This-evening we're going back to the beginning. And as we read our text Scripture I want you to see how the natural is a type of the Spiritual.
John 1:1-14, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him nothing was made that was made.
In Him was Life; and the Life was the Light of men. And the Light shines in darkness; and the darkness comprehends it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men might believe through him. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light which, coming into the world enlightens every man.
He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But to all who received Him, who believed in His Name He empowered to become the sons of God: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us".
Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth".
John's Gospel speaks of the Holy Spirit Who was manifested in virgin-born flesh as our Lord Jesus Christ who is the beginning of the creation of God—LESS than 2,000 years ago. Any of you who are clinging to denominational teachings, cleanse your souls right now. The first nine verses do not in any way speak of Jesus and do not make Him pre-existent as a second god. Neither do they suggest Jesus Christ is the Creator.
Jesus Christ is the Creator manifest in the flesh of a virgin-born Man. He is the Son of God, NOT God the Son. Jesus created NOTHING. He said Himself, 'I can do only what the Father reveals to Me and speak only what I hear from the Father' (John 5:19; 8:26). Jesus is the beginning of the creation of God Who is NOT a creation but the Creator. Only in Jesus is God a creation.
'In the beginning', God was alone with His thoughts which are attributes of what He is. Any word is a thought expressed. God is His thoughts—Light is the appearance of the glory of the Lord. That Light is called the Shekinah, or Pillar of Fire and Cloud. In this Form God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, led the children of Israel across the Wilderness, manifested above the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, above Jesus Christ (the Mercy Seat) at His baptism by John—blinded Paul on the Damascus Road, has appeared and been photographed many times today.
In these verses John is simply saying, when creation and time commenced, God's thoughts were complete. When expressed, they could be seen in the Form of Light. And the Fullness of God's nature and character were later manifested in the form of flesh, born of a woman 2,000 years ago, in order to die to redeem Adam's fallen race.
In Romans 8:28-30 and Revelation 13:8 we learn that in God's great thinking, Christ was crucified for the predestinated saints before there was light, before God was God. The word God means 'object of worship', and before the beginning, there was nothing to worship Him, He was just the Eternal Spirit alone with His thoughts. Of these predestinated, John says, "all that received Him, who believed in His Name, He empowered to become the manifestation of His thoughts for THEIR Day: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but were the Attributes of God IN the Logos or Word: when it was expressed as Light, IN a burning bush, IN the Pillar of Fire, accounted as being IN Christ when He was born of the virgin Mary, and IN Him when He died on Calvary". And THAT brethren, explains why Christ's Bride is sinless and spotless. We paid for our sins IN Christ on Calvary and came out in the Form of the Holy Spirit AFTER He died, (as Eve was taken from the first Adam after he fell asleep). We resurrected IN Him, are NOW seated in heavenly places IN Him and we can never perish (Ephesians 2:6).
Why were we born-again? Because we ARE the sons of God. We were ALWAYS His sons, foreknown from the foundation of the world. We just recognized It when we were born-again. We cry 'Abba, Father', because we RECOGNIZE we ARE His sons. Denominations know nothing of this. God saw us in His thinking before the foundation of the world, shouting for joy when we caught the revelation of OUR day and ITS Message, and were born-again (Job 38:4-7).
Jesus, who was Jehovah manifested in flesh said, "I am the Light of the world: he that follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the Light of Life"—revelation (John 8:12). "That you may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom you shine as lights in the world" (Philippians 2:15). In other Words, ALL those who are born-again were in God from the foundation of the world and expressed as the Logos in the Form of the Shekinah or Light at the beginning of time which was the start of creation. All God's elect were in that Light and spun-off, or were born-again in their designated season and time, by the Word for their day.
We Christians are all 'chips off the Old Block' as it were. God began manifesting the natural world in the same way, and at the same time. 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth'. When did He create the heavens and the earth? We don't know how many billions or trillions of years ago, He just said "in the beginning." That's when He became the Creator.
All we know is a huge ball of fire came from nothing, like the Word when It came out from God as Light. It whirled through the vast emptiness of space, separating itself into smaller pieces, one of which was to become this earth. This was God, writing His first Bible: the Stars.
His Word is forever written in heaven, and every primitive people had an understanding of the stars. This is why all myths and religions of the world originated from the same truth misinterpreted by Cush at the Tower of Babel, after God divided the earth by language. Interpretation is called hermeneutics after Cush who interpreted men's language and was worshipped as Hermes.
As this burning piece of sun that was to further divide into the earth, moon and the fixed stars that orbit the earth, flew away from its father, it cooled, the gasses condensed and became one huge ball of ice. God moved it back closer to the sun and the ice began to melt, breaking into huge glaciers which carved the landscape, what are now ocean floors, islands, mountains, and continents. All of this might have taken hundreds of millions of years.
The earth is more extensive than we realize. There are canyons six miles below the present surface of the ocean which have been carved by ancient rivers. The Congo River runs a distance of 145 miles out under the South Atlantic and ends in an alluvial fan. The Hudson River valley continues for 90 miles under the North Atlantic extending 300 miles as a submarine canyon to 15,000 feet on the deep sea floor. The Rhine runs all the way across the North Sea near Scotland and the ocean bed was apparently once rolling countryside. The Thames and Humber empty into the Rhine, and in the bottom of the English Channel, another river once flowed westward. On average, one of every 20 longshore miles, streams once flowed out, down the slope across the continental shelves. All over the world is this same evidence that the continents were at one time larger, and the oceans correspondingly smaller.
Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the HEAVENS and the earth".
As God is the Creator and source of all that is, the 'beginning' refers to the first existence or start of creation: when time commenced. It was sudden and instantaneous, as described by the 'big bang' theory; not evolution over aeons of time.
The word 'created' is the Hebrew 'bara' which means to fashion out of nothing—ex nihilo. Whence the weeds in our garden seem to come.
'Heavens' is a plural Hebrew word implying perfection, like the royal plural in English. It refers to the innumerable stars and planets which must remain in perfect balance, or we would experience a catastrophe of cosmic proportion. Like the Bible we read today, the heavens cannot vary one jot or tittle, each star has it position in heaven just as every saint has his place in the Word.
My watch gains about five minutes every day. Yours may be more accurate; even atomic clocks have a margin of error. But God's universe keeps perfect time. Were our solar system to lose or gain time, it would be cumulative and eventually the seasons would get out of harmony. It would be as disastrous as when a man gets out of harmony with the Word for HIS day. What if we tried to be Baptists, or Anglicans—even Pentecostals? We'd be impersonating the Word for a day gone by, and our worship would be in vain. What if the earth thought this is summer when the sun thinks its winter? The weather and crops would be in a disastrous situation.
The heavens mentioned in the first verse of Genesis is the planets and stars of distant systems, and does not refer to the firmament surrounding the earth. That is described in work of the first four days of verses 2-19.
Eventually the ice melted and covered the whole surface of this break-away planet with fluids—water and dense gases churning around, which brings us to the second verse.
Genesis 1:2, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters".
"Earth was without form"—'tohu', waste or desolate, "and void"—'bohu', empty or devoid of any life.
Isaiah 45:18, "For thus says the Lord that created the heavens; God Himself that formed the earth and made it; He has established it, He created it NOT in vain, He formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else". So His final purpose MUST be salvation.
These words, 'tohu' and 'bohu' —desolate and devoid of life—are used together in Isaiah 34:11 to describe the fall of Idumea (Edom or Jordan) in the day of vengeance, yet future: "But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it: and He shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion (tohu), and the stones (plummet) of emptiness (bohu)." The sense is that just as the architect makes careful use of line and plummet in order to square and raise the building in perfection, so will the Lord to make the ruin complete.
Edom was the antithesis to Israel and types the entire Gentile world, which, under Daniel's Seventieth week, will become 'tohu wa'bohu.' Edom refused to devote themselves to God voluntarily and now they will become so involuntarily, as a sacrifice demanded by His holiness and justice. Cherem—see verses 2-7, Ezekiel 38-39, and Revelation 19. All sin must end in a sacrifice: either of the sinner or of an acceptable substitute. Isaiah sees the land reduced to a nuclear waste, a depopulated 'tohu wa'bohu', frequented only by solitary creatures (verses 9-11).
Jeremiah's hyperbole likens the devastation to come upon Judah and Jerusalem at the hand of Nebuchadnezzar to a return to primeval chaos. "I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger. For thus hath the Lord said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end" (Jeremiah 4:23-27).
There are two main schools of thought concerning Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. Many theologians claim that God just created a finished earth and furnished it over six days of 24-hours and that earth is absolutely not a day over 6,000 years of age. Others subscribe to a Gap theory wherein either the earth evolved from a bunch of minerals through amino acids and enzymes on up to Henry Kissinger, or was it from Dr. Kissinger to an amoeba? They claim this process took billions or hundreds of millions of years at least. So it's unlikely we'll see another Henry Kissinger in our lifetime.
Another group contend God created a pre-Adamic Eden complete with Temple, where Lucifer ruled a kingdom of angelic beings who rebelled against God and became demons. They say God then destroyed this earth, and thus it became 'tohu wa'bohu', and that the six days of creation are a restoration. They also believe this theory accounts for many fossils. NONE of these or the many other theories are Scriptural. And there are no space men, earth is the only habitable planet.
Genesis 1:2 describes it as a chaotic waste, and records an altogether distinct and subsequent event which did not affect the starry heaven but only earth and its immediate heaven, because God was preparing it for the use of man. Between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, millions of years elapsed in which there may have been many cataclysmic destructions upon earth while God was preparing it.
If you would like a fuller explanation of the creation story which helps bring out Brother Branham's exposition of the first few verses of Genesis chapter one, I recommend you read the first six chapters only of Zecharia Sitchin's book, Genesis Revisited—"Is Modern Science Catching Up with Ancient Knowledge?" (Avon Books, ISBN 0-380-76159-9). These chapters should be filtered through the Message and the Bible because the author is not a Christian.
The Bible instructs us that the sun, stars, the earth and other planets were ALL created 'in the beginning'. Although there are many methods man has devised for assessing the age of this earth. We know it's incredibly old because the distance separating the fragments of sun or planets are measured in LIGHT YEARS. So it must have taken ages beyond our ken for the stars and planets to establish their predetermined orbits, and for earth to cool down, forming its relatively stable crust and topography.
Geographic evidence demonstrates that the preparations for man's use did not take millions, but thousands of years. For instance, the complete absence of so-called peneplains proves the world topography is NOT old at all, but young.
The geological ages that have been so confidently presented to the public as assured facts, are in reality theoretical inventions of Sir Charles Lyell and his early pioneers. When they looked at the chalk cliffs of Dover, they assumed long periods of chalk deposits—immense ages—an "Age of Chalk," or Latin creta for chalk. They called it the Cretaceous Age. In the English Midlands they found thick beds of coal—vegetation turned to carbon—which they called the Carboniferous Age, and in Devonshire Sedgwick and Murchison found millions of fish entombed in rock, which they interpreted as an "Age of Fishes" or the "Devonian Age," named after the geographical locality of Devonshire where the fish were buried. "Some years later, Roderick Murchison travelled in Russia, where in the province of Perm, he identified flat-lying red beds as corresponding to certain strata overlying the Carboniferous in England and Wales; thus was created still another system, the Permian" (J. W. Stovall and H. E. Brown: Principles of Historical Geology, p. 32). These Permian rocks in Russia thus became the 'type section' for dating rocks around the world. Thus, the Permian beds of western Texas that are supposed to contain similar fossils, are said to have been laid down in the same Permian period that extended from 280,000,000 to 230,000,000 years ago and likewise the Karroo basin of South Africa. Thus geographic localities are used in establishing chronological dates, and the link between geography and chronology is furnished by the fossils.
This is typical of early nineteenth century methods used in building the geologic time scale. That it is totally spurious is demonstrated by the following discoveries:-
"Human footprints have been found from as early as the Carboniferous period, 250,000,000 years old" (The Genesis Flood, p 172; The Carboniferous Mystery, Scientific American, Jan. 1940).
"About 40 miles west of Delta, Utah, at Antelope Springs, in the foothills of the Swasey Mountains, are located the famous trilobite fossil beds in the Wheeler formation of Middle Cambrian age . . . he cracked open a large chunk of shale; and what stared him in the face was an almost perfect cast of a human foot, or rather a shoe, heel and all. Even one side of the heel was worn more than the other . . . 600,000,000 years old." (Clifford L. Burdick, Field Geology, Bible-Science Newsletter, Nov. 15, 1968, p 4).
"One dinosaur or brontosaurus track found in situ with one human footprint . . . in 100,000,000-year-old Cretaceous rocks in Paluxy River Bed in Texas". This man was a SERPENT SEED, possibly 10 or 12 feet in height ". . . 15 beautiful giant human tracks, some 16 inches in length. The stride was about 6 feet, but when the one who made the tracks began to run, the stride began to lengthen to 9 feet, and only the toes of the feet showed" (Natural History, May 1939; Genesis Flood, p 173; Search for Man Tracks in the Paluxy River, Stanley E. Taylor, 1986, p 1; Clifford L. Burdick, Field Geology, Bible-Science Newsletter, Nov. 15, 1968, p 5).
Dinosaurs lived contemporaneously with man, and on THIS side of the Flood, as Brother Bill Cooper from England, a keen student of Bible history, archaeology and palaeoanthropology amply demonstrates from historical records (The Early History of Man—Part 4. "Living Dinosaurs from Anglo-Saxon and other Early Records," published in "Creation Ex-Nihilo Magazine," Australia; and as Pamphlet No. 280 by Creation Science Movement, England).
The fossils show evidence of death, ferocity and slaughter, and as the Bible ascribes death from sin to man alone they cannot be as old as some experts estimate. In America, mammoth bones have been found with the arrow heads that killed them. I read an account by a man who had quite recently dined on mammoths whose carcasses, still frozen in Siberia, are frequently attacked and eaten by wolves.
The drawing of a dinosaur was discovered by the Doheny Scientific Expedition of 1924 on the walls of the Hava Supai Canyon, Arizona (Evolutionary Geology, p 311). And in 1929, Dr. Samuel Hubbard, curator of Oakland Museum, California, found further carvings of dinosaur, elephant and ibex in the same location (Strange Prehistoric Animals and their Stories, pp 155-162). Dinosaur tracks found nearby showed a stride of over four feet.
Now when we come to the six days of PREPARATION, the word used is made, or 'asah', signifying to fashion out of existing material, not 'bara' to create out of nothing.
Fish, bird, animal and human life is said to be created, 'bara', as well as made, 'asah' (Genesis 1:21, 24, 27), because unlike vegetation which is unconscious life, we have a mortal spirit or conscious life that can be conferred only by direct act of creation independent of the chemical process of sexual procreation. Hence Romans 8:19-23 tells us that the whole animal kingdom which became subject to death when Adam surrendered his dominion to Satan, is consciously groaning and in travail for us to reach maturity and reclaim our dominion. Vegetation on the other hand is unconscious, and as the designated food for man and beast, ever subject to death. All life comes from God. Our mortal spirit that comes FROM God is not OF God. This was 'created' or 'bara'—not made from pre-existing material, whereas our body is made or 'asah' from the existing materials of this earth.
I Corinthians 15:35-50, is the story of God transforming earth 'asah' in the likeness of the first Adam, by birth, life, death and resurrection, into the likeness of the last Adam through His 'bara' Word. This is God creating HIMSELF a part of His creation. "But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?" (A body is a covering or tent, something which casts a shadow as distinct from the shadow itself).
"You fool, that which you sow is not quickened, except it die: and that which you sow, you sow not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: But God gives it a body AS IT HAS PLEASED HIM, and to every seed his own body."
"ALL FLESH IS NOT THE SAME FLESH: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds. There are also celestial (theophany or angelic) bodies, and bodies terrestrial (or earthly): but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another."
"There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars: for one star differs from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption (earthly body); it is raised in incorruption (glorified body): It is sown in dishonour (through sexual lust because of the Fall); it is raised in glory (by faith and a new birth): it is sown in weakness (dead in sin and trespasses); it is raised in power (having overcome the world): It is sown a natural body (flesh, blood and mortal spirit); it is raised a spiritual (soul-theophany and glorified) body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body."
"And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul (Genesis 2:7); the last Adam was made a quickening spirit (I Peter 1:23), (comparing natural life with eternal Life). Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy (material and mortal): and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly (from Above, or eternal). And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption."
Our bodies were 'asah', made from the natural elements of this earth and must be 'bara' in glorified form to inherit an incorruptible new world. Our spirit is Supernaturally 'bara' by God out of nothing like our soul. Our soul relates to the material world through our mortal spirit, then makes its choice. As the female body has a womb, the church has a womb. Our mind is the womb of the Spirit. God's Word must pass through our mind where we may reject the Spirit by reasoning, imagination, memory, conscience and affections, or allow it to pass to the soul and filter it through the Word of God and yield the increase.
As I said, the spirit, although 'bara' and GIVEN BY God is for THIS life only and not OF God. It operates our body and mind, enabling our soul to contact this material world and make its choice of faith or unbelief. So the soul is born independently of our natural birth, and as it matures, brings the mortal and material elements with which it is associated in nature under pre- eminence to the revealed Word.
When earth moved away from the sun: the sun, moon and stars disappeared. 'The effects of extinguishing light are such that the first forty-eight hours would suffice to precipitate every atom of moisture from the air in deluges of rain and piles of snow, and from that moment would set in a universal frost such as Siberia or the highest peak of the Himalayas never felt—a temperature of between two and three hundred degrees below the zero of our thermometers' (Herschel's Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects). Then God moved the planet back towards the sun and its warmth caused the ice to break up and melt, covering the whole globe with water.
Genesis 1:2-5, ". . . And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day".
This is not the creation of the sun, but the illumination or appearance of light. This light when it EVENTUALLY appeared was not daylight as we know it, but it did penetrate the dank gloom of everlasting darkness.
Genesis 1:6-8, "And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day".
The word "firmament" means "hammered-out bracelet" and describes the sphere containing the stars and moon and the asteroid belt that we see from earth in which water is a major component. These were made from the earth, being separated following a collision. And the word "heaven" means "where the waters were".
Psalm 104:2-3, "Who covers Himself with light as with a garment: who stretched out the heavens as a curtain: who sets the beams of His chambers in the waters." The sun's warmth caused the mists and clouds to rise from the surface of the earth, creating a sky.
This earth is an incredible place that did not just happen by chance but is a deliberate intelligent creation. The air we breathe is 79% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. This proportion is constant at any altitude. As nitrogen is lighter than air, when we exhale, it rises; too much nitrogen and the air would become laughing gas; we'd become lethargic and ultimately die. N2O2, nitrous oxide, is also deadly.
Oxygen is the agent of combustion. Were there too much oxygen, our pulse would race, and we'd die. NO2 is the basis for gunpowder. Dissolved in water, it becomes nitric acid. Water is a combination of oxygen, the essential agent of all combustion, with hydrogen, the most flammable gas known. Paradoxically, water extinguishes fire.
A law of nature is that heat expands an object. Water in the form of steam is expanded 1,600 times its original volume. Dependent upon its temperature, the atmosphere is able to hold an unbelievable quantity of water. The expanding power of water is almost unbelievable. If all the fog necessary to blanket the entire Sydney Harbor with a mist too thick for navigation, were reduced to water again, that amount of fog would scarcely give water enough fill a five-gallon pail.
The firmament is so extensive that it could hold in suspension several times the amount of all the water in all the oceans on the face of the earth. Whereas water is about 800 times heavier than the atmosphere, it's weight is overcome by solar heat that makes the resulting vapour one eighth lighter than the atmosphere, and it does not, and cannot fall as rain, if it is undisturbed (Frontiers of Astronomy p 8, by Fred Hoyle).
Ecclesiastes 1:7, "All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again".
The annual outflow of earth's rivers is 186,240 cubic miles of water. All this vast amount must be returned to the land every year, else the water supply of the land would become inadequate. Yet if this amount were returned all at once, it would cover the entire earth to a depth of three feet. The most powerful and silent water pump is surely the sun.
Genesis 1:9-13, "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters He called the Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day".
Whilst we certainly appreciate Christian zeal, anyone that imagines all of this took place in a 24-hour period has taken a leap beyond faith. I hardly think one day would be sufficient to evaporate the vast ocean and dry off the land, let alone bring forth grass, herbs, and trees. Reading on, we discover the sun's direct rays did not strike earth until the Fourth Day, and no moisture was returned until the Seventh Day.
God said, "Let the dry land APPEAR," not 'let it come into existence'. While the deep is represented as covering everything, the mountains and valleys of our world, are mentioned as already existing beneath it, and were formed before there was light (Sirs is this the Time 15:1-2).
Moses knew there was more than just the Med', Red, and Dead Seas, for he used the plural. All the world's oceans were "gathered together in one place," united with a common sea bed. Instead of dominating the earth, the waters are now made to serve the creatures of God.
Genesis 1:14-19, "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth and it was so. And 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. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon 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. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day".
This is not creation. Once the atmosphere cleared, the sun, moon, and stars RE-APPEARED. The 'light' of the First Day was illumination as opposed to darkness. The Hebrew was 'or', 'light', whereas the word used on the Fourth Day is 'ma'or', signifying a SOURCE and holder of light. Whereas the source of light in each day was the sun, (moon and stars), not until the Fourth Day were the cloud and mists sufficiently dispersed that they could be distinguished.
As we have already stated, the stars and planets were God's first Bible. Here we read that they were for signs and seasons—or appointed times for worship, and not as we shall see, for the four seasons we now know, and to differentiate and divide time.
God had said, "Let there be light" but ages passed before ever there was light. He said "A virgin shall conceive'" and eight hundred years passed before one did, but she did, because God said so.
Speaking of OUR day, God said, "For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people" (Isaiah 60:2). He said there would be false preachers in the land in the end-time, a famine for hearing the revealed Word, and the Gentile church would be apostate and know it not! But He is going to have a Church, I don't care how many dark ages we go through. He said "There will be Light in the evening time" and He will have a Church without spot or wrinkle, whether we're part of it or not, because He has already said it's going to happen. And it's going to be there.
God had commanded all these things by His Word, and they were NOT! His Word does not return unto Him void but accomplishes that for which it was purposed (Isaiah 55:11), because the spoken Word is the original seed and must transform itself into what was spoken. So on the Seventh Day, God rested and watched His Word come to pass, or manifest what was spoken. As soon as the waters subsided and the light struck those spoken Word seeds, life came forth.
Light and life come from the spoken Word of God. They are VINDICATION of that Word, and when the light shone, It brought the rest of His Words to life, or manifestation. And when the Light of revelation breaks through the mists of unbelief, it quickens the seed in your soul and begins to transform you into the likeness of the Word for your Age. Everything was "good." It could not have been less than perfect, until Eve accepted Lucifer's wisdom against faith, because God's law requires everything to bring forth of its OWN kind. Or multiply the Word.
At the close of the Fourth Day, the work of forming man's habitat was complete. Next, God's creative Word went forth to create creatures with consciousness. God spoke the lowest forms of life: fishes, birds, and animals, then man in His Own image and likeness. But after six thousand years, there was still not a man to till the soil, no vegetation to grow in the soil and no animals to eat the vegetation. (Power of Transformation 9:55-67; Works Is Faith Expressed 20:136; I Have Heard But Now I See 21:108; C.O.D. 704:61).
Genesis 2:1-3, "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them (stars and planets). And on the seventh day God ended his work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created to make." Over six-days He had spoken the Word. That was His 'work', and the Word had to take place.
Genesis 2:4-5, "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were CREATED (Genesis 1:1), IN the DAY that the LORD God MADE the earth and the heavens (Genesis 1:3-2:1). And every plant of the field BEFORE it was in the earth, and every herb of the field BEFORE it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground".
That concludes the record of God's six-days' work of 'bara', creating the stars and planets, and 'asah' or preparing the earth. Now comes the Seventh Day when they were manifested: 'in the day'—'yowm', or period 'that the Lord God made'—'asah', 'the earth and the heavens' (or the firmament) of this earth.
The firmament was not made perfect, so that sun, moon, and stars could be seen in it, until the Fourth Day. God had made the seeds but they had not yet grown, as there had been no rain to germitize them. Indeed it did not rain until the Flood, 1,700 years later. Likewise, the Word seed planted by preaching into the heart of God's elect cannot grow unless it is somehow watered by further revelation.
Genesis 2:6, "But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground".
The waters which covered the primeval earth and later destroyed Noah's world were now suspended in the atmosphere as a protective canopy which gave earth a uniformly warm, equable climate that pervaded polar regions in geologic times as contrasted with the bitterly cold climate that prevails today.
The introduction of seasons following the Flood ended the golden age of plenty, when seeds could be planted and harvest reaped with certainty at any time throughout the year. Also, vegetation grew quickly, as there was little or no night as we know it, because the light of the sun would be diffused and diffracted into a long twilight, leaving no pitch dark midnight.
The appearance of a rainbow immediately following the Flood shows there was no longer any light-diffusing canopy. For it's impossible to produce a colour spectrum from a diffused light source. The rainbow is a token of a Covenant, and scientific proof that there is no longer any light-diffusing canopy that could again collapse and cause a second flood (Genesis 8:22; 9:9-17).
Genesis 2:7, "And the Lord God FORMED man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives; and man became a living soul".
Now God FORMS—'yatsar', 'squeezes man into shape', from the dust of the earth, as a potter a moulds vessel of clay. And in Genesis 2;19, God 'squeezes into shape' every beast of the field and every bird and brings them to Adam to name.
All three words are used in Isaiah 43:7, "Even every one that is called by My Name: for I have created him (bara—out of nothing—speaking of man's soul and mortal spirit) for My glory, I have formed him (yatsar—shaped his body into an appointed form); yea, I have made him (asah—made his body from existing material)".
We are what we eat. Genesis 3:19, "In the sweat of your face shall you eat bread, till you return unto the ground; for out of it were you taken: for dust you are, and unto dust shall you return." The same essential chemical elements are found in man and animal life that are in the soil. Job 10:9, "Remember, I beseech You, that You have made me as the clay; and will You bring me into dust again?"
The dust of the ground—'adamah', or red earth, whence the name Adam is derived, corresponds to the natural colour of human skin, which is red on white. Songs 5:10, "My Beloved is white and ruddy . . ."
Genesis 2:7, "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of LIVES; and man became a living soul".
God breathed into this man of clay 'the breath of LIVES' (plural) and he became a living soul. Life is a sacred thing to God and the Hebrew word 'life' is always in the plural form of excellence. Man has two lives, the mortal spirit which contacts this world, and the soul which enables him to communicate with God. Hence the first death is the death of our mortal spirit and body, whereas the second death is the destruction of the soul in the Lake of Fire (Ezekiel 18:4, 20; Revelation 20:14-15).
Genesis 2:19-20, "And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him".
Adam was not a primitive cave man but made in the image of the all-knowing God with language and innate perception, for the Hebrew names of animals describe their nature. By naming God's creation, Adam took dominion or lordship over it, as a man takes lordship over the woman who bears his name (Genesis 5:2). And when Eve was formed, she shared his lordship over creation. Not in her own right, but as bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. A type of Christ and His Bride. Our authority is not of ourselves but by virtue of being in Christ Whose Name we bear.
Genesis 2:21-23, "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man".
Approximately a hundred years after God finished forming the animals and bringing them to Adam to name, He put His first-born son to sleep and made—'banah,' He a woman. This word 'banah' means 'to REBUILD or cause to CONTINUE', as an extension to a house.
Woman is not original creation but a by-product of man, created IN Adam, as Christ's Bride was created IN Him, and formed over a hundred years after God had manifested Adam and he had named God's finished creation. And Christ's Bride was not manifested for many years after the second Adam. Genesis 5:2-3, "Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth" (Serpent's Seed, 16:113). It is inconceivable Satan waited 129 years before tempting Eve with the mystery of life; far less likely that she and her husband procrastinated for as long after the Fall before conceiving Seth. For the commission of God was, 'be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth.' By the time Cain slew Abel, Adam and Eve already had a very large family, including Seth, and Cain's wife, a woman much the same age as her half-brother/husband. Clearly, Adam was around one hundred years Eve's senior.
Eve was a CONTINUATION of Adam, made from a rib taken from his side when God put him to sleep, as the Bride is a continuation of Christ made from the Holy Spirit taken from His side when God put Him to sleep—reunited through marriage. The only way a woman could come under the Old Covenant was through the marriage union (as a woman could not be circumcised, she came in under her husband's token). And the only way the Bride of Christ can come under the Blood of the New Covenant is through the new birth or Spiritual marriage which circumcises us in heart and ears of all that is superfluous and worldly, uniting us with Christ the Word.
God took six thousand years to create Eden. So it was on the Seventh Day, after God had FINISHED His creating, that the things which are seen were formed or manifested. And on this Seventh Day, Satan deceived the woman. God had said, "the day you partake of the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, that day you will surely die." Eve was seduced by the Serpent, then taught her husband the facts of life and bore two children in her womb: Cain who was born of the wicked one, and Abel who was born of the son of God. Because Adam chose to die in order to redeem Eve, no man has yet fulfilled a day in God's reckoning which would be a thousand years. The oldest man, Methuselah, lived for 969 years.
Now I think we need to quote a few more Scriptures where this word "day" or 'yowm,' is used, so we can dismiss forever the folly of men who claim God created a finished earth from scratch to the Garden of Eden in six solar days of twenty-four hours.
There is the day 'yowm' of the Lord. Isaiah 4:1, "And in THAT DAY seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by Your Name, to take away our reproach." Revelation 1:10, "I was in the Spirit in the Lord's DAY, and heard behind me a great Voice, as of a trumpet".
Now "the Lord's Day" or 'yowm' is yet future, after the sounding of the Seventh Trumpet to Israel, marking the end of the Gentile dispensation. It is the conclusion of man's day, and not twenty-four hours. John was caught up in the Spirit in the Lord's day for TWO YEARS whilst he was on the Isle of Patmos, and saw things which will come to pass in that time. So a 'yowm' does not necessarily mean twenty-four hours any than our English word always means twenty-four hours. And John did not see these visions only on Sunday, as the Brethren denominations teach.
In other instances the word 'day' means time itself. Genesis 4:3, "And in PROCESS OF TIME 'yowm' it came to pass." Numbers 20:15, "And we have dwelt in Egypt a LONG TIME, 'yowm' . . ." A long time indeed! For here a 'yowm', the word that appears in Genesis as the creative period and is called there, 'day', was 215 years.
Finally let us repeat Genesis 2:4, "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in THE DAY 'yowm' that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." In the Genesis one, the story was given in 'yowms' or DAYS, or time periods (plural)—each with "an evening and a morning." But in the Genesis 2, as one day (singular).
Without the Holy Spirit to guide us into the truth of His Word, we would be confused as to whether His creation was six days or one day. And we'd have a contradiction in the Bible.
We are taught in the Scripture, "one day upon our earth is as a thousand years with God". Although each day was distinguished by 'an evening and a morning,' they were six distinct periods of one thousand years wherein God expressed His creative thoughts that would transform earth from an uninhabited lifeless wilderness to the manifestation of those thoughts in an Eden on the Seventh Day.
When God pronounced His creation "very good," He gave green herbs to all birds and animals to eat (Genesis 1:29-30). When Adam followed Eve over the time line and the Life line, the ground was cursed and all creation entered a state of perpetual decay unto death, and the vanity of ceaseless toil in which it has since groaned and travailed (Romans 8:22).
Genesis 3:17-19, "And unto Adam he said, Because you have hearkened unto the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree, of which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat of it: cursed is the ground for your sake; in sorrow shall you eat of it all the days of your life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to you; and you shall eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shall you eat bread, till you return unto the ground; for out of it were you taken: for dust you are, and unto dust shall you return".
Thorns and thistles were a curse to animals as well as to men. Brother Branham often used the cocklebur to represent sin and sinners. And it is an excellent type, for in each seed pod are two seeds but only one comes up that year, thus ensuring the plant of continuity through the second year, even if the first year crop is a failure, for seed number two normally comes up in the second year of its life. But in case the new plant that grows from seed number one is cut down, burned, or otherwise destroyed BEFORE that plant comes to seed, number two springs right up into life without waiting for the second year. There's an Intelligence at work not evident in wheat, corn and other food grain. For God cursed the ground and promised "thorns and thistles" would flourish. Truly, "The children of THIS world, the tares, are IN THEIR GENERATION (or parentage) wiser than the children of Light" (Luke 16:8).
When sin has been removed and the curse lifted, herbs will flourish as weeds do now, WITHOUT the need for man to bring them forth by the sweat of his brow. The carnivores will eat herbs as in the beginning, the wolf will lie down with the lamb, and the poisonous will no longer be harmful (Isaiah 11:6-9; 65:25).
As an illustration of how fruitful the seed once was, if we saved and planted the progeny of one grain of corn, in three years, even with the limitation of seasons as we now have them, we'd have enough to plant the whole of Australia (or the USA which is the same size) as thickly as corn in ordinarily planted.
Solomon, the world's wisest man said, "All man's labours are vanity."' Man has been labouring six thousand years against sin. The seventh day is his rest or Millennium, before the final judgment of sin, when Satan and his angels will be annihilated.
Then comes the eighth day, when the God of this world will be Jesus Christ and His Bride restored to Eden and eternity. Throughout eternity, the saved will worship God manifest in the Form of Jesus Christ and His glorified Bride.
What ever you do Brethren, don't miss the rapture, which is the Message of the hour bringing God's elect into oneness with the Word, for the manifestation of the sons of God, the translation, and the glory that is ours as joint heirs with Jesus. And when you see this revelation in your Bible be sure to pass It on for the Life must pass through the Body. bb950106.htm
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