A Greatly Enlarged View of Creation

A GREATLY ENLARGED VIEW of CREATION

 

Recently I put together an article called "A Revised View of Creation", but now after checking out Louie Giglio on You Tube, and watching some of his presentations like "How Great is Your God" and "Our God is Indescribable" has prompted me to put together this article. I don't know about you, but I have been interested if finding out more about our universe since I became a follower of Jesus some 50+ years ago. I never believed in "The Theory of Evolution", and consider it just man's effort to disprove the Bible account. I believe the Bible to be God's "Instruction Manual" containing everything that He wants us to know. I believe it from Genesis to Revelation, although I don't profess to understand everything it teaches. Read (2 Tim 3:16-17) for details of God's intentions for having it written.

 

I consider life on earth to be a process that starts with our "natural birth" from our mother's womb. This prepares us for our "natural life" here on earth, but we need a "spiritual birth" in order to prepare us for a life after this present one ends. Jesus tried to explain this to a religious leader named Nicodemus in (John 3:1-8); of course he couldn't understand what Jesus meant by His expression "You must be born again". This "spiritual birth" is necessary to prepare us for a life in heaven with Jesus. Adam was the first human that God created, and then God stated "It is not good for man to be alone", so God put Adam asleep and took parts from Adam and formed Eve, and they became the first "one flesh" couple. But we know the story from (Gen 3:1-24) where we read the account of how they were deceived by the enemy and ate the forbidden fruit from the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" and brought sin and death into God's perfect creation. Most of us consider our universe to be just what we can see, perhaps with a small telescope, but now by the use of the "Hubble Telescope" we can see much farther into space than ever before. And now the specialists are telling us that our universe is expanding in all directions. This would seem to be almost impossible for our "finite minds" to grasp, but the evidence is now before us. It just goes to show us how "Exceedingly Great" is our Creator God! Then it takes someone like Louie Giglio to show us clearly just how great our Creator really is to create such a spectacular creation that is still enlarging from day to day. And to realize that this "Great Creator" has come down to Planet Earth to become our "Lord and Savior", is truly the Greatest Miracle of Miracles, and He loves each one of us!!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                                                                                                                 15/01/15

Creator

CREATOR

 

I have put together several articles on the topic of "Creation", but never one on the "Creator". Common sense should tell us that in order to have a creation we must have a Creator. For those of us who believe the Bible to be the Written Word of Almighty God, who assigned Moses to record the beginning of time as we know it in the first book of the Bible that is called Genesis. Which happens to be the word for "Beginning" in the Hebrew language, that God had Moses use to record the first five books of the Bible. We understand God to be a triune being, a "Three in One" being consisting of Father, Son, and Spirit that we often refer to as the "Holy Trinity". These three always existed in eternity that is outside our "time and space world" that we call our universe. And they always existed in "Perfect Unity" with each other. Since they have always been perfect, naturally the universe they created would be perfect. In previous articles we have dealt with how this perfect creation, including human beings, became very much "imperfect" by the entrance of sin and death into our perfect world, causing it to become our "fallen world".

 

Since our Creator exists outside creation in what we refer to as "Eternity", He is not directly affected by our "Fallen World", although I'm sure He knows exactly what is happening at all times in our world. As a finite being living in a "finite" world there is no way we can understand the "infinite". In Exodus chapters 33 and 34 God gives a self description of His very character to Moses, so it could be recorded in scripture. Bob Mumford calls these 7 characteristics of God His "7 fold DNA", consisting of 1/ Compassion,

 2/ Gracious, 3/ Slow to anger, 4/ Mercy, 5/ Truth, 6/ Faithful, 7/ Forgiving. So it would appear to me that this would be our best definition of our Creator, who is all these 7 things shown forth in His marvelous act of Creation of our "Ever Expanding Creation". What better way to describe Him than with His own "self definition"? There are many different words used in scripture, but when He appeared to Moses in (Exod 34:4-5) we read "Then the Lord came down in a cloud and stood there with him; and He called out His own name Yahweh. The Lord passed in front of Moses, calling out, Yahweh! The Lord!" And then started listing the 7 characteristics to Moses that apparently He wants to be known for. What better name could we possibly give to our Perfect, Marvelous, and Ever Expanding Creator but "Yahwey"!!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                                                                                                       20/01/15    

Creation

CREATION

 

This article is based on one written by Andy Snoke, and published in The Sharon Star in the Nov/Dec 2009 issue. He begins by saying "The eternal mysterious past known only by God, is interrupted with the timeless words "In the beginning". He goes on to say that this is not meant to imply that this is the beginning of all that the Creator has done, but only what was necessary to give us the story of "our" beginning as the human race. He declares in the second paragraph "you soon find out that there is much more that God has not revealed to man, than there is that is revealed to man."

 

Our brother goes on to talk about the apparent "gap" between the first and second verses of Genesis one. A theory I have been aware of for many years, which leads to the possibility of Satan being involved in making our planet "without form and void", as Moses describes it in (Gen 1:2). Surely our Perfect God never created it that way! He then had to restore it in 6 days to again make it capable of sustaining life. I have always found it interesting that the word used to describe His actions in this restoration process is a Hebrew verb translated as "let", and not the word for "create" used in

(Gen 1:1). Could this not be meant as a command to Satan to release his hold on the creation that he had brought under bondage at the time of being "cast out" of heaven? See (Isaiah 14:12-17). Then we have other scripture passages like (Ezek 28:12-19) that seem to allow for this possible theory.

 

I realize this is only a theory that is impossible to prove from scripture, but it certainly seems more likely to me than to believe that our universe is only 6000 years old! I have always had a hard time to believe that ever since I read in the margin of the first KJV Bible we ever owned that Adam was created around 4000 BC. At the time I had recently been exposed to my first scientific data that indicated that our earth was probably millions of years old. I was not at that time a believer in Jesus, and this caused much confusion in my mind. Then when I came across the "big gap theory", that settled the problem for me. Since becoming a follower of Jesus, some time later, and studying scripture now for many years, I have had no reason to change my belief in how our universe came into being. And the time factor is not a problem to me, I just put the pre-historical creatures in this gap! And leave the unknown things to God who knows everything! (Deut 29:29)!!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                                     Revised 05/09/13

He Leads Me

HE LEADS ME

 

This was the title of the devotional from ODB today Dec 30, 2014 based on (Ps 23) that prompted this article. The author Dave Egner told the story of an incident that happened in Istanbul Turkey in 2005, where 1 sheep jumped off a cliff to its death, followed by nearly 1500 others. Not knowing which way to go, these other sheep just mindlessly followed the other members of the flock. We humans are often referred to as sheep, for example read (Is53:6) "All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God's paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on Him (Jesus) the sins of us all". This fact just proves our need for a trustworthy Leader, and thank God He has given just such a Leader in Jesus Christ, once we by faith trust Him as our Lord and Savior. Jesus calls us to follow Him as our "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29), as the original 12 men He called to follow Him as His disciples.

 

When King David wrote the twenty-third Psalm, and started it with "The Lord in my shepherd", and he certainly knew the life of a shepherd having been one for several years when he was young. So we can safely claim Jesus as our own personal shepherd just as David did, providing we have made the choice of accepting Him as Lord and Savior. He calls all of us, but always leaves the choice up to us to accept or reject Him. We can certainly not claim Him as our Shepherd, if we have not received Him as Lord and Savior. I know people who think that because they faithfully attend Sunday school and church, and give money to support missions etc. that therefore they qualify to claim Jesus as their Shepherd. But according to scriptures like (John 3:1-8), or (2 Cor 5:17-21), unless they are "born again" spiritually, and are truly "in Christ", then Jesus is not their Shepherd. Our author closes his article with a poem by Sanders "Like sheep that sometimes wander from the flock in tangled paths of life to lose their way, I need my Shepherd's hand and watchful eye to keep me always, lest I go astray". I think this is good advice for most of us who claim to be followers of Jesus and part of "the Body of Christ" on earth today. How easy it seems to be to get off the path, and get tangled up in some wrong teaching, or questionable church doctrine. We all need the guidance of our Shepherd for sure; then our author closed with these words, "The Lamb who died to save us is the Shepherd who lives to guide us". Well spoken I believe, and I leave you with this truth!!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                                                                30/12/14

 

The Gift of His Presence

THE GIFT OF HIS PRESENCE

 

Joe Stowell posted an article on Our Daily Bread (ODB) on Dec 26, 2014 called "In The Neighborhood" that caught my attention. He told the story of a well known football player who had recently moved into their neighborhood, and of course everyone, especially the football fans, expected to get to know him personally. But they were very disappointed when it proved he was too busy to have any time to become involved in any local activities. As a direct contrast to this situation, consider the case of Jesus who not only moved into our neighborhood, but "His Presence" became available to anyone who believed in Him and accepted Him as Lord and Savior. Read (John 1:1-14), and focus on verse 14 for a few minutes in a modern translation like the NLT. I like the words they chose "So the Word became human and made His home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen His glory, the glory of the Father's one and only Son". I consider this to be the greatest miracle possible when God the Son left His place in the Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit) and came down to earth to be "Incarnated" into a tiny baby in the womb of Mary of Nazareth, who happened to be the "virgin" that the OT prophet Isaiah mentioned in (Is 7:14). This miracle of the "Virgin Birth" was a "one time only" event that allowed Jesus to escape the inherited sin of our original parents Adam and Eve (Gen 3:1-7) and be totally sinless, whereas all the rest of us are sinners because of Adam's sin plus our own sinful actions.

 

Just imagine; Jesus the sinless Son of God--the Lord of our universe, and the Creator of all things--chose to dwell among us! This is the Miracle that we celebrate every year at Christmas. Not only did He choose to live with us, but He promised an "Intimate Relationship" with all those who choose to accept Him as Lord and Savior. Then our heavenly Father "adopts" us into His Eternal family, and gives us the Holy Spirit to abide with us forever! See (2 Cor 5:17-21) for the details of what all this entails for those who put their faith and trust in Him, and what He accomplished for us on the cross as our

"Redeemer". Joe closed his article with "When you think of the Babe in the manger, remember how special it is that He not only moved into our "neighborhood", but that He did it so He could bless us with the intimate privileges of His residence within us". Oh how we need to thank God for His wonderful gift to us that we celebrate each year on Christ's birthday!!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                   29/12/14                                                                                  

 

The Gift of His Presence

THE GIFT OF HIS PRESENCE

 

Joe Stowell posted an article on Our Daily Bread (ODB) on Dec 26, 2014 called "In The Neighborhood" that caught my attention. He told the story of a well known football player who had recently moved into their neighborhood, and of course everyone, especially the football fans, expected to get to know him personally. But they were very disappointed when it proved he was too busy to have any time to become involved in any local activities. As a direct contrast to this situation, consider the case of Jesus who not only moved into our neighborhood, but "His Presence" became available to anyone who believed in Him and accepted Him as Lord and Savior. Read (John 1:1-14), and focus on verse 14 for a few minutes in a modern translation like the NLT. I like the words they chose "So the Word became human and made His home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen His glory, the glory of the Father's one and only Son". I consider this to be the greatest miracle possible when God the Son left His place in the Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit) and came down to earth to be "Incarnated" into a tiny baby in the womb of Mary of Nazareth, who happened to be the "virgin" that the OT prophet Isaiah mentioned in (Is 7:14). This miracle of the "Virgin Birth" was a "one time only" event that allowed Jesus to escape the inherited sin of our original parents Adam and Eve (Gen 3:1-7) and be totally sinless, whereas all the rest of us are sinners because of Adam's sin plus our own sinful actions.

 

Just imagine; Jesus the sinless Son of God--the Lord of our universe, and the Creator of all things--chose to dwell among us! This is the Miracle that we celebrate every year at Christmas. Not only did He choose to live with us, but He promised an "Intimate Relationship" with all those who choose to accept Him as Lord and Savior. Then our heavenly Father "adopts" us into His Eternal family, and gives us the Holy Spirit to abide with us forever! See (2 Cor 5:17-21) for the details of what all this entails for those who put their faith and trust in Him, and what He accomplished for us on the cross as our

"Redeemer". Joe closed his article with "When you think of the Babe in the manger, remember how special it is that He not only moved into our "neighborhood", but that He did it so He could bless us with the intimate privileges of His residence within us". Oh how we need to thank God for His wonderful gift to us that we celebrate each year on Christ's birthday!!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                       29/12/14