Devotional - 98-09-12 - Creation

The Genesis Series, Part 2

There are a number of views held by Christians as to how God created the world and the specific working out of the Genesis account. This is one of them."

Last week we briefly examined some of the facts from the first two verses of the Bible. We realize that prior to the visible heavens and earth that we now see there was life intelligence and activity. We also know something may/must have happened to make a perfect earth which was created to be inhabited become waste and void. We left off with the idea that perhaps Satan had something to do with this. And as always unless otherwise noted all scripture reference will be from the 1901 American Standard Version of the Bible. Let's dig in.

Ezekiel 28:2-19 Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyre, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Because thy heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a god, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art man, and not God, though thou didst set thy heart as the heart of God;-- ³ behold, thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that is hidden from thee; ⁴ by thy wisdom and by thine understanding thou hast gotten thee riches, and hast gotten gold and silver into thy treasures; ⁵ by thy great wisdom and by thy traffic hast thou increased thy riches, and thy heart is lifted up because of thy riches;-- ⁶ therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Because thou hast set thy heart as the heart of God, ⁷ therefore, behold, I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations; and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and they shall defile thy brightness. ⁸ They shall bring thee down to the pit; and thou shalt die the death of them that are slain, in the heart of the seas. ⁹ Wilt thou yet say before him that slayeth thee, I am God? but thou art man, and not God, in the hand of him that woundeth thee. ¹⁰ Thou shalt die the death of the uncircumcised by the hand of strangers: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord Jehovah. ¹¹ Moreover the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, ¹² Son of man, take up a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. ¹³ Thou wast in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was in thee; in the day that thou wast created they were prepared. ¹⁴ Thou wast the anointed cherub that covereth: and I set thee, so that thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. ¹⁵ Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till unrighteousness was found in thee. ¹⁶ By the abundance of thy traffic they filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore have I cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God; and I have destroyed thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. ¹⁷ Thy heart was lifted up because of thy beauty; thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I have cast thee to the ground; I have laid thee before kings, that they may behold thee. ¹⁸ By the multitude of thine iniquities, in the unrighteousness of thy traffic, thou hast profaned thy sanctuaries; therefore have I brought forth a fire from the midst of thee; it hath devoured thee, and I have turned thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee. ¹⁹ All they that know thee among the peoples shall be astonished at thee: thou art become a terror, and thou shalt nevermore have any being.

All throughout the universe we see chaos. Asteroids hitting heavenly bodies - stars exploding - meteors crashing into things. When we look at the Eden spoken of in Ezekiel and we understand that we are looking at a time when Satan was involved in commercial activity (traffic see v. 16 above) we wonder where was this Eden?

Certainly it is not the one spoken of in Genesis. Satan did not rule in the Eden where Adam and Eve lived. In the garden Satan decieved mankind and sin entered the earth through Adam. The verse from Romans also reveals the fact that sin had to have existed prior to Adam in order that it would enter the earth through him. What happened? It is a strange glimpse into something we know very little about. But lets take a journey through the scriptures to gather up some facts

We know sin existed prior to Adam and Eve disobeying God in the garden of eden. Where did it come from?

Romans 5:12 Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned

The verse plainly says sin entered through one man and so the language implies it was in existence already to enter in through Adam. It was not created by Adam nor was it created by a Holy God. Where did it come from? My theory on this is that there were good spiritual laws and things that Satan combined. These things in and of themselves were good - yet perhaps through the perfect wisdom summed up in Satan he manipulated these things to combine them in such a way as to develop sin. In our world the scientists tell us there are fundamental principles of the various elements, each one has it 's own distinctive characteristic and property. There are those elements that when taken alone they can be deadly to man yet when combined with others they can be most beneficial for us. The exact opposite is also true with relation to other elements. I am strongly inclined to believe Satan intruded himself to a place he should not go took forces good and usefull in their proper places and combined them in such a way as to make a different power. Such an unauthorized combination or manipulation of these forces resulted in the destructive power in the Bible referred to as sin. We know Adam did not create it we know a Holy God could not would not and did not create it and we also know that Satan is not the creator nor can he create! Yet sin is as real as any other power. I believe a lot happened prior to the beginning

And so somewhere in the midst of the activity from Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created... and between the point of the earth becoming "waste and void" a lot happened. We know Satan fell during this time he was cast to earth. We know a perfect earth made to be inhabited "became" waste and void.

Isaiah 45:18 For thus saith Jehovah that created the heavens, the God that formed the earth and made it, that established it and created it not a waste, that formed it to be inhabited: I am Jehovah; and there is none else.

One time a few years back I was teaching a small class these very same verses. They asked me if there was a possibility there was a pre Adamic race. I said that I could not be sure but that even if there was it would not rattle my faith any. Some of the class started perspiring a bit as this was all a little new to them. I said to them looking exclusively at the facts there was a distinct possibility that there may very well have indeed been a pre-Adamic race. I was immediately asked to offer some Biblical proof for this statement. I first asked for the meaning of the word replenish. The answer was given to me and I agreed that if we replenish something then something had to have been there to replenish the supply of. There was no argument. I then opened the Bible to

Genesis 1:27-28. And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. ²⁸And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

The very word used in this passage given to Adan and Eve is replenish. So the command given was to replenish. I would also like to bring out the facts brought to my attention from one of our devotional family who pointed to this passage of scripture

II Peter 3:1-9. This is now, beloved, the second epistle that I write unto you; and in both of them I stir up your sincere mind by putting you in remembrance; ² that ye should remember the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and the commandments of the Lord and Saviour through your apostles: ³ knowing this first, that in the last days mockers shall come with mockery, walking after their own lusts, ⁴ and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. ⁵ For this they willfully forget, that there were heavens from of old, and an earth compacted out of water and amidst water, by the word of God; ⁶ by which means the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished ⁷ but the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. ⁸ But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. ⁹ The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness; but is longsuffering to you-ward, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Perish in the Greek means to destroy fully, to disembark, death, punishment, and destuction. That would indicate to me not one single living being survives and that does not apply to Noah's time. It says there were heavens of old and a world of old and that the heavens and earth which are now (the same heaven and earth that Noah shared with us) have the same promise as did the ones of before....a day of judgement in reserve.

So as I stated earlier if there was a preadamic race it would not shake my faith any at all. If the earth and the heavens are a couple billion years old that would not shake my faith either. Let me clearly state this for the record that in no way do these facts give any credibility to the theories of evolution. Nor do I believe that man evolved from a primordial ooze that one day decided to be live. I simply believe that God created the heavens and the earth (perfect to be inhabited) something happened (Satan had some traffic with someone) Sin came into existence (perhaps by a manipulation of forces we know very little of which in and of themselves may have been good) The earth at that point in time became void and a waste. This left The basic building blocks or elements here as the Spirit of God hovered over them. So in essence when we examine all the facts it appears to me that the Creation account in Genesis may be more aptly stated to be a reconstruction account of a prior devestation. Next week we will begin to look at God revealing himself in the language He chose to begin the Bible with. I pray this devotional was thought provoking and helps you in your journey to prayerfully and carefully take the time to examine the Word. May the God Of Abraham Issac and Jacob bless you. Amen

In His Service,
Liv4Yeshua