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Varying Stages of Spiritual Growth
God created natural things to give us views into spiritual things. Jesus taught us in the parable of the sower, that there are six types of or conditions of the human heart. Only 50% of these six types produced any lasting harvest. Jesus told us that of he 50% who produced good fruit, that 1/3 of them produced 30 times, 1/3 produced 60 times and the other 1/3 produced 100 times. But, we can see that the other 1/2 of the people who also heard, allowed circumstances, persecution, lack of understanding and the cares of the world kill the harvests that God had wanted to give them. It is interesting to note that they all had the same seed sown in them, but only 1/2 produced anything worth while. We should all take note that the seed is constant, it is only the soil that changed what was produced and how much. This is a very critical lesson to learn. The seed or Word of God will never change, so that leaves only one place that changes can and should occur. Guess where that is?
So getting back to natural things showing us spiritual things, there is a comparison given to us in the Bible about Christians being born again. Jesus told us in John 3, “ye must be born again.” He of course was speaking of a spiritual rebirth. When Nicodemus asked him can a man go back into his mother’s womb? Jesus replied that “What is born of flesh is flesh, but what is born of the spirit is spirit”. Jesus was speaking of a spiritual birth process, that many times corresponds to a physical birth process. What are the implications of being born spiritually? You can see by looking at new born natural babies that these children are completely helpless and totally dependent upon someone else for nourishment and care. Well even though new born Christians can be fully grown natural people, from a spiritual stand point they need the same level of care that any new born needs.
As babies grow, they begin to develop more and more skills and abilities. By the time they are 4 years old they can do a lot of things that grown ups can do, but just not as quickly or as well. With continued training and development these children will eventually become responsible adults. So all of these physical developments are analogous to spiritual development. Just like a college student can not have a calculus conversation with a 2 year old, so are there many things in the Bible that are as equally as hard for a new Christian to accept. By realizing there are differences and by placing yourself somewhere on the following scale, you should be able to determine how much you need to grow.
| New Born | Jesus/Mature | ||||||||
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
So where would you fall on the scale? Zero being a new Christian and 9 being where Jesus is today. It think we all are striving for the 9, but none of us are very close to it yet. What does all of this have to do with Bible interpretation and understanding the Bible. Well more than you can imagine. Most of the dissension within the Body of Christ is coming from baby Christians. Babies holler the most, cry the most, complain the most, ask why the most and oblivious to what they are doing to others. Babies are self centered and focused only upon themselves and what they need or what they want. Children do many things that are harmful and hurtful without regard to anyone else. They’ll take toys away and bite and fight not caring about anyone else. Sounds like a lot of Christians I know. When a two year old comes to me and criticizes something that I do, I don’t let that bother me. Why because I’m older and I know they don’t know any better. It is funny, Jesus took the same attitude towards the Jews, while hanging on the cross, Jesus said “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”. It is no different today, when someone criticizes me for something I say, I just say “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Genesis 2:7 – The Redemption of the Body
There are so many ways to look at scripture that it is a challenge to know which way to go. If you have been reading my blog, you know that I try to provide new perspectives into standard teachings. I always use the Bible to explain and interpret the Bible so I’m not making stuff up. However, since a lot of what I teach is new, I’m to you and stuff you never heard, it will be difficult for you to see at first. That is just the way the Bible is. People can look right at a verse of truth and never see what it says.
Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
We can learn a lot by seeing inside the implications associated with property ownership. Since the man’s body was formed from the dust of the ground, that automatically implies the body can be bought and sold as any piece of property can be bought and sold. If you have ever bought a piece of property you will understand this concept. But what does that have to do with Adam?
Isaiah 52:3 For thus saith the LORD, Ye have sold yourselves for nought; ye shall be redeemed without money.
Here are the words of God spoken to us. God declares that Adam sold himself for nothing. In other words Adam did not gain anything from the sales transaction with Satan. There was a transfer of ownership of a piece of property and Adam lost everything. After the fall of man we now have a new god of this world (2 Cor 4:4) who was in charge until Jesus came and died for us. Did you notice the last part of Isaiah 52:3, God says, I know you sold yourselves for nothing, but I will redeem you without any money.
Redemption is a fascinating concept. In natural terms, people in our world pawn or sell items to stores called Pawn Shops. The establishment gives the person some money for their items of value and then sets a time limit that the person who sold the item can come back and repurchase the item back, usually for a premium. If the time limit expires, the item is now property of the store owner and he can sell the item for usually more than he paid for it. That is an interesting concept and actually a parallel to what the Bible says happened to Adam. Adam sold his property to Satan, but God had an established time period to redeem it and God said I will pay the price to get it back, and it won’t cost me any money. We know that God paid the price with His life and His blood, so even though it didn’t cost money, it wasn’t free or cheap.
Romans 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
In Romans 8:23 we can see a statement that declares the time period for land transfer has not completely expired. If we are waiting, like Paul was waiting what are we waiting for? When is this expiration or redemption period over. When will the property revert to the correct ownership? Well this is what God’s law said about personal property and ownership.
Leviticus 25:10 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man his family.
You see God instigated a time when every possession that was sold would be returned to the original owner. Every 50 years, a Jubilee would take place, a time of liberty a time of freedom for everyone. Any person who had been sold into slavery would be returned to his family. Any property sold to pay a debt would be returned to their original owners. This was God’s law and God’s solution to Adam selling what he couldn’t afford to sell.
Genesis 6:3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
I found Genesis 6:3 fascinating, did you notice that it said “man is also flesh”. This verse places a higher importance on something that man is above his body. Man is of course a spirit being that lives in a body. But in the eyes of God the man belongs in a body. Paul said in the New Testament, “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” So we can see that the man’s spirit can be separated from his body. In which case if the man’s spirit leaves his body we know the body is dead. If you die and go to heaven that doesn’t mean that you are not still waiting for your glorified body.
So many will question this reasoning, but I can see it based upon other scriptures in the Bible so I believe it. In Genesis 6:3 God speaking about the years of man said they will be 120. Most people these days don’t live that long, but a few have reached ages near that number. But I don’t think God was talking about that, or I guess I should say God was implying something else. If you take 120 and multiply it by 50 (Jubilees) you get what? The answer comes to 6000, that is an amazing number in light of the Genesis 1 prophecy. It seems that man’s time period of physical redemption is 6000 years. At this time the property will revert back to the original owner. There are really no coincidences in the Bible, there are really just a lot of clues. Putting the clues together is where we come in and that is our job. God has given us an assigned task to figure out the clues. In a short Blog like this, I can’t really give you every scripture reference and all the information that you probably need to figure these things out. All I can do is give you some snippets and a few references to help you search for the truth in a new way.
Genesis 2:2 The Seventh Day, God’s Coming Day of Rest
Genesis 2:2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
It is fascinating to me to know that God works and God rests. I don’t think God get’s tired like we do sometimes, but yet this is what it says. In Genesis 1 it said that man was made in the image of God, so if God works I would guess that He expects man to work. That is a big reason I’m not in favor of welfare and free hand outs by the government, the church or by any individual. I’m not opposed to helping people, but I believe people should be willing to work to get the help. So many people today just want a free ride and a hand out. I’m not for giving those types of people anything. It sounds pretty harsh, but people need to read the Bible and find out what God thinks is right. I’m pretty sure I read in my Bible, you don’t work, you shouldn’t eat. Oh, well I’ll move on and get off my soap box.
Verse 2 of Genesis 2 is the first mention of Day 7. We have already learned that each day of creation corresponds to a 1000 year period of human history. I’ve already alluded to the fact that this day 7 corresponds to the millennial 1000 year reign of Christ which will occur directly after the 7 year tribulation period. During this time period I’ve been told Christ will return to earth and establish a kingdom on earth without the presence of evil. During this time period Satan and his demons will be bound and unable to tempt or deceive anyone. At the end of this 1000 year time period the Bible says that Satan will be released to deceive again and anyone born during this 1000 year time period will have the opportunity to choose to believe the deception and be cast into the lake of fire.
There are verses in Hebrews chapter 4 that speak of this coming day of rest. These verses directly confirm the prophetic nature of Genesis and declare that this day will soon be coming. We are also told that we must make an effort to enter into this rest in Hebrews chapters 3 and 4. Those who choose not to believe will not enter into God’s rest we are told. It appears that the ball is in our court on whether we enter into God’s day of rest.
Matthew 11:28 Come unto me, all that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Revelation 14:13 I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.
So apparently God sees our works and acknowledges them. He has determined a time of rest for His saints. But, now is not the time. Now is the time of harvest and if you have ever had a farm you know harvest is not easy or restful.
Who Wrote the Bible? Where Did the Bible Come From?
(Ver 1.1) This of course is an interesting question. Technically speaking you have 66 books of text within the standard KJV Bible. We know that approximately 40 different men shared in the writing of the Bible over a span of approximately 1600 years.
Here are some basic Bible facts that I found on the Internet:
There are 8,674 different Hebrew words in the Bible, 5,624 different Greek words, and 12,143 different English words in the King James Version
- Number of books in the KJV Bible: 66
- Chapters: 1,189
- Verses: 31,101
- Words: 783,137
- Letters: 3,566,480
So let me ask you a simple question. What would happen if you attempted to get 40 different writers together in order to publish a book of such volume. What would the net results be? Could you get any of them to agree? How many times would they contradict each other? How many times would they cross paths and overlap information? How many times would they come up with anything that could predict what was going to come to pass a 1000 or more years in the future? I think you see the problem? Here we have a book that many approach with wrong assumptions, based upon wrong information, drawing incorrect conclusions and are generally just screwed up. I’ve heard so many people who want to write an exposition of why Paul said this, or Moses said that, like it was their ability and knowledge that produced what we are reading. If you approach the Bible with wrong ideas, you generally get back wrong ideas. There is a basic computer programming law that says if you put garbage in you get garbage out. That is the way the studying the Bible works.
What you first must do is understand who wrote the Bible? Establish a correct focus first. Forget the names of the 40 different men that copied the words onto the pages or scrolls I should say. Forget the commentaries of men who don’t understand or have a clue what God is saying and focus on this, God spoke and dictated the exact text and words that He wanted recorded and He gave the task of recording these words to 40 men over 1600 years. Now that changes everything in my view. Now you are not attempting to explain why Moses wrote anything that he did and left out other things that were not recorded. If you approach every word as being important and a word directly from God that has purpose and meaning you start looking at the Bible differently and can now begin to see it correctly.
2Ti 3:16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
Jer 30:2 Thus speaketh the LORD God of Israel, saying, Write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book.
According to 2 Timothy 3:16, the Bible was inspired by the Spirit of God. I guess it actually says given by inspiration of the Spirit of God. While the Bible has multiple scribes or men that were given the task to record the words of God in book form, we must realize that all of the words were given and inspired directly from God. This book says nothing that God would not want you to know and to understand right here and right now. It doesn’t say anything that God wouldn’t say to you if you could stand before His throne in heaven and ask Him questions directly. This book contains the thoughts, ideas, wisdom and knowledge of God and is available to you 24 hours a day. It is totally up to you to tap into this vast treasure of information.
6 Days of Creation – Genesis Chapter 1 Review
(Ver 1.2) In my Blogs the last couple of weeks I have been exploring an overview of the 6 days of creation and teaching how each day fits a prophetical view into God’s timeline for the 6000 year period of human history. I know this is a controversial viewpoint and it is probably brand new information to many. However, it is there if you research it and studyit from a prophetic perspective. Some have probably wondered how did I come up with the idea that the 6 days of creation were prophetic windows? I beleieve that it is just what the Bible says and therefore it is not my opinion or my personal interpretation of what God says. What we must do is to allow the Bible to interpret itself, so we must look for God’s definitions, His commentary and explanations and we must put these together with the words written in Genesis to understand them. Look at this verse and see what it says for yourself:
Isaiah 46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things which are not,…
You see from this verse God says I have declared or stated the end from the beginning. In other words God has prophesied the ending from the beginning. Genesis chapter 1 definitely declares the beginning of our current world system. So somewhere in that description is information about what is going to occur in our history and its final conslusion. To declare something that has not occurred is clearly a statement of prophetic proportion. The only to verify that a prophecy is from a real prophet is for us to examine the words and see if they have been fullfilled, have transpired or are coming to pass presently. Here is another scripture that speaks to us along these lines:
Ecclesiastes 1:9 The thing that has been, it is that which shall be, and that which is done, is that which shall be done,….
Again in this verse we see a powerful reference of something to look for when reading and studying the Bible. We can use these words to imply that God declares that what He has done during creation is that which will occur again. You see as I have read the Bible I have discovered a series of repeated patterns that have occured over and over. That is why that I believe that we should study the book of beginnings like it was a raod map to our future. Of course since we are at the very end of the 6th day or 6000 years, we should realize that we do not have very much time left. This actually makes our research more sure, since the majority of recorded history has already occurred and we are nearing the end now.
We started the chapter analysis by looking at the fact that the earth as stated in the Bible is much older than 6000 years, but we are not specifically told how old it is anywhere. It could very well be millions or billions of years old. We looked at scripture that speaks to us about a pre-Adamic civilization or world that existed prior to our current world system. We found scriptures that indicate that this world was completely destroyed and apparently God started over with us, or for us.
We looked at the work of God during creation and identified God’s first act as being division. God divided Light from darkness. We can imply from this that prophetically speaking God is breaking away or dividing himself from something that He does not want to associate with. At least 3 times in the chapter we can see that God divided something from something else. I can tell you right now that most Bible teachers and preachers don’t have a clue to the significance of these words of God so they ignore them. I’m sorry that I just don’t have time to teach you all of that right now.
The next significant point about creation is how God created. I might have alluded to the fact that God looked at the problem and always spoke the answer or the solution. As it is written in the New Testament, God is a God who calls those things that be not as though they were and as we can see from creation, they become exactly what they are called. Since man is made in the image of God this implies that man operates the exact same way that God operates. Of course not at the same level or capacity that God is, but you would be amazed at what the Bible says about our spoken words and the Bible is very strong in this area and says many things that are very hard to accept by many Christians.
During our study we identified some of the key symbolic elements and researching them in the scriptures discovered what they meant and how they are applied within creation. Light is symbolic of God. Seas are symbolic of people. Day and night are symbolic of the conditions of men’s hearts. Some have allowed the sun of God to light their hearts and then others have been kept in darkness because they have allowed Satan to blind their minds. We have identified the symbolic Sun as being Jesus Christ. Then we have identified the symbolic moon as being Satan, the ruler of the darkness.
In the creation of Adam on day 6 I took you through an analysis of the Hebrew words for man and Adam as being the same word. I then showed you from scripture how Genesis 1:27 should have been translated as Adam instead of man, because God calls both the male and the female by the same name. The inference of and application to marriage is of course easily seen.
Finally we looked at the coming into maturity of the body of Christ. We also looked at the delegated authority of the body of Christ. We are at the end of Day 6 of God’s established timetable and God has the planned return of Jesus Christ next on the agenda. I believe very strongly that Jesus’ return is not very long from now. I know I did not attempt to cover everything that the chapter speaks about. My goal was to give you some new perspectives and things to think about that you hadn’t seen before. Things that can be tremendously important to understanding a large portion of the Bible. I hope you have enjoyed Chapter 1 of Genesis and we will move into Chapter 2 next. I probably will not go verse by verse but I will change to a larger what are the key concepts given to us level of study. There are some awesome things in Chapter 2 and 3 if you can see them. So continue reading in Genesis and see what else God has to reveal to us.
Six Things Satan Doesn’t Want You To Know About Himself
(ver 1.7) This Part 1 in a series of Bible lessons about things that Satan does not want you know about him. Satan in the Bible is called by so many different names, titles, characteristics, symbols and descriptions. Each one of these that were given to us by God reveal Satan in a new way for us to learn from. For example, in Revelation 12:9 the name Satan is given to us and it is directly linked to be the symbolic “Great Red Dragon” in the book of Revelation. Satan is then further revealed as the “ancient serpent” in Genesis 3:1 in the same verse. Since Satan is called both the serpent in the garden in Genesis and now the Great Dragon in Revelation we learn from these two symbolic titles that he has gained significant power and strength. But maybe you did not know that and learned something brand new. In other places in the Bible Satan is also called the “deceiver” and the “father of lies” by God. If you wold like to see a more complete list of these Names, Titles, Descriptions and Symbols for Satan in the Bible you can go read that reference document and find those that I have been shown by God up until this point in time. Satan has had an explicit evil agenda in place ever since he deceived Eve and caused Adam to sin in the garden. Satan has implemented this plan based upon misconceptions and misdirection that diverts your attntion away from you finding or knowing the truth. There are a number of major things that Satan doesn’t want you to know about him. He tries very hard to keep these truths secret from you because they will cause you to think differently about your abilities and position in Christ Jesus. Today I’m going to tell you some of these guarded secrets that were revealed in the Bible for our benefit placed there by our wise and mighty God to help teach us the truth about our enemy.
NUMBER 1
1. Satan DOES NOT Want You To Know That He Exists
I know now as a Christian that Satan is a real spiritual being, but there was a time that I did not believe in his existence. Many people are in the exact same ignorant boat as I was when I did not believe in the existence of spiritual things. Unsaved people and even many new carnal Christians are generally very oblivious to spiritual realities, because they are consumed with natural things like drugs, alcohol, sex, money, power, fame, sports, food, music, and etc. Not only do most people in the kingdom of darkness not know that Satan, evil spirits, fallen angels and demons exist, they also do not understand that they themselves are also a spirit being that is simply living here on the earth in a natural physical body. Oh, sure there is a fascination in the world with the supernatural and spirits on TV, in movies and in video games. But these are generally put out by Satan as a distraction to the truth to keep people from finding out that he is real and to learn how he operates with them daily. Satan promotes these fictional TV shows, entertainments and activities to gain access into the minds of people to deceive them further from the truth. As long as you do not know that there is a real spiritual enemy in this world named Satan, you will never know that you need to resist him or fight against what he is doing in your life. We learn of the existence of Satan by reading the Bible and that is our only reliable source of any proof or evidence for his existence. If you do not believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God then you are in serious trouble looking for invalid sources of truth in the other books of the world. You can read about Satan’s existence and activities like in Mark 4:15, Luke 4:8, Luke 13:16 and Acts 26:18 to name only a few verses that teach of his existence. I pray that you learn to study this subject in order to learn that Satan does exist and that he is your enemy.
NUMBER 2
2. Satan DOES NOT Want You To Know How He Operates
Recently I wrote a Bible lesson on the subject Was There a Physical Talking Snake in the Garden of Eden that deceived Eve. If you read that lesson then you know that there was not a literal talking serpent in the garden. It is illegal for Satan to tempt people supernaturally and that is not how he generally operates because of the spiritual laws created by God. TV shows and movies that promote supernatural activity are created by Satan to be pure distractions to how he normally comes to us to operate. Satan uses, mostly mental thoughts, ideas and suggestions to influence and control your behavior. For example, if you have been having thoughts or ideas about suicide these are demonically inspired to try to get you to do what he is suggesting. The source of evil thoughts and these bad influential ideas are coming from Satan. Satan can even place strong desires within you to help guide you into doing wrong. These are very common ways of how spirit beings interact with any natural human being. I hope that you understand this because it will be the same for you.
The main emphasis from this section is to teach you to watch your thoughts. What I have been trying to say is that these evil thoughts in your mind to hurt someone are coming from Satan to attempt to get you do something that you shouldn’t. Have you ever considered how much people talk after a school shooting occurs about the factor of mental illness? Every crazy school shooter was caused by Satan’s barrage of evil thoughts to kill people. Every shooter was tormented by these thoughts until they finally gave into them. That is how Satan works and if you do not know this then you are at risk of the same. Satan comes to humans with thoughts of evil and these will always be very subtle attempts to control you to do what he wants you to do. I’ll say this again, every thought that you have is not from God or comes from your own mind. Let me give you a Bible verse that will help confirm this truth if you can see it:
2Co 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
Why would God tell a Christian to guard their thoughts if none of these came from Satan? That would not make any logical sense. Why does anyone guard something? Guarding the President is normally done to keep evil from coming near him to do him harm. This is the exact same concept that God is speaking of here in this verse. You see I once had a man leave me a comment on my Bible lesson about homosexuality and he said he had these thoughts for other boys and men since he was a young child and he said that this proved that God created him this way. I tried to tell him that these were Satan’ thoughts that were given to him to try to steer him away from the truth but he refused to listen to me. Any thought that is contrary to the Bible is from the devil. If you are standing on the top ledge of the Grand Canyon and you suddenly get the thought to jump off then it would be really stupid if you didn’t realize that this thought was from Satan and you did it and went to hell. Learn to do what God teaches about your negative thoughts of influence and cast them down.
NUMBER 3
3. Satan DOES NOT Want You to Know that He Can’t Be Everywhere At Once
In the Old Testament we have a greatly misunderstood book of the Bible called the Book of Job. I will not attempt to teach this book today, but I will draw out some valuable information that we can learn from it about Satan. In this story, Satan is said to appear before God in heaven. God asks Satan, where have you been? Right there that question teaches us an extremely critical fact about Satan. Perhaps you missed it? Satan’s reply to God was that he has been going to and fro across the earth and from walking up and down in it (Job 1:7). From the presence of God’s question and Satan’s reply we can learn so very much about our enemy. The first thing to learn is that Satan is not on the earth when he said this. The second thing to learn is that Satan is not everywhere all at once. In theological terms Satan is not omnipresent and cannot be everywhere at the same time like God can. If Satan has to travel from place to place on the earth then he can only be in one place at a time. That is interesting isn’t it? In the New Testament we get some further confirmation of this fact by reading:
1 Peter 5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour;
You can see the same basic information being given to us in this verse. Satan is stalking about the earth looking for someone that he can attack. The statement implications being given to us is that he can’t attack everybody at the same time. You also see that he has to walk from place to place in order to seek for someone to attack. We can conclude from these two verses that Satan is not everywhere at once. Therefore Satan is NOT omnipresent like God is. Now having said all of that we don’t know how many demons and fallen angels that Satan has under his control. Revelation 12:4 tells us that 1/3 of the angels fell with him. But, we don’t know how many total angels there were to start with. From information found in Hebrews there seems to be a bunch of them and it calls their number innumerable. There is also a story in the Gospels where Jesus casts out a legion of demons from just one man. This shows us that one man can have hundreds of spirits in him at once. Therefore while the devil cannot be present with everyone at the same time, he can still send his demons to them and this makes him appear like he is everywhere at the same time. This is just some good information to learn about your enemy.
NUMBER 4
4. Satan DOES NOT Want You To Know That His Time Is Short
Revelation 12:12 Therefore rejoice, ye heavens and ye that dwell in them, Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.
This verse informs us that Satan is very angry with something or someone. Why? Because he knows his time is very short. Satan is aware of an end time. You did realize that, didn’t you? Many people in the world are oblivious that the end is near. They think everything has happened the same way from the beginning and everything will just continue on like this for ever (2 Peter 3:4). However, Satan and the demons are aware that their time is so very short. Here is a Bible verse that will help to see that the devils knew there was coming an end time even when Jesus was present on the earth:
Matthew 8:29 And behold, they cried out saying What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? are thou come hither to torment us before the time?
These are the words of the demons that possessed a man where Jesus was going. These demons exclaimed who exactly Jesus was. Why were they questioning Jesus’ right to be there? Then they ask him have you come to torment us before the time. What time are they talking about? It is amazing that these spiritual beings are aware that there is coming a time of torment. All of this occurs still today, men walk about clueless to the times and the seasons while Satan and his forces know that they are almost done.
NUMBER 5
5. Satan DOES NOT Want You To Know He Was Defeated
Colossians 2:15 And having spoiled principalities and powers he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
We can see that Satan was defeated by what Jesus did on the cross. The blood of Jesus not only forgave our sins, it caused the defeat of Satan. The term spoiled is a military term when an army would take a city, they would take the wealth of the enemy and leave them with nothing of value. Genghis Kahn, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Hitler, etc. we can go on and on, but the conquering army would always walk away with the wealth of those that were conquered. Here is an informative verse of scripture that also helps us to see what Jesus has done:
1 Corinthians 2:8 Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
You see from this verse we can clearly see that Satan now has a major problem. Something that Jesus did, caused his status to change. Something that Jesus did in His death has doomed Satan and his followers and has set their destiny. Many Christians today have only seen a fraction of the things that Jesus accomplished on the cross. This is just another example of the fact that there are many things found in the Bible that we do not have the complete story on as of yet. We can make a broad conclusion, that based upon this verse that the death of Jesus Christ sealed Satan’s future.
So why if Satan was defeated, wasn’t he just thrown into the pit and that was the end of it? It is an interesting question, that most have never tried to answer. Satan has a right to be here as long as descendants of Adam have the right to be here. The world was given to Adam (Gen 1:26) and Adam gave it to Satan (Luke 4:5-6). So we in effect see a sub-lease being established. As long as Adam’s lease or time period is valid, Satan’s time period is valid. However, we also now know that this time period is now growing very short. If you have been reading my other Bible lesson you will already understand that the time period of human history was prophesied by God Genesis 1 to be approximately 6000 years. We can calculate that we are very, very close to the end of that time period right now. If you learned anything today, learn that Satan is a loser and if you are following him your time is very short to change your mind.
NUMBER 6
6. Satan DOES NOT Want You To Know That You Have Authority Over Him
Did you notice that earlier I quoted a scripture that said Satan was going about, seeking those who he could devour? Apparently he cannot come into your house and take everything from you unless you let him or permit him to do something to cause it to happen. If you could just find out what opens the door for the enemy to come in, I bet you would stop it. I don’t think I have a complete answer to that question, but I have seen at least part of the answer. We know sin, allows Satan access into our lives. Then in Hosea 4:6 it tells us that God’s people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. So in effect we can see that ignorance or not knowing the right things, can allow Satan access into our lives. What else opens the door to the enemy? I believe that not knowing that you have been given authority over Satan will also allow him to come into your life to attempt to work his evil works. Here is what Jesus told us:
Luke 10:19 Behold I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
If you don’t understand Biblical symbolism you will immediately get the wrong idea that you should be able to walk in a viper pit and not get bitten. But that is not what Jesus was talking about in this statement. Jesus is talking about the symbolic “serpent” that deceived Eve and that was literally Satan. The symbolic scorpions in this verse refers to the demons or evil spirits that are under Satan’s power. Understanding these symbolic references are essential to understanding the Bible correctly. Not everything in the Bible is literal. This verse tells us that Jesus gave us power over these evil spiritual forces. This word for “power” actually means “authority” or “legal jurisdiction” over these powers. The term translated as “power” of the enemy is a completely different Greek word that means “miraculous ability”. You learn from this verse that Satan still has ability to do some amazing things in the earth, but Jesus said I give you my authority over what he can do to you. You might not be able to stop what he does to your neighbor, but you can certainly stop what he does to you and your family. This spiritual authority must be exercised by your choice either during the attack or before the attack takes place. How do you do that? Maybe I’ll get into that in another lesson. Thanks for taking the time to read and study the Bible to learn about our enemy Satan. Share this spiritual knowledge with the poeple that you know and continue to walk in your new found knowledge from God. God Bless you!
If you would like to continue reading in this series, please go to “Part 2“.
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.
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 1:14-19 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.
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 1:4 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.
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“.
Genesis 1:1 Part 2
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 2 in the series of Bible lessons on Genesis chapter 1. If you have not read this from the beginning I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1” first. Genesis 1:1 is not a long verse but yet it contains profound information about creation and the creator God as we learned in the first lesson. Bible scriptures can be viewed in at least two different ways and probably more than that, if you think about it. There are actually many ways to view every scripture, there is a natural perspective, a literal perspective, a symbolic perspective and a spiritual perspective to name just a few possible ways to interpret verses. There will always be explicit truths that are given in every verse as well as the implicit or implied truths that are indirectly derived from studying the verse. The first verse in the Bible tells us explicitly that there was a stated beginning and that it was initiated by a creator God. What we learn from this explicit definition is that the beginning of all time and all physical matter occured in this single verse. The implications of this verse are of course enormous and very significant for us to understand also. We can learn by implication that it would have required an all powerful being to create everything that we can see in our vast universe. We can further learn that it would have required a being of tremendous intelligence in order to create the complex systems, physical laws and all of things that we have learned through modern science and technology.
One of my goals to teaching the Bible, is to help you learn how to study the Bible correctly. That of course is a subjective statement that is open to many different opinions. I really can’t help that people see things diferrently reading the exact same words. Just because something is different does not make it accurate or true, in fact it raises the point that someone is definitely wrong since both views if they conflict cannot be simultaneously correct. 
Therefore, while I teach you a subject I will occasionally introduce you to new concepts, principles, laws that I follow for Bible interpretation to help you understand my approach. This might be beneficial to you based upon the old proverb that you can help a man temporarily by giving a man a fish, but to really help them long term you need to teach them how to fish for themselves. So me doing the study and telling you what I have seen is only a short term benefit if I don’t explain how I got to what I said. So today I will start by telling you two things that I observe in every verse that I study. First I pay attention to every word. I look up every word in the Strong’s dictionary to understand the definition of the word in the original language. I also search for that word usage in the Bible to see where else God used it to help me understand what else God says on the subject. Next, one of the key things that I observe is the order of mention. Every word of God is designed with purpose. Nothing is given to us int he Bible that is not important and the order of mention is many times as equally important or even greater to understand than the words that are mentioned. So let’s look at the words in this first verse of Genesis.
What else can we learn from this verse? Since we learned by explicit and implicit definition that there was a beginning to time, we can therefore conclude by logical definition that before this creation event of a stated time initiation point occured, the concept of time did not previously exist. Therefore prior to Genesis 1:1, God existed eternally and indendepntly outside of the constraints of the dimension of time when He created the time diemension. Modern astronomers have concluded from observation that the universe around us, is expanding at an astronomical rate of speed. They can look through their telescopes and see back into time literally millions of years or even longer. Several scientist have concluded that the universe can be mapped in reverse to a starting origination point they call the “Big Bang”. But, hardly any have concluded there was an external force that caused this bang to occur. What many of these same scientists call the “big bang”, the Bible just simply calls the beginning. Therefore, we can learn from science and from God’s Word that there was a single point event in the past where all matter originated from something which is not directly stated or revealed in this verse. This beginning was the stated central point of creation origination and most definnitely an explosive powerful event that was triggered by someone that we call God. We see three basic essential components for our existence in this verse of creation; these were space, time and all physical matter.
In reading and studying the Bible I often times observed that the words in a list of items are ordered or organized in either priority or time sequence. What I have derived from this information is that in verse one of Genesis, time is mentioned first (the beginning), space is mentioned second (heaven) and finally specific matter was mentioned last (earth). 
This would seem to imply that God created the concept of time first followed by the concept of heaven or space both before the concept of matter and our planet earth was created which makes the most logical sense to me. Therefore, the order of mention in a verse can have meaning. However, the concept of heaven is more complex than just a simple statement of space. This of course is a little difficult to discover in the Bible, but since I have spent significant time extensively studying the Bible I have discovered that there are three different realms or dimensions that are referred to using the same word translated as “heaven”. Two stated realms are physical and one stated realm is spiritual. While we can fairly easily understand what the “earth” repersenents in this verse, the term “heaven” could potentially refer to any of the other possible entities foud in the Bible; either the earth’s atmosphere, or the known physical universe or to the spiritual place where God’s throne resides today. This is where we need to introduce the concepts of contextual word asociation interpretation and consistent word interpretation so that we can correctly understand the meaning of one word by understanding the correct interpretation of another associated word in the same verse or chapter. Since we are on the very first verse in the chapter, we will narrow our interpretation to only other words found here.
Let’s take the the word translated as “earth”. This Hebrew word literally means “to be firm”. Thus it teaches us that it could be related to the existence of physical matter if viewed from a purely non-spiritual perspective. If the earth is a physical firm planet then the only correct interpretation of heaven in this verse must also be of the same like substance also being in the physical realm consisting of the surrounding bodies observable from the earth. If we tried to make both heaven and earth in this verse in spiritualrealm then we would need to ask where did God reside when He was making this spiritual realm? Since this does not logically make sense to me, I would have to conclude therefore, that heaven in verse 1 was not referring to throne of God in the spiritual realm since that is where God is when He created our natural realm. It is only logical to conclude that the spiritual God existed eternally somewhere before the creation of all physical matter and this must have been the spiritual realm called heaven which pre-existed the created heaven in verse 1.
There are other very basic implied opposite truths found in this scripture that we can learn from today. This is what I call the “law of antithesis” and there is much to learn using this logical concept throughout the Bible. This law of Bible interpretation states that for whatever truth that is directly stated in any verse, there exists an implied oppostie realm of truth that is not directly stated. This is a common theme of life. For every good there is an evil. For every negative there is a positive. For every east, there is a west. Therefore, if there was a stated beginning then there must also be an implied ending. We can also ascertain this by the direct hidden reference to the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet that we looked at in lesson 1 that describes the God who created everything. The implication is confirmed to us by what we read in Revelation when Jesus told us that He was the first and the last, the beginning and the end. There is coming an end and I feel very confident that it is going to be very soon. There is further the revelation that if time had a beginning that time will have an ending. Therefore, what exsited before time will be that which exists after time. Antithesis truth is really quite outstanding if you can see them.
I could have spent a lot of time looking up the Hebrew words and all of their references, but you can do that on your own. I feel that Genesis is one of those books that is greatly misunderstood. I have spent more time studying Genesis than almost any other book of the Bible. This book is rich with information that is essential to understand correctly. One key way to understand it is to see what God says in the other parts of the Bible where He gives us His professional commentary on the subject. This is called a “letting the Bible interpret itself” concept and that is a rarely found technique used by people to study the Bible. However, I have found that it is essential or you will remain in a isolated text mentality for Bible interpretation using only your failed human reasoning. I hope and pray that you are learning something about God’s Word today that you did not know before and not only that but are grasping new ways to study the Bible that will help you to see what God has given to us. God Bless you until next time.
If you would like to continue reading in this Genesis 1 Series you may go to “Part 3“.
Genesis 1:1 The Missing Word
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
(Ver 1.5) This is Part 1 in the Series of Bible lessons on the first chapter of the Bible in the book called Genesis which means beginnings. I will be stepping through the chapter almost verse by verse talking about specific things that I found interesting. I believe Genesis 1 is one of my favorite chapters of the Bible. I have read this chpater repeatedly and continue to see and learn new things that it says. In this series I will be emphasizing the importance of studying this information. I will further go into several important concepts on how to study this information properly. Finally, I will be addressing the significance in getting the correct interpretation of the information in order to understand correctly what was written. Genesis is the first of the five books of the law written down by the prophet Moses. All of the law was originally recorded in the Hebrew language. The law is often called the “Pentateuch” which is a Hebrew word that means “five books”. The name of the book “Genesis” comes from the Greek Septuagint which was the Greek translation of the original Hebrew text. The first occurrence of the Greek Word “Genesis” is found in Matthew 1:1 where it is translated as the “generations” of Jesus Christ. The book of Genesis is widely called the “book of beginnings” by the Holy Spirit and by many knowledgeable Bible teachers and scholars. The first chapter of the book of Genesis has been divided into 31 verses. Clearly the first chapter of Genesis reveals God’s personal involvement in the design and creation of our current natural world system. There is considerable hidden information found in this chapter and we will explore a significant amount of it in these Bible lessons. Before I start lesson 1, I want to bring in another N.T. verse statement that Jesus made speaking about the Old Testament verses that we will be studying to help you see what I just said about this hidden information:
John 5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
The first thing that I would like to point out about studying any book of the Old Testament is that these books contain one central subject theme even though this subject was well hidden on the surface text reading of the information as you will begin to discover in this lesson. What I am referring to is the hidden spiritual content of Jesus Christ, the concealed central theme found in every book of the Bible. If you do not understand what Jesus said in John 5:39, it is obvious to me that you will not understand the book of Genesis correctly. Jesus told us to search for Him in the scriptures. The implied statement found in that information is that Jesus was well hidden in the words that are recorded if it is necessary to search to find Him. What I am going to do today is to show you one of these hidden references to Jesus in the first verse of the Bible.
Today’s lesson is the beginning of the discussion on verse 1. Verse 1 is not a long complex verse, but like many other verses God can say a lot using a very few select words. There is an amazing revelation found in the first verse of Genesis that most have never seen. Unless you can read and write in the Hebrew language you probably have not ever seen what I am about to talk about before. The fourth Hebrew word of the original Bible text is omitted and not translated into English. We can only assume that translators didn’t know how to translate the word so they ignored it completely. You see the problem is that this word is not a word at all and didn’t spell anything that they were familiar with. However it says something that is very profound when you understand what it is and what it means. Genesis 1 is comprised of exactly 7 Hebrew words and seven is the number associated with God. The number 6 is a number often associated with man. Therefore the omission of just one word changed the meaning of the verse dramatically. This omitted word falls between “In the beginning” and “God” in the English translation. So it appears to be an adjective that qualifies the noun “God” which is the Hebrew Word “Elohiym”.
This word is made up of just two letters in the Hebrew alphabet. The first letter is called the “alef” and second letter is called the “tav”. This still doesn’t appear to have any significance until you begin to understand that these are the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet and that changes everything doesn’t it? The verse should read something like this in the English “In the beginning the A-Z God created….”. Who is the A-Z God? Well of course this A-Z God can only be Jesus Christ who created all things. Let’s find the key that unlocks the mystery in the New Testament:
Rev 1:8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
You should begin to see that the O.T. pattern discovered in Genesis 1:1 for the first time is now repeated and even explained to us in the book of Revelation. In the first chapter of Revelation and the 8th and 11th verses, Jesus makes the following statements: “I AM, the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the ending”. Jesus repeats this statement in Revelation 21:6 and in Revelation 22:13. Since it occurs 4 times in the book of Revelation, it must have some very significant meaning to somewhere else in the Bible. We can quickly see if we become familiar with the Greek alphabet that Jesus has just identified Himself as the creator God. The Greek letters of “Alpha” and “Omega” are the first and the last letters in the Greek alphabet. Being a Hebrew, Jesus would have spoken this in His natural language and said I am the “Alef” and the “Tav”. But, since the N.T. Bible was written in Greek, it was recorded as the “Alpha” and the “Omega”. Jesus has just informed us that nothing happened or started in the world without Him and nothing will end in the world without Him either. Jesus confirms He is the reason we exist and that He created everything that we see. Jesus was intimately involved in the creation everything that we have and can do in this world and nothing will come to an end that He has not already done. So the first verse in Genesis 1:1 should read something more like this:
“In the beginning the A-Z God created the heaven and the earth.”
Now we can understand that the God of creation being revealed in this verse was the Lord Jesus Christ, the Alpha and Omega! I find that very important, informative and quite comforting information that everything that we can find in the rest of the chapter was done by Jesus our Creator. Keep this in mind as we continue to study through the rest of the chapter. We will eventually find Jesus hidden in other verses in this chapter also, but we will get to those soon enough. God Bless!
If you would like to continue to read and study in the first chapter of Genesis you may go to “Part 2“.
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