Did God Really Say. . . .?

It is the height of irony that so many Christians have succumbed to the attacks by the secular-humanist society around us when their game plan has been

"clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world....So [we] are without excuse."
Romans 1:20 (ESV, paraphrased, used out of context for a point)

What do I mean by that, exactly? Well, from the very beginning, the attack on humanity has been rooted in the subtle words of the serpent in the Garden:

"Did God actually say..."
Genesis 3:1 (ESV)

You see, the attacks on our faith today are just as subtle now as they were then. And believers everywhere have fallen for it, including many evangelical leaders! The world has taken fallible Man's interpretation of the things around us and tried to force it to fit the biblical account! And over time, likely in order to keep the proverbial door open to discussions about the Gospel, we've acquiesced on these foundational principles of our faith.

For example, Oxford Hebrew scholar James Barr, in a letter to David C.C. Watson, April 23, 1984, wrote

"...probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: 1. creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience; 2. the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story; 3. Noah's flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark."

Naturally, Barr doesn't believe Genesis, but he understands the writer's intention. Consider Exodus 20:11, which often gets overlooked any debate on what the writer of Genesis meant to say:

"For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy." (ESV)

The appropriate hermeneutic for Scripture in general, and Genesis in particular, should be exegesis, not eisegesis. God has revealed Himself to us through His word. I do not find the need to force it to say what I find to be more "reasonable" in light of what origins science, rather than observational science has determined about the "truth" of history. Genesis is God's first and best source of information with regards to the beginning of history as He was the one and only eye-witness to the events contained within it.

So yes, God really did say...