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Genesis 2:8 The Confrontation Between East and West
(Ver 2.0) When you read the Bible and begin to understand that every word has significance and meaning, you start to pay much closer attention to which words God selected to describe the events within creation. Knowing that God is so much smarter than we are and that He could have chosen any words that He desired to convey His thoughts to us, we must realize that He chose these exact words found in Genesis to describe creation to us. Recently in my blogs I have been skipping around in Genesis 2 for no particular reason, just giving you glimpses into the variety of subjects found there. Today we are going to look at verse 8 of Genesis 2 and see what God says to us.
Genesis 2:8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
I often times wondered why God said that he planted a garden eastward in Eden. We can clearly see from the information in this verse that man or Adam came from or was created somewhere to the west of Eden. Isn’t that interesting? Why is this so important that God included this fact in the Bible out of all the information that He could have given us? We don’t know exactly where Eden was located; we are only given the general location of Eden using the names of 4 rivers which are said to have flowed through it. We can assume using the general information of the location of these four rivers given to us that Eden must have been somewhere in or near the area between Israel and Iraq or in that general vicinity. I don’t really feel that the exact location is that important, but I believe that the general principles and concepts surrounding them are very important to today’s lesson. We can also assume based upon this location that somewhere to the west, probably in Northern Africa, the Man was created and then moved to the Garden. So why is this significant? It is the first mention of any compass direction in the Bible. The first mention of any subject in the Bible always has significance. There are many implied truths given to us in this scripture. We can see that much clearer later when we get to what happens later in chapter 3 after the fall of man.
What I will tell you now is just some overall concepts of the differences between human civilizations and the developmental differences between the east and the west. If you’ve never thought of this before, it is very fascinating to see the spiritual implications of east vs. west. The Far East as it is called has always been dominated by spiritual darkness; religions of the mind, religions of the body and the religions of idol worshippers. All of these types of religions focus more upon worshipping creation and ignoring the creator. You can go to places in China, Japan, Indonesia and other places and see the temples and idols of gods that have dominated that part of world. These are gods made by the hands of men and worshipped by ignorant and deceived humans. As a result we can see the rise of communism and dictatorships of godless governments that do everything in their power to attempt to limit and restrict Christianity, the Bible and the spread of the truth. Nowhere else in the world is this so prevalent as it is in the eastern Asia.
Then we can see another conglomeration of religions centered around the region of Eden which are primarily dominated by Judaism along with Islam and some Christians. Moving to the west we see the rise of more dominate Christianity and free societies and governments. What we begin to see is a dividing line and a growing trend of a clash between the cultures of the east and the west. Of course we understand that we wrestle not with flesh and blood but the spiritual forces, the rulers of the darkness of this world (Eph 6:12). It seems that these spiritual forces while attempting to make inroads into the west have predominately through history have controlled more of the far eastern nations. In the book of Acts and in the Epistles there are a couple of mentioned times that Paul is not allowed by God to go to the Far East.
Acts 16:6 Now when they had gone throughout Phyrgia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia,
Paul is directed specifically by God to go west only. In fact it specifically says God forbid them from going into Asia. I would assume from this that it was too dangerous and the people in those regions would have just killed them. If you look at the world today, the hardest places for Christians to go into and teach and preach are still predominately in areas of the Far East and the continent of Asia. In recent news articles there were several aid workers who were giving the people of Afghanistan free medical care; these good Samaritans were executed by the Islamic extremist. The claim was that they were preaching the Bible trying to get Muslims to convert. Isn’t that religious tolerance and freedom and the free will exercise of the people’s mind? Why is it that Islam wants to force you to become a Muslim and then once you are a Muslim they will kill you for leaving? There are no choices in Islam your decisions are made for you, is that your God? The control of people by fear seems to be their only message. Other than fear they have no message of salvation. They cannot stand up to the truth so they have to shut up those who try to teach it to others. What I want you to think about is how different the cultures are in these two parts of the world. Communism still dominates China and Russia. The country of India is dominated by people who revere cows. Between those three countries lies almost half of the world’s population. I cannot thank God enough for being born in the free country of the United States of America. We are not a perfect country but at least I can go to church without fearing that the Government will come in and throwing everyone into prison, at least today I can. I’ll bring out more information about east and west as we get into chapter 3 of Genesis, but I just wanted you to start thinking along these lines and notice what God said about it in chapter 2.
Concealing Information From God’s Enemies!
This will obviously be controversial to some. But nevertheless this is what God says so I stand by it. What I have been attempting to do is give you some keys to understanding the Bible. If we can understand God’s intentions, motivations and purposes for the book, we will better understand what is written. So in today’s blog I want to give you another perspective of why the Bible is so hard to understand, to many. This principle is based upon the concept that God has enemies and that in order for God not reveal everything to His enemies, He has to write things in an encoded method. , This encoded method allows God’s people to see the truth while at the same time keeping the information from His enemies. It is a very tricky way of writing with many complex twists, mysteries, hidden meanings, symbolic representations and other tricky methods. I call it God’s method of hiding the truth in plain site.
James 4:4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosever therefore will be a friend to the world is the enemy of God.
From this verse in James we see a fact revealed that God has enemies. If you didn’t know that it would be good to study and find out who those enemies are. I’ve heard some fools think and teach that Satan was just a pawn of God. A spirit being that appears before God to get permission to make somebody sick or kill their children. People read things like in the book of Job and make too many assumptions. Satan is not working for God. Satan doesn’t have to ask for permission to put some evil plan into work against you. Most of the time it is our own fault when Satan attacks us. We open the door to the enemy and let him do the things he does. There are a lot of Bible verses that I could give you to back that statement, but I won’t spend a lot of time on that subject since that is not what we are talking about.
This may also be news to some of you and maybe you’ve never heard anyone teach on this, but God has enemies. The church has the same enemies. Satan is still a spiritual force in the world in opposition to the church and our God. Satan I think sometimes people look at him as this evil red suited, horned and pitch fork carrying spiritual entity that resides in hell and comes to earth to bug us when he wants to. Nothing could be further from the truth. Satan does not live in hell, he has never been to hell, doesn’t want to go to hell and he’s doing everything in his power to stay out of there. But there is good news Satan doesn’t know everything. He can read the same Bible that we can but he doesn’t understand it any better than anyone else in the world. As God gives new revelation to the church, that is the first time Satan hears about most of this stuff. There are scriptures that back this up. Look at this verse:
1 Corinthians 2:8 Which none of the princes of this world knew for had they known they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
You see from this verse that Satan and his fallen angels are ignorant of the plan of God. This verse says clearly if they had known the consequences to killing God on the cross, they would not have done it. So apparently we don’t yet fully comprehend the ramifications and consequences of God being nailed to the cross. Not only did He provide salvation for us, he sealed the fate of Satan. Interesting isn’t it? So when Jesus said I didn’t come to do away with the law but to fulfill it he was saying that he was here to fulfill those things which were written about him.
Luke 24:44 And he said unto them, These are they words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets, and in the psalms concerning me.
John 5:39 Search the scriptures for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
So couldn’t Satan read the Bible and see and hear what was being said in the synagogues? Sure he could, the problem is he didn’t understand anything that was written and neither did any man. Jesus fulfilled countless prophesies in his birth, life, death, burial and resurrection and Satan didn’t know any of them. I can only assume that Satan thought by killing God he could rid him from his planet and now he could go on and continue to rule for as long as he wanted. These are all interesting thoughts but these concepts are also applicable to the unsaved human race. Notice what is written on this subject and the words spoken by Jesus himself:
Mark 4:11 And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables.
Jesus speaking to his disciples said the mystery is for only you to know, those that are on the outside they will never know or understand the things of God. It has always occurred to me that people in hell don’t know why they are there. They don’t have a clue that Jesus paid for their sins and they rejected the free gift of salvation. I wonder if someday they will come to the knowledge and realize the things they missed out on. So were we enemies of God before salvation? Here is a scripture that says we were:
Romans 5:10 For if, we when we were enemies , we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled we shall be saved by his life.
So we discover a fact that God said that while we were still enemies, Jesus paid the price to reconcile us back to God. This of course was one of the primary reasons for the death of Jesus on the cross. Clearly it was not all that transpired, but I’m sure glad He did that for us.
So what can we conclude from all of these scriptures? If God had enemies, He was forced to conceal information in His Word in a manner that His enemies would not understand what He was doing that would effect them. We will eventually discuss the methods in more depth that God used to accomplish this, but that is enough for now.
How Did the Church Become the Body of Christ?
(Ver 3.2) I will notify you up front, that this lesson may be very different than anything that you are expecting to read or even a departure from what you may have heard taught before on this subject. Therefore, it may be controversial because it is based upon many hidden Bible concepts which are only being opened and revealed by the Holy Spirit now on the subject of Covenants and Marriage. I believe that if you read the entire lesson very closely using an open mind and your spiritual eyesight to see what is written that you will begin to understand there is much more to it than you first realized. There has been a theological controversy within the church for many years. Some believe that the church is only the bride of Christ while others believe the church is only the body of Christ. There are also some that believe the church is both and even others that believe we are neither. But, which belief is the actual truth? After significant Bible study on this subject with the assistance and guidance of the Holy Spirit I believe that the church is both the bide and the body simultaneously. But, how can a body of believers be both the “body of Christ” and the “bride of Christ” at the exact same time? Have you ever heard a Bible preacher or teacher explain how being both is even possible? I know I haven’t. What I have heard some teach is that we are one but not both and they explain away any verses that conflict with their chosen belief selection. Any conflicting scriptures that do not align with their beliefs are either ignored or must be explained away. That is my controversial subject that we will be focused on today, believe it or not. This lesson will teach us how both potentially conflicting beliefs can be viewed as a sound Biblical truth simultaneously.
INTRODUCTION
The human body is an amazingly complex designed creation of God. It is comprised of millions, billions and even trillions of individual separate cells that work together in united ways to be one body. This very complex body reality came from just the union of two separate individual cells. Simply from the natural union of one male sperm cell entering into one female egg cell a multi-trillion cell being results. These two cells combined will cause all of the other cells to grow and develop into this amazingly complex unified carbon based unit called the human body. I believe that this is a basic parallel principle of truth that teaches us a little bit about how the church can be both a separate entity called the bride and by Christ entering into us (our spirit living and alive within our physical body) we can simultaneously be called His body. We will be reviewing scriptures that help to build this foundation of truth later in this lesson.
If the millions of people on the earth who call themselves Christians are one unified spiritual body of Christ, could it be that we were originated from the union of two spiritual cells that were joined to create this new body of Christ? I believe that the 2 cell combined union natural process of creating a new body is a potential natural pattern for how spiritual things work in the spiritual realm. Did you know that the Bible in Romans 1:20 teaches us that the natural things created by God reveal to us many of the hidden spiritual things of God?
There are also other potential things about male and female unions that must be understood in order to know how the church can be both Christ’s spiritual body and His spiritual bride simultaneously. These are the spiritual concepts that we will be discussing today. Are you ready to receive something new from the LORD?
CONFIMING THE CHURCH IS THE BODY OF CHRIST
Let’s start this section of our Bible study by confirming using several scriptures that Christians are firmly represented to be the body of Christ. This is the most common belief in the church and I totally agree with this truth completely:
1 Corinthians 12:27 Now we are the body of Christ, and members in particular.
If you have ever read the New Testament, you have probably noticed that the church is described in numerous places to be called the “body of Christ”. That is an absolutely fascinating factual piece of spiritual information that I would say the majority of Christians accept blindly without attempting to figure out how we became His body. But, I believe us accepting truth blindly without asking questions of how this happened is a potential pitfall for deception. I remember reading in Luke when the angel appeared to Mary and told her she was highly favored and would have a son. But, the wise woman Mary asked “How will this be seeing I know not a man?” That is really a great question and she was not rebuked for asking it. I believe that this question of Mary was a very similar question to what I asked the LORD about us being the body of Christ.
It is very hard to ignore the scriptures that communicate the “body of Christ” truth to us. You can find many references and I will just point us to some of them. The church is called the body of Christ in Colossians 1:18, Ephesians 4:15-16, 1 Corinthians 12:20, and Romans 12:5. These are a few of the obvious ones, but I believe there are others. Are you curious yet to what God says in His Word about how we became His body?
TAKING THE CHURCH IS THE “BODY” TRUTH TO AN EXTREME
What I have discovered in the past is that while there are many Christians that embrace this foundational truth, there are some that exalt it into an error to teach the church is Christ or equal to Christ. Mathematically speaking they would say “Church = Christ”. They conclude this from reading verses like Colossians 1:18 where Jesus is called the “head” and the church is labeled as His “body”. They then conclude we are Him here and now in the flesh and that is a partial truth. But,this is an example of someone falling into a ditch of extremism. Taking one truth and promoting it beyond what it actually says is a very dangerous approach to understanding the Bible. We are required to balance all of the scriptures on the subject in order to recognize a more balanced complete application of truth. Saying that the church is Christ is human logic that in effect places the church on the exact same level as Jesus himself. These types of people teach, if Christ has a bride, then we (the church) also have a bride. They in effect have concluded in error, that the church by being saved ha become the spiritual husband and the spiritual bridegroom, making us God or at least His equal. That belief is a ridiculous conclusion of erroneous Bible interpretation that was probably formed and based upon ignorance and wrong reasoning.
I’ve actually heard some of these types of Bible teachers tell us that in Revelation 21:2 where God describes the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven, that this city called the New Jerusalem is the bride of the church. Many have also concluded that this city is the natural nation of Israel. This is just more examples of the wrong interpretations of the Word of God. They try to convince us that the Church is the husband (aka the body of Christ) and Israel is the bride of Christ. They say “After all if we are the body of Christ, then if Christ has a bride then we must also have a bride”. But, there are so many problems with that mistaken human reasoning and logic. The first being in Revelation it does not say this city New Jerusalem is the Bride of Christ, it says that she is the Lamb’s wife (Rev 21:9) and that is a completely different concept. I’ve never heard the church called the Lamb of God, have you? I’ve also never heard the church called the body of the Lamb either. Ask yourself that question, are you the Lamb of God? If you are not the Lamb of God, then you can not be the husband to this bride described in Revelation chapters 19-21. If you are not the lamb husband of the New Jerusalem, then you may have a major problem with the extreme interpretation of us being the body of Christ, but not the bride of Christ. I know the Bible is complicated, but we have to think and allow the Holy Spirit to speak, guide us and direct us into all truth in order to figure things out. We have to be smart enough to listen, hear and see exactly what God says and then not to be foolish enough to jump to the wrong conclusions using our limited knowledge and understanding.
CONFIRMING THE CHURCH IS THE BRIDE
RESOLVING HOW THE CHURCH BECAME HIS BODY
There is still this main unresolved issue, if the Church is the Body of Christ, how did it get to be the Body of Christ? I do not know of very many Bible teachers that are asking this question. Why not ask God to reveal it to you. Could it be that is why you came across this lesson? I’ve personally never heard any Bible teacher even try to teach this deep question. I could probably write an entire book on this subject, but I only have time in one lesson for a few words. There are other Bible lessons on this website that will provide more detailed information than can be provided today. Please understand that no teacher can teach everything they know in one lesson. I would heavily recommend that you go and read the Bible series called “The Bride of Christ Revealed”. This series provides a lot more scriptures that prove the bride is the church. That was the bottom line revelation that the LORD provided to me and He backed it up with overwhelming Bible evidence. I will go over some of that information in this lesson briefly.
Gen 2:21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
Gen 2:22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
In Genesis chapter 2 we can read about a more detailed account of the Genesis 1 creation of man and woman. There in Genesis 2 we found out that the woman’s body was “taken” out from the body of the man (Gen 2:21-22). Uh oh! Do you remember reading about this in your Bible? God created Adam first and then subsequently the woman came from the man’s living body. This was truly the wisdom of God in action. God does nothing by chance or accident. His choice to create the woman’s body in this fashion must have had a greater hidden purpose than we know right now. The first woman’s body did not come directly from the earth, but rather came from her husband’s body. Adam then looked directly at the woman’s body and said she is now the bone of my bone and the flesh of my flesh (Gen 2:23). Are these all familiar subjects? Let’s look at verse 23 of Genesis 2 to refresh our memory:
Gen 2:23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
In other words Adam was literally saying to us, “she was his body” or personal “she is my body”. Uh oh again! Does this sound familiar? What mystery are we trying to solve? Do you understand this? Is this too complex or maybe too simple for us to believe? Is it possible for God to make a complete woman from just a part of a man? That is exactly what the Bible says happened so we have to decide if we want to believe it. According to God and the Bible, the woman’s body was “taken” from the body of Adam. Light bulbs should be beginning to be illuminated in our minds. We are asking God about how the Church became the body of Christ? Could Eve be a type of the church and could Adam be a type of Jesus Christ?
Gen 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
There was a law of God established here in Genesis 2:24 concerning the subject of marriage covenants between a husband (a male) and his wife (a female). This law states that the wife’s body would be called the same as her husband’s body. Jesus confirm this truth in the Gospels also. You can read one example in Mark 10:7-8. Humans have long embraced and received this truth even in our human marriage ceremonies. The wife has normally taken the name of her husband. This literally makes her body called by his name signifying one flesh. Many in the modern world are attempting to move away from this practice but taking the husband’s name is very Biblical in my opinion. In fact you can read in Revelation chapters 2 and 3 where Jesus addresses letters to the church that He will give them a new name if they overcome. We can clearly see from this the inference of a marriage covenant between Jesus and the Church. What we discover from this law of covenant marriage is God’s mathematical principal that declares two are to be called and named as one.
Wow, Genesis 2:24 is totally amazing to me. Two separate and distinct human bodies being called one body. One male multiplied by one female equals one unified covenant body. This is definitely God’s designed mathematical law of marriage (1 x 1 = 1). This verse in Genesis 2:24 says that they are separate yet still considered one flesh! Wow again and again, that is just so awesome to me. What is a body made of? The human body is largely comprised of flesh and bone. So if the Church is the body of Christ, we are His flesh and His bones here on the earth and this implies by this stated law that we must be His wife simultaneously. I’ll talk about that more in a bit.
I believe with all of my heart that Adam and Eve were physically created symbolic representations of a much greater spiritual truth. I believe that Adam and Eve were physical natural patterns that reveal much deeper spiritual parallels and realities of the unity between Christ and the church. I believe that Adam and Eve were a prophetical type and foreshadowing of a spiritual covenant marriage between the risen from the dead LORD Jesus Christ and the church. Did you know that Jesus is called the Last Adam (1 Cor 15:45) in the New Testament? Why did God call Jesus by the same name as the first Adam? This is not a coincidence either. This is God’s way of teaching us there is a divine purpose. We should read the verse:
1Co 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
Jesus is called the “Last Adam”, because of what God did with the first Adam. God has repeated the use of the first Adam in the in the Last Adam. The risen Jesus Christ the Lamb of God has taken a spiritual woman to be His wife and He married her and has now become one spirit, one flesh and one body with her. Let me give you a another confirming witness found in the scripture about Jesus being a pattern of Adam to help us understand what is being taught to us today:
Rom 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
Adam is clearly stated to be a pattern or type of the coming Jesus. The Greek word translated as figure means “a die as struck”. If you understand printing press concepts this is what God is saying in this verse. Whenever you use a die to strike a piece of paper the same image is repeated consistently. God is trying to teach us that Adam was the pattern for what Jesus will do when He comes to the earth. Since God takes and gives Adam a wife as one of the first or techinically His last works of creation, this is what will occur again with Jesus Christ and His wife. This is exactly how the church became the body of Christ, it was performed by God through a covenant marriage. Did you know that a covenat was a marriage in the eyes of God? You can find this by reading in Malachi 2:14 and Jeremiah 31:32. God when He implemented a New Covenant through Jesus Christ, He established a new marriage and calls the church His wife and His bride. We can clearly see that because of the Genesis law of marriage since the church is called the wife of Christ we would also be called the body of Christ. It is really not that complicated, but it was a hidden mystery of the Word of God. There are numerous scriptures that verify this relationship and we can look at a couple of them. The church is said to be one Spirit with Christ and this is the natural Genesis 2 covenant marriage terminology revealed in a spiritual format.
1 Corinthians 6:17 But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.
This verse in direct context is specifically talking about a husband and a wife relationship. The same terminology of the marriage covenant is being conveyed with the terms “joined” and “one” that we saw in Genesis 2. This verse is clearly speaking to the church and says that we being joined to the Lord are now one spirit with Him. If we are one spirit with Christ this informs us that we are also the body of Christ. In Genesis 2:24 that verse used the word “cleave” but if you study it out you will find that this is the same word and means the same thing as to be joined. It literally means to “glue together”. God is revealing that He will take two separate pieces and super glue them to make one new even stronger unit. That is a clear definition of a marriage and a good covenant relationship between a husband and a wife.
There are so many scriptures that say the Church is the Bride of Christ that I just can’t include them all in this lesson. But, I will leave you with one more reference that says it more clearly than you have ever imagined. Those that teach that the church is not the bride of Christ obviously just ignore these verses or attempt to explain them away with some less than honest excuses. If we read in the 5th chapter of Ephesians we can see an almost entire chapter devoted to husband and wife relationships. In fact, if you do a count of the number of times husbands are mentioned either directly or indirectly I came up with around 14 separate references. If you count the number of times wives are mentioned either directly or indirectly, I came up with at least 11 references. Then if you count the number of times Christ is mentioned either directly or indirectly I came up with 11 times. Finally if you count the number of times the church is mentioned either directly or indirectly, I came up with 12 times. It is very foolish to deny the direct association of the church being named as a bride and the LORD Jesus being named as her groom/husband. Christ and the church are revealed in the same terminology and language as a husband to a wife in this chapter repeatedly. But, the real clincher for me was the fact that God repeats the Genesis 2 covenant law of marriage again in verses 30 to 32 of Ephesians 5. I’ll go over them one at a time beginning with verse 30:
Ephesians 5:30 For we (the church) are members of his body (Jesus Christ), of his flesh and his bones.
This is the beginning of the stated law of marriage found in Genesis and the words of Adam that were said to his wife. Adam said “She was bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”. Adam said very clearly that the woman/wife Eve was his body! But, this time here in Ephesians God is talking directly about the Last Adam named the Lord Jesus Christ and about His bride/wife called the church. Immediately following this verse we have the continuation of the Genesis 2 law of marriage being restated for our benefit:
Ephesians 5:31 For this cause shall a man (Christ Jesus) leave his father (God the Father) and his mother (Israel/Mary), and shall be joined unto his wife (the church) and they two shall be one flesh (One Body).
Again we see that the church became the body of Christ by becoming the bride of Christ. I inserted the subject’s names into the verse so that you could more clearly understand who God was speaking of. The references are very clear and almost impossible to ignore. It is very important to note that when an Old Testament verse like Genesis 2:24 is quoted in the New Testament that it is given to us for the purpose of explanation. God is linking the life of Adam in Genesis to the life of Christ and explaining their similarities. The subject discussion of husbands and wives is concluded with this very direct outstanding statement of confirmation:
Ephesians 5:32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
So we finally we can taste the icing on the wedding cake in Ephesians 5:32. God declares this information given in this chapter to be a great mystery. What is a mystery? A mystery is something that was hidden from our plain sight and from many who still haven’t seen it. It is a puzzle that had to be figured out or solved with God’s help. Praise the LORD! That is what a mystery is, something that is confusing to many people on the surface only reading until we dig deep and learn the real truth with God’s help. That was the mystery of God that was revealed to us today. God finally tells us clearly that all of this talk about husbands and wives in Ephesians 5, is speaking of Christ and the church. So if any one asks you how the church became the body of Christ you can now tell them exactly how it happened; it was by a New Covenant of marriage. Thank you for studying the Bible with me and if this has been a blessing to you, then share it with someone else that you know to bless them with the same knowledge of the truth of God.
If you would like to continue learning more about the subject of the Bride of Christ being the church you can continue reading in this series with “Part 1“.
What Does God Think About Abortion? Pt 2
(Ver 1.4) This is Part 2 in a series of advanced Bible lessons about the subject of what God thinks about human abortion. If you have not read this series from the beginning, I would recommend very highly that you go back and start reading with “Part 1” first. This series was designed to build upon each of the preceding lessons. If you missed the first lesson then you have missed the basic foundations necessary to continue the study. Thank you for joining this Bible study and please do go and get your Bible out or your tablet or phone and open your Bible Application to verify everything that is stated is what you find in your Bible. There are really so many scriptures in the Bible that deal with the subject of abortion. But, they are only found if you look for them. God says seek and you will find (Luke 11:9). Which means if we do not seek correctly, we will never find. Therefore there is a prerequisite requirement that stipulates that people must search for the truth, instead of searching for lies. What I am teaching, is that it matters what we are looking for. Truth never changes, but our knowledge of the truth will change only if we search to find God’s wisdom and His point of view on the subject. I will say that there are people who look for verses to justify their belief in abortion and a woman’s right to choose. According to the Law given by Jesus if that is what we seek for we can find verses that seem to justify that position. But, does that make it the truth? Absolutely not! God wrote and designed the Bible to give humans the right to choose to know the truth or to not know the truth. If He had not given us this right then we would have been created as pre-programmed robots that could only follow His will imbedded in our internal software. But, we know this is not happening simply by observing human behavior all around us. God wrote 10 fundamental commandments in Exodus 20, and I have never met a human yet on the earth that has not violated at least one of these edicts. Therefore, none of us are robots and everyone has come short of the glory of God by sinning (Rom 3:23).
In my last lesson, I introduced us to the subject of abortion in the Bible. We saw a key definition of abortion from the Merriam-Webster dictionary that correctly defined the meaning of the word to include the “death” of the child during the termination of the pregnancy. Wow, that was important. Here we have a fundamental confirmation that this was a developing life form. You should know that a child is created by the union of the female egg and the male sperm and Webster was smart enough to understand that this was a life form that can die or be killed. In fact if we sent a probe to the planet mars and found these two cells and brought them back to earth for analysis, there would be such great excitement of the discovery of life on Mars that we cannot imagine it. Scientists would be so excited that life could exist on another place other than earth, that we would not be able to keep them silent. This would help them prove that life could evolve anywhere and evolution was a viable theory. But, these cells in the womb of a woman on earth are deemed unimportant by the same scientists.
Today, I will continue with the subject of what else God thinks about abortion today. Please let us stop and pray and ask the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to see how He sees the termination of a child in the womb before birth. So let’s get started.
OBSERVING NEW GOD THOUGHTS
Here is another interesting verse of God’s Word specifically concerning one of His major prophets:
Isa 49:1 Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name.
This verse says God knew the prophet Isaiah even while he was still in the womb of his mother. It also claims that He already knew his name. This proves that God knows the names of every born and unborn and even aborted child. Then God says “I know what Isaiah will do, I know the plan for his life, his calling, and his purpose”. I’ve said this before but, it will be beneficial to repeat it, if God knew Isaiah in his mother’s stomach, then he knew you while you were yet in your mother’s stomach also. If God knew Isaiah’s name, then he definitely knew your name before you were born. I am totally convinced that God knows the name of every aborted child that has never breathed a breath of fresh air, tasted food, had a drink of milk or lived to see the sun rise. God knows more than you can imagine right now. It is when people don’t know that they have a purpose in life that causes them to believe that NO human life is valuable in the eyes of God. But, in actuality the opposite is true. To God, ALL HUMAN LIFE IS VALUABLE!
Here are some more very powerful words from the Word of God concerning abortion. God speaking to another prophet said the following words:
Jer 1:4 Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
Jer 1:5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.
Here is another prime example of what God thinks about abortion. God clearly says to Jeremiah that He knew him and set him apart even while he was still in his mother’s womb. This verse said God also formed the child in her. Have you ever studied the complexity of internal human development from the union of two different cells? The join together and make one cell first. This creates a combined unique complex DNA pattern that is used to by God to created entire individual containing trillions of cells when fully grown. But, this process initially begins by cell divisions that eventually start dividing into very unique and different cell types. Some cells form the head, some form the heart and other living organs, while others form the bones and skull tissues. Every unique organ has originated with a designed intentionality. What makes the union of just two cells create such a differing amount of tissues that cooperate and coordinate in specific order to work in harmony? God claims He is at work in this process and if you knew how complex that it was, you would understand how smart God is. I say this because He is capable of doing this to millions of people on earth simultaneously.
If God formed this child named Jeremiah, we know that He also forms every child. The Bible says that God is no respecter of persons. What God does for one He is required to do for all. If a woman decides to terminate her child after God has formed him or her, then exactly who is this woman working against? This verse says that God sanctified Jeremiah while he was still in his mother’s womb. If God sanctified Jeremiah today in our world of aborted children, I wonder if God would have selected someone else who was going to be born or would we have just lost this book of the Bible.
People who believe that God is in sovereign control of everything that is happening in the world are greatly ignorant or confused and don’t understand what the Bible says. God does not override the will of a human male or female. People do whatever they want to do, even if God doesn’t want them to do it. So if a woman aborts her child and God had big plans for that child what is the result of that abortion? So we must ask how do we know that God has plans for me nd my child? Because His word says He does:
Jer 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
This is an amazing verse of truth. The word here translated in the KJV Bible as “thoughts” but it has the following definition in the Strong’s:
H4284
From H2803; a contrivance, that is, (concretely) a texture, machine, or (abstractly) intention, plan (whether bad, a plot; or good, advice): – cunning (work), curious work, device (-sed), imagination, invented, means, purpose, thought.
The underlying definition of this word in the Hebrew means “purpose” or “plan”. God is saying I had a plan for you long before you were conceived or born, and I have a purpose for you after coming into this world. You have a specific purpose from God in arriving and being here on this planet. It goes on and says in that verse that it is a good plan and not an evil plan. Here is the same verse in a more literal translation of the Bible:
Jer 29:11 For I know the purposes which I am planning for you, says Jehovah; purposes of peace, and not for evil; to give you posterity and a hope.
That verse really says a lot to me personally and we can clearly see that if God knew Isaiah and Jeremiah before they were even born and He knew what they were supposed to do, then God is revealing to us that He does the same thing for you and I and every other child that is soon to be conceived.
CONCLUSION
The Bible teaches us to establish every truth in the mouth of two or three witnesses (Mat 18:16) and I have done that very conclusively with these verses written by two different prophets over two thousand years ago. But, But we are not finished with this subject, so we will continue on it again in the next lesson. I thank you for your time in reading about God and His Word. Please leave me a comment if you have the time and be blessed in your study of the truth.
If you would like to continue reading in this series of lessons about what God thinks about abortion, please continue to “Part 3“.
What Does God Think About Abortion?
(Ver 1.5) This is Part 1 of a series of advanced Bible lessons about what God thinks about the subject of abortion. In the news a while back there was a great controversial clash of opinion between the left and the right that took place. It appears that one of the nation’s biggest Catholic Universities invited one of our liberal Democratic Presidents to speak at their graduation commencement. The single point of confrontation was a delicate subject that has divided our nation since 973. So what is this subject that has caused such a major division and debate? It is the subject of abortion. This subject came to the forefront of U.S. history in 1973 when the Supreme Court ruled abortion to be legal in a case named Roe vs. Wade. It still amazes me how 9 people on a court can make such sweeping broad rulings of moral values. The 7 members of the Supreme Court that ruled in favor of legalized abortion were named 1) Harry Blackburn, 2) Warren Burger, 3) William Douglas, 4) William Brennan, 5) Potter Stewart, 6) Thurgood Marshall and 7) Lewis Powell. According to Deuteronomy 19:10 I believe these seven men have a lot of innocent blood upon their hands. I hope that they regretted their choice and repented before they died.
INTRODUCTION
Let’s begin with the basics. What is an abortion and how is it defined? One dictionary say abortion is “a medical procedure to end a pregnancy”. It uses medicine or surgery to remove the embryo, fetus and placenta from the female uterus. That was a medical description from an abortion provider. But the Merriam-Webster dictionary puts it this way gaining additional new and important information. They say abortion is the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, and resulting in the death of the embryo or fetus. Wow, that changes things dramatically. Isn’t it interesting how some organizations omit words that are not desired to promote a result that would not be allowed after birth? One definition admits there is a death that occurs while the other just leaves this detail out completely. I think as we study the Bible we will learn that Merriam-Webster was more in alignment with God.
It seems that almost everyone in the world has some opinion on this matter and that is really the basis and the root of the entire problem of conflict. You see what I think about the subject of abortion and what you think about abortion really doesn’t matter or count for anything after we die. I mean who are you and who am I? The University speaking Liberal Democrat President’s opinion was that we should all just try to find some common ground and get along on this subject of abortion. But what he thinks really doesn’t matter or count for anything either. In fact what the Supreme Court’s opinion is on the subject of abortion doesn’t really matter or count for anything at all. All human opinion is baseless unless we agree with the one that created us.
What should only matter to you and I and concern us, is what does God think about the subject of abortion? If we could go instantly up to heaven and stand before the throne of God to ask Him a direct question on His thoughts on the subject of abortion, what would His answer be to us? Would God’s opinion change our opinion on the subject or would we still hang on to our opinion in spite of whatever He said about the subject? We should really think about that before we answer.
I wonder if we were confronted by God and told we were wrong about something, what would our response be? We could say I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was wrong and I’ll change immediately to be right. That would be the response of someone that was humble and feared God. Or we could say, I was wrong but then try to explain why we believed what we did was right at the time to justify our thoughts, opinions and actions. We could even try to be like an Adam or an Eve and pass the responsibility to someone else and redirect the attention away from ourselves and say it was just not my fault that I believed abortion was good and right, the court and the President made me believe it was right. We could be a real idiot and say sorry God, you’re wrong and I’m right and I’m not going to change my opinion or what I think no matter what You say or do. This last type of person has absolutely no fear of God. Or we could just care less and be indifferent. Our attitude could be just let people do whatever they want to do, it doesn’t have anything to do with me.
Which kind of person are you? What is your attitude towards this subject? If you are here on earth and can read this lesson from the Bible you must have not been aborted by your mother. Are you happy that your mother didn’t kill you before you were born? I personally believe that now is the time to learn the truth and change our opinions to conform with God’s thoughts on this subject. I’ll let you know right now that there will be no opportunities on judgment day to defend our wrong thoughts, opinions and actions we lived today. If we think there will be this chance, please show us the Bible verse that says this.
BEGINNING TO SEE GOD’S VIEWPOINT
If we proclaim ourselves to be a Christian then we should be aware that the Bible is the inerrant Word of the Living Creator God. The Bible is a directly written personal message to us from our God. The Bible was written for our benefit so that we could know this awesome God who none of us has ever seen before. So what a Christian does should follow God’s Word, His thoughts, His commandments, His instructions and the examples that He has given to us in this book. Let me show something that Jesus said to help confirm this point:
Mat 7:24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
Jesus said a wise man is one that hears the Word of God and does it. What is the opposite of that statement? The antithesis truth would be “a fool hears the word of God but does not do it”. What are you today a wise man or a foolish man? We all make this choice everyday in everything we do. So what does the Bible say on the subject of Abortion? And of course what would make us become a wise man that we could learn to change to do? Wisdom always begins with knowledge and knowledge must begin with learning about what God says on the subject abortion?
Like many other modern day Bible subjects the the word “abortion” is not found in the entire book, but that does not mean that God did not give us His thoughts on the subject. All we have to do to become wise is to study and find out what He has said on the subject using the other synonymous words that ARE found on the subject, so let’s do that. I want us to start this lesson by reading a very important foundational verse that is short but directly to the point on the subject of abortion.
Exo 20:13 Thou shalt not kill.
What does God say in this verse? It is one of the stated 10 commandments of God from the Old Testament. Are these a part of the words and of the commandments that Jesus was speaking of for a wise human to do? The Hebrew word H7523 translated as kill in this verse means “You shalt not commit murder”. What exactly is abortion if not murder? We learned earlier that Webster defined abortion as a death. To cause an innocent life to cease from continuing and developing in existence is clearly murder in Bible terms. What is the difference from a developing child inside the womb to one that has exited the womb and is still developing for another 18 years. If it is OK, to kill a developing child inside the womb, would it be fine to kill the same developing child outside the womb? Why is it today that outside the womb killing a child is called murder and killing a child inside the womb it is called abortion? They are both the same child! They are both in developing stages of growth. They both have the exact same DNA structure. Here is where the liberals have become creative to redefine that a living baby in the womb is not really a child but rather just a embryo or fetus and therefore not a viable self sustaining life form. By redefining a living developing child to be simply being labeled as an embryo or fetus they have dehumanized the living child, him or her and eliminated them for qualification as a living being for murder. Why do they not use this same logic when they have passed laws to protect the eggs of unborn eagles? Please answer this question, can a newly born baby child survive on its own outside the womb without assistance? Who is going to feed the child? Who is going to care for the child? Since they are not self sustaining do they fall into the same category and the unborn child that is fed by the umbilical cord that is attached to their mother? Do you see any problems with this type of thinking between how we should treat the child on the inside differently than how we treat them on the outside?
Did you know that destroying an unborn baby eagle bird in its egg is a punishable criminal offense? People can go to jail for killing (murdering) an eagle egg! Clearly it is the exact same type of stated unsustainable developing life form as the child (embryo or fetus) in the mother. Can you tell me what the difference is between an eagle egg and an unborn human baby? Yet one developing life form has gained a much greater value than the other in some people’s mind based upon some unknown reasoning. Why is that? How can that not be viewed as the same logical comparison that should not be ignored? Is the value in one species increased simply based upon the numbers of that species; are numbers what really matter? Because the eagle is endangered, does that make them more valuable to be protected than humans that are more populous on the earth? What do you think? Does God care more about eagles or for people? Did you know Jesus answered this question for you? In Matthew 10:29-31 Jesus speaking of two sparrows says God knows about them, but then tells humans they are much more valuable to Him than many sparrows.
Let me ask you this question, did God come to the earth to save just sparrows and eagles or did He come to save human people? If we do not know the answer to that question then we are in big trouble. John 3:16 gives us the answer by informing us that God loved us in the world so much that He died to save all those that believed in Him. Only a human is capable of believing.
Let us permit God to speak to us further on the subject of abortion and tell us His thoughts and then let us see how we react to His words:
Jdg 13:4 Now therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing:
Jdg 13:5 For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.
Jdg 13:6 Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, A man of God came unto me, and his countenance was like the countenance of an angel of God, very terrible: but I asked him not whence he was, neither told he me his name:
There are so many things to learn from the Bible, if we are open to the truths that it contains. We begin to learn when we allow God to show us what it actually means. Here is an example of a woman that had not had any children and the messenger of God shows up at her house and tells her that she is going to have a son. How did God know this? I think that is a really fair question and that the answer is probably more revealing than you can imagine. God knew of the child and what he was going to become and do long before he was even conceived. I will tell you that knowing this Bible fact alone will eliminate a woman’s right to choose an abortion. If God knows every child before they are born or even conceived and what they are supposed to be and what they are supposed to accomplish within their life, then who is a woman to overrule God to decide that the child should not be worthy to be born?
We know for a fact from biology class that the sex of a baby is determined by the male sperm from the father. Yet God knew which sperm cell was going to fertilize the egg in this woman in order for a male baby to be born. God knew that there was a future deliverer about to be born and according to many today, they would have said that this decision for him to be born should have been left up to the woman who conceived him. Is that what God thinks? Does a woman’s desire play a role in the plan of God for a child? Would a woman wanting a child be different from another woman not wanting her child? I personally do not believe it does based upon the Bible. We will hopefully look at this question more later.
Did you notice that God gave this woman specific instructions about what she did before she gave birth or this child was even conceived yet? In verse 4 God tells the woman not to eat or drink things that are bad for her or for the future baby. WOW, that is clearly a message that is very profound. God was basically informing us that what she did would affect the future child’s ability to fulfill his purpose. This truth places human responsibility on the mother that is way beyond what the world thinks right now. I believe that women and men will be judged for what they did to their future children good or bad.
This woman, the future mother described in Judges was told not to drink or eat any unclean thing before she conceived and while she carried this child in her womb. Why is this significant? If this was not a viable life form, why does it even matter what a woman eats or drinks? No, you see it does matter because this is not just an embryo or fetus in the eyes of God, or a blob of developing cells. In the eyes of God this was a child and God said it matters what you feed him. If it matters to God about this child and what he is fed in the womb, then it also matters to God and what every other child is fed in the womb. If it matters to God what this child was fed before it was born, then it clearly matters to God if this child was born at all.
Whose responsibility was it to eat the right things and drink the right things for the development of this baby? Was it God’s responsibility to see that his mother did the right thing or not? Did God make her do the right things here? These are not loaded questions! These are not hard questions to figure out the answers to either. If it matters to God about one baby in the Bible, then it matters to God about every baby that is supposed to be born. God does not treat one baby differently than the other, only people do that.
So what happens to all of God’s future planned roles and responsibilities of all of these babies that are aborted in our world by the mother’s choice to override God’s will? Do you think that the aborted children’s responsibilities in this life are just given to others that were not aborted? Or do you think that it is possible that there are a bunch of things that are not taking place and getting done, because the one that was going to find the cure for cancer was aborted? What if this child in Judges would have been aborted? What if his mother would have drunk wine and ignored the commandment of God? Would God had another deliverer to raise up or would Israel not have been delivered? I personally believe that this is a major problem with abortion and that there would have been no other one to take this child’s place.
Therefore, how many doctors, lawyers and teachers do you think have been aborted since 1973? Who or what exactly are we missing out on? Because of the abortion of the millions of future skilled workers, tax payers and roles that are being unfulfilled. How many church pastor’s, preachers, teachers and evangelists have been eliminated from coming into the world to help others get saved and not go to hell? Satan has used murdering people that some call doctors to create a population imbalance and reduction. Satan is trying his best to eliminate humans from coming into this world because they are threat to him.
CONCLUSION
This was just the introduction to the subject of “What does God think about Abortion?” I pray that you can begin to see from just one story in the Bible that it must matter greatly to God if a child is born. Why do you think Satan wants to kill all of the future children and keep them from entering the world? Could it be that one of these are the preacher that will reach the whole world with the truth? Does Satan think by eliminating future Christians that he can remain on this planet a little longer? I tell you that there are many things to consider on this subject. One is why has Satan been motivated to kill human children even since early in the book of Genesis? When Moses was born babies were tossed into the river to be drown, if they were males. This was a repeated occurrence when Jesus was born in Bethlehem and every child under 2 years old was killed. You see Satan is attempting to fight against whatever God has planned and is doing. We need to learn the truth and figure out whose side we want to be on. Abortion is a demonic evil plan of Satan to eliminate future humans and potential Christians. God is a pro-life God and is opposed to ALL abortion. We will continue to learn this as we go through this series of Bible lessons. Thanks for reading and studying the Bible with us today. I pray that what was stated has helped you to see what God really thinks on the subject and importance of future life.
If you would like to continue reading in this series of lessons on what God thinks about abortion, please continue to “Part 2“.
Is God Really In Control of Everything?
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 1 in a very basic series of Bible lessons on the revealed nature and character of God. In these lessons we are going to confront a popular and controversial misconception that is being spread in many churches by many confused preachers. This belief has been transferred to their church members and is often spoken in public by Christians. I hear it on Facebook very often. People will post little things on their walls passing on the responsibility for everything that occurs in their life to God. On the national news recently I heard a precious Christian couple accuse God of their house burning to the ground. In tears they said to the reporter “God does not put more on us than what we can bare”. In stating that, they had just attributed the loss of all of their natural possessions to the acts of Almighty God and implied that He was in complete control of the situation. I then heard more of the news report and wondered why the police were still looking for an arsonist that started the fire when it was actually God’s fault according to the couple. I often wonder what people think when they say things like this and then I wonder what the message is being presented to the world that is listening to these kinds of statements. Let me ask you this question and see what you think today:
Is God really in control of everything?
I am sure that there are a lot of opinions on this subject, but is opinion the thing that is really important in the world? Do you believe that everything that happens to you is what God has planned? If yes, how do you know for sure that God controls what happens to you? How would you ever prove that to anyone? What evidence do you possess for that accusation? A lot of religious people are driven by the idea that God is absolutely sovereign and therefore they have taken that truth and extended it to include that whatever happens to them must have been something that God has instigated, has caused to occur, commanded to transpire or at the very least has allowed or permitted to happen. After all they have reasoned that if it was not the will of God for it to happen, then He could have stopped it since He holds the power and ability to do that. Insurance agencies often times have clauses in their contract that state “Acts of God” are not covered. They of course are referring to natural disasters like fires, hurricanes, tornados and floods. But are these the works of God? How can they be? If they kill people and destroy their homes, lives and property? Are these the works of your God? I can tell you for sure that they are not the works of my loving God? So we must have different Gods? Recently we saw on the news a crazy man that stood up and shouted “Allah is great” and started shooting soldiers and civilians. In other shooting in Colorado we saw a man walk into a movie theatre and kill a bunch of people. Were these all of the orchestrated works of God? If it was then I don’t want that God.
The humorous thing that I have noticed about people who claim that God is in control of everything is that they never give us any scriptures to back that belief statement. Do you know of any scriptures that says “I am the LORD and I am in control of what happens to you.”? How about “I AM the Lord that sends you every clamity, test and trials”? I’ve never seen it, if it exists. So if there is no scriptural basis for your beliefs, what are your beliefs based upon? What kind of foundation are you standing upon? It sounds like your opinion or your theory and that is worth less than 2 cents to me. I once heard someone give a great definition of what a theory is and it went something like this:
Theory: A supposition based upon ignorance of the subject under discussion.
What a true statement that is. Too many people have a theory about what God is like, who God is and what God does. But how worthless is that information. Here is the number one problem with saying God is in control of everything that happens, good, bad or indifferent. You see when so many evil things happen to someone, no one can come up with a Bible answer for why it happened? They always just claim that God is smarter and wiser than we are and we can’t understand His ways, He must have had a higher purpose in taking your child. That is another idiotic opinion that I don’t mind telling you repels me away from a God who says in His Word that He loves us while causes a terrorist plane to fly into the side of a building killing hundreds and even thousands of people.
Of course religion quickly answers God had a purpose in it. Why? Because He did nothing to stop it from happening? So how did you come to the conclusion that it was God’s responsibility to stop it or do anything about it? What Bible verse is that logic based upon? Can you help me? The religious minded person, very often resort to a theory of what I call a “No Fault” Religion. No matter what happens to me in life, it is not my fault. I hope you see the problem, that means it doesn’t matter what you do, how you live, where you go, who you marry, where you work, if you live in sin or you become a nun, it just doesn’t matter. According to that philosophy, God is going to let happen to you and me everything that He desires regardless of what you or I do. I can’t find that in the Bible any where either. You know what I found in my Bible was a statement that says “God is not mocked, whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Gal 6:7). So apparently according to this verse it is not up to God after all what happens to you. It appears to matter more what you do and the seeds that you plant in this life to determine what you will reap. If you are getting a poor crop of bad, evil things happening to you, start checking to see what you have been sowing. This is a spiritual law of planting and reaping, but that is not my subject primarily, so I’ll move on.
So if God is not in control who is? This is an interesting question that is answered with the Word of God. I’ll start with Genesis 1:26:
Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
This verse is obviously ignored by people who teach God is in control. God himself speaking in this verse says “Let them have dominion over all the sea, air and earth and everything that is in them or on them”. That doesn’t leave anything out does it? Dominion is a term denoting authority and ruler ship. It is God’s delegation of control. It is a transfer of responsibility from God to man. That is obviously tough for many to swallow and to comprehend. How can God turn over the earth to a man that was going to screw it up and fail? But before we go there let’s confirm this verse with another witness:
Psalm 115:16 The heaven, even the heavens are the LORD’s: but the earth hath he given to the children of men.
Obviously another scripture religious people like to ignore, but this verse says the Heavens belong to God, but the earth was given to Adam and his children. Let me ask you to think about this, have you ever given someone a present, maybe something really nice and very valuable? After they took your gift and left was it your responsibility to guard it and protect it so that nothing would ever happen to it? Of course not! Once given and received, tt was out of your hands, you no longer had any right to say what happens to it, they could throw it in the trash or give it away to someone else and you don’t have any right to it anymore. Do you understand that concept? This is exactly what God did with the earth.
All of this doesn’t mean that God can’t participate in helping man out or doing something if he is asked to do it, but it does mean that God must ask permission to do something on earth, since He has given it to man to control. I know that really bugs religious people, since God is sovereign, omnipotent and if He wants to do something they believe that He can just do it. I really don’t understand that kind of logic when it is associated and applied to a God who cares about His integrity, His reputation, His character, His moral values, His self worth, His honor, and above all His Word. That sounds more like Satan than God. God will not violate your rights to choose. God will not force you to do anything. God will not override your will, your desires or your intentions. God will not make you believe in Him. God will not save you if you do not want to be saved. Etc. etc. If He did that He would be the great puppet master and a control freak and not a loving God. God will let you strap on a bomb and blow yourself up, but is that what He wanted for you? Was that God’s plan for you life, NO WAY!
So when people say God is in control just ask for a Bible verse that says that before you believe something so ridiculous. Before I close I’ll give you some more Bible verses to consider. In 2 Corinthians 4:4 Satan is directly called the God of this world. I thought God was in control of this world? Un Oh? It appears someone forgot to tell Paul. If Satan is the god of this world, that explains tornados, hurricanes, and floods much better to me. Remember when Jesus was in the boat crossing the sea and a storm came up and almost sank the boat. The disciples woke Jesus up and told Him they were about to perish and Jesus went to the front of the boat and looked at the wind and the waves stopped the storm by speaking to it. Uh OH Again? If God caused the storm and then stopped the storm He must be confused, or schizophrenic or maybe His house is just divided working against itself. Today I like storms and tomorrow I don’t. He just cant’ seem to make up His mind do I want a storm to sink them or do I want it calm. Maybe God starts storms and only Jesus stops them. How crazy is that? I know that my Bible says Jesus was God in the flesh and He said when you have seen me you have seen the Father. So whater Jesus did is what God does. Therefore there is no way that God starts the storm and then stops it. There are just too many problems with the theory that God is controlling everything.
What we need to realize is that Jesus said in John 10:10 “The thief has only come to kill, steal and destroy, but I came that you might have life…” If it kills, if it destroys something you own, or if it is stolen from you, that was not God in control causing it to happen, that was Satan demonstrating his power and you letting him do it.
I’ll do one more scripture that helps us to understand who is in charge now. This verse is a statement made by Jesus Christ after His resurrection and it goes like this:
Matthew 28:18 And Jesus cam and spake unto them saying, All power is given unto me in heave and in earth.
Again we see a major problem with the God is in control of everything theory; Jesus who is God says that all power is now given to Him in heaven and on the earth. But, I thought God already had all power over heaven and earth? According to many theologians He did. Obviously Jesus is just confused and He doesn’t realize what He is talking about. Please don’t be ignorant! Jesus knows exactly what He is talking about and the authority of both heaven and earth was transferred back to God at the resurrection of Christ. But, what did Jesus immediately do with it and who did He get it back from? So many good questions to ponder. But I’ve given you enough to think about for now. I hope that you do the research in your Bible to answer these questions. Until next time, God bless you in your Bible study.
If you would like to continue reading in this series you may goto “Part 2“.
Genesis 2:7 – Our Source of Life
Here is another perspective or way to look at the creation of man. I will give you some advanced spiritual concepts and truths, using scriptures in the Bible. We know from Genesis 2:7 that God forms the body of the man from the dust of the ground. Then let’s read what happens:
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 see that man’s life came directly from God, for it says God breathed into his nostrils, the breath of life. What exactly is the breath of life? The Bible gives us some valuable clues if we are able to put them together and see them. The first thing we should realize is that the body was not the man and did not contain any life until God did something to produce the life. God must have imparted something that made the man unique from the rest of creation. No where in the Bible, does it say God breathed into the body of a monkey or a chimpanzee to cause them to live. Right there we can see a major difference between animals and man. I believe there is sufficient scientific evidence such as DNA that when interpreted correctly shows man did not come from monkeys. But natural men who are convinced there is no God will always try to come up with a natural explanation of how we got here.
James 2:26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
This verse in James declares a universal truth that applies to every man, woman and child. It says if the body is alive, it (the body) has a spirit within it. I guess what it actually says, is without the spirit, the body is dead. So when God formed a body from the dust of the ground for Adam, was it dead or alive at first? Let’s start by asking, was Adam a spirit being? Of course he had to be a spirit being. God is a spirit (John 4:24) and man was made in the image of God, so man has to be a spirit. So where did Adam get his spirit? Of course it had to come from God. It is interesting that it says God breathed into the nostrils the breath of life. I take that to mean his spirit and not just God’s attempt at CPR. If God breathed spirit life into Adam whose spirit was it? Of course it was God’s spirit. Again, more difficult concepts to grasp and understand. But we can confirm this by looking at other scripture in the Bible:
Hebrews 12:9 Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of sprits and live?
Here is another fascinating scripture that contains another universally true statement. It says God is the Father of spirits. That of course would be every spirit, good, bad or indifferent. Therefore, Adam by implication was a son of God. People will automatically think that I just put Adam on the same class and level as Jesus, but I didn’t. I did not say Adam was God, I just said he was a child of the Almighty. So put down your stones and read. Why is it important to see this relationship between God and Adam? I’m sorry I don’t have time to explain that right now. Perhaps we will get into that later. So does the Bible say that Adam was a son of God? We just read a scripture that implied it very strongly but there is another reference that comes to mind. In the genealogy of Jesus in Luke the 3rd chapter we can read a long, list of father and son relationships starting with Joseph going all the way back to Adam. Then guess what says in verse 38:
Luke 3:38 Which was the son of Enoch, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.
Here is a key to correct Bible interpretation, be consistent. If every named pair represents a father and a son relationship except the last one, that would be an inconsistent interpretation. You have to apply the same logic to very member in the list or else it is not a list of anything, just a bunch of names.
What we have discovered is that God is the source of our life and that our life is not physical first, but spiritual first. Then after the impartation of the spiritual, we can see the clear implication that only then can we have physical life. This is applicable to many things in the Bible and contains valuable lessons for us all.
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.
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.
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 1:14-19 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 1:9-13 – The 3rd Day
Gen 1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
(Ver 1.1) Day 3 of creation is very interesting and contains a lot of information. It begins by confirming to us that the world was covered with water and God commands the water to gather and separate from the earth. Maybe you realize and can understand that this is also a stated division of land from water. The separation of the waters from the land is what God says caused the land to appear. To appear means it was clearly hidden before. It is not that complex yet people ignore the little details given to us by God to beleive an alternative reality of what happened. It is very obvious to me now that Genesi 1:2 describes a universal flood that covered every land mass on the earth. If you study this out you will find that there is more than enough water in the oceans to accomplish this. All it would take is a shifting of the depths of the oceans nd the water would again cover the earth very easily.
Gen 1:10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
I want to point out in this verse that God declares a defintion for the Hebrew word translated as “earth”. God very clearly says “earth” is dry land. This is so obvious to me but many have not seen it, that God says in Genesis 1:1 that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. The “earth” Hebrew word in Genesis 1:1 is the same Hebrew word that God defined here in verse 10. Theefore, by God’ definition, God declares in Genesis 1:1 dry land existed in the beginning. There is a major conflict that is given to us in Genesis 1:2 where the world was covered with the deepness of water. I have concluded from this information that Genesis 1:2 is describing a time after the begininning where something catastrophic occurred to cover the earth completely in water.
Gen 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
Then God commands the earth to produce grass, trees and living vegetation. God also gives us the Seed law of Genesis and a key to understanding the Kingdom of Heaven. God says the seed is always in itself. That is a fascinating concept. Basically it states that there was a creation event that occurred once and that this resulted in a process of self perpetuating events. What we learn from this concept is that each part of God’s creation had within itself the ability to reproduce and produce more of their own kind. In other words God created things ONLY once and then these tings had the ability to self sustain, propogate and continue to spread and grow indefinitely. That is a very important conept to grasp both phsycially and spiritually.
Since God creates plants on Day 3, I believe that it would be noteworthy to analyze a plant’s growth requirements. What are the basics that any plant needs to sustain growth and produce fruit for example? Of course all plants require earth, fertilizer, nutrients, correct atmosphere, water, the correct climate and light. What was the last requirement in my list necessary fundementals? It was light. Do you know what that means? It means that the sun already existed as of Day 3 to help to regulate the earth’s temperature and provide the necessary light for any plants to grow. Without the sun’s existence, the earth would have been an ice cube and vomplrryrly unable to produce any plant life. You’ll hopefully understand why I went into this level of detail when we get to Day 4 next.
Gen 1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Gen 1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
God declares the earth’s ability to produce plants existed on Day 3. Please keep in mind that all of the laws of agriculture that God created for the earth to be able to do this must have been in existence at this time. Also consider the timing and the order of what is occuring. Before the existence of any animal God first produced food. This is the basic requirement for higher forms of life like birds or animals. If there was no food supply nothing would have survived long. God’s intelligent design is clearly outlined in what He has accomplished the order of mention declares the wisdom and intelligence of a creeator.
Understanding Bible Interpretation! Getting God’s Definitions!
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 6 in the study series of Correct Bible Interpretation Rules. If you have not read from the beginning I would recommend that you go back and start reading with “Part 1” first. The last time I taught on this subject of Bible interpretation rules we talked about a very specific type of erroneous interpretation called the private interpretation. We of course now realize that a private interpretation simiply is one that is dominated by our opinions and they contain our personal subjectivity in determining the meaning of what we have read in the Bible. If you are smart you will realize that your opinion is not what is important to God or to me. Just as my opiniion should not be important to you. God is not going to ever ask our opinion on what we think the Bible means. You do realize that, don’t you? So as a result we discovered that we should let the Bible interpret itself. What we think has no determination on the final outcome of what truth is. God is so smarter than all of us combined and He wrote down very specific words that mean very specific things and we should find out what He said and what He thinks and then we should go by that as being the truth only.
So here is a related topic to no private interpretations allowed. Let God define the Words in the Bible and not you or even Daniel Webster. I look up words all the time in dictionaries to learn what they mean, but I have found that God’s definitions of these words are many, many times not in the dictionary. Let me give you a couple of quick examples. We have been studying the 1st chapter of Genesis and it refers to the 6 days of creation and then the 7th day when God rested. But if you have been following the lesson, the term “day” is defined a little bit differently in the Bible. When the Bible says “A Day is…” that indicates a direct definition is about to occur. It is about to tells us what God thinks a day is equivalent to.
2Pe 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
So if God says a day is as a 1000 years and that a 1000 years is as 1 day we can attempt to apply this definition to the scriptures we find “day” mentioned. I know this doesn’t work everywhere all the time but it does help us in many places, especially Genesis the 1st chapter. The difficulty comes when we realize that words have multiple definitions and this is the same with Bible words. We are going to have to use the word in context to see if it fits. I know this defintion fits nicely with Genesis 1 based upon what else the Bible says on the subject. You can read about a coming 1000 year day of rest in Revelation chpater 20, for example. This day of rest is described as a coming event in Hebrews chapter 4. Therefore the clarification of a day being as 1000 years directly applies to Genesis 1 with ease.
Let me give you another example of when God’s definition is better than a man’s definition. In the 9th chapter of John, Jesus comes upon a blind man and his disciples start asking him questions of why. I’m not going to get into the details of this story just one comment that Jesus makes in answering the question. Jesus says “I must work the works of him that sent me…” in John 9:4. In reading this verse I automatically assumed like many others that healing the man was the work that Jesus was talking about because we can see that this is what Jesus did at least at first. If we look up the word “work” in the dictionary it would refer us to a manual labor task or a place of employment or occupation among other related meanings. Of course none of these definitions would help us to understand what Jesus did and why. What is work to God? What is God’s definition of work? Did you realize Jesus tells us the definition, if we only look for it. If we back up in the book of John to the 6th chapter and the 29th verse we can see God’s definition for what work is:
John 6:29 “This is the work of God, that we believe on him whom he has sent.”
That definition changes everything so dramatically about what we read in John 9 that it is almost ridiculous and it shows us why we should be looking for God’s definitions in the Bible and leaving our opinions and our definitions out of the mix. You can now go back to chapter 9 of John and reread the entire story based upon this new definition and you will see that God did accomplish this work. Jesus met up with the former blind man and asked do you believe in the Son of God (John 9:35)? The man asks who is that to Jesus and Jesus says it is who you are speaking to now. The man then says “Lord I believe”. This was the defined work of God demonstrated. Getting people to believe in Jesus in still our primary work today.
Let me give you one more example on getting God’s definitions to help you see that this is a very important subject to learn. We are all told in the Bible to expect eternal life as our reward. However, every spiritual being in the world saved or unsaved will live forever somewhere. Those that are saved will live with Christ and those that are not will be in hell. So what is the Bible defintion for eternal life? Let’s read God’s definition of eternal life for the believer:
Joh 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
There is a direct explicit definition for eternal life in this verse and there is also an indirect definition for eternal death in this verse. Since every truth has an opposite truth associated with it, we can learn both definitions from a single verse. Eternal Life is us knowing the True God forever. We can conclude that Eternal Death is the opposite of not knowing the True God forever but knowing the false God Satan forever. These are very important definition of eternal ife and death. Because they came from God’s word and not the dictionary they contain truth that is unrefutable by human reasoning.
I just gave you three quick examples of letting God define the words we read in the Bible but there are so many others to be found in the Bible. It will help you so much in understanding what God wrote if you let God show you what those things mean. The Bible is one Book by one Author and He is smarter than I am. God Bless!
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“.
A Deceived Christian Example to Avoid Part 1 – Calling Good as Evil and Evil as Good
(Ver 1.2) Today is Part 1 in a Bible study series focused upon how Satan can even deceive people who say they are Christians. Jesus speaking to the disciples in Matthew 24:4 warned them “take heed that no man deceive you”. There are preachers today that believe true and real saved Christians cannot be deceived to fall or turn away from Jesus. It is unfortunate that Jesus did not understand this belief or he would not have warned us that we could be deceived. This Bible study series will focus upon how we can find examples of deception taking place in the world today within the lives of people that say they are Christians. So let us get started with the first example.
I really do not enjoy criticizing other Christians and I plan to never name their names. I realize there are no perfect people in the world including me. But occasionally someone just stands out above the rest as the most incredibly deceived person that calls themselves a Christian that I’ve ever heard of. Yesterday while watching the evening news a story came across the network about a pastor who was going to battle Satan by holding a book burning on Halloween. At first glance this probably does not sound like a bad idea to many Christians, but I was floored when the news anchor started naming the list of materials that he was planning on burning. At first I thought the preacher was going to share about burning Heavy Metal songs, Punk, Rap lyrics, Cult Materials, Porn or other types of similar literature. However, the shocker came when they interviewed the preacher and he said he was going to burn Bibles. Obviously this is what got him on a major news network for public TV consumption. I really thought this man was joking at first. But I gathered from hearing this plan of this preacher that it was true and that he was dead serious on carrying it out.
According to this preacher and I use that term very loosely, only the King James version of the Bible was divinely inspired and came from God and all of the other versions of the Bible were works of Satan. I really don’t understand how dumb or blinded someone can become and still be called a Christian. How did this man arrive at such a foolish opinion. What would cause someone to think any Bible could not be used by God. That seems to be putting God in a box of severe limitation.
You know what I have discovered about people? It seems that the people who know the least amount of truth are many times the most vocal and opinionated against God. It sounds to be that this preacher has his head buried so deep that he doesn’t recognize the difference between good and evil. The Bible actually warns us in Isaiah 5:20 “Woe unto them that call evil good and good, evil”. To burn any translations of the Bible and call it the works of Satan is an incredibly deceived action.
Satan is not in the business of helping people to read and understand the Bible. If Satan had his way there would be absolutely no Bibles available to anyone and obviously he has convinced at least one preacher to help him get rid of them. How many of you realize that there are no perfect translations of the Bible available in print? Did you know that every translation of the Bible has some slanted perspective and/or opinion of the translator mixed with it? The King James Bible while it is the one that I use predominately, I have found many problems with the translation. Obviously by me making that statement of truth, I just got on someone’s heretic and false teacher list. But we must all know that only the original Hebrew and Greek text contains the inspired (God Breathed) words from God’s mouth without errors. We should all just learn Hebrew and Greek and fix this problem shouldn’t we? I guess not, what we should do is just study to show our self approved a workmen unto God who rightly divides the word of truth (2 Tim 2:15).
My guess is this man is also one of those preachers who claims “tongues” is of the devil. It is sad how Christian people have been so easily deceived into believing such untrue things. I’ve watched movies, I’ve seen fights, I’ve seen people in bars drunk, I’ve witnessed acts of violence and terror and not one time have any of these people in any of these places or acts have I ever seen standing up speaking in tongues with their hands raised in praise. I have also never seen or heard of anyone in a bar reading the NIV, NASB, NKJV, or other Bible while they were getting drunk. Isn’t that just a little bit troubling to you?
Every decent Bible translation can be used by the Holy Spirit to reach someone to get them saved. The Holy Spirit is NOT limited to reaching only people who can speak “King James English” of “thee”, “thou”, “thus”, “saith”, etc. When someone first becomes a Christian it is good to get a translation of the Bible that is on their level. Easy to read English words are much more easy to understand than the KJV Bible. Later as the Christian becomes more mature and spiritually aware, other Bible translations of literal translation can be used by God also to help that individual learn.
So here was an example of one deceived man, a preacher who calls a good book called the Bible as an evil work of Satan and obviously doesn’t know the difference.. Let us not take the same bait of Satan to fall into the same trap of deception. Let us avoid following this man as our example. Please join me in praying for this man. Let us pray that God will bless this man with a spirit of wisdom and revelation in knowing Christ Jesus, Amen.
A PERSONAL APPLICATION
LORD, I pray that you will help me to not be deceived. Lead me far away from anyone that is not proclaiming what you said in your Word and are saying today by your Holy Spirit. Help me to turn from following anyone that is not being led by your Spirit. Open my spiritual eyes to be able to understand your Word as I read and hear it and to discern between right and wrong, truth and lies, and good and evil. Thank LORD for your presence in me and your faithfulness to me in Jesus Name, I pray. Amen.
If you would like to continue reading in this series, please click “Part 2“.
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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