I was once invited to speak at a church in Buhl, Idaho as a candidate for pastor. The reception was warm and I rated my message as an 8.5. It was a good time. After the pot luck was over, the elders of the church pulled me aside to talk. They asked me some more questions about my background and expressed a strong interest in having me as their pastor. Toward the end of the conversation, one of the elders made a big point that I was not to worry about my beliefs conflicting with theirs. They said that their church was easy going when it came to the content of the Bible and that they did not care if I believed in all those stories in the Old Testament. Stories like creation, Adam and Eve, the flood, Jonah and the fish, Daniel and the Lions den etc. They all nodded and agreed that those things were just not all that important. I politely told them that there would be problem because I believed that all those "stories" were literally true and that they were very important. I turned down their offer.
Is it optional to believe all that is in the Bible? How important are all those stories? How important are they to you? It is one thing to be ignorant of the things in the Old Testament, it is quite another to deny them or to regard them as exaggerated "stories" with little importance.
In Matt 12:39-41, Jesus said, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah: For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and, behold, a greater than Jonah is here." In this statement, Jesus ties the story of Jonah to his own death and resurrection. He repeats the reference to Jonah again in Matt 16:4. Was Jesus misguided when it came to science and history? Was he using fairy tales to illustrate the important subject of his resurrection? I think not! Jesus also claimed to be greater than Jonah. What good it that? How great would you have to be to be greater than a fairy tail hero? No, Jesus was not misguided. He referred to the story of Jonah as a fact of history. Since Jesus tied it to the resurrection, you cannot throw out the story of Jonah unless you throw out resurrection of Christ as well.
In like manner, Jesus referred to creation when in Mark 10:6 he said "But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female." Was Jesus using a "creation myth" to support his argument about the sanctity of marriage? I think not! Jesus had a direct hand in creation. In John 1:3 we are told, "Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." In 1Cor. 15:22 Paul links the story of creation to the resurrection when he says "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.."
The subject of creation can be found in almost every book of the Bible. One of my favorite passages on the subject is 2Cor 4:6 "For God, who said “Let light shine out of darkness,” is the one who shined in our hearts to give us the light of the glorious knowledge of God in the face of Christ." Think about it. If you deny that God made the light to shine out of darkness, how can you then believe that He has shined in your heart.
The more you read and study the Bible, the more you will find that it must be taken as a whole. 2Tim 3:16 [NET] Every scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
