FAQ 93
Ideas on Evolution and Creation
NCW 8, January 1994
Q. According to the New Covenant Church's Constitution, the New Covenant rejects evolution and accepts a doctrine of special creation. Do you believe that all things were made in six literal "days" or in longer periods of time?
The doctrine of origins is a complicated one because the Book of Genesis tells us so little. It is perfectly true that the word "day" in, for example, Genesis 1, is to be understood to mean a 24 hour period in the conventional sense. And because this is its literal meaning, most creationists accept that God literally created all things in six twenty-four-hour periods of time.
However, there is another interpretation. Since the word "day" in prophetic imagery can also mean "one thousand years" it is possible that a Genesis "day" is one thousand years too. It could, by the same token, also refer to longer or shorter periods of time.
New Covenant Christians do not, however, accept that the earth is "millions" of years old for the dates ascribed by evolutionists are artificially contrived ones based on unscientific methods.
Most creationists believe that the dinosaurs co-existed with man. A commonly cited text showing their co-existence is in the Book of Job where creatures resembling a brontosaurus and perhaps a parasaurolopholus are described.
There is no direct fossil evidence that men and dinosaurs ever co-existed except for some rather dubious and unprovable human "footprints" supposedly made in brontosaurus tracks in the Pauluxy River bed in Texas, USA. If they did co-exist, it is most unlikely in my opinion that dinosaurs existed in any great numbers. Common sense alone should tell us that no human civilization could possibly co-exist with monsters such as Tyrannosaurus rex or Allosaurus, and if they did, detailed mention of them would certainly have been made somewhere. It is possible that legends of dragons may hark back to times when a few dinosaurs did co-exist with men but in sufficiently small numbers so as not to prevent the building up of settlements. Clearly no kind of human settlement on the plains would have been possible with giant carnivorous dinosaurs roaming the world. Men would have been forced to live in caves.
At this time the New Covenant has made no absolute pronouncements on the duration of creation or even the creation mechanism because it has received very little revelation on the subject. This is a matter that is currently being debated and light from the Lord sought after. If we learn any more, it will be published. For now, we maintain that Darwinian Evolution (and modern theories such as "punctuated equilibrium") are false and that Creationism is true. How God created we do not, as yet, know for certain though a number of theories are currently in circulation amongst us. As this remains speculation we do not propose to publish anything else at this stage.
For a scientific treatment of Evolution, see my article, Evolution: A Doctrine in Search of a Scientific Theory
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Last updated on 18 April 1998
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