An Ancient Record -Can You Trust It? - The Fifth and Sixth "Days"

During the fifth creative "day," the Creator proceeded to fill the oceans and the atmospheric heavens with a new form of life-"living souls"-distinct from vegetation. Interestingly, biologists speak among other things, of the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom, and they divide these into sub-classifications.  The Hebrew word transplanted "soul" means "a breather."  The Bible also says that "living souls have blood. Therefore we may conclude that creatures having both a respiratory system and a circulatory system-the breathing denizens of the seas and heavens-began to appear in the fifth  creative period. -Genesis 1:20; 9:3, 4. 

On the sixth "day," God gave more attention to the land.  He created "domestic" animals and "wild" animals, these being meaningful designations when Moses penned the account.   (Genesis 1:240  So it was in this sixth creative period that land mammals were formed.  What, though, about humans?  

The ancient record tells us that eventually the Creator chose to produce a truly unique form of life on earth.  He told his heavenly Son:  "Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have in subjection the fish  of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and the domestic animals and all the earth and every moving animal that is moving upon the earth."  (Genesis 1:26)  Man would therefore reflect the spiritual image of his Maker, displaying His qualities .  And man would be capable of taking in huge amounts of knowledge. Thus, humans could act with an intelligence surpassing that of any animal.  Also, unlike the animals, man was made with a capacity to act according to his own free will, not being controlled mainly by instinct. 

In recent years, scientists researched human genes extensively. By comparing human genetic patterns around the earth, they found clear evidence that all humans have a common ancestor, a source of the DNA of all people who have ever lived, including each of us. In 1988, Newsweek magazine presented all those findings in a report entitled "The Search for Adam and Eve." Those  studies were based on a type of mitochondrial DNA, genetic material passed on only by the female.  Reports in 1995 about research on male DNA point to the same conclusion - that "there was an ancestral 'Adam," whose genetic  material on the [Y] chromosome is common to every man now on earth," as Time magazine put it. Whether those findings are accurate in every detail or not, they illustrate that the history we fin  in Genesis is highly credible, bring authored by One who was on the scene at the time. 

Next time: An Ancient Record-Can You Trust It? - Conclusion of The Fifth and Sixth "Days"

From the book Is There a Creator That Cares About You?