Monthly Archives: October 2009
The Bible Contains Riddles, Puzzles, Mysteries and Secrets
(Ver 1.4) This of course is a very difficult subject for many Christians to accept or acknowledge. So many Christians struggle with believing the concept that God would intentionally hide important information from us. How could a loving God ever keep us from easily finding that which He desires us to learn and know? I once heard a minister say that studying the Bible is like a natural man searching for natural gold and I found that I could really not improve on that analogy so I’ll use it to help you understand how the Bible was written by God’s design. If you’ve ever panned for gold in Colorado or California you will have already discovered how difficult it was to find anything of significant value on the surface. I tried it but I came up empty even after several attempts when I was in Colorado, I guess it was fun, but it would have certainly been better if I had left with something that I could have said WOW, look at this!!! Look at what I found. This is a lot like reading the Bible and many do it everyday, but never walk away with the WOW, look at this. “Look what I found in the Word of God”. Why is that? There are probably a lot of reasons and I cover many of them in this Blog. Here is a verse of scripture about God and it describes a characteristic of His nature that must be understood if you are going to be a serious student of the Bible:
Proverbs 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings is to search out a matter.
What an amazing statement of universal truth. This verse clearly states that God is glorified by Him hiding information for us to find. Oh yes, I should have told you first that we are the kings and priests of God that He is referring to in this verse. Jesus is called the King of kings and the Lord of lords (Rev 19:16). The reference to “kings” is us! I know that bugs the heck out of religious people, but please get over it see what the Bible says.
Like digging for gold in the natural world so it is in the spiritual world with the Word of God. People don’t usually find many big gold nuggets of truth on the surface of God’s Word by just reading the it. There we must ask, how do we find them? We find them by digging deep for them. It involves work and that is a four-letter word to many. Proverbs 25:2 said that the honor of kings was in the searching of the information. Searching involves effort and that is spelled W O R K! There is a lot of information that can be found on the surface of reading the Bible, but the really good stuff is always found much deeper within the text. Did you ever notice the world’s largest gold producers are finding most of the valuable stuff deep underground using tunnels, blasting, digging and a whole bunch of effort. Occasionally they might find a large vein and strike it very rich by digging deep. Bible study is the exact same thing. I noticed this scripture in the Old Testament that confirms that God has secrets:
Amos 3:7 Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he reveal his secret unto his servants the prophets.
This verse informs us that God has secrets, but it also says that God will not do anything without first revealing his secrets to His servants, His prophets. That tells me the Old and New Testaments both have the potential of an extraordinary number of hidden secrets of God. Some we have discovered and most that we have not yet found.
Proverbs 1:23 Turn you at my reproof: behold I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.
God says in this verse in Proverbs that He will make known His words after He has poured out His Spirit. We can see that the work involves the Holy Spirit. We can also see the clear implication that the meanings of the words must be hidden if God is going to make them known. You see we have had these words recorded for us to read for thousands of years. But yet the implication is that there is still more to know. Many will try to explain this away as having happened back with the apostles. But that event was only the former rain and now is the time of the later rain. Now is when God is again pouring out His Spirit unto men. Now is the time for the harvest. There are so many scriptures that tells us the same information, here is one from the book of Daniel:
Daniel 2:20 Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his: 21 And he changed the times and the seasons: he removes kings and sets up kings: he gives wisdom unto the wise and knowledge to them that know understanding. 22 He reveals the deep and secret things: he knows what is in the darkness and light dwells with him.
You see from these verses that God is the one that holds all wisdom and that He gives it to us so that we can become wise. But verse 22 says the main point of this Blog, God reveals the deep and secret things to us. A “Deep” thing is an implied truth that is not easily understood or seen. These are very strong statements of truth and teach us a lot about the Bible. It tells us that everything in the Bible is not shallow and easy to find or understand. It implies that there is an extended effort and a commitment necessary from those who want to find these “deep” secrets. Let’s jump into the New Testament and look at another verse:
1 Corinthians 2:7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory.
Here we read another verse that declares God has hidden things in the Bible and it even refers to them as mysteries. What is a mystery? A mystery to me would be a complex puzzle, a code, riddle or something that is not plain or obvious. If you could look at it and immediately know what it was, it wouldn’t be a mystery would it? So apparently if you haven’t figured it out, the Bible is written in a style that conceals many things and makes hidden much of the knowledge, understanding and wisdom of God.
Romans 16:25 Now to him that is of power to establish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began.
This is another great example of the fact that God hid the revelation of Jesus Christ from the very beginning of our created world. We can observer clearly in this verse that God must reveal this information to us in the form of a revelation given to us in this instance by the writer Paul. If you didn’t know it, there are still Pauls in the world today that God uses. God is revealing things, giving revelation to many within the body of Christ and all you have to do is recognize it when you hear it. Yes, there will be false teachers, prophets and etc. in this world But, the Word of God will always be correct when rightly divided. Judge what people say by the Bible. So we can see so many verses that declare that the Bible contains the mysteries and secrets of God, here is just one more:
Colossians 1:26 Even the mystery which has been hid from ages and from generations, now is made manifest to his saints.
This is a fantastic verse if you are one of God’s saints. For if you are a saint of God then this verse assures that you are potentially destined to know these hidden secrets. The implication is clearly given that they are intended for God’s saints to know and understand. Some will attempt to explain, that was only for them, the early church and not for us now. I can hear it all now. But there is no way it is not for us right here and right now. This is what Jesus said about the secret things of God:
Luke 8:17 For nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest: neither anything hid that shall not be known and come abroad.
This is of course a little difficult to see in the King James version of the Bible, but it basically says that there is nothing that was hidden or secret that will not be made known or revealed so that we can see them, understand them and know them. That is a powerful prophecy and the words of God himself speaking. Has this occurred yet? I really only think we have scratched the surface of this prophecy, but I believe it will be fulfilled before Jesus’ return. You of course can believe whatever you like. You might ask how can this be, is it possible that the body of Christ could unify and see the truth? I think it is possible if we allow God to do it. This scripture in Daniel shows us what God is capable of by just one Old Testament prophet:
Daniel 2:47 The king answered unto Daniel, and said, Of a truth it is that your God is a God of gods and a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets seeing that thou could reveal this secret.
So the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar recognized the power of God. By God revealing a bit of information to him the king was convinced that he was the true God. You see God just has to reveal a few key things to get people to see and He knows what those are. I believe that is why we will see major changes in attitudes and major changes in the true church of the living God.
So what have we seen? That the Bible contains mysteries, secrets, riddles and puzzles that God is starting to reveal to us in these end times. If you start looking for them, and expecting them to happen, God will make sure that they do happen. But since there are so many false teachings going around, here is what the Bible recommends for us to do:
Acts 17:11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
You should follow this example of the early church. Be open to hear and learn, but search God’s Word everyday to see if they are really true. Don’t buy into anything I say or anything anyone else says just because they said “Thus saith the Lord” or I have a revelation from God. Too many ignorant people have done that and burned or died in a compound when their leader suddenly said it was time for them all to die. God can and will show us if what is being taught is true or not in His word if we stop and ask and listen to His leading. If God doesn’t bear witness within your own spirit that its right, reject it and run far away very fast. Just remember that God still expects us all to search and work for it and to see what His word says. God will reward them that diligently, meticulously, conscientiously, thoroughly seek Him. It will be up to you, what you learn in these last days, more than it will be up to God. Thank you for reading these Bible lessons and I pray that they are all a blessing to you. Please tell someone about this website and help the Gospel go forth to as many as we can reach.
Jesus had a Problem with Religion
(Ver 1.2) Many try to classify Christianity as a religion, but it is not a religion, it is a relationship. You either know God or you don’t or more importantly God knows you or He doesn’t. In Luke 13:25, Jesus tells a story of those that are standing on the outside crying out “Lord, Lord”. Jesus tells them “Depart, I know ye not”. What a sad story of people who thought they did everything right but didn’t know God and more importantly weren’t known by God.
Reading and studying the Gospels, I found Jesus to be a loving and compassionate individual, to all but one group of people. So did God show favoritism by NOT treating these people the same as he did the common sinners. These people that Jesus constantly confronted in abrupt terms were the religious people of His day. These were the rulers of the Jews. These were those that thought of themselves as being better than everyone else. These are the people that thought they knew more than everyone else, including God who was standing before them. These were the keepers of the law of God, who added to the Word of God and made it of no affect due to their traditions and decrees. Jesus was not kind to these people and said some very blunt things to them. He called the children of Satan (John 8:44). He called them serpents, a generation of vipers (Mat 23:33). He said many things to them that can still be said to people even in the church today.
Religion has always been man’s attempt to please a God they do not know. Most of the time religion involves strict rules of thou shalt not do this and that. Many religions people punish themselves, do without things, even hurt themselves by beating their bodies with chains or other crazy things. All in an attempt to make themselves worthy of something that God has already given to them for free. But religious people go so far above and beyond that simple definition and description. There are religious people probably sitting next to in church. Full of themselves and how good they are. They are so much better than you and I. Try to teach them something new and they scream heretic, hearsay, garbage, junk. They close their minds, ears and eyes to the truth and are content with what they think they know. Happy to live in ignorance and remain ignorant. You probably noticed I take after Jesus, I confront religious people straight on, I’m not trying to please everybody with a watered-down teaching that just let’s everyone do as they please. Jesus wasn’t like that, and we shouldn’t be like that. Jesus would commune with sinners, eat with tax collectors and call religious people idiots. Ok, I admit idiots, was my interpretation of some of His strongest words. Love all of those that will open and let you into the doors of their hearts but confront those religious types of people who say that we are wrong in doing that.
Genesis 1:24-31 Day 6 God’s Delegated Authority
(Ver 1.1) There are so many things to learn in the Bible it is a challenge to figure out what do people already know, what do they need to know and what is important. So I plan on wrapping up my blog on Day 6 of creation with this last bit of information. When I worked for a small software company many years ago, I met a man there that had graduated from a seminary (which will remain nameless). He had some very strange ideas about the Bible and had been taught many things by people who obviously didn’t know God. There is a difference in knowing about God and knowing God. Well any way this man told me that in first chapter of Genesis when God said “Let them have dominion”, that didn’t mean they were in control of anything. In other words he read the scripture and immediately threw away the verse because it did not fit his theology. That of course is a huge problem. We should always make our theology and beliefs fit what we read and learn and not the other way. What does it mean to have dominion? Here is what Webster defines the word as:
Dominion: dominance or power through legal authority
Adam was given legal authority over the planet. That would make him the ruler of the earth, wouldn’t it? If you are brave you might have called Adam the “god” of this world”. God’s statement gave Adam dominion, and that implies a transfer of ownership. A legal status change or transfer from God to man. Legal authority is a right that is bestowed upon you, something that can only be transferred upon you by a higher authority. You can’t make your self a policeman, but if you sign up go through the training and are accepted you can be given the authority of a policeman by the local city government. A policeman has a transferred authority to carry out and enforce the law. Power and authority are sometimes used as synonymous terms. But really they are quite different, many strong men have the ability to exercise power over people to make them do what they want, but most do not have the authority backing them. When God created the world he turned over the authority to rule it to his creation.
Psalm 115:16 The heavens, even the heavens are the Lord’s: But the earth he hath given to the children of men.
This verse in Psalms tells us very clearly that the earth was given to the children of Adam. Do you recall in the Gospels when Jesus walked the earth he constantly referred to himself as “the son of man”. Jesus of course was a Hebrew and in the Hebrew he was saying I am a son of Adam. Remember man and Adam are the same Hebrew word. The Pharisee’s would ask him where do you get your authority to do these things? They recognized that he taught with authority, spoke with authority, cast out devils, healed the sick and did many other miraculous things. But Jesus never told them where he got this authority. I personally believe that God had given it to him when he created Adam.
So what is the huge controversy about this delegated authority of man? The main problem that the seminary graduate had was that it violated his idea of God’s sovereignty. If man was in control of the planet, that meant God was not. If man was responsible to work and keep the garden, then that means God was not. The implications are huge and it helps to explain a lot of things in the Bible when we see these things clearly. Why did Jesus have to come in the form of a man in order to redeem us? Why did the omnipotent God have to be birthed through a woman on this planet to do everything he needed to do to free us from sin, Satan, death and evil. There are so many things to think about and to consider. But, we first must start by reading the Bible finding out what God says happened and then attempt to understand how that affected us.
When I started this blog, one of my statements was probably very offensive to some. I called Adam the god of this world when he was created. It is funny how many things that are in the Bible that people ignore. In 2 Corinthians 4:4 God calls Satan the god of this world, how did he get this title? It had to be transferred to him from Adam. Remember when Jesus was tempted by the devil? Satan came to him and said “worship me and I’ll give you everything that you can see.” Satan told Jesus that it had all been given to him. So who gave it to him? It had to be Adam, because God had given it all to Adam. Only the owner has the right to transfer ownership. I can’t come up to your house and tell you that I am giving your house to someone else that wants it. If I don’t own your house I don’t have a right to tell you who lives in it. So many things to consider, isn’t there? So then what do Christians do with John the 10th Chapter when Jesus tells humanity, “Is it not written in your book of the law, I said you are gods.”. Most religious people and denominations stay very far away from that verse and never touch it. Act like it does not exist and we don’t have to address it. If we acknowledge that it’s there, then we have to come up with excuses of why it’s not true. Heaven help us all!
When Jesus was raised from the dead he makes a statement that blows you away. In Matthew 28:18 Jesus says this “All power is given to me, both in heaven and in earth.” What a radical statement, according to what many theologians teach, you would have thought that God already had all power in heaven and in earth. Apparently Not! Do you see the problem? Here we have another very direct statement that God (the highest authority) has delegated all authority to Jesus both in heaven and on the earth. How could God do that? It was because Jesus was a son of Adam and had the right to take back what his father Adam had given away. See right there so many religious people are going to scream and say I said Jesus’ father was Adam and not God. But I didn’t say that. Jesus was the Son of God, but He called Himself the son of Adam. Naturally born a child of Adam a man, but spiritually conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary. The combination of God’s word and Mary’s egg, produced a man called Jesus Christ. A man who was 100% God and 100% man.
That concludes my short lesson on delgated authority. If you study the subject you will clearly see that God had the right to do whatever He desired with His creation and He clearly desired to create a man and give it all to him and his children. Jesus came to the earth to get back what Adam had given away to Satan and do other things that I have not touched on as of this point in my Bible lessons. Please continue to read and to learn what Jesus has done for us. God Bless!
Genesis Chapter 1 – Did God Create a Perfect World?
(Ver 1.2) I’ve heard many, many Bible teachers stand up and speak about creation in the terms that God created a perfect world for Adam. When Adam came on the scene everything was perfect, they would say. The implications to this always bothered me, since that is not what the Bible said. I’m not sure how these teachers came to that conclusion, but I simply have to go by what the Bible says. Six times in the chapter 1 of Genesis God declares what He has done as being something that is “good”. Good is of course a positive term, but it is also a highly subjective term. What is good to me, might not be good to you. I could say Apple Pie is good. But you might not like it. However, if I said something was perfect that implies something else entirely. Here is the definition of perfect found in the Webster’s dictionary:
being complete of its kind and without defect or blemish; “a perfect circle”; “a perfect reproduction”; “perfect happiness”; “perfect manners”;
So according to the dictionary, perfect means something that is complete, but not just complete, but something that is free from defects and flaws. In my opinion, perfect would imply something that could not fail or be brought down. If Adam was created perfect in a perfect world, it would have been impossible for him to sin. Since we all understand that Adam did sin, we can understand that he at the very least had the potential for flaws. Adam possessed the ability to fail, like an appliance you might buy at the store. Have you ever bought a perfect appliance? I really don’t think so.
So when God says it was good, what does that mean? I would say that in God’s perspective or viewpoint on the event, it was a positive outcome. It was an opposite of evil or bad. What if we could come up with a rating system and many have, that says something like this:
Worst –>Worse –> Bad –> Neutral –> Good –> Better –> Best
Many times consumer reporting companies have similar rating schemes for appliances or cars, etc. You can see by the scale that there are varying degrees for bad and good. You could never say that about “perfect”, there are not varying degrees of perfect. Given my rating scale where would you put God’s “good” creation? It would have to be somewhere to the right of Neutral, but where I’m not sure. If you notice I did not even put the word “perfect” on the scale, since that would go so far above and beyond what I consider to be even the best. I am convinced that “good” is not “perfect”. However, it is really not my opinion that matters, but what God thinks about it that counts. I found some interesting scriptures in the Bible that speaks to us along these lines:
Genesis 2:12 And the gold of that land is good;
God said the gold in the land was good. But gold is a metal that is mixed and very hard to find in a pure state. Gold has a grading scaled from 1 to 24 carats. 24 carats would be the best and purest but yet I doubt if you could call it perfect. Sometimes it can be good to see what is opposite to a definition in order to help understand the positive side of the subject. In Genesis 2:18 God says it is not good for man to be alone. That would be the opposite of good and looking at that verse it could be a highly subjective term. I don’t know if we have gained a definition or not of the term what is good. Let me throw another scripture in the mix that says something totally different.
Psalm 119:96 I have seen the end to all perfection…
Many times we read stuff and don’t apply it to what we learned earlier because we don’t really understand it and aren’t asking the right questions. This verse has a statement that has broad and far reaching implications. What does the term “All” mean? To me that means “All”, “everything is included” and means it is all inclusive. There is nothing that is left out. If you said “most” or “some” that would leave some items excluded from the list. So the term “All” is all inclusive, there is nothing left out or omitted. This is not going to sit well with a lot of religious minded people, but this would also include God himself. God did not leave himself out of the term “All”. I have always believed that God was a perfect Spirit being. In capable of errors, with no flaws. But if God says in His word that there is coming a time when there will be no perfection, what does that mean? How would we possibly apply that fact to God? I wish I had the answer to that, but maybe you do. Tell me what you think about this scripture. Maybe you know some other scriptures in the Bible that answer that question. In my mind this verse is speaking of Jesus who was God in the flesh. If Jesus was born a “perfect” man that would mean it would have been impossible for him to sin, just like “Adam” if he was perfect. So when God became a man, the Bible says that He was tempted in every way just like we are. Satan came to Jesus and tempted him just the same as us. So, if this was the divine God, was it really a temptation? Of course it was and that would imply that Jesus was only “very good” and not perfect. Jesus had to be capable of sinning and failing, otherwise it would not have been a temptation. That is what I think. Do not misunderstand me, I did not say Jesus sinned. I just said He had to have the possiblity to sin our he would not have been tempted just like we are. It just would not make any sense to me.
Understanding Correct Bible Interpretation! The Bible was Written to Give Man a Choice!
(Ver 1.2) This Bible lesson may be a brand new perspective for you and it just may be something that you may have never considered to think on. Have you ever studied the many different writing styles of books? College text books are written radically differently than fictional literature. Technical writings and software documentation are written consderibly different than a President’s biography. Realizing that there are so many different writing styles, let me ask you what literature style is the Bible written in? I believe that is an interesting and very important question to consider. From my research and study I’ve discovered that the Bible is significantly different than anything else that I’ve ever read. I believe that this makes it difficult to label it as just one writing style and say that it is only that one. For example Psalms many times resembles a poetry writing style but it certainly cannot be labeled that alone because it contains so much more than that alone.
It is almost easier to determine what the Bible is not rather than to try to assign it a specific style. For example, the Bible was certainly not written in a text book style using technical documentation methods. However, the Bible does contain great technical information about creation. Why didn’t God write these creation facts, events, descriptions and dates using more revealing, plain and indisputable evidence? Do you think that God is not capable of describing all of the little creation design intricate details of DNA, Sound Waves, Laws of Physics, etc. using the scientific terms involved and the background proof data behind every part of His creation? Can God not compete intellectually with the modern PHD professors in our colleges and universities? Are the scientific discoveries and the theories of men superior to God? Do believe that God not able to dispel the theory of human evolution using His knowledge of creation?
I personally believe that God’s intelligence is so far beyond the Einstein’s in our world that He could solve the debate with only a few lines of specific information. But, if He did that, what would be the end result of that type of information? It would be like the classic movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, when the man from another world went to the professor’s house and solved a very complex technical equation on the chalk board, that the professor had been trying to figure out for a long time. What that information did was take away any doubt that he was not from this planet and that he was much smarter than the professor and anyone else in the world.
If God provides us undeniable evidence that proves His awesome power, knowledge and ability to us all, the net result would be that every human man would no longer have any other option but to believe what God says is truth. I believe that this type of strong evidence would result in the loss of all human freedom for a man to believe whatever they wanted to by faith. If God proved that He was God, no longer does any man have any freewill choices or decisions to make about the existence of God. It is an interesting paradox. The God who proves His love for us by coming personally and shedding His blood to pay the cost of our sin and He doesn’t even write down one letter in any book or leave any evidence proving His appearance. He doesn’t us leave any photographic proof of His existence. He doesn’t leave any scientific or DNA evidence other than the words of a few witnesses, some people who are told to go and tell the world that He appeared. He tells these witnesses that those that believe their words spoken to them will be saved, but those who do not, will be damned (Mark 16:15-16).
Therefore, every man on the earth is left with only one choice, to believe or to not believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The ball of decision is not in court of God, but was specifically designed to give man the choice in a human court of faith. A man must be sent to preach the good news to others (Romans 10:15-16). This preacher man must believe that he is called to preach and then choose to preach. Then men that he is sent to must choose to listen, hear, understand and believe the message. This method of salvation is a spiritual system called faith that was designed, created and implemented by the sovereign God alone. Knowing this should change everything about our perspective when we read the Bible. We should change to begin to look for the hidden evidence in the Bible and we should start by believing in things that we can not understand completely without overwhelming evidence.
We can learn from just the simple story of Adam and Eve in the first 3 chapters of Genesis, that God provided everything that they had need of and it was all said to be created good in the eyes of God. But, God said there was one thing that they shouldn’t do and that was to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He didn’t say they couldn’t do it, but He did warn them that the day that they did eat they would surely die. The Bible does not say that God fully explained what death was or that Adam remotely understood the consequences of disobedience. But yet, God gave man the choice to make. This is called freewill and every man has a right to it.
Apparently, Adam didn’t listen to the warning when he was faced with one of the world’s greatest decision choices that anyone could possibly make up until that time. I do not believe that Adam understood the consequences of his choice for himself or all of his descendants and he definitely chose wrong. Could God have stopped Adam from making this bad choice by providing more information, proof and evidence? I believe the answer is YES! Should God have stopped Adam by force from making this bad choice using His great knowledge? I believe the answer is NO based upon His love alone! Those are both interesting questions that only God can fully answer, but I believe the further involvement of God would have taken away the free will of the man to make his own choice to choose to obey and that is something I believe that God does not do.
So why is the Bible written in such a controversial way that appears to allow men to believe whatever they choose to believe? I believe the primary reason is the fact that God has continued to give man a freewill choice in everything that he believes. We can believe in Jesus is the LORD GOD or we can choose to believe that Jesus was just a prophet like Islamic teachings say. We can believe in the existence of eternal damnation and hell or we can choose to believe in universal salvation. We can believe in evolution or creation. We can believe in whatever we want to believe in. God wrote the Bible in this manner to allow us to find whatever we wish to search for in the Bible. But, of course that right to believe in something that is so wrong will not help us on judgment day. On judgment day, God will not be interested in our opinion or our beliefs. It won’t matter if we think we are right with all of our heart. We’ll not get to share our opinion with God on why we believed what we did on earth. We better make sure what we believe is right here, right now and is based upon the most truthful and accurate information that we can search and find in God’s word.
Thank you for reading this little Bible lesson. Infinite choices are presented in the Word of God. However, there is always only one true interpretation and understanding and this will agree with God’s opinion and not mine or yours. God Bless you and keep you and please leave a comment if can.
Genesis 1:24-31 Day 6 Part 2 – God Called Them Adam
(Ver 1.1) In my last lesson on Genesis I talked about the prophesied coming of a perfect or more literally a mature man, but today I want to shift gears and change our focus on something new. Back in verse 27 we saw the creation of man in the image of God. I want to stop right there and point out something that I found very interesting while I was studying this verse. The Hebrew word translated as “man” is H120 in the Strong’s. Now that is all well and good until I noticed that the name “Adam” was from the Hebrew H121. So what is the problem? If you don’t speak Hebrew you would never know that these two words are the exact same word. Strong decided to give the one word two different reference numbers even though it is the same word. That is a major problem for translators and readers. How do you know when you should translate the one word as “Adam” or as “man”. The determination of the meaning becames a highly subjective decision process that can be very easily mistranslated based upon someone’s opinion of what they think it means. I hope you understand the problem. You see I for one believe after searching the Bible for the occurrences of these words that sometimes they did it right and a few times I believe they did wrong. Uh oh!
Gen 1:27 So God created Adam (man) in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Look at verse 27 and see what changes if I change the one word. “So God created Adam in his image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them”. Thre was nothing that super dramatic that changed. Was it completely different, not really. The original said “man” my modified version said “Adam”. But since they are the same word in the Hebrew which one is right? Verse 27 actually contains a major contradiction, riddle or puzzle. Did you notice it? It said at first God created him, and then it says God created them. We really haven’t gotten to the creation of the woman even though she is clearly mentioned for the first time in this verse. As we get into chapter 2 of Genesis we will begin to see that chapter 2 is really just a more in depth look at some specifics that occurred in chapter 1. Chapter 2 is simply a more detailed account of the creation event using new information given to us and a more in depth look at some very new huge subjects such as God’s definition of family and marriage.
Getting back to the puzzle of verse 27 what is the solution to the contradiction? This is why I believe the word should be “Adam”. When God created the male and the female God called both of their name “Adam”. It use to be common practice in our world for women to take the name of their husbands so that they were both called by the same name. When we get to chapter 2 of Genesis we will see why more clearly. So why did God call both of them Adam? Maybe we should stop and ask, did God call them both Adam? There is actually a confirming scripture that says this later in Genesis. Look at this verse in Genesis 5:2:
Genesis 5:2 Male and female created He them; and blessed them, and called their name “Adam” in the day that they were created.
It is truly amazing what the Bible says when you can see it and put the pieces together. This verse is speaking directly about the cretion account we just read about in Genesis 1:27 but this time it is worded correctly and stated accurately. The translotors had no choice but to make it this word based upon context. If they would only understood this more clearly I believe that they would corrected what they had already done in chapter one. What caused them to make this verse Adam and the other one man? In this verse there is the direct association of this word being both of their “names”. These are the kind of little quirky things that you just need to become aware of when you read and study the Bible. The translators were men and they sometimes made mistakes. Every Bible translation has some problems, but there are none that can’t be solved by you studying. God Bless!
Genesis 3:1 Was there a Talking Snake in the Garden?
(ver 2.6) This is “Part 1” in a series of advanced Bible lessons on the study of hidden spiritual subjects found in Genesis 3. In this lesson I am going to confront a popular misconception and misunderstanding found in the chapter. Was there a literal talking natural snake in the Garden of Eden? Did a naturally created snake approach, walk up to, or slither up to Adam and Eve and start a conversation with them to deceive them? I’m sure most of you have seen the paintings of the temptation, the naked man and woman holding an apple with the snake creature nearby. We’ve all heard this story taught this way in Sunday School as a child. However, is this what the Bible really says? Must we take every scripture, verse and word literally in the Bible? What if God intended the verse to hide a greater spiritual meaning? If so, then how would we know when to take something inspired by the most intelligent Spirit literally in the Bible and when to view it as only a symbolic reference, a figurative expression or even as a figure of speech? Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying. There are literal statements and stories in the Bible. The Genesis 3:1 account is a very true and real story of what actually happened during the fall of man. We just need to begin to understand what was actually given to us to read.
Too many Christians want to take everything written by God completely and totally as if the Bible was written in a school text book style with every truth obviously presented in a straightforward and plain ordered bullet point or numbered manner. But the problem is that the Bible is not a textbook and it contains many, many hidden mysteries, puzzles and concealed truths that are not self-evident on a surface only reading of the text. You can also find there are truths written on the same subject anywhere in the Bible from front to back, cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation. The Holy Bible is written in a multitude of literary styles by around 40 different men that were given the words by God to write for us to read, study and learn from. God purposely hid many of these truths, not from us, but for us to find (Prov 25:2). So here is the divine challenge, how does God encode secrets for someone to find without using a standard encryption system that makes the text totally useless? The government encrypts information to keep it out of the hands of other enemy governments. Web sites encrypt credit card and customer information to keep it out of the hands of hackers and criminals. What we can learn from this principle is that God obviously had an enemy that was trying to steal information and use it against us. Therefore, I believe based upon scripture that God has encoded within the natural text message a spiritual message within so that He could reveal it by His Spirit in us His people at the appropriate time, which I believe is now. I call this technique, God hiding the truth in plain sight.
THE CREATED SET CALLED BEASTS OF THE FIELD!
So the question remains was there a literal physical talking snake in the garden of Eden? I’ll have to tell you right now that there is absolutely no way based upon rightly understanding scriptures that I have found in the Bible that there was a physical talking snake in the garden. You can clearly see where I stand upon this issue so let’s find out why I am a firm believer in this. Here is what the beginning of Genesis 3:1 says to us, read it very carefully and then I’ll explain it.
Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field that the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
I am only going to be focusing on the first phrase of the verse in this Bible lesson. But I did give the entire verse to help avoid criticism from those that would like to criticize and find fault. Let’s begin by doing some close analysis of the exact wording or phrasing of this initial statement “Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field that the Lord God had made”. You should be able to understand from reading the entire verse that the primary subject of the verse is a “serpent”. This Hebrew word is H5175 and does mean “a snake” in the literal definition and this is why people begin to believe that God is speaking of a literal talking snake in Genesis 3. This Hebrew word being translated as “serpent” is used 31 times in the Old Testament and is found in 28 verses with 5 references being found within 5 verses of Genesis 3. But let’s change the perspective in order to see the characteristics of this “serpent” being described by God and maybe this new knowledge will begin to change how we think.
Now observe that this “serpent” is stated to be more subtle than “any beast” of the field that the Lord God had created. I want to focus upon the Hebrew word H6175 which is translated as “subtle” in Genesis 3:1. The Hebrew word translated as subtle means “cunning” in an evil, negative or bad manner. The ESV and NASB versions of the Bible translated this word as “crafty”. The CEV Bible translated it as “sneaky”. The Young’s Literal Bible translate it as “subtile”. This Hebrew word is clearly represents an evil connotation being applied to this class of being labeled or named as the “serpent”. Right there that should raise some red flags in our minds to teach us something that is very important. How did God create every beast (living) animal on this planet? Didn’t God create the beast of the field and say that they were all “good” in Genesis 1:25 and “very good” in Genesis 1:31? Good is not evil and very good is definitely not anything that is bad. There were no evil connotations placed upon any of the created beings found in Genesis 1, so that is something brand new for us to consider and learn from. It would contradict with Genesis 1 if this was a created literal snake in the Garden of Eden. I hope and pray that you can see that but we also need to learn what else this verse is saying or should I say is not saying.
This is what the Holy Spirit said to me when I studied the verse and it changed my entire perspective dramatically when I saw it and fully understood it. I read this verse and suddenly the still small voice of the Holy Spirit asked me this question, “Did you notice that didn’t say ‘other‘?”. Almost immediately I knew what He was asking me because of divine revelation. When I studied Geometry in High School, I remember a part of the class dealt with the subject of mathematical “sets” and “set theory”. 
Do you understand what a “set” is? A set is a grouping of related items. Let me give you a more complete definition of a set. A set is “a well defined collection of distinct objects. The objects that make up a set (also known as the elements or members of a set) can be anything: numbers, people, letters of the alphabet, other sets, and so on.” Within mathematical sets you can also have subsets. Then you can have multiple sets with some common or overlapping members that are in more than one set. For example, a set could be Animals, under that set could be a subset of mammals, under that set could be a subset of birds, fish, land animals and on and on. Each set or subset is a grouping of related items. In other words every member of the set has the same characteristics and can be easily identified as belonging to the group. So why did I just spend so much time going through all of that math explanation and set theory overview? Do you see it? Was the primary noun serpent of this sentence a created beast of the field that the Lord God declared a member of the set of created beings of the field defined by God to be very good? I’d like to ask you a question and I want you to consider it with great thought. What would change if God would have added the word “other” to the verse? Read this modified verse with the word other added and observe what changes:
Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any ‘OTHER’ beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
Now do you see it? What comprises the set “beasts of the field”? What are the members of that set? Beasts of the field would be the superset of all created animals, birds, reptiles, etc. Isn’t a natural and physical snake one of those beasts of the field that the Lord God has made? So what happens when you take out the word “other” like the verse really says. The logical conclusion has to be that the serpent was not a member of that category of the made or created creatures of the field. Let me teach it to you like this, if the adjective “any” is placed before the noun “Beasts” we have to conclude that there are no beasts omitted from this grouping. The Hebrew term (H3605) translated as the English word”Any” is an “all inclusive” statement that omits none of them. The Hebrew word translated as “Any” literally means “All” or “EVERY”. By God NOT putting the word “Other” after the word “any” we know concretely that the referenced “serpent” in the beginning of the statement was not a member of that set of created living creatures. In other words, there was no physical literal created talking snake based just upon the correct reading, understanding and interpretation of this verse. I hope and pray that you understand basic logic and math laws and how they apply to the correct interpretation of the Word of God. God is a highly intelligent being and has designed and implemented the Bible using Laws that we must follow in order to correctly understand what is written.
NATURAL OR SUPERNATURAL TEMPTATION?
So let’s find some other scriptures that help us to confirm what God has just taught you by the omission of the word “other”. Here is one verse that I know most don’t immediately associate with Genesis, but it is related even though you’ve never seen it or applied it to what we have just read in Genesis 3:1.
1 Corinthians 10:13 There hath no temptation overtaken you but such as is common to man:
What is God’s primary subject that is occurring in the beginning of Genesis 3? What is the initial theme of Genesis 3? Some say that Genesis 3 is about the fall of Man, but what happened before that. Before the fall there was a state of everything being created good without sin on the earth. Then Satan appears and does what? Of course we are talking about the “temptation” of Adam and Eve by the serpent or Satan, right? So what did God just teach us about the subject of human “temptation” in 1 Corinthians? This is another law or principle of correct Bible interpretation, the Bible always interprets itself. So you must go and search the Bible for related scriptures that help to explain what is written in the Old Testament.
In 1 Corinthians God says every time we (humans) are tempted by the enemy (Satan) it is a common human occurrence. The Greek word that was translated as “common to man” is G442 and it means “after the manner of men”. In other words any satanic temptation is one that is a natural temptation, meaning it is NOT a supernatural temptation. Did you realize that according to what God has just written in His word that it is illegal for Satan to tempt you supernaturally? What is a supernatural temptation? That would be any temptation that did not occur naturally by created design or created laws or any temptation of a non-created material substance or nature. Have you ever seen a talking snake? If you can find me one I would love to see it and this would provide the evidence to support a literal talking snake in the garden being the tempter. Seeing talking snakes in the past and today would make this type of temptation a common occurrence for man. However, I’ve been to many zoos and if there were any talking snakes, I didn’t see them. No you see a talking snake would be a supernatural temptation, a non-common human temptation occurrence and that would cause God’s word in 1 Corinthians 10:13 to become a lie. Since God does not lie I have to conclude there was still no literal talking snake in the garden.
We can therefore reason with great confidence that a talking snake being a tempter would be an illegal supernatural act and if Satan can’t tempt you this way, then he can’t tempt Eve that way either. This scripture is an example of a universal truth. In other words this scripture applies across the board to every person in the human race at any given time within human history. There are some scriptures that only apply to the natural nation of Israel; there are some scriptures that only apply to men; there are some that written to only women; there are some that are written only to the church and others that are written to other groups or sets of people. However, there are also those scriptures like this one that will apply to everyone equally. This is a verse that is in the Universal set of Truth. These represent spiritual laws and God enforces these. The Bible says God watches over His words to perform them and this would be an example.
HOW DOES SATAN TEMPT SOMEONE TODAY?
Have you ever been tempted by Satan? Sure you have whether you admit it or not. How did he come to you and try to tempt you? Did Satan have to manifest himself in the body of an animal to tempt you? Of course he didn’t. Satan when he comes he speaks in your mind, by using your thought life to tempt you to do something that you shouldn’t, or to say something you that you shouldn’t, or whatever. If Satan tempted you this way, then he tempted Eve this way also. Do you think we can find any scripture to confirm this? Of course we can if we look:
2 Corinthians 11:3 But I fear, lest by any means as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty , so your minds be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
It is amazing what the Bible says when you look for it, understand it and apply it to Genesis 3 interpretation correctly. You see this verse is written to the church and it said Eve was deceived by the serpent, because of his trickery. But did you notice how he did it? This temptation occurred in Eve’s mind and it was not carried out by a talking supernatural snake in the garden. How can we further confirm this? Ask yourself was there ever any mention in Genesis 3 of Adam hearing the snakes voice? If you read closely you will observe that God rebukes Adam for hearkening to the voice of his wife and never mentions the voice of the serpent to Adam. Was not Adam standing next to Eve in the garden? If there was a literal talking snake present then there would have been an audible voice for Adam to also hear. I really believe that Bible need to learn to read and see what is there and what is not there and quit adding tot he words to make them say something that they do not say. We have just learned from God’s commentary on the story of Genesis 3 that whatever Satan said to Eve was a thought in her mind and this caused her to be deceived. Satan is still the same subtle deceiver today and he works and operates in the exact same way that he has always worked. He tries to deceive you through the same avenues of your mind. This verse clearly warns the church to watch their thoughts in order to keep Satan from corrupting their minds. That is why we are instructed in the Bible in this way:
2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imagination and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
Apparently our minds are still the battle ground for the attacks of the enemy and we are responsible to police this mental realm and exercise our authority to keep the enemy out of there. Because preachers and teachers believe that Satan had to borrow the body of a physical snake in order to manifest himself in the earth, they think this is the only way he can communicate to you. We have clearly seen that this is not the case using the Bible. Eve was clearly deceived in her mind; you can also be deceived in your mind if you let him operate there. God tells us what to think on in the Bible, perhaps you should go and search for them and learn to keep only those things in your mind.
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF SATAN ENTERED AN ANIMAL’S BODY?
I think now would be a good time to introduce you to another set of scriptures that is certainly related to our subject study. If Satan had to borrow the body of a literal physical snake in order to manifest himself to Adam and Eve, what would happen if he actually did this? According to the Bible it is not a positive outcome for the natural snake. You can see in the Gospel where Jesus when He walked the face of the earth and came across a man who was possessed of devils in Matthew 8. The devils started to talk to Jesus and asked Jesus if they could go into the bodies of the herd of swine that were nearby. Jesus said Go! The devils went out of the men and went into the nearby natural animals. Then what happened to the animals?
Mat 8:32 And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.
Apparently animals are aware when evil spirits enter into them. Did you see this? The animals were driven mad and committed suicide. After the suicide the evil spirits had no living bodies to possess, so they went about looking for another human to deceive. Did you learn anything from this story? Did you see how it applies to Genesis 3:1? Yes it is confirmed that a spirit being can enter into a body of even a snake but we must conclude from what was just presented that the snake would not have been a willing participant to the possession. God gives us clues like this in the Bible and we are required to put the clues together in order to understand what is being said. What we have learned is that even animals have a sensitivity to spiritual beings. Sometimes I think that animals are more sensitive than many people about pending disasters. Cats and dogs can sense earthquakes before they happen. Animals around the coast line ran to higher ground before the tsunami killed so many people a few years ago. Do not assume or think that any animal will just allow a devil to come into them and use them without them knowing about it. This is just another reason I do not believe there was a physical talking snake in the garden.
IS THE SERPENT LITERAL OR SYMBOLIC?
Now there is a major problem being presented for those who want to take every scripture literally. You see the problem is that the serpent must be a purely symbolic reference for a spiritual being that was not directly named or identified in the book of Genesis at all. You see I have been talking like you already knew that they serpent was Satan throughout this Bible study, but I have offered no Biblical proof to confirm this fact. How do we know that the “serpent” was Satan and not a literal talking created snake? I state the serpent was Satan based upon where else the serpent is mentioned in scriptures. God gives us the definition of the serpent in the last book of the Bible. You do understand that God is the author of the entire Bible, don’t you? You do understand that God can give new information for the same subject found in Genesis wherever He desires to, don’t you? You see God uses a symbolic serpent to describe Satan in several places in the Bible but I will only give you two verses that identifies the serpents real name to us very clearly:
Revelation 12:9 And the great dragon was cast out, the old serpent called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth and his angels were cast out with him.
Rev 20:2 And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years,
We can see from these verses in Revelation the true identity of the symbolic “old serpent” is revealed to us to be Satan, the deceiver. These verses also contain another symbolic reference and calls Satan the “great dragon”. Apparently Satan’s strength and ability has increased substantially as the symbolic dragon at the end to a level greater than he possessed at the beginning as the symbolic serpent. You can clearly see why God selected to use symbolic references in both places of the Bible. By comparing these two symbolic references we can gain additional information about this unseen spiritual enemy named Satan. What I am doing is attempting to teach you that God reveals the true identity of the symbolic “serpent” found in Genesis 3:1. You can see two times in Revelation 12:9 and Revelation 20:2 that the “serpent” is a symbolic reference for the devil called Satan. If the “serpent” is not literal here in these verses there is NO legitimate way for the “serpent” to be literal in Genesis either. So we just learned a valuable lesson, of why we can’t take everything in the Bible literally. We have also learned that we can’t study any book of the Bible independently in a vacuum. We must always use the Bible to interpret the Bible! We must see what God’s says about the subject we are studying in the Old Testament in the other places of the New Testament, because He always provides additional information, explanations and definitions that are critical for us to see in order to correctly understand what was being taught.
I have just given you at least 4 good reasons why the Bible says there was no literal physical talking snake in Genesis 3:1. These are not all of the reasons that I could have presented but there were enough reasons why I can say with great confidence that there was no physical talking snake in the Garden of Eden! I thank you for you time and comments. Be blessed in the Lord and continue in the pursuit of the knowledge of His Word. Until the next lesson please tell your friends about what you have learned from God.
If you would like to continue to read Genesis 3 “Part 2 – Does Eating Fruit Kill You” please click.
Why is the Bible so Hard to Understand?
(Ver 1.2) Here is a topic that might raise a huge debate. Is the Bible hard to understand? Can you read the Bible cover to cover and know exactly everything that it says? There are many that I have heard who think that you can. However, I believe based upon the number of divisions, dominations, unbelievers and atheists in the world, it is clear that the Bible is very, very difficult to read and understand. So why is this such a delicate subject? I think it could be partially because there are so many people in the world that have learned something that they think is in the Bible and are holding fast to it like there is nothing else to learn. I see this all over church denominations, they learned something great a hundred years ago and they stopped learning. There is a famouse statement that applies to this discussion and it says “The greatest enemy to knowing the truth is believing that you alread do”. That statement precisely describes a great number of people in the world. God brings along someone new with a new revelation of something that He wants to teach His people, and we have idiotic denominations preaching these people are of the devil and saying they are all heretic teachers. If only they would be open and receptive enough to study and find out if it was true before they condemned it, most of them would have to change their minds and ask God to forgive them and then they would have to change what they are teaching. Pride causes many to fail this requirement quickly. No one wants to admit I was wrong please forgive me for what I use to teach.
So why is the Bible so difficult to understand? The Bible is a highly unique book written by over 50 different human authors in many different writing styles. But that is not what makes it so complex to understand for you see the entire book is really written by only one author and He is God. God used different men to write down what He wanted to say but it all goes together in harmony. So what is the difficulty? Here is a scripture that helps to explain at least part of the problem, if not the majority of the problem.
1 Corinthians 2:14 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.
There are some really strong words given to us here and this verse contains the primary reason why even many Christians don’t understand the Bible. You see this verse doesn’t say it is talking about an unsaved man, just a natural man. What is a natural man? If you look up the word it means one that is dominated by their senses. In touch with how they feel more than what they believe. The Bible speaks of a carnal mind being an enemy to the things of God (Romans 8:7). A carnal mind is a mind that is dominated by the flesh and not the spirit. So we begin to see a pattern to the problem. The unsaved world doesn’t have a clue that they are a spirit living temporarily in a human body so there is absolutely no way they would ever be able to understand the Bible. It is only after we let Jesus come into our hearts that we can begin to see and understand the Words of God.
So then what do Christians need to do to become more spiritual and less flesh dominated? That is another point of controversy but I’ll tell you what happened to me, because I can’t speak with any authority about what happened to you. I was saved, I believe as young child in Vacation Bible Schools and Christian Summer Camps. I was raised in a Christian home and my father was a pastor of several churches. However, as I grew up I drifted away from the things of God and became flesh dominated and controlled. I married and we had kids and finally through a series of events that occurred, God had my complete attention. I began to seek God for more of Him and started asking to be filled with His Spirit. Before, all of this I really never understood the Bible, didn’t like to read the Bible and didn’t care about anything that was in it. However, God answered my prayer and filled me with the Holy Spirit and all of sudden the Bible came to life and the words on the pages spoke with meaning, power and authority. A new awareness of God, a knowing God on a deeper level, an actual personal relationship with God occurred. So many people read the Bible to learn about God, when God really is more interested in them knowing Him first. So that was a quick testimony of my story and how God was able to change my heart and as a result while I don’t know everything, He has certainly been able to teach me a lot more than I use to know. God is capable of teaching you whatever you need to know, but the problem is not with God, the problem is always with us being able to change and receive from Him. It is a complex world we live in, we were created by a highly complex God who has developed complex rules and systems that He operates within. The idea of an omnipotent God that places limitations upon himself and what He can do, is probably offensive to many religious minded people. But, I didn’t create the systems, the rules, the guidelines, the laws that He imposes upon us and himself. We are required to figure out how He operates and change to fit His requirements, we should all know and understand, that God will not change to fit our requirements.
This was not a long lesson, but it requires a lot of humility and deep thought for the reader to see what is covered. I thank you for reading it and I pray you learned something from it. God Bless you and if there is anything that I can do leave me a comment and I will try to respond in a timely manner.
Genesis 1:24-31 Day 6 Part 1 Prophecy of Man
(Ver 1.1) We have arrived at the last day of creation, the last day of God’s work to create our current world system. We again see the law of Genesis being restated in the creation of the animals and the rest of the creatures that inhabit the earth. Everything on the earth produces after its own kind. Squirrels produce only squirrels, mice produce only mice, horses produce only horses, cattle produce only cattle, etc. It is very interesting to note that everything is completely created before man arrives. God has provided everything that man would have need of and there was nothing lacking. No there were no cities, houses, cars or roads, not even any computers or internet but God provided every raw material necessary for man to create all of these. It is also interesting to note that God created man to be an inverntor and a creator. Man does not create on the level of God, but we create, music, art, machines, tools, on and on. I’m sure God gave many these ideas for these great inventions and creations and maybe even helped them build them. But creating stuff is in man and no other creature possesses this feature to man’s creative degree. I’ve never seen a monkey paint a Mona Lisa.
We can see that God created everything that man would have need of physically, but spiritually would be another question. I don’t know how preachers can teach poverty and self sacrifice. It seems religious minded people have a tendency to look at a mother Theresa and think she is some kind of saint because she owns nothing. I personally think that is slap in the face of God who created everything for his creation to enjoy, to possess and to use. If God had not intended for man to have any of it, why would He have went to so much trouble of putting it here in the first place. If you have children and your two year old wants to play with a knife would you put it on the table and say leave that alone it’s not for you. Any two year old will forget quickly whatever they are told and pick that knife up and do whatever they want to with it. In order to keep somebody from having something that is harmful the best things to do is not to put it any where within their reach in the first place. So obviously God is smarter than parents if He thought wealth and riches were not good for His children because it would hurt them, the would He have put them here anyway? Do you see how idiotic people’s opinions can get? No you see in Revelation that heaven is paved with streets of Gold. That sounds like wealth to an extreme. It doesn’t sound like God thinks that wealth is harmful does it? Oh well let’s move on to another subject. Let’s skip down to verse 27 and look at the creation of man.
Gen 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
I firmly believe that starting in verse 27 that the creation of man is a prophetic event signifying or prophesying the coming into maturity of the new creation of those in the church or those called the body of Christ. Man was the last part of the process of creation and if you want to get technical, woman was the actual last work of God’s creation process. Man was created and came into being at the end of the 6th day of creation. I believe that as the Bible says, that in the last days knowledge will increase and I believe that men and women in the church will again start to resemble their creator. Reading verse 27 we see the explicit statement that God created man in his image. What exactly does that mean to you? To me that means if you looked at Adam and Eve you would immediately think they look like God. Did you ever notice red headed parents normally produce children with red hair. Looking at the red headed children you can say they were made in the image of their parents. You immediately identify one from the other. You can look at one child and recognize the source or origin. That is what I believe God is prophesying about his church, we will finally be able to see a Christian and say wow! he looks like Jesus. God’s family resemblance should be there for all to see. There are several scriptures that I could include here but search your KJV Bible for words like “perfect”. This word is a little bit misleading because it means “mature”, “complete”, “fully grown”. There are several verses in the New Testament that ask us to wait for this perfect man to come and I believe the time is now.
Genesis 1:20-23 Day 5 of God’s Creation
Gen 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
(Ver 1.1) According to Day 5 of creation, God caused the seas to fill with every type of fish and sea creature. During this time period we also see the fact that every type of bird is said to develop to fill the sky above the earth. It is interesting to note that I guess evolutionists seem to believe every animal on the planet originated from the sea. At least this is the way that I understood what they were saying. I do not profess to be an expert on evolution theory and whoever has studied it is of course no expert either, since they can’t prove anything they are saying. According to the Biblical record of the creator, the fish did come first, followed by the birds. But in no way does it say they evolved one from the other, in fact it declares the total opposite. I alluded to the law of Genesis when we discussed tree and plant life development. The law of Genesis says everything produces after its own kind. Every fish, bird, mammal, insect, reptile, or whatever, has within itself the ability to self sustain it’s own species. Each one has the ability to reproduce itself and to keep it going. Every species has the seed within itself to reproduce.
Using the study of DNA recent scientists have made a lot of discoveries. DNA is an extremely complex coded formula that dictates what a creature will become even before it starts to develop. There are no overlaps or DNA evolution between species that I know of concerning God’s creation. I know that humans contain a similar DNA characteristic to that of monkeys but on close examination they are completely different from that of a monkey Therefore a monkey will never be able to reproduce or to transition to the form of a human. They are just too different. DNA research using what is known as “mitochondrial” DNA has determined that all of the human race originated from a common woman they so appropriately have named “Eve”. I remember reading this in the News Paper several years ago. Of course they buried this information on one of the inside pages, but the result of the article was the conclusion that the Bible was more accurate than we thought. We didn’t come from monkeys, but rather from a single woman named “Eve”. Since that publication the world’s scientific atheists have done their best to explain away the findings. I pretty much just ignore their ramblings. I know the Bible is true, I know that it is the words of the one that created it all and therefore I would rather read the Bible than listen to the words of an ignorant man attempting to say there was no God involved.
I would like to be able to discuss the prophetic implications of these verses but, I have to be honest and say that I don’t know of any right now. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, it just means I don’t know them. I do know that they early church used a symbol of a fish and this is an event that occurs on the early part of day 5. So if you can see any prophetic implications from Day 5 in how it would relate to the early church please let me know. I’ll be happy to learn.
Genesis 1:14-19 Day 4 Part 5
(Ver 1.1) After I learned this information that I have been attemting to teach to you, it changed my perspective on much of the Bible. I started to understand a lot more of the parts that use to be very hard to follow. I hope that you too are beginning to see some glimpses of the light of how the scriptures harmonize and fit together. We have been discussing the two different realms or spiritual states of the human heart. Those who are in darkness and those who are in the light. We have seen that Jesus Christ represents the sun and we are beginning to understand how the word of God causes Christ to arise and shine into our hearts. I think it is a good time to talk about the identity of the moon.
Gen 1:16 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.
I once heard a minister say that the church is the moon (lesser light). That we are the one’s that live now in this dark world and we are to rule over it. Of course on the surface I understood what he was trying to say but he got it all very wrong. We are certainly in the world, but we are not of this world. In fact if you look at scripture it says we are seated with Christ in heavenly places (Eph 2:6). No, just think about all of the the known moon’s characteristics. The moon is a lifeless chunk of rock that has no ability to do anything. The light it shines at night does not originate from itself, no it is simply a reflection of the light from the sun. Some would say that fits the church, we don’t have any ability within our self but we depend upon Christ who gives us the ability to do whatever. Of course that is true, but let’s take the analogy deeper. The moon is lit in the sky in different phases. The moon goes from completely lit to completely dark. How does that fit the church? Are you saying God shines on us sometimes and sometimes He doesn’t? Or are you saying man hides from God so that God cannot shine on him? Either one doesn’t really make any sense to me. The moon is also only lit on one side. There is a dark side of the moon that we don’t see. Is this descriptive of the church? Does the church only show the world the part they want to see and hides the part they don’t want people to see in the darkness. That shouldn’t fit a true Christian in the church either. These are major problems to the moon being the church from my view point.
Gen 1:18 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.
We know from reading Genesis 1:18 that the sun rules the day and the moon rules the night. We could also say that the moon rules the darkness. Night and darkness are synonymous terms. Here is a scripture that should help to clear up the confusion of is the moon the church. Let’s look at a verse in Ephesians 6:12:
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.
Did you see what that this verse says? Who is this verse talking about? It is speaking of Satan and his demonic forces. These are the spiritual forces that are our enemies and as this verse states, they rule the darkness, not the church. In fact the Bible tells the church that we are not of the darkness (John 12:46), it also says what association has light with darkness (1 Th 5:5), meaning there should be none. You are welcome to study this subject in more depth, because I did not attempt to give you every scripture that there is on the subject. My goal is to point you in the right direction and help you learn. God Bless you and I hope you enjoyed Day 4. I’m sure I didn’t cover everything, but I hope I helped you to see some new things in the Word of God.
Knowing There Are Rules
(Ver 1.1) I believe many times it is a good idea to review the basics and establish a firm foundation to build upon. In thinking about this topic of Bible Interpretation I thought I would review the obvious. Of course it may be obvious to me, but to a new Christian it might not be common knowledge, so here I go. There are rules to Bible Interpretation by God’s design. God has established rules and guidelines to follow and once we learn these, they often time become second nature and you don’t have to think about them in order to follow them automatically. It is much like the law of gravity, it doesn’t take us long to discover that if we climb in a tree and we slip, we fall quickly and hit the ground. I learned this as a kid in my backyard and I never forgot it. I didn’t want to disregard this law of gravity again. If you ignore God’s laws of Bible Interpretation, you might not get the wind knocked out of you physically, but spiritually it can be the same.
So what do we need to do first? Learn that there are rules to follow. Then learn what the rules are. Then follow the rules. This is not rocket science, just a simple truth about understanding the Bible and the author of the Bible. The same God that established natural and physical laws has also established spiritual laws. He lives by them and He expects you to learn them and apply them also. These are the basic principles that we all should live by everyday. We drive our cars using the traffic laws everyday. Normally once we learned how to drive and passed the test for the license we don’t go back constantly and review all of the laws that we learned every minute of the day while we drive. No, the laws and rules have become second nature and we follow them while we drive without even thinking about them.
I do not profess to know every rule of Bible Interpretation, but the ones that God has taught me, these I will transfer to you for your benefit. By reading the rest of these posts in this blog, you can learn some of the do’s and don’ts of Bible Interpretation and apply these to your study and improve your learning capacity, I guarantee it.
Genesis 1:14-19 Day 4 Part 4
We have been exploring the revelation of night and day, light and darkness and have discovered that these are symbolic elements that represent the state of the heart’s of men. We have explored the fact that God created a division between two different distinct groups of people which Jesus Christ implemented with His death and resurrection. One group is those who belong to Christ and are said to be the children of the light and the day. Those who don’t belong to Christ are those who walk in darkness live in the night. Let’s look at another verse that confirms this:
Romans 2:19 And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness,
According to this scripture God writes to the church and declares them to be a guiding light to the blind, those who are in darkness. Right there we know that we the church are not in the darkness, but yet we are the one’s which can shine the light for those who are unable to see spiritually. What is blindness? It is the inability to see light. How is it that some people can see and understand the Bible and many others can’t? Here is the answer to that question:
2 Corinthians 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
This verse of scripture contains so much revelation that it is difficult to stick to the point at hand. However, it declares that the “god of this world” has blinded those who are in darkness. Let’s stop right there and determine who is the “god of this world”? Most of you should already understand that this is Satan, the dragon, the serpent, the devil, the deceiver, the thief, the accuser of the brethren, the adversary, the father of lies, Beelzebub, Lucifer and I could go on and on. This enemy of God and the church goes by a bunch of identities and names in the Bible but they all direct us to one spirit being called Satan. The verse in 2 Corinthians 4:4 tells us that there are those who are in spiritual darkness because of this enemy that has caused them not to believe. It in effect says that Satan is blocking the light from shining in so that they are not able to see spiritually. It also confirms that Jesus Christ is the light or the Sun that is trying to shine in on the hearts of those men in the darkness.
I hope you are grasping the powerful symbolism that Genesis is providing us. What we are beginning to see is two different rulers, two different gods, one god of this world and one God our Lord Jesus Christ. Two different kingdoms, one of light and one of darkness. Two groups of people those who live in the night who are unable to see and those who walk in the light and can see where they are going. It is a profound symbolic representation of the spiritual state of two completely different groups of people. We will continue more in the next lesson and hopefully finish up day 4.
Genesis 1:14-19 Day 4 Part 3
I knew this day would take a lot to explain and even more effort on your part to understand. But I’ll do the best that I can in a limited space to teach you as much as I can. In the last lesson we concluded with the revelation of the identity of Sun as being Jesus Christ. Before we move on to the moon, let’s back up and address the purpose of Day 4 from God’s perspective. We saw that Day 4 was an emphasis of a division occurring. I believe the divisions already existed back from at least Day 1 when God said let there be light. The implication of Day 1 was light did not reach the surface of the planet and therefore darkness prevailed upon the face of the earth. When God said let there be light He allowed the light to penetrate into the darkness. This is probably a mixture of my personal opinion and the implied references found in the word of God. Unless I find some scripture to back that statement I really don’t expect you to believe it.
Back to the subject of Day 4. We can see in the scripture the reference to the existence of two distinct realms or dimensions. One is called “Day” and the other is called “Night”. I think it would be good to look at the symbolism of these two divisions. Let’s start with the obvious, the day is the time where we experience the presence and warmth of the sun and it’s light. The night is the period of time when normal people sleep and the sun is not present. One division has the sun light and the other does not. From what we have seen Jesus Christ represents the Sun. Scripture also tells us that God is light. We can already begin to see a spiritual reality being stated. The day is for those who are in the light of the Sun of God, the night is for those who are without God. Do you understand this? This is the division that took place when Jesus died on the cross and after He arose.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:5 God writes to the church and says to them “You are all children of the light and children of the Day…”. I already mentioned this next verse in the last lesson, but I’ll show it to you again in 2nd Peter 1:19, God writes that “The Day will dawn out of the darkness and the Day Star will shine in our hearts.” I know I paraphrased that verse a little bit but I didn’t change the meaning. God is saying that Christ will dawn in our dark hearts and light them up with His light and cause us to be the children of the light. Let me give you one final scripture from Romans 13:12 God tells the church “the night is far spent and the day is at hand, let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light”. All of the key elements are mentioned, day, night, darkness and light. Where do you stand today? The Day and Light symbolism goes through out the New Testament. You are welcome to study it and find out how the physical characteristics of the night and day are symbolic of the spiritual conditions of men’s hearts.
So we have established the identity of the symbolic night and day as being the spiritual condition of men’s heart. In our next lesson we will continue to expand the identities of the other symbolic elements that we have found in these verses.
Genesis 1:14-19 Day 4 Part 2
We can learn something very important for us to know, if we pay close attention to the wording of verses 14 and 16. In reading these verses of day 4 we can easily see that God is speaking of two lights, but yet God does not name the lights or call them by their usual referenced names of the sun and the moon. They are referenced in a general or generic way of just two lights. In verse 16 they are called two Great Lights. But this time it distinguishes them and qualifies them as one being much greater than the other one. We are told the greater light will rule the day and the lesser light will rule the night. It is not difficult to figure out that God is speaking of the Sun and the moon. So why doesn’t God call them by their usual names? This is just one technique that God uses to conceal the truth in the Bible. There are many other methods, but we will only address this one here. I call this God’s way of hiding the truth in plain site. To make the truth harder to find God often times refers to the same object or subject by different names and/or descriptive terms. So many Bible teachers have missed this fact and as a result have taught several things in error. But I won’t get into that. Here is a most valuable lesson for your Bible study, when searching for a subject in the Bible, try to think of every possible title, name, or descriptive quality to search for. Use your Bible search program to look for these and it will go much faster. By finding all of the verses that you can about a specific subject you are much more likely to learn the truth and not fall into error.
Here is where we start to get into the prophetic side of the scriptures concerning day 4. I told you much earlier that the 1st Chapter of Genesis contains a lot of symbolic references, much like the book of Revelation is covered with symbolism throughout. Knowing this we can now begin to learn something that will help you in your Bible study tremendously. What does the symbols of the sun and the moon represent? If you recall I also told you that the days of creation were a prophetic timelines into the future. So what happened on the 4th day or around the 4000th year of our history? We know that Jesus Christ was born in a manger in Bethlehem, he then grew up 30 years and then ministered for 3 years, was crucified by the Roman soldiers, died and then rose again after 3 days. The fourth day of creation is giving us a prophetic view into the coming of Jesus Christ and the basis for why he came.
So what does the Sun represent? I will tell you that the Sun represents our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In 2nd Peter 1:19 Jesus is referred to as the “Day Star” that will arise in our hearts. What is the Day Star? Just another name or title for the Sun. Get it? In Revelation 22:16, Jesus himself is speaking to the church and He calls Himself the “Bright Morning Star”. What is the Bright Morning Star? Of course it is another name or title for the Sun. You do understand that our sun is just our closest star? I think I’ve given you enough references but here is one more that I will close this lesson with. In Malachi 4:2 God prophecies that the “Sun of Righteousness” will arise with healing in His wings”. Who is the Sun of Righteousness, of course it is Jesus Christ.
Genesis 1:14-19 Day 4 Part 1
(Ver 1.1) Day 4 of creation is incredibly amazing hidden information that when you see it and understand it helps to explain many things found in the New Testament. I have attempted to teach you that all of the days of creation are prophetic statements that pointed us to future spiritual events and day 4 is one of the most significant of them all. But before we get into the prophetic spiuritual side of the scriptures let us deal with the surface text content and the natural implications. If you recall in day 3 we saw that the earth begins to bring forth plant life. I then pointed out the requirements for all plant life and this included soil, nutrients, water, appropriate climate and atmosphere and then the existence of light. These are just the basic rules and requirements found within God’s creation for gardening and farming. If you have ever grown a garden you can understand this. My main point that I want you to understand was that the sun had to exist on Day 3 in order to already have growing and living plants on this planet. These are laws created by God and people ignore them and beleive God circumvented them in order to explain how God created the sun on day 4.
I’ve heard many Bible teachers claim that God created the sun and the moon and the stars on day 4. However, I would have to disagree strongly with that teaching and say all of these already existed prior to day 1 of creation. I have already tried to emphasize what the Bible describes to be “a world that was” and that this world is said to have been completely destroyed by water in 2 Peter 3:6. But, I guess there will be many that will still be skeptical and refute these truths in the scriptures because they do not understand them. That is too bad for you if you close your eyes to what the Bible says in order to believe what you want.
If you think about it from a scientific perspective what is more important the earth or the sun? Which one can survive without the other in the form that it is currently in today? The obvious answer is the sun. Only the sun is independent from the earth and not the other way around. In other words what revolves around what? If you are just a little bit intelligent you understand that the earth revolves around the sun and that the earth is totally dependent upon the sun for all of our life, warmth seasons and time cycles. The earth is completely dependent upon the gravitational pull of the sun to determine it’s position in the universe. Without the sun and it’s gravitational pull, the earth would be floating away in space to who knows where. Then there is also Day 1 of God’s creation evidence when God said let there be light. What is the dominate source of all light for our planet? Of course it is the sun, so if the earth could have any light on Day 1, it must have also had the sun. Think a little bit more with me. On day 1, God declares the light to be day and the darkness to be night. These are clearly sun based concepts that do not and cannot occur without the existence of the sun and the earth’s rotation around it. Since the days of creation are divided into 6 day and evening periods of time, the existence of the sun is a requirement for the definition of what a day is. Without the physical sun’s existence on Day 1, a day could have been defined to be a billion years. So I’ve given you a few really good reasons why the sun had to exist prior to day 4 of creation. So if we read again about Day 4 what is God talking about?
Gen 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:
Did you notice that verse 14 mentions division again? This is at least the third time we have seen an explicit reference to God dividing one thing from another thing. I really don’t believe people have discovered yet what this means and why God had to do this. But, I’ll teach on this subject in the future and leave it alone today. Now let’s look at what God says about these two lights. God says these will be used for signs, seasons, days and years. We can understand days pretty easily, a single revolution of the earth represents one 24 hour period of time. This day is divided into two equal periods of 12 hours where one is called day and the other is called night. Then it mentions years, a year is a complete cycle of the earth around the sun. This cycle takes approximately 365 days to complete. It didn’t really mention months but a month is very close to a complete cycle of the moon around the earth. So God declares these lights to be the time keeping devices for us to establish set time periods and that is an interesting concept, without them what would we use to measure time?
I want you to consider this new perspective of our modern calendar. What is our current year number based upon? The current calendar year is based upon Jesus coming into the world. These are commonly called B.C. and A.D. B.C. refers to the time before Christ. A.D. is the latin phrasing that means the “year of our Lord”. These are very specific references to God coming to the earth in the flesh and most people on the earth ignore it to live in their ignorance. I do not beleive that God speaking in Genesis 1:14 about setting calendars is a cooincidence and I beleive they are directly related to what God has accomplished.
We have only started day 4 and there is so much that we could discuss. I think I will stop here and continue the next time we meet.
Genesis 1:9-13 – The 3rd Day
Gen 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.
(Ver 1.1) Day 3 of creation is very interesting and contains a lot of information. It begins by confirming to us that the world was covered with water and God commands the water to gather and separate from the earth. Maybe you realize and can understand that this is also a stated division of land from water. The separation of the waters from the land is what God says caused the land to appear. To appear means it was clearly hidden before. It is not that complex yet people ignore the little details given to us by God to beleive an alternative reality of what happened. It is very obvious to me now that Genesi 1:2 describes a universal flood that covered every land mass on the earth. If you study this out you will find that there is more than enough water in the oceans to accomplish this. All it would take is a shifting of the depths of the oceans nd the water would again cover the earth very easily.
Gen 1:10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
I want to point out in this verse that God declares a defintion for the Hebrew word translated as “earth”. God very clearly says “earth” is dry land. This is so obvious to me but many have not seen it, that God says in Genesis 1:1 that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. The “earth” Hebrew word in Genesis 1:1 is the same Hebrew word that God defined here in verse 10. Theefore, by God’ definition, God declares in Genesis 1:1 dry land existed in the beginning. There is a major conflict that is given to us in Genesis 1:2 where the world was covered with the deepness of water. I have concluded from this information that Genesis 1:2 is describing a time after the begininning where something catastrophic occurred to cover the earth completely in water.
Gen 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.
Then God commands the earth to produce grass, trees and living vegetation. God also gives us the Seed law of Genesis and a key to understanding the Kingdom of Heaven. God says the seed is always in itself. That is a fascinating concept. Basically it states that there was a creation event that occurred once and that this resulted in a process of self perpetuating events. What we learn from this concept is that each part of God’s creation had within itself the ability to reproduce and produce more of their own kind. In other words God created things ONLY once and then these tings had the ability to self sustain, propogate and continue to spread and grow indefinitely. That is a very important conept to grasp both phsycially and spiritually.
Since God creates plants on Day 3, I believe that it would be noteworthy to analyze a plant’s growth requirements. What are the basics that any plant needs to sustain growth and produce fruit for example? Of course all plants require earth, fertilizer, nutrients, correct atmosphere, water, the correct climate and light. What was the last requirement in my list necessary fundementals? It was light. Do you know what that means? It means that the sun already existed as of Day 3 to help to regulate the earth’s temperature and provide the necessary light for any plants to grow. Without the sun’s existence, the earth would have been an ice cube and vomplrryrly unable to produce any plant life. You’ll hopefully understand why I went into this level of detail when we get to Day 4 next.
Gen 1:12 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.
Gen 1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
God declares the earth’s ability to produce plants existed on Day 3. Please keep in mind that all of the laws of agriculture that God created for the earth to be able to do this must have been in existence at this time. Also consider the timing and the order of what is occuring. Before the existence of any animal God first produced food. This is the basic requirement for higher forms of life like birds or animals. If there was no food supply nothing would have survived long. God’s intelligent design is clearly outlined in what He has accomplished the order of mention declares the wisdom and intelligence of a creeator.
Understanding Bible Interpretation! Getting God’s Definitions!
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 6 in the study series of Correct Bible Interpretation Rules. If you have not read from the beginning I would recommend that you go back and start reading with “Part 1” first. The last time I taught on this subject of Bible interpretation rules we talked about a very specific type of erroneous interpretation called the private interpretation. We of course now realize that a private interpretation simiply is one that is dominated by our opinions and they contain our personal subjectivity in determining the meaning of what we have read in the Bible. If you are smart you will realize that your opinion is not what is important to God or to me. Just as my opiniion should not be important to you. God is not going to ever ask our opinion on what we think the Bible means. You do realize that, don’t you? So as a result we discovered that we should let the Bible interpret itself. What we think has no determination on the final outcome of what truth is. God is so smarter than all of us combined and He wrote down very specific words that mean very specific things and we should find out what He said and what He thinks and then we should go by that as being the truth only.
So here is a related topic to no private interpretations allowed. Let God define the Words in the Bible and not you or even Daniel Webster. I look up words all the time in dictionaries to learn what they mean, but I have found that God’s definitions of these words are many, many times not in the dictionary. Let me give you a couple of quick examples. We have been studying the 1st chapter of Genesis and it refers to the 6 days of creation and then the 7th day when God rested. But if you have been following the lesson, the term “day” is defined a little bit differently in the Bible. When the Bible says “A Day is…” that indicates a direct definition is about to occur. It is about to tells us what God thinks a day is equivalent to.
2Pe 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
So if God says a day is as a 1000 years and that a 1000 years is as 1 day we can attempt to apply this definition to the scriptures we find “day” mentioned. I know this doesn’t work everywhere all the time but it does help us in many places, especially Genesis the 1st chapter. The difficulty comes when we realize that words have multiple definitions and this is the same with Bible words. We are going to have to use the word in context to see if it fits. I know this defintion fits nicely with Genesis 1 based upon what else the Bible says on the subject. You can read about a coming 1000 year day of rest in Revelation chpater 20, for example. This day of rest is described as a coming event in Hebrews chapter 4. Therefore the clarification of a day being as 1000 years directly applies to Genesis 1 with ease.
Let me give you another example of when God’s definition is better than a man’s definition. In the 9th chapter of John, Jesus comes upon a blind man and his disciples start asking him questions of why. I’m not going to get into the details of this story just one comment that Jesus makes in answering the question. Jesus says “I must work the works of him that sent me…” in John 9:4. In reading this verse I automatically assumed like many others that healing the man was the work that Jesus was talking about because we can see that this is what Jesus did at least at first. If we look up the word “work” in the dictionary it would refer us to a manual labor task or a place of employment or occupation among other related meanings. Of course none of these definitions would help us to understand what Jesus did and why. What is work to God? What is God’s definition of work? Did you realize Jesus tells us the definition, if we only look for it. If we back up in the book of John to the 6th chapter and the 29th verse we can see God’s definition for what work is:
John 6:29 “This is the work of God, that we believe on him whom he has sent.”
That definition changes everything so dramatically about what we read in John 9 that it is almost ridiculous and it shows us why we should be looking for God’s definitions in the Bible and leaving our opinions and our definitions out of the mix. You can now go back to chapter 9 of John and reread the entire story based upon this new definition and you will see that God did accomplish this work. Jesus met up with the former blind man and asked do you believe in the Son of God (John 9:35)? The man asks who is that to Jesus and Jesus says it is who you are speaking to now. The man then says “Lord I believe”. This was the defined work of God demonstrated. Getting people to believe in Jesus in still our primary work today.
Let me give you one more example on getting God’s definitions to help you see that this is a very important subject to learn. We are all told in the Bible to expect eternal life as our reward. However, every spiritual being in the world saved or unsaved will live forever somewhere. Those that are saved will live with Christ and those that are not will be in hell. So what is the Bible defintion for eternal life? Let’s read God’s definition of eternal life for the believer:
Joh 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
There is a direct explicit definition for eternal life in this verse and there is also an indirect definition for eternal death in this verse. Since every truth has an opposite truth associated with it, we can learn both definitions from a single verse. Eternal Life is us knowing the True God forever. We can conclude that Eternal Death is the opposite of not knowing the True God forever but knowing the false God Satan forever. These are very important definition of eternal ife and death. Because they came from God’s word and not the dictionary they contain truth that is unrefutable by human reasoning.
I just gave you three quick examples of letting God define the words we read in the Bible but there are so many others to be found in the Bible. It will help you so much in understanding what God wrote if you let God show you what those things mean. The Bible is one Book by one Author and He is smarter than I am. God Bless!
Genesis 1:6-8 God the Divides Waters from the Waters!
Gen 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.
Gen 1:7 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.
Gen 1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
(Ver 1.1) The first three chapters of Genesis are very full of symbolism. I believe the 6th verse of Genesis 1 is no exception. Here God speaks of natural things, but these things all have spiritual meanings that were hidden from man. God again deals with the subject of division on the 2nd day of creation. In this verse God seems to establish a separation between two bodies of water and He calls this expanse of separation the firmament. It is interesting to note that our sky separates two very large bodies of water. We of course know the oceans and the seas are very large bodies of waters but we also know through scientific studies that the clouds and the atmosphere above contains a large amount of evaporative waters. Rain obviously falls from somewhere and waters the earth. It is a process created by God to water the plants of the earth and to give us a fresh drinking water supply. All of this is good and all of this is interesting but God is also giving us some more information in this chapter that we need to become aware of.
What is the symbolic term “waters” representative of in the Bible? How does God define waters? It might surprise some of you but the seas and bodies of waters is often times referred to as a type of peoples or nations. Isn’t that an interesting concept? Let me quickly give you a scripture that supports what I just said. In Revelation 17:15 God gives us a definition of the term “waters”. God again uses “waters” in Revelation 17 symbolically and so read this verse very carefully and observe what it says:
Rev 17:15 And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.
God specifically says that the symbolic “waters” are representative of many people and nations. So if we look again at the 2nd day of creation, God says he has separated waters that are below from the waters that are above. If we apply the definition we found in Revelation to these scriptures and apply them to the context of them being prophetic, what conclusions can we arrive at?
What happened 2000 years after Adam? Looking at the Bible timeline we can discover God’s covenant with Abraham occurred approximately 2000 years after Adam. The establishment of the nation of Israel occurred on the 2nd day of God’s timeline. God made a covenant with a specific group of people. He chose to marry a nation of people. God did not covenant with the entire human race, just the descendants of one man named Abraham and then only with the descendants of one of his son’s Isaac. What was the result of this act of God? We had one group of people in covenant with God and the rest of the descendants of Adam separate from the covenant. That represents a clear division and an established difference between two waters. The waters from above were now different than the waters that were below.
It is very interesting to note that 7 times in the first chapter of Genesis, that God says what He did was either “Good” or “Very Good”. But, on the 2nd day of creation there is no mention of anything being “good”. The first time we saw something that was stated to be good was the mention of Light being separate from darknesss on day 1. The next time anything is said to be good is on day 3. I can only conclude based upon this evidence that whatever God did on day 2 was necessary, but not something God wanted to do or what He considered to be good. That of course was just my opinion, but I find it fascinating.
God Bless,
Genesis 1:5
Genesis 1:5 ends day one of the creation account. This verse gives us God’s perspective on light and darkness. He calls the light “Day” and the darkness “Night”. Everything in the Bile has significance and this naming of the two divisions will become increasingly important as you learn more about them in the Bible. It is very significant to realize that the 1st act of God in creation of our world system was to divide something from something. These two things were light and darkness or as God called them “Day” and “Night”. We know from a natural perspective day and night are 2 divisions within our daily cycle. Each division has 12 hours in them. Isn’t it interesting that the number 12 occurs so frequently in the Bible? Israel had 12 tribes, Jesus had 12 disciples, the New Jerusalem has 12 foundations and we could go on and on.
I alluded to the fact that the 1st chapter of Genesis was prophetic in nature and many will not understand what I’m talking about. You see the days of creation were outlined in a specific order following a specific plan of God. God gives us clues to our earthly history and timetable by studying this chapter. Here is a quick introduction to what I’m talking about. In the book of 2nd Peter 3:8 we are given a major clue to this prophetc account of creation. This verse tells us “A day is as a 1000 years and a 1000 years is as one day.” Isn’t it interesting that the account of the Genesis creation is given to us in terms of days. As you read thru the chapter you find that God worked 6 days to create and then on the 7th day he rested.
If you had the time to do an in depth study in the Bible you would find that it has been approximately 2000 years since the birth of Jesus Christ. According to Peter this is 2 days. Going back from Jesus to Abraham is another 2000 years or 2 days. Finally from Abraham to Adam is another 2000 years or 2 days. Add this up you arrive at 6 days. According to the Biblical calendar we are at the end of the 6th day of God’s creation timetable. We will continue to look at this in more depth as we continue thru the chapter. That was just a quick introduction and I welcome you to go through the Bible and do the math and check what I just told you.
God ends Day 1 but I wanted to make another point about verse 4 real quick that maybe you didn’t see. Did you notice that God called the light, good but he did not call the darkness good. That is also significant. I hope you are enjoying reading thru the chapter and we will continue again tomorrow.
Correct Bible Interpretation Rules Part 5 — No Place for Private Interpretations
(Ver 1.2) This is now Part 5 in the series of lessons on Correct Bible Interpretation. If you have not read through this series from the beginning I would strongly suggest that you return back to “Part 1” first. I’ve been going through various rules and the keys to successful and correct Bible Interpretation and now want to touch on probably one of the most important rules that I have been shown by God. The ignorance and the misuse of this one rule gets more Christians into the hot water of error than probably the others all combined. It seems like humans are naturally opinionated and like to express their opinions usually very loudly. Whenever a person doesn’t understand what is being said, many times they close their eyes to it and attempt to come up with their own explanation of the meaning of the verse. This is called a private interpretation. The Bible actually warns us not to go there, but still this is a common human trait we all must face and conquer. Here is a definition of interpretation that I found on the web:
Interpretation: Opinion regarding a set of facts. A degree of subjectivity is involved on the part of the individual, based on his or her experience, personality, and biases.
Did you notice what that definition said? It said people often times use their own experiences, their personalities or their biases to determine what they think about a stated fact. I see ministers doing this all the time in what they teach. They are letting something external to the Word of God dictate what they believe it says. That is a very dangerous approach to take when studying the Bible. Here is a verse of scripture that I referred to earlier:
2 Peter 1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
That is a critical word from God with far reaching consequences. It says we shouldn’t use our own private interpretations to explain God’s Word. The clear implication that is made is that the Bible interprets itself. Some would read 2nd Peter 1:20 and say that is a restrictive context that only applies to prophetic books like Isaiah or Revelation and other books that were written by God’s prophets. But I’ve got news for you that almost every book that I’ve studied has some very clear prophetic words recorded in them. It’s easier to find a scripture of prophecy than to find a scripture that is not prophetic.
So the bottom line, is if you don’t understand what is being said shut up and don’t try to teach it like you do. Unless you can find scriptures that back what you think is true and accurate leave it alone and don’t speculate. I’ve recently heard some ministers teach Revelation and they said some things that were clearly just their own opinions. The problem is when they stand up and teach it with authority like it is a word from God they influence others to believe a lie. This makes it much harder when God does reveal the truth for people to accept.
Here is another example of a private interpretation. Many in the body of Christ teach that healing went out with the death of the last Apostle. God doesn’t heal anymore, we have doctors that have replaced God. It doesn’t matter that they don’t have any scripture to back what they are teaching, the damage is done, people’s faith is destroyed and many Christians die as a result. There are more private interpretations of the Bible on the internet than there is the truth of God. That makes it extremely difficult to place the truth at the top of the list. I have heard men leave me comments and tell me why I am wrong over and over and almost everytime, it has to do with their private interpretation of the scriptures. Whenever you have to look for a reality outside of the Word of God by studying commentatires or history books, you have departed from the truth to teach a lie. Please learn to give God more credit than that. There is much more information in the Bible than what you currently know and understand. God help us all from people teaching their own opinions.
Genesis 1:4 Day 1 of Creation
(Ver 1.2) We are of course still in the beginning of the creation of our world system in God’s Day 1. It is important to note what God does on each day of creation. It is important to note the order of the events of creation. I believe from years of Bible study that each day of creation is a prophetic view into God’s overall plan for the future of mankind. I believe sincerely that each day of creation reveals something that either already occurred or will occur at a specific time in the natural timeline of man’s existence on the earth.
Isa 46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
We learn these concepts from reading verses like Isaiah 46:10 that says God “declares the end from the beginning…”. From this information we understand that the story of the beginning of our world also reveals to us the end of our world and it’s timetable. Since we are discussing day 1 and a day is to the LORD is as a 1000 years we further understand day 1 until the end of day 6 have already passed by. It is only the end of Day 6 that is still occurring right now. Then we will learn that Day 7 will be the coming millennial day of the LORD described in the book of Revelation. You might say I’m jumping to conclusions and making some radical assumptions, but nevertheless I will stand by that statement. I hope as we continue to go through this chapter that you will begin to see it also.
Gen 1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
So what did God do on the first day of creation? God looked at the earth and saw darkness and said “light be”. According to Genesis 1:4 God informs us that this first act was done in order to “divide” light from darkness. That is a amazing revelation if you choose to understand it. We know from 1st John 1:5 that God is revealed to be “light” and then the verse goes on to teach us that in Him is no “darkness”. If we search the Bible using our Bible Search software we should look for verses containing the words “light”, “darkness”, “day” or “night”. These verses connect us to a revelation of a spiritual realization that we can see being initiated first in Genesis 1:3-5. If God is Light, what is darkness? We all understand that darkness is defined as the absence of light. Therefore, spiritual “darkness” would include anything not being a part of God.
The implied meaning of this verse is that God has separated himself (God=Light) from darkness (Eph 6:12). Let’s look briefly at the word “divide” in the Hebrew. According to Strong’s the Hebrew word H914 means to “sever”, “separate”, “divide asunder”, “make a difference”. This word implies a cutting into two pieces using a sharp knife. I could probably go into a lot more detail right here but that might just cloud the issue. What we should take away from the 1st day of creation is that there was a plan of God implemented for the separation of light from darkness. I will also mention this for the sake of argument later, if the world was introduced to light on day one the “sun” has to also already exist doesn’t it? It is an interesting puzzle, but one that we will address later.
Correct Bible Interpretation Rules Part 4 — Introduction to Symbolism in the Bible!
(Ver 2.2) This is Part 4 in the series of Bible lessons on Correct Bible Interpretation Rules. If you have not read this series from the beginning it would be advised that you go back and start reading at “Part 1” first and continue forward through the series. Getting a firm grasp on God’s usage of symbolism is very critical to correctly understanding and interpreting the Bible. Many times we read the Bible and see the mention of something that can be taken either literally or symbolically and this makes correct Bible interpretation infinitely more complex. The Bible is full of symbolism from the very 1st chapter of Genesis to the very last chapter in Revelation. We will eventually discuss why God uses symbolism but for now let’s attempt to define what it is. I like to view symbolism as a method used by God to convey hidden spiritual information in a coded format or reference. Symbolic Bible reference almost always describe concealed and hidden spiritual things using the terms, descriptions, names or titles of natural things, events or people that we all should be familiar with or at the least should be able to look at them and then learn to understand them with study. For example, have you ever seen God? No, God is a hidden spiritual being and the Bible says no man has ever seen God, but yet for you to get to know who God is, He describes Himself in the terms of natural things like the Sun so that we can understand Him and learn about His hidden qualities.
If while you are reading the Bible you encounter a reference to something or someone that doesn’t make a lot of sense to be a real physical entity it would be a good time to ask is this a symbolic reference to a higher spiritual truth. Let me give you an example in Genesis 3, the Bible speaks of a creature called the serpent in Genesis 3:1. Most Bible scholars agree that this is Satan, but the controversy comes when they attempt to say that Satan appeared in the garden of Eden as a physical snake. If you ever attended Sunday School as a child you have seen the picture of a naked man and woman in the garden with an apple in their hand and a talking snake near them tempting them. I guess this is the picture that these verses in Genesis 3 have conjoured up within the minds of men and women who have read the story. I could give you several scriptures in the Bible that directly contradict this account that helps us to see the real meaning behind this symbol, but I guess because of the time it would take to do that, I won’t go into that level of detail until we get to those verses in Genesis 3 later. What I will say is that this serpent in Genesis 3 is a symbolic reference and not an actual literal physical talking snake and you will have to wait for why I know this until later.
Please realize that the first three chapters of Genesis are heavily covered with symbolic references and not literal references. God is attempting to teach you about spiritual things and not about natural things and this is the failure that many Bible students fall into by simply ignoring which references are natural and which ones are just symbolic of a much greater spiritual reality. The book of Daniel has many symbolic references throughout the book. The beasts seen in the visions, are all symbolic of earthly empires and spiritual beings behind them. The book of Revelation is literally the most symbolic book that I know of. There are very literally few things in the book of Revelation that are mentioned that are not symbolic of something that is spiritual. You can find Daniel’s beasts repeated in Revelation, you can find the serpent from Genesis 3 repeated and finally being revealed to who this was in Revelation 12. There are two major symbolic women in Revelation, one in Revelation 12 and the other in Revelation 17 called the Whore of Babylon. There is another symbolic city called a woman in Revelation 21 named the New Jerusalem and the bride of the Lamb.
I hope that you understand symbolism and can learn to identify God’s usage of this technique. God Bless!
Genesis 1:3 – Let There Be Light!
Gen 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
(Ver 1.3) This is now Part 5 in the Bible study series helping us to understand Genesis 1. We have been moving through the chapter verse by verse and studying it using some new ingsights from the written Word of God. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would recommend that you start with “Part 1” first and then move through it in numbered sequence. Genesis 1:3 begins the account of God’s creation of our present world system that we all currently live in. We have already looked at verses 1 and 2 and have seen that the world as described at that time was covered completely with water in a lifeless state of darkness and utter destruction. From God’s choice of words I have determined that there is enough scriptural evidence that this was not the way that it started initially in the beginning. Therefore, something catastrophic had to have occurred to cause the world that was originally created by God in Genesis 1.1 to perish and to become completely and utterly destroyed resulting in an uninhabitable planet. Why is it even important to study this part of the Bible and what relevance does it have for Christians today to know and understand this information? I think that is a very important question to ask and to answer. I want to answer that question by again telling you something else that God says about the beginning in another part of the Bible:
Isa 46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
First notice God’s usage of the key Hebrew word “beginning” (Strong’s H7225). This Hebrew word is used in only 49 verses of the Old Testament and that is not too many to go and read them all to see if they apply or shed light on the subject of Genesis 1. In Isaiah 46:10 God uses the exact same Hebrew word translated as beginning in Genesis 1:1. Therefore we have a direct link to subject content based upon God’s word selection. Then notice what God declares and the implications associated with this statement. God says I speak of the end from the beginning. Wow, that is a radical concept and a revelation of monumental proportions. It means that if you do not understand the beginning that you will never be able to understand the end. Uh Oh? That does not sound good for a lot of Bible Prophecy teachers today. God says that you can read what I wrote in the beginning and see what is coming in the end. How is this even possible? Are you beginning to now see the importance of learning the correct interpretation of Genesis 1? I mean do you want to know what Revelaion means? If yes, then you better start with Genesis 1 and find out what that means because there you will find the keys to unlocking the understanding of the book of Revelation. Wow, I just taught you something that is so far off of the charts of current Bible teaching that I wonder why I said it. I just let you in on something else to look for in Genesis. The first thing that I mentioned was that Genesis 1 was about Jesus and I told you to look for Him in every verse. Now I have sprung another revelation on you and said in every verse to look for the end from the stated beginning descriptive words. Therefore we have three direct priorities in reading every verse. We want to understand what they mean in the stated beginning context first, we want to then know what they mean for Jesus the creator second, and then finally, we want to know what they mean for the future end of the world. Please allow me to list these again so that you can remember them and learn why it is important to study the creation account in Genesis:
- Study Genesis to see and understand the creation event first.
- Study Genesis to see and understand the God who created everything second.
- Study Genesis to see and understand the end of the world.
In studying just the first three verses of Genesis 1, I have counted over 15 different direct subjects to study in the entire Bible and I omitted the smaller more common Hebrew words from this count. Here is a list of the primary or dominate subject Hebrew words in these three verses. Every word occurs at least once and when more than once I included a count after the word in parenthesis.
- Beginning
- Created
- Alef-Tav, A-Z, Alpha-Omega
- God (3)
- Heaven
- Earth (2)
- Without Form
- Void
- Darkness
- Face (2)
- Deep
- Spirit
- Moved
- Waters
- Said
- Light (2)
Surely you can begin to see how complex the Bible is by examining this short list of subjects. Searching the Old Testament for every one of these words would be a large task, but one that would be very beneficial to our understanding. Then crossing over into the New Testament would be of even greater benefit if we could determine which Greek words corresponded to these 16 Hebrew words. That is possible and maybe I should teach you how to do that here in this lesson. In order to cross languages barriers to find the New Testament Greek words that are directly related or associated to the Hebrew O.T. words we need to find an Old Testament quoted verse in the New Testament with that word exact in it. This is difficult but not impossible to do with a computer and a version of the Bible that helps to identify them. For example I like the NASB version of the Bible for this cause. They capitalize every Old Testament verse quoted in the New Testament so that they are all easily recognicable. I then do a search for the words that I am looking for like “heaven” and “earth” and then find them in a N.T. quoted verse. I did this search and found both words in Hebrews 1:10. This verse quotes Psalms 102:25. Then I go to Psalms and verify that the Hebrew words in that verse for “heaven” and “earth” are the same words found in Genesis 1 and they are, so I now know that the Greek words G1093 and G3772 are equivalent words for the Hebrew words H776 and H8064 respectively. Do you understand what I just did and why? It can be a bit complex and take some time and effort to accomplish, but yet it is very important and very beneficial for the subject study.
When reading verse 3, it is very interesting to note that the first act of God in this creation event was stated to be the introduction of light back into the planet. Why was that God’s first action and how would that even be possible, if the literal sun did not exist already to shine on the earth? You see I believe the first chapter of Genesis is both literal and symolic of many greater spiritual truths simultaneously. This is the only way that one verse can teach you three different things using the same words. I believe that Genesis 1 was God’s way of teaching us some very complex hidden things by God selecting the specific stated order of every event performed, how it was recorded and described, how it was performed, and then by the timing of the event in the overall 6 day process. What God does is reveal to us greater hidden spiritual truths while creating our world system concurrently. In other words everything recorded in Genesis 1 is by divine superior design and has a hidden purpose to reveal a greater mystery.
We should know from reading and studying the Bible that God has described Himself to be Light. Light is an important concept found throughout the Bible in many forms using many synonymous terms. The first recorded mention of light is here in Genesis 1:3. One of the last direct mentions of light occurs in Revelation 22:5 and says some awesome things about this subject of how God will be to His people their eternal light. Therefore, when God said in Genesis 1:3 “Let there be Light”, what exactly did that mean and what are the imiplied reference for Jesus and the end of the age?
1Jn 1:5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
If you only think naturally or carnally you will miss all of the spiritual messages from God hidden in His word. This is why when Jesus taught us the scriptures that said repeatedly “Let him that has ears to hear, hear” (Mat 11:15). What Jesus was claiming was that there was more said in the scriptures than what their natural ears were currently understanding. Let’s get into what the symbolic meaning of the “Light Be” command could represent in Genesis 1:3. We can see from several other scriptures in the Bible that there is no place that we can go that God is not already present there (Psalm 139:8). God is clearly an omnipresent being and all that means is that the Spirit of God is present everywhere simultaneously. Therefore, to attempt to teach that God was introducing Himself into the world, I believe would conflict with the omnipresent part of God’s nature. What then can these verses possibly represent?
We can see from studying the rest of the chapter that God is repeatedly dividing something from something else and here in verses 3 through 5 God separates Day (light) from Night (darkness). In day 1 of the six day creation event God defines what day is and what night is and that is a much more significant revelation to consider than you know right now. It is also a stated major problem if the sun does not exist on this day of creation since day and night could not possibly occur without the existence of the sun and the earth’s rotation around it.
Here is the first time we see God doing anything specifically in direct reference to a specific creation task. We should begin to ask the question “How does God create anything by definition and revealed methodology”? This is a critical point to understand as we will later learn why it is so significant. Men typically create things with their hands, they build a car, write a song, mow the grass all natural things involving the work of our hands. Where were God’s hands during this work? As we see later in the chapter God rests on the seventh day from all His work so we know that He was working while He was creating. But, I believe we can clearly see that God’s work methods were by a radical new method of labor. I believe, knowing how God works will help us learn how we should be working. But, I guess I won’t go there today.
So what did God do? God looked out on the darkness that covered the earth in verse 2 and then what happened? What does darkness represent literally, figuratively and symbolcically? I believe this is a concept we need to define using the Bible. God spoke to the darkness and said “Light Be”. This is a pattern that will be repeatedly emphasized as we continue through the rest of the chapter and this work methodology is also found throughout the Bible in the lives of a number of key examples given to us by God. Most people who read the Bible don’t really understand what they read. As a result they gloss over their minds and basically ignore the words that are written for them to turn to alternative preconceived ideas or thoughts that they think that they do understand. It sure changes everything when you finally see what the actual words and meanings say; it will change your entire outlook on God and His Word if you let it in and accept it as truth.
Let me introduce you to a brand new concept called symbolism. I personally believe that practically everything in Genesis 1 is symbolically linked to a greater hidden truth of something that God is doing in the spiritual realm. Genesis chapter 1 is so heavily saturated with this symbolism that it has very rich and deep meanings attached to every verse. Every day of creation is symbolic of a spiritual day to God and I believe this is a new concept that you need to take hold of in order to understand how near we are to the end of our time here on this earth. As we will soon see the 6 days of God’s creation are symbolically representative of each day of human history on our planet. Since Adam’s creation man has been on this planet very nearly for 6000 years. We can calculate this duration using the genealogies found in the Bible and the ages of the men given to us in those geneaologies. This is how many Bible teachers have come up with the popular theory of the age of our earth being only 6000 years old. However, they are misapplying the information and missing the greater truth that God hid for them to find. Let me stop here and introduce you to some of God’s critical commentary of the creation events found in Genesis. You need to begin to understand that God reveals more information in other parts of the Bible that are essential for you understanding what is occurring in Genesis. If you only study Genesis in a vacuum void of these verses you will never perceive the truth of God. Turn with me in your Bible and read these verses found in 2 Peter:
2Pe 3:4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
2Pe 3:5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
2Pe 3:6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:
2Pe 3:7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
2Pe 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
Notice what God reveals in these verses. In verse 8, God gives us the redefinition of the Genesis term “day”. This definition represents a new spiritual “day” concept and not a literal day reality. God is revealing a specific clue to the duration of the world by informing us that each day of creation represents a 1000 year period of God’s time. Peter is quoting a part of a verse found in Psalms to make this information plainer and to give it significance to our study. By examining the context of this statement you should be able to clearly understand that Peter is linking this new “day” length information back to the original Genesis creation account. Go back to verse 4 and you will see a clear reference to the “beginning of creation” a clear reference to the information found in Genesis 1:1. Peter immediately follows this verse with a statement concerning Genesis 1:2 where the world was completely covered with water. Then Peter in verse 6 declares that the world that then had perished. Did you know that there was a world that existed before our world? God was teaching us a revelation and giving us explanations concerning the first two verses of Genesis in this discourse. Next in verse 7 God declares information about the end of the age linking the beginning to the end again as we read in Isaiah. Immediately following this statement is verse 8 concerning the definition of a day as being 1000 years. God has placed such key detailed information here that it is amazing when you can see it.
Did you notice that in verses 5 and 7 were two significant references to the Word of God? This reference is also a critical part of the Genesis Bible study. I believe if you do a search in Genesis 1 for the phrase “and God said” you will find it written 10 times in 10 different verses. God places extraordinary importance on His Word in the creation of the world. Peter reveals to us that the world that perished was created by the spoken Word of God and that the world that we live in currently was also created by the spoken Word of God. We learn as we continue that this is how God worked so keep this information in your mind as we continue in this series.
Do not misapply 2 Peter to attempt to say each day of creation is a literal 1000 year period of time. That would be another misapplication of spiritual information. God uses natural things to help us to understand spiritual things. Therefore, I am a firm believer that the 6 days of creation are literal 24 hour periods of time. Take the information literally in Genesis whenever possible but also realize that every literal word has a symbolic meaning potentially attached to it. What I am doing is viewing the information as being literal and symbolic at the same time as I have stated before.
Correct Bible Interpretation Rules Part 3 — The Bible Is Not Complete!
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 3 in the series of Bible lessons on Correct Bible Interpretation Rules. If you have not read from the beginning of the series I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1” first. This is one of those obvious Bible facts, but sometimes it is really good to state the obvious for public general knowledge and for clarification to help avoid misunderstanding. The Bible does not contain a complete story, account or description of anything, anyone, any place, or any event within human history. The Bible omits more details than it includes on any subject given to us by God. I believe God puts only the most relevant and pertinent facts in the Bible that He wanted us to see and know and that He omitted whatever He felt was not important or too dangerous for us to know at that time. For example it is very clear that Genesis is not a complete account of creation. The Old Testament is not a complete account of the natural nation of Israel. The Gospels are not a complete account of the life and ministry of Jesus. The book of Acts is not a complete account of the early church. The book of Revelation is not a complete account of the end. On and on I could go. What we must begin to realize is that the facts and information given to us in the Bible are all extremely important and then we must learn to focus on what they say or don’t say in order to understand what God wanted us to know. Did you notice what I just said? There is more than one way to learn from what God wrote in the Bible. One direct way is to learn what was written to us. The other indirect way is to observe what was not written to us. Wow that could get really complex, couldn’t it?
In the book of John the 20th chapter and the 30th verse it says there were many other things that Jesus did that were not written for us to see. Why were some things recorded and other things not recorded. Correct Bible study and interpretation is certainly more complex and involved than anything that you can imagine.
Joh 21:25 And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.
Notice what God declares to us in this last verse of the book of John. God very clearly states that the world could not contain the volumes of information that were performed and spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ. That just amazes me tremendously. God was obviously highly selective to which words that He wanted us to see and understand. It certainly does not belittle the words that were not included but God placed great value upon these words that were written to us. Seeing the value of these words has been the theme of the last two lessons on Correct Bible Interpretation. If you do not value God’s Words then you will never correctly understand them.
Understanding that God has written the Bible using a technique of limited and confined information is one of the keys to unlocking the meaning. Look at the Bible as a single piece of the pie from the much larger complete knowledge of God’s wisdom. Gaining a correct perspective of the Bible will great assist in the correct interpretation of the Bible. This technique of limited information displays the extreme intelligence of God and His ability to say a great deal in a few words. Often it is not the amount of the words but rather the purpose and content of what was spoken that makes them most valuable to us. I hope you are grasping the significance but we have only initiated the subject of Correct Bible Interpretation. We will continue on in the next lesson and learn more important concepts.
If you would like to continue reading about Correct Bible Interpretation please go to “Part 4” now.
Genesis 1:2 Part 2
Gen 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.
(Ver 1.4) This is Part 4 in the series of Bible lessons on Genesis chapter 1. We have talked about a lot of different subjects so far and I have introduced you to a new controversial debate that is raging between many Bible teachers. Some have said that the earth is relatively young and only 6000 years old and other Bible teachers like myself see it to be much older. Techinically speaking nowhere in the Bible does God give us the exact age of the earth or the universe so it would be foolish for any man to try to date it so precisely. That is why I do not give you any dates, but I only say it is very old based upon the Bible. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1” first. Today I’m going to focus on the part of the words in verse 2 where God says “And darkness was upon the face of the deep…“. Genesis 1:2 continues with some revealing words, the implication is made that the earth is totally and completely covered by water and in complete darkness. This would imply that there was no dry ground anywhere and that the depth of the water that covered the ground was so deep that light could not penetrate to reach it. This information would further the concept definition that the world was an uninhabitable place. It sounds a lot like the movie “Waterworld” without any people, animals or even fish. Let’s examine this information baed upon what science tells us about light penetration in ocean water because I think this is fascinating to see what God is saying to us. After the first 3 feet of ocean water 50 percent of the light is absorbed by the water. That is not much depth is it? But it get’s even better. Sunlight is a compound source that when separated using a prism like device we can demonstrate that it is comprised of multiple colors. These can be viewed as red light, blue light, yellow light, green light, etc. Red light is completely absorbed in the ocean water in the first meter. Therefore red light is absent after the first 3.3 feet. The color with the deepest penetration is blue light and it will travel only to a depth of around 330 feet which is much deeper than the color of red. However after 330 feet there is no available light to see and we now have a state of darkness. Therefore the ocean dept that covered the earth in Genesis 1:2 must have been at the minimum of 330 feet to produce the complete darkness on the face of the deep.
I beleive this would be a good time to restate the information given to us in Genesis 1:1. Genesis 1:1 taught us that God created the heavens (implied sun, moon, planets, stars, etc) and then the earth. 
I based this conclusion on associated scripture context and the lack of direct creative accounts given to us anywhere else in the chapter. We must learn to see what the Bible actually says, but we also must be able to learn from what the Bible does not say concurrently. Both are potential sources of factual informaiton that are relevant to us having correct understanding. We know from scientific observation that the earth revolves around the sun in a designed concept that we call our “solar system”. A system is a set of individual compents that comprise a greater something that works togeither to produce a postive outcome or purpose. For example, a sound system is comprised of speakers, a receiver, an amplifier and possibly other components that work together to produce musical sound or voice amplification. Take one or more of the individual components away and the complete system fails to function correctly. This is the concept being taught to us by God in Genesis 1:1. The existence of the sun is a central required component for the earth’s viable existence. Since God does not directly tell us when the sun was created in chapter 1 we must conclude it was created in verse 1 by an implied reference and scientific system completeness if for no other reasons. 
I know that many people will try to say that the sun was created on Day 4 but that is techinically NOT what it says and only what you thought it said. We will talk more about that part of the subject when we get to those verses. Just try to see where I am coming from for now and then later try to see how I got there after you have all of the information that I can give you. From my understanding of scriptures and science there is an absolute requirement for the sun’s existence in verse 2 of Genesis 1 but the fact that the light does not reach the surface of the planet makes the reality more complex on why this is happening. The lack of light on the surface of the planet could be for multiple different reasons. I have heard many people theorize about a pre-Noah canopy of clouds that prevented the direct light from the sun from fully reaching the surface. But even on a cloudy day we can still have significant light to see by. No, I have conlcuded that it was the combined effect of both the cloud layers and the depth of the waters that covered the earth that were the contributing factors for there being no light that was reaching the earth’s surface.
Here is another interesting concept that is very important to understand when discussing Genesis 1 creation.
If the sun does not exist in verse 1, then no other part of the chapter makes direct logical sense. You see without the direct presence of the sun, there exists no concept of how to measure time or how to define day or night. Did you ever think of that? The creation account as you will soon see going forward is divided into 6 days of God’s labor and they are described to be evening and morning day 1, 2, 3, and etc. Without the sun, there is no evening and neither is there any morning. There is no concept of what a day is if the sun does not exist. This is exactly what I was teaching you about our solar system and the loss of one key compent. When you take the sun away from being created in Genesis 1:1 the rest of what we thought we knew in Genesis 1 begins to fail and fall apart. We have no basis for the truth to define what a day is if the sun does not exist. I hope you are at least thinking and trying to understand what I just said.
The last part of the verse says “and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Again, this information is confirming that the entire world is covered with the deep liquid substance of water. Obviously this was a universal or global flood of the entire planet earth. If we recall from verse 1, it said in the beginning God created “earth”. The use of the word “Earth” implies by direct definition that there was dry ground that was inhabitable. You might ask me how I came to that definition of the Hebrew word translated as “earth” and I will have to tell you that it was defined to us by God in verse 10, but since we have not gotten to that verse yet, you will either have to trust me or stop and go study verse 10 out of sequence and then come back to verse 2 and apply God’s definition to verse 1. This brings up an interesting point again about how to study the Bible using the Bible. This is an example of why it is essential to not study ANY one verse in isolation. You must take the Hebrew word translated as “earth” and then go see how God defines it and uses it in context. This Hebrew Word (Strong’s number H776) is used 15 times in the first chapter of Genesis. Please go to them all and show me where they do not refer to dry inhabitable ground. In most of the verses it is more than obvious that this is the clear meaning. Therefore to exclude the first verse and say it is not referring to dry ground is inconsistent idiocy. It is an absolute necessity to be consistent in your interpretation of every word of God!
So we again see by the definition and the usage of the word “earth” in chapter 1, that something happened to cause the current state of water that destroyed it in verse 2. What happened in Genesis 1:2? The Bible doesn’t really tell us very many specifics, but God does give us some very relevant and important clues about this event. Finding the clues and then putting all of them together correctly is always the biggest challenge to correct Bible interpretation. We need to go search our Bibles for where God speaks of creation and floods in the same reference. We can do this by simply a word search.
I found a very major clue to what happened to the earth in Genesis 1:2 given to us in 2 Peter chapter 3 verses 4 thru 6. In verse 4 of 2 Peter 3, God specifically mentions “the beginning of creation” to help define the associated importance of the next two verses, 5 and 6 being directly associated with Genesis 1:1. Verse 4 points us to Genesis 1:1 in two ways. First, there is the obivous phrase of “the beginning of creation” referenence and that leaves no doubt in my mind that this is a reference to the first verse in Genesis and no other verse in the Bible will fit. Then second, there is the implied antithesis reference of Peter talking about the coming of the Lord at the end of the age. Both of these references help to point us back to the 1st verse and chapter of Genesis as I have taught you about Jesus being the Alpha and Omega God who created. This information in verse 4 connects the next two verses in 2 Peter back to Genesis 1 by context association and by the continuation of the same thought statement. Let’s go and read all of the verses in the correct sequence:
2Pe 3:4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
2Pe 3:5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
2Pe 3:6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:
I’ve already talked about verse 4 so I will not repeat myself. Verses 5 and 6 speak directly and specifically about the earth being covered with water and this matches the information exactly that we saw in Genesis 1:2. In verse 6 God makes this very radical statement, “The World That Then Was…”. If you read this and are just a little bit smart, you will quickly realize that God is speaking of a different world other than the current one that “Now Is”. You see it says this world that was before our current world perished completely. What world can that possibly be talking about? The Greek word translated as “perished” is defined as the complete and utter destruction of a world with no survivors. Go look up the word for yourself, if you don’t believe me. The Greek word is G622 and it is a very interesting study being comprised of two root words that leave no doubt in my mind that this event being described represents a transition from previous life to complete and utter death. In other words you never use this word unless there existed a life and now that life no longer exists.
Obviously many people who believe in a young earth theory try to explain away these scripture references by saying they are talking only about Noah’s flood and not the Genesis 1:2 flood. But, you see that interpretation, contradicts with what this scripture in 2nd Peter says and makes God to be a liar. First, learn this simple fact that Noah’s flood was not at creation but occurs well over a 1000 years later following the creation event. How can you associate Noah directly with creation? Was Noah there with Adam? I really do not think so and that is the primary problem with a Noah application. Then take note of this very important fact that in Noah’s flood the world that “Then Was” is still the same world that “Now Is” and in the flood of Noah everything did not completely perish. There were many survivors of the Noah’s flood including the animals, the birds, the fish the plants, the trees and even 8 human people. After Noah’s flood the same descendants of Adam that inhabited the planet as before the flood, still inhabited the planet after the flood. The ancesteral lineage of Jesus in Luke 3 proves this by going from Mary all the way back to Adam. This proves that we are still in the same world system that was created by God in Genesis 1. This is a very important revelation to see and understand for it helps to explain a lot more things in the Bible than you can imagine right now.
There are certainly many other scriptures in the Bible we could bring in right here that shed more light on the “world that was”, but for now I’ll leave it at that. Just recognize and acknowledge this verse in Genesis 1:2 that we are studying today is talking about a universal flood that destroyed everything that was on the planet. I think I will end the lesson on that note and thank you for your time in studying the Bible with me. Please feel free to leave me a comment if you know of any scriptures that are relevant to what I was teaching about today. Please do not leave me a comment with your opinion, for like I said before I’m not interested in your opinions. Only God’s Word will prevail over the opinions of men. God Bless.
If you would like to continue to the next lesson in this series on Genesis 1 please go to “Part 5“.
Correct Bible Intrepretation Rules Part 2 — Recognizing that Every Word of God is Important!
(Ver 2.1) This lesson is Part 2 of the Correct Bible Interpretation Rules series. If you have not read from the beginning I would recommend that you start with “Part 1“. In this series I discuss the proper approaches and rules to interpreting and understanding what God has given to us to know. When reading and studying the Bible, I have learned that it is absolutely critical to pay close attention to every word that is written. If it wasn’t important, God would not have written it down for us to read and study. Think with me and consider the fact that God could have written us any words and these are the ones that the most intelligent being in the universe wrote down for you to personally read. That tells me that God thinks they are important. Did you ever notice that God pays attention to the smallest details in your life? The Bible says He knows how many hairs are on your head (Mat 10:30). Since this number changes on many people’s head daily this is an amazing attention to some details that we do not even know. That is an amazing revelation to the level of detail that God is interested in you. If He cares that much for you, I believe that He expects you and I to care that much for Him and His words.
2Ti 3:16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
This scripture in 2 Timothy 3:16 informs us, that every word of God is important for us to see and learn. If you continue reading in the next verse you will that it claims that these words will help a man to grow up spiritually and become mature to do great works. Sometimes I think we either do not understand what this means or we forget that this is true. Especially when we read through boring genealogies or lists, laws or something that we are not interested in. Does “ALL” mean every word? I believe it does and we need to read it like God is saying something very important to teach us or correct our life’s course.
Luk 4:4 And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.
You can clearly read from the mouth of God some words that are extensively ignored by some Christians. According to God Himself, He says that man will only live by knowing every Word of God. God is comparing His Word to that of symbolic natural bread. It just so happens that I really like bread so I can relate to this analogy and type of symbolism with ease. You see I also like the Word of God and that is what makes me different than a lot of people. What I want you to see is the emphasized qualifier in this verse that it states that “EVERY” word of the Bible is important to feed on spiritually. The next time that you read a genealogy like in Genesis 5 you should change your attitude towards it and find out why God put it there and then try to learn what it means. When I discovered that the Genesis 5 genealogy had a hidden message within it, I changed how I looked at the Word of God. Suddenly every word seemed to have more significance and meaning attached to it than I ever realized before. I began to look at every word differently and just because I did not understand why it was there, it did not deter me from taking away what I could find out about it and then making notes about what I still needed to learn. Writing down your questions and praying to ask God to answer them will open the door for Him to show you what they mean.
Maybe I’m different than you are. I learned as a computer programmer to pay close attention to every jot and tittle that existed within the programming text. Every bit and byte of information had great significance to whether the program that I wrote worked or failed. Believe it or not, this is what God is trying to teach you today about the Bible. Become a detail oriented person in your Bible study and it will change your point of view and I will guarantee that you learn more than you ever have before. Learn to feed your spirit on every word of God and treat them all as being valuable for your life. There is a famous quote that states “Success is in the details” and I believe this more today than I ever have. I hope you do this also! Ignoring little details will most often lead us into errors of wrong interpretation. Taking a portion of a verse out of context is often a main way people fall into error.
I thank you for reading this short lesson on Correct Bible Interpretation. It had only one main point and I pray that you understood the significance. If you would like to continue reading in this series please continue to the next lesson called “Part 3“.
Genesis 1:2 Was there a Long Period of Time Between Verses 1 and 2? Part 1
(Ver 2.1) This is now Part 3 in the Genesis 1 Bible study series. If you have not read it from the beginning you should go back and start with “Part 1“. So far in our study we have not encountered any deep controversial discussions, but then again we have only just now gotten to the 2nd verse in the Bible. Here is where I believe it begins to potentially change. I’ve alluded to the fact that many Christians believe that creation took place a short time ago, ranging from 6000 to 10000 years at the most. I can not disagree with that erroneous belief more strongly than to say there is “No WAY” that can be true based upon a full study of the entire Bible! While many people like to hang on to a young earth theological theory, because that is what they think the Bible says, I have spent a lot of time looking deeper for the truth in the Bible and I want to discover what God really says happened. The problem with most young earth Bible teachers is that they do not study the Bible in its completeness allowing God to teach us what else we need to know on the full subject. So I have spent the time and will try to point you to other verses in the Bible that you need to know about that teaches the earth is much older than 6000 years. Let’s start by reading the second verse and then continue the lesson:
Gen 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.
As you can read in the 2nd verse of Genesis 1, it starts with the statement “And the earth was without form and void…“. I want to start by saying there are many Hebrew scholars that know the language better than I do. But, according to some of them that I have listened to, this statement could very easily have been translated as “the earth became formless and void”. You can see this repeatedly demonstrated by the word usage throughout Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 and many other places in the Old Testament Bible. The word almost always demonstrates a change from the previous status or state to a new status or state of the given object being described. In this case in verse 2, the given object is the “earth” and the stated transition is to become formless and void from some other previous state that was not formless or void. What is the opposite of “formless and void”? I guess that is what we need to learn today.
This is an incredibly important and informative statement about the condition or state of the planet at that time in the creation of our world and it helps us to establish the reason why God did everything else that He did in the rest of the chapter. You see, I believe that God gives us the current earth status in verse 2 to differentiate it from from the original earth status from the beginning of creation which was clearly stated to have occurred in verse 1. Do you understand that no where in this entire chapter dialog did God ever create the earth by saying “Earth Be” and then the earth was? This direct omission of creation appears to inform us it did not occur during these 6 stated days of God’s divine work. Notice how this work took place in Genesis 1. We will soon observe in the rest of the chapter that whenever God desired to create something that He would speak to the problem area and the the problem area would be bring forth a change, transformation or correction. This problem of their being no missing earth that was spoken to to cause an earth to be, is a major clue to understanding Genesis 1, did you notice that? This leads me to believe that the earth was not a problem originally in verse 1 when God says it was created. What Genesis 1:2 appears to imply, is that there was a potential vast expanse of unstated time in between verses 1 and 2 where something drastic happened to cause the state of the world to become a desolate and uninhabitable planet. We will soon see verses that will confirm this. This belief for a long time has been labeled as the “Gap” theory, but as we continue to study the Bible in more depth, we will discover that God gives us many very important clues that can technically mean nothing else but this gap had to actually occur.
There are several great factual reasons why I do not believe in a young earth theory, but instead of reviewing any scientific evidence and reasoning, let’s just stick with what the Bible says. You see I am not interested in debating the subject with you and I could really care less about any of your opinions on the subject of when creation occurred. I only want to know what God has said to us and only that truth will overrule all my opinions and yours.
What does it mean to be “formless” and “void”? These are actually very important words that help us to confirm what has transpired up until this point in time. The Hebrew word (H8414) translated as “without form” means to “lie waste”, “a desolation”, “desert”, “wilderness” and “empty place”. Doesn’t sound very good does it? The Hebrew word (H922) translated as “void” is a word that means “an undistinguishable ruin” and “emptiness”. All of these synonymous terms describe an uninhabitable environment after an implied destruction not do they conform to the creation event that was clearly mentioned in verse 1. This would mean that something must have occurred to cause the earth to become uninhabitable. I know you can very easily reason away my logic saying God is just transitioning creation from a formless blob of mass to make it inhabitable. However, I believe that by reading just the first part of this verse and studying the definitions of the words, we can conclude that something catastrophic occurred to cause this situation or state of all matter on the earth to fail and I’ll try to explain why I said that next.
Here is a valuable lesson that will help you with correct Bible interpretation. No single verse, single phrase or single word in the Bible is “an island” and stands alone by itself. In other words there are no isolated or independent verses of scriptures in the Bible. The Bible is ONE BOOK by ONE AUTHOR and He says more than ONE THING in it about the same subjects. We must learn to use the entire Bible to interpret any single verse in the Bible and when we do this by researching the subjects and the words that we find to look for them in other places and this helps us to define them or explain them. Here is an important fact. God is the b best Commentator of His own Work. God explains every problem and issue somewhere else in the Bible to resolve our potential conflicts. God through His infinite foreknowledge anticipated our every question in His Word and placed them scattered randomly though out the book for us to find like a puzzle solving word search game. God chose every word in the Bible with great precision, on purpose and by His divine sovereign design. For example, if we search the Bible for occurrences of the Hebrew word H8414, which is translated as “without form” we will find a very key verse in Isaiah that will shed tremendous light on the subject of what has happened in Genesis 1:2.
Isa 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.
You see in Isaiah 45:18, it specifically says that God does not create anything that is “without form”. I know the word was translated as “vain” in this verse, but it is the exact same Hebrew word and refers to the same state. So if we are smart just a little bit, we can see clearly that in Genesis 1:1 that when God created the heavens and the earth that it had to have been in an inhabitable state when it was first created in verse 1. You see God is giving us all a direct commentary on verse 1 of Genesis 1 here in Isaiah. We only found this verse by searching for God’s usage of the same Hebrew word. Since God is again speaking of the creation of heaven and earth we know it has direct association and meaning to our study subject. People who are not thinking correctly try to explain this verse in Isaiah away as being a Genesis 1 transitional phase of the creation account in Genesis 1. You see because Genesis 1 ends in an inhabitable form, they have reasoned that it first started uninhabitable and then became inhabitable by God’s design. They have further reasoned that Isaiah is stating the overall summary account of the end of Genesis 1 and that Genesis 1 is the detailed account of how it became this way. However that logic has some great flaws in its reasoning.
I want to stop here and ask those that believe in a young earth, “Which came first the chicken or the egg?” Did God create a formless blob of cells and then He spoke to these cells for them to become a chicken or did God create the fully formed chicken that laid the egg that became another chicken? You see you have to believe in a evolutionary transition if you believe in a Genesis 1:1 lifeless and formless entity evolving, transitioning or becoming a life form supportable type of truth. You are trying to mix apples and oranges teaching that you do not believe in evolution but yet embrace an evolutionary concept of lifeless substances becoming life substances and that is clearly an inconsistent approach to correct Bible interpretation. You see I am forced to believe in a Genesis 1:1 life supporting planet as being a fully formed, inhabitable earth because I also believe in a God that created a fully formed chicken and not a transitional blob of cells that became the chicken. You of course can believe whatever you like and remain mixed up and inconsistent.
In verse 2 of Genesis 1 it says the earth was now or became”without form” and “void” and I believe based upon the Biblical evidence in Isaiah that this represents a change of state from the original matural creation state where it was inhabitable. To deny this is to say that God was not able to create the final product and was forced to create it within phased limitations. Therefore, we can logically determine that based upon Isaiah 45:18 that something or someone destroyed the original creation inhabitable planet and made it or caused it to become a place of utter destruction. The only person in the Bible that qualifies for this type of destruction to God’s creation is Satan in my opinion. Satan is the one that Jesus described in John 10:10 as the thief who had come to “kill”, “steal” and to “destroy”. That fits the description of Genesis 1:2 very well.
Why would God need to hide an almost random and remote verse somewhere else in the Bible within a major prophet named Isaiah (45:18) in the Old Testament that speaks to us clearly about creation and teaches us a new perspective on the things that we suspected, but yet we did not see in the original writings of Moses in Genesis? Why did we have to go and search to find this reference if the verse was truly connected to what was written in Genesis 1? Why did God not just plainly tell us the whole factual truth at the beginning of the Bible? Why does God do things like this to spread out information? To me that is truly a mystery, yet God does this by His divine sovereign choice and by His intelligent design of His written Word. I have suspected that God has hidden this information in the Bible for a couple of reasons. First, so that we could learn to search for His truth in the word as it says in Proverbs 25:2. Then second so that He could reveal what was hidden to us at the appropriate time. Third, I believe that God has hidden the truth in His word to allow any human the right to believe in a lie. If God would have placed every truth in clear understandable words, no man would have any right to believe anything else. I strongly believe that we must use the Bible to interpret the Bible, if we don’t, we are merely standing on our own opinions and those aren’t worth anything are they?
MORE OF GOD’S COMMENTARY ON CREATION
I want to take you to some additional verses found in the Psalms that gives us major insight into the works of God’s hand during creation. I would recommend that you read the whole chapter but for time sake I will not attempt to teach every verse found there. Start reading in verse 1 and see God describing His majesty and glory as being first and foremost above all else. Notice very plainly the order of mention because this reflects what occurred during creation in Genesis 1:1 to the end of the chapter. The chapter begins with only a description of God the Creator with no other beings that are mentioned to be equal to Him or even in existence. In verse 4 God suddenly mentions the angels as being created spirits. Then notice in verse 5 God declares that He laid the foundations of the earth so that it would never be removed but only after the mention of angelic creation that was clearly stated before this fact. I am trying to make a point that angels existed before the earth existed. What I want you to see is that now here in verse 5 of Psalms 104 these words correspond to verse 1 of Genesis 1 and that we can now be in sync with the same creation event being described in both from two different points of view. The stated order is God always existed, then came the angels and then the earth was created afterwards. Verse 6 is where I want to begin teaching since it is certainly about Genesis 1:2:
- Psa 104:6 Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains. (KJV)
- Psa 104:6 You have covered the deep as with a robe; the waters stood above the mountains. (LITV)
I just gave you two translations of this verse . One is the KJV and the other is the Literal Bible translation. The Hebrew word (H3680) that was translated as “coveredst” or “covered” literally means to conceal, hide, cover or clothe an object. We can determine from the statement that the object being covered was the earth. I then want you to notice that this is a past tense statement declaring it to be a finished work of God. Yet we clearly look around us today and see the mountains not covered, don’t we? Then I want you to understand that in order for God to cover the mountains they must first have been uncovered! Uh oh! We are learning critical informed details that transpired in Genesis 1:2. What this description is teaching us is like when I make my bed. I can take my bedspread and cover the sheets and the mattress and they suddenly disappear because of the layer of covering. At night I can turn the covers back to reveal the bed and get into it and that is what is being revealed by God in this verse that occurred and in the verses that are about to come. Let’s read the next verse:
- Psa 104:7 At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away.
Here in this verse there is a direct connect with the subject from the previous verse. The primary subject of the last verse was the waters that covered, but here God says it was by His rebuke of them that they fled away. What exactly is a rebuke? I seriously want you to consider that question before you jump out with an answer. According to the dictionary a rebuke represents a verbal expression of sharp disapproval or criticism. Now I want you to think again using God’s commentary on the Genesis 1:2 creation event. Why would God need to rebuke the waters if it was not how He wanted it in the beginning? Did God make a mistake at the beginning to have the earth covered by waters? Would God have created a state of chaos that needed to be rebuked? Why wouldn’t an all knowing God just have created it right the first time? Wow, those are great questions. Perhaps the next few verses will help you find the answers:
- Psa 104:8 They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them.
This is a description of what occurred in verse 9 of Genesis 1 at the beginning of day 3 of creation and we are technically getting ahead in the Bible study of the rest of the chapter but that is what occurs many times in deep Bible study. What I am doing is trying to teach you that if you want to find the truth that you are going to have to search for it. Quit reading one chapter in Genesis 1 and think that you know everything that you need to know. These are great verses that I am giving to you and I hope that you are seeing what they say. I think I am only going to give you one more verse in this chapter even though there are others that are applicable to what we need to learn. Please read carefully verse 9:
- Psa 104:9 Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth.
- Psa 104:9 You have set a boundary that they may not pass over; they shall not return to cover the earth.
I once more gave you two translations of the same verse from the KJV and the LITV for comparison. What does this verse say? Can you read? What does the term “pass over” mean? Is that not a transitional statement of before and after? If the waters passed over the mountains then the mountains were not covered to begin with! What does the term “again” mean? What does the term “return” mean? Both of these translations tell us that the water was not there and then it was there and now it is again not there and will never return again. Uh oh again! I mean this teaches us something that is ignored or not known by most Christians. Did you learn anything from it? Do you believe God? Learn to put 2 and 2 together correctly and see how that they consistently make 4 every time.
Let me end this Bible lesson on Genesis 1:2 with another question. If the “earth” was created in Genesis 1:1 and that Hebrew word translated as “earth” literally means dry land why was the earth’s dry inhatibable land now covered with water completely in verse 2 being totally destroyed and uninhabitable? I think that is an outstanding relevant question that many Bible teachers ignore or fail to ponder. I believe the original Hebrew language has demonstrated that the earth was there in the beginning and then changed states to become the formless and void condition that we have observed. This is clearly what God is revealing in His own commentary on the event that we just read in Psalm 104. What we need to know next is why did this happen and how did this happen? Only by attempting to learn can we discover the truth. The greatest enemy to us knowing the truth is when we believe that we already possess it. Thanks for studying the Bible with me and we will continue our lesson on Genesis 1:2 in the next lesson.
If you would like to continue to read in the Genesis 1 series you may proceed to “Part 4“.
A Deceived Christian Example to Avoid Part 1 – Calling Good as Evil and Evil as Good
(Ver 1.2) Today is Part 1 in a Bible study series focused upon how Satan can even deceive people who say they are Christians. Jesus speaking to the disciples in Matthew 24:4 warned them “take heed that no man deceive you”. There are preachers today that believe true and real saved Christians cannot be deceived to fall or turn away from Jesus. It is unfortunate that Jesus did not understand this belief or he would not have warned us that we could be deceived. This Bible study series will focus upon how we can find examples of deception taking place in the world today within the lives of people that say they are Christians. So let us get started with the first example.
I really do not enjoy criticizing other Christians and I plan to never name their names. I realize there are no perfect people in the world including me. But occasionally someone just stands out above the rest as the most incredibly deceived person that calls themselves a Christian that I’ve ever heard of. Yesterday while watching the evening news a story came across the network about a pastor who was going to battle Satan by holding a book burning on Halloween. At first glance this probably does not sound like a bad idea to many Christians, but I was floored when the news anchor started naming the list of materials that he was planning on burning. At first I thought the preacher was going to share about burning Heavy Metal songs, Punk, Rap lyrics, Cult Materials, Porn or other types of similar literature. However, the shocker came when they interviewed the preacher and he said he was going to burn Bibles. Obviously this is what got him on a major news network for public TV consumption. I really thought this man was joking at first. But I gathered from hearing this plan of this preacher that it was true and that he was dead serious on carrying it out.
According to this preacher and I use that term very loosely, only the King James version of the Bible was divinely inspired and came from God and all of the other versions of the Bible were works of Satan. I really don’t understand how dumb or blinded someone can become and still be called a Christian. How did this man arrive at such a foolish opinion. What would cause someone to think any Bible could not be used by God. That seems to be putting God in a box of severe limitation.
You know what I have discovered about people? It seems that the people who know the least amount of truth are many times the most vocal and opinionated against God. It sounds to be that this preacher has his head buried so deep that he doesn’t recognize the difference between good and evil. The Bible actually warns us in Isaiah 5:20 “Woe unto them that call evil good and good, evil”. To burn any translations of the Bible and call it the works of Satan is an incredibly deceived action.
Satan is not in the business of helping people to read and understand the Bible. If Satan had his way there would be absolutely no Bibles available to anyone and obviously he has convinced at least one preacher to help him get rid of them. How many of you realize that there are no perfect translations of the Bible available in print? Did you know that every translation of the Bible has some slanted perspective and/or opinion of the translator mixed with it? The King James Bible while it is the one that I use predominately, I have found many problems with the translation. Obviously by me making that statement of truth, I just got on someone’s heretic and false teacher list. But we must all know that only the original Hebrew and Greek text contains the inspired (God Breathed) words from God’s mouth without errors. We should all just learn Hebrew and Greek and fix this problem shouldn’t we? I guess not, what we should do is just study to show our self approved a workmen unto God who rightly divides the word of truth (2 Tim 2:15).
My guess is this man is also one of those preachers who claims “tongues” is of the devil. It is sad how Christian people have been so easily deceived into believing such untrue things. I’ve watched movies, I’ve seen fights, I’ve seen people in bars drunk, I’ve witnessed acts of violence and terror and not one time have any of these people in any of these places or acts have I ever seen standing up speaking in tongues with their hands raised in praise. I have also never seen or heard of anyone in a bar reading the NIV, NASB, NKJV, or other Bible while they were getting drunk. Isn’t that just a little bit troubling to you?
Every decent Bible translation can be used by the Holy Spirit to reach someone to get them saved. The Holy Spirit is NOT limited to reaching only people who can speak “King James English” of “thee”, “thou”, “thus”, “saith”, etc. When someone first becomes a Christian it is good to get a translation of the Bible that is on their level. Easy to read English words are much more easy to understand than the KJV Bible. Later as the Christian becomes more mature and spiritually aware, other Bible translations of literal translation can be used by God also to help that individual learn.
So here was an example of one deceived man, a preacher who calls a good book called the Bible as an evil work of Satan and obviously doesn’t know the difference.. Let us not take the same bait of Satan to fall into the same trap of deception. Let us avoid following this man as our example. Please join me in praying for this man. Let us pray that God will bless this man with a spirit of wisdom and revelation in knowing Christ Jesus, Amen.
A PERSONAL APPLICATION
LORD, I pray that you will help me to not be deceived. Lead me far away from anyone that is not proclaiming what you said in your Word and are saying today by your Holy Spirit. Help me to turn from following anyone that is not being led by your Spirit. Open my spiritual eyes to be able to understand your Word as I read and hear it and to discern between right and wrong, truth and lies, and good and evil. Thank LORD for your presence in me and your faithfulness to me in Jesus Name, I pray. Amen.
If you would like to continue reading in this series, please click “Part 2“.
Correct Bible Intrepretation Rules Part 1 — No Verse Stands Alone
(Ver 2.1) This is Part 1 of a series of lessons on Correct Bible Interpretation. In this series I try to present basic rules governing correct Bible interpretation. Today is a very simple rule to learn and to follow, yet so many have totally missed it. Everyone needs to understand that no single verse of scripture is an island. You might not understand that analogy but what I mean is that no verse of scripture is independent of the rest of the scriptures in the Bible and stands alone. So many people read one scripture and get so excited by what it says they seem to forget how it fits with the rest of the Bible. As a result of an overabundance of enthusiasm for the one solitary verse they have taken it and tried to treat it like God didn’t say anything else in the whole book. Many take a single verse of scripture and change it into a verse named Robinson Crusoe and have stranded it on an island in their mind. This kind of reasoning makes the Bible very easy to change the meaning into saying something that it does not say. If you isolate any verse in the Bible you can make the Bible say some very bad things. This is a common error found in incorrect Bible interpretations everywhere. Here is a verse of scripture that Jesus taught us and it actually says a lot about this subject that I am talking about today:
Mat 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
What you can see is that Jesus contrasts two realities, physical food and the Word of God. God compares both of them to be essential, but for the later to have precedence over the former. In this verse Jesus says one key word that is essential to apply correctly. This word is “EVERY” and that implies you better know more than one verse on any subject. It is clear to me that the Word of God is spiritual food and you must feed on it as often as you do natural food in order to grow strong spiritually. If you are only feeding on one verse then you are probably being starved spiritually. If you are focused on one verse only, you are ignoring the rest of God’s comments on the subject. Here is another very relevant verse for this subject of isolated verses:
2Co 13:1 This is the third time I am coming to you. In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.
God tells us that every word that we believe must be based upon more than one witness. A witness is someone who speaks the truth in a court case or a trial. A witness is always sworn to tell the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This is a Bible basic concept of correct Bible interpretation. Do not take one verse which is one witness and teach anything. Go and search the Bible for a corresponding witness to the verse. Many times this is one verse from the Old Testament and one verse from the New Testament. Other times it is two or three verses in just the New Testament. What we find in doing this is that God’s truth is rightly divided based upon our ability to find multiple witnesses in the Bible of what we have read. This is why some people are very foolish in their practice of handling snakes in their church services because they found one verse in Mark that they think says for them to do this. That is STUPIDITY gone to seed bursting forth into great error!
What we should be doing is asking how does this verse that I found fit into the Bible’s big picture? How does this verse relate to the other verses on the subject? What else does God and the Bible say about this subject? Can I find more than one witness in the Bible in order to declare this verse a truth? This is the way God designed the Bible and this is how the Bible works. If you learn these concepts they will help you tremendously in changing how you study the Bible.
If you would like to continue reading in this series of lesson concerning correct Bible interpretation please continue to the next lesson Part 2.
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