The Battle for the Beginning

I have had this book on my shelf for two years and finally decided to read it, and I am glad I decided to do so. I was thinking that the book was solely a defense of the literal 6 day creation, but there was much more to glean from the book. MacArthur starts off the book to show the affects that atheism has had on our culture, and will continue to have, if we continue down the path as a nation with no God. I thought this was definitely needed so the reader who has not thought about the implications of atheism can see the results and where the non-moral process leads to as moral human beings.

The strong parts of the book are definitely the exegesis of Genesis 1-3. Undoubtedly, MacArthur shows that in looking to the Bible alone, Sola Scriptura, that there is no wiggle room for anything other than a literal 6 day creation, by our Creator. For those in the Christian community this information is undoubtedly needed and is important to understand the implications if we start to look to science instead of the Scriptures as a source of knowledge about what has already been revealed in the Holy Writ.

MacArthur then continues to show how science actually helps the creation account in the Bible not the other way around, which I found also very interesting. Such as, science says that there must be photosynthesis for plants to grow and nourish. If we follow the non-literal creation account to take billions of years, and plants were created on the 3rd day and the Sun wasn't created until the 4th day, how did the plants survive for those billions of years? Again, science shows the Bible's account of creation to be true.

The part that I found weak was MacArthur continued over and over again to point to the intricacy of animals on the planet then simply said: see, there must have been a creator! I enjoyed reading about a couple of the animals but it really had no impact when he continued to go over and over again focusing on the animals. (I do understand this is exactly what some of our most famous puritans did to prove there was a Creator, like Jonathan Edwards with spiders and Isaac Newton with gravity, but I found it to be repetitive).

This by no means dismisses the importance of this book. In only 221 pages MacArthur does a great job of undermining the atheist and also shows the undermining of the Scriptures a Christian does if they take anything besides the biblical account of six day creation. Link to Buy