In June 2015 I had the great privilege of participating in teaching and preaching in Fortaleza, Brazil. The organizers translated my PowerPoint presentations and conference notes into Portuguese. The topic for the conference was Creation. I hope that making these materials available online will be an encouragement to many Portuguese-speaking Christians, lay people and pastors alike. My thanks to Pastor Jenuan Silva Lira of Igreja Biblica Batista do Planate and to Diego Ramos (one of my students when he was at The Master’s Seminary) for arranging the conference and managing the translation of the materials.
In the Beginning: Creation and Biblical Authority /
No Princípio: Criação e Autoridade Bíblica
Conference Notes: English / Portuguese
1. Creation Outside Genesis: The Biblical Testimony / Criação fora de Gênesis: O Testemunho Bíblico
Many Bible students make the mistake of thinking that the sole potential witness to Creation resides in Genesis 1-2. Enemies of literal six-day creationism believe they only need to create doubt and suspicion about the authenticity or the integrity or the historicity or the accuracy of the text of the Bible’s first two chapters. However, evidence for six-day creationism permeates much of Scripture–it is part of its warp and woof.
2. The Creation Record: Is It Poetry? / O Relato da Criação: Narrativa ou Poesia?
One attack on the historicity of Genesis 1-2 appeals to an argument based upon the genre (kind of literature). If those two chapters are actually poetry, does that mean that the content cannot be understood as an accurate account of historical events?
3. The Historicity of Adam and Eve / A Historicidade de Adão e Eva
Today’s hot button topics in the area of Old Testament studies includes the raging debate over the historicity of Adam and Eve. Was Adam the physical, historical, genetic head of the human race? Are Adam and Eve the characters of history? legend and myth? or neither?
4. Creation and Fall: The Problem of Death / A Criação e a Queda: O Problema da Morte
When did death enter God’s created world? The issue involves more than just human death–it involves the deaths of billions of living creatures in the geological fossil record. What does the Bible have to say about the topic theologically? Paul’s epistle to the Romans provides some of the most specific teaching on this topic.
5. Noah’s Flood: Global and Catastrophic or Local and Gradual? / O Dilúvio de Noé: Global e Catastrófico ou Local e Gradual?
The entire issue of the age of the earth involves two different interpretations of the geological record. The purely secular science viewpoint argues for uniformitarian models. The purely biblical viewpoint responds with an alternative explanation based upon the Flood of Noah’s day. For this second viewpoint to be a legitimate model explaining the fossil record the Bible must teach a global and catastrophic Flood as opposed to a local and gradual Flood.