhood and our divinely-assigned mission in life are inseparable. Adam and Eve were created “in the image of God” (Gen. 1:27), and were given the divine mandate to “fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28)....he point is that the fall of man into sin did not obliterate God’s own image from the essence of human beings. Man’s identity as “made in the image of God” is neither abrogated nor taken away....Sin has distorted that image and it must be renewed by Christ (Eph. 4:24;Col. 3:10); nevertheless, it remains stamped, indelibly, in every fragment of our fiber as human beings. (577-578)

As the “reflection” of God, man was created to reflect God’s life and character in his own life and character. He was to live as God lives, although on a creaturely level. (580)

The purpose of the creation of man and woman is clearly defined immediately upon their creation, so that their existence and their “chief end” would be inseparable from each other. “And God created man in His own image… male and female he created them. And God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (Gen. 1:27–8). Human beings were created in the image of God to exercise godly dominion over all the earth....His life is unfulfilled unless it is lived out in terms of this Dominion Mandate: to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth, and to have dominion over it, under God. He is called to build a God-honoring culture out of the resources sprung from Eden and to fill it with generations of godly descendants. (581-582)

This Dominion Mandate is being accomplished as Christian men and women, who love God and each other, see themselves as and carry out the duties of prophets, priests and kings. As prophets we are to interpret life in terms of God’s written Word (2 Cor. 10:3–). As priests we are to dedicate ourselves, our families, our societies and the product of our hands to the service and glory of God (1 Cor. 6:20). As kings, we are to rule ourselves and our cultures under the Law of God in the power of the Holy Spirit (Ex. 20:1–17). (582)

This Biblical truth concerning the creation of human beings lays a firm foundation for the sanctity of human life from conception to death (and beyond). (582)

On the basis of this clear Biblical truth we are bound to confess that all human life, including prenatal human life, which begins at conception, has sanctity, being directly, specially and personally created by God in His image (Ps. 139:13–16; Luke 1:15, 36, 42, 44; Ps. 51:5; Jer. 1:5). (583)

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Mama says she hasn't curled hair for 30 years...so maybe the roll job wasn't the best. (Way better than I could have done!!)

(*Selfie*) We tied the curls up with one of my scarves. (Thanks, Katie!) I suppose most people would leave their ears tucked under the scarf, but I hate stuff on my ears, so I pulled them out--then I went out into the chilly rain to check the mail and discovered that in that configuration, my ears act as wind scoops. Seriously. I just hastened the wind blowing into my eustachian tubes (I have very cold-sensitive inner ears).

Right before we took it down. I looked soooo like my cousin Joel with that mess on top of my head!

Before brushing it out.

The very back was still kind of damp so the curls didn't set quite as well.

Sorry this one is kind of blurry...but other than that, it's okay.

All brushed out! See how "bouncy" it looks around the edges?

It's my Mommy!! :)

She's loverly, isn't she?

(By the by, we do not own this pattern...and neither is that my size. Then or now. :D And...I'm shooting more for the look of the red one.)

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