We just had a powerful conversation about Moses vs John Walton on Genesis on the Creation Today Show with Eric Hovind and Zach Hardison (Book Zach Here), author of Stay Right There, and it could not have been more timely. At a moment when more and more churches are being encouraged to rethink and reinterpret the opening pages of the Bible, Zach stepped in to explain why Genesis matters far more than most people realize. This was not about winning a debate. It was about whether God’s Word is allowed to define its own meaning, or whether modern scholarship and ideas, like those promoted by John Walton, get to reshape it. 

Zach walked us through something many believers have never been taught even though it fills the Bible from cover to cover. It is called intertextuality. It means that God repeatedly explains what He says in one place by saying it again somewhere else. Scripture is not a loose collection of religious thoughts. It is one unified, interconnected message. There are more than 340,000 cross references throughout the Bible, and Genesis alone connects to the rest of Scripture 381 times. Zach compared it to a massive grove of aspen trees where what looks like thousands of separate trees above ground is actually one living organism below the surface. Tug on one tree and the entire grove moves. That is how God designed His Word.

The conversation then turned to a growing movement in seminaries and churches that teaches a very different way of reading Genesis. Modern theologian John Walton argues that Genesis is not about God creating the world, but about God assigning roles to a world that already existed. In his view, creation is functional rather than material, and Genesis is theology instead of history. But Moses, the author of Genesis, presents something far clearer. God creates the heavens and the earth. He speaks light, land, plants, animals, and mankind into existence. Adam is formed from dust. Eve is formed from Adam. Death enters only after sin.

Walton builds his framework by turning to ancient Near Eastern pagan texts from Egypt and Babylon, cultures that rejected the God who revealed Himself to Moses and produced their own counterfeit origin stories. Zach compared it to DFC, a counterfeit of KFC he discovered while visiting Japan. If you want the original, you have to go to KFC, not DFC!

Zach showed why that approach cannot stand, because Scripture itself keeps repeating what God did in Genesis throughout the rest of the Bible. Luke traces humanity back to Adam, who had no human father. Paul calls Adam the first man formed from the dust. Revelation identifies the serpent of Genesis as Satan. The Bible keeps saying the same thing again and again. God created. Man fell. Death entered. Christ came to reverse it.

That is why this matters. If Genesis is not real history, the gospel becomes unmoored. But if Genesis is true, then the Cross and the resurrection make sense. The Bible begins with no death and ends with no death, and everything in between tells the story of how God restores what sin broke.

Zach’s message was simple and strong. Stay right there. Do not move the foundation. Let God interpret His own Word.

We strongly encourage you to watch this episode. It will give you clarity, confidence, and a deeper trust in the unity and power of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation.

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