Genesis in space and time: The flow of biblical history

Francis A. Schaeffer

Copyright 1972, ISBN 08778846367

I have been a fan of Francis Schaeffer for many, many years. Peggy and I visited his L’Abri in Holland in the late 1980s. His Christian Manifesto is a classic and I highly recommend it for any high school student. Now, this book “Genesis in Space and Time” was also for most part a good book. While Dr. Schaeffer shows clearly how Genesis is a history book and shares great insides on the epic events of history recorded in Genesis, the book has one serious flaw in stating that Genesis is a book of “Genealogies not Chronologies”. I was disappointed. I have been wondering if with all our creation science research over the last thirty years Dr. Schaeffer would have held a different view had he be born a generation later? The chronologies that we find in Genesis and elsewhere in the Scriptures are certainly there for a reason and that is, believe it or not, to give us a reliable chronology of history. Why else would God have bothered to give us the exact dates of epic events like the flood of Noah’s days? Or why would God have gone through all the trouble keeping a precise record of when so-and-so begat so-and-so? Why do we have all the life times of the great patriarchs in Genesis? Certainly to aid us in putting together not only a genealogy but also a chronology of history!

--Hanno