7 Reasons Satan Doesn’t Want You to Believe Genesis 1–11

Last week we looked at four key areas where spiritual battles are growing in intensity at an alarming rate. Let’s review:

1. The trustworthiness and authority of God’s Word go hand in hand. With the first question in the Bible, Satan asked, “Indeed has God said?” This is an age-old battle that will never quit until the Lord comes back.
2. With churches looking to gimmicks and business models more than ever to get people in the doors, the sufficiency of God’s Word is under fire.
3. Who is Jesus and why did He come? Watered-down and unbliblical answers to these questions bring great scrutiny on the person and work of Jesus Christ.
4. Did Genesis 1–11 really happen? Was there a literal flood? Did man really fall in the Garden of Eden? Was the earth created in six days? Satan wants you to believe that Genesis 1–11 is a make-believe story. But why?

Why is there such a concentrated effort on disproving Genesis 1–11? Why is Satan working so hard to make sure this portion of Scripture becomes a fairy-tale in the mind of mankind? I want to showcase seven reasons Satan will employ any method necessary to rob you of your faith in these events.

1. The Old Testament is in fact the story of Jesus.

Jesus told the unbelieving Jews, “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me” (John 5.46). Moses wrote the entire book of Genesis, so did Jesus’ statement apply only to Genesis 12 and beyond, or does it begin with Genesis 1?

Genesis 3 contains the first promise of Jesus. Satan does not want any kind of reference to the predetermined plan of God–the Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1.20; Revelation 13.8).

2. No creation equals no Creator.

Without a Creator there’s no one to be accountable to when you die. We have various judicial laws that keep us in check for the most part but when you take away the Creator, life is random. Things just happen. The image of God fades from existence. Life no longer is God-breathed. We throw accountability to the wind and man does what his heart desires.

3. Without Genesis 3, there is no evil one who tempted Eve.

Satan wants this removed. He is quick to convince people this is mere “nonsense” … such “foolishness.”

The less people know about Satan the easier it is for him to operate. The last thing Satan wants is for man to understand the role he played in corrupting God’s perfect creation.

I had a medical doctor ask me one time, “How can you believe in such nonsense?” I told him that he lives by just as much faith as I do because he assists people up to death but cannot accompany them beyond that point. The answers to his questions scientifically stop there. At that juncture, the line that is crossed from life to death, everyone must believe someone or something, including the atheists and agnostics. The only way to know what happens after death is to go there and come back, and only Jesus Christ has done that.

4. Without Genesis 3, there is no Fall of man.

There are seven key reasons Satan doesn’t want you to understand and believe in the Fall of man…

1. He doesn’t want you to know there is a curse that affects everybody and everyone.
2. He doesn’t want you to be aware of the affects of sin–that it kills, it always kills.
3. He doesn’t want you to be aware of your inward slavery to a fallen and corrupt nature because if unbelievers don’t know they’re imprisoned, why would they ever try to escape?
4. He doesn’t want you to know that God expelled Adam from His presence for one sin.
5. He doesn’t want you to know there is a time and place where man’s status changed completely–from holy to unholy and from sinless to sinful.
6. He doesn’t want you to know that you only have yourself to blame for any folly you encounter.
7. And he certainly doesn’t want you to know there is a promised head-crusher that has conquered his entire realm, and is offering freedom from your bondage that he helped bring about.

Satan actively seeks to hide all of these truths from mankind because after all, he’s the father of lies (John 8.44).

5. No Flood means no covenants with God.

The promise of the first covenant is found in Genesis 6.18 just before the Flood. This is where God initiates a covenant relationship with man for the first time. It sets the standard and precedent for every other covenant in Scripture. This aspect of God’s relationship with us is vital to our salvation and Satan will do anything he can to prevent us from understanding it.

6. Without the Flood, there is no judgment for sin.

The Flood, thus far, is God’s greatest display of judgment on man’s sin. He destroyed His initial creation and reformed it with new landscapes, new climates, and a single righteous man (Noah) and his family. Man paid a huge price for his sin during the Flood.

We know that through building the ark, Noah’s actions condemned the world of sin (Hebrews 11.7), and his testimony continues to condemn those who do not believe the Word of God.

Satan does not ever want man to understand there is a reckoning for sin–eternal consequences for his actions. He wants man going to the grave believing he got away with the wickedness in his heart.

7. What you do with the first 11 chapters of the Bible, you must do with the rest of it.

The accounts found in Genesis 1–11 are not mere isolated events that are never again mentioned in Scripture. So if you don’t believe these events occurred, what do you do with the rest of Scripture that references them? You see, by disproving the first chapters of the Bible, Satan can lead you down a slippery slope of “disproving” many other books in the Bible. Let’s look at a few examples…

⁴ By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. ⁵ By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God. ⁶ And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. ⁷ By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith (Hebrews 11.4-7).

All the men found in this passage from Hebrews (Abel, Cain, Enoch, and Noah), are all found in the first eleven chapters of the Bible. If you’re going to throw out Genesis 1–11, you’re going to have to throw out the book of Hebrews as well.

And speaking of these men, Abel, Enoch, and Noah are found in the genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3. So if these guys didn’t exist, you have to throw out the book of Luke.

Look at what Peter writes,

⁵ For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water,⁶ through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. (2 Peter 3.5-6)

If there was no Creation, and there was no Flood, then we have to throw out the book of 2 Peter. And since 2 Peter references 1 Peter (2 Peter 3.1), we must throw out 1 Peter as well.

Our Bible is getting thinner isn’t it? You can start to see why this tactic is so appealing to the devil.

Jesus said, regarding His Second Coming, in Luke 17.26-27:

²⁶ And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: ²⁷ they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.

The Second Coming and the Flood go hand in hand. Without one, you don’t have the other. Without the truthfulness of the Flood account, you can’t speak of the Second Coming with any kind of authority because Jesus links them in this passage.

Jesus is either right or he’s wrong about his reference to Noah and the Flood. He’s telling the truth or He’s a liar, and He’s not God in the flesh. If Genesis 1–11 is a make-believe story, then our Savior is a make-believe Savior.

The number of people who believe the first eleven chapters of Genesis is growing smaller every day. Numerous seminaries and denominations have abandoned their faith in this crucial part of Scripture.

It usually starts with something very, very small. “Indeed, has God said?” Yes! Indeed, God HAS said!