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WHY did God create Man?

In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth, day and night, and all the animals on our planet - for a purpose. However, did He create man as some kind of hobby? Have you ever wondered WHY you were born? Does our existence END at death? What is our ultimate destiny? Do we exist to rule the UNIVERSE?

The culmination of God's creation was to create US, man, which is what Genesis clearly states (see Genesis 1, especially 1:26).

The Hebrew word for God is Elohim in Genesis 1:26 and elsewhere, which is a plural form, and for that reason, we find the One who is the Creator referring to "our" image (Genesis 1:26-27). Amazingly, God consists of more than one Being. As the Bible continues its revelation of these Beings, it shows them in a family relationship.

Of all His wonderful creations, we are our Creator's greatest achievement. Through the human reproductive process He set in motion, God has created billions and billions of beings. Moreover, it is His desire that every one of these beings become complete in His eyes. The RESURRECTION, when humankind's nature transforms, will bring completion.

Genesis 1 and 2 describes a PHYSICAL creation -- a model that precedes a SPIRITUAL creation. Some have argued that Adam had the Holy Spirit. "After all," they say, "he was created perfect!" Indeed, all that God made was perfect, but it was PHYSICAL - the human creation was only flesh and blood. Even though Adam was perfect, he was incomplete. He lacked a very important ingredient. He lacked the Holy Spirit. Because of his being incomplete, Adam made a wrong decision in the Garden of Eden. He disobeyed God and obeyed Satan. This was the first sin (Genesis 3:22-24).

It is vitally important that we understand how God redeems us. Our salvation is by grace through faith. Christians are His workmanship -- created in Christ Jesus to perform good works (Ephesians 2:8-10). The ministers of this world would have you believe that there are NO WORKS involved in following Christ. They teach a person need only accept Jesus to receive salvation. This is not what the Bible teaches!

Did God create ANOTHER Adam?

QUESTION:   Did God create another or a second Adam? If not, how did the human race get so BIG so quickly?

ANSWER:  Some people believe Adam and Eve were just two representative people among many, but that is not what the Bible says. The Bible reveals only TWO people were specially and personally created by the hand of God. Additionally, evidence to support the fact that God created only two original humans can be found in the meaning of Eve's name.

After God created Eve He brought her to Adam. Upon meeting his helpmate for the first time he named her in the Hebrew 'ishshâh, or "woman" (Strong's Concordance #H802), which is the generic designation of all females (Genesis 2:23). Interestingly, it was only AFTER they sinned that Adam gave his wife a personal name (Genesis 3:20).

Eve's name in the above verse is translated from the Hebrew word chavvâh, Strong's Concordance #H2332 and literally means "life" or "living." Inserting the actual Hebrew meaning of Eve's name into Genesis 3:20 gives us below.

"And Adam called his wife's name LIFE, because she was the mother of ALL LIVING."

Eve was named LIFE, or the mother of ALL living, because out of her would spring the ENTIRE (not just some of or most of) human race! Eve's name does not leave any room for human beings to BEGIN to come into existence by any other woman or means.

Now let us answer your second question regarding how the human family could have gotten progressively bigger if only two humans were originally created.

The Bible mentions, by name, three children of Adam and Eve. Cain was the firstborn. Seth came into the world sometime after Cain killed Abel, when Adam was one hundred and thirty years old. Genesis 5 tells us that after Seth was born our first parents had other children.

"After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years;  and he had SONS and DAUGHTERS." (Genesis 5:4)

Adam lived a total of nine hundred and thirty (930) years! It would be safe to assume that Eve lived at least as long, maybe even longer, than her husband. Even if we assume they only had three children in their first 130 years together, they had PLENTY of time after this to take full advantage of God's blessing and obey His command to procreate (Genesis 1:28).

A footnote in the writings of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 1, Chapter 2) stated that a very old tradition said the first couple had a total of THIRTY-THREE (33) sons and TWENTY-ONE (21) daughters!

Additionally, since the first couple were created perfect, their genetic makeup would be perfect and so would that of their first few children. With no genetic problems to enter the picture, God allowed them (for a time) to intermarry and fairly quickly begin to populate the world. As time went by, however, genetic imperfections would make close-kin marriages impractical and a real risk not only for the mother but also the children who could more easily be born with genetic defects and handicaps.

Some mathematicians have calculated that at the time of Noah's Flood, which was roughly 1,600 years after the creation of man, that the population on earth could conservatively been at least ONE BILLION people!

The Bible record leads us to conclude that God personally created only two humans, and then let the biological processes and urges He placed in them do the rest to populate the earth. Thank you for submitting your question about a second Adam.

At what AGE did God create Adam?

QUESTION:  At what age did God create Adam? Was he created to look like a young man or someone older?

ANSWER:  You have asked a good question about Adam that unfortunately is not definitively answered in the Bible. That said, we can draw a general age range from inferences made in scriptures and from man's history.

When Michelangelo sculpted the statue called Slaves in the 1500s he depicted his subjects as young men in their prime at about the age of 30 or so. He also painted Adam in his prime when depicting him on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Archaeologists that have uncovered tombs and mummified remains from the ancient Egyptians have found that most of the statues and masks discovered depict a person at an age when they were in the prime of his or her life (one notable exception is Amenhotep IV). Was this the pride of man to want to look his best for posterity or was this the inspiration of God to do these art pieces in this manner? If it was his inspiration then we might surmise that Adam, who was sculpted out of the red earth of the Middle East, was created in the prime of human life. This prime would be roughly around the age of 30.

When Jesus was killed on the cross he was also in the prime of his life or half way through his earthly lifetime. He is called the Second (or last) Adam in the Bible (1Corinthians 15:45).

We know that after our first parents left the Garden of Eden they were young enough to procreate many, many children. When we study all of the "begets" found in Genesis and elsewhere we see that the first child in each family is usually born when one or both parents are between the ages of 25 and 35. This lends some evidence to the argument that the first man was created in this age bracket.

Was Adam fully comprehending and emotionally mature when he was created? Perhaps, but if he had lived longer in the world of wickedness he would have seen the wisdom of doing things the right way. Instead, he sinned and chose to decide for himself what was right and wrong, instead of trusting in his Maker. One indication that he was emotionally like an adolescent child is when his sin was discovered. Rather than owning up to it like a mature person and asking for forgiveness he chose to lay the blame on another person (Eve). She, of course, followed his example and laid her sins on the serpent (Satan) who beguiled or deceived her.

How long Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden before they sinned is not known. We know that their lives were not subject to death until they sinned. Their life span was counted from that point forward. Did God teach them his laws and educate them in the disciplines he thought were necessary for their understanding? He gave Adam the sole task of naming all of the animals. One would need to know a little bit about biology to be able to do that I would think. This also would take a considerable amount of time. God also gave them the dominion over all of the earth with the express command to dress and keep it. This would, of necessity, require some knowledge of the physical world around them.

In conclusion, it would be safe to say that Adam was likely physically created by God to look like a human being in the 25 to 35 year old age range.

Should we believe the lifespans of pre-flood man?

The main focus of skepticism about how long people lived in the Bible has focused mainly on the genealogies listed in the first several chapters of Genesis. Adam lived to be 930 years old (Genesis 5:5) and Methuselah, the oldest human, lived 969 years (verse 27). Noah, who was already 600 years old when the flood came, lived a total of 950 years. What are we to make of all these advanced ages? Although undoubtably humans before the flood lived very long lives, those living after the deluge experienced lifespans that were significantly shorter. For example, Moses lived to the age of 120, which is slightly less than Jeanne Calment who in 1997 died at the age of 122 years.

The ancient Roman historian Varro asserted that to understand the REAL age of the patriarchs one must divide their lifespans by 12 (i.e., substitute lunar months for solar years). This, however, does not work when one considers the age at which the patriarchs sired their first son. For example, if we divide the age at which the Bible says Enoch had Methuselah (65 - see Genesis 5:21) by twelve, we end up having him become a father just after he turned five years old!

What might have caused the decline in lifespans to what we now accept as normal? There are ways to attempt to explain the difference in longevity although they are somewhat speculative. For example, Henry Morris and John C. Whitcomb in the seminal scientific creationist book The Genesis Flood promote the idea that because the earth's water was suspended above it (see Genesis 1:6-7; cf. 7:11) before the great Flood, it helped protect the patriarchs from ultraviolet radiation. Such water in the atmosphere made for a better, more even and temperate climate throughout the earth. After climatic conditions radically changed after the Deluge, people on average lived shorter and shorter lives (assuming they were not cut down by childhood diseases, etc.) to where a 'good long life' was considered living to the age of 70 or 80 (Psalm 90:10).

Much like the belief that God (re)created the world in six days in Genesis 1, it's easy today to be skeptical that the pre-flood patriarchs lived an average of more than 800 years. But, if we remember that an all-powerful, all-knowing God could have remade the world faster than we could snap our fingers, we should not think the information in Genesis is so far-fetched.

Ultimately, it comes down to belief, a reasonable but not blind faith. If the Bible is reliable in what can be checked, it's reasonable to believe in what cannot be checked. It's much like questioning a witness in a court room during a trial. If the witness' story checks out in parts that can be checked, and is not contradictory, etc., then it's reasonable to believe his or her testimony on matters that cannot be verified. This explanation of pre-flood lifespans may not seem fully plausible to our rationalistic minds, but that is where faith comes in.