Category Archives: Creation

GOD IS A LOVING CREATOR (3)

Creation December 12, 2025 Leave a comment

PMW 2025-098 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

As I conclude this brief three-part study on God’s goodness to us in creation, I want to close with the fact that our Creator is perfectly righteous.

God Is Perfectly Righteous

The God who creates man and gives him all good things, is perfect and righteous. The Bible repeatedly speaks of God’s absolute righteousness, making such statements as:

“The Rock! His work is perfect, / For all His ways are just; / A God of faithfulness and without injustice, / Righteous and upright is He” (Deut 32:4).
“As for God, His way is blameless” (Psa 18:30a; 2 Sam 22:31).
“Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; Your judgments are like a great deep” (Psa 36:6).
“Your righteousness, O God, reaches to the heavens” (Psa 71:19a).
“The ways of the LORD are right” (Hos 14:9).
“The LORD is righteous within her; / He will do no injustice. / Every morning He brings His justice to light; / He does not fail. / But the unjust knows no shame” (Zeph 3:5).

Jesus prays to God calling him “righteous Father” (John 17:25). Continue reading →

GOD IS A LOVING CREATOR (2)

Creation December 9, 2025 Leave a comment

PMW 2025-097 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

This is my second article in a three-part series on God’s goodness as our Creator. Postmillennialists should emphasize God’s goodness in creation because his goodness guides creation to its good end. We believe that even though the world will never be perfect before Christ returns, we will make dramatic advances toward perfection as the gospel progresses in history.

Now I will consider the fact that:

God Creates Man

The Bible opens in its first chapter with the majestic march of six days. In Genesis 1 we read the record of God’s unfolding creative process as it leads to its climax in the creation of man (Gen 1:26–28). Man is the very goal of creation, and its high point. In fact, though it necessarily mentions the creation of the starry heavens (Gen 1:1, 14–16), the creation record intentionally focuses on a small part of the universe: the earth, its flora and fauna . . . and man (Gen 1:2–13, 17–30). And even the creation of the sun, moon, and stars is for the purpose of giving light on earth the special arena of God’s creative work (Gen 1:14–16). Continue reading →

GOD IS A LOVING CREATOR (1)

Creation December 5, 2025 Leave a comment

PMW 2025-096 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

The postmillennial hope is rooted in the goodness of our loving God, who is our Creator. Thus, evidence of the postmillennial hope can be found in the creation account in Genesis 1–2.

Genesis is the book of beginnings, and for our purposes we will focus on its presentation of the beginning of the world, of man, and the revelation of God’s goodness to man. In order to properly understand our spiritual hope in a God-given salvation we must recognize our historical context in a God-created world. Neither Christianity nor salvation can be abstracted from the real world. Christianity is not a magical and mystical faith, but an historical and supernatural one. Continue reading →

INTRODUCING GENESIS (2)

Creation, Old Testament June 24, 2025 1 Comment

PMW 2025-051 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

This is my second in a two-part, rather extensive series introducing Genesis. We now move on to consider its:

Genre
Moses was a gifted writer, as both the careful structure of Genesis as a whole and the exalted prose of Genesis 1 particularly testify. He was also quite capable of writing compelling poetry; in fact, and he did so frequently, both in Genesis (e.g., 2:23; 3:14–19; 12:1–3; 27:27–29; 49:2–27) and elsewhere (e.g., Exo. 15:1–8; Num. 6:24–26; Deut. 32:1–43; Psa. 90). But what is the basic genre of Genesis?

The content and structure of Genesis show that he wrote in narrative, historical prose. This is expected in that Israel possessed a factual, real-world oriented faith. As noted above, Genesis serves as the prologue to the Pentateuch. This is significant in that the Pentateuch is a lengthy narrative of the historical formation of Israel as a nation. Genesis would be useless for its purposes if we discount its historicity. Scholars do not doubt the basic historical nature of his genre in Exodus through Deuteronomy, even when they dispute its accuracy. And only a few scholars from critical schools of thought doubt his historical intent in Genesis 12–50. Nor do we have any evidence of a genre shift in the historical narratives from Genesis through the rest of the Pentateuch. Continue reading →

INTRODUCING GENESIS (1)

Creation, Old Testament June 20, 2025 Leave a comment

PMW 2025-050 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

Title
Genesis is the first of the five books of Moses (the Pentateuch). The titles to the first five books of the Bible are actually the first words of the Hebrew text in each book. Thus, the Jews called the first book Bereshith, which is the first word in the Hebrew of Genesis 1:1. It means “by way of beginning, or in beginning.”

The title by which we today call this book is derived not from the first words of the Hebrew, but from its Septuagint title. The Septuagint title is directly transliterated as: Genesis. Each of the Greek titles of the Pentateuch summarize the subjects of the books, rather than presenting their first words. Had the ancient Greek translators used Genesis’s first words, it would have been called: En archē (“in beginning”). They apparently derived the title we use from Genesis 2:4a which reads: “This is the book of the generation [geneseos] of heaven and earth.” The Greek word means “origin, source, or generation.”
Continue reading →

ADAM & EVE’S TENANCY IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN

Creation, sin February 4, 2025 Comments: 2

PMW 2025-010 by Jame R. Hughes (Creation.com)

Gentry Note:
Creation is the foundation to all theology. This is significant for postmillennialism in that Creation leads ultimately to New Creation, and since the resurrection/ascension of Christ we are “new creations,” spiritually anticipating the consummate New Creation. Thus, the revelation of creation and the fall in Genesis is a crucial aspect of a full-fledged theological structure.

This article on the timing of Adam’s sin in Eden matches what I have long thought. It is a succinct presentation of this important feature of Adam’s failure in Eden.

How long were Adam and Eve in the garden?

When I have been speaking on behalf of CMI, I have been asked a few times, “How long were Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?” A simple answer is to state that the Bible does not tell us the answer. However, we can draw legitimate inferences from other passages in the Bible and from what we know about current human biology which may help us provide a possible answer.

At the conclusion of the sixth day of creation, God declared all that he had made to be “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Since there was no sin in the perfect state at the end of that day, Adam and Eve were not expelled from the garden of Eden on the sixth day of creation. The events in Genesis 3—the fall of Adam and Eve into sin and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden could have occurred hypothetically on the next day, the first Sabbath—the seventh day of the creation week—or weeks or months after the first Sabbath. Continue reading →

GENESIS PROVES POSTMILLENNIALISM

Creation, Optimism April 26, 2024 Comments: 16

How Genesis and PostmillPMW 2024-032 by Kendall Lankford

[Gentry note:

This nicely presented, insightful article appears on The Shepherd’s Church website (The Shepherd’s Church is located at: 10 Jean Ave. Suite 12, Chelmsford, Mass.).]

INTRODUCTION

If you have been with us over the last 8 weeks, we have been attempting to summarize what a failed eschatology looks like. From the hyper-defeatism of dispensationalism and premillennialism to the subtle apathy for cultural engagement that seeps in through amillennialism and the Radical Two Kingdoms, we have been attempting to show that a wrong view of eschatology will have an impact on how you live in the world. Because let’s face it, if you believe that we lose down here (As John MacArthur famously said), we will not work down here. If we believe the rapture is always moments away, then why waste your time doing the long work of making disciples and transforming culture? If we believe that all of our energy and effort should go into spiritual activities (the Kingdom of God) and that this work does not overlap with the physical world (The Kingdom of Man), then why engage at all? Why obey Jesus’ command to be salt and light in the world if the only aspect we will ever see redeemed is spiritual? Better to spend your time converting souls for a Gnostic utopia than Biblically discipling nations to live with Jesus in the New Heavens and New Earth. Continue reading →