Genesis 1:14-19 comments: an earth-centered cosmology

    1:14 ¶  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: 15  And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16  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. 17  And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18  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. 19  And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

The Bible teaches an earth-centered and an earth-focused universe. Theoretical scientists dismiss this notion as in order to push an atheist agenda this cannot be accepted. However, some of the most brilliant scientists have admitted that the earth appears, from their own observations, to be in a central location in the universe although they simply cannot intellectually accept that.

Fred Hoyle, one of history’s great theoretical scientists, wrote in a textbook published in 1975;

However, [refers to a diagram of the universe] would demand a special relation of our own galaxy to the universe, since in this figure we have taken our galaxy to be located in the center of a nonuniform distribution of galaxies. It hardly seems plausible that our galaxy would be in any such privileged position. So we answer the above question [would anywhere appear to be the center making the universe acentric?] affirmatively on intellectual grounds rather than because such an answer is determined by observation.[1]

The fact that, according to the observations of many theoretical scientists, based on the data they have collected based on their own theories and mathematical models, the earth may be in a central position in the universe is interesting, to say the least. Regarding the belief that was once widely held by both scientists and Christians, that the earth was the center of the solar system (geocentric theory) rather than the sun (heliocentric theory), as Copernicus theorized, Hoyle had this interesting statement to make. “We now know that the difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory is one of relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance.”[2] Remember there are no walls, ceiling, or floors in space so determining relative motion without those reference points can be very complicated and often the evidence and mathematical calculations can point to one way and also prove the reverse.

In the controversial book Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe by University of Washington scientists, Peter Ward, a geologist and paleontologist, and Donald Brownlee, astronomer and astrobiologist, put forth the evidence and theory that showed that for life to exist on earth the universe was perfectly suited and even a slight variation in much of the observable universe would result in a lifeless earth.

From our perspective here the earth appears to be the center of the universe and the only place where the existence of life is necessary. The Bible here states clearly that the sun and the moon were created for the earth, for purposes here, and were not formed by a random process without meaning.

However, modern ideology, that life is basically an accident and we are insignificant, swirling in an equally insignificant position in the universe, is the prevailing modern myth that you are allowing your children to be indoctrinated by in public school and in college.

By the way, with regard to the moon in verse 16 the Bible tells us that it does not generate light of its own…

Job 25:5  Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight.

…just as we are told that the earth is not attached to any object…

Job 26:7  He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.

…and that it is circular in shape…

Isaiah 40:22  It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

…and that in the expanse of outer space there is a vast empty place as Job 26:7 stated above, which we have confirmed by observation.[3]

And yet, theoretical scientists, in the main, deny the Bible’s truth. However, any honest reading of philosophers of science will show you that theoretical science is driven by ideology as much as it is any honest assessment of the evidence.[4]

Your best bet is to believe the Bible as literally written. It is a primary source, given to men by the God who created them, and is thoroughly reliable while the musings of theoretical scientists are not. The sun and the moon exist to perform certain functions with regard to the earth, not as accidental events of nature in space-time.

There is a myth perpetuated by textbooks and lectures of scientists and philosophers that the ancients believed the universe was very small. The Christian writer, C.S. Lewis, referencing a number of ancient and medieval sources, pointed out that the ancients thought the universe to be quite large in his book The Discarded Image.[5]

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[1] Fred Hoyle, Astronomy and Cosmology: A Modern Course (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Co., 1975), 87.

[2]  Ibid., 416.

[3] Sarah Knapton, “Mysterious Supervoid in Space is Largest Object Ever Discovered, Scientists Claim,” The Telegraph, April 20, 2015. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/11550868/Giant-mysterious-empty-hole-found-in-universe.html.

[4] Suggested reading includes Richard Lewontin’s Biology as Ideology, Paul Feyerabend’s The Tyranny of Science and Against Method, Ian Hacking’s Representing and Intervening, Nancy Cartwright’s How the Laws of Physics Lie, Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and The Copernican Revolution, and E.A. Burtt’s The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, all of which I have read and have in my library.

[5] C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 97-99.

Genesis 1:11-13 comments: after his kind

1:11  And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12  And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13  And the evening and the morning were the third day.

In the same 24-hour period as the sea and land being divided you can see plant life being created from the earth, not out of nothing. Life is created out of substances already formed the previous day. A fundamental point of biology is made here in that plants yield fruit after their kind. It seems obvious that an orange tree doesn’t produce pears but this will be an important point to remember in a few verses. Kind is a Biblical taxonomic classification. Just as we use Species, Genus, Family, or Order God uses the more general word, Kind. Kind is much larger than species and should not be confused with that word as there are more than two dozen definitions of species, none of which denote the Kind of Genesis but rather smaller divisions of plant and animal life.[1] It is important to change your way of thinking as you have been polluted by the fallacies of Modernism. A biological creature’s nature is determined by its Kind, from the top-down. It’s Kind is not determined by its individual components. Context is what is important in biology. Just think of language. The words rite or right have a meaning based on the sentence they are in. For instance, we speak of ‘a religious rite,’ a ‘rite of passage,’ or ‘turn right,’ or ‘my legal rights.’ The context determines the meaning just as the design determines the expression of genes. Put Reductionism back in its box and you will understand reality so much better. God, speaking through Moses’ writing, is speaking here about original creations from which developed all other types.

There was a pre-Darwin doctrine claimed by both scientists and Anglican churchmen called ‘The Immutability of Species,’ which insisted that all species were specially created by God at the beginning. This clearly confused kinds with species.

Grasses include wheat, rice, corn, and other grains such as millet and rye. Fruits would include apples, citrus fruits, melons, etc.[2]

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[1] John S. Wilkins, “A List of 26 Species ‘Concepts,’” Evolving Thoughts Science Blog. October 1, 2006. http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2006/10/01/a-list-of-26-species-concepts/

[2] ”Cereals, grasses, and grains,” United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service, http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/ethnobotany/food/grains.shtml, (accessed 5.3.2016).

Genesis 1:9,10 comments: earth taking shape

1:9 ¶  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. 10  And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

In the third 24-hour period, the water covered earth, under God’s authority and power, water and land separated. Land appears above water which may clarify the condition of the earth as being without form, and void as the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters in verse two. Theoretical scientists suppose a primeval earth with one super-continent and the rest covered by water. This continent is called Gondwanaland, with another super-continent theorized for later call Pangaea. Whatever the musings of scientists who ponder origins and original things God has clearly here, through Moses, given us the separation of the earth, the dividing of it, between land and sea.

Psalm 95:5  The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.

It will be important for later to understand that theoretical scientists presume as much or more water under the earth’s crust as above it, in the oceans.[1]

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[1] Mark Prigg, “Revealed:The vast reservoir hidden beneath the Earth's crust that holds as much water as ALL of the oceans,” DailyMail.com, March 12, 2014.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2579584/The-vast-reservoir-hidden-Earths-crust-holds-water-ALL-oceans.html#ixzz47Uti24Se

Genesis 1:6-8 comments: the creation of outer space

1:6 ¶  And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7  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. 8  And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

The firmament, heaven, or what we call our atmosphere and outer space, the heavens, is a band dividing waters on earth from waters which must now exist in the furthest reaches of space. I noted this previously although there is much more to be discovered and one could predict that at the outermost distance in space there should be quite a significant amount of water.

Psalm 148:4  Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens.

God made the firmament and clearly expanded it creating the immense realm of space we see around us. Modern theoretical scientists talk about this rapid expansion of space but their starting point is not God’s creation but a god-like inanimate object, the Singularity, previously mentioned, before what they call The Big Bang.

If the universe is 93 billion light-years (the distance light travels in one year) across as some theoretical scientists suggest and we have no way nor, in this life, ever will have a way to measure if this is true, then this happened very rapidly, by God’s hand, in a day. So, the evidence these scientists observe to come up with their atheistic theories, postulates, and conclusions are merely the evidence of the handiwork of the God of the Bible.

First there is the appearance of light, as theoretical scientists call the Photon Epoch, then a rapid expansion of the universe. I am not certifying that what scientists say is true when they make educated guesses nor do I mean to tie the Bible into current scientific understanding, which is changing, but merely to show that even theoretical science has dipped its toe into the pool of truth, perhaps to take it out again or perhaps to immerse itself further in understanding God’s actions in creation if they can just get past atheistic determinism caused by their inner fear of God’s judgment.

Again, I must repeat;

Psalm 19:1  « To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. » The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

And add;

Psalm 8:3 ¶  When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

Psalm 33:6  By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.

Notice at the end of this day God does not say that it was good. There are things that will abide in space above us in a short while (for us reading) that we must be aware of.

Job 15:15  Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight.

Job 25:5  Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight.

Ephesians 6:12  For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Ephesians 2:2  Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:

That the heavens have depth and distance is clear. Imagine a curtain being stretched out in a wind, with depth and distance.

Psalm 104:2  Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:

Genesis 1:4-5 comments: Day and Night

1:4  And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5  And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

It is established here God’s works are good. His original intention is good, beneficial, worthwhile, life-giving, and giving Him glory, manifesting His power. But, God is not a uniter. He is a divider. He divides, as we will see, evil from good, sin from righteousness, the wheat from the chaff, and here, light from darkness. There is truth and there are lies. There is good and there is evil. There is light and there is darkness. Unlike the popular mantra that darkness is the absence of light so evil is the absence of God the truth is that God has control over all of it and He is present everywhere. Hell is not simply separation from God, but an expression of His wrath on those who reject His sovereignty over them. Do not let popular ‘new age’ philosophy corrupt your understanding of the God of the Bible.

1Kings 8:12 ¶  Then spake Solomon, The LORD said that he would dwell in the thick darkness.

Deuteronomy 4:11  And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness.

Isaiah 45:7  I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Psalm 139:8  If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

The modern Christian denies God’s power and sovereign rule over all that exists in the material universe. His God is weak; who can neither preserve His word nor keep His man or woman saved and is in a war with almost equal in power, Satan, for our souls, to whom Christ’s life was paid as a ransom, none of which are true but spoken as if they were by every lying conservative pulpit in the land.

Psalm 119:89  LAMED. For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.

Exodus 30:12  When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them.

Psalm 49:6 ¶  They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches; 7  None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him: 8  (For the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth for ever:)

Matthew 20:28  Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

Spiritually, God gives you a choice; light or darkness, spiritual Day or Night, with the first letters capitalized. You have the choice to make as part of your free will but you have no control over the consequences of that choice. The importance of this comparison is made clear by the fact that the sun, which we define morning by its appearance and the stars which dot the night sky have not been created yet. What is revealing this first day is more profound than the sun we see in the sky now or the stars that fill the heavens.

Here we see that God’s day for us starts in the evening previous. The Bible defines the day as starting on the previous evening and into the following day, like Tuesday night into Wednesday. As the darkness was first then the light, so is the evening first then the day, and your sinful condition first then the light of Christ, as the darkness of this age and then the morning of Christ’s return.

This is a physical 24-hour day with an evening and a morning, not an ‘age’ consisting of millions of years.

Genesis 1:3 comments: and there was light

1:3 ¶  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Sound passing through water causes light in a process called Sonoluminescence, as the experimental science which produced Sonar showed us.

Here are the three parts of God in verses one, two, and three. In verse one there is God the Father, the soul of God, so to speak, the seat of will and self-identity.

Psalm 11:5  The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.

In verse two we have the Spirit of God, His particular vehicle for acting upon and through His creation, also called the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Ghost as God Himself as already pointed out.

Here, in verse three, we have God’s spoken Word, the beginning of all life, the origin of life, the beginning of light, and the origin of light. Here, the universe is being created, the UNI-VERSE, one spoken sentence. God is the author of it, the authority of it, as my wife, Beth, pointed out to me.

John 1:1 ¶  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2  The same was in the beginning with God. 3  All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4  In him was life; and the life was the light of men.        5 ¶  And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

The Lord Jesus Christ, as any reading of John will attest to, is the Word. He is the physical image of God, the body of God, if you will, so we have three parts of one God; soul, body, and spirit.

Colossians 1:15  Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:…2:9  For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

Hebrews 1:3  Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;

John 14:9  Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?

Three parts to one God with one will, not three individual persons with separate wills.

Deuteronomy 6:4  Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:

John 10:30  I and my Father are one.

Christ is the appearance of God; the angel of the Lord, His presence.

Isaiah 63:9  In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.

Galatians 4:14  And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus.

Who led the Hebrews out of Egypt.

Judges 2:1 ¶  And an angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you.

We will be created in such a manner, having a body, a soul, and a spirit.

1Thessalonians 5:23  And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Regarding light, scientists presume the existence of the basic particle of light, a photon. The universe is bathed in that light. For every estimated proton around the nucleus of an atom they say there are a billion photons.[1] Of course, photons might not even exist except as theoretical entities to explain things that can be seen by mathematical constructs.

Psalm 19:1  « To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. » The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

We can safely dismiss theoretical entities, as said previously, which exist only as having explanatory power to envision a universe without God, and understand that this is the Word of God working in our universe. And, He holds it together, not non-existent Dark Matter or Dark Energy, but God Himself, as the Word, Christ.

Colossians 1:17  And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

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[1] Lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, and Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006), 75.

Genesis 1:2 comments: without form, and void

Moving back to the text Heaven is one of those words like evil that doesn’t need an ‘s’ on the end to be thought of as plural although there is nothing particularly wrong with saying heavens or evils. It’s just awkward sometimes. We say skies as in the old advertising phrase, “Fly the Friendly Skies,” when there is only one sky. William Rosenau, in his early 20^th century work entitled Hebraisms in the Authorized Version of the Bible reported that in the Hebrew grammars he studied the use of the word heaven or heavens, as for other plurals, is the difference between referring to something as a number of individual separate objects or as a singular to denote them collectively. So, contrary to the skeptics who insist that writing heaven for heavens is wrong, especially those skeptics sitting under Authorized Version preaching, it is not wrong, they are.[1]

            In the following passages we see the description of the creation of two heavens; one what we call atmosphere and the other we call outer space.

Genesis 2:1  Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

1:2  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.

To define without form, and void we cross-reference to Jeremiah 4 to see how the Holy Spirit guided that prophet to define the phrase.

Jeremiah 4:23  I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. 24  I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. 25  I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled.

In a statement on an unrelated subject in Jeremiah we find the definition of without form, and void as being structurally fluid and uninhabited, without light. In verse 9, with the appearance of dry land the text indicates the earth was covered by water. We do know that God’s intention was for it to be inhabited.

Isaiah 45:18  For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.

There is a belief that there is a gap between verses one and two that allows for long ages of time or for a brief period of time where the earth was inhabited by someone or something. We do not have enough evidence in the text to discuss this possibility which didn’t become popular until the early 1800’s, But I call those who believe in the authority of the King James Bible to note that the phrase is And the earth was without form, and void not, “And the earth became without form, and void.”  In addition, how could there be death before Adam’s time?

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

There are some commentators who insist that animal life died in this period but mankind had not been created yet. However…

Romans 8:22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

1Corinthians 15:21  For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.

When I get to the word replenish I will be forced to discuss this possibility further.

The word darkness will be used in a spiritual sense later in the Bible as it is used in a physical sense here. The face of the deep is a reference to the fact that this earth is encased on water and the face of references the surface. The sea or ocean as a distinct body of water separated from land has not been formed yet. In Job 38 the phrase is used in an argument God makes to Job about things on earth to things in the furthest reaches of outer space.

Water is present in the universe. In the Orion Nebula alone enough water is produced, scientists estimate, to fill the earth’s oceans every 24 minutes.[2] This water is not necessarily the same kind of life-giving water we have on earth, though.[3] Even if they are guessing wrong about the amount the evidence still remains that there appears to be a great deal of water out there.

The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Moved upon shows movement on something as in Genesis 7:21 and the face of the waters is the surface of the waters as in Genesis 7:18.

The Spirit of God is one agency by which God works in His creation. There is named the Spirit of God here and elsewhere as well as the Spirit of Christ.

Romans 8:9  But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

1Peter 1:11  Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.

This is the Holy Ghost as a person with the Spirit being Himself in operation.

Luke 4:1  And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,

John 1:33  And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.

John 7:39  (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)

Acts 2:4  And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

1Corinthians 12:3  Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.

When the Holy Spirit’s operative work is spoken of the impersonal pronoun it can be used.

Romans 8:16  The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:..26  Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

But as a third part of God the Holy Ghost is referred to as he.

John 14:26  But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

            The Spirit is the mind and heart of God just as the spirit of man includes the heart, reason, emotions, intellect, and talents. For contexts where the Spirit of God or the spirit of man can be synonymous with mind please see the following;

Romans 8:27  And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

1Corinthians 2:9  But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. 10  But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. 11  For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. 12  Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. 13  Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14  But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15  But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. 16  For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

Ephesians 4:23  And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;

Philippians 1:27  Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;

2Timothy 1:7  For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

            Now for the heart, and we must understand that all of our decisions include our invisible minds and hearts. Here are just a couple of examples.

Exodus 35:21  And they came, every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing, and they brought the LORD’S offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation, and for all his service, and for the holy garments.

Deuteronomy 2:30  But Sihon king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him: for the LORD thy God hardened his spirit, and made his heart obstinate, that he might deliver him into thy hand, as appeareth this day.

            God the Father is the soul of God, the seat of will and self-identity, while the Holy Ghost is the very mind and heart of God moving in creation called the Holy Spirit in action as the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ, and the Son of God is God’s physical existence, His image, His body. It is through the latter that He connected with us and it is there, at the Lord Jesus Christ, that we who have bodies commune with God. Without the physical image of God as our Saviour there is no connection in our minds and hearts, in our spirits with an invisible, incorporeal God of the universe. It is through Christ that we reach God and through Him only.

            The very mind of God has formed the earth and the heavens and we will learn controls all reality and events. Nothing can happen unless God either causes it directly or permits it to be done. From the most basic cell function to a wisp of a breeze and from the evil that men do to the formation of a distant galaxy all things flow from either His perfect, direct will or His permissive will. Look around you and see the mind of God at work every day. Pray for His mercy, accept His love, and give Him the glory.

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[1] William Rosenau, Hebraisms in the Authorized Version of the Bible (Baltimore: The Lord Baltimore Press, 1902), 111.

[2] Frank D. Roylance, “Astronomers Observe Water Forming in the Orion Nebula,” The Tech – Online Edition, Volume 118, Issue 19, April 14, 1998. http://tech.mit.edu/V118/N19/dorion.19w.html

[3] Justine Alford, “Water on Rosetta’s Comet Different to Water on Earth,” IFL Science, December 11, 2014. http://www.iflscience.com/space/rosetta-data-suggests-water-earth-probably-didnt-come-comets

Genesis 1:1 comments continued: How do you know that God exists?

The second question that begs itself is, “How do you know that God exists?”

There have been lots of arguments in history regarding God’s existence. There is everything from Pascal’s Wager. It goes like this in a shortened way. If I believe in God and He doesn’t exist I won’t know because I will cease to exist. If you don’t believe in God and He does exist, you’re fried.

There have been arguments from Aesthetics, Desire, Conscience, the Moral Argument, the Ontological Argument, and on and on for thousands of years. But, really, the argument for God’s existence breaks down to where we live. The most important proof of God’s existence is that there is something rather than nothing and since stuff doesn’t create itself it had to be created, and that’s where God comes in.

Of course, faith cannot be based on this idea. Faith is based on your experience with Him and on the truth of what He has said in His book. Not only have I encountered a risen Saviour in prayer, Bible reading, answered prayer, and in the creation and reality around me but I completely trust His book containing His ministry of reconciling mankind to Himself. I have no doubts. God speaks to my heart through His book changing me without me hearing words in my ear but working on me from the inside in His special way.

You may not find me a credible witness. Unbelievers become adamant, raving even, that as a person of faith you are a lunatic, or weak, or small-minded. They cannot accept that a perfectly rational scientist, businessman, or scholar of any type could believe in and love a God who has not revealed Himself to them.

These are things outside of our personal experience with God, a personal experience that no unbeliever can understand or accept unless God Himself touches their hearts, that suggest or even prove His existence.

Let’s take something as complex as life. The astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle was born in Yorkshire, England on June 24, 1915. He was conferred a master's degree from Cambridge in 1939 and then was elected Fellow, St. John's College, Cambridge in the same year. He worked his way to become a Professor of Astrophysics and Natural Philosophy in 1958. He was a leading contributor in the discovery of how the elements from lithium to iron are synthesized inside stars.

Professor N. Chandra Wickramasinghe was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on January 20, 1939, studied astrophysics at Cambridge, and was a student of Hoyle's. He received a Ph.D. in 1963 taught at Cambridge. He later became a Professor of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy at the University College, Cardiff, Wales. He is an expert in the use of infrared astronomy to study interstellar matter.

These are no lightweights although Wickramasinghe has gone a little bonkers in the last few years. But, they both came to the logical atheist conclusion that life came from outer space. Why? Because it was impossible for it to have happened by random chance on earth, not in 15 billion years or a hundred billion years. Let me read you a quote published recently by Dr. Wick…

“Improbability of Life

The blueprint for all life from bacteria to plants to animals was discovered in the 1950s by Watson and Crick to reside in DNA – in particular in the precise arrangements of the nucleotides A,G,T,C that effectively code for proteins that in turn control cell function. In a series of books and articles published in collaboration with the late Sir Fred Hoyle, I have argued that highly specific arrangements needed for the operation of living cells cannot be understood as arising from random processes. For the simplest bacterium (Mycoplasma genitalium) the probability that its few hundred genes will be discovered by random shuffling of their amino acid components gives a figure of 1 in 10 to the 1000^th power or smaller. Hoyle and I have compared such horrendous improbabilities to the odds against a ‘tornado blowing through a junk yard leading to self-assembly of BOEING 707 airplane.’”[1]

1 in 10 to the 1000^th? These types of scientists estimate there is only 10 to the 80^th power number of atoms in the universe. Saying that life came about by random processes is like me saying that I’m getting handsomer, wealthier, and smarter as I get older. You would just look at me and go, what? I’m joking, right? But, scientists who believe in spontaneous generation, I mean abiogenesis, or life by accident are serious.

So, proof that God exists, step one. Life could not have happened on earth by chance. It’s not mathematically conceivable, not by any stretch of your Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Dr. Who imagination. But, what about it coming from somewhere else? That’s called panspermia and that’s what Dr. Wick believes in.

Well, NASA scientists Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, in their book, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, explained that it is also highly unlikely that life came from someplace else as this planet, located where it is, is the best and most likely place for life to exist and, in fact, probably could not exist anywhere else.

So, proof that God exists, step two. Life could not have happened anywhere but on earth. But, it couldn’t happen here by chance. So, something else, or someone else rather, must be happening than mere material processes randomly achieved, or if you don’t like my use of the word random, then how about without purpose or intent, by accident.

Who could it be?

You know if they could have proven that life could have come together by random events on earth like Miller-Urey’s experiment tried to do and failed in the 1950s it would be astounding. But, you’d have to have nothing and then have something suddenly come into existence for it to simulate God without God. After all, Miller-Urey made something happen with the equipment and chemicals they introduced making themselves in the place of God. But, they did not create life and established conditions that evolutionists do not believe were present in their fantasy of early earth anyway. So, it worked as a publicity stunt but was not good science.

Then, there was Dr. Wimmer in the latter part of the twentieth century who supposedly made a virus out of synthetic DNA. Now he admitted in an interview that he did not create life as a virus isn’t alive, it can’t reproduce itself and needs a host, and he used synthetic DNA.

None of these experiments or any other created life or proved that it could be created by random processes without an intelligent mind involved.

So, now you have the gorilla in the living room. You have something as complex as life and you shouldn’t have it if there were no one to inject their intelligence into it. Life isn’t possible without God.

You have the atheist or the doubter demanding, “How do you know God exists?” and you have your own testimony, if you have one, and you have this incontrovertible fact, “Because without God life could not exist.”

You see, we are not just alive. We are aware that we are alive. Science has a huge problem with conscious self-awareness. Step three to proving that God exists. I am.

It has been said repeatedly that consciousness is the window through which we understand. Science has failed to pinpoint the actual brain processes that are behind our awareness. Some neuroscientists and philosophers of science express a deep pessimism that we will ever find an explanation for consciousness. But we know. Every car mechanic or customer service rep, a farmer or bank teller can know what a neuroscientist does not know. We know where consciousness comes from, that function of our spirit.

Zechariah 12:1 ¶  The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.

Scientists say that a good theory, a theory that must supplant other theories, doesn’t have to answer every question. But it must answer more questions than its competitors. The belief in God answers far more questions than theoretical science can even come up with.

God is the greatest of all self-aware beings.

Exodus 3:14  And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

He made us. He formed our bodies, our souls, and our spirits. In these verses are all three; body, spirit, and soul.

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

1Thessalonians 5:23  And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He uses our spirit to see us from the inside.

Proverbs 20:27  The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.

We are made self-aware and our soul is the seat of our self-identity and will and our spirit makes us aware of it, of God, and of all things. It is our understanding, our skills, our drives, our emotions, our yearnings.

It is sad that the atheist or doubter will question your testimony as to whether or not you are a credible witness for God’s existence. That was how I came to Christ, the mechanism He used, the testimony of others. I vacillated between atheism, happy to believe in any religion at all, and really, God just being irrelevant to my life or thinking. But, over time I saw the truth of Christianity in the lives of people around me.

No, it wasn’t because of someone screaming Bible verses at me on a street corner. It wasn’t from someone handing me a gospel tract. It was the testimony of Christians, filled with faith and goodness, relying completely on God for their very survival, trusting in Christ’s righteousness and not their own for eternal life. Their faith was real, and it took time but God impressed on me that reality until I accepted it myself and received Christ on March 19, 1986. It was a Wednesday evening I believe.

The question of whether or not God exists has been a subject of deep philosophical debate for thousands of years. But, even outside of our experience we know.

Psalm 19:1  The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

The proof of God’s existence is all around us. Without God’s existence no reality makes sense for very long.

Ask yourself, if there was no God, then why is there something rather than nothing? Why is something as complex as life here in this space of earth?  If God doesn’t exist why do I know that I am? Where did that come from, o’ wise one? How can we have this conversation?

The universe is finely tuned, so finely tuned that something as rare and fragile as life can live in it. Things like the ratio of the strength of electromagnetism to the strength of gravity for a pair of protons, nuclear efficiency of fusion from hydrogen to helium, the density parameter, the cosmological constant, and a bunch of other intelligent sounding stuff make many scientists insist that the universe is just so and because of that you, me, and that little chipmunk you saw on your deck this morning can exist.

Other scientists invent all sorts of nonsensical things to counteract this belief. They will resurrect the multidimensions of the occult of the late 1800s which impacted theoretical physics then and say there is a multiverse, many universes where things are different and anything is possible. I might even be handsomer, wealthier, and smarter on one of them, in their imagination only of course.

But, the universe is fine-tuned. Now, how does something get tuned? Have you ever seen a radio tune itself? Never mind. In today’s world I suppose that is possible. But, at some point a person was involved; an engineer or someone to tune that radio. How do you think the universe was tuned so close and exact? Who did it? Who maintains it? We all know that if you leave your car in the driveway without maintaining it for thirty years the tires will rot and it will become undriveable. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that all things fall apart. Oh, and there is this;

Colossians 1:17  And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

Scientific papers have expressed alarm at the harmful mutations produced in each generation of people. One of them was entitled, “Contamination of the Genome by Very Slightly Deleterious Mutations: Why Have We Not Died 100 Times Over?” But, we’re here, our biology is preserved, life goes on and the planet is not yet cold and dead.

Again, I say ask yourself, if there was no God, then why is there something rather than nothing? Why is something as complex as life here in this space of earth?  If God doesn’t exist why do I know that I am? Why is the universe so finely tuned as to permit us to exist?

You know, our government has spent millions of dollars searching for extraterrestrials, life on other planets, even microbial. They will continue to do so but will probably never find it. The scientific community has a hunger, a lust, to overthrow God. They are searching for microbes and water on Mars.

In the Rosetta Mission they recently learned that water in space can be vastly different than water on earth so they feel confident in at least admitting that our water didn’t come from comets. But, they will keep searching, hoping to be able to drive the nail in the coffin for belief in the God of the Bible.

There are two other things that scream the truth of the existence of God. One is the very desperate desire to prove beyond all doubt that He does not. Let me read you part of the short religious history of man that God has provided in Romans.

Romans 1:19 ¶  Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20  For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21  Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

And in another context an ancient warning;

Isaiah 66:4  I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: but they did evil before mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not.

Remember what King David thought of atheists in about 1000 BC.

Psalm 14:1  « To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. » The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.

Finally, evolutionary biologists admit an astounding thing. Belief in God, according to some of them, is hard-wired into the human brain. A neuroscientist and the author of several books, Andrew Newberg, wrote a book entitled Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. He is called a neurotheologist, studying how religious belief and prayer affect the brain.

On page 129 he wrote, “…evolution has adopted this machinery, and has favored the religious capabilities of the religious brain because religious belief and behaviors turn out to be good for us in profound and pragmatic ways.”

As evolutionists often do he refers to evolution as he does in other places with natural selection almost as a god in itself rather than just a process or a mechanism by which new species of dog, cat, or deer are produced by environmental stresses or opportunities or human cross-breeding efforts (There are more than two dozen scientific definitions of species.) The fact is that all of the genetic information necessary for a creature to adapt to its environment are present within the creature’s DNA and no dog ever became a cat and no alligator ever became a trout. But, Newberg, like other of his ilk, refer to evolution as a sort of inert god who unfeelingly adopts and favors in the passage I quoted. In a preceding page he refers to natural selection as not tolerating something. So, it is almost humorous to see how these kinds of scientists use language, at the least, in a very interesting way.

Susan Mazur, a science writer and journalist who doesn’t appear to be a fundamental Baptist (said in a tongue-in-cheek manner), wrote in her book The Altenberg 16: An Expose’ of the Evolution Industry that, “Evolutionary science is as much about posturing, salesmanship, stonewalling and bullying as it is about actual scientific theory.” (v)

So, to summarize, if you want to look outside of your own experience for proof that God exists I suggest starting with life. There are many other topics we could talk about that prove or at least suggest His existence but for brevity sake let’s review the points I’ve made.

One, there is something rather than nothing and since space dust did not create itself then something or someone did. Two, life could not have begun here on earth and probably not on some distant planet by chance. Some intelligent being had to create it. Three, self-awareness and consciousness imply a reality greater than the physical universe. Four, we are apparently “hard-wired” to believe in God. It is part of our make-up.

We believe in God because He has communed with our spirit so that we can. We experience Him in our prayer and in the answers to it, the way the Bible speaks to us, in the truth found in it, the way He molds and changes us by our reading and hearing it read, by the reality arounds us that is confirmed in the Bible, and by His miraculous intervention in our lives.

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[1] Chandra Wickramasinghe & Robert Bauval, Cosmic Womb: The Seeding of Planet Earth (Rochester, Vermont:Bear & Co., 2017), Kindle ed., chap. 1.