The Creation of the Human Race

Miracles give a message, or a warning. The definition of a miracle is an event in the external world brought about by the immediate efficiency or simple volition of God. Miracles are not isolated wonders or mere showmanship. They are never superfluous and always related to redemption. Miracles are necessary to God's revelation and His purpose of redemption. They are a foreshadowing of the eschatological blessing that we shall receive.

Miracles do not appear uniformly throughout redemptive history. There are spikes where miracles suddenly appear, then there are long periods of time when we do not see any miraculous activity. Miracles often appeared as signs of authentication, to show that an individual's claim to ministry was authentic, and he truly was a prophet or apostle of God.

The apostles' miracles and the miracles of Jesus Christ are an eschatological breakthrough. They are appropriations of the power of the Holy Spirit that stamp approval upon the message and the messenger.

2. The Creation of Man was Distinctive compared to the rest of creation.

The creation of man is a sovereign act of power and wisdom, an act of the Transcendent One.

There is a unique engagement of God's council. There is a unique engagement of divine thought and intratrinitarian council. This is not something that is exhibited in the creation of any other creatures.

There is distinctiveness arising from the nature with which man is endowed. All other creation was created after its kind. Man is patterned after the character of God Himself. This clothes man with a unique dignity.

There is distinctiveness based on the lordship with which man is invested. As last in the series of creation, man's lordship is correlative with his origin. Since God is sovereign, man in the image of God, is also sovereign, though in a subordinate sense.

Man has affinity with the inanimate creation, since we are told he was created from the dust of the ground, but man has affinity with the animate creation in that both man and beast were produced by God's formative actions. But, there is a distinction that only man receive the importation of life from the breath of God.

3. The antiquity and chronology of the human race.

Whether or not there are gaps in the Genesis account, or whether or not there are long days or twenty-four hour days, the most critical thing in the doctrine of creation is that all that occurs, occurs by the direct act of God, and man is the result of the mediate creation of God. The Bible itself does not answer how long the human race has existed. Since the Bible does not answer it, then it becomes something of secondary importance. Any view, which does no violence to the facts of scripture and accounts for the biblical data, may be deemed within the realm of orthodoxy.