Hi Extol, Mark,
These are some excerpts from The Postscript To Nashville 08 Conference. There are several places in the Nashville 08 Conference papers where Ray discusses more about Humanity and Man being introduced on the scene. I would suggest you read All The Nashville 08 Transcripts to get your complete answer.http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,9130.0.htmlExcerpt # 1. FIRST HUMANS
Now I talked a little, not during the conference so much, but in some of the bull sessions in the evening we had. Where it was said, ‘were Adam and Eve the first humans?’ Well, I said, not necessarily and I gave numerous reasons for that. I thought of another one here just yesterday, so I’ll throw this out just for fun and just to think about. I’m not making some big stand on this.
I used to think where it says God formed man from the dust of the ground (Gen. 2:7), He’s just going back to explain in more detail what He did in chapter 1. But I’m thinking that’s not tenable either.
So let’s ask ourselves, when God created herbs and things, did He just create one? One piece of moss, one blade of grass? Or did He make grass, a lot of grass and a lot of things. Well let me explain this, because I don’t know if I did this at the conference. Notice where it says in verse 11.
Now what do science finds are the progression of plants? You start with the primitive, they can be somewhat advanced, until you finally have whole trees producing fruit. What is one of the last things in plant life that comes on the scene according to the geological table? It’s a very recent addition… flowers. Flowers are relatively new to plant life in the geological time scale.
So obviously He didn’t make one blade of grass or one piece of algae, there was a multitude. Now notice when we come over to verse 20.
Gen 1:20 And God said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures, that hath life.
Did He just make one male and one female fish or was there an abundance of them? Then we go on verse 21, “He made the great tanniyn.” Which I believe you know are the dinosaurs, the reptiles.
Then we have the cattle, verse 24. Did He just make one cow and one bull, is that it? Well, it says He made cattle.
Well then when we come down to verse 26, it says “God said, Let Us make man…” But the Hebrew is ‘humanity.’ “Let us make humanity.” Did He really just make one man and one woman? That’s not what He did with all the other things, did He? Look at it.
Gen. 1:27 Let Us make humanity in Our image after Our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle…
Remember, I pointed out it doesn’t say let them have dominion over the great tanniyn, the dinosaurs. Why? Because they were extinct for 50 million years.
“In the image of God created He him.“ That’s what it says, but that’s not in the Hebrew. It just says, “In the image of God created.” That’s all, it doesn’t say “He him.” Concordant puts “created it.” God created it, humanity, it. So it just says “in the image of God created.” He created, but to make the English more understandable, they put in “…created He him.” God created him, but the “him” is not in there.
Excerpt #2.
“Male and female created.” Now in our translation, it says “male and female He created them.” So it’s pretty difficult to say, ‘well there was one man and one woman.’ He created humanity, He created humanity male and He created humanity female. Humanity, okay.
Now when we come to Adam and Eve, He gives them a name and we know it’s just one. Are they the first ones though? Maybe not. Because we later have Cain, that says his sentence is too great, wherever I go, they will kill me (Gen. 4:13-14). Who will kill him? Who? There was only Abel and he killed Abel. So if there’s only Adam and Eve and their two sons, Cain and Abel… well Cain killed Abel, so now there’s only one man left, and his mother and father. He says to God, wherever I go, “anyone who finds me will kill me." Who? He killed the only other man alive on earth. Well if we interpret it that way, there are problems. Then Cain took a wife… so there’d be all these other things to contend with and so on. Alright.
george.