the Bible calls nephesh — which is apparently both breath and blood16—only humans are made in the image of God Himself.
At the end of day 6, God considered all He had made — the heavens, the earth, the angels, the animals, and Adam and Eve — and He pronounced everything “very good.” There was no sin, suffering, or death. No shedding of blood. No disease. No thorns or thistles.17 Everything everywhere was perfect!
Then, on the seventh day, He rested and blessed it. God gave man the pattern of working for six days and resting for one, as He did.18
PRIMARY PASSAGES
Genesis 1:24–31; Genesis 2; Ezekiel 28:12–15; Mark 10:6; Exodus 20:11
KEY VERSE
“And the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make a helper comparable to him.’” (Genesis 2:18)
WRAP UP
“Wow! Father, You made the animals, and then You made Adam and Eve. We didn’t evolve from stardust in some kind of primordial goo. You created us special on the sixth day of creation, in Your image. Then in the perfection of the Garden, You gave the amazing act of marriage and told the first husband and wife to produce many children! Please help me to honor marriage and family in the way You invented it, Lord. Please help me to be a good caretaker of the earth and the animals. I want to please You, Father.”
1 Genesis 1:24, 2:19
2 Elephants (elephantidae), giraffe (giraffidae), cattle (bovidae), cats (felidae), dogs (canine.)
3 “Although there are about 668 names of dinosaurs, there are perhaps only 55 different “kinds” of dinosaurs, quoted from “Were Dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark” online at www.answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/were-dinosaurs-on-noahs-ark/.
4 See “Do Leaves Die?” accessed online February 2017 at www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v1/n2/do-leaves-die.
5 Genesis 2:7–14. The Bible mentions four main regions before the Fall of mankind and the catastrophic worldwide Flood of Noah’s day; the four regions were Havilah, Cush, Asshur, and Eden. Adam was formed from the ground in the region called Eden which was in the east, and then placed in an extra-special garden God prepared — the Garden of Eden. Once in the Garden, God brought animals to Adam to name.
6 Genesis 2:8, 2:15
7 Genesis 2:17 is literally, “dying thou dost die” (YLT). The process of dying began immediately after man’s sin.
8 Genesis 2:20
9 Although millions of species of animals exist today, nearly all are the result of rapid changes within the “kinds” (roughly equivalent to the “family” category). For instance, today we have a multitude of species of dogs, but all of them came from the original canine kind. All the species and breeds of dogs — including all the domesticated dogs, and wild dogs like coyotes, wolves and dingoes — have come about by the tremendous amount of information and adaptability that God designed into the DNA of the original pair. Dogs do not evolve into other kinds of animals, they adapt (speciate) within the dog kind. God designed DNA to allow for tremendous and rapid adaptation and speciation through the generations of each kind.
10 For example, if Adam had to name 1,000 top-level kinds, and he named one kind every 15 seconds, he could have been done in less than five hours, even allowing 45 minutes for breaks. In research by Dr. Jean Lightner and others, scientists’ project that there were around 1,000 different top-level kinds of animals [proto-species (genera)] to name. Even so, Adam did not name all the beasts of the earth, but merely a subset of that (the beasts of the field), so he named far less than this number. See Dr. Jean Lightner’s Answers Research Journal article, https://answersingenesis.org/noahs-ark/determining-the-ark-kinds/.
11 The Bible says that Adam was “alone” (he had no mate). It does not say that he was “lonely” (isolated). A common misconception.
12 Genesis 2:22–23 (in Young’s Literal Translation, multiple exclamation marks more fully communicate Adam’s intense delight).
13 Adam and Eve were both created in perfection, before sin, suffering, and death entered the world. Due to the Fall (Genesis 3), no other human has ever experienced that perfection.
14 The married couple was told to have children in a way that required the act of producing them; not only “caring for” them. The created order was male and female, and Jesus defended this in Matthew 19:4–6 and Mark 10:5–9. Homosexuality and homosexual “marriage” is a form of adultery, one of several sins of sexual immorality. With regard to the biblical mandate for parenting, the question is not whether a same-sex couple can love a child, but whether God intended for same sex couples to be parents.
15 Genesis 1:27, 2:7.
16 “People and some animals are described in Genesis as having, or being, nephesh. The Hebrew word nephesh conveys the basic idea of a “breathing or living creature,” but some passages indicate that nephesh creatures may only be the ones that have blood. For example, Leviticus 17:11 states that “the life [nephesh] of all flesh is the blood of it.” There is no example in Scripture of “blood” ever being used in reference to invertebrates. In fact, in the biblical and everyday sense, invertebrates do not have blood [Hebrew, dam]” (from Answers magazine volume 9.4, October–December 2014, in Readers Respond section, https://answersingenesis.org/answers/magazine/v9-n4/readers-respond/readers-respond/ ).
17 Genesis 3:18.
18 Exodus 20:11, 31:12–18. Colossians 2:13–17 indicates that the death of Jesus on the Cross cancelled the Sabbath-keeping covenant that was previously required of the Israelites.
BONUS — Angels
A war arose in heaven soon
