C3001 Genesis 1

Genesis 1:1-12

Tape #C3001

By Chuck Smith

Shall we turn now in our Bibles to Genesis, chapter 1, verse 1.

The word Genesis means, beginning, and we read,

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (1:1).

Now the question arises, how long ago was that? And it is obvious that the Bible does not give us a clear distinct answer.

The word created here is the Hebrew word bara. It is only used three times in the Bible, and it is that capacity of creating something out of nothing. It is a capacity that is exclusively God's. There are two other words that we’ll be coming across, asah and yatsar, that are translated, made or formed. And they are the Hebrew words used for the assembling of existing materials. So we say someone created a new television. No, he didn’t. He may have assembled existing parts, but he didn’t say, "Television be," and suddenly there was a television there, creating out of non-existing materials. Only God has the power and the Hebrew word bara

It is interesting that in this account of creation we find the bara is used just here at the very beginning, and then we find that God made and God formed using the existing materials and assembled things together out of the materials that then existed once He had created the heavens and the earth.

The book of Genesis goes back to the beginning of creation, the material universe, the beginning of time. Time is related always to the material. There is a dimension in which time does not exist, that is the eternal. We cannot really think, our minds are not programmed to think in that dimension. To us everything has a start and a finish, a beginning and an end. But we cannot really conceive of timelessness, of the eternal.

Just how long ago in our time was the creation of the universe? "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." You see, before the heavens and the earth were created, God thought about you. Christ was crucified before the foundations of the earth. Before God even created a material universe, He thought about you, He loved you, and He planned for your redemption. It's hard to really conceive, but such is the stated case of the scriptures. But then God created the material universe.

There are several assumptions or ways of looking at this. There are those scientists today who are taking a very literal kind of a look at this and saying it was only around 6,000 to 10,000 years ago that the physical universe was created. They are beginning to offer a lot of evidence to support their claims. Dr. Henry Morris has written several books on cosmology and the beginnings and creation of the earth, and I respect highly this man’s opinions and views. He is a scholarly man and a dedicated Christian.

There has come a system of thought that has definitely dominated our educational system. It has been so prevailed that it is hard for us to divorce ourselves from the pseudo-science of evolution. It is not a true science and doesn't deal with empirical facts. It deals only with theories and hypotheses that change day by day with the changing evidence.

You remember that they were telling us that is the lunar module landed on the moon? It would probably be swallowed up in the moon dust. They hypothesized that the moon must be at least six billion years old. And having no atmosphere, those meteorites that come into the moon and explode are turned into dust. So there were those that were predicting that the moon dust would be somewhere between seventeen and thirty-five feet deep. A lot of expense was given to the preparing of the lunar landing module to counteract this tremendous dust cloud that they expected to arise and perhaps swallow the lunar lander. It was one of the real concerns of the scientists. Now, you saw on television as they walk on the moon, the moon dust was less than an inch thick. Now these men who had hypothesized this ancient moon somehow were very silent about the lack of the thirty-five foot covering of dust.

There are a lot of other interesting evidences that you can use to show that the earth is probably much younger than the necessary twelve billion years for the evolution of the single cell into the complex human form. The only reason why we have postulated an extremely old earth and universe is to accommodate a theory that has very little actual proof or no actual proof, but just a lot of hypotheses that are built upon hypotheses. Yet, it is so accepted by the intellectual community that no one dares to say that perhaps the evolutionary concepts are wrong.

It reminds me of the story of the king who wanted a new suit. The tailors came and said, "We are going to sew you the most beautiful suit in the world. We are going to use an invisible thread to make the material, but only the very intelligent will be able to see it. Those who are not intelligent won’t see the suit, or the very intelligent people will see it." And so they measured the king and they began to fit the king with this new suit, and they tried on his new invisible coat. And they said to all of his counselors, “How do you like that coat, isn’t it beautiful?” And none of them wanted to appear ignorant. They wanted to appear very wise to the king, and so they all commented on how wonderful the coat looks and my what a perfect fit and they went on. Finally, the king dressed in his new suit went out among his subjects wearing his new suit, but alas some poor fool standing on the corner looked and said, "The king is naked."

Same concept--they have got the idea that if you are extremely wise and intelligent you will believe the evolutionary theory. Only a fool could believe that God created man! And they’ve got the whole academic, not the whole. Thank God there are enough wise men among the scientists that they are saying that the king is naked. And they are admitting that there is not any real proofs or evidences offered to prove the evolutionary theory. There is a book called, Earths In Upheaval, absolutely destroys the idea of uniformitarianism. Immanuel Velikovsky, Earths in Upheaval, you might get that book. It just shatters the theory of uniformitarianism, which is the basic theory upon which evolution is built. More and more scientists are coming out and exposing a lot of the problems of embracing the evolutionary theory. And that is the only reason why we would want to create an earth of several billion years old or a universe of several billions of years to accommodate a theory.

An interesting paper was done by Dr. Barnes of the University of East Texas in El Paso on the electromagnetic fields that surround the earth. He’s probably done more study on the electromagnetic fields than any other scientist living today. Dr. Barnes in this interesting paper points out that over one hundred thirty-five years ago, about one hundred forty-two years ago a Dutch scientist measured the level of the electromagnetic field around the earth, and in every subsequent year there have been measurements of this electromagnet field around the earth. And we find that this field is gradually decaying at a very constant rate, a predictable rate. And in the one hundred forty years of measurements there has not been one variance in the rate of decay of the electromagnetic field. Now this electromagnet field around the earth does have a protective kind of aspect to it, in that it does cause many of the cosmic rays to be repelled or to bounce away without hitting the earth.

We do realize that much of the mutation and age processes and all are caused by cosmic rays. Those rays, gamma rays, and the various neutrinos that are bombarding our earth are going through our bodies and causing a mutation of our cells and bringing on the aging processes. We realize that if we put milk, shield milk from the cosmic rays that milk will keep fresh for months without refrigeration, but there is that deterioration that takes place.

We’ll be getting in a little bit to the moisture blanket that God used to have around the earth--that also was a shield against much of the cosmic rays. We realize that the ozone blanket also shields us from cosmic radiation, especially the ultraviolet from the sun. With the deterioration of the ozone blanket, as a result of our use of floral carbons in aerosol cans, the SST’s and the detonating of atomic missiles in our atmosphere, now we are receiving a heavier bombardment of the ultraviolet rays causing exposure to the sun, to have a greater detriment and skin cancers are an extremely common thing now. If a person gets exposed to the sun too much, and the constant warnings to watch your exposure to the sun, it can be very damaging to you. It used to be a very helpful thing till we started destroying the ozone blanket, but now it has become a very damaging thing exposure too much to the sun. And we are being warned about it constantly, especially by the skin specialists who deal with the maladies that develop from overexposure to the ultraviolet rays.

In his paper on the electromagnetic fields, in pointing out the decay of the magnetic force in these electromagnetic fields, in postulating, if it has decayed in the last hundred and forty years at the constant rate, then turning it around, and assuming that this has been a constant, which it has been for a hundred and forty years years, turning it around and figuring how strong the electromagnetic force say 25,000 years ago. The electromagnetic force around the earth, if has been in constant decay for 25,000 years and we turn it backwards, we find that 25,000 years ago the electromagnetic force would have been so strong that it would have heated up the surface of the earth to about 240 degrees. So there could be no moisture on it. It would have all evaporated into the atmosphere. As far back as a 100,000 years, if this decay has been the same over 100,000 year period, the magnetic force would have been so strong, the heat would have been so great that the earth would have been in a molten state. So, feeding that to the evolutionists who need several billions of years, they talk about how it dies down and than every 10,000 years or so it is recharged. Oh, very scientific solution. Who recharges it? And with what kind of system do they recharge it?

So whenever the gaps appear, for instance, I have the cast of a footprint taken from the Piluxi River in Texas. This footprint was found alongside of the footprint of a dinosaur fossilized in the Piluxi River. And they have found hundreds of them intermixed with the dinosaur tracks, crossing the dinosaur tracks and even imprinted within the dinosaur tracks. This is, of course, a tremendous difficulty for the evolutionists who have the dinosaurs living a hundred million years ago and man coming on the scene about three million years ago. Here in the Piluxi River is proof that they, at one time, coexisted upon the earth. The scientists that were brought down to examine it, whose minds are set with the presupposition that evolution is true, could not define this as a human footprint, because it was found in the footprint of a dinosaur. It led this brilliant scientist to conclude, "Well, it certainly appears like a human footprint. It looks like it is a possibility, but we know it can't be." Now that’s real science. I don’t know if the king is naked. I'm not a brilliant scientist, but I know a footprint when I see one.

There are those scholars today, and their number is growing day by day, who are declaring that the theory of evolution can no longer adequately explain the existence of man or the universe. We have had Dr. Wilder Smith here on several occasions. I highly recommend his book. He writes in a very clever style. And in pointing out, really, the truth of what Genesis declares, "Everything after its kind," and that there can be no real transformation or revolutionary process within a closed system. He points out how very important that is to our whole lifestyle. For if you could have dramatic changes within a closed system, it would be interesting every time you opened a can of peaches to find out what you had inside, the changes that had taken place within a closed system.

“In the beginning God created,” and here it declares that the universe was a creation of God.

One further little note, and with that we’ll quit hammering. Darwin, of course, postulated that man evolved through a long chain of processes, which are known as "Fortuitous occurrences of accidental circumstances." You see, they snow you with the big words. It’s a huge word. He postulated that we evolved from the simple cell. When I was a kid that is what they were teaching in the classes in science in school of the simple cell. That was before we developed the electron microscope. That’s before we discovered the protein DNA molecules, and that is before a lot of the later discoveries and the discoveries of the chromosomes and the genes and so forth. And suddenly we find out it is not a simple cell. It’s probably the most complex thing in the whole universe with all of the code within it for what is to be formed from it all encoded; this one little cell and all of the codes that are within it, far from simple. But the interesting thing, the cell within a frog is far more complex from the man. If we’re in an upwards movement, then your next move will be probably towards the frog, because its cell is really more complex than that of a human.

But in a science symposium called in Europe in which the greatest scientists of the United States and Russia and Europe were brought together for the purpose was to determining the possibility of extraterrestrial communication from outer space--intelligent beings out there somewhere trying to communicate intelligently with us here on the planet earth. The symposium was reported in a book edited by Carl Sagan, one of the leading exponents of the evolutionary theory, and published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology back in 1975. The book is entitled, "Extraterrestrial Communication," and it is…a symposium titled the book.

The first paper that was offered to the scientists was offered by a group of scientists from the United States. Understanding what we do now about the complex cell and the complexity of the cell and the DNA molecule and all, they put together all of the chance factors of bringing the cells together in a random choice kind of a selection, to determine what is the chance factor for the first protein molecule to develop by this fortuitous occurrence of accidental circumstances. It turns out that it would take ten to the twenty-eighth power fortuitous occurrences of accidental circumstances to create your first cell.

That is a pretty big number, because if you assume that they are correct in the twelve- billion-year life of the universe, there has only been ten to the seventeenth power seconds in the ten billion years. You are assuming then that there are trillions of these chance factors going on all over the universe at the same time. In fact, you have only ten to the twenty-fifth power grains of dust upon the entire earth. They would have to be interacting billions of time every second over the ten billion years and still there isn't enough time for them to come together in an accidental form to form the first protein molecule. The only solution, of course, is, well, the whole thing is probably twenty-five billion years old. You know anything can happen given enough time is the theory.

"In the beginning God created," that takes less faith to believe than to swallow the evolutionary theory. I have no problem believing with an intelligent, powerful, eternal God calling into existence a universe, for He is an infinite God, therefore He can do anything. The universe that He would call into existence would demonstrate His intelligence. Through that form of life that He would put upon the earth, there would be a demonstration of His intelligence.

You can take the creation model and study the geological column, which does not exist; it’s only a hypothesis. There is nowhere in earth that you can go and dig down the side of a cliff and say, “Here is a geological column from each period progressing upward.” Sometimes whole layers of older formations are on top of younger formations for miles. Then they have the theory of the crust crossing over the top, overlaying crust and everything is happening in ten billion years. But as I say, there are a lot of good books to read on that. You can read just as well as I can. And don’t just read one side, read some of Dr. Gish’s books, and Dr. Morris’ books,  and John Lighthead, and some of these fellows who have done a lot of research on the creation theory. You see, those who oppose Dr. Morris never oppose him on scientific grounds. I have never heard him bettered on a scientific ground. They only oppose him with ridicule. How can he call himself a scientist because he doesn’t believe that the king has a beautiful coat on.

Now, just when God did create the heaven and the earth, we do not know. I do not believe that the Bible, of necessity, would cause us to believe that it is just 10,000 years old. It would indicate that perhaps there is a gap of time between verse one and verse two in Genesis. For in verse two we read,

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters (1:2).

The earth being without form and void does not sound to me like God's creation, for as we read in verse 4, “God saw the light that it was good.” Verse 10, “God saw that it was good.” Verse 12, “God saw that it was good.” Verse 17, “God saw that it was good.” Also verse 21 and verse 25. So the creation of God was good.

Sometime, and perhaps before God laid the foundations of the earth, or maybe after He laid the foundations of the original earth, God created other beings that are not human. God created divine beings that we call angels. They are in a different dimension than we. They also were created in part in God's image and after the likeness of God, for they were created self-determinate beings. For God desired to receive and to have fellowship with them as well as He desires to receive and have fellowship with us. Thus, the creating of the angels as self-determinate beings.

One of the angels decided to rebel against the authority of God and to advance himself into the god state to be worshiped as God. His name is known as Satan, or Lucifer, the Dragon, the Devil. But he, at one time, was one of the anointed cherubs. He was at one time in a position of great honor. Ezekiel tells us that he was perfect in beauty and perfect in wisdom and perfect in all of his ways, until the day that he rebelled. Iniquity was found in him. At that point, he was cast out from his position.

Isaiah tells us that he said, "I will exalt my throne above the other angels; I will sit in the congregation, in the sides of the north; I will ascend to the most high; and I will be like the Most High" (Isaiah 14:13-14). His willing against the authority and government of God.

The book of Revelation would indicate that perhaps as many as one third of the angels followed him in his rebellion. And so they make up a second kingdom in the universe, the kingdom of death and darkness that is now opposed to the kingdom of God, the kingdom of light and life, and God has allowed this second kingdom to exist. When was Satan created and the angels? Where was the Eden that he inhabited? “For thou has been in Eden, the garden of God, and every precious stone was your covering.” When did this take place? When did Satan fall? No doubt sometime in the prehistoric period before God created man, because Satan appeared to man very early in the fallen form in the garden.

Now, one of the difficulties that I have with Dr. Morris's literal ten-thousand-year old universe or less is that I feel it doesn't give room for the creation of the angels and the fall of Satan. I believe that there probably is a gap of time. That does not explain the fossil records. I believe the fossil records are better explained by the flood. And if you’ll read "Earths in Upheaval" by Immanuel Velikovsky, you’ll find some extremely fascinating facts that are not brought out in your textbooks concerning the discoveries of the bones of animals in caves crushed and animals which are natural enemies all together crushed and broken in caves as though by some violent force. And he gives just record after record of these things all over the world. Speaking again of a violent upheaval, which better is described by the great flood of Noah and the fossil record. Where do you find fossils being formed in tremendous amounts today? Not on the ocean floor! They actually deteriorate and dissolve without being fossilized. Fossils were formed by some convulsion of nature where there was the death of the animal or the breaking off of the plant and then the covering with sediment and the tremendous pressure causing it to be fossilized.

Oh, you can find fossils and you can create fossilized forms. I have a friend who was a scientist who was going to one of the national conventions of the scientists. He decided to have some fun, so he created a cast of a skull that did not look human, it looked more like a humanoid or like the missing link actually. And he deliberately designed it to look like that. He took it to the silicate springs up near Bakersfield where if you put a bone or something in that silicate springs, it will fossilize it in six hours. He left it there for twenty-four hours to do a good job, and then went back with a story of digging in a cave and coming across with this fossil. And it was interesting how the brilliant men were dating the thing as much as 90,000 years old and all, and this was surely the missing link. And he was the talk of the convention that year until he confessed his hoax, and well, he came very nearly from being dismissed from the Academy of Scientists.

When I went through the Oregon Caves, they explained to me how many millions of years it takes for those stalactites and stalagmites to form and how they were able to date the Oregon caves by the length of these stalactites. It was marvelous, because they were able to take the mineralization and so forth and then the length of it and they can tell you exactly how long that thing has been forming, millions of years. And that was a very common age dating factor, until they found under the Washington Monument stalactites that were five feet long and that thing was built in 1924. Pop goes the weasel! The king is naked.

If Genesis 1 deals with the original creation of the material universe, it does not really deal with the actual beginning. The gospel of John goes back before this, before the universe existed God existed.

“In the beginning,” and John goes way back now. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1-2).  That's going back even before the material universe. "All things were made by Him" (John 1:3a). Now he comes to Genesis 1, the creation of God. How long did God exist? He has existed from eternity. Again, our minds cannot deal with timelessness.

“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” And so, we see a universe, an earth actually in the universe, not necessarily the universe itself. But the earth without form and void and darkness over the earth. The Spirit of God, and interestingly enough, here in verse two, we find the very first mention of the Spirit of God.

Then God said (1:3),

The word God is Elohim. In the beginning God, Elohim. If you know anything about Hebrew language, you know that the im is plural. God singular is El; the Hebrew has a duo text. The duo is Elahh. God’s plural is Elohim. In the beginning God created. Even there we have the indication of the trinity or the tri-unity of God: Father, Son and Spirit. The Spirit shows up right in verse two. Actually, the Son is there in verse one, because all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. So, when you read, "He created the heaven and the earth..." you have the Son involved. He, according to John, is the creator, the agent of creation.

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 (1:3-4).

Interesting God divided the light from the darkness, and I’m sure that it was just meant that there is a division between light and darkness. But the idea of God dividing the light is interesting, because we know that light is divided on the spectrum. We can divide light with a spectroscope. There is light even in the darkness, but it is dark light. The infrared, when you get down to that dimension where it is no longer visible to the eye, but it still exists, but it is dark to us. Yet, there is the infrared and below, light that is not seen.

So God divided the light from the darkness.

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day (1:5).

This creates a problem in the minds of many people, in that we do not read of God creating the sun and the moon. "And God made two great lights,” verse 16, “the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; He made the stars also." Notice though, God made, that is, assembled, asah, not bara. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth itself. The earth was shrouded in darkness, covered in darkness. Perhaps shrouded by dark clouds, perhaps in a dark nebula, many possibilities. It began to emerge and there was light, but still covered by darkness, only the first rays of light penetrating through the cloud covering, so that it was possible to note that it was evening and it was morning. How could you have the evening and the morning aspect unless the earth was rotating on its axis? You have, of course, the sun out there in its position, but then the light holders and light of the sun allowed then to come through to the earth on the fourth day of creation.

Verse 6,

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. God called the firmament Heaven. [raqiya, limitless expanse] So the evening and the morning were the second day (1:6-8).

So, the atmosphere. The Bible does refer to three heavens. The first heaven is that atmosphere around the earth, that surrounds the earth, the atmosphere going up into the stratosphere. The second heaven is the stellar heaven, the universe itself. And God placed the stars and all in the heavens. The third heaven is the dwelling place of God, wherever that may be, and I do not believe that it is way out in the Andromeda Galaxy. I believe that the third heaven is very close to the earth, but in a whole different molecular structure.

I believe, as some scientists do postulate, there is a possibility of two earths co-existing at the same time, the same place, both of them passing through each other, each of them oblivious to the others existence, because, they are made up in a different molecular structure. The interesting thing about the material structure as we know it is that there is much more space than solid matter in material things.

If you had a molecule of hydrogen and you blew up the nucleus of the hydrogen (the proton) to the size of a basketball, the little electron that is revolving around it would be 3,000 miles away. There is that much space in the hydrogen atom. Actually, if you would reduce all of the atoms in your body to just the solid material, if there were no space in the atoms that make up your body, if all of the electrons would collapse into the protons, you'd need a microscope to see yourself. You're just a bunch of blown up expanded molecules, yet you’d weigh the same. That little microscopic spec of dust would weigh whatever you weigh. It is a matter of density.

We know that there are stars in space that have a much greater density than does the sun or our own planets in the solar system. In the Dog Star, which is a double star, which we have discovered. The smaller one is called the Pup. It is estimated that the density of the Dog Star is so great that a square inch of the Dog Star would weigh 1,750 pounds. The atoms are more tightly compacted. Imagine going down the path and seeing a meteorite that happen to fall from the Dog Star and you decided to kick the thing off the path, just a little thing, and you may try to pick it up, 1,750 pounds. So, in the molecular structure, it is possible that heaven is much closer to earth, and I do believe that it is. I do believe that there are two worlds coexisting. The spirit world and the material world, passing through each other. Only I believe that they are aware of our existence, but we, for the most part, are not aware of theirs. I believe that the scripture teaches this.

Now in the creating of this firmament, the atmosphere, God placed originally a tremendous volume of water in the atmosphere, suspended it. We do know that water can be suspended in the atmosphere, tremendous volumes of water. Sometimes when the clouds come over and are cooled too quickly, that volume of water falls on a particular area and we have tremendous floods. The amount of water that can be suspended…

God's whole system is so marvelous, the rain cycle or water cycle. Think of the engineering processes that God figured out in creating, first of all, the gases that make the water, the hydrogen and oxygen, H2O. Both of them lighter gases than our atmosphere itself. Of course, the atmosphere is seventy-nine parts of nitrogen to twenty parts of oxygen, and one percent of freon and neon, and some other of the gases, but basically a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere.

Oxygen and hydrogen, in their pure forms, are lighter than the atmosphere itself. As the sun hits the ocean, water evaporates into the gases hydrogen/oxygen, carried by the clouds and the winds brought down from the north or across the Pacific. Then as they move inland, they begin to cool and they begin to drop their water on the land and it creates the snow in the mountains, and it is preserved or kept in store. In the summer season it begins to melt and so that the streams run during the summer seasons bringing us the fresh water as they flow back into the sea, only to be carried again purified, you know, distilled by being transferred into their gases and carried aloft and back again. And the whole cycle is just a marvel of God's engineering that God designed and figured out by creating the balance of the earth and the sea to two-thirds water and one-third earth. And any other balance you'd be living in a marshland if there were more water and less land, and if it were the other way with more land and less water surface, then you'd be living in a vast arid desert. The land would be uninhabitable. So the whole balance or design of God is just a marvelous "fortuitous occurrence of accidental circumstances" and that made the whole thing possible!

Now this original water canopy filtered out many of the cosmic rays so that the body being marvelously constructed and made by God recreated itself over and over. In the beginning, while there was this protective blanket, life physical powers and abilities would continue for almost a thousand years without being abated, because there weren't the mutations that are created by the bombardment of the cosmic rays. They were being shielded by the water canopy around the earth. So, we have found in fossils asparagus ferns fifty feet tall. Ideal growing situation because you’ve got this moisture blanket covering the whole earth, the whole earth like Hawaii. You didn't have your polar regions, the vast ice waste area of the North and the South Pole, but they were also beautiful tropical areas as is shown by the charcoal deposits at the South Pole some two hundred feet under ice. As is demonstrated by the Mammoths found encased in ice in the areas of Siberia with tropic vegetation in their digestive tracts.

The earth at one time was a much more hospitable place. Without the vast areas of ice and cold in the North and South Poles, you wouldn't have the violent storms; you would have only a gentle movement of air. You wouldn't have hurricanes. You wouldn’t have tornadoes. The air movement would be much more gentle, because you wouldn't have the large masses of cold air falling into the vacuum created by the rising of the hot air. You would have a beautiful hothouse kind of an effect around the earth and the plants not being destroyed as far as their molecular structure by the bombardment, man not being destroyed by the bombardment being shielded and protected. We would live to a productive nine hundred years plus. This explains the longevity of the antediluvians, how that Adam and his descendants, up until the time of Noah, lived an average of nine hundred years old still bearing children. Imagine a nine hundred year old woman saying, “I’m pregnant again. This is the one hundred and eighty-fifth time.”

God divided the waters, atmosphere. And so there were the stellar oceans as well as those upon the earth. Evening and morning the second day.

Then God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so (1:9).

It would appear here that originally the land surfaces were all together. It is possible that the theory that is gaining great popularity of the continental shift actually is a correct theory. That there did come a time when there was a great continental shift, a drift of the continents. That seems to be a theory embraced by many of the scientists today that the continents were all, at one time, joined. It would indicate in the book of Genesis, and we’ll get there as we go through that, that the…it was in the days of Peleg that the earth was divided that that was the time that this great continental, not drift, but splitting took place.

And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters he called Seas [plural] (1:10):

How did Moses know when only he had to deal with the Mediterranean and that was known to them as the Great Sea and they thought that was it? They thought it was just one, but we know that there are seas. And we talk about the seven seas, the major seas, plural.

and God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, and herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields seed according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed was in itself, according to its kind: and God saw that it was good (1:10-12).

So the bringing forth the botanical kingdom. Now, the interesting thing about it is that they bear seeds according to their kind. If there were any chance to prove the evolutionary theory, you could prove it every year when the farmers plant billions of wheat seeds. The day one of those grains of wheat turns into an apricot tree, you have a classic demonstration of a transmutation. Now mutations, sure, they take place all the time. You can have a Royal Apricot, all different kinds of apricots. You can have a Delicious Apple, a Golden Delicious Apple, a Pippin Apple; I’m getting hungry for apple pie. You can have Roman Beauty or Pippins or all different kinds of apples, but they're all apples. The minute you plant an apple seed and have an orange tree, then you've got a demonstration of evolution, because now you have a transmutation. You have crossed species from one to another. There are a lot of changes within a specie; you have all kinds of dogs, all kinds of cats, but when you put your two Samoans out in the yard to breed and they produce a Persian kitty, you've got transmutation and valid proof for the evolutionary theory.

So interestingly, God of course commanded them to fill the earth. We’ll get that in the next chapter. I am always amazed again the engineering and the genius by which God created the seeds and created them to propagate, the different ways by which a seed propagates itself. They have what they call exploding seeds, as the pod dries it explodes, and as it explodes it opens with a pop; it shoots the seeds on out. The pine tree has, they call them propeller seeds. It has a little ingenious fin on it and when the cone opens up and the seed drops off, this fin starts it spinning, rotating. As it spins, it begins to move out from under the pine tree, so it can fall and be planted outside of the shade of the tree, where it can grow up on its own. So this neat propeller seed that spins and brings it out away from the pine tree. Then you have umbrella seeds. The little dandelion that you’re problemed with in your grass, as it turns to a seed it forms a puffy little umbrella on it that when the wind comes, it picks it up and carries it off and it falls someplace and then propagates itself wherever it falls. Or, of course, it has many seeds and a lot of times parts of it will fall as it floating through the air. When we were kids we used to take those things and blown on them and disintegrate them and all. We were just helping to propagate itself. How many times have you been out hiking and when you get home you pick all the little hitchhikers off your socks? The foxtails and those other seeds that put little hooks on themselves to catch a ride when you brush by it. When you pull them off and throw them down, you are helping to propagate that noxious weed. There are other seeds that have a little fast-drying glue, and as you walk by it will glue itself to you. When the glue dries it will fall off and you have given it a ride and propagated it without even knowing it. Then other seeds surround themselves with luscious tasting meat, and you take and eat it and blow the seeds out of your watermelon, and you’re propagating that watermelon all over. The blackberries, the bears eat them, and in their elimination processes propagate the blackberry seeds all over the country. Ingenious ways by which God designed that they should propagate themselves.

And talk about propagation, if you would take a grain of corn and plant that grain, and then take the ears of corn from that one grain and the following year plant everyone of those grains of corn, and then the following year you took all the grains of corn that grew from those grains of corn that you planted and plant them again, in six years you would have enough corn to plant the entire land surface of the earth. Seed yielding herbs after their kind, trees yielding seeds after their kind, marvelous the design which demonstrates the wisdom of the infinite creator.

Next Sunday we’ll continue in chapter 1, and at this rate…sometime in the middle of the millennium we will conclude our journey through the Bible.

David the psalmist said, “Lord, I am fearfully and wonderfully made; and that my soul knows right well" (Psalm139:14). There have been some very fascinating books written of late by Christian neurologists on the brain and its functions, capacities. And as I’ve read a lot of these books on the human brain, on the nervous system and the blood cells, I realize that David's statement was probably one of the greatest understatements. “I am fearfully and wonderfully made; and that my soul knows right well.” The marvels of creation, they all testify of a infinitely wise God. The design and the whole structure and, of course, we are not going to try and go into these things, but they are a fascinating study that I would encourage you to do some reading on some of the various facets of the human body to realize how marvelously we were created. And yet, God created all of us for the definite purpose of knowing Him and loving Him. If you don't know God and if you don't love God, then you haven't fulfilled the very purpose of your existence and your life is a waste. I would encourage you to know God, love God, find the real purpose of living.

May the Lord be with you and bless you, and may you come to know Him a little more this week. May you become a more keen in your observation of His creation. As you look at those beautiful flowers that are now in bloom, the gazanias, the ice plant, all bringing forth seed after its kind, all propagating after itself, all there for a purpose and a plan of the divine Creator. Just become a little more aware of Him and stand in awe of His creative genius. That is what worship is all about: acknowledging God for what He is and what He has done. Don’t be like the fool who worships and serves the creation more than the Creator. That is irrational, but that is man today. And that is the problem with man; he worships the creature, rather than the Creator. He worships the created object rather than the Creator, and that’s on the road down, and you can read that road down in Romans 1, because he did not want to retain God in his mind, his foolish heart was darkened and he worshiped the creature more than the Creator who is blessed forever more.” “Therefore,” God says, “All right, that’s what you want. I’ll let you be a total fool. You can wear the invisible suit that your folly might be noted even by the most simple person.” May you discover God in all of His glory and all of His power and all of His love, and may you love that new dimension in the Spirit with Him. In Jesus’ name.