'In the Beginning God created...' — Art Katz

Creation as the Foundation of Faith

Your beginnings are fraught with remarkable purpose, Lord, and we ask a grace that you would begin, my God, to open our heart and our understanding of what was in creation from the very first, that is the statement of yourself, of what you are as God, and that we have not even begun, my God, to understand, to apprehend.

We ask, Lord, that you would do something for the foundations of our own life, our own faith for the church, as we go back to the beginnings, my God, and see there the things that are implicit for the end.

Grant now, my God, your direction, the expression of your heart and wisdom and understanding and that measure that is appointed for us, and we thank you for the privilege of what is before us to go back to the beginning, to the origin of things, to creation itself.

Guide us by your precious eye. We thank and give you praise for this privileged time now in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay. Well, just to read from Genesis 1 .1, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Probably wouldn't hurt to spend a few weeks on that verse. It's not the beginning of God, because God is without beginning. God is from eternity to eternity. He is self-existent, but it's the beginning of God's act of creation, and that's what we want to focus on, the heaven and the earth.

So this is the span of God's creative intention of these spheres, and both deserve uttermost respect. Somewhere in this Jewish commentary, let me see if I can find it, or elsewhere that I've seen it, it says that we need to have our feet on the earth, but our head and hearts in heaven.

So we need to span the breadth of what is in God's creation, heaven and earth. In fact, we're called to be a heavenly people on the earth, and to bring the dimensions of heaven into the ordinary, and the everyday, and the earthly things.

So I'm happy for God's heaven and earth, and that he might give us a deeper appreciation for both. Probably the one cannot be understood independent of the other. You can't consider heaven separate from the earth, and earth will suffer if it's considered separately and independently from heaven.

Somehow these two domains of God need to be brought into his perspective. So, all 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, and God said, let there be light.

There was light, and God saw the light, that it was good. 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.

I'm not going to read beyond that, because that's part of your own assignment to familiarize yourself again with the scriptures, and the way in which it has pleased God to set down his creation, and to establish it day by day in the divine wisdom, but that it begins with light, is something that should not be lost to us.

Light is the beginning, and that there's a separation from darkness, is God's first creative act, and somehow we have not only creation to consider, but covenant, and it's interesting in this Jewish commentary on the Torah, that they recognized that there's a connection, that in the biblical view, creation and history belong together.

Creation is the foundation of a covenantal relationship between God and the world, and in a specific and important sense, between God and Israel. So, God's intention, though Israel is not yet made mention, is already implicit, according to these commentators, in the acts of creation, and if we follow our Genesis, it's not long before we come to it.

Man, and then the descendants of man, the judgment of God with the flood, Noah and his descendants, and out of that line comes Abraham, and God's redemptive strategy in reconciling a lost mankind to himself, that has already taken place in the early chapters of Genesis.

Creation and the fall, and then Abraham, and out of Abraham, Israel, because God has got to have a demonstration of what he is and about, in the earth and before all nations, in the one nation that he has appointed, and with whom he has made covenant.

We'll get into this again. There's got to be something set before the nations that is graphic, visible, and tangible, and Israel is appointed of all nations for that task, to set before the nations the demonstration of God and his way, by his own conduct and his own practice.

That Israel has failed in that, is part of the continuing tragedy and misfortune of man's failure, but that God will ultimately bring that through, and which the church has significant part, is the whole heilsgeschicht, the salvation history of God.

It's a cosmic sweep of God, a tremendous drama, and the church that is ignorant of it is condemned, as I so often say, to a mere succession of Sundays, to mere services. The thing that makes the church the church is its understanding of its place in this whole drama that has its inception in creation, and its conclusion in revelation, and the triumphal fulfillment of God's intention of what was with him at the first, in the beginning.

I hear these commentators speak of the Bible as a Jewish book, that through Abraham and his descendants, the realization of God's plan for humanity will be hastened, and in fact be made possible altogether.

So even the Jewish community needs to be aware, and probably has lost sense, that there's a purpose for itself beyond itself for the nations, and that it's not the self-contained chosenness of God for some enjoyment of the light of its own.

It's there for a purpose for the nations, and maybe part of the church's function is to instruct Israel about its own meaning, because it has been lost to it in its lostness. But here, in this commentary, the reference is touched, that from the beginning, this whole genesis, and the coming forth into Abraham, has to do with God's plan for humanity, all nations, for the redemption of his creation.

Scripture as the Revelation of Creation's Purpose

Okay, I don't know where to turn, I've got so many possibilities before me. None of this would be open to our understanding, merely from our observation of nature, that no amount of scientific explanation about how things have come to be, or any observation of nature, is itself an instruction, but that the Word of God tells us how to understand creation.

In the beginning, God created. There's no argument, there's no defense of God. It goes without saying, it's implied, God is God, and that creation is his work, and that the only way to understand it is to receive what he speaks about it, and how he has performed it, and to find his purpose in his word about it.

If we were left without a word, we would be left to speculation of every conflicting kind, but God has spoken and given us an understanding in his word that he's the author of creation, and that we know that God, by definition, is a purposeful God, so that his purpose must be implied in what he has created, making man in his own image, giving man a platform for his activity, and the way in which God has been pleased to establish the heaven and the earth.

Karl Barth, B-A-R-T-H, who some commentators say he's a giant, a theological giant of the kind that should be equated with Luther, with Calvin, St. Augustine. There have been certain giants of the faith, in the history of the faith, to whom much grace has been given in breadth of understanding, and in communicating to the church valuable insight.

Karl Barth is considered a 20th century giant, and though his fame is kind of dissipating today, I greatly esteem this man. So just to give you a little sample of his own insight in this volume of his work called The Doctrine of Creation.

The world would not exist at all if God did not exist, and if it were not from him. It is because it does not exist of itself, but only because God willed and created it. It has no power over its own self and its own form that it does not belong to itself and that it cannot control itself.

God is not only the creator, he's the Lord over his creation. The creation is not something that is independent of him once it's established, but in a continual relationship with him who has made it for his purposes.

We have got to probe, plumb the purpose of God in creation, because he didn't have to do it. And how long did he exist in his timeless existence as the self-existent one without creation? Why did he, in a moment of his own choosing, set it in motion?

What's the significance of that timing, and what's the purpose for his having established it? We can look to some New Testament statements about that. Somebody turned to Colossians, I think it's 1 .16.

Somebody turned to Romans 1 .17, Hebrews chapter 1 verse 2, and Revelation chapter 4 speaks about creation. Let's hear those New Testament statements that might give us a sense of the purpose of God in his creation.

Has someone turned to Colossians? I've got that one.

Okay. Colossians 1 .16. For by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things have been created by him and for him.

Amen. Let that sink into our hearing a bit.

Created by him and for him. Who has Romans 4 .17? As it is written, I have made you the.

Father of many nations in the sight of God in whom he believed. He was appointed our father in the sight of God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and speaks of the non-existent.

Things as if they already existed. Okay. The point of that verse is the symmetry or the harmony between creation and resurrection. You can almost sense as you read creation of God out of the darkness and out of the chaos bringing forth something is not unlike the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

And that this reference, the God who made those things to be which were not, echoes again the genius of God in creation so that the resurrection is God again asserting himself as creator. And if God is going to resurrect Israel who has failed in his purposes and is brought to death by its sin and its alienation from God, again, we're going to have a recreative act of God in the resurrection of Israel to fulfill God's intention in it from the first.

So every resurrection act is another assertion of God and his creative power. And there's a reason why in seminaries they teach a course called creation and redemption. They bring together creation and redemption because redemption is nothing other than God acting in creative power to fulfill his intention from the first in things that have failed of that intention through the failure and sin of man, Israel, and the church.

And every time God will answer to man's failure, he answers with the same power by which he had the first asserted in creation. So we just need to be alive to the affinity between creation and resurrection.

Jesus commences a new creation by his own resurrection from the dead in his own ascension, a new order of mankind. So God is recreating in the resurrection of Jesus in the way in which he asserted that same power at the first.

How about Hebrews chapter 1, is it verse 2 or 1 and 2?

I believe last day spoken unto us by his son, coming at the point of error of all things,.

By whom he also made the worlds. By whom he also made the worlds. There's another verse, maybe if someone knows it, about all things were made by him and for him.

I just found it, it's the last verse. Yeah, is that John? Romans 11, it's written there. Go ahead, you want to read that? Romans 11, verse 6. For from him and through him and to him are all things.

Amen. Is it Revelations 4 that speaks about all things were made for him, for the life of his pleasure? Somebody look at Revelation 4. We sing that often.

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. Amen. Verse 11.

Amen. So we have a basic statement reiterated in Scripture of the purpose for creation is for God's pleasure, his delight, his satisfaction, his enjoyment, his glorification. He didn't have to do it. He chose to do it.

And Colbert is very insistent in reminding us that God is under no constraint to do anything and that everything that he does is out of his own chosenness and out of his own freedom. God cannot be imposed upon.

Creation is his baby. He chose to create. I'm so grateful. Hallelujah. That it was in his good pleasure, that it is his pleasure, because he wanted to make man in his image. He wanted to have fellowship.

He didn't want to enjoy his own divinity unto himself, although he well could have. But his nature, what he is in himself, moved him to create and bring into existence those with whom he could fellowship and share his glory and dominion even over that creation.

Can you get that in your spirit? The magnitude of God to share. It's something like the Father has given to Jesus a name above every name, that to him every knee shall bend and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

What? Do you realize what you're doing, Father? You're giving to this upstart the kind of consideration and honor that belongs to you exclusively. You're giving to him the name to which every knee shall bend and to the glory of God the Father.

You're delighted in that. You didn't have to. You could have kept it to yourself. You didn't have to have a son and you don't have to have many sons with whom to share your glory, but it's your nature to do so.

How can we talk about loving God if we have not understood, if our hearts have not broken over what he is in himself that is displayed in creation? In a creation that need not have been except that he chose to perform it and opened himself to an unnecessary anguish and pain and suffering in the failure of Adam and Eve, in the failure of Cain, in the nations that were in rebellion against him in chapter 10 and 11 of Genesis, God opened himself to suffering by bringing into being what he has in the hope of the greater glory that he will enjoy.

I don't know how to say this. I'm just, I'm trying to feel my way into this myself. And these theologians, and Carl Barth especially, wrestles with this, that this act of creation is the constitutive act of his deity.

Don't get panicky when you hear some highfalutin language. He's not saying these things to be fancy and say, look ma, no hands. But a theologian more than us is extremely careful about the words that he employs, and they are always lean, no more than is necessary to communicate the thought.

What is he saying here? Creation is God's constitutive act. Can you think of one thing that you have done that you would say, you want to know who I am? Consider this one thing that I've done. This one thing that I have done expresses me.

It's the genius of what I am about summed up in this one act. That's what creation is for God. It's his constitutive act. It's what he is in himself is expressed in the phenomenon or the act of creation.

Creation is God acting out of himself for his own purpose, by which he reveals what he is in himself, benevolent, loving, desiring fellowship, wanting to share his glory, not willing to be contained in himself as exclusive unto himself nor for himself.

Well, what's the implication of the revelation of God in creation if that's true of him for us who are his church, which he has created, that we should not also exhibit that reality and that mentality and that spirit in ourselves?

Are we for ourselves? That church that is only a self-perpetuating entity and whose programs are only designed for its own continuation contradict the genius and the character of what God is in himself as revealed in creation.

He chose not to be alone. He chose to be for others. He chose to share. He's not a self-perpetuating God for himself. And the church that loses that character or that never had it, how then is it the testimony or the witness of the God who in the beginning created?

Do we appreciate our own creation? And what is the purpose for ourselves as church that ought to be the reflection of what was his purpose in having created creation to begin with? See the implications of this?

The Church as a Reflection of God's Creative Character

This is theological reflection and the beauty of it is that it's not reserved for theologians alone. God intends for the church to be theological because theos is God and theological is thought, rumination, consideration of God.

That's why in the German universities, unlike America, seminaries were not a separate institution. They were part of the university, but theology was called the queen of the sciences. It was the crown of all learning.

If you took science or philosophy or history, it was only as a foundation to bring you into the deeper consideration of the study of God that contains all of that because there's no history without a world.

There's no history without a mankind that God has created. So the Germans rightly understood that theology is the queen of all consideration and it needs to be our understanding also. Can you imagine a church that's bored, a church that's predictable, a church that's listless, that has to find some novelty to entertain its congregants when it has the breadth of all this given by God for its consideration and to grow thereby.

So creation denotes the divine action in the eternal beginning of the Son by the Father because it's through the Son that creation is made. He is the creator and therefore only in the inner life of God himself.

The secret of creation is out of God's own reality. God willed and brought into being that which corresponds to himself as the constitutive act of his deity. You want to know what God is? You've got to go back to the beginning.

In the beginning, God created. So this creation also indicates a relationship between God and the world and one in which God enjoys an absolute superiority and a lordship on the one hand and the dependence of creation on the other.

Paul in Athens: God as Creator and Lord of the Nations

Maybe sometime in the course of these days we'll look at Act 17 when Paul, steeped in Hebrew understanding, is brought by God to Athens which is the classic capital of the pagan world and the glory that was Greece of humanism, of philosophy and he sets before them in one statement the purpose of God.

He says, God has made of one blood all nations of men and established their bounds and their habitations that they might seek after him. He says, God who created the heavens and the earth is Lord over all.

In one statement from Paul he sets forth a foundational view of reality that has its heart in the fact that God created the heavens and the earth and the nations and all them that dwell therein. That you Athenians have not got a playground for yourself to do your thing independent of him who created it and has a purpose in it.

That you're Greek and not French and that you're in this part of the Mediterranean world is not happenstance nor accident but part of the divine wisdom and strategy in creation because the God who made the heavens and the earth is the Lord over all, including Athens and including you.

And if you don't reckon on that and continue in your independent and highfalutin self-celebrating way enjoying your own culture, your own civilization, the day will come when Greeks will be known for greasy spoon diners and that's all they'll be known for.

There'll be a second rate, third rate backwater of the world and the glory that was Greece will be reduced to a scandal and shame of a nation that's reduced to nothingness fighting over Cyprus with the Turks.

Thank you Lord for that statement. Thank you. Because they did not heed the apostolic word that came to them at their principal place at Mars Hill where they come every day to hear some new thing. They heard the word of God and the definitive statement of God about God and refused to take it into consideration and lost what measure they had and became a shambles and a contradiction to what was once the supreme glory of civilization and that is that the God who creates is also the God who's Lord.

You know why? Because when you create something you own it, it's yours and you're Lord over it to do with it what you will for you have created it for your purpose alone. It behooves us who have life by virtue of that creation to understand something of what those purposes are for what shall it mean for us to live in ignorance of them.

If he's Lord over his creation and we have the privilege of life because of it what is our purpose in that creation and how shall we go about making our decisions and calling our shots and living our lives in a reckless indifference to the underlying and great purposes of God and having established the creation and I would say that the great tragedy that permeates the earth and Russia as we spoke in the prayer time has come out of a willful ignorance and a rejection of not wanting to know what the purpose of God is lest we find ourselves in conflict with it or having to surrender our petty purposes in an acknowledgement of his greater purpose.

The Creative Word in the Hutterite Colony

Purpose is a key and no little wonder that my first message on this recent trip to Canada at a Hutterite colony the first time of door in over 25 years has opened to me to address an entire colony unprecedented that it would be given to any man outside their own ranks.

I had no message. I was in the darkness of the deep. I was without form. I was in chaos oh you never saw a more pathetic spectacle than what I was on that night when we left the one colony to go to the other and I saw that the women were going to join us.

I said do you have to come. Okay. Can't you stay home. What do you want to do. Come and watch my my humiliation. I have nothing. I have no inspiration. I'm a dead dog. My tail is between my legs. I have no desire.

I'm going like a snail with the God. It could be canceled. It was a darkness over the deep it was a chaos of a mishmash of of of turbulence that could not even be interpreted. And I came into that and we arrived at that colony and we sat down with the spiritual leader and some of his sons and men in the living room and they were making chit chat and I'm I'm dying multiple deaths five minutes away from the time of speaking and they're making chit chat.

What did they think. That a professional had arrived and had brought with him in his briefcase the the message and he's going to perform it. Don't they know that every word of God is creative that it's going to set something in motion for ill or for good judgment or blessing.

And who is sufficient for these things. Don't they know. And that the speaker himself doesn't know yet what that word is. Five minutes away from the speaking and at once and for all opportunity never before given that if it is muffed and missed that'll shut the door permanently to any further penetration into those communities who have a potential for salvation of Jews in the last days.

Do you understand what was at stake. So why was I in that condition. Why did I come full of women. Vinegar and got it all. Boy let me at him. Just the opposite. I was a picture of death in terrible darkness without light and without seeing and without knowing.

I'm listening to these men with their chit chat which compounds my suffering. The the what shall I say that the the tedium the the inanity of more small talk in in the face of my turbulence was an unbelievable combination.

You want to be a bearer of the word. These are the sufferings through which you'll go not once but frequently. And all the more when something of great moment is at stake. And so I said don't you guys ever pray.

You know we're going into a meeting of an unprecedented kind. Don't you ever pray. They hadn't thought about it. And all the one young man probably the only one born again in the room beside myself uh deigned to pray.

And then I said to this brother the leader I said do you have a place where I can just have a few moments alone with the lord and shut me in his office. And I went down on my knees should have gotten down on my face.

I cried look at the pathetic condition condition that I'm in moments away from a life and death situation. And I had not a word. What's the word. And the word was purpose. That's the one word purpose.

And I came before that congregation. Oh I wish I could describe it. It would have taken the wind out of your sails. The children were in the front. How can they how can they hear a man like me. And behind them their parents with their arms over looking with that kind of look like my first words were to them were like I feel like I've come from another planet.

I mean there's just no correspondence between us. There's no way that you can conceivably understand anything that I could say. We're just from remote you know ends of the earth. That's the way I was impacted by looking at their faces.

That's why God says don't look at their faces. And then I opened my mouth in that terrible death and began to speak a purpose. And the lord quickened the remembrance of a line from that American philosopher poet Thoreau.

I think it's David Thoreau who wrote a book called Walden Pond in about the 1850s something like that in which he said all men live lives of quiet desperation. And my message to them was God combining the word purpose and the remembrance of Thoreau that except you have consciously and willfully sought the lord to understand his purposes and have taken them to your own heart to live them out.

Your life is a life of quiet desperation no matter how much occupied you are with your hard right tasks. And they are a very industrious productive people in the midst of all of that if you're not consciously living for the purpose of God your life is a life of quiet desperation.

And that was the word of life. And I watched their faces visibly change as that word continued to go forth as like God hammering on the dead doors of their life and awakening something. And when I finished they sang a couple of courses.

The last course was just as you are you know come. I just I said to this brother Jake. I said should I give an invitation. I had sat down. He said no. He said no one will respond. What he was saying was we don't give invitations.

It's never been done. I said okay. I continue to wait. I said well shall I just go and conclude the service in prayer. Yeah. I went back to the microphone. And what a microphone I think was more like a washboard.

I never heard sound more choked and stultifying than out of that inadequate piece of technology dammering lips. Oh I don't know how anybody could hear through it. And so I just concluded with prayer. And I said if anyone has any need for prayer or any thought that wants to come up we're available as a service closes close the service.

And a sea of people came up. John John Mandel who was videotaping the service. He said I could kick myself for having put my camera away and missed that sight of these people all around you are as you sat in the chair and they were on their knees on the floor looking up at you waiting for a word waiting for prayer waiting.

Something had broken life had come. So a creative word out of death. Now I'm hearing from these Hutterites who have heard of that that I'm being called a false prophet for having given an invitation that it's a no-no that you know so you can believe that if anything is born of God it's going to receive a counteraction against it.

This is not just a once and for all everything that has to do with creation initially must in some measure accompany every creative act of God. And I just gave you an example of one if you had the patience like there were two other occasions in those days exactly like that in the 10 -12 days in Canada where something was birthed out of the same kind of death the sense of futility despair hopelessness and darkness.

Where on another occasion in North Bay Canada at a charismatic meeting where the messianics had been invited I looked out on this droll site d-r-o-l-l totally dispiriting listening to the so-called worship from the platform that was so blah and the and the pastor who was leading in it a man who gave such evidence of defeat and failed life that the whole thing was a statement of the ever all that is lamentable in present-day Christendom and charismatic looking at these faces in their condition they all look like high school dropouts.

I'm a high school dropout myself. Well what I'm saying is they looked like people who are dull incapable of being reached and somehow satisfied with this blah kind of thing that was going on. And how am I going to address that.

And my first words were I said I can't recall another occasion where I had been in provoked to Jewish snobbery as I am tonight because I've been looking down my Jewish nose at your reprehensible gentile dullness.

And before I could get that statement out of my mouth the Lord took over he took over. Out of that I was I was expressing my despair of any hope of communication and that the best thing that the only thing you've done for me is awakened me to being a Jewish snob.

And before I could get that statement out the Lord and you I would to God you could have been there. I had a freedom. I was moving. I don't know that my feet were on the ground. I was from one side of the room and I watched the faces they were awakening from their death when I finished I could not believe it was the same congregation with which I had begun.

Something had taken place of a creative kind that made all things new and had brought them into the purposes of God. Because North Bay is at a lake and river system that if you follow it long enough it'll bring you into the great lakes from the most northern most locations of Canada through North Bay in smallest craft all the way into the great lakes and to Duluth 150 miles from us and to us and from us God knows where God will be bringing Jews.

One day because a word came forth in North Bay Canada to an unsuspecting audience that had no sense of God's purpose in the mystery of Israel to embrace it. And one hearing by the creative word of God that had come into their death through death.

Chaos, Separation, and the Work of Creation

So it behooves us to understand the anatomy of creation if God had to bring forth out of darkness and out of chaos by the operation of the spirit to begin with what shall it be at any occasion when God is again creative.

And what is the work of God if it is not that. And what are we performing if we're just bringing messages or predictable things. That is not the creative work of God in the given moment according to his wisdom which includes.

That's why if there was any way that I could have been kept from this table I would have grasped at it. I came like the proverbial snail. I don't want to begin either. How do you begin to consider the awesome dimensions of creation of all of the books.

Where'd I turn Lord. So there's always some resonance of a darkness over the deep especially if it's got to do with a deep. Let's let's look at that verse two. If it has not to do with the deep we would not to have anything to do with it.

He's not called us to surface phenomena or triviality. And to that I'll turn to. And his commentary on genesis great old testament scholar statement is that God is the lord of the world but not only in the sense that he subjected a pre-existing chaos to his ordering will.

So he sees creation as coming out of some pre-existing chaos. And this is a contradiction and a paradox. But paradoxes are not uncommon in the scripture and in the faith because we know that God created ex nihilo ex space n-i-h-i-l-o which in latin means out of nothing.

In other words God has no dependency. He does not require raw material. He himself creates from nothing the whole thing that to be lord over all and that he's not. He owes nothing to anything that precedes him to draw from it in order to create.

And yet the scripture in a strange way indicates that there was something there at the time of creation that he had to separate in order to bring forth the world. And it's a mystery and men need to probe it as we're seeking to do even now.

The earth is without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. You can look in your version with me from 45. Verse 7. I form the light and create darkness. I make peace national well-being.

Moral evil proceeds from the will of men but physical evil proceeds from the will of God. And i create physical evil calamity. I am the lord who does all these things. Verse 8. Let fall in showers you heavens from above and let the skies rain down.

Righteousness the pure spiritual heavenly life possibilities that have their foundation in the holy being of God. Let the earth open and let let them skies and earth sprout forth salvation. Let the righteousness germinate and spring up as plants do together.

I the lord have created it woe to him who strives with his maker. I don't know if you've noticed how frequently in the psalms and especially in isaiah God reminds Israel that he is the creator and the maker of Israel itself.

He's created another creation. He's created Israel. And somehow it's critical for Israel's understanding of God to reckon on God as being the creator it says in verse 15. Here's here's Israel's statement.

Truly you are a God who hides yourself hides yourself. Oh God of Israel the savior. Verse 17. But Israel shall be saved by the Lord with an everlasting salvation. You shall not put to shame or confound to all eternity.

For thus says the Lord who created the heavens and God himself who formed the earth and made it who established it and created it not a worthless waste he formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord and there is no one else.

So there's a remarkable conjunction God reasserting himself as creator and also Israel's deliverer. Israel's savior because it's going to take God in his creative power to establish that restoration. Here's a little footnote to that statement about the reiteration of God as a creator in the scriptures pertaining to Israel.