The reason for believing the creation account as written has nothing to do with trees or things that God created but rather the origin of sin.
The origin of sin is that Adam was commanded by God not to do something, and he did it. He disobeyed his Creator and sin came into the world.
This is a completely separate issue from the question, "were trees created instantly and fully grown, or did God plant saplings and they grew over many years?"
Jesus is the second Adam only because there was a first.
Obviously there was a first.
As I said, the Hebrew word for man is Adam - it was not a name then. However he arrived in the world and however he was created, there was a first man. And it was to him that God gave the command not to eat - a command which he chose to disobey.
This is because the first Adam was a real man who was literally tempted and literally failed.
Like I said, of course he was; I've no problem with that.
The first man was a man - that goes without saying.
While Jesus was also a literal man (as well as God of course) who was also tempted by Satan (the temptation of Jesus is the desert) but where the first Adam fell Jesus did not. These things simply don't hold together if Adam was simply a story.
I never said that Adam was simply a story - nor am I arguing FOR evolution.
All that I'm saying is that;
- the Bible is not a scientific textbook and its purpose is not to explain HOW the world was created. Whereas God gives gifts to scientists so that they can discover, investigate and tell us more about God's creation.
- if someone does not believe that the world was made in 6, literal, 24 hour days and everything was created instantly, it does not mean they cannot be a Christian, that they are being deceived by devils, that they are against God and on the side of science, or any of the other things that I have read in various forums over the years.
I agree with John Stott when he said that it is for the scientists to tell us the HOW of creation; what the Bible tells us is the who and why. GOD created, GOD spoke, GOD saw that it was all good. This is God's world, he made it for a purpose - it is not something that randomly came about when some atoms happened to collide/divide/explode. This world is not a mistake or a result of chance - God is behind it all and is in charge.
The gospel is indelibly intertwined with the creation and fall account.
God created man and man chose to disobey God, true; that is not in dispute.
But that doesn't address, or affect, the question; how was the world created? The Bible does not answer this, it says "God spoke and it was so" - but those things could actually have taken thousands of years, in our time, to come into being.
That, for me, doesn't matter and doesn't affect the Gospel one bit. God created man, man rebelled and Jesus, as the second Adam, came to restore all things and reconcile us to the Father.