The Confessing Seventh-day Adventist

Two stories or one?
Until the latter half of the 19th century, Genesis 1 and 2 were seen as one continuous, uniform story with Genesis 1:1–2:6 outlining the world's origin, and 2:7–2:25 carefully painting a more detailed picture of the creation of humanity. Modern scholarship, citing (1) the use of two different names for God, (2) two different emphases (physical vs. moral issues), and (3) a different order of creation (plants before humans vs. plants after humans), believes that these are two distinct scriptures written many years apart by two different sources, chapter 1 by the Priestly source and chapter 2 by the Jahwist, with the bridge the work of a "redactor", or editor. [1].

- Metzger, Bruce M.; Murphy, Roland E., eds (1991). "Annotation to Genesis 2:4b". The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha (Revised edition ed.). USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 2048. ISBN 0195283562.
- Metzger, Bruce M.; Coogan, Michael D., eds (1993). The Oxford Companion to the Bible (First Printing ed.). Oxford University Press,. pp. 932. ISBN 0195046455.

This is the end of the first creation account:

Genesis 2
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. 2 By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

The second creation account begins as follows:

Genesis 2
4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven. 5 Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. 6 But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. 7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. 8 The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. 9 Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Speculations aside, such as the origin of the book of Genesis, there is nothing unusual about believers in God agreeing that their most confident perceptions about the universe are imperfect. The evidence that we see only a limited reflection of the truth is overwhelming (1 Corinthians 13:12). Scripture abounds with multiple prophetic scenarios so why be surprised with two distinct accounts of creation? It's an undeniable fact that the book of Daniel weaves together two distinct prophecies, the first one is written in Aramaic and anticipates the world as coming to an end in the days of a divided fourth kingdom (the Roman Empire) and the second scenario, written in Hebrew, envisions the world ending in the period of the divided Greek kingdom. And the book of Revelation foretells of the world possibly ending in the first century (the seals), then in 1844 (the trumpets). But those conclusions are cancelled with the introduction of a third and final scenario in Revelation 12, which extends the inevitable end of time to an even more distant future. [2] [3].