Posted on 05/21/2013 5:07:33 PM PDT by pastorbillrandles
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.(Genesis 1:1)
This simple sentence, given to us as a Revelation from God through Moses, has launched hundreds of thousands of books, papers, sermons, and essays, and has underpinned our entire civilization. It is a theological statement, but it has also led to our modern concept of science, technology, philosophy, and our western epistemology (concept of truth).
Thus the departure from Genesis 1:1 and all that follows it, has been the deepest and perhaps least appreciated reason for our current civilizational decline and pending collapse.
Here in these spare words, selected by the Holy Spirit of God, we are granted a statement of ultimate reality.
In the beginning… This means that one of the limits set around all created life and being, is Time. We have a beginning, and an end. There was once a beginning, meaning that there was something before the beginning, an ultimate cause which existed prior to and independent of time.
God...(Elohim) … is a personal being, the almighty creator of everything that exists. He made all things for His pleasure, as they sing of Him in Heaven, around His throne,
Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created (Revelation 4:11)
But God is distinct and separate from His creation. The creation is an expression of God, but it is not God, nor is it part of God. God is Holy. This means that God is entirely “other” than His Creation, he is separate, and above in every sense from his Creation.
There is only God himself, and his creation; “all is two”, and never, “All is one” as the pagans teach.
God created…Everything that exists came into being by the power and Sovereign will of the infinite , personal God of the Bible. Elohim, the Almighty God, is the designer behind “intelligent design”. He is the one who brought into being all plants, animals, fish, geography, elements, chemicals, natural laws, planets, et al.
Stanley Jaki, in his book ,Christ and Science gives four reasons why modern science owes its existence to the Genesis 1:1 worldview,
“…. the Christian belief in the Creator allowed a break-through in thinking about nature. Only a truly transcendental Creator could be thought of as being powerful enough to create a nature with autonomous laws without his power over nature being thereby diminished. Once the basic among those laws were formulated science could develop on its own terms.” “The Christian idea of creation made still another crucially important contribution to the future of science. It consisted in putting all material beings on the same level as being mere creatures. Unlike in the pagan Greek cosmos, there could be no divine bodies in the Christian cosmos. All bodies, heavenly and terrestrial, were now on the same footing, on the same level. this made it eventually possible to assume that the motion of the moon and the fall of a body on earth could be governed by the same law of gravitation. The assumption would have been a sacrilege in the eyes of anyone in the Greek pantheistic tradition, or in any similar tradition in any of the ancient cultures.” “Finally, man figured in the Christian dogma of creation as a being specially created in the image of God. This image consisted both in man’s rationality as somehow sharing in God’s own rationality and in man’s condition as an ethical being with eternal responsibility for his actions. Man’s reflection on his own rationality had therefore to give him confidence that his created mind could fathom the rationality of the created realm.” “At the same time, the very createdness could caution man to guard against the ever-present temptation to dictate to nature what it ought to be. The eventual rise of the experimental method owes much to that Christian matrix.”(Jaki,Stanley, Christ and Science, Realveiw Books)
God Created the Heavens… Created life and being are not only bound by the dimension of time, but by space also. God created the heavens; space, in which to place the world, the planets, the nations.
Thou, even thou, art Lord alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee.(Nehemiah 9:6)
The expression, “the heavens”, in the Hebrew of Gensis 1:1, “HA Shemayim“, is plural. By the New Testament Revelation we learn that there are three heavens, each containing the other. There is the atmosphere around the earth, where clouds and birds are seen.
Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.(Acts 14:17)
Then there is the expanse which we call “space”, in which the planets and stars and galaxies are set.
For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.(Isaiah 13:10)
Finally there is the highest heaven, the place where God’s throne is and where He dwells. When Solomon dedicated the temple, he prayed repeatedly that in the variety of circumstances and trials the Jews should find themselves in that “You would hear from heaven, your dwelling place…” and deliver the people.
Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the Lord’s thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is.(Deuteronomy 10:14)
God created … the earth…All created life and existence is bound by three dimensions; Time, Space and Matter. We are all something, somewhere, and exist at some time. But we are not God, nor are we a ‘part of God’. We can only be what God made us to be, (Human, flesh and blood, mortal, male or female), and we can only exist when and where He placed us according to his pleasure. (I used to wish I lived in the pioneer days, but I live now, not then!).
God created us. This implies his ultimate ownership of us, and our accountability to Him. This is why there is a “creation controversy”, one doesn’t need to be a theologian to perceive that if I was created by someone, I owe that Person my worship, and accountability at the very least.
Recognizing reality means accepting the Creator/creation distinction, as well as the Divinely ordained limits of time, space, and matter, as ordained by that Creator for our own good and His glory. He made us who we are, and set us where and when we exist. It is His definition of our humanity that counts because our existence is owed to His good will.
In spite of their "education", advanced degrees and, in some cases, very high IQs, liberals brazenly refuse to accept that fundamental truth of our very existence. Thank you for posting this and may you (and all readers of this this thread) continue to enjoy the rich Blessings of God Almighty.
I never pretend to understand the wisdon of God. But I can't understand how murderous Islamists, Boston Bombers, Hitler or Pol Pot, among others, could give Him pleasure.
I found a spreadsheet that equates what’s happening today to the Bible, in timeline format. have you seen it?
Proof he loves us!
The first sentence of the biblical texts as outlined here is indicative of how God arranged that man would participate in revealing His Name; that He would use the spoken Word to teach and save, being a present Help through that same Word. This “beginning” is what Adam taught his children. Generations thereafter teach the same. The mood, tense, and person all bring the reader/hearer into Truth. There are many ways one could express creation and the beginning of time, but fallen man, left to his own devices would have been too clever by half.
No I haven’t but am willing to
Eight on Fester, that is a very profound way of putting it. I neveer thought about the way the mood and tense really do grip us and bring us all in..
I meant to say “Right on” LOL
For every one of those truly evil creatures serving Satan, consider the many who are truly good such as Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert -- and that's just off the top of my head and only from within the past 30 years or so. Each one of those (and there are many others) is a witness to God's eternal Goodness. And, I'll hasten to add that the Lord's Divine Justice will be equally eternal and unyielding for the likes of those murderous Islamists, Boston Bombers, Hitler, Pol Pot and, notably, the equally vile Ted Kennedy, murderer and abortionist.
I thought for sure, you meant Fight On. :) A passing moment of levity in an otherwise serious thread.
...and his children's children and so on for a long time. If I did my math correctly, Noah was about 60 years old when Adam died. I could be wrong though but it is very interesting to think about. Noah talking to Adam...WOW!
there are those who believe in Gap theory between 1.1 and 1.2
Traditional Jewish dating has Adam’s death more than 150 years before Noah’s birth. I believe this is traditional Christian understanding as well.
Great post!
The Bible is historical fact. It is His story. :)
high IQs are not limited to liberals....
Yeah, but that gets to my point. Why did God create evil in the first place? A loving God should not have created frail creatures to live in eternal punishment. It would have been better not to be born than to be born and sent to hell.
God is not the author of evil. That was Satan of course. It was man's disobedience to the Lord, in what was the paradise of Eden, that led to the spread of evil in the world.
Lest you think I have all the answers and am just parroting a glib reply, I've pinged pastorbillrandles, the initiator of this thread to get his take.
I'll also add that there's one question I have in terms of evil: What happens when Satan is ultimately vanquished? Is there any chance that a Heavenly being might go rogue again. Presuming that there's free will in Heaven, will its inhabitants be prevented from even considering evil for all of eternity?
Revelation — the separation of the sheep from the goats — forever.
But God created Satan knowing what Satan was going to do, and created Satan anyway. And in doing so, God created evil, the source of evil.
And infinity is a long time. Who knows if there will be another war of angels.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.