In this sermon, the speaker discusses the contrasts and similarities between the book of Genesis and the book of Revelation. He uses a digital watch as a metaphor to illustrate the different time zones represented in these two books. The speaker also mentions the cursed world described in Genesis, with its sorrow, thorns, and Satan's oppression, and contrasts it with the eternal world described in Revelation, where there is no more curse, sorrow, or pain. The sermon also touches on the concept of faith as the evidence of things not seen, as mentioned in Hebrews 11:1.

...study in the book of Genesis conducted by Chuck Missler. The subject of this tape is Genesis chapter 1, verse 1. We're going to be in a very, very tough book. Those that are relatively naive about Bible studies always assume that the book of Revelation is a tough book. And those of you that have borne with this group for some time went through the book of Revelation and discovered that it's a relatively manageable work. But we're about to undertake an unmanageable work, because the really tough book is the book that we've decided to embark upon in this next period such as we have. The book of Genesis. And the book of Genesis is, as you know, the word means beginnings. And virtually everything in the scripture starts in the book of Genesis. Not only the origin of man that we normally associate with, but virtually every Bible doctrine that we'll come across starts in the book of Genesis. Everything that starts in the book of Genesis is concluded in the book of Revelation. Everything that is concluded in the book of Revelation, you can find its beginnings in the book of Genesis. And if you study it very, very carefully, you'll quickly conclude that the book of Genesis had to be written after the book of Revelation. If you follow the principles of higher criticism, you quickly come to that conclusion. I'm being facetious, of course. I'd like to tell you a story. Some of you may be familiar with this watch that I wear. This happens to be a digital watch. I can do the same thing with any watch, but this particular watch makes the discussion a little more colorful. Because what I can do with this watch, of course, is get the time in several time zones. I have a calculator and a date function. And I can tell you, if you give me your birth date, I can tell you the day of the week you were born on. Those of you that are financial people, I can tell you the rate of return on a call option that expires on the third of Friday in April. It consists of 36,000 circuits behind the display and a 28-key, I think it's 28, or is it 30? A 30-key keyboard. So we can play with this, and I could waste your time tonight by demonstrating some of the little things you can play. But if I told you that 30 engineers spent two years designing the five little silicon chips that make this up and organizing it all with a quartz crystal to keep time within two or three seconds a year and so forth, you'd probably believe me. And I hate to be the one to break the news to you tonight, but that's just a cover story. What actually happened was that billions of years ago there were random atoms floating through the cosmos. Why are you laughing? These atoms were tossed about by the winds of cosmic change, and some of them came to be perfect pieces of silicon and others perfect pieces of metal shaped just the right size. The distance between some of the circuits is so small that light itself can't resolve them. If you're going to fix the circuits, you need an electron microscope. But that's okay. It all happened through billions of years of cosmic change, and all these little keys were labeled 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You think I'm putting you on, don't you? Why? Why can I tell you a story about this watch evolving as the result of a cosmic roulette wheel and you laugh when I can show you that the hand that it rests on is far more complex than the watch is, and yet the average person today is willing to accept the existence of the hand without an architect, and yet the proposition is so ridiculous as to be a reasonable approach to humor if I take something less complicated and suggest that it happened by accident. We're going to get into a little bit of probabilities. We're also going to get... The reason you were laughing, whether you knew it or not, has to do with the subject of entropy, and not tonight because we have enough burdens for tonight, but we're going to get into the subject of entropy. We're going to discover that if we were subjected as a culture to a time reversal, there's probably only one way we could tell if time was going backwards. How would you tell if time was going backwards? If all things are relative and time is reversing, everything is in order, but just going backwards. How would you tell? It turns out most of the things that you would think of to try and tell won't work, but if you go home and take a deck of playing cards and shuffle them, and every time you shuffle them, they become more ordered, you know that you're in a time reversal because one of the processes that we deal with every day has to do with the law of entropy laws. Entropy is a fancy word for meaning randomness, and there's a second law of thermodynamics which applies the entropy laws to the field of physics which says that we're winding down. Everything that we observe in the heavens above and in the earth beneath is going from order towards chaos, from a high temperature to a lower temperature, to randomness, and those laws are the entropy laws, sometimes embodied in the second law of thermodynamics. There is only one case in the universe where the entropy laws are violated. We call that life. But the whole proposition of evolution, the whole proposition of a universe without an architect, flies in the face of scientific knowledge as we think of it. That's a very interesting thing. I'm still trying to find my notes. Some years ago at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the prize paper was given to a group that absolutely refuted the theory of evolution on scientific grounds. Nothing to do with religion or the Bible. The proposition by the authors was that evolution represented pure science and had no status to be regarded really even as a theory, at most a hypothesis, and they won the award. I've got to find that because I know a lot of you would be interested in that. I came across a book some years ago, which is an interesting book. It's actually the translation of some proceedings. This is the English language version of the Proceedings of a Scientific Conference held in the USSR at the Beirutan Astrophysical Observatory, and it was sponsored jointly between the United States Academy of Sciences and the Soviet Academy of Sciences. And what they did, they assembled 84 of the top scientists around the world in all languages, and they happened to choose that location to meet, and they had a discussion that went on for some time. The subject of their discussion was communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. As you probably know, there's been a lot of intellectual and scientific interest in the possibility of life outside our planet, the possibility of life in outer space. There's been a lot of technical effort put towards the technical problems of communication with extraterrestrial intelligence, and this conference proceeding was addressing that subject. None of the participants, to the best of my ability to determine, have any spiritual insight at all. They're all just classical agnostic scientists. But what's fascinating about these proceedings is that in their discussions and dialogue concerning the possibility of life outside the planet Earth, by the time they're through, what they don't realize is that they are inadvertently commenting on the validity of life to be spontaneously generated. And the net conclusions, there's many interesting conclusions that we'll be drawing on as we go through the study, but the net conclusion is a pessimistic one as far as the conference is concerned. There is no data to presume that there'd be life outside. There's a hope held by many. Carl Sagan edited it. He's one of the more articulate spokesmen in the hopes of finding life out there. But all the technical knowledge we have militates against it. Let me just give you one example of the kind of thing that comes up. Most of you that are technically oriented at all have probably read in the papers or in magazines a thing called the DNA molecule as the basic substance of which proteins are made and thus carrying the basic key to proteins, thus tissues, thus life itself. And engineering the DNA and its associated molecules is a big area of research today. What makes the DNA molecule interesting is that because of its structure, it lends itself mathematically very well to being estimated as to its... the possibility of it occurring by chance. The DNA molecule is a very complex molecule and one of the things they bring out is that it has a chance of occurring by accident or by random behavior. One chance in 10 to the 130th power. Now it turns out because of its nature it's estimatable that way. Well that may sound like a very large number and boy it is. And I could spend some amusing time this evening to give you some examples of just how large a number that is. But it's such a large number as frankly to make the probability of it occurring by chance absurdly small. But let's investigate the possibility of it occurring by chance and let's assume that there was one chance per biological generation of some microorganism. What is the shortest lifetime for a generation, speaking biologically, now I'm not speaking of a complex organism like a human being, but even just of a single celled animal. What's the shortest lifetime you can imagine? Certainly shorter than an hour, maybe minutes, let's say seconds. The scientists all tend to agree that the age of our universe is about 6 billion years old. Now I'm not here to support or challenge that estimate. What's interesting is from several different fields of physics and others they've come to that conclusion. So let's take them at their word and assume that that's the age of the universe. Do you know how many seconds are in 6 billion years? 10 to the 17th. Now that's a shock if you're familiar with numbers because that isn't a lot. But that's all there is. Let's assume that our imaginary generation is less than a second. Let's take that second and divide it into a thousand parts. The mean lifetime through the history of the universe of a thousandth of a second is a pretty short trial to try and get a one DNA molecule. Let's take that thousandth of a second and divide it into a thousand parts and we get a term that we're familiar with in the computer field called a microsecond. A million of those per second. 10 to the minus 6 for those of you that are engineers. Let's take the microsecond and divide it into a thousand parts. That's what we call in the computer field a nanosecond. There's 10 to the minus 9 nanoseconds or 10 to the 9th nanoseconds per second. There are only 10 to the 26th nanoseconds in the history of the universe. If you grant the roulette wheel idea there isn't time. Now this is a crude way to demonstrate to you the fallacy, the statistical fallacy of the evolutionary hypothesis. We glibly speak of the scientific method which typically means to gather some information, construct a hypothesis, construct an experiment to challenge that hypothesis, gather some new data which tends to either verify or either validate or invalidate our hypothesis. In every scientific experiment chance is always the rival conjecture. Your conjecture as to what you think the state of things are is always measured against the probability of it occurring by randomness. There's all kinds of tests and statistics, chi-score and others, that we use and we always use the probability of it happening by chance as the rival conjecture. The probability that any one of the facets of our existence occurred by chance are so small as to be mathematically untenable. So we're going to be running headlong into this having started this way as a way to get those that were late parking a chance to join us without losing any of the spiritual content. I made sure that the first few minutes of our discussion tonight was absolutely devoid of any spiritual content. Let's set aside the foolishness of man and approach our Father for some real guidance tonight. Father, we praise you and thank you for the privilege of gathering together here in the name of Jesus Christ. We thank you, Father, that there are no accidents in your kingdom and we thank you that we're all here by divine appointment to open your word to get a glimpse of what you have for us and just behold thy glory and the glory of Jesus Christ in whose name we pray. Amen. I remember when I first did a revelation study. I think it was Mike Montgomery came down from Laguna Beach and said, Hey, would you do a revelation study in Laguna? I said, Sure, fine, great. He says, Good, I'll start organizing the prayer groups to cover you. I said, What? And he made me aware of the fact that you don't undertake a study like that without having some spiritual help. And so usually when we take a study like Revelation, we usually set up some prayer groups and things to get some real help. Let me tell you right now, I can sure use it in the book of Genesis. There are more things that are here for our learning and the problem won't be so much dealing with a particular idea, the problem will be to try to sift through all the possible exciting things to pick those things that are fruitful, those things that the Holy Spirit would have us dig into. The book of Genesis, as you all know, is part of the Pentateuch. The first, you know, the Torah, if you're Hebrew, the five books of Moses. And we could spend a great deal of our time in what would be called, which would get into the authenticity of the book. You'll discover, if you do any background reading of the book of Genesis, you'll discover a group of writings and scholars and libraries full of books which extol the idea, which is usually called the documentary hypothesis. There is a theory that emerged in relatively recent times that the book, the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, and specifically the book of Genesis, wasn't really written by Moses, but was really written by several different authors and appended, put together, compiled later. They build this theory, obviously, first of all, on the arrogance of their own knowledge, as opposed to the leading of the Holy Spirit. But it manifests itself in arguments that lead from the use of certain words. There is certain portions of the scripture in which the name Elohim is dominant, and they speak of the Eloist writer. There's the parts of the scripture that are dominant where the word Jehovah, or Jehovah, or pronounce it as you will, is dominant. So you speak of the E documents, those sections that are presumably written by this particular guy, the J documents, the P documents, the priestly documents, and on it goes. And you'll find the libraries full of various scholars arguing with each other as to which one really wrote which parts, and so forth, and so on. Now what we could do if we had lots of time and we're not worried about spending it fruitfully, is we could spend a lot of time going through the arguments that the documentary hypothesis stands on, on one side, and we'd spend some time building all those things. And then we'd tear them apart, one by one by one. And I'll give you a bibliography a little later on. And there are several, those of you that are interested in that, there are several scholars, in fact many years ago, that tore the documentary hypothesis to shreds intellectually. So you can tear it apart just on documentary grounds. But you and I have an opportunity to save all that time by going at it another way. And I'd like to start this study, as I start many of these studies, I'm sort of starting fresh with you tonight, even though I recognize many of you are, how many of you are here with a Revelation study? Raise your hands. Okay, now I might mention I used to like, I always liked to have Genesis follow the book of Revelation. It's a neat study. Revelation first, which gives you an overview of the whole scripture by the way we go at it, and then the book of Genesis is a beautiful book to follow on. But turn with me at this point to Luke 24. And those of you that have been with me before and that have already memorized this passage, bear with me, but I think it's very, very uniquely valid for us tonight. And this is a chapter in Luke, it's one of my favorite. It's perhaps one of the best known chapters, the first half of the chapter is very well known because we frequently read it at the Easter season. What we read less frequently perhaps is the last half of the chapter starting at verse 13. The context of course is Sunday morning. In this case perhaps it's Sunday afternoon. Sunday morning of course as you know we had the empty tomb discovered and the whole sequence of events that occurred what we call Easter morning. At verse 13 it says that two disciples, behold two of them, went that same day to a village called Emmaus which was from Jerusalem about three score furlongs or seven miles to those of us that are in a different numbering system. So these two disciples are walking to Emmaus and verse 14 they talk together of all those things which had happened. Now they're obviously pretty shook. They're disciples, they're a follower of Jesus Christ. Last Friday or Thursday or depending on how you see that and I won't get into that tonight we had the crucifixion. That had to shake most of them. They were scattered, frightened, worried, confused. It wasn't what they expected. They later on realized they should have expected it from what he told them and that's codified in the Gospels. But certainly the general demeanor was one of fright and confusion. These two guys are heading for Emmaus and they're talking about these things. Verse 15 It came to pass that while they communed together and reasoned Jesus himself drew near and went with them. Now if you were writing the screenplay or if you if I can see if I can indulge in this kind of an idiom if you were somehow in control of the stage management here you would find it irresistible to do some wild kind of thing to reveal Jesus Christ to them. Here's his disciples and Jesus is alive and living and raised from the dead. You can think of any of a half a dozen really, Cecil B. DeMille kind of things to do. Notice what Jesus does. Well first of all notice verse 16. Their eyes were holden that they should not recognize him. Now we're not told why or how but for some reason these two disciples didn't realize who this stranger was that joined him. I have some theories as to what that is but they're just Chuck Nistler's theories. All we know from the scripture here is that for whatever reason they didn't realize who this was. It might have just been spiritually withheld from them supernaturally some way or there may have been something about his aspect that they couldn't penetrate something. In any case as they walked they thought they had a stranger with them. Verse 17 And he that is Jesus said unto them what manner of communications are these that ye have with one another as ye walk and are sad. In other words as he approached them he could overhear their conversation and they were obviously depressed dejected. He could tell from the conversation that they were despondent. And as he walks up as a parent stranger he says hey what's the problem? How come you guys are dragging? And one of them whose name was Cleopas answering said unto him Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem and hast not known the things which are come to pass here in these days? Which in our vernacular would say where have you been fellow? Weren't you here last week when all this happened? Don't you understand the predicament we're in? In other words where have you been? And he said unto them what things happened? In other words he wants to hear it from them. And they said unto him concerning Jesus of Nazareth who was a prophet mighty indeed and word before God and all the people and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and have crucified him and we hoped had hoped that it had been he who should have redeemed Israel and besides all this today is the third day since these things were done. Now obviously it would be hard to present a case that their faith was holding strong. Now I'm being serious. In other words they obviously their faith was holding I'm being serious. I'm being serious. I'm being serious. I'm So in other words they're all hung up in a way that okay their leader was crucified but now the body is gone. So they're really confused they don't understand what's happening. Notice what happens in verse 25. Jesus says to him I am he don't you recognize Me. Attesting what he does say. Look what he really does say. Then he said unto them, O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken." Another one of those passages which says that everything that had happened was not only foreordained but forewritten in the Old Testament. One of the things we're going to do in our study of Genesis is explore some things that are prophesied in Genesis that I defy you to find prophesied anywhere else. For example, in 1 Corinthians 15, the famous resurrection chapter that speaks of Jesus' resurrection, in that opening of a few verses of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul defines the gospel. He says how Jesus was crucified and buried and rose again the third day according to the scriptures. And that kernel of that verse is the definition of the gospel because of the context in which Paul uses it. The question is, though, where in the scriptures, that is, the Old Testament, does it predict that Jesus is to rise on the third day? Of all the prophecies that I'm fond of getting into, it's not Ezekiel 38, it's not Revelation 13, it's a passage in Genesis in which the Holy Spirit, in my opinion, the Holy Spirit has gone so far as to put an error in the text, so as to give us a prophecy that's among the most precious in the scripture, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Believe all that the prophet has spoken. And he goes on to speak to them, ought not Christ to have suffered these things. Notice himself speaking of himself in the third person. Strange, isn't it? The more you know him, the more you see what's happening, isn't that eerie, to have him as one of his first resurrection, the first day of his resurrection, to traffic with his disciples and sort of comment as an instructor, speaking of himself, but in the third person. Eerie, isn't it? Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory. Notice what he does in verse 27. And beginning at where? You know, I feel sorry for Luke because he didn't have the benefit of all this scholarly textual background to realize that Moses really didn't write those books. Luke didn't seem to understand that. The reason he didn't understand that is because Jesus Christ himself indicated the authorship of the book of Genesis. We'll come back to that. I'm getting at another point first. And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures. What do you mean all the scriptures? Two or three of the books? Apparently what Jesus Christ did, now whether he did it from a text that someone was carrying, unlikely, or whether he did it from their own knowledge from the synagogue, he took them through. Moses, starting at Moses, front end, what? The Torah, carried them all the way through the scriptures as they knew it, the entire Old Testament. And he revealed to them the things concerning whom? Himself. One of the exciting things we're going to discover in the book of Genesis, one of the amazing, the things that you're going to carry away from this gathering as we get together to look at the book of Genesis, isn't some new insight about the creation or evolution, this or that or the other thing, is the discovery that every page of the book of Genesis focuses on one person, Jesus Christ. There are several books that have been written, and the books themselves, by nature, have to be just abbreviations because there's so much on them. Amartya Han has a book called The Portraits of Christ in Genesis, a very readable piece. My guess is that one also, Jesus Christ in Genesis. You can write books, many of them, just examining and unraveling the images of Jesus Christ, the foreshadowings, the details of Jesus Christ in the book of Genesis. But he himself authenticates that view. His first act, ministerial act, in his resurrection was to lead a Bible study, a Bible study that was prophetic. He used as his reference the Old Testament. To do what? To show himself to these disciples. It's interesting, he apparently did it pretty effectively, because verse 28 says, As they drew near unto the village, in other words, they finally got to where they were going, in Emmaus, to which they went, he made as though he would have gone on. In other words, as they started to stop and turn aside to their place they were going, he was ready to keep going, going on. But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them. Jesus Christ joins them then for dinner. Verse 30, And it came to pass, as he sat eating with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. Why? We're speculating, we're indulging in speculation, and those of you that know, you've entered in Monday night to heresy 1A, we have no resistance here to speculate a little bit. So this isn't the scripture, it's our guess. How do you think they recognized him? What did he do that caused them to realize who he was? He broke bread. And the guess is, by many, many writers, is that as he broke bread they saw the nail prints, and they realized who he was. Now what's interesting is, if you go through the Gospels, you discover that after his resurrection no one recognizes him at first. In fact, in the 20th chapter of John, when they're fishing and then they have the fire, it says, We dared not ask him, for we were sure it was he. A strange phrase for John to use, it implies there was a problem. Again and again and again, we see that he's not recognized at first. And you don't really find the answer to that in the New Testament. You find the answer, in my opinion, you find the answer in Isaiah chapter 50 and several other chapters, which imply that among the torments of the crucifixion was the ripping off of his beard. Now we know that he bore the marks of his crucifixion after his resurrection, because when he appears to his disciples and Thomas didn't believe, Thomas says, Unless I put my finger in his nail prints and so forth, then that following Sunday evening they gathered behind locked doors, the Lord appears to them a second time, and he holds out his hands to Thomas, Here, put your finger in the nail prints. We know he still bore the wounds of his crucifixion, but we don't have the part of the New Testament, but if you fulfill the prophecies of the old, we know that among the things they did was to tear his beard off, which is likely to leave scars and disfigurement that makes it no surprise that they might not have recognized him at first. Isaiah chapter 52, the tail end of that, points out that he was abused so badly that he no longer had the form of a man. Now you may be shocked by that if that's a new idea to you. At the same time, the marks of his humility is also the marks of his glory, and we can spend more time on that, but the point is anyway, here they see him, they recognize him, and what does he do? He vanishes. And they said to one another, verse 32, Did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us along the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures? It's my desire and prayer tonight that Jesus Christ will be the one to open the scriptures to you. We're going to take a lot of liberty in our gathering, as those of you that are familiar with my rather cavalier style, we will tend to go into some pretty controversial areas, and there's no book that intrinsically is more controversial than the book of Genesis. But as we go, I want all those of you who are taking notes, put in your notes Acts 17.11 and memorize it thoroughly if you're going to spend any time with Chuck Missler, because it's essential that you search the scriptures daily to prove whether those things be so, which is the admonition in Acts 17.11. In other words, don't believe anything I tell you. If I succeed, my interest is just to stimulate you to do your own homework, because we are going to travel on some very spooky path before the day is over, before the study is over. Jesus Christ said in John chapter 5, verse 39, he says, Search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, right? And they are they which testify of me. What was he talking about to his listeners when he said the scriptures? The Old Testament. And I would submit the highest form of that in the mind of the Jew was the Torah. In that you think you have eternal life, it is that which speaks of me. He also says the volume of the book is written of me. He says that in Psalm 40, so you have to be able to relate to that. But anyway, he also points out in Matthew 5 that not one jot or one tittle shall pass from the law until all be fulfilled, and he has come to fulfill, to complete the work of him that sent me. And we are going to come back to this business of completing the work of him that sent me, because I thought God rested when his work was done. I had the impression that he created the world in six days, and the seventh day he just took it easy, because he was finished. And yet Jesus Christ comes and says, I have come to finish the work of him that sent me. What's he talking about? What's he talking about? Something that wasn't finished until he hung on the cross and said, it is finished. And what he set out to do on the cross, saying it was finished, it is finished, is something that was purposed before Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, which leads us to another kind of a problem that we'll get to. We're going to also challenge as we go a very peculiar view of mine. I have a number of views, many of which I'm sure are wrong, and I'll leave you the exercise for the student to figure out which is right and which is wrong. But one idea that I have that I cannot prove, but you should be aware of it because it's a fun challenge. I personally have the, well, I'll take as my authority Romans, I think it's 15.4, where it says that whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning. The word whatsoever things were written aforetime means whatsoever things, everything. I hold the very strange view that not only is the scripture, the word of God, a very high view of inspiration, and I don't think we have the authority or the license or capability to separate that which is inspired versus some that purportedly might not be. I believe the scripture is inspired in the whole, but I carry it one step further in the belief that every number, every place name, and I'll show you some places where a comma or an omission is engineered by the Holy Spirit to communicate to us. Now my theory is easily challenged because you will be able to mention several things, many of them. I haven't the foggiest notion of what lesson there is in that particular item, but I challenge you in every one that I've had the time to chase down, the end of that chase leads to a treasure. And as we go through the book of Genesis, we're going to encounter many of those. First point I think we've made, which is that the book of Genesis is Christ-centered. We're going shortly to get into Genesis 1, verse 1, seven words, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and in the beginning refers to the beginning of time. It's not the earliest comment in the scripture. The book of Genesis, we're going to discover, has ten generations, the generations of the heaven and the earth, and then lots of different people. But it's not the earliest genealogy. There's one genealogy in the Bible that's older, predates Genesis chapter 1, verse 1. Does anyone know what it is? John 1, 1. Right on. Gee, we've got a graduate school here. That's great. Turn to the gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 1. The essence of John's comments here include many sweeping, breathtaking insights. The main one of which is that Jesus Christ was preexistent, before time began. Genesis starts with the beginning of the mass-space-time continuum. But John 1, 1 goes before that. It says, In the beginning was the word. Now the word here, the logos, the proper name, is a name that John uses not only in his gospel, but in his epistles and in the book of Revelation, which he also penned, as a title of whom? Jesus Christ. And you can identify that in 1 John 5, 7. You can identify that in Revelation 19, 13, and a couple other places. Clearly, setting aside for the moment all the things that are embodied in John's use of that word, it clearly is a title of Jesus Christ, and that's enough to suffice for tonight. John is saying, In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God, and the word was God. Actually, God was the word, but I won't get into that thing. That sounds to us like double-talk, doesn't it? In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. In other words, the word and God, there's some distinction. They're together, they're co-equal, but they're not the same thing. They're together. I can't be with myself. And the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. We have a very complex statement that gets at the essence of Jesus Christ. The main point for us tonight is that he pre-existed. He pre-existed with God. We tend to think of Jesus Christ as beginning with Mary, until we run into Joshua in the battle of Jericho and a lot of other places where he seems to show up everywhere. Jesus Christ pre-existed. But let's go further. Look at verse 3. All things were made by him. By whom? By Jesus Christ. And without him was not anything made that was made. What are angels? Created things. What's the highest form of an angel? Cherub? Archangel? Fine. Who made them? Jesus Christ. Who was the most powerful angel of them all? Who made him? He is not Jesus' brother. I'm sorry if there are any among us that have come from one of the groups that have a different family tree for these things. Right after the creation, the first real quotation we get into here is light. And here we have it spiritually. In Genesis we have it another way, maybe. The structural relationship between the first chapter of John and the first chapter of Genesis is in itself a fascinating study, but I'll leave that for you people to look at yourself. Most of us tend to visualize the story of Adam and the creation and then the family trees and Noah as a part of a long string of events that we're on the end of. Question. When did God first start dealing with you? We came here tonight from our various walks of life, various concerns and anxieties to blow an evening with this character that you've heard about. Stop and think for a moment. When did God first start dealing with you? You looked ahead. Ephesians chapter one, verse four. We'll start with verse three. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath chosen us in him. When? Before the foundation of the world. May I say before Genesis one, verse four. One. That we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated us, et cetera. And we could take the time tonight to find handfuls of passages like that, all through the book of Colossians, all through the book of Ephesians, and all through the book of Hebrews. Again as we're doing our little sample, let's turn to Hebrews chapter one. God, who at so many times in a diverse manner spoke in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds. Plural. We'll come back to that. Plural. Plural. We think of the earth having been given to Adam, Adam sinned and the earth was made degenerate, the Lentropy laws introduced, and that we have the institution of salvation by the shedding of blood and by faith and all those key ideas, and that through the action of Jesus Christ the world is redeemed. Except when we get to the book of Revelation we notice a strange thing. Behold, I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The redemption is far more pervasive than just you or I. We may be in some sense a key focus of it, and from our point of view we're the most important focus of it. But that's very, very self-centered. The worlds are plural. Who being in the brightness of his glory and express image of his person, upholding all things by the word of his power, we're going to come back to that as we get into atomic structure, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty and so forth. I would go to Colossians 1.16 and lots of others. At this point, though, I guess my point, first of all, in a sense I could say his creation is finished. The Lord's creation was finished on the seventh day. And there's scriptures to back that up. But I would argue to you in a more comprehensive sense, is his creation finished yet? No. There's another sense in which it was finished when Jesus Christ on the cross says it is finished. And yet, indeed, we hear both Moses and also the writer of the book of Acts say there will become a time in the second coming that is the time of restitution of all things. There's some things not put back the way they belong yet that will be then. What? Things put back the way they were intended to be before whatever happens in Genesis. A couple of other things. I could drown you with many passages, but there's a few we should look at. Turn to John 5. Let's put to silence this authenticity question. In John chapter 5, we've lifted a verse already, verse 39. Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life. They are they which testify of me. And so on. Verse 45. Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one that accuseth you. Even who? How can Moses accuse you? The law. That means he wrote the law. Sure. Well, God wrote the law, but I mean, Moses is the bearer of the witness. All right. Verse 46. In whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me. Isn't that a neat little word? He wrote of me. If you believe in Jesus Christ, those words can save you hours of dull time in musty libraries waiting through the arguments of the documentary hypothesis. Because we know that Moses wrote of Jesus Christ. If you don't believe in Jesus Christ, you've got a different kind of problem that chasing down that issue won't help you with a lot. And we could go through Matthew 8.4, Matthew 19.7 and 8, Matthew 23.2. Mark, this is for the tape, Mark 1.44, 7.10, 10.3 and 4, 12.26. Luke 5.14, Luke 16.19 and 31, Luke 20.37. Especially Luke 24.27. Let's pick up that one while we're here. Luke 24. We'll just take a couple of these. We were in Luke 24, and I meant to pick this up, but I didn't then. 27, of course, he makes reference to Moses there, but let's skip down to verse 44. And he said unto them, These are the words which I spoke unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled that were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning me. And you go through John 3.14, 5.45, John 6.32, John 7.19, John 7.22 and 23, and on and on and on. Those of you that really want to look at it, you can discover that there's ample references by Jesus Christ and his apostles to the fact that Moses wrote the... In fact, let me suggest this to you. I'm going to argue that Genesis can be argued as being the most important book in the Bible. How do I come to that conclusion? Well, it's the foundation of all of them, of course. But no other book is quoted as frequently. Adam himself is referenced in Deuteronomy, Job and 1 Chronicles, just looking at the Old Testament alone. Noah is in 1 Chronicles, Isaiah and Ezekiel. Abraham is referenced 15 times in the Old Testament, 11 times in the New Testament. Jacob 20 times in the Old Testament, 17 in the New. In the New Testament, there are 165 distinct references to Genesis. With the doubles and the duplicates, where the illusion is made more than once, there's over 200. Over 100 of those are in the first 11 chapters. So if you start tearing apart the book of Genesis, you've got real problems as you get to the rest of the Scripture. You'll discover one of the basic discoveries is that the Bible hangs together intimately, tightly. It's been architected. We have 66 books written by 40 guys over many thousands of years that bear tangible evidence of an engineer in charge. And I don't mean just a common theme. I mean the very sentence structures, language, idioms, structure of the whole bears evidence of design. We're also going to discover that that evidence of design is there in many ways, one of which is the occurrence of what we call types, models. Things that occur in the book of Genesis not only start certain doctrinal ideas, but lay down models of what's to follow. An example is Adam as a type, the first Adam, as opposed to the last Adam. Who's the last Adam? Jesus Christ. And that modeling of the role of Adam and the role of Christ isn't some theologian's dream. It's mentioned by Paul in Romans 5 and by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, two different places. Eve is a type of the church, a model of the church. That's not our invention. It's the invention of Paul in Ephesians 5. Abraham and Isaac is modeled in a very special way as outlined in Hebrews 11, 17-19. But more importantly, in ways that are going to blow our minds when we get to Genesis 22. When we get to the story of Joseph, I will hand out a list of over a hundred ways, literally over a hundred ways, that Joseph is a type of Christ. And that's wild as you realize how much that's been engineered. Those of us that come from the study of the book of Revelation will be sensitive to the role of Nimrod relative to the Antichrist. We'll be sensitive from Revelation 7, the twelve tribes and the whole role of the twelve tribes in the book of Genesis. Even the redeemed in Revelation sing the song of Moses, remember? And we could just spend a lot of time listing the parallels between Genesis and Revelation. In fact, let me just highlight some of these things. We have, of course, in the book of Genesis the beginning of the creation, the beginning of man, woman, the Sabbath, marriage, home, childhood, sin, murder, sacrifice, grace, trade, agriculture, city life, races, languages, chosen people, and so forth and so on. One other commentator described it another way that I thought was perhaps more meaningful. We have, of course, the beginning of the material universe in the sense of the sphere of divine revelation of grace. We have the beginning of the human race, which is the subject of the divine revelation of grace. We have the beginning of sin, which is the cause for the divine revelation of grace. We have the beginning of the plan of redemption, which is the character of the divine revelation of grace. We have the introduction of the nations, Genesis 10 and on, which is the scope of the divine revelation of grace. The Hebrew nation, which is the channel for the divine revelation of grace. And we have life of faith and consecration, which is the outcome of the divine revelation of grace. The sphere, subject, cause, character, scope, channel, and outcome. And you can, of course, obviously outline the book in that form if you like. The book of Genesis anticipates virtually all of our false philosophies. Almost every false philosophy you'll run into is refuted by the book of Genesis. Atheism, because the universe was created by God. Pantheism, because God is transcendent and distinguishable from his creation. Polytheism, in the sense of one God. Materialism is refuted because matter had a beginning, according to Genesis. Humanism is that God, not man, is the ultimate reality. Evolutionism, in the sense that God created the heavens and the earth. Uniformism, which we'll speak to a lot, namely that God intervened to have all this happen, and so on and so forth. We will, as we go through the book of Genesis, encounter all of the major doctrines in the Bible. Sovereign election, in the story of Abraham. Salvation starts with the skins of animals, with Adam and Eve. Justification by faith, with the believer's security. The concept of separation, disciplinary chastisement. The rapture of the church is introduced in Genesis. Divine incarnation, death and resurrection. The coming exaltation of our Redeemer. His priesthood, the priesthood of Melchizedek. The Antichrist. And, interestingly enough, the basis of our major world problem today, the Palestinian covenant. Israel's claim on the land tracks from Genesis, which is being disputed by the world today. And you can expect that if the world follows God's prophesied pattern, we'll increasingly challenge Israel's claim to the land. So don't be surprised. Recognize that when Israel is saved, that it will be so clearly the hand of God. It won't be because the U.S. is putting up money or showing any faithfulness. When we were at the International Peace Congress last fall, that was, I guess, the main message. Admonition that Israel not look to the United States for their help, but rather somebody else from whence to come with their help. In the book of Genesis it says, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. In Revelation it says, I saw a new heaven and a new earth. In Genesis it says, Gathering the waters he called sea. In Revelation it says, The sea will be no more. The darkness he called night. No night there. In Genesis, In the day you eat thereof you shall surely die. In Revelation it says, Death shall be no more. It says, I'll multiply your pain. In Revelation there shall be pain no more. He cursed the ground in the one hand. There shall be no more curse. Satan appears as a deceiver. In Genesis, he's disposed of in Revelation. Man is driven from the tree of life. In Genesis, he has access to the tree of life in Revelation. He's driven from the garden. He has access to the city and so forth. The probationary world, which I'll call the Genesis world. We have a division of light and darkness. Division of land and sea. Rule of the sun and the moon. Man's in a prepared garden. River flowing through the garden and so on. And in the eternal world, the world of Revelation, we have all those same elements in contrast. There's no night. There's no more sea. There's no more sun and moon. Man is in a prepared city rather than a prepared garden. There is a river out of the throne of God. And you can go on and on and on. In fact, it's an interesting exercise. Those of you that are really interested in passing the final exam, which I won't administer. Someone else will take care of it for me. I strongly suggest what you might want to do is take some notepads and just for fun, any way you want to approach it, through the scripture, through your notes, whatever, make a list of the contrasts or similarities between Genesis and Revelation. And you have a full-time task. There's a lot of them. It's a big deal. In the cursed world, we had a cursed ground. We had daily sorrow, thorns and thistles, sweat on the brow, and returning to dust, evil continually, coats of skins, Satan oppressing. And in the eternal world, Revelation, there's no more curse, no more sorrow, no more pain. Tears are wiped away. And there's nothing that defileth. And instead of coats and skins, we have fine linen, white and clean. Satan's banished rather than opposing and so on. Same kind of a model there. At this point, we've got time to get into Genesis. Let's turn with me to Genesis 1. Go to your left. Chapter 1, verse 1. We're going to start tonight with seven words. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. In Hebrew, there are seven words. First word is Bereshith, which means in beginning. Not in the beginning, in beginning. This starts the beginning of time. Now, this is probably a good place just to mention something else that may be useful to us as we go. You know, it's interesting. Science is gradually learning enough for us to understand a little more about what God says. Don't fall in the trap of saying, gee, science validated the Bible. It's got to be the other way around. As our science is sound, it is consistent with the Scripture. And it's interesting that some time ago, we could read this and have a partial understanding. But in today's concept of modern physics, we can begin to understand much more of the book of Genesis because of our increased insight in the field of cosmology. We're going to touch on some of that as we go through. The whole concept of the Big Bang theory being put to silence, the whole concept of the cosmology of the dark sun. There's a major problem that the scientists will acknowledge. There's a basic violation of the conservation of angular momentum in our solar system, which implies that the planets did not come from the sun. In fact, the sun may have been a later addition. And it's all speculation. We have no way of knowing. But it's interesting that it's not inconsistent with our record in the book of Genesis. But we'll get into that as we go. The point is that in our modern physics, we understand that time is a physical dimension. You and I have a tendency to conceive of time as some kind of uniform absolute against which everything else happens. And according to the new awareness in physics that was ushered in by Einstein and the Laplace transforms and all the rest, we now understand more and more that time is a physical dimension. And just as mass increases with acceleration, time slows down. And we've all, I think, talked about or had exposure to some TV special or some writer who has tried to communicate the subtleties of our time domain, that if two twin astronauts born at the same time, but one of them goes on a space mission and comes back, he's a little bit younger than his brother is because his participation in those accelerations alter his time domain. And we begin to understand we no longer competently speak of space and time separately. We speak of space-time if we're going to be very precise about it. And the whole concept of time having dimensionality that's nonlinear is something that you and I have a tough time relating to. Now, fortunately for our own orderly universe, those differences show up only with extreme changes of speed. So for you and I to live in our world, we can get along pretty well because the distortions of time are pretty subtle. But on the other hand, it's important for us to understand that time, space, and matter are linked together. And in beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. The word created here is the word bara. It's used very rarely in the scripture. He only creates three things. This is one of them, bara. There's two other words, asa and yatsar. Asa means to make, fashion, fabricate. Yatsar means to form, in the sense of attending to the final details. And if you turn to Isaiah 43.7, this doesn't help a lot, but maybe it gives you some insight. Isaiah 43.7 uses all three words in the same passage. It's a poetic passage, but still it'll help us to understand the elements within which we're dealing. In Isaiah 43, you may recall this from our Isaiah study. Verse 7, it says, Everyone who is called by my name for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him, yea, I have made him. Created, formed, made. Bara, asa, yatsar. Three different words. The subtle distinctions between asa and yatsar aren't that important. The difference between form and fabricate and what have you. The difference between bara and those others is very important. Because the word bara means to bring into being out of nothing. To bring into being out of nothing. You and I, in some clumsy way, can shape things and form things and deal with materials we're provided. Maybe do some very, quote, creative things. But you and I do not, in fact, with all the laboratory skills we have, have no ability to do anything but convert from one time, space, matter level to another. Incidentally, every time we make a conversion, it's imperfect. We do not even have 100% efficiency in any of our processes, it's something less. And if you have something less than 100% efficiency, you eventually wind down. The universe is like a large clock that has been wound up that we see only winding down. We call that observation the second law of thermodynamics or the entropy law, and we'll talk more about that in a minute. In the beginning God, bara, the heaven, shemayim, it's a plural word, can mean the heavens, either heaven or heavens, it's translated both ways in different places, and it's the land or the earth. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. One small point. Interesting, the word for God here is elohim. Now those of you who have been with us a bit have learned enough of the Hebrew grammar to know what an im ending is, like cherub is singular for a cherub, right? What's the plural of cherub? Cherubim. What's the plural of seraph? Seraphim. What does the im ending mean? The im ending in the Hebrew is a plural form. In the English we often, in many nouns, you just add an s. That makes it a plural. Elohim fundamentally is a plural noun. However, a very strange thing occurs. Every place it appears in the scripture, it's grammatically incorrect. Because the Hebrew, like many languages, requires the noun and the verb to agree in their implied number, right? The word elohim is a plural noun, elohim, and yet it's always used as a singular. One God, but in some kind of plurality. We see this show up in the English later where it says, let us make man in our own image. Okay? We'll get to that then. But note right up front, in the first seven words of the Hebrew, we have a manifestation of the Trinity. We're going to see the Trinity much more evident the more we go. But it's interesting, right up front, there's no argument for God, there's no apologetics, there's no elaborate rationale. If you want that, you can wait to get to Romans 1, first couple of chapters of Corinthians. There's much to say about that. Genesis doesn't bother. God feels he has the right to take himself for granted. It just describes him. In the beginning, it was, you might turn, we can't miss, we can't hit these passages without getting a few New Testament comments on this particular passage. Turn to Hebrews chapter 11. First few verses, I missed it in verse 3, but let's get the tone of it now. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. The evidence of things not seen. Faith isn't some blind thing you happen to believe. It's the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders received witness. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by whom? The Word of God. So that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. It's interesting that even in today's engineering, I made reference to semiconductors. I happen to work in a plant where we make, put 20 or 30 thousand transistors in a little piece of silicon. If something's wrong with that, a microscope is almost useless. We use a microscope to see if the wires connected to it are in the right place, and a few superficial things. When we get serious about a problem, we have to use what's called a scanning electron microscope. Why? Because light rays themselves do not have the resolving power to show us what we're dealing with. So we go to an indirect way of looking at it, because we can amplify it then maybe 5,000 to 1, and see a particle of dust that's a millionth of an inch in size that looks like a crater sitting across two parts that should be separated and so forth. And that's just a crude example. A physicist used a mass spectrometer. There's all kinds of instruments we have invented and tried to use to deal with our atomic structure because it is what? Smaller than light itself will reveal. So the writer of Hebrews had a tremendous insight into 20th century physics. The things which are made are not made of things which do appear. Can't be seen. It's even more interesting than that if you really want to track down some of the... There was a Nobel Prize in physics given to a couple of guys some years ago dealing with a positron. A positron is like an electron, same mass but reverse charge. A positron can be observed in certain cloud changes under certain laboratory conditions for very short periods of time. It has a lifetime of a few millionths of a second, so you have to be very, very ready when it comes by. But a positron can be produced in laboratory conditions. It's a particle, another one of these many subatomic particles that fascinate us in terms of not only understanding physics in the practical sense, but also have profound cosmology or origin of the universe kinds of implications. But these two guys essentially developed some experiments and some mathematics supporting those experiments which essentially postulated that the positron, which occurs for only a brief lifetime, before it eventually collides with an electron and they mutually annihilate each other, they both disappear from existence. They pointed out that the short period of time that the positron occurs is probably the electron in a time reversal. The circumstances give rise to the whole thing. Our circumstances apparently put this positron in a time reversal and that is the electron in time reversal and it appears as a positron. And that sounds crazy, but it was a Nobel Prize paper in physics and it's interesting. I just mentioned it as an aside. The concept of time going backwards is very, very strange. In order for time to exist you have to have physical existence. Our God is beyond physical existence so our God isn't subject to the constraints of time. And there's one thing that I've mentioned many times that may be useful for some of you that are new here. If God has no mass then we discover we have a misconception of eternity. We think of time as a linear dimension in which some point is a beginning and another point on a line is an end and that interval, that line segment can be correlative to a lifetime or a piece of history or something else. And if we think of an eternal being we think of somebody who's on a line that starts from infinity on our left and goes to infinity on our right and we think of, in effect we assume somebody that has an eternal existence is someone who simply has lots of time. A very long line that's infinitely long. And that's a conceptual error because an eternal being if he is free of mass is outside the time domain altogether and can see the end from the beginning intrinsically. Now if that being is outside our time domain altogether and has for some reason a desire to communicate to us who are subject to the constraints of a time domain how would he validate his message? Assuming he has the technology as he obviously would have to get a message to us how would he put a signature on that message to let us know that the origin of that message had to occur from outside our time domain? Very easy. He would tell us the end from the beginning. And that's exactly what God has done with the scripture. He describes from the front the end. He knows the end from the beginning. And he lays that out in such detail that there's parts of it we can see and validate to recognize the source of our message and by giving us the context of the whole he can allow us to put ourselves in perspective of his plan. Interesting, isn't it? Something else he's done we now have learned a lot about secret messages and how you code messages to keep them from being jammed. We call it electronic warfare. Those of you that are engineers here know that if you're going to send a message down a channel and you're expecting hostile jamming you take your message and you distribute it over the available bandwidth. Very interesting. It's exactly what the scripture has done. And as we understand the structure of the scripture we're fascinated to recognize that it's organized so as to minimize its exposure to hostile jamming. Because not only did it come from outside the time domain to reach us it anticipated intelligent antagonistic jamming. I think that's awfully interesting. One other thing I meant to show you before we got in and I think I still have time to sneak it in here is turn with me to 1 Peter excuse me, 2 Peter I think I want. I'd like to turn to 2 Peter chapter 3 2 Peter chapter 3 Peter says knowing this first that there shall come in the last days scoffers When are the last days? I think most of us have a feeling a sneaky feeling it's very close at hand. In the last days there shall come scoffers walking after their own lusts and saying where is the promise of his coming? Now you've heard this verse mentioned many times to point out that one of the characteristics of the end times is a general skepticism about the second coming of Jesus Christ. And that's validly applied. One of the characteristics in the church I'm talking about out on the street when you know in the world where people don't even know there is a Jesus Christ or have any concept that he's supposed to return. I'm talking about the doctrinal ossified spiritually empty orthodoxy which says that we've all gotten carried away with this idea that he's literally coming back. That's in my mind who this is pointing to. But notice something else that Peter goes on to say. These same scoffers are saying where is the promise of his coming? Make the following assertion. For since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. What Peter does here or the Holy Spirit does for us through Peter he links up prophecy or the disbelief of it and evolution. Now you and I when we first read that think gee those subjects aren't related. I mean a guy can be into or not into prophecy that's one thing and a guy can be into or not into with his creation evolution thing. The Holy Spirit says the disbelief of the second coming of Christ is based on a conviction that says for since the fathers fell asleep in other words since the ancients Adam, Noah you name it fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. The whole concept of evolution hangs on a concept of uniformism. You're going to do carbon 14 dating more than 3000 years ago you're invalid it turns out for a lot of reasons. But all this long term analysis which attempts to support the idea of evolution hangs on the assumption not proved that rates stay the same that time is linear and half a dozen other things. When we get into this a little more I'll bring in some pictures it turns out you've all heard the lag types the stalagmite arguments and how because of the rate of the mineralization of the water coming from things there's you know when they drip from the top of a cave it leaves a little mineral behind and finally gets to be a long sort of thing and there's one on the ground where it lands it becomes a little mountain and then they finally two join right and if you do a very careful analysis of the amount of mineralization the rate of the water drip you can figure out by the length of the stalactite or height of the stalagmite or whichever way it is you can date them right? Well you know what's really fun about that is there's some pictures in a book I found which shows stalactites five feet long under the Lincoln Memorial which was built in 1923 and if you do the analysis of the drip and the amount of mineralization all the stuff you can easily conclude that the Lincoln Memorial was thousands of years old the problem is is that it was we generally have regarded as having been installed in 1923 and all this does it's an interesting amusing example of how easy it is to get into error by linear extrapolation and the whole concept of evolution hangs on uniformism but what the Holy Spirit is saying here is something else it's not a question of just science or the evolution issue the issue is is there a God that's intervening in our universe did he intervene in the first place to create it and if so he's obviously not shy about intervening again to redeem it or take possession of it the whole concept of the Bible is based on the concept the awareness of a God who cares who created it in the first place provided for a certain destiny allows us to participate in that destiny and is perfectly willing to intervene when he feels like it to accomplish his will and the concept of the second coming of Jesus Christ is linked conceptually to the whole concept of Genesis 1-1 in the first place and it's fascinating to recognize and Peter illuminates that for us is that there's a fundamental link between prophecy and the creation okay now that gets us through rather sloppily maybe long-windedly through Genesis the first verse now there are 50 chapters in Genesis when you go home at night you can figure out that how many verses are there per chapter at the rate Nistler is going we'll be here we'll be here at the second coming even if you have an amillennial theologian but as you can probably guess it picks up first 11 chapters first 11 chapters are about the beginning of the human race the rest of the books are about the beginning of one family and the key person in the book of Genesis is not Adam it's Abraham and we'll get there and the pace will pick up I promise okay now we get into verse 2 and what we've just crossed from verse 1 and verse 2 is one of the many fascinating controversies about the book verse 2 typically reads and the earth was without form and void and darkness is upon the face of the deep and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters the spirit of God this is where you start a study of the Holy Spirit not in Acts 2 Genesis 1-2 this is where the Holy Spirit is moving the word moved is the word rakah which appears only three times in the scripture here it's translated shake in Jeremiah 23-9 and fluttereth in Deuteronomy 32-11 many commentators feel that the Holy Spirit is brooding moving it's moving in the sense that a hen broods over her chicks the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters it's interesting that the word rakah also is the same the pharaoh in the Greek in 2 Peter 1-21 all men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost the Holy Spirit is always moving but the word rakah in the Hebrew also can mean to vibrate and as we get into we're going to get into Genesis a little bit further before we get into this whole cosmology thing but the whole notion that God created the elements that made up matter in verse 1 but later on set them in vibration in the quantum mechanics sense to give them substance as we think of them may be hidden in the second verse the second sentence of the second verse but what really makes this whole thing really interesting you will find volumes written about the first sentence of this verse and the earth was without form and void and darkness is upon the face of the deep and in the short time that I have what have we got here about six minutes well okay that's probably enough to get you confused enough that you'll come back next Monday to have it straightened out and the earth was without form and void let's start first of all with the words without form and void they mean waste and desolate and we could make a long study of each one of those words and every time it appears in the Old Testament we'll discover that there's the overtone it's not clear but there's the overtone of judgment okay the best example of that would be to turn to Isaiah chapter 45 18 I shouldn't say the best example of that but one of the uses of those words you want to be aware of and you might put in the margin of Genesis 1 2 Isaiah 45 18 because you'll have occasion from time to time to want to talk to your friends about an interesting possibility what I'm going to suggest to you is a possibility it's a possibility I find interesting it's a possibility that has been misunderstood by many and improperly applied let me give you enough of it so you can think about it during the week and we'll tear it apart next week Isaiah 45 18 says for thus sayeth the Lord who created the heavens we don't have any doubt about what Lord we're talking about here right God himself who formed the earth and made it he hath established it notice the next phrase he created it not in vain he formed it to be inhabited the word vain there is tohu the tohu verbohu phrase of Genesis 1 2 is the same word and scholars have pointed out that this contradicts Genesis 1 2 which says he didn't originally create it tohu verbohu without form and void chaos desolation as they go back and check the Hebrew of chapter 1 verse 2 they discover that the word and is a wild consecutive and it turns out that there is a lot of debate among Hebrew scholars you find good scholars on both sides of the argument however examples can be shown where instead of and it implies in contrast to it's an and in the sense of but furthermore or in contrast to and could be translated in English but the word was is an active verb implying action for example in Genesis 19 26 speaking of Lot's wife she became a pillar of salt so this it is argued by many that this verse can be translated as follows first of all Genesis 1 1 no argument in the beginning God created the earth period paragraph new subject but the earth became without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep the word deep there in the subject is the abuso so you can chew on that a little bit now the concept that this gives rise to and we'll talk about this more next time is that God did not originally create the world as we see it in Genesis later no question about it in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth but it is argued by some scholars that something happened to cause it to be judged made desolate and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the water and we have a recreation in view here as a habitation for man and the whole scenario as we see it this whole idea tends to be appealing to those who are looking for a place to see where it was that Satan fell we know from the scripture Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 those of you who want to read for next time read Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 there are passages in there that superficially seem to be addressed to the king of Tyre or the king of Babylon when in fact the language goes far beyond that in Ezekiel he says thou wast in Eden and it's clear that the language of the prophet it's going beyond the local king he's having a tirade with but rather it's pointing to Satan himself Satan obviously was created perfect subsequently fell when did he fall he's already fallen when we see him in Eden so many scholars hold to the view that the fall of Satan and the whole origin of demons as opposed to fallen angels and they draw a distinction between what's a fallen angel and what's a demon has in its murky origins a role between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 I mean there are two verses of Genesis 1 frankly I personally see a lot of scriptural support I shouldn't say support that's too strong a term those hints are strong enough that I find that very appealing but here's the problem this was first made popular by Thomas Chalmers in 1814 subsequently revised by a guy by the name of Pember G.H. Pember wrote a book Earth's Earliest Ages and it's a fascinating book and one that will be in our bibliography published in 1907 Pember is one of the major advocates for the so called gap theory the concept of a gap between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 here's the trap not to fall into don't look to the gap theory to explain dinosaurs and fossils and the ancient history of the earth many evangelical Christians have clung to the gap theory as some attempt to reconcile the millions of years that the geologists and the archeologists anthropologists paleontologists all those characters look to in the ascent of man nonsense totally irreconcilable with Genesis we'll deal with that the fact that there was maybe possibly an incredible era of time between Genesis 1 and 1 and Genesis 1 and 2 has got nothing to do with the other problems we're going to face and I'll prove it to you very simply you don't have to know any Hebrew to solve to put the gap theory to silence as far as evolution is concerned the gap theory might be valid for certain spiritual things it's got nothing to do with our problems of cosmology in the classical sense why? the whole field of paleontology is based on what? fossils right? fossils are dead right? fossils speak only of death death was instituted after the fall of Adam so death came by one man there was no death before Adam's fall what that means is a whole other thing we'll get into okay? I believe that the curse that God put on Adam deals not only with death deals with the institution of the entropy laws which will be we'll see in Romans the promise to be relieved we will be relieved from the bondage of decay which is good language for describing entropy laws the point is the gap theory I think is fruitful to explore you cannot insist upon it there's good scholars on both sides of the argument but the scholars that fight the gap theory feel it's a heresy are upset with it because most Christians try to hide behind the gap theory as some way of trying to reconcile some other passages of scripture with what they think they understand from high school biology and they'll fall on their face because of other problems the gap theory is no panacea for those problems there are better answers to those problems and we'll cover some of those next time but the gap theory to me is very interesting it's worth your study we'll pick up from there next time and try to explain a little more detail and then we'll move in and we'll also talk about