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Bro. Otis Fisher
Open your Bibles to page 1, Genesis, genuses. I want us to think, place yourself, go back if you will, if you can, to before the beginning. What do you see, John? Alright. Debbie, what do you see? Darkness.
I see no space. This is before the beginning. Greg, what do you see? Bob? So you didn't go back. Well, we all have some picture in mind. It's hard for me to picture nothing. But in our way of speaking, there was nothing.
There was only God. Now, Debbie, I cannot fathom that, but that's what he says. And I have to go along with what he says. In the first verse, it reads like this. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
Now, the Hebrew for all of that is, A literal translation of that would be, Beginning created God, a substance, heavens and earth. Man cannot think outside of time without using time. David, how do we think outside of time?
Yes. Bob, did you ever try to describe something that you had never seen? Alright, it's rather obvious that we think in time. So we will put a beginning to everything. In the beginning, this is a period of remote, unknown antiquity, hid in the depths of eternity.
God, the name of the supreme being. Now, in the Hebrew, it signifies strong and mighty, in its expression of omnipotent power. And by its use here in the plural form, is obscurely taught at the opening of the Bible.
Now, we have the word Elohim. It's plural. David, what do I mean by it is plural? Alright, it teaches a doctrine of which is very strong, and we find it throughout the Bible. It's revealed in any part that you put down in.
And it teaches though God is one, there is a plurality of persons. Now, I'm not about to explain the Trinity to you, but suffice to say, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This is the Godhead. David and I have talked a lot about this, that God is in three people, three persons.
They're engaged in the creative work. We find all of them engaged in the creative work, but we can't explain it. We can talk about it. When you come to the word create, now, he created all of this. It was not formed in any preexistent material, but it was made out of nothing.
There was not something in front of God, and he made it over into this creation. There was nothing, nothing but God, and he created this. Now, we're going to run across a word made and a word create. There is a difference.
Keep that in mind. Created is from nothing, from a non-existent something. He made things out of the dirt, the water, so on and so forth, after he had created. So try to hold that separate. It will come into play later.
The substance of the universe, heaven and the earth, this first verse is a general introduction to the inspired volume, declaring the great and important truth that all things had a beginning. So now everything has a beginning, and when he says beginning, he's talking about at that moment.
Are you with me? That nothing throughout the wide extent of nature existed from eternity. Originated, none of it originated by chance or from the skill of any inferior agent, but that the whole universe was produced by the creativity or the power of God.
If you want to write down these references, Acts 17, 24 and Romans 11, 36. So God has spoken this world into existence. He has spoken space, the earth, the heavens, the stars, the suns, everything into existence.
How much of it, Greg, has man discovered? A very small part. Yet there's billions of stars, planets, all of this, but that is but a small portion of the creation. In the second verse, 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.
Now, between verse one and verse two, I was taught in college that there is a wide gap. That's not true. There is no gap between one and two. You'll follow the chronological and physical order of this as we progress.
God, it seems at first, is to have created the elementary principles of all things. And this form and grand mass of matter, which in the state must be without arrangement or any distinction of parts, a vast collection of undesirable materials of nameless existence, strangely mixed.
In other words, it was a soft, thick, lump, or mass, commonly called a glob. So we have this glob in front of us. Joy, I'm a way off outside of space looking at this, and it is a glob. Space isn't even there.
I used that term wrong. It's hard. But this is the way it was. When this... Yes. Yes. The Earth was without form and void. Now, form and void. It had no form. It was, we'd say, pliable. It moved around.
And it was void. But it was empty. Now, how could the substance be empty, Debbie? We've never seen anything like this. Man cannot... Of course, man can't create, but man cannot make a substance that is void.
We'll find out more about that in a moment. When this elementary principle was brought together, God was pleased, and he was pleased to spend six days in uniting, assorting, arranging the materials out of which he had built up not only the Earth, but the whole of the solar system.
The Spirit of God moved, literally continued brooding over it as a fowl does when hatching her eggs. This word brooding has given rise to many, many doctrines. This may be also where the people get the idea that it was hatched out of an egg because of the word brooding.
And there's lots of people, lots of cultures say this was an egg. I can't buy that. I'd hate to see the chicken. The immediate agency of the Spirit by working on the inactive and disordered elements combined, arranged, and ripened them into a state adapted for being the scene of a new creation is coming.
First, we've got the glob. The account of this new creation properly begins at the end of the second verse. And the details of the process are described in the natural way, natural way, as an onlooker looking at it has done.
Now, the onlooker is going to relate the changes as they come. Remember, it's all here in the glob. And God said, let there be light. And there was light. Now, I know I did not announce this last week for you to study, but Greg has been studying it.
When this phrase, let there be light, and it occurs repeatedly in the account, what does it mean? Many have asked the question, how could light be produced on the first day when the sun didn't come until the fourth day?
Can you help us out, Greg? Oh, we're getting somewhere. It isn't the light itself, it's the power behind that light. What is the very first thing? Now, after we have the glob, what's the very next step that would be absolutely necessary before there could be anything made, John?
Well, all of you be thinking, what's the very next step that has to be made before we could begin to build things, Joy? The heaven and earth have not come out yet. They're in this glob that we've got.
Well, you're getting awfully close. All right, that's close. Yes, that's it. I believe it was at this moment that God spoke the atomic structure into the glob. The original word, as Greg pointed out, is the power behind the light, a form of electricity.
Let me catch up here. Yes, that's what Greg was speaking of. It's not the light. It's the power behind the light, the ore. Yes, and from it comes our structure. In other words, if you can see the glob out here, then God speaks into it friction, which produces heat, which would produce the ore.
So friction had to be there before there could be anything else built. Are you following? What was that? I couldn't tell if this was... All right. The electric fluid. The word's been used for lightning and for sun.
God has diffused the matter of caloric or latent heat. Caloric heat or latent heat. Give us the definition, Greg. Yes. All right. Does caloric mean roughly the same thing? All right. Now, God has diffused this matter of latent heat or caloric heat through every part of nature.
Think about it. Everything that we touch, we eat, we look at, there is heat in it. I don't know. Might be. It has a lot less heat than most things. The existence of this caloric latent or primitive light, friction, may be ascertained in various other bodies that can be produced by the flint and steel, by rubbing two hard sticks together, by hammering cold iron.
What happens to iron if you beat it repeatedly? It'll get hot if you are at it long enough. Friction is the general... in general produces both fire and light. God, therefore, created this universal agent on the first day because without it, no operation of nature could be carried on or perfected.
So, the second thing was he said, let there be light. Now, without that step, nothing else can be made. Four, God saw this light and it was good. So, what does that tell us about what he had made, David?
He was pleased with it. Now, David, can you see anything that God makes in that he says, well, that's good enough. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness.
Now, when he spoke that atomic structure, that friction, or when he said, let there be light, when he spoke that into the glob, what happened, Greg, to the glob? Well, it's in glob form. It's moving around.
It's without form. It's without its void. And we spoke the atomic structure into it, which applies to everything in the world. What would happen to that glob? Yes, it became a globe. That's right. It took shape.
Now, in the fourth verse, we have it structured. It's a globe. And he divided the light from the darkness. Now, this throws you off if you're still thinking about the light. He created the light. But we decided that that was what gave it form and shape, and it become a globe.
Now, what did he do when he divided the light from the darkness, John? Yes, that's what it is. He gave it a kick, and it began to spin. Now, which way does it spin? The right way. Yes. All right. By its spinning, would that not set up the dividing of the light and the day?
We don't have to have light and day for it to be prepared for that. But that's what took place. He spun it. The word simply refers us, by anticipation, to the rotation of the Earth around its own axis once in 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds.
So we're traveling how fast, Greg? David, how fast are we spinning? 1 ,000 miles an hour. Takes 24 hours. That's fast, yes. Yes. We don't know that. The gravity is holding me here, so we don't know that we're spinning.
But we are. We know the Earth is rotating. God gave this rotation to the Earth. Now, in verse 5, and God called the light day, and darkness he called night, and the evening and the morning were the first day.
So he has, first he spoke into existence the mass, the glob. The next thing he had to do was to bring order to it. So he spoke into it friction, which immediately made it snap together and it become a globe.
Everything in free space, in its free form, is round. Now, if it's a different shape, then something has affected it. But everything in its natural state, in free space, is a globe. A drop of water, or whatever you're measuring.
That's right. Or it would all fly apart. So there had to be gravity. The natural day, as the mention of its two parts clearly determined, and Moses reckons according to the oriental way of evening to morning, instead of morning to evening, as we do.
Now we come to verse six. I think this will be the last one today. Verse six. And God said, isn't that wonderful? What if God had never said anything? We take it just for a starting place that there is a God.
That was so natural to me. I never thought about, maybe there isn't. But there is a God. And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
Now science has discovered that the earth was, at one time, enveloped in water. There was a band of water around the earth. The remnants of it are still there. They've discovered that. Now what does this mean?
It is as though you took a tennis ball and suspended it inside a basketball. Can you get that picture? Tennis ball suspended in the side of a basketball. The space between the outer surface of the tennis ball and the inner surface of the basketball is the firmament.
It means space. God made the firmament and divided the waters which are under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. So, God has divided the waters. Debbie, where did these waters come from?
He had everything in the beginning. He is expanding now and he divides the waters from the waters. I found one or two references to that canopy of water. I looked for them this week and I could not find where I had found that.
But, suffice to say, there was a canopy of water. Now, what was the purpose of that canopy? Greg? Yes, we are told what happens later. What purpose would there be, John? There must be a purpose. All right.
That is absolutely right. A perfect environment. It was like it was in a greenhouse. Now, David, what was the color on earth as the sun filtered through this? The most healthy color for your eyes. All right.
God made this space, this firmament, and he divided the waters that were on the globe from the waters that were around the globe. Now, how far out this extended, I don't know. Yes. Yes. He is outside of his creation.
Yes. That is so true. He is outside of space now. God has not come into this space. When he does, it is in the form of Jesus Christ. So, he is doing all of this out in front of him. God called the firmament heaven, and the evening and the morning were the second day.
Well, I told you wrong. We have got time for one more. Now, he is ready to produce the dry ground. That, John, would be the next step if he is going to put me on this earth. I am not going to tread water all the time.
I have got to walk on dry ground. God said, let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so. Waters, dry land, the dirt and the water was all mixed together in a soupy, well, you women know what a thin or thick soup consistency is, and that was the way that it looked.
It was, I have got to stop, and the dry earth, dry land appeared. Now, start with that verse next week, but I want you to think of this dry ground. If the water was to be all connected, where was the earth?
Where was the dirt? Where was the terra firma? Where was the part that I walk on? Think about that. Now, are there questions? I'm sure there should be questions concerning up to this point. The water, everything is first all stirred together.
There is no dry ground. There is no pure water, because it's all mixed together. David? That's right. That's absolutely right. That's right. When he spoke, let there be light, and he put that friction, that energy, that atomic structure, it came from a source.
It had to come from him. Isn't that wonderful? All right. Next week, we're going over the same thing. Bob, would you dismiss us, please? You.