The Truth Revealed

Genesis and Marriage
Gen. 1:1 “And in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”.
I grew up in a small North Dakota town and completed my high school years in a class of 52 students. I had known every one of my classmates since kindergarten and most of my teachers for many years. But I started feeling uncomfortable in some of my classes because my science teachers began laughing about foolish people who believed in the creation story from the Bible. I wondered too, at times, if we believed in some “big Genesis fairy tale”. Evolution seemed so rational in the 1970’s as I was being introduced to it.
I remember one bright, spring morning, one of my science teachers gleefully crowed in class that scientists would soon know how life began. He victoriously claimed the “simple cell” was soon to be unlocked from all its secrets and we would know how the universe began. He said our scientists would soon prove that life could be created by some simple chemical reactions and a Superior Being/God wasn’t necessary. As my teacher spoke, I stood up from my desk, in a flash, and I told my teacher he was wrong!
Ok, that didn’t happen. I actually slid lower in my desk and didn’t lock eyes with my teacher that day or many days after that. I wasn’t equipped to deal with defending my faith at age 16. I wasn’t prepared.
Flash forward a few years. I entered Christian University at my dad’s request. “Finally!” I thought when I arrived at my first day of school, “I will be one of the best-equipped students here.”
Since birth, I had attended Sunday school every Sunday and countless Summer Vacation Bible Schools at various churches. In my teen years, I had taught Sunday school and VBS to younger children, retelling the stories I had learned. I participated in Bible studies and gone faithfully to church camp every year. With all that preparation, I undoubtedly, would excel at a Christian University!
What I didn’t realize is that Bible stories were important but they didn’t tell the Bible’s complete message that God had revealed to us. I actually knew very little.
At my Christian university, one of my college professors repeatedly said, that if you understood the book of Genesis, you were nearly halfway to understanding the Bible as a whole. That was great news for me! But I still lacked the knowledge to put all the pieces together. My knowledge of the Bible stories wasn’t enough. I needed more.
That same professor also said that the book of Genesis begins the framework/basis for all the next 65 books of the Bible. Genesis set the stage. The remaining 65 books refer to the book of Genesis over and over. Genesis covers Adam to Joseph’s time in Egypt. Those very significant first 2000 years after Adam and Eve sinned.
I gained a lot of knowledge at my Christian University, but I didn’t come away understanding how it fit together. The message was still unclear. It seemed complex and hard to understand; I floundered at times.
Since then I have learned a lot and I would like to show the form of this wonderful book we call the Bible. It tells the greatest story ever told! I won’t retell those wonderful stories of the characters of the Bible but just concentrate on the basics. Filling in the rest of the richness of the scriptures will take more than a lifetime of study. (I know it is one of the most exciting endeavors you will ever take on.)
This study concentrates on the skeleton or framework of the Bible. I would like to help you see it as a whole first. Then you can fill in the rest of the story. This study lays out the beautiful, rich story of redemption, laid out so intricately and lovingly by God.
I have included a time line at the top of most lesson pages. The time line begins at Adam’s creation and ends at the birth of Christ. The time line will help to distinguish how quickly the Bible moved through some parts of human history and how the narrative of the Bible slowed on the timeline when the call of Abraham begins. The history of the Jews compiles most of the Old Testament with the exception of the first 11 chapters of Genesis.