As I have previously mentioned, this blog was for a limited time and a specific purpose. That purpose is to share the contents of my book "Science the Bible and Life on Other Planets". Approximatley 63 pages in length, chapter one begins with my first post and continues in order from that point to the present. If you are new to this blog and are interested in a unique take on the issues between science and religion so hotly debated elsewhere, this blog is for you.

To further your search for truth, I recently have posted a number of links to some video Bible studies I have been working on. They are available to view by clicking on "Video Bible Study" at airdriesda.org. All are welcome to learn more about God and His truth for our time there.
THANK YOU
LES MILLER

While the project for the Airdrie Church is on going, here are some various urls for Bible videos I have up on line.

http://www.3angelstube.com/video/298/How-to-Study-the-Bible-Part-1
http://www.3angelstube.com/video/309/How-To-Study-The-Bible-Part-2

http://www.3angelstube.com/video/312/Getting-To-Know-the-Father

http://www.3angelstube.com/video/313/Getting-to-Know-the-Son

http://www.3angelstube.com/video/322/Getting-to-Know-the-Holy-Spirit

http://www.3angelstube.com/video/492/Why-Do-We-Suffer

http://www.3angelstube.com/video/618/Forgiveness

http://www.3angelstube.com/video/679/Creation-and-Redemption

http://www.3angelstube.com/video/1420/Understanding-Temptation

http://www.3angelstube.com/video/1443/The-Second-COming-of-Christ-and-the-End-of-the-World

http://www.3angelstube.com/video/320/The-Search-For-Truth

http://www.3angelstube.com/video/1558/Which-Laws-Were-Done-Away-When

http://www.3angelstube.com/video/680/True-Grace-is-the-Power-to-Live-Right

http://vimeo.com/17230809 (God's Holy Day)


My Testimony on youtube in 4 parts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc5gGaSjggg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRAbN3taQ7Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2O_A0D1Y94
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLA2gGqLHcU

There's lots more great videos on 3angelstube.com and sabbathtube.com
God bless!

New Project

Look for "Video Bible Study" on airdriesda.org where you will find a number of different topics designed to meet your spiritual needs. May the Lord be with you!

So we have the Second Coming, then we have the delivering of the kingdom. They are two separate events that according to Revelation 20 are 1000 years apart. Take careful note how in many of these Bible references there are two separate things listed. What we have here is a breakdown of those events into what happens before and what happens after this 1000 year period. To see each of these texts in their original state without this breakdown please look them up in your own Bible.

HIS APPEARING (The Second Coming)
“Jesus Christ ... shall judge the quick“ 2 Timothy 4:1.
“they that are Christ’s at his coming” 1 Corinthians 15:23
“they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life“ John 5:29
“some to everlasting life” Daniel 12:2
“I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” John 14:3
“the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout ... the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. So shall we ever be with the Lord” 1 Thessalonians 4:16,17
“the great day of His wrath has come” Revelation 6:17
“He hath ... avenged the blood of His servants ...” Revelation 19:2
“The earth ... shall fall ... the LORD shall punish ... the kings of the earth.” Isaiah 24:20-22
“he that hath part in the first resurrection ... the second death hath no power” Revelation 20:6
“the Devil ... bound ... a thousand years” Revelation 20:2

HIS KINGDOM (Delivered to the Father)
“Jesus Christ ... shall judge ... the dead” 1 Timothy 4:1
“But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished” Revelation 20:5
“we shall judge angels” 1 Corinthians 6:3
“thrones ... they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them ... and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years” Revelation 20:4
“the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and the dead were judged” Revelation 20:12
“some to shame and everlasting contempt” Daniel 12:2
“they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” John 5:29
“whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” Revelation 20:15
“This is the second death” Revelation 20:14
“the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven” Revelation 21:2
And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them” Revelation 20:9
“Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God” 1 Corinthians 15:24
“Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men ... the former things are passed away” Revelation 21:3,4
“Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth” Matthew 5:5
“for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away” Revelation 21:1

TO SUM UP
When Jesus returns He will destroy the living wicked, all who have rejected Him one way or the other. The living Saints, His true followers, will watch as He raises from the dead those who were His true followers from every other generation of human history. Both together are changed and fly off to Heaven for a period of 1000 years. An exception to this is a special resurrection for those who “pierced Him” (from Revelation 1:7).

This Millennium time has God’s people with Him judging the fallen angels and the wicked. In other words, He will explain why those He didn’t take to Heaven lost out on the chance He gave them. They made their own choices each and every one. Every single question will be answered, every single mystery will be solved. We’ll get a chance to see world history from His point of view. We’ll see when the angels, particularly our guardian angels, came to help us and offered help to the wicked that was turned down. The “bottomless pit” of Revelation 20:1-3 is obviously symbolic of the earth as a wasteland as the rest of the chapter clearly describes events that happen on the surface of the earth. Satan will be “bound” by a chain of circumstance, as he will have no one to lie to or tempt into sin. With all his people dead and God’s people all in Heaven, he’ll have nothing to do but think about the horrible things he has done in ruining this world.

At the end of this time period when the Heavenly City comes down to the earth as Revelation 21 speaks of, God raises all the wicked together, and this is the one point in history where every knee does bow before Jesus Christ in recognition of His justice as it says in Philippians 2:9-11. We’ll be satisfied with His justice, that He did try to reach those who are lost, and they will be shown where they had a chance to be saved and turned it down as well. Satan makes his final effort to deceive the wicked and one last time they show their contempt for God’s mercy by trying to attack the City as described in Revelation 20:7-10.

After all sin and sinners are completely wiped out of existence by that fire, God will make the earth anew and it will be the home of the saved forever. The earth will then be the capital of the entire universe and the door will be opened to a brave new world of exciting adventures for God’s people. There will always be something new to learn, always be something interesting to do. We will see Jesus face to face and we’ll always be reminded of the great love He has for us by seeing the scars in His hands, feet and side. Isaiah 66:22, 23 gives us this promise “’For as the new heavens and the new earth Which I will make shall remain before Me,’ says the LORD, ‘So shall your descendants and your name remain. And it shall come to pass That from one New Moon to another, And from one Sabbath to another, All flesh shall come to worship before Me,” says the LORD.’” All flesh here includes the redeemed people of earth, the angels and every other intelligent being on every other planet.

John 3:16 POST TWO

The Father obviously gave control of this earth to the Son. 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 shows that what Christ is doing in the plan of salvation is to buy the world back that Adam sold. He was already king of the universe ruling with the Father from eternity, but when all is said and done here He will also be king of this world too. He’ll have the place Adam once had.

"But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. For “He has put all things under His feet.” But when He says “all things are put under Him,” it is evident that He who put all things under Him is excepted. Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all."

So this verse is an overview of all of human history. We talked already about how the story of the world can be summed up into a few distinct phases. God gave the universe a demonstration of just how bad things would get under sin before the flood, then He gave us a chance to recover ourselves through obedience, but that didn’t work either since we are no longer capable of obeying on our own. Finally when Jesus came He did for us what we can’t do for ourselves. This text describes the final phases of history. Since Jesus rose from the dead He can now give the promise to those who seek Him that He will raise them up when He returns again. “Then comes the end” refers to a time after when the wicked will be punished for their sins. In just a little bit we’ll briefly discuss what that punishment will entail. This earth, once cut off from God the Father by sin, will then be given back to Him by His Son, Jesus, the king of this world. The earth will regain the place in the universe it once had.

Of course when Jesus did come to earth He looked like any other human being. It was the combination of the miracles He performed and the prophecies He fulfilled that proved He is the Messiah. In Acts 2:22-24 Peter said “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know— “Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.

It was not possible for death to hold Him because death is the penalty for sin and Jesus never sinned. This is according to Hebrews 4:15 “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. Peter continues in Acts 2:25-32 with:
"For David says concerning Him: ‘I foresaw the LORD always before my face, For He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad; Moreover my flesh also will rest in hope. For You will not leave my soul in Hades, Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life; You will make me full of joy in Your presence.’ "

"Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne, he, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption. “This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses."

The fact that Peter comments the way he does shows that he and the rest of the early church finally understood what the coming of the Messiah really meant. Before the cross everyone within the realm of God’s people was looking for an earthly king to free Israel from the Romans. However, Jesus as a heavenly King came to free them from sin itself. What happened over time is that people had misinterpreted the prophecies of Jesus coming. Instead of a spiritual leader they were looking for a political one. This is why Jesus said in Luke 20:41-44 “And He said to them, ‘How can they say that the Christ is the Son of David?’ ‘Now David himself said in the Book of Psalms: “The LORD said to my Lord, Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.”’ Therefore David calls Him “Lord”; how is He then his Son?”

John 3:16 In-Depth POST ONE

You see them with their homemade signs at football and hockey games. All those signs say is “John 3:16”, which is probably the most beloved and well known verses in the entire Bible. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

When did the Father give the Son to the world? Was it the day Jesus got baptized and started His three and a half year ministry? Was it that first Christmas when Jesus came into the world as the angels announced His birth to the shepherds? No, I submit to you that in light of what we have already seen of Jesus in the Old Testament, that He has been working to save this world from the very day it went astray. Let’s look at what happened that day from Genesis 3:15. “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.”

This is the very first prophecy given that the Messiah would come and save the world. These words were spoken then by Jesus Himself. It was Jesus who went to the Garden that day to confront Adam and Eve. It’s been mentioned several times already that we are cut off from God the Father by sin. The Father is the highest authority in the entire universe. So He rules the universe and this world also. According to James 1:17, the Father gave us Jesus since He is the source of all that is good. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.” (Deuteronomy 6:4 shows there is a oneness to God yes, but there is also a hierarchy. Consider that the Spirit lives not to glorify himself but the Son in John 16:13,14 and that only the Father knows the date for the Second Coming, see Mark 13:32.)

When the Lord made humanity, it was His purpose to give us authority over this planet as is shown by Genesis 1:28 “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” Our first father, Adam would have been a king over us had he not sinned. In the genealogy of Christ Luke 3:38 uses the same title for Adam as Christ Himself bears “the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.”

However, from the example of David, another king who symbolized the Messiah, this authority was under God. 1 Chronicles 28:6,7 says “Now He said to me, ‘It is your son Solomon who shall build My house and My courts; for I have chosen him to be My son, and I will be his Father. ‘Moreover I will establish his kingdom forever, if he is steadfast to observe My commandments and My judgments, as it is this day.’” In other words, God’s blessing comes tied to obedience. When Adam and Eve sinned, they forfeited that blessing.

This explains the significance of Job 2:1, which we looked at in the chapter on life on other planets. I’ll repeat the verse here “Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD. These are the ‘Adams’ of the other planets. Adam himself would have had this role still had he not sinned. What he did in eating of the tree was to forfeit the world into Satan’s control. The devil now claimed the legal right to control it. That’s why the Bible calls him the “god of this world” and the “prince of the power of the air”. Jesus had to then act immediately in some fashion or Satan would have taken over.

Satan was able to claim this legal right to world domination through tempting our first parents into sin. Genesis 3 tells the story of how sin itself came into this world. I recommend you read the whole chapter. For now we’ll look at verse 17 and 21 “Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat of it:”’ ‘Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life.’” "Also for Adam and his wife the LORD God made tunics of skin, and clothed them. We talked already in chapter two about how their sense of their own nakedness after they sinned came from the broken connection with God. They were not ashamed beforehand to be naked and now they were. Notice it is God who clothed them. This symbolizes the provisions He was already making for their salvation. The slain lamb was to represent the innocent One who would come and offer up His own life to cover their guilt. This is what allowed Adam and Eve to live on. Otherwise the Father would have destroyed them immediately.

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.

Though we have discussed it quite a bit from several angles in the first few chapters of this blog, there is great significance to the changes made in our world since the mid 1800’s. This also has a lot to do with what Jesus is doing now. You see the very first time anyone came to understand the significance of Daniel 8:14 and the cleansing of the Sanctuary was in the early 1800’s. This sparked a great religious revival as a movement rose up believing the cleansing was a sign of the end of the world. The book “Daniel and the Revelation” by Uriah Smith, a man who was there, puts it this way on page 386:

The great religious awakening in the early part of the nineteenth century which resulted from a study of the prophecies, culminated in this advent movement. Men from all denominations were convinced that the coming of Christ was near. As they came out of the various churches, they left sectarian names and feelings behind, and every heart beat in unison as all joined to give the alarm to the churches and to the world, and pointed to the coming of the Son of man as the believer's true hope. Selfishness and covetousness were laid aside, and a spirit of consecration and sacrifice was cherished. The Spirit of God was with every true believer, and his praise upon every tongue. Those who were not in that movement cannot fully realize how great was the searching of heart, the consecration to God, the peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, and the pure, fervent love for one another which true believers enjoyed.

From The Great Controversy by Ellen White, page 611 “The advent movement of 1840-44 was a glorious manifestation of the power of God; the first angel's message was carried to every missionary station in the world, and in some countries there was the greatest religious interest which has been witnessed in any land since the Reformation of the sixteenth century”.
This revival came about as a result of what’s known in history as “The Second Great Awakening”. After Napoleon took the Pope prisoner in 1798 the political power of the Catholic Church was broken, though persecution had already been waning for decades. This combined with the failure of the French Revolution gave great confidence to Protestant Bible scholars. The Bible was no longer illegal for the common man to possess and people began studying it more earnestly as the various Bible societies spread God’s word.

This ‘Advent’ movement keyed in on Daniel 8:14 and the cleansing of the Sanctuary as we have discussed above. Daniel and the Revelation, page 635 elaborates further.

As early as 1831, William Miller, of Low Hampton, New York, by an earnest and consistent study of the prophecies, was led to the conclusion that the gospel age was near its close. He placed the termination, which he thought would occur at the end of the prophetic periods, about the year 1843. This date was afterward extended to the autumn of 1844. … When he began to promulgate his views, they met with general favor, and were followed by great religious awakenings in different parts of the land.

Soon a multitude of colaborers gathered around his standard, among whom may be mentioned such men as F. G. Brown, Charles Fitch, Josiah Litch, J. V. Himes, and others, who were then eminent for piety, and men of influence in the religious world. The period marked by the years 1840-1844 was one of intense activity and great progress in this work.

Now remember this happened when 1844 was still in the future. Their critical mistake came from the fact that they didn’t really know what the Sanctuary was and assumed its cleansing meant the end of the world when Jesus will return and cleanse the earth. As Uriah Smith discussed there was more than a year of approximate guesses that came and went from 1843 to 1844. The last possible day fro Jesus to return was October 22, 1844. (I’ll explain how they arrived at these dates in the next chapter.) When He didn’t come the event was written up in history as “The Great Disappointment”.

Why did revival go wrong? They were injecting their own opinions into the Bible rather than letting God’s word speak for itself. However the Lord knew this would happen. The cleansing reference of verse 14 is preceded by Daniel 8:13 “Then I heard a holy one speaking; and another holy one said to that certain one who was speaking, ‘How long will the vision be, concerning the daily sacrifices and the transgression of desolation, the giving of both the sanctuary and the host to be trampled under foot?’” Daniel 8:13 has two saints talking. It’s the second saint who is asking the first the question the question of when? The first saint answers the second only on that question of when. The second saint is left to learn the meaning through further study later. Though the first movement fell apart, those who were willing to hang on after being so broken and disappointed were given many great rewards. God worked in several ways to raise up a new movement. As this happened, those who studied their Bibles saying in their hearts ‘where did we go wrong?’ found many other important truths missing from the theology of the mainstream church of the day. These people found out the very truths we have discussed here among others.

They are now known as the Seventh-day Adventists. ‘Adventist’ from the understanding that Jesus will soon return to end this world and begin a new one and ‘Seventh-day’ from the Bible fact that the original Sabbath has never been changed in God’s eyes. Sunday is not the true Sabbath, but we’ll leave that discussion for another day.

Jesus gave us the truth when He came to earth the first time. Indeed as John 14:6 says, He is the “way, truth and the life”. The early church began with the benefit of that truth but soon fell away from it over the course of a few centuries. Then God worked again to bring His people out of the Dark Ages. First there was Martin Luther, the man we all owe our freedom to today. Then wave after wave of Reformers came along from the Baptists to Wesley and the Methodists, each one adding a piece as they were lead to study the Bible. Ultimately though, the 14th century mindset still had its influence.

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.”

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 Secret Keys That Unlock the Real Truth Post One

A few years ago a friend of a friend told me about a practical joke someone once played that I thought was really funny. The victim of the gag was a woman hosting a Thanksgiving dinner. She had made effort upon effort to get everything just right for the special meal. What she didn’t know was that hours before, one of her guests had snuck into the kitchen and stuffed a Cornish game hen inside the turkey. When she went to carve up her beautiful bird, there was this other bird inside it. As the scene unfolded, the hostess was overwhelmed with shock, guilt and horror. “I killed the baby”, was her only thought. Morbidly funny I’ll admit, but think about this situation, birds lay eggs right? All birds do, yes, WITHOUT EXCEPTION! If this was the first case ever of a bird giving birth like a mammal, why wasn’t the baby bird whole and intact? Why was it prepared for eating just like the turkey? Even though the evidence in that immediate moment seemed completely overwhelming, logic and truth needed to prevail because what she saw was only a trick played on her by someone else.

What if you were in a similar situation? What if you saw something so overwhelming it had to be true, even though every single bit of logic and truth said it wasn’t, what would you do? What would you believe? People who buy into the modern, scientific mindset have no room in their belief system for the spirit world at all. Yet miracles still happen that science cannot explain all over the world. However, what very few are willing to consider is that there is such a thing as a false miracle. This is not to use the word ‘false’ in the sense of some slight of hand magician’s trick. What I mean is a real, supernatural event, but one that does not come from God.

First and foremost the Bible very clearly speaks of two supernatural forces working on this planet. On one side we have God and on the other there is the devil. 2 Corinthians 11:14 says “And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.” In other words, you can’t always tell them apart. God will work in your life and when He does He will make sure you know it is Him who is working. Satan will work in your life and will also try to make you thinks its God working. So how then can you tell? You can’t just trust your own eyes and ears; you need a standard beyond yourself. Satan has the power to work miracles that lead people to believe his lies. This kind of question is something the whole world has to face more often than people realize, especially in stories of near-death experiences. Millions of people say, “But I know what I saw, it was real!” Was it really? Why would God clearly and consistently say one thing about what death is really like for 59 centuries and then contradict Himself in our time?

Isaiah 8:19, 20 says “And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” There you have it. Satan’s false miracles are always shall we say, “flashy”; they’re designed to wow people with no real purpose. When God works, there’s a message there. The “law and the testimony” refer to the Bible and the Ten Commandments. A true miracle from God will pass the test of His word. Notice something else here. That is a connection between false miracles and death. The God of the Bible is referred to as the Living God. He works through living people, who are called prophets. Satan’s way of working is very often contained in “messages from beyond the grave“.

So the very first secret key we’ll look at is the fact that when you die you really do die. We have already found the proper balance between creation and evolution, that God has been creating solar systems for countless eons of time, but that each one was created and did not evolve. He has the power to cause matter to come into existence and that’s what makes Him God, among other things. Therefore the creation story of Genesis chapters 1 and 2 is not mythical but a realistic account of the very first week in planet earth’s history and it happened about six thousand years ago.

Genesis 2:7 gives us the process whereby the Lord created our first father, Adam. “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” The word being there is translated soul in other Bible versions. This is something that must be fully understood, Man does not HAVE a soul man IS a soul. The combination of a physical body and this ‘breath of life’ make a soul. The Bible uses the word ‘soul’ almost 1700 times and never calls it immortal.

A SOUL IS NOT A GHOST! So says 1 Peter 3:20 “who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.” Did eight ghosts get onto Noah’s Ark? No, eight living, breathing people did.

What most people think of when they use the word soul is this “breath of life”, which is another great mystery we’ll never fully solve and simply have to accept. Whatever it is, it has something to do with the ability to breath and something to do with the electricity that runs our minds. This ‘breath’ is also called ‘spirit’ or ‘ghost’ in certain Bible verses. It is the energy God gives to make life. This energy is not a conscious entity of its own. Job 27:3 puts it this way “As long as my breath is in me, And the breath of God in my nostrils”. When Paul spoke to the Greeks of his day, from whom we get our modern science, he said in Acts 17:28 “For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.”

Life comes from God and only from Him. Think about the computer you are using right now to read this blog. It has a hard drive and a processor, which are physical piece of equipment that parallel the functions of your brain. These cannot work unless the machine is turned on and plugged into the electrical power source, which is simply energy and nothing more. There is no way to communicate directly with that energy, it simply powers the machinery.

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.

Of Course They Landed on the Moon POST TWO

Paul’s experience makes the situation quite a bit more interesting. What he saw he spoke of several times, one is in Acts 26:12-23 ““While thus occupied, as I journeyed to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests, “at midday, O king, along the road I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and those who journeyed with me. “And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ “So I said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. ‘But rise and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will yet reveal to you. ‘I will deliver you from the Jewish people, as well as from the Gentiles, to whom I now send you, ‘to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.’

“Therefore, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, “but declared first to those in Damascus and in Jerusalem, and throughout all the region of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent, turn to God, and do works befitting repentance. “For these reasons the Jews seized me in the temple and tried to kill me. “Therefore, having obtained help from God, to this day I stand, witnessing both to small and great, saying no other things than those which the prophets and Moses said would come— “that the Christ would suffer, that He would be the first to rise from the dead, and would proclaim light to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles.”

Paul’s encounter with Christ was just as supernatural as what Peter described. Yet Paul saw Jesus at least three years after He returned to Heaven. The Lord was not a ghost, just as He said to the disciples that Sunday night in Luke 24:37-43, He was still the same Jesus! Paul never met Him that we know of before the cross yet his account harmonizes well with those who did.

Do you trust these men? A liar can’t keep his story straight indefinitely and will always slip up somewhere because he has to make an effort to remember what lies he’s told to whom. And what are the odds that liar would remember his story perfectly 30 years later in Peter and Paul’s case and 60 years later in John’s? When one is telling the truth he or she does not have to remember it in that sense because the truth just is what it is. The overwhelming changes in the disciples from their encounters with Christ testify to the fact that they did experience something real. They all abandoned Him in the garden that Thursday night and their entire world was crushed when Jesus was put on the cross. Yet 50 days after that in Acts 2 and for the rest of their lives we see nothing but courage in them. They might have gone to their graves for a lie to avoid shame and embarrassment but would they have lived so courageously for that same lie until then?

Paul also said in First Thessalonians 2:4, 5 “But as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who tests our hearts. For neither at any time did we use flattering words, as you know, nor a cloak for covetousness—God is witness.

Verses 9-13 of the same chapter say “For you remember, brethren, our labor and toil; for laboring night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, we preached to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how devoutly and justly and blamelessly we behaved ourselves among you who believe; as you know how we exhorted, and comforted, and charged every one of you, as a father does his own children, that you would walk worthy of God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory. For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.

What the men of God had to say was the word of God. Their character backed up their words. When someone initially searched for God who has no previous knowledge pf spiritual things, that person will look to the one sharing with him and base his decision to some degree on that person’s character. The student looks to the teacher and says “what is truth” but is also saying “does this work for you.” Once the student comes into his own faith relationship with God he will have that faith tested by being allowed to see that his teacher is not perfect after all. Therefore it behooves Christians to live out what they believe every day. The consistency of character these men showed for the rest of their lives is evidence they can be trusted.

It is the Lord who ordained that humans would be used to reach each other. Not everything therefore, will come to us individually straight from God. He will raise up and call some, so they can help others. He will show it’s His word by the changes in your life He makes.... that’s the proof! Just like the proof of creation we’ve already seen, the life, death and resurrection of Christ is proven the same way, by the peace of mind Jesus brings to those who receive Him. Psalm 51:10 says “create in me a clean heart

Remember Jesus words to doubting Thomas in John 20:29? “Jesus said to him, ‘Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’” Ultimately none of us were there. We have to trust those who were. The ultimate proof of creation, Psalm 51:10, is also the ultimate proof Jesus is the Saviour of the world. How could His salvation mean anything if He hadn’t made us in the first place? How could His creation mean anything without His saving Grace either? To repeat the verse, it says “Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
The fact that there are people today who reject the moon landings is proof of the principle of human nature that ultimately one has to experience things for oneself in order to believe them. They youth of today weren’t there so they can’t believe it. If mankind did return to the moon then many of those same youth would likely admit it was true after all. We all need a continual refreshing like this in order to sustain what we believe in. It’s the same in spiritual things.

Of Course They Landed on the Moon POST ONE

OF COURSE THEY LANDED ON THE MOON

I’ll give him a fake name – ‘Neil’. He is a composite character taken from a few people near me in life. A modern minded person, into science, philosophy and science fiction/fantasy, he is a lot like I was when I was his age. There is one crucial difference though. My friend, like many young people today, does not believe the moon landings were real. There have been books, TV documentaries and websites speaking about the issue and calling into question what was once fully accepted. The lack of stars behind the astronauts in any of the lunar surface pictures, the way those pictures were lit, the way they seemed to walk in their spacesuits, the way the shadow lines cross the ground, the waving of the U.S. flag; all these and more are given as “proof” that the moon landings couldn’t possibly be real. These have also clearly been debunked in other books, TV documentaries and websites. Those things that couldn’t happen, like the uneven shadow lines, are shown there to be everyday occurrences.

What shows those in the “against” camp to be completely incorrect and what I find fascinating about the whole debate is the incredible amount of evidence they ignore. Thousands of people were involved in the launching of the spaceships. After all these years and not one has cracked and spilled the beans, what does that say? Where did the rockets go each time they launched? They went up; if it was a fake they would have had to come down somewhere. Could you hide a 300 foot tall rocket? As my wife suggested to me in our conversations on the issue, how far would the conspiracy have had to go? Was every single Mercury, Gemini and pre-landing Apollo mission also a fake or was it just the actual moon landings? Do these same people who watch TV every day believe the satellites those TV signals come from are unreal? If the helicopter had the capsule in tow and dropped it into the ocean before it picked it up, where did it come from? There would have been thousands of people on the navy ships to see this part of the hoax. They never said anything. What about the total and complete disdain any living astronaut has for the issue. It’s entirely beneath them to even discuss it at all. If it was faked, then why have an Apollo 13 near disaster? Surely anyone who would lie to that degree would gloss things over so well that they would be seen to succeed without any problems. Not one of these points is ever dealt with by those who discount the success of the Apollo missions.

I have never doubted for one second that the moon landings were real. One thing that confirmed my beliefs over the years and closed my heart to any doubts was when I saw the video of the astronauts proving Galileo right. As a young person I greatly valued seeing this in light of being taught the story of Galileo’s persecution. What the astronauts did was to take a hammer and a feather up to the moon and drop them both at the same time. People disagreed with Galileo’s statements that all things fall at the same rate and used the feather as their example. Without air on the moon, the feather and the hammer fell at exactly the same rate landing on the moon’s surface at exactly the same time. This was not something that could be faked.

When you take all of the supposed reasons for the moon landing to be faked into account, what those who believe and promote them are really saying is not that they don’t believe, but that they can’t bring themselves to believe. It’s just too far beyond their worldview to surrender their preconceived notions.

In a way it’s not surprising that today’s youth do feel this way. The situation is the same one that we were in during the 1970’s with the book “Chariots of the Gods”. Its premise was essentially “how could those ancient peoples have built such great monuments when as far as we know they were nowhere near as advanced?” Today’s youth are well aware of the factoid that the average car has had a more powerful computer chip in it than was on the Apollo spaceship for at least the last twenty years. Therefore, how could they have done it? Your car couldn’t make it to the moon right?

The answer is simple, they were smart. I was quite adept at doing math in my head until I started using a calculator. Then I lost that skill. The entire world is the same way today. A slide rule may not be as fast as a computer, but the engineers at NASA could get the same results with it if they needed to. The kind of computers we have now were not what they had then. What they couldn’t get their computers to do, they did themselves. I’m not the first to say this but it’s something everyone should know. That is even though today’s computers are much more powerful and much smaller, they run complicated applications for processing video and picture files that the computers back then did not do. All they used those giant, room-sized computers for was number crunching. There were no operating systems to load up on the Apollo Command Module. Neither was there a mouse, printer/scanner nor a wireless router for high speed internet with their associated driver programs. There wasn’t even a monitor in the capsule the way we think of one. The display screen simply showed the numbers they needed to see. The majority of the computing was done on the ground anyway.

Computers are only as popular as they are today because they have been made so user friendly. They’re nothing more than glorified video game consoles, typewriters and stereo systems. Have you the average layman reading these words ever wrote any programs on your home computer yourself? People today take these things for granted, which leads them into error. Having been raised with them their whole lives and knowing nothing else, its no wonder young people today can’t picture the world any other way. The thing is; it was.

I know it’s true that they landed on the moon because I was there. I was four years old watching the rocket lift off live on television. I will never forget the wonder that filled my heart as I saw the great blasts of smoke and steam shoot out from the side of the Saturn V booster to a distance beyond it that was greater than its height. I remember the scene a few days later with the helicopter coming to the capsule, already in the water, and the frogmen leaping out into the ocean to gather and collect the astronauts and bring them home safely. No one will ever be able to convince me of anything other than the truth of the matter. They did land on the moon every one of those six times.

It was not my purpose to get into a major discussion on the topic of the actual moon landings. Instead rather, to springboard into why there is so much doubt among the young of today and what lessons we can draw from this controversy as it applies to the spiritual things we’re discussing here on this blog.

What about the stories of those who can say “I WAS THERE“ to seeing Jesus rise from the dead, were they fakes, yes or no? What does that mean for us today in the age where so many think they no longer need God?

Acts 1:3 says “to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” Take the example of the Lord’s appearing to 500 at once mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:6. How could that possibly be attributed to mass hysteria? Note that the text here says “He presented Himself”. The crowd didn’t control the appearance.

John was one of those who saw Him many times after His resurrection. 1 John 1:1-4 says “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life— the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us— that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.”
John was the youngest disciple. He wrote these words at least 60 years later. Growing up a Jew he knew of the hopes Israel had in the coming Messiah. He knew the true God, the God of the Bible, was not the same as the statues worshipped by every other culture in the entire world.

The Lord is beyond our reality and yet here he tells us that same God came into our reality to give us life. He was an eyewitness and he shares what he knows to be indisputably true. Even more so, he not only saw Jesus he touched Him! John’s main concern is not all that Jesus did to prove Himself after He rose form the dead, but the way He lived His life during the time of His ministry when He taught so much truth, gave so many practical demonstrations of His love and reached out to save those who would reject Him.

Peter actually uses the word “eyewitness” in 2 Peter 1:16-19, specifically talking about transfiguration of Luke 9:28-36, when he, John and James were with Jesus. They saw Jesus in a glorious white light and saw Moses and Elijah. They also audibly heard the voice of God the Father. Peter wrote these words many years later. “For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts;"

Elsewhere Peter speaks of the “more sure word of prophecy”. In other words, even though he did have eyewitness experiences, the real proof of Jesus Messiahship is found in the prophecies of the Old Testament that the Lord fulfilled while on earth. Some of those prophecies, like how Judas would betray Him, were not ones Jesus could personally control. Here in the above passage Peter notes how those prophecies were confirmed by this supernatural encounter.

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.

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.

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.

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.