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| Details of Creation |
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| Written by Dell Young | |||
| Wednesday, 31 December 1969 23:59 | |||
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Romans 15:4 ?Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we might through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.? In Timothy 3:16 ?All scripture i...
Romans 15:4 ?Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we might through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.? In Timothy 3:16 ?All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.? For this study, we need to understand these passages and accept them as truth.
When we start to read the Bible and begin in the beginning, our mind gets filled with genealogies. Somebody, whose name we can?t pronouce, begat somebody else, who?s name we can?t pronounce and we read through this and we can?t make much sense out of it. But, if we want to understand the message that God brings to us, we need to understand in the beginning, that this book has no superfluous language in it. The book that God has put together so meticulously through the years by the different writers, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, has a meaning in every passage. The meaning may be contained in the context, or the meaning may be general that reaches out beyond what the writer, the speaker or the teacher is teaching at a particular time. This is where we want to start. We want to start in the beginning of God?s word and try to understand it. We want to look for some of the things, that are later referred to by Paul in the New Testament as, a ?shadow of heavenly things to come?. We want to look for those shadows, those examples and those teachings and we need to search out and find the meaning of these things and how they apply to us. Now, I chose this because it is something that is familiar to all of us. Nearly everybody has read the first chapter of the Bible, at one time or another. It is a simple story. In the first chapter, it gives us the creation. The second chapter goes back over this material chronologically. Except for references in later books, these are the only two chapters that deal with this magnificent point in time where God speaks the world into existence. So, it leaves us with this: we have no reason to marvel or stand in awe of this accomplishment because God doesn?t expect us to. He simply said this is the way it was. He wants us to accept that it was something very simple for Him to do, but He did it for a reason. This is what we want to explore. We begin in Genesis 1:1-2 ?In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.? Now, our mind has the capability to reach out. This capability is like fire or water. It needs to be controlled so that it becomes a help and not a hindrance in our studies. When we read a passage of scripture, and something is suggested to us, we reach out ahead or go back to a time before, and speculate in our own minds what happened. When we do that, we lose the thread of truth that is offered to us. When we read that the earth was without form, and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep....we have mental images of this. We are influenced by artists who have tried to draw throughout the years what they visualize as ?the beginning.? I have a Bible that is about 60 years old. In it, as in others, is a picture of the Creator with a fierce, scowling image with the wind blowing in his hair and lightning flashing in the sky behind him and we can almost hear the thunder rolling. This is how we picture the formation of the earth. ?In the beginning...? It is very hard to describe something that is not. You can?t draw a picture of something that is without form. You can?t give depth to something that is void. You can?t draw a picture of nothingness and this is what the language in Genesis says about the universe that we claim to have conquered. To accept the truth of the creation, we have to accept the idea that God began with nothing save Himself, His voice and His Spirit. 1:3 ?And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.? And then, God did something that slips past us. 1:4-5 ?And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.? He?s telling us something here. God is going to culminate the process of the creation in creating a creature He will choose to call man. Everything He does is on the behalf of this creature He makes on the sixth day. So, what happened here is for the benefit of mankind. When God divided the light from the darkness, he showed us two of the most contrasting things you and I will ever see. We have heard a common _expression for years - ?it?s as different as daylight from dark.? The only power of thought that God puts in man?s mind, brain, heart and soul is the power of comparison. Man is not able to think an original thought. Man is not able to create. He cannot bring into existence something that never has been before. One of the wisest men that ever walked this earth, save for the Lord, said in Ecclesiates 1:9 ?The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.? This doesn?t mean man is going to be dumb, it?s just means God is reserving a power unto Himself. And He starts in the beginning and divides the light from the darkness so that man will live as much in darkness as he does in light so he will appreciate them both and use them appropriately. God wants man to know when to get up and go to work and when to go to sleep at night. It wasn?t just a casual thing. It was meant to give us regulation in our lives so that we can understand what God is trying to do for us. ?The evening and the morning were the first day.? We need to understand that everything that was created was created at its zenith. When God spoke light into existence, it was at high noon. So, the first day began at high noon and the next 24 hours made up that first day. 1:6-8 ?And God said, ?Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.? And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.? In this blob of nothingness, called waters in verse 2, God made a hole. In the middle of this hole, the water was still there. On the outside of the ring that made the hole, the water was still there. He simply opened up an air gap. That was the first move toward bringing something into existence that would be compatible to our whole being. We have resisted this theory of the second day from our earliest history. God is beginning to make a natural environment for man. He?s going to give Him all the liberty in the world but He?s also going to give him a confining place. This first element, this heaven, was made for man. It wasn?t made for the sun, moon and the stars, or the birds of the air. It was made for man. Heaven, going back to the root meaning, is a gap, a void, a hole. Now, God had something that had a shape to it. He had water, a hole, and more water inside the hole. God is going to begin from the inside now and work His way out. He went to water that was inside the hole and gathered the waters together. 1:9-13 ?And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, ?Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit trees yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth?: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his own kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.? Here is the world as we know it. We have a lot of theories about the earth. God has said here that he gathered together these things He called Seas and brought them into one place which was exactly where He wanted them. For the most part the seas are right where God put them on the third day. There is some erosion on the beaches but basically they are right were they were in the very beginning. The untold millions of gallons of water that flow into the oceans every day from rivers like the Amazon, Mississippi, and rivers all over the world do not ever fill up the oceans or change the boundaries set by God. We worry about our continent shrinking and it has been predicted in another hundred million years, it won?t be any larger than the island of Cuba...but that is man?s theory. It is simply a wild guess with only several inches of evidence in 6000 years to back it up. On this day, He created the vegetable kingdom and fruit trees are mentioned along with grass and its seed and flowers. All created in their zenith. He didn?t created a seed, plant it and wait for it to grow into a tree. He made a tree with fruit on it that had seeds in it that could be taken and planted to make another tree. The seed was in itself. God established continuity, a pattern and a form of life that we can look at today. So, we know what God put in this world. God did this for man. 1:14-19 ?And God said, ?Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth?: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament in the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.? Astronomy is one of the oldest sciences that we have. Some of our greatest thinkers and opinion makers down through the years were credited with the wisdom and knowledge that they had of astronomy and were called wise men. They spent their life studying the stars, sun and moon. They saw the established pattern that God had put together in the very beginning. The sun never varied from its course. The tides could tell the phases of the moon. In the 1960?s, we went back to being brainers and in thinking big, we wanted to put a man on the moon. The church, in general, shrank from this thought thinking man would never be able to get it done. But they did. I talked to a member of the church who was in a government office and they were getting fliers from the US and they were stressing the importance of being the first people on the moon because they believed if they got on the moon with the right kind of equipment, they could control weather over the whole world. The thinkers thought they were mental giants. So, they fed the information from the great scholars in the past and the information they could gleen from the scholars in the present into the computer and they couldn?t get the rocket pointed in the right direction where it would land on the moon. So, they turned to the knowledge of God. When Israel was fighting the Amorites, as recorded in Joshua Chapter 10, the battle was going sore. Israel began to win with the Lord?s help, but the day began to wane and they needed just a little more time to get the job finished. So, Joshua spoke to the Lord and ?said in the sight of Israel, ? Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the Valley of Ajalon?. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.? In Isaiah Chapter 38, King Hezekiah was sick. Isaiah, the prophet, came and told him in verse 1: ? ?Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live.? The king prayed to the Lord and wept sorely over this news. Then, in verse 5, through Isaiah, the Lord said, ?I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years...? verse 7 ? ?And this shall be a sign unto thee from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing that he hath spoken; Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward.? So the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down.? All of these scholars and scientists had to take this information into consideration and put it into their computer to get that rocket aimed towards the moon. And the whole while, the truth of the Bible was denied with every breath. I among some of the doubters at that time and I want to lay out a simple truth. When God made this first Heaven, He told man he had dominion over it; he ruled it; he could do what he wanted to with it. Now, if He gave man this realm, and He didn?t say anything about any other realm, then the other does not belong to man. We see a limitation. Man could be ruler over earth, but he was nothing anywhere else. As I have doubts about the space program, I can only imagine about the doubts people must have had back in the 1860?s when someone decided they would build something called a submarine! But, whether it be the quest to conquer to the seas or space, we have to take enough of the elements from this first heaven, earth, with us to survive. They had to take air, water, and food that is grown out of the ground for nourishment. Sure, with the imagination of man, we can go to places we were not placed in by God, but we can?t survive because they are not the realm He gave us dominion over. 1:20-23 ?And God said, ?Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven?. And God created the great whale, every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, ?Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth?. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.? Now the scene is set. Everything is here, except what God referred to as, the beast of the earth. The fish are in the water and the fowl are in the air. There is a heaven here for man and in that same heaven are the fowls of the earth and anything that requires the breath of life in their nostrils. We go up so many feet and we run out of the element of oxygen. We have reached another realm that we know a little about, but not as much as we think we do. This is another heaven, where the sun, moon and stars are. 4000 years later, there is going to be a simple statement written in another book referencing our minds back to this thing. Paul tells us in 11 Corinthians 12:2-4 ?I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.? The third heaven is not mentioned here, is it? It comes later in New Testament times. But the scene is set. Here is a habitat for man. 1:24- ?And God said, ?Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind?: and it was so. And God said, ?Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.? So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, ?Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth?. And God said, ?Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat?: and it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.? I talked to some people, not long ago, that read this passage of scripture who said that man, before his fall, was perfect. I don?t agree. God didn?t say man was perfect; he said everything he had made, including man, was very good, not perfect. According to God, there wasn?t anything made in the creation that was perfect - but they were good and very good. Here?s the question of this study: why do we resist the simplicity of these teachings? Why do we try to re-create what God Himself has made? As an example: we read in the 2nd chapter of Genesis of a garden east of Eden that man was put in. This garden is described as growing ?every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food.? We read this and interpret it this way: every tree that is beautiful to the eye and every tree that is good for food. It doesn?t say this. It doesn?t say a tree that is barren and beautiful. It says a beautiful tree that produces food to eat. God gave us the capability to think. And he saw that this was good, and very good. We are still marveling at the human body. We still don?t really know what makes it tick. We still don?t really know what makes it quit ticking. It is a magnificent machine. It is a work of art. It is a miracle. We can?t reproduce it. They claim to be able to clone sheep, but it?s is only by taking what God gave us and repeating it. We can?t bring into existence something that never has been before. We can only use what God has given us. Isaiah gave us an old, familiar adage and a very simple truth in Isaiah 55:8-11 ??For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways?, saith the Lord. ?For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watered the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that is may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereunto I sent it.?? Let there be light...and there was light. The purpose of the 39 books in the Old Testament and the 27 books in the New Testament have one common thread in their teachings: to give us the ability to save our souls. God gave us the Bible as the standard by which to live if we are to survive in the realm to come and said it was good and very good. There is no other. As I stated before, we can only use what God has given us. And we won?t survive the next realm if we don?t take enough of the Bible with us to pass the test on judgment day.
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