Written by Moses, 1500 years B.C.
With Genesis began the progressive revelation of God, which culminated in Jesus Christ.
Genesis is the seed plot of the Bible.
In it we have in germ form almost all of the major doctrines which are fully developed in the various books which follow. “Holy men wrote as they were moved,” etc.
1. In Genesis Gad is revealed as the Created God—Genesis 1:1.
2. We also have the first hint of the Blessed Trinity, of a plurality of persons in the Godhead. God—Spirit of God—Son of God—Theophany. “Let us make man in our image”—Genesis 1:26. The Trinity is revealed at the Lord’s baptism.
3. In the book, man is described first as:
A. The creation of God’s hands
B. A fallen, sinful being
C. Brought back to God.
4. The wiles of Satan are also exposed—Genesis 3; 2 Corinthians 4:3, 4. The realm in which he works is spiritual. He overturns the Word of God, casts doubt on its integrity, denies its veracity. More subtle—“You shall NOT surely die.”
5. The truth of salvation is typically displayed. Our fallen parents were clothed by God Himself—Genesis 3:21. To procure those skins death had to come—blood must be shed, the innocent was slain in place of the guilty. Only in this way could man be covered, and only in this way can the sinner be fitted to stand before a holy God.
6. Believers’ eternal security is strikingly illustrated—chapter 6. Divine judgment in the forms of a flood descended upon guilty man and swallowed them up. Noah, who had found grace in the eyes of the Lord, was safely preserved in the ark into which God had shut him. Our life in Christ is eternal—Romans 8; John 10.
7. The doctrine of the rapture is also revealed—chapter 5. Enoch, the man who walked with God, “was not”, for God had translated him. He did not pass through the portals of death. He was suddenly removed from these scenes of sin and suffering and transported/raptured into the realm of glory. Describe what will take place at the Rapture.
8. We also learn of the Savior’s coming exaltation. This is strikingly typified in the history of Joseph, who is the most complete of all the personal types of Christ. After a period of humiliation and suffering, was exalted to be governor of Egypt. They conspired against him, and cast him in a pit, and sold him. “Unto him shall the gathering of the peoples be”—chapter 49:10.
All these are marvelous proof of the Divine Authorship. Who but God, who knows the beginning from the end, could have embodied, in germ form, the great doctrines revealed at a much later date.