For a thousand years, Satan will wander to and fro in the desolate earth to behold the results of his rebellion against the law of God. During this time his sufferings are intense. Since his fall his life of unceasing activity has banished reflection; but he is now deprived of his power and left to contemplate the part which he has acted since first he rebelled against the government of heaven, and to look forward with trembling and terror to the dreadful future when he must suffer for all the evil that he has done and be punished for the sins that he has caused to be committed.
As the ransomed ones are welcomed to the City of God, there rings out upon the air an exultant cry of adoration. The two Adams are about to meet. The Son of God is standing with outstretched arms to receive the father of our race--the being whom He created, who sinned against his Maker, and for whose sin the marks of the crucifixion are borne upon the Saviour's form. As Adam discerns the prints of the cruel nails, he does not fall upon the bosom of his Lord, but in humiliation casts himself at His feet, crying: "Worthy, worthy is the Lamb that was slain!" Tenderly the Saviour lifts him up and bids him look once more upon the Eden home from which he has so long been exiled.
After his expulsion from Eden, Adam's life on earth was filled with sorrow. Every dying leaf, every victim of sacrifice, every blight upon the fair face of nature, every stain upon man's purity, was a fresh reminder of his sin. Terrible was the agony of remorse as he beheld iniquity abounding, and, in answer to his warnings, met the reproaches cast upon himself as the cause of sin. With patient humility he bore, for nearly a thousand years, the penalty of transgression. Faithfully did he repent of his sin and trust in the merits of the promised Saviour, and he died in the hope of a resurrection. The Son of God redeemed man's failure and fall; and now, through the work of the atonement, Adam is reinstated in his first dominion.
Transported with joy, he beholds the trees that were once his delight--the very trees whose fruit he himself had gathered in the days of his innocence and joy. He sees the vines that his own hands have trained, the very flowers that he once loved to care for. His mind grasps the reality of the scene; he comprehends that this is indeed Eden restored, more lovely now than when he was banished from it. The Saviour leads him to the tree of life and plucks the glorious fruit and bids him eat. He looks about him and beholds a multitude of his family redeemed, standing in the Paradise of God. Then he casts his glittering crown at the feet of Jesus and, falling upon His breast, embraces the Redeemer. He touches the golden harp, and the vaults of heaven echo the triumphant song: "Worthy, worthy, worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and lives again!" The family of Adam take up the strain and cast their crowns at the Saviour's feet as they bow before Him in adoration.
This reunion is witnessed by the angels who wept at the fall of Adam and rejoiced when Jesus, after His resurrection, ascended to heaven, having opened the grave for all who should believe on His name. Now they behold the work of redemption accomplished, and they unite their voices in the song of praise.
To God's people the captivity of Satan will bring gladness and rejoicing. Says the prophet: "It shall come to pass in the day that Jehovah shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy trouble, and from the hard service wherein thou wast made to serve, that thou shalt take up this parable against the king of Babylon [here representing Satan], and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! . . . Jehovah hath broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of the rulers; that smote the peoples in wrath with a continual stroke, that ruled the nations in anger, with a persecution that none restrained." Verses 3-6, R.V.
During the thousand years between the first and the second resurrection the judgment of the wicked takes place. The apostle Paul points to this judgment as an event that follows the second advent. "Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts." 1 Corinthians 4:5. Daniel declares that when the Ancient of Days came, "judgment was given to the saints of the Most High." Daniel 7:22. At this time the righteous reign as kings and priests unto God. John in the Revelation says: "I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them." "They shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years." Revelation 20:4, 6. It is at this time that, as foretold by Paul, "the saints shall judge the world." 1 Corinthians 6:2. In union with Christ they judge the wicked, comparing their acts with the statute book, the Bible, and deciding every case according to the deeds done in the body. Then the portion which the wicked must suffer is meted out, according to their works; and it is recorded against their names in the book of death.
Satan also and evil angels are judged by Christ and His people. Says Paul: "Know ye not that we shall judge angels?" Verse 3. And Jude declares that "the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, He hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." Jude 6.
At the close of the thousand years the second resurrection will take place. Then the wicked will be raised from the dead and appear before God for the execution of "the judgment written." Thus the revelator, after describing the resurrection of the righteous, says: "The rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished." Revelation 20:5. And Isaiah declares, concerning the wicked: "They shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited." Isaiah 24:22.
As we enter the kingdom of God, there to spend eternity, the trials and the difficulties and the perplexities that we have had here will sink into insignificance. Our life will measure with the life of God. There, immortal minds will contemplate with never-failing delight the wonders of creative power, the mysteries of redeeming love. There will be no cruel, deceiving foe to tempt to forgetfulness of God. Every faculty will be developed, every capacity increased. The acquirement of knowledge will not weary the mind or exhaust the energies. There the grandest enterprises may be carried forward, the loftiest aspirations reached, the highest ambitions realized; and still there will arise new heights to surmount, new wonders to admire, new truths to comprehend, fresh objects to call forth the powers of mind and soul and body.
The Lord has given me a view of other worlds. Wings were given me, and an angel attended me from the city to a place that was bright and glorious. The grass of the place was living green, and the birds there warbled a sweet song. The inhabitants of the place were of all sizes; they were noble, majestic, and lovely. They bore the express image of Jesus, and their countenances beamed with holy joy, expressive of the freedom and happiness of the place. I asked one of them why they were so much more lovely than those on the earth. The reply was, "We have lived in strict obedience to the commandments of God, and have not fallen by disobedience, like those on the earth." Then I saw two trees, one looked much like the tree of life in the city. The fruit of both looked beautiful, but of one they could not eat. They had power to eat of both, but were forbidden to eat of one. Then my attending angel said to me, "None in this place have tasted of the forbidden tree; but if they should eat, they would fall."
Then the angel said, "You must go back, and if you are faithful, you, with the 144,000, shall have the privilege of visiting all the worlds and viewing the handiwork of God. (My note: These particular words were written in the 1850’s. Why did the angel say this to her? Because the Lord knew that very soon there would be a much greater interest in the subject of life on other planets.)
Long have we waited for our Saviour's return. But none the less sure is the promise. Soon we shall be in our promised home. There Jesus will lead us beside the living stream flowing from the throne of God and will explain to us the dark providences through which on this earth He brought us in order to perfect our characters. There we shall behold with undimmed vision the beauties of Eden restored.
All the treasures of the universe will be open to the study of God's redeemed. Unfettered by mortality, they wing their tireless flight to worlds afar. With unutterable delight the children of earth enter into the joy and the wisdom of unfallen beings. They share the treasures of knowledge and understanding gained through ages upon ages in contemplation of God's handiwork. As Jesus opens before them the riches of redemption, and the amazing achievements in the great controversy with Satan, the hearts of the ransomed thrill with more fervent devotion, and with more rapturous joy they sweep the harps of gold; and ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands of voices unite to swell the mighty chorus of praise.
One pulse of harmony and gladness beats through the vast creation. From Him who created all, flow life and light and gladness, throughout the realms of illimitable space. From the minutest atom to the greatest world, all things, animate and inanimate, in their unshadowed beauty and perfect joy, declare that God is love.
Showing posts with label Sci-fi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sci-fi. Show all posts
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Jesus as one man had achieved the impossible. He had obeyed in a world of sin, refuting the charge that God’s laws are too harsh. He had offered Himself as the sacrifice in man’s place, refuting the charge that God doesn’t care. And! By doing both He also refuted the charge that God is some sort of egomaniac demanding worship without anything in return. God Himself in the person of Christ showed just how much he really does care about His creatures. Philippians 2:5-11 says “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of [things] in heaven, and [things] in earth, and [things] under the earth; And [that] every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ [is] Lord, to the glory of God the Father. “
I once worked with a man I’ll call “Ned” who asked me “how can they say Christ was tempted in all things when He was never molested as a child?” It’s a worthwhile question to consider. Hebrews 4:5 does say “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Ned’s reasoning in part came from a lack of understanding as to the nature of the first and second deaths and many of the other truths we’ve been discussing. As wonderful as it is to read the four gospels and focus on Christ dying a gruesome, horrible, physical death, it’s in light of the overall background theme of the conflict between good and evil that has been going on in every generation that makes the cross of much greater value.
When I explained to him the meaning of the separation and the Father forsaking the Son on the cross it help him to understand better. As well, to be tempted in all points may not mean every actual sin. For instance it’s a sin to eat drink or smoke things that damage you body. Your health is a gift from God so alcohol, cigarettes and street drugs are not things true Christians will have anything to do with. Tobacco did not exist in Bible time except in the Americas, which had no contact with the Holy land at the time. To be tempted in all points really means every kind of sin. No one had fancy sports cars then. There would still have been the same prideful “because I can afford this and you can’t, I’m better than you” attitude in those who looked at their chariots the same way some people look at cars today. I’m sure you get my point.
If Jesus were only a normal man living a life of sin, His sin would have been enough to keep Him out of Heaven even if He did become perfect while on earth. He had to have lived a perfect life for the whole time He was here. If He was a perfect man, (but only a man) and died, He would have only been able to save one other man, and He would not have been able to get out of the grave Himself, because someone has to pay for sin. It is because He was God, therefore infinite, that He could make an infinite sacrifice and save as many as will come to Him. It is important to note that as God alone, He could not save man because it was man that sinned and man must die for sin. Therefore, for the infinite God to make this infinite sacrifice, the infinite God had to become a finite man. Only He truly has life in Himself because God is the creator and not a created being. All that life was wrapped up in the person of Jesus Christ and offered on the cross to pay the debt mankind owes.
Consider the words of Ephesians 2:8-10 “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: [it is] the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” No one can make themselves good enough for God. Think about what it would have been like though if humans could make themselves good enough for God? Then the Lord would owe us salvation, wouldn’t He? Who then would be the highest authority in the universe? Though it is not possible for us to make ourselves good enough for God, His plan of salvation had to play out the way it did in order to preserve His integrity and legal authority as King of the Universe.
And the cross also shows the pain sin has caused the heart of the Lord. With one member of the Trinity coming to earth with the approval of the other two, it was God’s way of acting out how much He hurts when any of us do anything wrong. Isaiah 49:15 and the first part of 16 says ....”Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.”
Romans 3:26 speaks about how through the plan of salvation God is both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” at the same time. The penalty for sin was death, but because God took that penalty upon Himself man could live and have a second chance. Is that what you’d like to have? If you’ve never done so before I would invite you to ask Jesus to be you Saviour right now.
I once worked with a man I’ll call “Ned” who asked me “how can they say Christ was tempted in all things when He was never molested as a child?” It’s a worthwhile question to consider. Hebrews 4:5 does say “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Ned’s reasoning in part came from a lack of understanding as to the nature of the first and second deaths and many of the other truths we’ve been discussing. As wonderful as it is to read the four gospels and focus on Christ dying a gruesome, horrible, physical death, it’s in light of the overall background theme of the conflict between good and evil that has been going on in every generation that makes the cross of much greater value.
When I explained to him the meaning of the separation and the Father forsaking the Son on the cross it help him to understand better. As well, to be tempted in all points may not mean every actual sin. For instance it’s a sin to eat drink or smoke things that damage you body. Your health is a gift from God so alcohol, cigarettes and street drugs are not things true Christians will have anything to do with. Tobacco did not exist in Bible time except in the Americas, which had no contact with the Holy land at the time. To be tempted in all points really means every kind of sin. No one had fancy sports cars then. There would still have been the same prideful “because I can afford this and you can’t, I’m better than you” attitude in those who looked at their chariots the same way some people look at cars today. I’m sure you get my point.
If Jesus were only a normal man living a life of sin, His sin would have been enough to keep Him out of Heaven even if He did become perfect while on earth. He had to have lived a perfect life for the whole time He was here. If He was a perfect man, (but only a man) and died, He would have only been able to save one other man, and He would not have been able to get out of the grave Himself, because someone has to pay for sin. It is because He was God, therefore infinite, that He could make an infinite sacrifice and save as many as will come to Him. It is important to note that as God alone, He could not save man because it was man that sinned and man must die for sin. Therefore, for the infinite God to make this infinite sacrifice, the infinite God had to become a finite man. Only He truly has life in Himself because God is the creator and not a created being. All that life was wrapped up in the person of Jesus Christ and offered on the cross to pay the debt mankind owes.
Consider the words of Ephesians 2:8-10 “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: [it is] the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” No one can make themselves good enough for God. Think about what it would have been like though if humans could make themselves good enough for God? Then the Lord would owe us salvation, wouldn’t He? Who then would be the highest authority in the universe? Though it is not possible for us to make ourselves good enough for God, His plan of salvation had to play out the way it did in order to preserve His integrity and legal authority as King of the Universe.
And the cross also shows the pain sin has caused the heart of the Lord. With one member of the Trinity coming to earth with the approval of the other two, it was God’s way of acting out how much He hurts when any of us do anything wrong. Isaiah 49:15 and the first part of 16 says ....”Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.”
Romans 3:26 speaks about how through the plan of salvation God is both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” at the same time. The penalty for sin was death, but because God took that penalty upon Himself man could live and have a second chance. Is that what you’d like to have? If you’ve never done so before I would invite you to ask Jesus to be you Saviour right now.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Daniel and the Revelation, page 635 also says “We call (Miller’s) investigations a consistent study of the prophecies, because he adopted a sound rule of interpretation. This lies at the base of every religious reformation, and of every advance movement in prophetic language. This rule is to take all the language of the Scriptures, just as we would that of any other book, to be literal, unless the context or the laws of language require it to be understood figuratively; and to let scripture interpret scripture. True, on a vital point he made a mistake, as will be explained hereafter; but in principle, and in a great number of particulars, he was correct. He was on the right road, and made an immense advance over every theological system of his day.”
The fact that Miller was right about so much combined with the practicalities of his message had the effect of testing the entire Christian world as to whether they really were sincere or not. Think about it. If you were told Jesus was coming back this Thursday, how would that make you feel? Would you be afraid, or would you say “I can’t wait to see Him”? It’s a principle that for every thing God does, Satan finds ways to counterfeit the Lord’s workings.
Have you ever pondered the meaning of 2 Thessalonians 2:11&12? “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Why would God send someone a lie? Well, think about it this way; Miller preached the truth and they rejected it. The message went everywhere Christianity had. When they heard the message, they were all convicted that what they currently believed in was not right. However, since they did reject the message, they were now left with nothing. What they did believe in wasn’t true and didn’t work and they knew it. So they had to turn to new ideas that were also untrue. It’s an act of mercy for the Lord to have allowed it to happen to allow for people’s free choice.
Daniel and the Revelation, page 661 “The acceptance by Protestantism of the first angel's message would have enabled the church to become a light to ‘all nations.’ But betraying her trust by her rejection of the message, she left the nations without the witness of present truth that they might have had, to grope in the darkness of error and superstition resulting from the intoxicating and stupefying influences of the system of false doctrines she had built up and refused to relinquish.”
There are of course, as many counterfeits to the truth in this world as there are people it seems. There are a few though we could almost call “great counterfeits” such as secularism (trying to build a world without God or at least one where religious faith is nothing more than a fairy tale), rationalism (the belief that there is no such thing as absolute truth) evolution and communism. They came to approximately the same generation of people that heard and rejected Millers teaching and are now world-wide in their influence. The Christian world has embraced these errors to one degree or another and as the Christian world has expanded to include the entire world today, these errors have come along with it. The French Revolution had brought in militant atheism, the basis for these counterfeits. However, the Revolution fell apart and because of the horrors of the reign of terror that generation stayed with the Bible. Once the Great Disappointment happened those who were opposed to the Bible grew bolder when they saw such a movement fall apart after their one critical mistake.
This boldness is the basis for the great moral decline of the last 50 years especially. However, the trend was already in motion well before that. Many today should be able to identify with this description of Albert Einstein’s childhood from “Giants of Science” page 146, a direct result of growing up within the changed religious culture that resulted from the rejection of the Advent message. “Although Einstein’s parents were Jewish, they were not interested in any religion and sent Albert to the nearest school, which was a Catholic elementary school. At the age of ten he was sent to a ‘secondary’ school, called a Gymnasium, which prepared students to enter the universities. ... While in the Gymnasium, Einstein received instruction in the Jewish religion. He had learned about Catholicism in elementary school. As a result he gained a lasting respect for the ethical values of religion but felt that all religious rituals were superstitions designed to prevent man from thinking independently.”
"Today it seems that the great Hebrew-Christian moral tradition, the most ancient part of our heritage, is crumbling to pieces before our very eyes. . . . The faith in science has grown so strong, so self-sufficient, so deeply rooted in the processes of our society, that many of those who feel it have lost all desire to combine it with any other. . . . The man who trusts a physical science to describe the world finds no conceivable place into which to fit a deity. . . . The philosophies that express their [men's] basic interests today are no longer concerned, as they were in the nineteenth century, with vindicating a belief in God and immortality. Those ideas have simply dropped out of any serious attempt to reach an understanding of the world. . . . The present conflict of religious faith with science is no longer with a scientific explanation of the world, but with a scientific explanation of religion. The really revolutionary effect of the scientific faith on religion today is not its new view of the universe, but its new view of religion." John Herman Randall, "The Forces That Are Destroying Traditional Beliefs," Current History, June, 1929, pp. 359-361, quoted in Daniel and the Revelation, page 659.
That is the real reason the world is the way it is today. That’s what’s really going on. Our world is building to the time of trouble Daniel 12:1 speaks of. As smart as we are we are not God and we cannot solve all our problems on our own. Revelation 11:18 The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come, And the time of the dead, that they should be judged, And that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints, And those who fear Your name, small and great, And should destroy those who destroy the earth. No matter how hard anyone tries, human selfishness is still there. It was to solve that problem of selfishness that God sent His Son into the world to save it.And of course the two great counterfeits we have been discussing the most here in this blog are the twin ideas that science has defeated the Bible and the fact that science fiction can meet the spiritual needs of those who adopt this purely rationalistic world view.
Thomas Bertonneau and Kim Paffenroth are the authors of “The Truth Is Out There – Christian Faith and the Classics of TV Science Fiction”. Their title is obviously borrowed from the end line of each episode of the TV show “The X Files”. On page 10 they say: “It is not scientific investigation and knowledge that is an enemy of Christian belief …. Rightly understood, increasing our knowledge of creation results in greater understanding and appreciation of the Creator.”
On page 163 they say: “Whether it is H. G. Wells The War of the Worlds (1897) or Stanely Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the well-wrought science-fiction story nearly always carries at least a tinge of what philosopher of politics and history Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) calls the theophanic event: the in-breaking on everyday life of a sublime vision of things that says to its witness that this rather than the narrow everyday assumption about life and the world is the truth, and says so in such a way as to demand from the witness a total transformation of his or her existence.” (Emphasis the author’s)
At same time all these counterfeits have been developing the Lord has also been working to restore the real truth as well. Truths like the ones we looked at in this chapter that have been ignored or misunderstood by most believers are now being showcased again. More than that though, the truth about our origins and what life itself is about are now being proclaimed worldwide. You didn’t just stumble across this blog; God guided you to it for a theophanic event of your own. That event is contained within our final two chapters. There you will see that what you thought was a boring old story, that of Adam and Eve, is just as exciting as Star Wars, Star Trek and every single other science fiction franchise combined
Read on, and be amazed at what you see.
The fact that Miller was right about so much combined with the practicalities of his message had the effect of testing the entire Christian world as to whether they really were sincere or not. Think about it. If you were told Jesus was coming back this Thursday, how would that make you feel? Would you be afraid, or would you say “I can’t wait to see Him”? It’s a principle that for every thing God does, Satan finds ways to counterfeit the Lord’s workings.
Have you ever pondered the meaning of 2 Thessalonians 2:11&12? “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Why would God send someone a lie? Well, think about it this way; Miller preached the truth and they rejected it. The message went everywhere Christianity had. When they heard the message, they were all convicted that what they currently believed in was not right. However, since they did reject the message, they were now left with nothing. What they did believe in wasn’t true and didn’t work and they knew it. So they had to turn to new ideas that were also untrue. It’s an act of mercy for the Lord to have allowed it to happen to allow for people’s free choice.
Daniel and the Revelation, page 661 “The acceptance by Protestantism of the first angel's message would have enabled the church to become a light to ‘all nations.’ But betraying her trust by her rejection of the message, she left the nations without the witness of present truth that they might have had, to grope in the darkness of error and superstition resulting from the intoxicating and stupefying influences of the system of false doctrines she had built up and refused to relinquish.”
There are of course, as many counterfeits to the truth in this world as there are people it seems. There are a few though we could almost call “great counterfeits” such as secularism (trying to build a world without God or at least one where religious faith is nothing more than a fairy tale), rationalism (the belief that there is no such thing as absolute truth) evolution and communism. They came to approximately the same generation of people that heard and rejected Millers teaching and are now world-wide in their influence. The Christian world has embraced these errors to one degree or another and as the Christian world has expanded to include the entire world today, these errors have come along with it. The French Revolution had brought in militant atheism, the basis for these counterfeits. However, the Revolution fell apart and because of the horrors of the reign of terror that generation stayed with the Bible. Once the Great Disappointment happened those who were opposed to the Bible grew bolder when they saw such a movement fall apart after their one critical mistake.
This boldness is the basis for the great moral decline of the last 50 years especially. However, the trend was already in motion well before that. Many today should be able to identify with this description of Albert Einstein’s childhood from “Giants of Science” page 146, a direct result of growing up within the changed religious culture that resulted from the rejection of the Advent message. “Although Einstein’s parents were Jewish, they were not interested in any religion and sent Albert to the nearest school, which was a Catholic elementary school. At the age of ten he was sent to a ‘secondary’ school, called a Gymnasium, which prepared students to enter the universities. ... While in the Gymnasium, Einstein received instruction in the Jewish religion. He had learned about Catholicism in elementary school. As a result he gained a lasting respect for the ethical values of religion but felt that all religious rituals were superstitions designed to prevent man from thinking independently.”
"Today it seems that the great Hebrew-Christian moral tradition, the most ancient part of our heritage, is crumbling to pieces before our very eyes. . . . The faith in science has grown so strong, so self-sufficient, so deeply rooted in the processes of our society, that many of those who feel it have lost all desire to combine it with any other. . . . The man who trusts a physical science to describe the world finds no conceivable place into which to fit a deity. . . . The philosophies that express their [men's] basic interests today are no longer concerned, as they were in the nineteenth century, with vindicating a belief in God and immortality. Those ideas have simply dropped out of any serious attempt to reach an understanding of the world. . . . The present conflict of religious faith with science is no longer with a scientific explanation of the world, but with a scientific explanation of religion. The really revolutionary effect of the scientific faith on religion today is not its new view of the universe, but its new view of religion." John Herman Randall, "The Forces That Are Destroying Traditional Beliefs," Current History, June, 1929, pp. 359-361, quoted in Daniel and the Revelation, page 659.
That is the real reason the world is the way it is today. That’s what’s really going on. Our world is building to the time of trouble Daniel 12:1 speaks of. As smart as we are we are not God and we cannot solve all our problems on our own. Revelation 11:18 The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come, And the time of the dead, that they should be judged, And that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints, And those who fear Your name, small and great, And should destroy those who destroy the earth. No matter how hard anyone tries, human selfishness is still there. It was to solve that problem of selfishness that God sent His Son into the world to save it.And of course the two great counterfeits we have been discussing the most here in this blog are the twin ideas that science has defeated the Bible and the fact that science fiction can meet the spiritual needs of those who adopt this purely rationalistic world view.
Thomas Bertonneau and Kim Paffenroth are the authors of “The Truth Is Out There – Christian Faith and the Classics of TV Science Fiction”. Their title is obviously borrowed from the end line of each episode of the TV show “The X Files”. On page 10 they say: “It is not scientific investigation and knowledge that is an enemy of Christian belief …. Rightly understood, increasing our knowledge of creation results in greater understanding and appreciation of the Creator.”
On page 163 they say: “Whether it is H. G. Wells The War of the Worlds (1897) or Stanely Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the well-wrought science-fiction story nearly always carries at least a tinge of what philosopher of politics and history Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) calls the theophanic event: the in-breaking on everyday life of a sublime vision of things that says to its witness that this rather than the narrow everyday assumption about life and the world is the truth, and says so in such a way as to demand from the witness a total transformation of his or her existence.” (Emphasis the author’s)
At same time all these counterfeits have been developing the Lord has also been working to restore the real truth as well. Truths like the ones we looked at in this chapter that have been ignored or misunderstood by most believers are now being showcased again. More than that though, the truth about our origins and what life itself is about are now being proclaimed worldwide. You didn’t just stumble across this blog; God guided you to it for a theophanic event of your own. That event is contained within our final two chapters. There you will see that what you thought was a boring old story, that of Adam and Eve, is just as exciting as Star Wars, Star Trek and every single other science fiction franchise combined
Read on, and be amazed at what you see.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
This leads us to secret key number three, in which we look at what exactly Jesus is doing up in heaven right now in a very brief fashion. Jesus went to heaven as a real person in a real body not as a ghost. Therefore He’s up there actually doing something. What is it? We get a clue from Acts 3:19-21 “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.” This quote is from the King James Version. Notice carefully that forgiveness does not come instantly, but at a later date, the “times of refreshing.” This is very important. Jesus does offer us peace now when we turn from sin. However, in light of this verse the offer comes in the form of an assurance, a promise for the future.
Allow me to illustrate the point with this example. Forgiveness is like buying a TV and paying for it with a cheque. You take home the TV from the store that day but the cheque takes another ten days to clear the bank. A cheque is accepted as good as cash but it isn’t actually cash. It’s a promissory note in essence. Well, every time you do something good an angel writes it down. Every time you do something bad, an angel writes it down. The Bible says that at some point, God is going to look at these lists. Though we have the promise of His forgiveness now if we will change our wicked ways and accept His death on the cross, the ‘paperwork’ won’t be complete until this ‘times of refreshing’ is.
Please take careful note as well of the order of events listed in that text. The times of refreshing takes place shortly before the Second Coming of Christ. First the refreshing comes, then Jesus returns, and finally the ‘restitution of all things’, which refers to God completely finishing the conflict between good and evil and making this world into a paradise again for all eternity. Revelation 14:7, a prophetic message for the last generation concurs by saying. “… Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come …” This verse is not saying the judgement will come, it is saying it has come. This is present tense English here.
The same idea is expressed in Daniel 8:14”And he said to me, ‘For two thousand three hundred days; then the sanctuary shall be cleansed.’” The exact nature of this time of refreshing is actually one of the most difficult theological concepts to grasp. To really understand this takes quite a lot of study so I will only give a brief overview here. When the Lord established Israel as a nation He instituted their Sanctuary and priesthood through all the laws He gave to Moses. The various rituals the Israelites were to participate in were all designed to teach symbolic lessons of what God would do to save the world through Jesus. There was a daily sacrifice of an innocent, pure lamb. This taught we all need Christ on a continual basis. Then there was a yearly calendar of religious holidays grouped into spring and fall. These taught the lesson of what would take place in the development of God’s plan of salvation through world history. The spring festivals taught lessons on the First Coming of Christ while the ones in the fall were designed to teach us about things near to the Second Coming of Jesus, the end of this world and the beginning of God’s new earth, a reestablished Garden of Eden for all His friends.
When an individual committed a sin and needed to go to the Temple and sacrifice, there was a specific process as to how it was done. First, the person in question confessed the sin over the lamb and killed it. Now the animal had symbolically taken the sin away. This was like the buying of the TV with the cheque. However, the process was not done at this point! The priest then took the blood of the lamb into the first main room of the Sanctuary, called the ‘Holy Place’. The sin was there symbolically for the rest of the year and day by day more and more sins symbolically ‘built up’, shall we say. Then once a year on the “Day of Atonement” the High Priest went into the inner chamber of the Sanctuary, called the ‘Most Holy place’. This was a special ritual in which one single, complete atonement was made for all the sins that the people had committed that year. The Sanctuary was now cleansed, or ‘refreshed’. The cheque had cleared the bank that day. While this was happening inside the temple the people were required to afflict their souls. It was a day for careful searching of heart to make sure everything was indeed right between each individual and the Lord. God promised He would forgive their sins and by accepting the special sacrifice of the High Priest, He made good on His promise.
According to Hebrews 8:1, 2 the earthly Sanctuary was only a copy of the original in Heaven. “Now this is the main point of the things we are saying: We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a Minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord erected, and not man.” To get even more information as to what this is we go to Daniel 7. Verses 9 and 10 say “I watched till thrones were put in place, And the Ancient of Days was seated; His garment was white as snow, And the hair of His head was like pure wool. His throne was a fiery flame, Its wheels a burning fire; A fiery stream issued And came forth from before Him. A thousand thousands ministered to Him; Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. The court was seated, And the books were opened.”
So the Sanctuary in Heaven is the throne room itself where God the Father appears here with 100 million angels. This room is vastly beyond anything humans can imagine (as another Bible /science fiction parallel, an attempt to imagine it is essentially what the Senate is in Star Wars). This cleansing time is a time of judgement. Verses 13 and 14 continue with “I was watching in the night visions, And behold, One like the Son of Man, Coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the Ancient of Days, And they brought Him near before Him. Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, Which shall not pass away, And His kingdom the one Which shall not be destroyed.”
Allow me to illustrate the point with this example. Forgiveness is like buying a TV and paying for it with a cheque. You take home the TV from the store that day but the cheque takes another ten days to clear the bank. A cheque is accepted as good as cash but it isn’t actually cash. It’s a promissory note in essence. Well, every time you do something good an angel writes it down. Every time you do something bad, an angel writes it down. The Bible says that at some point, God is going to look at these lists. Though we have the promise of His forgiveness now if we will change our wicked ways and accept His death on the cross, the ‘paperwork’ won’t be complete until this ‘times of refreshing’ is.
Please take careful note as well of the order of events listed in that text. The times of refreshing takes place shortly before the Second Coming of Christ. First the refreshing comes, then Jesus returns, and finally the ‘restitution of all things’, which refers to God completely finishing the conflict between good and evil and making this world into a paradise again for all eternity. Revelation 14:7, a prophetic message for the last generation concurs by saying. “… Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come …” This verse is not saying the judgement will come, it is saying it has come. This is present tense English here.
The same idea is expressed in Daniel 8:14”And he said to me, ‘For two thousand three hundred days; then the sanctuary shall be cleansed.’” The exact nature of this time of refreshing is actually one of the most difficult theological concepts to grasp. To really understand this takes quite a lot of study so I will only give a brief overview here. When the Lord established Israel as a nation He instituted their Sanctuary and priesthood through all the laws He gave to Moses. The various rituals the Israelites were to participate in were all designed to teach symbolic lessons of what God would do to save the world through Jesus. There was a daily sacrifice of an innocent, pure lamb. This taught we all need Christ on a continual basis. Then there was a yearly calendar of religious holidays grouped into spring and fall. These taught the lesson of what would take place in the development of God’s plan of salvation through world history. The spring festivals taught lessons on the First Coming of Christ while the ones in the fall were designed to teach us about things near to the Second Coming of Jesus, the end of this world and the beginning of God’s new earth, a reestablished Garden of Eden for all His friends.
When an individual committed a sin and needed to go to the Temple and sacrifice, there was a specific process as to how it was done. First, the person in question confessed the sin over the lamb and killed it. Now the animal had symbolically taken the sin away. This was like the buying of the TV with the cheque. However, the process was not done at this point! The priest then took the blood of the lamb into the first main room of the Sanctuary, called the ‘Holy Place’. The sin was there symbolically for the rest of the year and day by day more and more sins symbolically ‘built up’, shall we say. Then once a year on the “Day of Atonement” the High Priest went into the inner chamber of the Sanctuary, called the ‘Most Holy place’. This was a special ritual in which one single, complete atonement was made for all the sins that the people had committed that year. The Sanctuary was now cleansed, or ‘refreshed’. The cheque had cleared the bank that day. While this was happening inside the temple the people were required to afflict their souls. It was a day for careful searching of heart to make sure everything was indeed right between each individual and the Lord. God promised He would forgive their sins and by accepting the special sacrifice of the High Priest, He made good on His promise.
According to Hebrews 8:1, 2 the earthly Sanctuary was only a copy of the original in Heaven. “Now this is the main point of the things we are saying: We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a Minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord erected, and not man.” To get even more information as to what this is we go to Daniel 7. Verses 9 and 10 say “I watched till thrones were put in place, And the Ancient of Days was seated; His garment was white as snow, And the hair of His head was like pure wool. His throne was a fiery flame, Its wheels a burning fire; A fiery stream issued And came forth from before Him. A thousand thousands ministered to Him; Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. The court was seated, And the books were opened.”
So the Sanctuary in Heaven is the throne room itself where God the Father appears here with 100 million angels. This room is vastly beyond anything humans can imagine (as another Bible /science fiction parallel, an attempt to imagine it is essentially what the Senate is in Star Wars). This cleansing time is a time of judgement. Verses 13 and 14 continue with “I was watching in the night visions, And behold, One like the Son of Man, Coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the Ancient of Days, And they brought Him near before Him. Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, Which shall not pass away, And His kingdom the one Which shall not be destroyed.”
Friday, February 5, 2010
If you’ve never heard of this concept before of the resurrection, it can be a little startling. We don’t become ghosts when we die means there’s very few people in heaven right now. So far it’s only Enoch, Moses, Elijah and a small handful of others who rose with Jesus the day He did. Enoch and Elijah were taken to heaven without having to die and Moses was resurrected. Jude 9 speaks of it and of course Moses and Elijah were both with Jesus when He was transfigured. The others were given a special resurrection early to illustrate what Jesus will do for His people when He returns again. Matthew 27:52, 53 speak of them.
The resurrection can be illustrated by a scene from the 1998 movie version of “Lost in Space” starring Matt LeBlanc of TV’s “Friends”. In this one particular scene the family is being attacked by spider-like alien creatures. They barely get back to their own ship alive leaving the robot to continue fending these creatures off. Then when the robot is overwhelmed Will, the youngest boy, steps into a special holographic chamber and takes direct control of the robot because he can fight the aliens better than the robot can. After a certain point though, things are still going badly. So before the ‘spiders’ destroy the robot, the boy downloads all the robot’s software onto a disc and later builds a new robot. He then inserts the disc and reloads everything the old robot once had.
You and I are in a battle here on earth with an alien force out to destroy us. That force is Satan and his angels. They are doing everything they can to lead us into temptation and get us to cut ourselves off from God. They are constantly on the attack and they never give up. What Jesus did in living a perfect life was to defeat satin by being tempted the same way we are and never giving in. Now that He is in heaven, if we will surrender ourselves to Him, it’s like Jesus lives out that life in us again. We are not robots in that we have free choice. However, we have inherited weaknesses and tendencies toward sin. It is easier for us to give in than to stand firm. Only through God’s power in our lives can we have hope.
There comes a time though when every one of us will die. What Jesus does then is ‘downloads our minds’ essentially. On the day Jesus returns again He will use the same power He did when He originally created this world to recreate new bodies for his friends. Then He will ‘reload their minds’ into those bodies. Again however, this is only for those who have surrendered to Him and are His faithful followers. There’s two resurrections, one to take His friends to heaven and one to rid the universe of those who hate truth and goodness. They’re brought back to life only for a short time to show them all how much God did try to save them.
This explains why there is so much multi-level prophecy in the Bible. From any one person’s point of view, they face death, go into their graves, and come up on the other side not knowing anything about the time that passed in between. Remember to them it’s like being asleep. So in any one generation when God spoke through a prophet and gave a promise of reward to the faithful or punishment to the unfaithful, though they were going to receive whichever reward at the end of history; from their point of view that end would be as soon as they died. The prophecies were worded in such a way as to appeal to the needs of the immediate generation receiving them and also appeal to the later generations who would be influenced in their respective times by the current generation’s actions as world history rolled on.
The resurrection can be illustrated by a scene from the 1998 movie version of “Lost in Space” starring Matt LeBlanc of TV’s “Friends”. In this one particular scene the family is being attacked by spider-like alien creatures. They barely get back to their own ship alive leaving the robot to continue fending these creatures off. Then when the robot is overwhelmed Will, the youngest boy, steps into a special holographic chamber and takes direct control of the robot because he can fight the aliens better than the robot can. After a certain point though, things are still going badly. So before the ‘spiders’ destroy the robot, the boy downloads all the robot’s software onto a disc and later builds a new robot. He then inserts the disc and reloads everything the old robot once had.
You and I are in a battle here on earth with an alien force out to destroy us. That force is Satan and his angels. They are doing everything they can to lead us into temptation and get us to cut ourselves off from God. They are constantly on the attack and they never give up. What Jesus did in living a perfect life was to defeat satin by being tempted the same way we are and never giving in. Now that He is in heaven, if we will surrender ourselves to Him, it’s like Jesus lives out that life in us again. We are not robots in that we have free choice. However, we have inherited weaknesses and tendencies toward sin. It is easier for us to give in than to stand firm. Only through God’s power in our lives can we have hope.
There comes a time though when every one of us will die. What Jesus does then is ‘downloads our minds’ essentially. On the day Jesus returns again He will use the same power He did when He originally created this world to recreate new bodies for his friends. Then He will ‘reload their minds’ into those bodies. Again however, this is only for those who have surrendered to Him and are His faithful followers. There’s two resurrections, one to take His friends to heaven and one to rid the universe of those who hate truth and goodness. They’re brought back to life only for a short time to show them all how much God did try to save them.
This explains why there is so much multi-level prophecy in the Bible. From any one person’s point of view, they face death, go into their graves, and come up on the other side not knowing anything about the time that passed in between. Remember to them it’s like being asleep. So in any one generation when God spoke through a prophet and gave a promise of reward to the faithful or punishment to the unfaithful, though they were going to receive whichever reward at the end of history; from their point of view that end would be as soon as they died. The prophecies were worded in such a way as to appeal to the needs of the immediate generation receiving them and also appeal to the later generations who would be influenced in their respective times by the current generation’s actions as world history rolled on.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
One very important thing must be mentioned here. Jesus warned of “false Christs” and “false prophets” in the last days. Another description Jesus gave was of “wolves in sheep’s clothing”. Satan has the ability to pull of miracles as well and will use that ability to the best advantage he can in order to lead as many of God’s people astray as possible. Though Jesus offered many miracles and healings as proof of His divinity, in our time miracles themselves cannot be enough. We have to be ready to test a miracle by the Bible. If that miracle is the kind of miracle God would do and not just some cheap, dime store psychic’s trick; if that miracle has a purpose and a message behind it that agrees with the principles of the Bible; and if that miracle glorifies God; then it is a true miracle. If the purpose of the miracle is just to put on a big show and wow those who see it without really helping them in life or if the one performing the miracle ends up getting all the credit for it, even if that person claims to get his or her power from God, then it is a false miracle. No matter how powerful and compelling it may seem to be, “I was there” can’t enough today.
“I was there.” “I saw Jesus” is what the disciples have said. His miracles and infallible proofs did come from God and do agree with God’s word. “I was there, I saw Him too” is what Paul said. “I was there”, is my own personal testimony both to the moon landings and to Jesus. I saw Him because I was full of guilt and He made me clean and pure again is what anyone today can say if they will turn to Jesus. Just like the moon landings, Jesus is real. I know because I was there.
From an engineering point of view, the moon landings were the highest and greatest technological achievement our modern world has created. Here’s something interesting to think about. How many men have walked on the moon? Twelve! How many disciples did Jesus have? Twelve! What does that tell you? I agree wholeheartedly with Marvin Moore, whom I quoted in the last chapter. This event definitely was the crowning achievement of man’s quest to reclaim heaven.
After all my attempts to set my friend Neil straight he always counters quite firmly with one statement “if it’s really true that they landed on the moon, why haven’t they gone back?” We’ll examine this next.
“I was there.” “I saw Jesus” is what the disciples have said. His miracles and infallible proofs did come from God and do agree with God’s word. “I was there, I saw Him too” is what Paul said. “I was there”, is my own personal testimony both to the moon landings and to Jesus. I saw Him because I was full of guilt and He made me clean and pure again is what anyone today can say if they will turn to Jesus. Just like the moon landings, Jesus is real. I know because I was there.
From an engineering point of view, the moon landings were the highest and greatest technological achievement our modern world has created. Here’s something interesting to think about. How many men have walked on the moon? Twelve! How many disciples did Jesus have? Twelve! What does that tell you? I agree wholeheartedly with Marvin Moore, whom I quoted in the last chapter. This event definitely was the crowning achievement of man’s quest to reclaim heaven.
After all my attempts to set my friend Neil straight he always counters quite firmly with one statement “if it’s really true that they landed on the moon, why haven’t they gone back?” We’ll examine this next.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
THINGS MAY WE THINK WE KNOW BUT REALLY DON’T
Job 38:1-7: “Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said: “Who is this who darkens counsel By words without knowledge? Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
We looked at some of this already and saw how the rest of the universe was here to watch God create this solar system. This issue of creation versus evolution is of course one of the greatest challenges modern man has ever made to the Lord Himself. Charles Darwin took a trip to the Galapagos Islands and saw how an isolated community of birds varied within its own species according to the needs each kind of bird had (microevolution, which does keep with Bible truth). From there the leap was made to all life forming out of other life (macroevolution, which is a fanciful guess). I ask you, although there was variation in these particular birds, why do we not see the same thing in every single lake in the world? Why are there so many of the exact same species of fish in lake after lake in a given area when these lakes are completely isolated form each other? God created one cat and it micro-evolved into the lion, ocelot, siamese housecat etc. He created one dog and it became the coyote, wolf, hound etc. However, cats have always been cats and dogs have always been dogs. Geologists went around saying “these are old rocks because they have old fossils in them”. At the same time biologists were saying “these fossils are old because they’re in old rocks”.
I once heard put it this way “Skepticism and that which is called science has to a large degree undermined the faith of the Christian world in their Bibles. Error and fables are gladly accepted, that they may pursue the path of self-indulgence and not be alarmed, for they are striving not to retain God in their knowledge. They say, ‘Tomorrow will be as this day and much more abundant.’ But in the midst of their unbelief and godless pleasure the shout of the archangel and the trump of God is heard.” And this way as well “The Bible Our Guide in Science.--We are dependent on the Bible for a knowledge of the early history of our world, of the creation of man, and of his fall. Remove the Word of God, and what can we expect but to be left to fables and conjectures and to that enfeebling of the intellect which is the sure result of entertaining error.”
In thinking of what the Lord asked Job … “who determined (the earth’s) measurements?” some other thoughts come to mind about this whole discourse. We may be able to identify the different types of cells in a blade of grass or the different organs in the human body. We may be able to determine what purpose they serve. But that does not mean we have the power to make them serve their purposes. It doesn’t mean we deserve credit for their existence. Neither does it mean that we’ll ever figure out how to make something so complicated out of nothing.
Once in a trivia book, I read that all the weeping willow trees in North America today are descended from a few seeds that fell out of Benjamin Franklin’s broom. Just three or four seeds that he planted spread out over the entire U.S. and Canada over the last two and a half centuries. What if we could genetically trace them back even farther? What if we could get back to the very first weeping willow tree that existed in the Garden of Eden? From that point on, with all our scientific knowledge, we still couldn’t prove whether this first tree was created by the Lord Himself or evolved from a previous tree. A geologist walking into the newly created garden would see things created in their mature state; therefore he would conclude that they are much older.
We cannot pierce the mysteries of what the Lord has chosen not to reveal to us. You can’t prove God was the creator by looking at his creation; you have to trust Him that He is.
Job 38:24 “By what way is light diffused, Or the east wind scattered over the earth?”
Wind doesn’t blow, it sucks. It is a result of temperature differences - that’s the most basic Grade Eight Science. Light is something different. We don’t really know what it is. Sir Isaac Newton was the 17th Century scientist who theorized that light is a particle. He named those particles Photons. In the 19th century scientists had enough evidence from their experimentation to dispute this. They thought light was a wave. Today, there is experimental evidence to support both theories and scientists have simply resigned themselves to admit that they don’t really know what light is. It seems to be both a particle and a wave. This, like the mystery of the shower curtain, is something we have to accept. It’s the same with creation.
Job 38:34 “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, That an abundance of water may cover you?”
Today we have public address systems with microphones, amplifiers and speakers that are capable of multiplying the sound of our voices to a much greater degree than we can normally speak. The music industry has various studio tricks to make a recorded voice sound much more full than is normal as well. One such trick is overdubbing, where a recording is made of music or singing and then re-recorded over itself a second time but slightly out of synchronization. If you are familiar with the group ABBA from the 1970’s, they used this technique and were quite popular. The story goes that their concerts could not duplicate the sound of their albums and fans were disappointed because of this.
Job 38:36 “Who has put wisdom in the mind? Or who has given understanding to the heart?”
When my wife Melissa spent a year and a half babysitting her friend’s child I watched that child learn to stand and speak it’s first words. I remember trying to describe concepts to him such as: one thing is under something else. I also remembered watching a documentary once in which people were trying to teach this concept of under to monkeys by sign language and the monkeys didn’t get it. To be able to make sense of what is at first gibberish to the point that you can think in a language is a miracle.
Job 38:1-7: “Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said: “Who is this who darkens counsel By words without knowledge? Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
We looked at some of this already and saw how the rest of the universe was here to watch God create this solar system. This issue of creation versus evolution is of course one of the greatest challenges modern man has ever made to the Lord Himself. Charles Darwin took a trip to the Galapagos Islands and saw how an isolated community of birds varied within its own species according to the needs each kind of bird had (microevolution, which does keep with Bible truth). From there the leap was made to all life forming out of other life (macroevolution, which is a fanciful guess). I ask you, although there was variation in these particular birds, why do we not see the same thing in every single lake in the world? Why are there so many of the exact same species of fish in lake after lake in a given area when these lakes are completely isolated form each other? God created one cat and it micro-evolved into the lion, ocelot, siamese housecat etc. He created one dog and it became the coyote, wolf, hound etc. However, cats have always been cats and dogs have always been dogs. Geologists went around saying “these are old rocks because they have old fossils in them”. At the same time biologists were saying “these fossils are old because they’re in old rocks”.
I once heard put it this way “Skepticism and that which is called science has to a large degree undermined the faith of the Christian world in their Bibles. Error and fables are gladly accepted, that they may pursue the path of self-indulgence and not be alarmed, for they are striving not to retain God in their knowledge. They say, ‘Tomorrow will be as this day and much more abundant.’ But in the midst of their unbelief and godless pleasure the shout of the archangel and the trump of God is heard.” And this way as well “The Bible Our Guide in Science.--We are dependent on the Bible for a knowledge of the early history of our world, of the creation of man, and of his fall. Remove the Word of God, and what can we expect but to be left to fables and conjectures and to that enfeebling of the intellect which is the sure result of entertaining error.”
In thinking of what the Lord asked Job … “who determined (the earth’s) measurements?” some other thoughts come to mind about this whole discourse. We may be able to identify the different types of cells in a blade of grass or the different organs in the human body. We may be able to determine what purpose they serve. But that does not mean we have the power to make them serve their purposes. It doesn’t mean we deserve credit for their existence. Neither does it mean that we’ll ever figure out how to make something so complicated out of nothing.
Once in a trivia book, I read that all the weeping willow trees in North America today are descended from a few seeds that fell out of Benjamin Franklin’s broom. Just three or four seeds that he planted spread out over the entire U.S. and Canada over the last two and a half centuries. What if we could genetically trace them back even farther? What if we could get back to the very first weeping willow tree that existed in the Garden of Eden? From that point on, with all our scientific knowledge, we still couldn’t prove whether this first tree was created by the Lord Himself or evolved from a previous tree. A geologist walking into the newly created garden would see things created in their mature state; therefore he would conclude that they are much older.
We cannot pierce the mysteries of what the Lord has chosen not to reveal to us. You can’t prove God was the creator by looking at his creation; you have to trust Him that He is.
Job 38:24 “By what way is light diffused, Or the east wind scattered over the earth?”
Wind doesn’t blow, it sucks. It is a result of temperature differences - that’s the most basic Grade Eight Science. Light is something different. We don’t really know what it is. Sir Isaac Newton was the 17th Century scientist who theorized that light is a particle. He named those particles Photons. In the 19th century scientists had enough evidence from their experimentation to dispute this. They thought light was a wave. Today, there is experimental evidence to support both theories and scientists have simply resigned themselves to admit that they don’t really know what light is. It seems to be both a particle and a wave. This, like the mystery of the shower curtain, is something we have to accept. It’s the same with creation.
Job 38:34 “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, That an abundance of water may cover you?”
Today we have public address systems with microphones, amplifiers and speakers that are capable of multiplying the sound of our voices to a much greater degree than we can normally speak. The music industry has various studio tricks to make a recorded voice sound much more full than is normal as well. One such trick is overdubbing, where a recording is made of music or singing and then re-recorded over itself a second time but slightly out of synchronization. If you are familiar with the group ABBA from the 1970’s, they used this technique and were quite popular. The story goes that their concerts could not duplicate the sound of their albums and fans were disappointed because of this.
Job 38:36 “Who has put wisdom in the mind? Or who has given understanding to the heart?”
When my wife Melissa spent a year and a half babysitting her friend’s child I watched that child learn to stand and speak it’s first words. I remember trying to describe concepts to him such as: one thing is under something else. I also remembered watching a documentary once in which people were trying to teach this concept of under to monkeys by sign language and the monkeys didn’t get it. To be able to make sense of what is at first gibberish to the point that you can think in a language is a miracle.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Job Learns What We All Must Post Two
No one knows for sure who Job was or when he lived. There is a “Jobab” listed in Genesis 10 and 1 Chronicles 1 that lived between Peleg and Abraham. Likely he’s the same person. If so, there is much significance to the timing of God’s challenge as this is the time when knowledge was decreasing on the earth. Let’s take a look at the various questions God asks to the one He calls “mortal man” and see if they still can inspire us today:
THINGS WE THINK WE’VE FIGURED OUT
Job 39:1, 2, 5, 10, 13, 14 “Do you know the time when the wild mountain goats bear young? Or can you mark when the deer gives birth? Can you number the months that they fulfill? Or do you know the time when they bear young? “Who set the wild donkey free? Who loosed the bonds of the onager Can you bind the wild ox in the furrow with ropes? Or will he plow the valleys behind you? “The wings of the ostrich wave proudly, But are her wings and pinions like the kindly stork’s? For she leaves her eggs on the ground, And warms them in the dust;”
If you like to watch nature documentaries, or read magazine or encyclopedia articles, you can learn all kinds of things about the animal kingdom. With a little bit of searching here on the internet one could find information on the gestation period of the mountain goat, how to train a wild ox or learn about ostriches. Job 39:17 is fascinating when you consider how many birds much smaller than an ostrich can navigate by the stars, and yet why is the ostrich so foolish? “Because God deprived her of wisdom, And did not endow her with understanding.”
Chapter 39:19, 25 “Have you given the horse strength? Have you clothed his neck with thunder? At the blast of the trumpet he says, ‘Aha!’ He smells the battle from afar, The thunder of captains and shouting.”
In reading this I never thought before how all those centuries we fought wars with horses, they also had to be fearless as they went into battle just like their riders.
Job 38:39, 41 asks “Can you hunt the prey for the lion, Or satisfy the appetite of the young lions, Who provides food for the raven, When its young ones cry to God, And wander about for lack of food?”
The food chain and the circle of life is something taught early on in junior high school biology classes. Predators contribute to the health of a herd by preying on the sick and the old animals. Psalm 104:21gives us the real answer to this question. “The young lions roar after their prey, And seek their food from God.”
Job 40:15-18, 21-23 “Look now at the behemoth, which I made along with you; He eats grass like an ox. See now, his strength is in his hips, And his power is in his stomach muscles. He moves his tail like a cedar; The sinews of his thighs are tightly knit. His bones are like beams of bronze, His ribs like bars of iron. He lies under the lotus trees, In a covert of reeds and marsh. The lotus trees cover him with their shade; The willows by the brook surround him. Indeed the river may rage, Yet he is not disturbed; He is confident, though the Jordan gushes into his mouth,”
Modern commentators believe this refers to the hippopotamus, but some believe this is a reference to a dinosaur like the brontosaurus because of the “tail like a cedar” text. Leviathan is also in controversy as some think it is a large crocodile, while others think it is the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Personally I do believe these are references to the dinosaurs. It seems so obvious as to almost be self-explanatory that the old legends of fire breathing dragons in so many world cultures referred to the dinosaurs. Now here is Old Testament proof such creatures existed. A great discussion of leviathan and behemoth can be found in Jim Pinkoski’s comic book “A Creationist’s View of Dinosaurs and the Theory of Evolution” available from the Amazing Facts ministry. Go to amazingfacts.org for more.
Job 41:1-4, 8-10: “Can you draw out Leviathan with a hook, Or snare his tongue with a line which you lower? Can you put a reed through his nose, Or pierce his jaw with a hook? Will he make many supplications to you? Will he speak softly to you? Will he make a covenant with you? Will you take him as a servant forever? Lay your hand on him; Remember the battle—Never do it again! Indeed, any hope of overcoming him is false; Shall one not be overwhelmed at the sight of him? No one is so fierce that he would dare stir him up. Who then is able to stand against Me?”
Job 41:11, 13, 14, 18-20: “Who has preceded Me, that I should pay him? Everything under heaven is Mine. Who can remove his outer coat? Who can approach him with a double bridle? Who can open the doors of his face, With his terrible teeth all around? His sneezings flash forth light, And his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his mouth go burning lights; Sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke goes out of his nostrils, As from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals, And a flame goes out of his mouth.”
And what happened to the dinosaurs? Psalm 74:12-14 tells us “For God is my King from of old, Working salvation in the midst of the earth. You divided the sea by Your strength; You broke the heads of the sea serpents in the waters. You broke the heads of Leviathan in pieces, And gave him as food to the people inhabiting the wilderness.
Job 38:22, 23: “Have you entered the treasury of snow, Or have you seen the treasury of hail, Which I have reserved for the time of trouble, For the day of battle and war?”
Some who read this with doubt may just write most of this discourse of as flowery poems and not literal descriptions of anything. Is there really a storeroom in Heaven filled with hail and snow? We can describe what we see in the process of water vapor changing form from liquid to solid or gas. Indeed we have seen already in chapter two that Job 36: 27-29 does describe this cycle. However, look up Ezekiel 38:22 “And I will bring him to judgment with pestilence and bloodshed; I will rain down on him, on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, flooding rain, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone.”
Job 38:8-11, 16 “Or who shut in the sea with doors, When it burst forth and issued from the womb; When I made the clouds its garment, And thick darkness its swaddling band; When I fixed My limit for it, And set bars and doors; When I said, ‘This far you may come, but no farther, And here your proud waves must stop!’ “Have you entered the springs of the sea? Or have you walked in search of the depths?”
We have mapped the sea floor and we do have the ability to go under water to the very bottom, but still it has been said that we know more about outer space than we do about the oceans.
THINGS WE THINK WE’VE FIGURED OUT
Job 39:1, 2, 5, 10, 13, 14 “Do you know the time when the wild mountain goats bear young? Or can you mark when the deer gives birth? Can you number the months that they fulfill? Or do you know the time when they bear young? “Who set the wild donkey free? Who loosed the bonds of the onager Can you bind the wild ox in the furrow with ropes? Or will he plow the valleys behind you? “The wings of the ostrich wave proudly, But are her wings and pinions like the kindly stork’s? For she leaves her eggs on the ground, And warms them in the dust;”
If you like to watch nature documentaries, or read magazine or encyclopedia articles, you can learn all kinds of things about the animal kingdom. With a little bit of searching here on the internet one could find information on the gestation period of the mountain goat, how to train a wild ox or learn about ostriches. Job 39:17 is fascinating when you consider how many birds much smaller than an ostrich can navigate by the stars, and yet why is the ostrich so foolish? “Because God deprived her of wisdom, And did not endow her with understanding.”
Chapter 39:19, 25 “Have you given the horse strength? Have you clothed his neck with thunder? At the blast of the trumpet he says, ‘Aha!’ He smells the battle from afar, The thunder of captains and shouting.”
In reading this I never thought before how all those centuries we fought wars with horses, they also had to be fearless as they went into battle just like their riders.
Job 38:39, 41 asks “Can you hunt the prey for the lion, Or satisfy the appetite of the young lions, Who provides food for the raven, When its young ones cry to God, And wander about for lack of food?”
The food chain and the circle of life is something taught early on in junior high school biology classes. Predators contribute to the health of a herd by preying on the sick and the old animals. Psalm 104:21gives us the real answer to this question. “The young lions roar after their prey, And seek their food from God.”
Job 40:15-18, 21-23 “Look now at the behemoth, which I made along with you; He eats grass like an ox. See now, his strength is in his hips, And his power is in his stomach muscles. He moves his tail like a cedar; The sinews of his thighs are tightly knit. His bones are like beams of bronze, His ribs like bars of iron. He lies under the lotus trees, In a covert of reeds and marsh. The lotus trees cover him with their shade; The willows by the brook surround him. Indeed the river may rage, Yet he is not disturbed; He is confident, though the Jordan gushes into his mouth,”
Modern commentators believe this refers to the hippopotamus, but some believe this is a reference to a dinosaur like the brontosaurus because of the “tail like a cedar” text. Leviathan is also in controversy as some think it is a large crocodile, while others think it is the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Personally I do believe these are references to the dinosaurs. It seems so obvious as to almost be self-explanatory that the old legends of fire breathing dragons in so many world cultures referred to the dinosaurs. Now here is Old Testament proof such creatures existed. A great discussion of leviathan and behemoth can be found in Jim Pinkoski’s comic book “A Creationist’s View of Dinosaurs and the Theory of Evolution” available from the Amazing Facts ministry. Go to amazingfacts.org for more.
Job 41:1-4, 8-10: “Can you draw out Leviathan with a hook, Or snare his tongue with a line which you lower? Can you put a reed through his nose, Or pierce his jaw with a hook? Will he make many supplications to you? Will he speak softly to you? Will he make a covenant with you? Will you take him as a servant forever? Lay your hand on him; Remember the battle—Never do it again! Indeed, any hope of overcoming him is false; Shall one not be overwhelmed at the sight of him? No one is so fierce that he would dare stir him up. Who then is able to stand against Me?”
Job 41:11, 13, 14, 18-20: “Who has preceded Me, that I should pay him? Everything under heaven is Mine. Who can remove his outer coat? Who can approach him with a double bridle? Who can open the doors of his face, With his terrible teeth all around? His sneezings flash forth light, And his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his mouth go burning lights; Sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke goes out of his nostrils, As from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals, And a flame goes out of his mouth.”
And what happened to the dinosaurs? Psalm 74:12-14 tells us “For God is my King from of old, Working salvation in the midst of the earth. You divided the sea by Your strength; You broke the heads of the sea serpents in the waters. You broke the heads of Leviathan in pieces, And gave him as food to the people inhabiting the wilderness.
Job 38:22, 23: “Have you entered the treasury of snow, Or have you seen the treasury of hail, Which I have reserved for the time of trouble, For the day of battle and war?”
Some who read this with doubt may just write most of this discourse of as flowery poems and not literal descriptions of anything. Is there really a storeroom in Heaven filled with hail and snow? We can describe what we see in the process of water vapor changing form from liquid to solid or gas. Indeed we have seen already in chapter two that Job 36: 27-29 does describe this cycle. However, look up Ezekiel 38:22 “And I will bring him to judgment with pestilence and bloodshed; I will rain down on him, on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, flooding rain, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone.”
Job 38:8-11, 16 “Or who shut in the sea with doors, When it burst forth and issued from the womb; When I made the clouds its garment, And thick darkness its swaddling band; When I fixed My limit for it, And set bars and doors; When I said, ‘This far you may come, but no farther, And here your proud waves must stop!’ “Have you entered the springs of the sea? Or have you walked in search of the depths?”
We have mapped the sea floor and we do have the ability to go under water to the very bottom, but still it has been said that we know more about outer space than we do about the oceans.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Bible Proof There's Life on Other Planets post three
One of the biggest reasons for the confusion people have when they contrast science and the Bible is because the creation story in Genesis 1 seems to suggest an earth centered view. You have to know how to read it. It is simply told from the point of reference of someone standing on this new planet like a reporter might have covered it for CNN. Job 38:4-7 has the creation from the point of view of the Angels and others watching in heaven. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, When the morning stars (note: these are the angels) sang together, And all the sons of God (these are the Adam type leaders) shouted for joy?”
We looked at Genesis 1:1-3 in the previous chapter, let’s look at it again for some further clarification. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” That does not mean that the earth was an empty rock and actually has been here for 4 billion years and that the Lord simply added an atmosphere and ocean. To be without form means it did not exist.
Today most people just can’t wrap their heads around such an idea because they have been so completely indoctrinated with evolution. A lot of people try to blend the two conflicting ideas on our origins. You will hear things like “maybe they weren’t seven of our days, maybe they represent longer time periods”. Theories like this come from a desire to make sense of what we can’t make sense of. To blend creation and evolution in this way always ends up making creation serve evolution because people just can’t believe the Lord can cause something to exist where there was nothing before. Even the big bang theory is based on this same false premise that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. (We can now destroy small amounts of uranium or plutonium can’t we?) The observations scientists have made of an expanding universe led them to conclude that all the matter in the universe was once concentrated in one place and exploded in this bang. Some scientists have now abandoned the theory because they realized someone would have to have been there to set off the explosion, i.e. God. It’s entirely possible the universe is 28 billion years old just like scientists have estimated based on their observations. If so, then each and every solar system within the universe was created by God Himself in a process of seven literal days. The Father, Son and Spirit spoke together and where there was once nothing, behold new planets came into existence complete with eco-systems and first parents for every species. This is the only way to blend the truths of the bible with what we can clearly see in our telescopes that neither downgrades God nor goes against known fact.
What makes God “God” is three things that simply cannot be explained and have to be accepted. 1. He is all-seeing, all-knowing, 2. He has always been and always will be, and 3. He has the power of creation, of life and death. He can cause matter to come into existence simply by speaking.
God does not have to serve man’s limited ability to comprehend Him. “He works in mysterious ways”, is a common catch-phrase. Often the reason His ways are mysterious to us is because we are not willing to surrender our preconceived notions. As Peter said in Acts 11:17 when the Lord worked in a way beyond his understanding, “who was I that I could withstand God?” The science minded person may think this cannot be accepted, but yet science has to do this all the time. A good example is the history of our study of light, which will be discussed in the next chapter. For now, take the example of the simple act of having a shower. When you turn on the water, by all known laws of physics (motion, heat, and air pressure) the shower curtain should push out from the bathtub. Yet it sucks in to the tub every time. We can’t explain it. Do we ignore this fact and repeat a lie over and over telling everyone to believe that the shower curtain does push out or do we surrender to a truth beyond our ability to comprehend because it is plain and obvious? God can only help us when we surrender to the truth that He is God.
We have already looked at one spiritual proof of the Lord’s creative power. If you will repent of your sins and accept Jesus’ death on the cross in your place, the Holy Spirit will bring Him into your heart and make you into a new person. From that point on, He wants you to live out the new life He has in store for you. In Galatians 2:20 we read, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” We get a second spiritual proof from the creation week. THINK ABOUT IT! The calendar has days, marked by the rotation of the earth; months, marked by the phases of the moon; and years, marked by the earth’s orbit around the sun. There is no astronomical reason for the week! The seven literal days of creation are where we got our week form. The Lord’s final act in that week was to mark it off with an anniversary as described in Genesis 2:1, 2 “Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.”
God made the Seventh day of the week Holy as a memorial of creation. The best way to prove creation is in fact to give Sabbath keeping a try and honour Him on His Holy day. He blessed the day. He is there in a special way each week from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, the original Bible Sabbath. There’s a connection there you’ll make with Him when as a born-again believer with a living faith you keep His day His way. Once you see just how much Jesus has done for you and you experience His love anew through the Sabbath, you will know the truth beyond all doubt. No evolutionary science will ever sway you again. Genesis 2:1, 2 is a declaration that creation is finished as well. In other words, Earth is the last planet the Lord made. (This also gives us the only possible explanation for Satan’s rebellion. It’s been said sin can never really be explained; to have lived for eons of time in peace and harmony and then to want something more? It does make no sense. However, after all that time seeing new wonders continually unfold as creation grew and grew, maybe when God said it was done, they said to themselves, “that’s it?”)
This understanding then clearly explains what really happened on day 4 in the creation account. ‘Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; “and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the fourth day.” Genesis 1:14-19.
According to the 14th century view, which most people think is what the Bible says; the rest of the universe was created solely for the benefit of earth. This of course makes no room for other planets, nor does it make room for all that we’ve seen so far. How could Satan’s fall and the war in Heaven have happened if he was only two days older than Adam and Eve? The Lord did create the sun and the moon and the planets in our solar system on day 4 because they were created for our benefit. That does not mean this is when He created the whole rest of His dominion though. It just means He made it possible for us to see what‘s out there. Those lights were put into the firmament, which is our atmosphere. In reference to the stars, which are light-years away, it simply says He made them “also”. There is no indication then that He actually did make them the same day.
A few verses sum up our discussion. 1 Corinthians 4:9, “For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men.” Ephesians 3:10 “to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places,” The word “spectacle” could be replaced with “reality show” couldn’t it? A very short time after Paul wrote these words the spectacle came to its fullest meaning as Christians were fed to the lions in the Roman Coliseum. Yet Paul obviously understood that there was more going on than could be seen with human eyes. The progress of the gospel was not just for the benefit of the people of this world, it was also for everyone else watching us from far away in space.
Our final proof there is life on other planets comes from the parable in Luke 15:4-6. It is normally understood as applying to individual persons that Jesus came to save, but can it not, in light of this study, also apply to our one isolated little world? “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? “And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. “And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ Jesus sought you out and is rejoicing now with the angels that you have turned from your sins and come to Him. He has also sought out the whole world. When He returns, takes us to Heaven and then after the millennium establishes His kingdom on earth (more on this to come), this parable will be completely fulfilled. Our lost planet will once again be in its rightful place in God’s universe.
We have seen so far that the two conflicting worldviews from the 21st and 14th centuries both contain some errors and some similarities to the real truth. Science has questioned God, and just like other prophetic references to His foreknowledge that this would happen, He also has some answers you may be surprised to see. They are in the last four chapters of the book of Job. We will look at them next.
We looked at Genesis 1:1-3 in the previous chapter, let’s look at it again for some further clarification. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” That does not mean that the earth was an empty rock and actually has been here for 4 billion years and that the Lord simply added an atmosphere and ocean. To be without form means it did not exist.
Today most people just can’t wrap their heads around such an idea because they have been so completely indoctrinated with evolution. A lot of people try to blend the two conflicting ideas on our origins. You will hear things like “maybe they weren’t seven of our days, maybe they represent longer time periods”. Theories like this come from a desire to make sense of what we can’t make sense of. To blend creation and evolution in this way always ends up making creation serve evolution because people just can’t believe the Lord can cause something to exist where there was nothing before. Even the big bang theory is based on this same false premise that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. (We can now destroy small amounts of uranium or plutonium can’t we?) The observations scientists have made of an expanding universe led them to conclude that all the matter in the universe was once concentrated in one place and exploded in this bang. Some scientists have now abandoned the theory because they realized someone would have to have been there to set off the explosion, i.e. God. It’s entirely possible the universe is 28 billion years old just like scientists have estimated based on their observations. If so, then each and every solar system within the universe was created by God Himself in a process of seven literal days. The Father, Son and Spirit spoke together and where there was once nothing, behold new planets came into existence complete with eco-systems and first parents for every species. This is the only way to blend the truths of the bible with what we can clearly see in our telescopes that neither downgrades God nor goes against known fact.
What makes God “God” is three things that simply cannot be explained and have to be accepted. 1. He is all-seeing, all-knowing, 2. He has always been and always will be, and 3. He has the power of creation, of life and death. He can cause matter to come into existence simply by speaking.
God does not have to serve man’s limited ability to comprehend Him. “He works in mysterious ways”, is a common catch-phrase. Often the reason His ways are mysterious to us is because we are not willing to surrender our preconceived notions. As Peter said in Acts 11:17 when the Lord worked in a way beyond his understanding, “who was I that I could withstand God?” The science minded person may think this cannot be accepted, but yet science has to do this all the time. A good example is the history of our study of light, which will be discussed in the next chapter. For now, take the example of the simple act of having a shower. When you turn on the water, by all known laws of physics (motion, heat, and air pressure) the shower curtain should push out from the bathtub. Yet it sucks in to the tub every time. We can’t explain it. Do we ignore this fact and repeat a lie over and over telling everyone to believe that the shower curtain does push out or do we surrender to a truth beyond our ability to comprehend because it is plain and obvious? God can only help us when we surrender to the truth that He is God.
We have already looked at one spiritual proof of the Lord’s creative power. If you will repent of your sins and accept Jesus’ death on the cross in your place, the Holy Spirit will bring Him into your heart and make you into a new person. From that point on, He wants you to live out the new life He has in store for you. In Galatians 2:20 we read, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” We get a second spiritual proof from the creation week. THINK ABOUT IT! The calendar has days, marked by the rotation of the earth; months, marked by the phases of the moon; and years, marked by the earth’s orbit around the sun. There is no astronomical reason for the week! The seven literal days of creation are where we got our week form. The Lord’s final act in that week was to mark it off with an anniversary as described in Genesis 2:1, 2 “Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.”
God made the Seventh day of the week Holy as a memorial of creation. The best way to prove creation is in fact to give Sabbath keeping a try and honour Him on His Holy day. He blessed the day. He is there in a special way each week from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, the original Bible Sabbath. There’s a connection there you’ll make with Him when as a born-again believer with a living faith you keep His day His way. Once you see just how much Jesus has done for you and you experience His love anew through the Sabbath, you will know the truth beyond all doubt. No evolutionary science will ever sway you again. Genesis 2:1, 2 is a declaration that creation is finished as well. In other words, Earth is the last planet the Lord made. (This also gives us the only possible explanation for Satan’s rebellion. It’s been said sin can never really be explained; to have lived for eons of time in peace and harmony and then to want something more? It does make no sense. However, after all that time seeing new wonders continually unfold as creation grew and grew, maybe when God said it was done, they said to themselves, “that’s it?”)
This understanding then clearly explains what really happened on day 4 in the creation account. ‘Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; “and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the fourth day.” Genesis 1:14-19.
According to the 14th century view, which most people think is what the Bible says; the rest of the universe was created solely for the benefit of earth. This of course makes no room for other planets, nor does it make room for all that we’ve seen so far. How could Satan’s fall and the war in Heaven have happened if he was only two days older than Adam and Eve? The Lord did create the sun and the moon and the planets in our solar system on day 4 because they were created for our benefit. That does not mean this is when He created the whole rest of His dominion though. It just means He made it possible for us to see what‘s out there. Those lights were put into the firmament, which is our atmosphere. In reference to the stars, which are light-years away, it simply says He made them “also”. There is no indication then that He actually did make them the same day.
A few verses sum up our discussion. 1 Corinthians 4:9, “For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men.” Ephesians 3:10 “to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places,” The word “spectacle” could be replaced with “reality show” couldn’t it? A very short time after Paul wrote these words the spectacle came to its fullest meaning as Christians were fed to the lions in the Roman Coliseum. Yet Paul obviously understood that there was more going on than could be seen with human eyes. The progress of the gospel was not just for the benefit of the people of this world, it was also for everyone else watching us from far away in space.
Our final proof there is life on other planets comes from the parable in Luke 15:4-6. It is normally understood as applying to individual persons that Jesus came to save, but can it not, in light of this study, also apply to our one isolated little world? “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? “And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. “And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ Jesus sought you out and is rejoicing now with the angels that you have turned from your sins and come to Him. He has also sought out the whole world. When He returns, takes us to Heaven and then after the millennium establishes His kingdom on earth (more on this to come), this parable will be completely fulfilled. Our lost planet will once again be in its rightful place in God’s universe.
We have seen so far that the two conflicting worldviews from the 21st and 14th centuries both contain some errors and some similarities to the real truth. Science has questioned God, and just like other prophetic references to His foreknowledge that this would happen, He also has some answers you may be surprised to see. They are in the last four chapters of the book of Job. We will look at them next.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Chapter three post two
The next logical question then is “why can’t we communicate with them“? Isaiah 59:1, 2, and Hebrews 10:12 answer this very important thought. “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, That it cannot save; Nor His ear heavy, That it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear.” “But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God,” (This “right hand of God” is another reference to the throne room, or Sanctuary.) We are isolated here because of sin. Jesus had to die to save us from sin, but only once and only here. He did not have to go to any other planet and die for anyone there. So there is therefore no other world in rebellion against the Lord. All the rest of creation is at peace with God.
This brings up a very important point. They were there. Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”. Since death is the penalty for sin, and there is no sin in the rest of the universe, these beings have lived through countless eons of time and have watched every moment of human history unfold. They haven’t just had the privilege of seeing things from our point of view; they have also watched God as He worked to save this world.
Think about the full realities of this point. For however many years these ‘people’ have lived, they never once have had to experience any pain or suffering at all. Before this world began, they never knew what it was like to be lied to, or stole from. Yet now they have seen every murder, every broken home, every wrong thing that’s ever happened in this world.
In Job chapters 1 and 2 Satan came as earth’s representative because he did in fact steal this planet from Adam and Eve as is told in Genesis 3:1-7. Just as Adam is called a son of God, Lucifer (Satan’s original name) is referred to as “son of the morning” in Isaiah 14:12. Therefore he was once the highest angel, next in line to the Lord Himself. This reference along with Ezekiel 28:12-17 and Revelation 12:3-9 are the three most notable descriptions in the Bible of the devil. Ezekiel 28:15 says “You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, Till iniquity was found in you.” Lucifer at some point traded away the perfection God had originally given him and became Satan. Why did he do this? Isaiah 14:13 gives us the answer. “For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation On the farthest sides of the north”. This desire for pride and self-exaltation lead to war in Heaven. Lucifer became Satan when he desired a place higher than he already had. The only place left was that of the Lord Himself. According to Revelation 12:4, 9 Satan took a full one-third of the angels with him as they were cast down to this earth.
Yet here he is in Job chapters 1 and 2 still in Heaven! He still had some level of access to the rest of the universe and was not fully cast down at this point. There must have been some questions raised in the minds of those who live on the other planets when Lucifer started this rebellion. God had to take time to answer them, which is what world history is really all about. We can give a reasonable guess as to what those questions were simply by examining the kinds of questions people here ask today. “Does He really love us?” “Is He really fair?” “Why does His law say if you’re not in complete submission to Him, you must die?” “How can I be expected to live up to God’s law anyway?” “Is the Lord right in demanding our worship and adoration, or is He just on some sort of ego-trip?” One more very important question as well “If You are going to let the people of earth whom You save join the fellowship of these other planets Lord, how can we be sure they can be trusted?” This is of course not the question we ask, but it must be the question the rest of the universe is asking about us.
All these questions and whatever others there may have been are getting their answers in a living demonstration as world history plays out. In fact, when you study it out completely, the earth is one big giant experiment to test if there is any possible way to run the universe other than God’s. The Lord is really the one on trial. Not only did Adam and Eve fall, but in every generation their children have carried on the family business. Yet the Lord has been continually offering mercy and kindness, even to those who don’t care about Him. All of world history from the fall of our first parents (highlighted by the story of Cain and Abel) to the flood can be summed up in one sentence: God gave the rest of the universe a demonstration of just how bad things would get elsewhere if sin were allowed to run rampant. The rest of the Old Testament time period can also be described with one simple statement: The Lord gave man a chance to recover through obedience. The Ten Commandments are God’s Law. Violating them is what 1 John 3:4 says is sin. In Exodus 24:3 “all the people answered with one voice and said, ‘All the words which the Lord has said we will do.’” However they were trying in their own strength. Their history showed just how futile it is for any of us to try to make ourselves good enough for God.
The next phase of human history is in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. This is simply put as: God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. From the New Testament we can see a progressive decline in the place Satan has in the universe. Cross reference Luke 10:18 with Revelation 12:12 and you will see that Satan has now lost his place and is confined to this world. “And He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” “Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.” When you think about it, the devil spent at least 4000 years telling everyone who would listen that he was the real victim, yet Jesus, who is God the Son, came and proved every one of the devil’s charges to be false.
Philippians 2:5-8 “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” Jesus “humbled Himself”, though He should not have had to, He did. His example shows the humility of God, that He keeps His own law and that He really does love us to go to such great lengths to save us. After putting his own Creator on the cross, Lucifer lost all credibility with the rest of the universe. The planet He stole was now bought back by Jesus.
When Jesus went back to Heaven, they were ready to receive Him. He returned in triumph to make everything ready for when He would come back to earth and rescue us. Jesus can now judge us fairly, because He knows what it’s like to live the way we do. Human history now entered its fourth phase as the results of Jesus achievement were to be shared across the entire world and also demonstrated in the lives of those who received Him as their Saviour. The angels and the beings on the other planets have watched the progress His followers have made over the last 20 centuries in fulfilling His calling.
They will also watch in triumph as God works through His people in this fifth phase of history, what the Bible calls “the last days” to bring this entire controversy to its rightful conclusion. This is the time period we live in today. It’s the one where people are running to and fro with an increase of knowledge which began a little over 150 years ago. It’s the one with man trying desperately to create a heaven on earth for himself and take back his place among the stars while the Lord is working at the same time to make people ready His way, with the full and complete truths of the Bible restored in their lives. As mentioned in the last chapter and one of the most important points of this whole book, the dark ages were a spiritual as well as an intellectual darkness. That which most people today think the Bible says is only what they were told the Bible says by the influence the dark ages had on western civilization. Jesus spoke in Matthew 7:21-23 of a great many people alive at His Second Coming that He will say He didn’t know even though they thought they were His people. Why is that? Because when given a chance to fully recover from the darkness they turned it down. More on this will be discussed in another chapter.
Though the discussion here has been of the entire world on the grandest possible scale, each and every human life is also a repeat of this same controversy. Psalm 91:11 says, “For He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways.” This “charge” does not mean “control”; it instead means “responsibility”. Just like in the old cartoons, when someone has to make a moral decision there was a good angel on one shoulder and a bad angel on the other, each whispering advice. God sends His angels to influence and protect us, while Satan is using his angels to lead us astray in any way possible. The interest the angels and the beings of the other planets have is just as much in your life and mine as it is in everyone else’s.
This brings up a very important point. They were there. Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”. Since death is the penalty for sin, and there is no sin in the rest of the universe, these beings have lived through countless eons of time and have watched every moment of human history unfold. They haven’t just had the privilege of seeing things from our point of view; they have also watched God as He worked to save this world.
Think about the full realities of this point. For however many years these ‘people’ have lived, they never once have had to experience any pain or suffering at all. Before this world began, they never knew what it was like to be lied to, or stole from. Yet now they have seen every murder, every broken home, every wrong thing that’s ever happened in this world.
In Job chapters 1 and 2 Satan came as earth’s representative because he did in fact steal this planet from Adam and Eve as is told in Genesis 3:1-7. Just as Adam is called a son of God, Lucifer (Satan’s original name) is referred to as “son of the morning” in Isaiah 14:12. Therefore he was once the highest angel, next in line to the Lord Himself. This reference along with Ezekiel 28:12-17 and Revelation 12:3-9 are the three most notable descriptions in the Bible of the devil. Ezekiel 28:15 says “You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, Till iniquity was found in you.” Lucifer at some point traded away the perfection God had originally given him and became Satan. Why did he do this? Isaiah 14:13 gives us the answer. “For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation On the farthest sides of the north”. This desire for pride and self-exaltation lead to war in Heaven. Lucifer became Satan when he desired a place higher than he already had. The only place left was that of the Lord Himself. According to Revelation 12:4, 9 Satan took a full one-third of the angels with him as they were cast down to this earth.
Yet here he is in Job chapters 1 and 2 still in Heaven! He still had some level of access to the rest of the universe and was not fully cast down at this point. There must have been some questions raised in the minds of those who live on the other planets when Lucifer started this rebellion. God had to take time to answer them, which is what world history is really all about. We can give a reasonable guess as to what those questions were simply by examining the kinds of questions people here ask today. “Does He really love us?” “Is He really fair?” “Why does His law say if you’re not in complete submission to Him, you must die?” “How can I be expected to live up to God’s law anyway?” “Is the Lord right in demanding our worship and adoration, or is He just on some sort of ego-trip?” One more very important question as well “If You are going to let the people of earth whom You save join the fellowship of these other planets Lord, how can we be sure they can be trusted?” This is of course not the question we ask, but it must be the question the rest of the universe is asking about us.
All these questions and whatever others there may have been are getting their answers in a living demonstration as world history plays out. In fact, when you study it out completely, the earth is one big giant experiment to test if there is any possible way to run the universe other than God’s. The Lord is really the one on trial. Not only did Adam and Eve fall, but in every generation their children have carried on the family business. Yet the Lord has been continually offering mercy and kindness, even to those who don’t care about Him. All of world history from the fall of our first parents (highlighted by the story of Cain and Abel) to the flood can be summed up in one sentence: God gave the rest of the universe a demonstration of just how bad things would get elsewhere if sin were allowed to run rampant. The rest of the Old Testament time period can also be described with one simple statement: The Lord gave man a chance to recover through obedience. The Ten Commandments are God’s Law. Violating them is what 1 John 3:4 says is sin. In Exodus 24:3 “all the people answered with one voice and said, ‘All the words which the Lord has said we will do.’” However they were trying in their own strength. Their history showed just how futile it is for any of us to try to make ourselves good enough for God.
The next phase of human history is in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. This is simply put as: God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. From the New Testament we can see a progressive decline in the place Satan has in the universe. Cross reference Luke 10:18 with Revelation 12:12 and you will see that Satan has now lost his place and is confined to this world. “And He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” “Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.” When you think about it, the devil spent at least 4000 years telling everyone who would listen that he was the real victim, yet Jesus, who is God the Son, came and proved every one of the devil’s charges to be false.
Philippians 2:5-8 “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” Jesus “humbled Himself”, though He should not have had to, He did. His example shows the humility of God, that He keeps His own law and that He really does love us to go to such great lengths to save us. After putting his own Creator on the cross, Lucifer lost all credibility with the rest of the universe. The planet He stole was now bought back by Jesus.
When Jesus went back to Heaven, they were ready to receive Him. He returned in triumph to make everything ready for when He would come back to earth and rescue us. Jesus can now judge us fairly, because He knows what it’s like to live the way we do. Human history now entered its fourth phase as the results of Jesus achievement were to be shared across the entire world and also demonstrated in the lives of those who received Him as their Saviour. The angels and the beings on the other planets have watched the progress His followers have made over the last 20 centuries in fulfilling His calling.
They will also watch in triumph as God works through His people in this fifth phase of history, what the Bible calls “the last days” to bring this entire controversy to its rightful conclusion. This is the time period we live in today. It’s the one where people are running to and fro with an increase of knowledge which began a little over 150 years ago. It’s the one with man trying desperately to create a heaven on earth for himself and take back his place among the stars while the Lord is working at the same time to make people ready His way, with the full and complete truths of the Bible restored in their lives. As mentioned in the last chapter and one of the most important points of this whole book, the dark ages were a spiritual as well as an intellectual darkness. That which most people today think the Bible says is only what they were told the Bible says by the influence the dark ages had on western civilization. Jesus spoke in Matthew 7:21-23 of a great many people alive at His Second Coming that He will say He didn’t know even though they thought they were His people. Why is that? Because when given a chance to fully recover from the darkness they turned it down. More on this will be discussed in another chapter.
Though the discussion here has been of the entire world on the grandest possible scale, each and every human life is also a repeat of this same controversy. Psalm 91:11 says, “For He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways.” This “charge” does not mean “control”; it instead means “responsibility”. Just like in the old cartoons, when someone has to make a moral decision there was a good angel on one shoulder and a bad angel on the other, each whispering advice. God sends His angels to influence and protect us, while Satan is using his angels to lead us astray in any way possible. The interest the angels and the beings of the other planets have is just as much in your life and mine as it is in everyone else’s.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Chapter Three Post One Bible Proof There's Life on Other Planets
Welcome to "SCIENCE, THE BIBLE AND LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS" the contents of a book examining issues between faith and our modern values. Each chapter will be divided into 3 or 4 posts of about a page and a half each. May all who read this be challenged to think in new ways and experience personal growth because of it. Sincerely, Les Miller "Mr. Les"The blog will be divided into 10 chapters, each one sub-divided into 3 or 4 posts, about a page and a half each.
The contents are as follows:
TRANSLUCITE
SCIENCE FICTION AND THE MEANING OF OUR MODERN AGE
BIBLE PROOF THERE’S LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS
JOB LEARNED WHAT WE ALL MUST
OF COURSE THEY LANDED ON THE MOON
WHY HAVEN’T THEY GONE BACK?
THE (NOT SO) SECRET KEYS THAT UNLOCK THE REAL TRUTH
JOHN 3:16 IN DEPTH
MR. SPIELBERG HAVE I GOT A SCRIPT FOR YOU
EPILOGUE “THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE
Chapter three BIBLE PROOF THERE’S LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS
Alberta, Canada is well known as an important source of dinosaur bones. Dinosaur Provincial Park, where many specimens have been discovered, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The town of Drumheller plays host to the “Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology”. A half hour’s drive north from there the “Big Valley Creation Science Museum” exists in the town of Big Valley. My wife and I happened to visit this museum the day before its grand opening a few years ago. The displays were very professional. Some of which presented quite reasonable challenges to the theory of evolution while others gave highly compelling evidence of the Genesis account of early world history. We purchased a few books that also made their case for creation the same way.
“In the Beginning - Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood (7th Edition)” by Walt Brown Ph.D., Director of The Center for Scientific Creation, was one of those books. It’s actually very sad to say, but even if he is completely right with all the rest of his theories (and I’m not a scientist so I can’t say for sure) Mr. Brown totally invalidates himself with two sections dealing with the issues of life on other planets and the age of the universe. He might as well be trying to prove the world is flat after all. The modern non-biblical world view is so ingrained into today’s youth; his opinions on these topics will have no credibility in their eyes (see “In the Beginning” pages 232-235 and 247-248).
Ultimately no one can really prove creation or evolution. Rocks and flowers prove one or the other if that’s what you want them to. Most people take a similar approach to the Bible by reading their pre-conceived notions into it rather than a careful study to let it speak for itself. Pastor George Vandeman was speaker /director of the “It Is Written” television show from the 1950’s to the early 1990’s. He therefore witnessed the transition from the previous generation’s mindset influenced by the Bible, into that of the Baby Boomers and beyond. On page 5 of “Planet in Rebellion”, Pastor Vandeman writes “For who of us is not aware that during a few short decades the planet that was once our universe has dwindled into a planet that can never again be completely isolated from its stellar neighbors”.
However the discoveries of science did not threaten his faith at all. “But nothing, I believe, will help us get our bearings and settle our confusion than to look through our giant telescopes to the stars fixed in the planned precision of their unfailing orbits – and discover who is back of it all” (page 12). His position that there is in fact life on other planets is illustrated by quoting Isaiah 45:18 “For thus says the Lord, Who created the heavens, Who is God, Who formed the earth and made it, Who has established it, Who did not create it in vain, Who formed it to be inhabited: “I am the Lord, and there is no other.” He then adds “Therefore if this world were not the abode of life, its creation would have been in vain – useless. Would it not naturally follow that if such be true of this little speck of cosmic dust, then much if not all of God’s creation would likewise be in vain if not put to some intelligent use” (page 22)?
As we saw from Hebrews 1:1-3, God made all that we can see “out there”. Did He make it all for the benefit of planet earth on day four of creation? If so, why bother to put mountains on the moon or a red spot on Jupiter since we didn’t find them until Galileo? Why have galaxies billions of light years away if we can’t even see them with the naked eye? What about life out there then? Isaiah 40:15 says “Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket, And are counted as the small dust on the scales; Look, He lifts up the isles as a very little thing.” If the 226 nations of earth are a drop in the bucket (this is where that phrase came from), then there are obviously millions of planets with inhabited, developed societies on them throughout the universe.
In Nehemiah 9:6 the “host” of heaven worships God. These are beings, not inanimate objects. “You alone are the Lord; You have made heaven, The heaven of heavens, with all their host, The earth and everything on it, The seas and all that is in them, And You preserve them all. The host of heaven worships You.” “Host” is an old English word for large group of people. Elsewhere the Bible says He is the Lord of “hosts”, as in more than one group.
One particular large group is mentioned in Daniel chapter 7. This is a vision the Lord gave the prophet Daniel of world history from his time forward. After the rise and fall of the Persian, Greek, and Roman Empires and their transition into “Christendom”, the nations of Europe under the domination of the church; the vision finishes with a special emphasis on heaven’s point of view. Daniel is shown the actual throne room where God the Father and Jesus begin the first phase of Their judgement of planet earth. Elsewhere in the Bible this room is referred to as the “Temple in Heaven”, or the “Sanctuary”. We will examine this judgement and what it means for us more closely in “The (Not So) Secret Keys That Unlock the Real Truth”.
For now let’s look at verses 9 and 10 “I watched till thrones were put in place, And the Ancient of Days was seated; His garment was white as snow, And the hair of His head was like pure wool. His throne was a fiery flame, Its wheels a burning fire; A fiery stream issued And came forth from before Him. A thousand thousands ministered to Him; Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. The court was seated, And the books were opened.”
What is ten thousand times ten thousand? 100 million! The largest stadium in this world is in the Czech Republic and holds almost 250,000 people. Yet this one room holds 400 times more. Now, in many countries on earth, there is a regular army and then there is an elite inner guard charged solely with protecting the Head of State. Are these 100 million angels the sum total of all the angels out there? Likely this is not the case because the text also said “thousands of thousands”.
The text in Nehemiah cross references well with what Paul called the “third heaven” in 2 Corinthians 12:2. (This is one point where I disagree with Mormonism. They have some strange belief based on this verse that makes no sense.) The three levels of heaven are: 1. the blue sky; 2. what we now call outer space, which is where the hosts live; and 3. the holy city, New Jerusalem, where God’s throne is now and in which He receives worship. This is one reason some people can find the Bible confusing as sometimes when the Bible says “heaven(s)” it is only talking about our blue sky. Revelation 21:1 for instance, is not talking about the rest of the universe, its just talking about our atmosphere. “Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea.” The Lord knew that pollution would be an issue in our time. He promises that when He makes the earth anew, He will give us a clean atmosphere again. (Not that we shouldn’t take care of the world the best we can now, of course. But the thought that we actually will destroy this earth through pollution is a lie.)
One of the most striking texts in the Bible is a multi-level prophecy that has recently been fulfilled once more. From Obadiah verse 4 we can draw the conclusion that our Heavenly Father knew the conflict in science and religion would take place with two differing views of Heaven as a hot button issue. In it He says “Though you ascend as high as the eagle, And though you set your nest among the stars, From there I will bring you down,” says the Lord.” Though began by the Soviet Union with Sputnik in 1957 and continued today by many nations including Japan, China, Canada and the European Union, the nation with the eagle as its symbol claims to have won the space race as the United States was the one country that has landed men on the moon. The U.S. has also lead out in the development of the International Space Station. Obadiah 4 promises we will see Jesus come back to this world from the same realm of physical space that this permanent resting place, or “nest” for mankind has been established in.
The fact that there is life out there is proven most clearly by cross-referencing a few texts. A sort of heavenly convention is discussed in Job 1:6, 7 and again in chapter two, but we’ll only look at this first reference. Notice the phrase “sons of God” “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. And the Lord said to Satan, ‘From where do you come?’ So Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth on it.’” In Luke 3:38 Adam is listed as a son of God “… the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. “ The other sons of God at this meeting then are the Adam type beings, the first created ones, or the leaders of the other planets. Evidently the Lord holds meetings with representatives of all the other planets on a regular basis as Satan returns quickly to discuss Job again in the next chapter.
The contents are as follows:
TRANSLUCITE
SCIENCE FICTION AND THE MEANING OF OUR MODERN AGE
BIBLE PROOF THERE’S LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS
JOB LEARNED WHAT WE ALL MUST
OF COURSE THEY LANDED ON THE MOON
WHY HAVEN’T THEY GONE BACK?
THE (NOT SO) SECRET KEYS THAT UNLOCK THE REAL TRUTH
JOHN 3:16 IN DEPTH
MR. SPIELBERG HAVE I GOT A SCRIPT FOR YOU
EPILOGUE “THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE
Chapter three BIBLE PROOF THERE’S LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS
Alberta, Canada is well known as an important source of dinosaur bones. Dinosaur Provincial Park, where many specimens have been discovered, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The town of Drumheller plays host to the “Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology”. A half hour’s drive north from there the “Big Valley Creation Science Museum” exists in the town of Big Valley. My wife and I happened to visit this museum the day before its grand opening a few years ago. The displays were very professional. Some of which presented quite reasonable challenges to the theory of evolution while others gave highly compelling evidence of the Genesis account of early world history. We purchased a few books that also made their case for creation the same way.
“In the Beginning - Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood (7th Edition)” by Walt Brown Ph.D., Director of The Center for Scientific Creation, was one of those books. It’s actually very sad to say, but even if he is completely right with all the rest of his theories (and I’m not a scientist so I can’t say for sure) Mr. Brown totally invalidates himself with two sections dealing with the issues of life on other planets and the age of the universe. He might as well be trying to prove the world is flat after all. The modern non-biblical world view is so ingrained into today’s youth; his opinions on these topics will have no credibility in their eyes (see “In the Beginning” pages 232-235 and 247-248).
Ultimately no one can really prove creation or evolution. Rocks and flowers prove one or the other if that’s what you want them to. Most people take a similar approach to the Bible by reading their pre-conceived notions into it rather than a careful study to let it speak for itself. Pastor George Vandeman was speaker /director of the “It Is Written” television show from the 1950’s to the early 1990’s. He therefore witnessed the transition from the previous generation’s mindset influenced by the Bible, into that of the Baby Boomers and beyond. On page 5 of “Planet in Rebellion”, Pastor Vandeman writes “For who of us is not aware that during a few short decades the planet that was once our universe has dwindled into a planet that can never again be completely isolated from its stellar neighbors”.
However the discoveries of science did not threaten his faith at all. “But nothing, I believe, will help us get our bearings and settle our confusion than to look through our giant telescopes to the stars fixed in the planned precision of their unfailing orbits – and discover who is back of it all” (page 12). His position that there is in fact life on other planets is illustrated by quoting Isaiah 45:18 “For thus says the Lord, Who created the heavens, Who is God, Who formed the earth and made it, Who has established it, Who did not create it in vain, Who formed it to be inhabited: “I am the Lord, and there is no other.” He then adds “Therefore if this world were not the abode of life, its creation would have been in vain – useless. Would it not naturally follow that if such be true of this little speck of cosmic dust, then much if not all of God’s creation would likewise be in vain if not put to some intelligent use” (page 22)?
As we saw from Hebrews 1:1-3, God made all that we can see “out there”. Did He make it all for the benefit of planet earth on day four of creation? If so, why bother to put mountains on the moon or a red spot on Jupiter since we didn’t find them until Galileo? Why have galaxies billions of light years away if we can’t even see them with the naked eye? What about life out there then? Isaiah 40:15 says “Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket, And are counted as the small dust on the scales; Look, He lifts up the isles as a very little thing.” If the 226 nations of earth are a drop in the bucket (this is where that phrase came from), then there are obviously millions of planets with inhabited, developed societies on them throughout the universe.
In Nehemiah 9:6 the “host” of heaven worships God. These are beings, not inanimate objects. “You alone are the Lord; You have made heaven, The heaven of heavens, with all their host, The earth and everything on it, The seas and all that is in them, And You preserve them all. The host of heaven worships You.” “Host” is an old English word for large group of people. Elsewhere the Bible says He is the Lord of “hosts”, as in more than one group.
One particular large group is mentioned in Daniel chapter 7. This is a vision the Lord gave the prophet Daniel of world history from his time forward. After the rise and fall of the Persian, Greek, and Roman Empires and their transition into “Christendom”, the nations of Europe under the domination of the church; the vision finishes with a special emphasis on heaven’s point of view. Daniel is shown the actual throne room where God the Father and Jesus begin the first phase of Their judgement of planet earth. Elsewhere in the Bible this room is referred to as the “Temple in Heaven”, or the “Sanctuary”. We will examine this judgement and what it means for us more closely in “The (Not So) Secret Keys That Unlock the Real Truth”.
For now let’s look at verses 9 and 10 “I watched till thrones were put in place, And the Ancient of Days was seated; His garment was white as snow, And the hair of His head was like pure wool. His throne was a fiery flame, Its wheels a burning fire; A fiery stream issued And came forth from before Him. A thousand thousands ministered to Him; Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. The court was seated, And the books were opened.”
What is ten thousand times ten thousand? 100 million! The largest stadium in this world is in the Czech Republic and holds almost 250,000 people. Yet this one room holds 400 times more. Now, in many countries on earth, there is a regular army and then there is an elite inner guard charged solely with protecting the Head of State. Are these 100 million angels the sum total of all the angels out there? Likely this is not the case because the text also said “thousands of thousands”.
The text in Nehemiah cross references well with what Paul called the “third heaven” in 2 Corinthians 12:2. (This is one point where I disagree with Mormonism. They have some strange belief based on this verse that makes no sense.) The three levels of heaven are: 1. the blue sky; 2. what we now call outer space, which is where the hosts live; and 3. the holy city, New Jerusalem, where God’s throne is now and in which He receives worship. This is one reason some people can find the Bible confusing as sometimes when the Bible says “heaven(s)” it is only talking about our blue sky. Revelation 21:1 for instance, is not talking about the rest of the universe, its just talking about our atmosphere. “Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea.” The Lord knew that pollution would be an issue in our time. He promises that when He makes the earth anew, He will give us a clean atmosphere again. (Not that we shouldn’t take care of the world the best we can now, of course. But the thought that we actually will destroy this earth through pollution is a lie.)
One of the most striking texts in the Bible is a multi-level prophecy that has recently been fulfilled once more. From Obadiah verse 4 we can draw the conclusion that our Heavenly Father knew the conflict in science and religion would take place with two differing views of Heaven as a hot button issue. In it He says “Though you ascend as high as the eagle, And though you set your nest among the stars, From there I will bring you down,” says the Lord.” Though began by the Soviet Union with Sputnik in 1957 and continued today by many nations including Japan, China, Canada and the European Union, the nation with the eagle as its symbol claims to have won the space race as the United States was the one country that has landed men on the moon. The U.S. has also lead out in the development of the International Space Station. Obadiah 4 promises we will see Jesus come back to this world from the same realm of physical space that this permanent resting place, or “nest” for mankind has been established in.
The fact that there is life out there is proven most clearly by cross-referencing a few texts. A sort of heavenly convention is discussed in Job 1:6, 7 and again in chapter two, but we’ll only look at this first reference. Notice the phrase “sons of God” “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. And the Lord said to Satan, ‘From where do you come?’ So Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth on it.’” In Luke 3:38 Adam is listed as a son of God “… the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. “ The other sons of God at this meeting then are the Adam type beings, the first created ones, or the leaders of the other planets. Evidently the Lord holds meetings with representatives of all the other planets on a regular basis as Satan returns quickly to discuss Job again in the next chapter.
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