An upcoming documentary is slated to explore a contentious question: Is the biblical book of Genesis literal, real-life history?
Dr. Del Tackett, former president of the Focus on the Family Institute and the former director of technical planning for the National Security Council under President George H.W. Bush, spent a year interviewing biologists, astronomers, archeologists and Bible experts — and those discussions are included in the film “Is Genesis History?” which is slated for release nationwide on Feb. 23.
Tackett’s central goal? To ask these experts to help him — and viewers — “better understand the world we see around us.” Thus, the film pledges to take audiences “on a remarkable journey to explore evidence that supports historic claims of the Book of Genesis.” And after the film’s showing, Tackett and a panel of theologians and scientists will discuss the debate in further detail.
As for Tackett, he made it clear in an interview with Faithwire exactly where he stands.
“I am convinced that the historicity of Genesis is true. It’s not a poem, it’s not an analogy,” Tackett said. “It really is the eyewitness account that God gave to us.”
Of course, not everyone embraces a literal explanation of Genesis, with some rejecting the stories in the book as impossible, unlikely or simply unverifiable. But Tackett said he believes the “current scientific paradigm” that’s en vogue today could be one reason why so many dismiss the biblical narrative.
Today’s worldview, he said, is one that is characterized by “deep time” — an elongated creation timeframe of millions or billions of years that does not align with the six-day Genesis narrative. Tackett said the fact that deep time is the popular narrative has made it difficult for people to think outside that box, as they come to the biblical text with a lens that already colors how they see the issue.
“If you then read the Genesis account and you have been schooled — because academia, the media, the signage, it all holds to that deep-time paradigm,” he said. “And if that is what you have been told then you come to Genesis and you read it and it doesn’t fit in that paradigm unless you do a lot of twisting and turning, unless you try to change the genre of the words, and so I think that’s what is happening.”
As for his own views, Tackett affirmed that he personally embraces a six-day creation paradigm, saying he sees no reason why an all-powerful God wouldn’t have been able to create the universe in such a short period of time.
“I clearly believe that God created the world in those six days … and so I believe that’s what God did in just the same way that Jesus turned water into wine,” he said. “If a scientist were trying to look at the wine that Jesus made he would have to come to the conclusion that it had been fermenting for years and years.”
When asked what he observed while filming “Is Genesis History?” that he found the most compelling, Tackett referenced soft dinosaur tissue as being particularly noteworthy (note: some scientists have tried to explain how this tissue could still be preserved).
“It was spongy; that can’t exist if these fossils are millions of years old, it can’t be there,” he said, going on to reference the flood of Noah’s day. “In the Grand Canyon, looking at the massive sediment in those layers with very smooth lines in between each of those layers, it just to me speaks of the enormity of the judgement of God, and the power he unleashed on the world.”
Tackett went on to say that he believes the description of the ark offers “the most clear historical narritive genre of almost anything we have in the entire Bible” — and added that he believes the proof can be found in rock layers around the world and the “mass graveyards of the creatures that were buried as a result of that judgement.”
Find out more about the documentary here.
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