CREATION BY ETERNAL GOD IN THE BEGINNING
Part 6
PARTS 6 AND 7 ARE A SUMMARY OF THE 7 PART SERIES
Genesis 1:1 – In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth
July 27, 2014
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Earth was Created Perfect by God in the Beginning
It Became Tohu+Bohu because of Angelic Rebellion
Part 1 was put up on April 28, 2014 – Part 2 was put up on May 1, 2014, Part 2A – Part 2A was put on June 20, 2014 – Part 3 was put up on June 26, 2014 – Part 4 was was put up on June 29, 2014 – Part 5 was put on on July 12, 2014 – Part 6 is now being put up today July 27, 2014
God has used his own creation many times to accomplish his Will!
God will use His Creation Again to fulfill His Tribulation Prophecies.
If angels or men rebel against him he can make earth Tohu+Bohu!
Read what will happen before the 2nd Advent in Our Last 2 Blogs!
By the Time of His 2nd Advent Earth will Look like It’s Tohu+Bohu!
Gap Theory Phases of the Earth
I accepted the Gap Theory long before I came to the Missionary Baptist Seminary in Little Rock, Arkansas. It has been around since Hector was a pup. I attended the original Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in the late forties and early fifties while Dr. Bogard was still living, and entered my military and National Security Agency career in 1951. I was first exposed to the Gap Theory in Merrill Unger’s Bible Handbook before I retired from the NSA. So it was no great leap for me to listen attentively to what was taught concerning it while I was a student at the seminary
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Merrill Frederick Unger (1909–1980) was a Bible commentator, scholar, and theologian. He earned his A.B. and Ph.D degrees at Johns Hopkins University, and his Th.M and Th.D degrees at Dallas Theological Seminary. After serving as a pastor at several churches, Unger taught for a year at Gordon College. For the next 19 years, until 1967 – at which time he became professor emeritus, Unger was professor of Old Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. Unger was a prolific writer who authored some 40 books many of which are well received in Christian colleges and seminaries. Unger was also a well known Biblical archaeologist.
I again wish to state what I have said over and over again in this series – the Gap Theory is just what the name implies, it is a THEORY, no more and no less, but Genesis 1:1 is, in my opinion, it is best of several others I have considered. I am only certain Genesis 1:1 is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Genesis 1:1 – In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
I do not believe man evolved. I believe he was created on a single day, the sixth day of a restoring of the original creation of God in Genesis 1:1, which became necessary when the Devil rebelled against the Lord by attempting to mutate His own life forms in the original creation.
I believe there have been two great floods on the present earth that God originally created, the flood of Noah’s time, and the flood of Genesis 1:2a.
Genesis 1:2 – And the earth was (hayethah-became) without form (tohu), and void (bohu); and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
As I have shown in previous updates, the first sentence in 1:2 states what the earth had become as a result of Satan attempting to manipulate God’s original creation of 1:1. The word “deep” is a noun that means “abyss,” and refers to the bottom of a great flood God has sent upon the earth to destroy Satan’s creation, and the “face” of that great flood is the surface of its waters that cover all the earth. The second sentence of 1:2 – “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,” pictures God hovering over the surface of the waters, which he used to destroy land creatures because of a Lucifer Led Angelic Rebellion. . It is the picture an artist would portray by painting a portrait of a chicken hovering over her eggs to give protection and her warmth to produce new life from her eggs she originally laid. This is the announcement of what is about to follow in the rest of the first chapter of Genesis, which is a literal six day restoration of the original creation of God in Genesis 1:1 that had been marred by God due to the rebellion led by of Satan. The first great flood in the Bible is not the flood in Noah’s day, it is the great flood of Genesis 1:2 that covered all the land surface of the original perfect creation of God.
God doss not create something for mankind to dwell on by initially creating it as tohu and bohu (a wild desolate chaotic waste). However, God has, from time to time made changes in his original perfect heavens and his earth when angels or mankind have rebelled against him. The first rebellion was when some of his angels chose to follow Satan. Mankind has also challenged God’s authority by exceeding the limits of his longsuffering several times. The second rebellion was when mankind exceeded the limits of God’s longsuffering.
Isaiah 45:18 – For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath estabkished it, HE CREATED IT NOT IN VAIN (TOHU), he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD, and there IS NONE ELSE. (There is a difference between “Lord” and “LORD).
In each case God has made earth uninhabitable because of rebellion against his commandments, and then restored it to make it habitable for mankind.
The earth has gone, and will continue to go through, phases of God’s dealing with it since he originally created it. They are as follows:
(1) God created the Original Earth – Genesis 1:1
(2) God made earth waste due to Devil’s Rebellion – Genesis 1:2
(3) God Reshaped and refurbished His Earth – Genesis 1:3-31
(4) Earth Cursed by God due to Man’s Rebellion – Genesis 6:17,18
(5) The Flood of Noah’s Day – Genesis 7:23,24
(6) The Present Earth Restored – Genesis 8:13 and 9:15
(7) Earth burned by God for Man’s Rebellion – II Peter 3:3-9
(8) Christ’s 2nd Advent and 1000 Year on Earth – Zechariah 14:9
(9) Physical Earth’s Final Destruction by God – Revelation 20:7-10
(10) God creates the final Spiritual Heaven & Earth – II Peter 3:10-14
(11) Where there will be NO MORE TOHU OR BOHU FOREVER
I believe that God created the earth billions of years ago. I do not know, nor can I estimate, when Satan first rebelled against God, but I believe a great gap of time exists between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2b, and I also believe that the re-creation by God from Genesis 1:3 onwards was done in six literal days, not over long periods of time. Please note in Genesis 7:19-24 that only the land based creatures were totally wiped out in the great flood of Noah’s day. The same was true in the first great flood of Genesis 1:2, only the creatures dependant upon “the face of the ground” for their life survival were destroyed.
Genesis 7:23 – And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
The sea creatures were not all destroyed completely in either of the two floods. God did create (bara’) great whales in the seas in his re-creation. It is interesting that whales are mammals. It appears that the creatures of the oceans were not all destroyed by the Genesis 1:2 flood, and that many, along with some birds that were able to survive the flood, were allowed by God to bring “forth abundantly, after their kind,” in order to once again repopulate their domains.
Genesis 1:21 – And God created (bara’) great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
This would explain why fossil replicas of fish from the pre-Genesis 1:2b flood were discovered, which perfectly match their descendant species in the oceans of today. These fish fossils that match were found in areas of the earth’s land mass that were once joined together, but tore apart at the time of Satan’s rebellion against God between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. If you will take world map and look at the protruding northeastern part of the South American continent, then shift your eyes across the Atlantic to view the area of greatest curvature in the western coastline of Africa, you will see how the two continents were once joined together into a single land mass. The identical fish fossils from the pre-flood of Genesis 1:2b are found in Africa and South America where they once joined together. They were separated when the earth began to break apart from being a single dry land mass at the time of Satan’s rebellion against God, who created the single dry landmass in Genesis 1:1. Geologists have named the first landmass of Genesis 1:1 “Pangaea,” which means “all lands.”
The development of plate tectonics principles in the twentieth century brought a sweeping change in our understanding of the original earth. It was a century in which we ran across, under, and above the earth, and it was a time when the most fantastic increase in human understanding of the earth and the universe occurred, an acceleration that is beyond belief. Now, in these last days of this age, we can understand many of the tenets of God’s creation that Moses, and those traveling with him, were not able to grasp in their day, which is the reason God gave them a very simple account they could accept, but left a fuller understanding in the linguistic account for us to understand in these last days.
Daniel 12:4 – But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
Soon after the first truly reliable world maps were made, geographers noticed that the continents would fit together like a jigsaw puzzle if they could be moved, but the idea of a mobile crust was not considered until the knowledge explosion occurred in the early twentieth century. As a certified meteorologist, I became familiar with the work of another man who was my peer in meteorology, Alfred Wegener, a meteorologist who accepted the theory first advanced in 1908 by American geologist Frank B. Taylor. The German, Alfred Wegener, gave the first reasonable explanation of why plate tectonics was valid, by pointing out the similarities in the fossils found on the coastlines of northeastern Brazil and central sections of the western coast of Africa. His evidence was published in a 1915 book with the title, “The Origins of Continents and Oceans.” Warner believed that the continents light granite rock somehow plowed above the denser basalts of the ocean sea floors, driven by forces related to the rotation of the earth. His theory was not proven until our “running to and fro” on the ocean sea floor (since the end of World War II), enabled us, by the development of seismic tomography (created by the earthquake waves passing through the earth), to see the cracks in the world’s crust. Then the technology needed to track the historical magnetic paths of polar wandering through magnetic patterns in the rock strata reversals on the ocean and sea floors was developed, and we were finally able to accept the tectonic drift of the continents over a long period of time to be a fact, rather than just a theory. The dinosaurs, and their fellow land creatures, lived in the age that followed the fall of Satan in Genesis 1:2. their extinction occurred abruptly in the flood of Genesis 1:2b, after having flourished for millions of years. Genesis 1:3 is the beginning of the description of a literal six day restoration of the fallen creation following the flood of Genesis 1:2a.
Genesis 1:1-3 – In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. [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. [3] And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
I am beginning to wonder if I will ever complete this series, but, Lord willing, I will eventually finish. I don’t know if I really want to take the time to go through the re-creation verses line by line, but if I feel inclined to do so it will eventually appear in future Parts, if I feel up to it, I may discuss the earth’s age theory of Bishop Ussher in the next creation Part. I believe his theory first appeared some 23 years after the 1611 edition of the King James Bible, and, if correct, would have the earth reaching an age of 6,016 years in 2012.
The Gap Theory Flood and the Age of the Earth
Up until the time that Bishop Ussher, in about 1634, added up the genealogical dates in the fifth chapter of Genesis, and gave them as proof that the earth was created in 4004 B.C., people did not particularly care how long the earth had existed. They just read the first Scripture in the Bible, and believed it. That satisfies me, but it does not seem enough for a number of people, so I have given you an account of what I believe concerning the how and the when of creation, as I interpret it from the account in Genesis. However, what I consider important is that God created the earth, not when and how he did it.
Genesis 1:1 – In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
It is highly unlikely that God intended to wait until 1634 to reveal the age of the earth to an Irish Archbishop named James Ussher. I don’t believe that the genealogical ages from Seth to Noah were intended, or can be used, for calculating the age of the earth. The Hebrew words used for “son,” “daughter,” and “begat,” may involve a distant or an immediate descendant. Merrill Unger, in his “Bible Handbook,” gives several reasons why one should not use Bishop Ussher’s calculated age of the earth as factual. They are quoted as follows:
(1) The Hebrew terms “begat,” “son,” “daughter,” are used with great latitude. They may involve a distant as well as an immediate descendant.”
(2) The ten generations from Adam to Noah and the ten from Noah evidently aim at brevity and symmetry, rather than unbroken father-to-son relation.
(3) Abbreviations due to symmetry are common features of Scripture genealogies (as in the first chapter of Matthew).
• In the recurring formula: A lived ____ years and begat sons and daughters, and A lived after he begat B ____ years and begat sons and daughters, B may not be the literal son of A. (the identical Hebrew word “ben” is used for son, grandson, great-grandson, great-great-grandson, adinfinitim). The age of A is his age when his descendant was born from whom B was descended. So an indefinite time interval may therefore be intended between A and B
• Believe me when I tell you I have heard all the arguments that come from cross referencing Old Testament and New Testament genealogies in an attempt to prove man was created in 4004 B.C. And I have tried to be open and honest with God and myself in attempting to discover from the Scriptures exactly when Adam was created on this planet. I cannot tell you from the Scriptures when Adam was created. All I can do is to give you an estimate based on what I have seen in the fossil record of what I believe to be the descendants of Adam, and the latitude I believe allowed by God without violating the linguistics of the Scripture. I approximate, estimate, just plain guess, that God created Adam in the Garden of Eden some 25 to 30 thousand years ago. But if you believe God created Adam in 4004 B.C., I will certainly admit you might be correct. And if you do believe that the earth is only 6,007 years old, I have no problem with it. But if you tell me that God did not create the earth, or that he did not create Adam on the sixth day, or that he created Adam by a process of evolution from lower life forms, then I violently disagree with you.
• The flood that closed the age of the dinosaurs, and their cold-blooded epic of geological time, occurred in the final sentence of Genesis 1:2.
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.
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