In the Beginning, Lesson 6: The First Adam and the Last Adam

Welcome to Authorized Sword Ministries. This is Lesson Six of our course In the Beginning: The Truth About Creation. Today's lesson is called The First Adam and the Last Adam.

We're glad you're back.

In Lesson Five we looked at the worldwide Flood. Today we come to the first man, and to the man who came to save us. The Bible does not treat Adam as a story. It treats him as history, and the gospel itself depends on that.

Our Key Verse

"And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit."
— 1 Corinthians 15:45 (KJV)

There is a first Adam, and there is a last Adam. One brought death. The other brings life. If the first man is only a myth, the good news about the second Man is cut at the root.

Part One: Man Made in the Image of God

Male and Female, by God's Hand

On the sixth day, God did something He had not done with the animals. He made man in His own image:

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."
— Genesis 1:27 (KJV)

Male and female. Both bear the image of God. Genesis chapter 2 then shows us how the first man was made:

"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
— Genesis 2:7 (KJV)

Adam did not climb up from the beasts. He was formed from the dust, and life came from the breath of God. Then God made Eve from Adam's side, a helper meet for him, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. The first marriage, and the first human family, begin here. Paul later said:

"The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven."
— 1 Corinthians 15:47 (KJV)

Jesus Believed This

When the Pharisees asked Jesus about marriage, He took them back to the beginning, not to a long age of ape-like ancestors:

"And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,"
— Matthew 19:4 (KJV)

"But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female."
— Mark 10:6 (KJV)

"From the beginning of the creation." Man and woman were there at the start. Luke's Gospel even traces the family line of Jesus all the way back to "Adam, which was the son of God" (Luke 3:38). The New Testament will not let us keep Jesus and throw Adam away.

Part Two: When "Ape-Men" Claims Collapse

The world has been told, again and again, that fossils prove man came from an ape-like ancestor. We need to be honest here. This field has been full of changing reconstructions, and some famous claims have not stood.

Piltdown Man Was a Hoax

In 1912, an amateur archaeologist named Charles Dawson claimed to have found a "missing link" near Piltdown, in Sussex, England. A human-like skull and an ape-like jaw were presented together as one creature, and for decades many accepted it as evidence of a human ancestor. In 1953, that story fell apart. Joseph Weiner, Kenneth Oakley, and Wilfrid Le Gros Clark showed that the skull and the jaw came from two different creatures, a human and an ape, probably an orangutan. The teeth had been filed down to look more human, and the finds had been artificially stained to match the local gravel. The Natural History Museum in London, which holds the material, calls Piltdown Man an audacious fake and a sophisticated scientific fraud.

We do not tell this to mock science. We tell it as a warning. Experts can be taken in when they already expect to find a missing link. A famous "proof" can last for forty years and still be false.

Nebraska Man Was a Mistake

Another famous case was not a hoax. It was a mistake, and that is important to say honestly. In 1917, a rancher and geologist named Harold Cook found a single worn tooth in Nebraska. In 1922, the paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn named it Hesperopithecus haroldcookii and presented it as the first ape from North America. A popular magazine even published an artist's picture of a whole "Nebraska Man." Then more digging was done. In 1927, William King Gregory announced in the journal Science that the tooth belonged to an extinct peccary, a pig-like animal. The identification was retracted.

So one "ape-man" was a stained and filed fake, and another was a pig's tooth. That does not, by itself, settle every fossil that has ever been found. It does tell us to be slow to rewrite Genesis because of a headline, a drawing, or a tooth.

Part Three: Why the Gospel Needs a Real Adam

Paul does not treat Adam as a symbol. He builds the good news on a real first man and a real last Man:

"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:"
— Romans 5:12 (KJV)

"For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous."
— Romans 5:19 (KJV)

"For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
— 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 (KJV)

If death and suffering were already here for millions of years before any Adam sinned, then death is not the wages of sin in the way the Bible describes. We will look at that more closely in our last lesson. For today, notice the line Paul draws. One man disobeyed, and many were made sinners. One Man obeyed, and many are made righteous. Take away the first man, and you have pulled a thread that runs straight to the cross and the empty tomb.

Adam is also called "the figure of him that was to come" (Romans 5:14). The first Adam is a real person who points us to a greater Person.

Part Four: One Blood, One Race, One Saviour

The Bible has a clear answer to racism. Paul told the philosophers at Athens that God

"hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;"
— Acts 17:26 (KJV)

One blood. Every nation. Every shade of skin. We all go back to Adam, and after the Flood we all go back to Noah's family. There is one human race, and every person bears the image of God.

We want to be careful with a well-known phrase here. The full title of Darwin's 1859 book is On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. In Darwin's day the word "races" was often used for varieties of living things, not only for groups of people, so we will not pretend the subtitle was, by itself, a statement about human skin color. What we can say, honestly, is that evolutionary ideas about "favoured" and "less favoured" groups were later used by others to excuse racism and cruelty. That is a misuse of human beings who all bear God's image. The Bible will not support it.

In Christ the wall comes down even further:

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."
— Galatians 3:28 (KJV)

Every person you meet is made in the image of God, and every person you meet needs the Last Adam.

What This Means for Us

You are not an accident, and you are not the end product of the beasts. God formed the first man from the dust and made the first woman from his side. They sinned, and death entered, and that story is our story. But God did not leave us there. The Last Adam came. He is "a quickening spirit," a life-giving Saviour. He died for our sins and rose again, and all who trust Him shall be made alive.

"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."
— Romans 10:9 (KJV)

A Simple Step for This Week

• Read Romans 5:12-19 and 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, 45-49 slowly, and notice how often Paul says "one man" and "one."
• If someone tells you Adam is only a story, kindly show them that Jesus and Paul did not treat him that way.
• Thank God for one human race, one blood, and one Saviour for all.

A Prayer

Lord, thank You that You made us in Your image, male and female, and that we all are of one blood. Thank You for the first Adam, who shows us where sin began, and for the Last Adam, Jesus Christ, who gives life. Help us to trust Him, and to treat every person as someone made in Your image and loved by You. In Jesus' name, amen.

In our last lesson, we will see why creation matters, from Eden all the way to the cross, and to the new creation that is coming.

This is Authorized Sword Ministries. God bless you.

Sources

All sources were opened and checked on November 10, 2026.

1. Piltdown Man: announced 1912 after Charles Dawson's claims near Piltdown, Sussex; exposed as a fraud in 1953 by Joseph Weiner, Kenneth Oakley, and Wilfrid Le Gros Clark. The skull and jaw came from two different species (a human and an ape, probably an orangutan); teeth had been filed; finds had been artificially stained. The Natural History Museum, London, "Piltdown Man." https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/services/library/collections/piltdown-man.html ; see also J. S. Weiner, K. P. Oakley, and W. E. Le Gros Clark, "The solution of the Piltdown problem," Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) Geology, 1953.
2. Nebraska Man (Hesperopithecus haroldcookii): a single worn tooth found by Harold Cook in 1917; described by Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1922 as a North American ape; identification retracted in 1927 when William King Gregory concluded it belonged to an extinct peccary (a pig-like animal). This was a mistake, not a deliberate hoax. Gregory's retraction was announced in Science, 1927. Helpful summaries: "The Role of 'Nebraska Man' in the Creation-Evolution Debate," National Center for Science Education, https://ncse.ngo/role-nebraska-man-creation-evolution-debate ; J. Lents, "The history of hesperopithecus: the human-ape link that turned out to be a pig," PubMed record, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17115373
3. Full 1859 title of Darwin's book, including the subtitle "or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life": public-domain first edition, On the Origin of Species. In the language of the time, "races" often meant varieties of organisms, not only human groups; later misuse of evolutionary ideas to justify racism is a separate, real historical fact and should not be loaded onto the subtitle alone.