#2 UNDERSTANDING GENESIS 1 + New Life Church Pastor Peter Mordh

Biblically Speaking

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Hello, hello, welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino and I'm your host.

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In this podcast, we talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding

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God easier. These conversations have transformed my relationship with Christ and understanding of religion.

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Now I'm sharing these recorded conversations with you. On this podcast, we talk about the facts, the history, and the translations to make the

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Bible make sense so we can get to know God, our Creator, better. Welcome back to Biblically Speaking.

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I'm your host, Cassian Bellino. I'm really excited for this week. I feel like last week for our first episode, it went so well with Christian Carr, sorry,

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Christopher Carr. Oh gosh, I'm so nervous right now. I'm still trying to get my voice. But this week,

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I'm so excited. I'm going to talk with Pastor Peter Nord, who's a pastor in Southern California for New Life Church.

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And he's going to jump into his credentials, but he holds a bachelor's in pastoral theology and a master's in Christian counseling.

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And it was actually his idea to talk about the topic we're going to jump into today, which is Genesis. And I think that's just really great to begin a podcast at the beginning.

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You know, last week, we said the Our Father. This week, we're going to jump into Genesis. And I think just beginning at beginning makes so much sense.

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And having somebody that is so well read in this topic to really help us make sense of it of, okay, why did we begin with that at the beginning?

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What was God really trying to say? What do these translations actually mean? Because I don't speak Aramaic or Hebrew.

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I just kind of take it literally. And is that the way we're supposed to take it? You know, is seven days, seven days on earth?

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Is it not? I mean, I have so many questions. And for someone to kind of suggest this for a topic that I already wonder about,

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I'm so excited to talk Peter's ear off. So if you're tuning in again, you have no idea how much that means to me that you're actually listening.

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This is really just a brainchild of my own curiosities and my own conversations with God that how do

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I know and love a God that I don't understand? And these conversations with people like Peter and Christopher last week really just helped the

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Bible seem more real and accessible and understandable. And then from there, a relationship with God develops.

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So, yeah, I'm so excited. If you have questions, we don't really have an

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Instagram or anything set up yet. But when we do, shoot me the questions there or find me on my personal

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Instagram. Right now, the handle is mama .cast with four S's. And there's no reason why you can't just shoot me a question there.

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There's no reason why this whole podcast can't be something everybody benefits from. So if you are listening and you do have questions, let this be productive for you, too.

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This is just me being curious and confused and trying to be a good Christian. But if there's some questions that I can cover,

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I mean, send them on over. So I'm excited to talk about what we're talking about today with Pastor Peter.

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And it's actually kind of a funny story how we met, which we'll get into in a sec. But again, enjoy.

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I hope you enjoy. See you. I just got the sweatshirt off Instagram.

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And it was one of those cheesy Instagram accounts. So it's actually Christian street wear.

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And I'm so excited to wear it for this episode. That's cool. But, yep, here we are with our second episode with Pastor Peter Nord.

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Pastor, do you mind if I call you Pastor? Yeah, sure. Peter, do you mind just introducing yourself a bit?

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Yeah, sure. Yeah, I'm the pastor of New Life Church in Palmdale, California. It's northern

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Los Angeles County. I am staying here for the reason a lot of people are moving out of California.

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I love it. We are a light in a place where a lot of people don't go to church.

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And I love that, too. We just launched a third service. So we're doing three services on Sunday.

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We're building an auditorium. We just bought 80 acres. We're just a church on the move.

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And we're just wanting to help people. And my alternate passion is helping people.

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But really, I found that doing that can only happen through the Word of God and through the power of God.

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And so that's why I'm so excited about talking to you today. So awesome. Yeah, I'm so excited to jump in the

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Word of Genesis. Yeah, if you could just kind of jump into your background and how you've become so well -read.

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Did you get a PhD? I know that it says from the website you got your master's and your bachelor's. But why

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Genesis? Yeah, so I mean, it is the foundation. If you were to take one passage that is tied throughout the entire

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Bible, it would be Genesis 1 to 11. There's no mistake, and it's not a coincidence, that every attack that has been had on Christianity for the last 2 ,000 years has always gone back to, yea, hath

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God said, which is straight from Genesis 3. So it really is the foundation of Christianity.

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And a lot of people have, over the years, tried to cast shadows on its importance. And I think that that's a mistake.

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I think you have to go and you have to ask the tough questions. You have to do the work to know, hey, this is really important.

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It's why it's first. In fact, I mean, literally the first three Hebrew words are the most important, and they are repeated all throughout the

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Bible. And so, yeah, no, Genesis is great. My background is

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I was a skeptic. 17 years old, I was really questioning my faith.

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I didn't really know what I believed. I knew what my parents believed, but I didn't know what I believed.

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And so I went on a quest to find what I felt like was true. And today they would say my truth, but I discovered that there is no claim to truth, that it's either true or it's not.

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And so after studying lots of religions and different things that I thought made sense to me,

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I couldn't shake the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I couldn't shake how Muslims, Jews, people from all around the world, if they're scholarly and they're actually using evidence to back up their claims, they don't dispute the fact that Jesus was dead and rose again.

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They don't know how he did it. And I just, all of the proofs from Scripture and outside the

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Scriptures just pointed to the fact that for 2000 years, they've been trying to poke holes in it, and they just can't.

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And so as one of my friends says, it was going to take me more faith to be an atheist.

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So I decided to just be all in. And that's how I am. Like, I'm all in.

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So once I realized, hey, this is true. At 18 years old, I went to Bible college and I got a four -year degree in theology and biblical languages.

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And then I went right into the ministry. I started pastoring the South Fontana Community Church. I was a little young to be a pastor.

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I was 20 years old. But I just felt like, you know what, why not? But then I kind of dialed it back.

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I got a master's degree in psychology and counseling and became a counselor, became a young adult pastor.

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I spoke in all 50 states to young adults all around the world and really was passionate about that still am.

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But now pastoring in Palmdale for the last seven years, it is a joy to study the

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Word of God. It's a joy to walk people through transformation, through the truth. You know, Jesus said, the truth will set us free.

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And so psychology comes at it from the angle that says, how do you feel? Let's try to fix it.

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Jesus says, this is what's true. Now let's address how you feel. It's totally opposite. And it's a wonderful thing to start with the solution, with the foundation and work our way up.

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Wow. That was a great answer. I kind of got stuck with like, you have studied so many different religions.

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And I feel like I am surrounded constantly by people that are like, listen, Christianity, probably good, but I need to rule out the others first.

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You know, I think that's a pretty normal approach to deciding what faith. And just understanding all these other faiths.

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I'm going to ask the question later about like, how does Genesis differ from all the other, you know, religions,

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Christian stories, but just backing up just a second, when it comes to, you know,

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Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, what was it that, you know, they're all valid and people are believing in them.

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So what was it about you that was kind of like the clicker of like, oh, this isn't it. This is actually, you know, was there a moment like that?

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Yeah, actually, the crazy thing about every religion is there's an element of truth in every religion.

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I mean, otherwise people wouldn't even give it the time of day, right? Right. So the

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Bible is all true, but it's not all truth in the sense that it's not comprehensive.

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I mean, there are things that are true about medicine that aren't included in the Bible. I think we would understand that.

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That there's what's called general revelation. So there's some things out there that are absolutely true that aren't in the

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Bible. And to that, we say, okay, if it's something that we can look at and say, absolutely, it's true.

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And the thing that I really was interested in answering was, what about the religions that predate

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Christianity? A hundred percent. And when you think about a religion, you know, like Hinduism or Buddhism, you look at the tenets of their faith and you realize, okay, wait a second.

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From the beginning of time, we had a woman and a man who was seeking after their creator in ways that are very similar to the religions that you see.

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And it was so eerie to kind of look back and see how they were almost like a projector pointing forward to say, these things are true.

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And it elevates our need for a savior. And so the one thing that no other religion had was a suffering savior.

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And so that is the one thing that you wouldn't expect from a man -made religion.

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You would expect the savior to be triumphant and to be glorious and to not be bloody and beaten and humiliated.

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And so when you come to Christianity, he breaks the mold of all the other religions that even predated it.

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And you realize, wait a second, everything that's true in those things are almost like a projector screen pointing us forward to something that we need.

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All of those religions, they create thirst for something more. Because when you try to be your own

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Buddha, which is essentially what Buddhism is, is you are your own

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God. And there are 330 ,000 gods in India. And again,

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I'm not putting down anyone who follows those religions. What I am saying is, if you take all of the nuggets of truth out and just live them, it does produce some frustration.

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And some frustration that hasn't really been talked about until the internet. And now you have a younger generation who are voicing some of those frustrations.

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And the frustration is this, that you can't be your own savior.

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Self -fulfillment brings frustration. It's a futile pursuit. So for me, it was like, okay, they have some elements of truth.

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There are some things that Confucius and Buddha and Hinduism, they say that are good things.

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But now that we have scripture, we look at meditation and we realize it's not about being at one with ourselves.

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It's about being at one with God. And meditation is taking truth and emptying our soul of the lies we tell ourselves and filling it with truth.

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And so, I mean, you could take every religion around the world and it lacks the suffering savior that we all long for.

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We long for someone to feel our pain, to know what we need and to meet that need.

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Only Jesus did that. And so that's, again, just to kind of give you a synopsis of all the different religions.

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I'm saying this was my pursuit. This is my journey that I saw all of them.

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And I was actually amazed by some of them. I learned from some of them, but none of them could transform me like Jesus could, because Jesus came down to me.

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And here's the other thing. Jesus claimed to be God, which is a big deal. He didn't just claim to be a good teacher.

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He claimed to be God. And then he rose again and he still lives. So again, even if you don't believe in Christianity, you still have to ask, is he alive?

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Like, is he still existing? Because Buddha is confirmed dead.

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You know, I mean, Muhammad, you know, a great teacher, prophet, whatever you want to label him as, but he is dead.

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We know where his bones are, but Jesus is alive. And so you just, again, you have to deal with that.

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The resurrection, it all always comes back to the resurrection. I mean, I had a thought and it's gone now.

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That's okay. But even thinking about other religions and their creation stories. So since you do have this in -depth knowledge of, you know,

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I know loosely that Buddhism is based off, you know, Buddha, who was a prince and then he saw poverty and decided to kind of seek that human experience in a way and kind of give up all earthly possessions.

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And he found enlightenment under a tree. That's literally the extent of my knowledge. Super, super basic. That seems very, you know, cut and dry.

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But like Genesis is like, God baking a cake out of the atmosphere.

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You know, it's him pulling together elements that weren't there before. You know, was that kind of like the first people of that time had ever heard of that type of creation story?

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You know, like the first person to ever hear Genesis, were they just like mind boggled or were they like, oh no, no,

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I'm used to that because I used to believe in this God, Baal, and his creation story was two

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Titans clashing. Like what was the background of the first person ever to hear Genesis? What would their reaction have been?

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Yeah, so first and foremost, I mean, I, again, I don't, I want to start super simple for someone who's like just coming to the

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Bible. Yeah. Job is the first book. So that was the first book written chronologically.

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Okay. Would the people in Moses's day when

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Moses was receiving the creation story, would they have been absolutely shocked by this?

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No, I don't believe so. I believe this was something that was absolutely recorded and passed down.

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Was it scripture yet? No. Do I feel like the Talmud and some of the rabbinical writings are extremely helpful in lots of historical evidence out there?

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I don't know what that is, Peter, you might have to back up. So the Talmud is traditional writings by Jewish Sanhedrin priests.

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And the rabbinical writings that add to the Talmud are just basically this growing document of things that they would add to scripture.

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Much like other religions add to scripture, you know, the Mormons have the Pearl's Great Price and, you know, the

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Muslim tradition has lots of different writings, obviously the

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Koran, but you would look at that scripture and saying, oh, that's great, that's a historical document. I would look at scripture as it is the

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God -breathed word, meaning it's exactly what God wants for us, it's been preserved, it's literal.

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When it's not literal, it's figurative, we can get into that later. But I mean, for me, you look at all the other things that kind of are salt and peppered around scripture and you realize, no, they knew that God created the heavens and the earth, that we are stamped with God's image.

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To what extent, I don't know, we weren't there. There's not a lot of historical documentation outside of scripture.

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And in fact, I mean, if you throw out the Bible, which a lot of people wanna do nowadays, you don't have any historical documents that match the criteria that you're gonna set if you wanna throw out the

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Bible. I mean, the Bible sets the standard. So the Bible has more manuscripts per verse, per chapter, per book of the 66 books than any other historical document.

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So it goes back the farthest, it has more confirmation, archaeological confirmation, historical confirmation.

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So again, we could get into the weeds of that in all of the different manuscripts and all of that.

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But the Dead Sea Scrolls, that was the final straw on the back of those who were trying to say that scripture really wasn't exactly divinely preserved.

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And for those listening that may not understand me, what exactly are the

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Dead Sea Scrolls? I feel like I kind of know, but I'm not 100 % clear. Sure. So the

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Dead Sea Scrolls were in this cave in Qumran. A shepherd boy went in,

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I think it was in the 1930s. I'm gonna get that wrong. So fact check me on that.

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But he throws this rock into these small caves, which are everywhere in Israel, if you've ever been there. And he hears something break.

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So obviously, curiosity gets him. He goes and he grabs these perfectly sealed, other than the ones he broke, these jars, these clay -filled pots.

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And inside them were these ancient documents that were, I mean, documents dating back to 600

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BC. So I mean, we're talking about the time of Hezekiah, the king,

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Isaiah. In fact, Isaiah, I mean, everything that you took from those ancient scrolls and match them up to what we had 2 ,000 years later, they match, they're a perfect match.

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So again, that's just one of many examples. And if you go to the

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Jerusalem Museum, downtown Jerusalem, it is fascinating.

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I mean, the evidence is overwhelming for scripture. So again, a lot of people would say, well, what about this?

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What about that? I mean, you could debate it, and it's been debated for centuries. But if you're just stepping back and saying, okay, bring me the evidence, like bring me the evidence of, and you put all the evidence on one side for either claim that the scripture has been tampered with and changed over the years.

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And Constantine made up a bunch of stuff. I mean, just the evidence doesn't match them. And so I've always said to my young adults, truth fears no question.

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So if you have evidence, bring it to me, like show me the proof, because the truth always wins.

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And sometimes it takes a while, but the truth always wins. And it doesn't have to be manipulated. It's something that you can just kind of rest in.

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Yeah, yeah, I absolutely agree that the Bible can be absolutely debated. But I think it was what

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Jordan Peterson, he had some PowerPoint, he's great. But he like aligned every single part of the

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Bible. And this is within the Bible, not outside, but everything in the Bible that really connected itself to the beginning.

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So there's a cross reference in the hundreds, essentially, that really said what happened before.

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And I'm not too familiar with the prophets and Isaiah and Elijah, but what was already said perfectly matched with what happened and what was fulfilled.

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Yeah, that's incredible. Just like backing up. So you said that people, with Job, people in Moses's day, they would have heard

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Genesis, that's God's brief word. And they would have been like, oh yeah, no, that totally checks out. I can get on board with God, whipping up an earth with his hands in a matter of seven days.

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Was that because, what was their belief before that? Well, yeah, and let me answer what was their belief before that.

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But let me also say that it was in a time where they did not have the written word.

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So God interacted with people in a different way. And Peter even said this in 2

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Peter 1, that we have a more sure word, more sure than Jesus standing right there and saying it.

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And he said, because you can forget what someone said. I mean, I forget half of the things

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I said last week. Your mind has a way of losing some of that. But when you write it down, and 140 times in scripture, it commands us to write it down, write down, write.

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He told prophets, priests, and kings, and moms and dads to write down what he was saying.

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So which is why we have the word of God. So I think the reason that the first thing before we talk about what they believed before is the fact that God was actively like thundering from the clouds.

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And I mean, his presence was visible and literal in the sense that, I mean, they just saw it.

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I mean, so when it says in the beginning, God, it's like, oh, okay. Well, I mean, we don't see him, but we see the fiery pillar at night, and we see the cloud by day.

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I mean, you know, yeah, it's wild. It's wild, but it was a different time period in the sense that God was literally interacting.

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And you were hearing the voice of God, literally. And it scared them so much that they told

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Moses and Aaron, like, hey, wait a second. We can't do this anymore. Like our children, like we, you have to be, you have to be a representative.

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You have to be a mediator between us and God. And this is where the story of Jesus comes in, because Jesus is our final mediator.

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He is a better Moses. He is a better Adam. He's a better David. He's a better mediator between God and man because he is

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God and he was man. So again, everything points toward Jesus.

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And I would even say, some people might get extremely like bent out of shape at this, but I believe that even things outside the

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Bible point to Jesus. And I just, again, that's my own personal belief, but I believe that every religion and every book and everything that honestly, we look at is super interesting.

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And people who don't even believe in Jesus, I think that even those people, not even knowingly, are pointing to him as the savior.

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I mean, you look at our whole existence and it bears record of that.

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I hope that you don't hear the motorcyclist outside, but please, if you have an example top ahead, please share it because I totally agree with you.

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But I mean, we're in the Christian field. So we kind of want to see Jesus everywhere. It's that confirmation bias. But what is your example that people that are unknowingly praising

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God, unknowingly pointing to Jesus? Yeah, no, I love that. So a lot of times people will say, you know,

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God, why would God, you know, let really bad things happen to really good people?

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And, you know, I'm dealing with a family who, her, and I don't want to say any names, but her husband just passed away.

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They have a three -year -old boy. She just found out that her mom has stage four cancer.

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I mean, and she is asking like, why, why would

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God allow this to happen? And I think even that question is a confirmation.

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And again, I understand confirmation bias, but you have to think about it from an objective, like step out and really think about what we're asking when we say that.

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What we're asking is, why, based on my measure of what is good, is

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God bad? You're A, confirming that what is good and bad actually matters.

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So if there's no God, it doesn't matter. And then B, you're assuming that he cares.

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And if he does care, then he has to somehow, some way, right the wrong of sin.

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Sin entered the world, it corrupts everything. So ultimately what we're asking is, why isn't

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God doing anything about the sin problem? Because cancer and all of the things in our world, that's not

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God's original design. You go back to creation, his original design had none of that, right? So we're the owners of the new

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Ferrari that wrecks the Ferrari and then blames the Ferrari, right? We're blaming God for something that we ruined.

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And yet God says, wait a second, that inside that question is a longing for belonging.

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What we're really asking for is we're asking for God to understand our need and to somehow enter into this need.

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And somehow, some way, not just understand and have empathy, but somehow right all the wrongs.

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And that is who Jesus is. Jesus is the one that came down to us.

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He suffered. He didn't come down to us all aloof, like you've got problems, I don't. He brought heaven down to earth and he entered into our mess.

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He entered into our sin and he felt our pain. He was in all points tempted like we are yet without sin.

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And he felt all of the infirmity. He felt all of the pain and he still died.

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And he is in the process right now of continuing to bring heaven down to earth.

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And he is going to right every wrong, but it's in his time. You say, well, what time is that?

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All of eternity. We look at our existence, 80 years. God has all of eternity to have the last word and to bring justice to all of the pain and suffering.

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And so in a question as common as that, we see the answer is Jesus. And that's not confirmation bias.

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That's, you don't have any other answers outside of Jesus. That will meet that deepest need.

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Yeah, just jumping into time. I mean, that is one of the hardest concepts for us to really understand is that God created time so he exists outside of it.

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And that's why this concept of eternity and the concept of creating the world in seven days, it just seems unfathomable for us.

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So I love this explanation. I love that every question I ask, we just go farther down this rabbit hole.

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But just to bring us back to people hearing this, just to give us some context is if I was experiencing

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God's fiery pillar, which I truly, that could be a whole different conversation of how people experience

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God. Right, right. I thought this was how they did. We wake up and we go to work and then we watch

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Netflix. So that's how we experience God, right? So they were hearing this

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God breathed word. They were seeing God. But then Moses was like, actually, it was this way in seven days.

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You know, he heaven and earth and then he planned and then he water where they like, okay, you know, this is kind of similar to what

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I thought before, which was what? Yeah, I mean, again, we weren't there.

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I don't know exactly how they felt about it. But I will tell you right now that if we would have been in their shoes,

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I don't necessarily think we would have questioned that. Here's why.

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We think of the miraculous in terms of past tense.

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Like God used to do miracles, you know? Okay. He still does miracles, but we don't recognize it, right?

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So a lot of people think, you know, well, I asked God to help me, you know,

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I prayed and he just didn't come through for me or whatever. And I hear that all the time as a pastor. The reality is, well, how?

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Like, how did he not come through for you? Like, was there, you know, was there something that you had an expectation of that he didn't meet?

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Because that's a different conversation. You know, could it have been that he prevented something miraculously that was going to happen that didn't?

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Like that game is an infinite game that you can't play because we're finite players.

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So I think for them, again, putting myself in their shoes, I think that they saw the miraculous all around them and the supernatural all around them.

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And so to hear the miracle of creation would have just been one more miracle. And again, not to say that it wasn't faith.

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It is faith. And by the way, I will give whoever wants to debate creation, I will give them this.

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That from one angle, you can look at it and the evolutionary process makes a lot of sense from that angle with all of those details.

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But you cannot place that onto scripture because everything else falls apart.

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So if God stamped his image onto us, that cannot be progressive because that's not how

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God works, right? The miracle of life happens immediately. And we know that because we see it happen all the time.

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I mean, the spark of conception is a beautiful thing. And ask any parent. Like it is a miracle.

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It is an absolute miracle. And dreaming. I mean, we know more about the stars in the universe than our own dreams.

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It's a miracle that we have this whole world when we sleep that sometimes is wacky and crazy.

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But it's a world inside our head. And we're still trying to figure all that out.

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And so the reality is there's miracles all around us. But Satan tries to tempt us and doubt us or cause doubt within us that says, you know, maybe it wasn't so miraculous after all.

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And if he can get, if he can pull on that one thread, the whole sweater unravels.

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Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that definitely makes sense. I'm just going to do a pause right here.

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We can take this out. But I was just curious, historically speaking, and I don't want to ask a question that you don't know.

32:51

But I was provoked to have this podcast because I heard somebody that wasn't very

32:57

Christian, but more into the books essentially say, you know, before the Genesis Christian story, there was this other religion.

33:05

And it was this type of God. And it was this type of mythical story, you know, and, you know, the pagans and the women that worshipped

33:13

God, like all the things. So I know, I just, I don't know when that was in the timeline of the

33:19

Bible. And so I am curious if I was, you know, praising like a female God, or I was praising like a

33:25

Zeus, was that, you know, that creation story is a violence and it's of oppression and, you know, just being simply more powerful.

33:34

So that deemed them the God. Whereas with Genesis, it's of love and creation and cultivation and miracle.

33:43

Relationship. And relationship, you know, I don't want to, you know, go outside your, you know, knowledge block.

33:49

But if you do, I mean, shed some light to me on just like what people, what kind of existed before.

33:57

If you feel comfortable. No, absolutely. And here's the thing. I mean, I'm not, there are so many people that are far more, you know, skilled and understand this far greater than I do.

34:09

But I will tell you this right now, that the whole idea, and I love

34:14

Elon Musk. I love a lot of the things that he says, but the whole idea that like, we're in a simulation and there are, you know, multi -universe, you know, possibilities where it's like, this is our

34:25

God, but those people have other gods and other planetary, you know, it's just there, you know, again, you can build all of these possibilities outside of the scriptural account, but it still doesn't take away, is the scriptural account true?

34:45

You still haven't answered that. So again, you can build things outside of it. And, you know, did

34:50

God, like for instance, one of the theories is, you know, the gap theory where, you know,

34:56

God had, there was a whole nother human race in between Genesis 1 .1 and Genesis 1 .2.

35:01

And I mean, there are - You mean like Neanderthals? Like there are honestly, and we could go,

35:07

I could go on for an hour about all the different theories in Genesis 1 and 2. I mean, there have been so many theories trying to explain the miracle that, in the beginning,

35:19

God created Elohim Bereshit. He created, and the thing that you have to, level with is, it's here.

35:31

So again, you can debate how it came. You can debate what was before it, but it's here.

35:39

And so what I just, what didn't make sense to me as a teenager is, it's here.

35:47

It's incredibly beautiful and complex.

35:52

And I mean like the ear and the eye are so irreducibly complex. I mean, it's like, it's like that evolved.

36:00

I mean, so it didn't work for millions of years. And then all of a sudden it did. Like it just, it didn't make sense to me.

36:06

And again, maybe it makes sense to other scientists and all of that. But again, you have this one theory that fits everything.

36:13

Like it literally checks all the boxes. And yet we constantly want to go outside of that theory.

36:20

And ultimately, I think the reason why I wanted to go outside of it is because I didn't want to be accountable to him.

36:27

It's not a matter of intellectual ability. It's a matter of personal accountability.

36:35

And if we're really honest, if we're honest with ourselves, we don't like a

36:40

God that we can't. And I know that's a double negative. We can't manipulate.

36:47

We want a God that we can say, well, I'm just not that way.

36:52

Or I don't do it that way. Or that's good for you, but not for me. And whenever we step outside of our creator and we become as the creation, the one that calls the shots about how we are to operate, then what we're really saying is,

37:08

I want to be my own God. And there's only two choices. Either God is on the throne of our lives or we are.

37:17

And you can name any religion. You can name any, we could talk about any possibility.

37:22

There are limitless possibilities. But those are the two choices on the shelf, serving

37:28

God or serving self. So, I mean, this might be a hot take and we can speak as freely as we want.

37:34

This podcast is truly my questions. I'm not trying to assume or speak to anybody. But does that mean, like, you don't,

37:41

I don't want to say you don't believe in evolution, but like, I think that there is an overlap. I don't think science excuses

37:46

God's presence. I think it creates like, it for me, it's reason in our human mind. But, you know,

37:52

I have a hard time reading Genesis. And my logical mind wants to picture, you know,

38:00

God whipping up earth and heaven and Adam and Eve. And I don't want to talk about Adam and Eve in this podcast, maybe in a future one, but really just what it was, you know, where does

38:10

God's creation end? And where does our understanding of dinosaurs and evolution and, you know, the millions and billions of years ago in the epochs, where does that begin?

38:21

And does that have overlap? And I, you know, I've heard, I asked everybody this, you know, and no one really has an answer because we all wonder the same thing.

38:29

We want it to relate, but I think no one can find the bridge. And I was just kind of talking about this with friends of, you know, was it, this might sound so silly, but really, was it just like a bubble of Eden and like a bubble of this creation while evolution was happening?

38:44

Or was it happening at the same time? And, you know, a day for God was like millions of years for us.

38:51

And Adam and Eve was the culmination of evolution from the human terms. But, you know, God doesn't want to talk about evolution.

38:58

He wants to talk about his creation. So that's all he's going to mention in Genesis. You know, I'm really trying to like,

39:03

I know that science doesn't, I know that science supports God. And I know that God doesn't try to dispute science.

39:09

And I'm not trying to separate either one of them, but I do think that we evolve a species. We continually improve.

39:16

We continually, you know, the better, oh my gosh, why can't I think of it? You know, you're going to meet with the best version.

39:22

You know, it's, you know, the worst versions are going to die off. So I think evolution will happen. You know, it's not saying that it's ungodly, but also how do we get a fully formed human?

39:32

You know, how do we get a fully formed seed creation? Is that, you know, in your opinion, and again, like not trying to pin you down on anything, but do you just think that when

39:41

God was saying, he's created heavens and the earth, and that was kind of just loosely saying over the billions of years, evolution, no?

39:49

Yeah. Well, I mean, there are, there definitely, you need to distinguish between macro and micro evolution.

39:56

I mean, I'm talking with the creation story, the macro evolution, meaning like there was like an amoeba or a big bang or something was like, you know, these particles that just happened by chance, just happened to kind of form together.

40:11

Again, you know, could God have done that? Absolutely, he could have.

40:16

I don't believe he did. And again, because you have to go to the fact that he stamped his image onto us.

40:25

We are image bearers and the first two chapters, I mean, if you want to parse that out properly and you would even

40:33

Jewish rabbis would agree with this. You take the first two chapters of Genesis, you have to come to the conclusion that that is

40:41

God saying, I am well -pleased with the reflection of me in them.

40:50

So again, the amoeba, how does that reflect God, right? And so macro evolution, again,

40:57

I have really good friends that believe that God created the, you know, that he caused the big bang or he caused the amoeba and then, you know, everything developed.

41:05

I absolutely, I mean, he would be crazy not to believe in micro evolution in the sense that, I mean, I have a golden retriever, his name's

41:11

Kobe, and the reality is golden retrievers weren't in the garden of Eden.

41:17

I mean, I'm sorry, they weren't. They evolved as a species specifically in Scotland to go hunting, but that's beside the point.

41:26

I mean, you know, you look at dogs, you look at lots of other things that have evolved over the years, but that's micro.

41:32

We're not talking about like popping out new eyeballs or, you know, growing tails or massive mutations.

41:40

And so again, you have to ask the, you know, what type of evolution? And then the other thing you have to ask is, are we really okay with saying that the world is billions and billions of years old?

41:56

And again, that's a big question to ask. I'm not saying I have the answer to that. I think that's a really tough question.

42:02

That's something that I think, you know, is there's a lot of evidence on both sides of that, but everything will kind of come down to, okay, then how old's the earth?

42:12

Was there a flood? All of those things. But I like to stay with, hey,

42:19

God created us. He created us in his image with a specific purpose. Now let's live that purpose out.

42:26

Again, the origins are incredibly fascinating. I think it's a wonderful discussion, but Deuteronomy 29, 29 does tell us that there are many mysteries that do not belong to man.

42:38

They belong to God. And so these mysteries are sometimes things that we want, but they don't belong to us.

42:47

They belong to him. And it's what makes eternity so fabulous. And I'm looking forward to exploring those mysteries.

42:55

But a lot of times I can get sidetracked from my personal accountability for my purpose right now.

43:03

I'm not saying we're doing that right now because I love the discussion, but I mean, sometimes it can be a little bit of a sideshow because God has already revealed to us everything we need to live our lives the way he intended.

43:15

For right now. For right now. Yeah, because people, you know, 50 years ago had way less understanding than what we do today, but still that was how much

43:24

God wanted them to know 50 years ago. Exactly. Yeah, for sure. Actually mind boggling.

43:29

That kind of like excuses all the questions of like, when was the big bang? How old is the earth?

43:35

You know, when he took the rib out of Adam and made the woman, you know, was that a surgery? We don't need to know.

43:42

And we're not supposed to know until we do know and God will decide when we need to know. That is, that's just the faith, you know, that's just when

43:49

God, it's almost like that default answer of like, yep, and that's why we have faith because you're not until you know you don't, but you should still believe even if you don't know that is that Deuteronomy quote has just blown my mind.

44:02

Yeah, study that out. I mean, it's really, you know, the Bible is the greatest commentary on the

44:10

Bible. And that's I think what Jordan Peterson was proving when he was showing all the cross references is, you know, you have, you know, all of these authors, you know, dozens of authors over 1500 years on three different, you know, continents speaking three different languages and they're all in harmony and they're all completely supporting one another.

44:35

It is one of the great proofs of the Bible. And again, it's circular reasoning. It is circular reasoning because it's the

44:41

Bible proving the Bible. I get it. I get that because I know a lot of people are like, well, you can't prove the Bible to prove the

44:46

Bible, you know, or whatever, but I mean, it is, I mean, you can't remove the fact that that's a real thing.

44:53

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. I also want to spend some time just in the scripture.

44:59

I know that you're already wealth and knowledge. Just the fact that you can pull verses is already mind boggling, but I'm just going to read through kind of what we're referring to as Genesis one through 30 is in the beginning.

45:11

This is the new international version. I got some flack on my last episode because I was using the message version that did not translate well, literally.

45:20

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

45:28

I just think that's great because I feel like the Holy Spirit is this shapeless, always omnipresent.

45:35

It's almost like the guardian angel for everybody. Now God said, let there be light and there was light.

45:41

God saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness and he called the light day and the darkness he called night and there was evening and there was morning the first day.

45:50

And God said, let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water. So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it and it was so and called the vault sky and there was evening and there was morning.

46:02

The second day. So I might go back to being scientific with you.

46:07

So there was water everywhere and then he separated it with basically land. So he's, if I'm reading this right and correct me if I'm wrong, he's saying the sky was full of water, right?

46:17

It still is. I mean, and again, I'm not a scientist. I'm not a scientist, but I mean, you know, our atmosphere is filled with water.

46:32

I don't believe, I believe that there was like a canopy of water before the fall.

46:38

Again, that's just my personal belief. I'm not a scientist. Right. But everything,

46:44

I mean, with how large the dinosaurs that are mentioned in Job and in Psalm, I mean, the size of those dinosaurs that are mentioned,

46:53

I mean, it would have had to be a highly oxidated environment. So yeah, absolutely.

46:58

I think that there was a stronger, I don't know what you call it, ozone layer, whatever the layer is, you know.

47:06

It talks about the three heavens a lot in the Bible. So the first heaven, meaning like the air we breathe, the second heaven.

47:14

I love how you're casually mentioning this. I'm like, where does it say that? Oh my gosh. Like this next episode.

47:21

Okay, I didn't know they mentioned dinosaurs in the Bible. Oh yeah.

47:27

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, in fact,

47:32

I mean, I have my Bible over here. You can search dinosaurs in the Bible. It's Job. I think it's

47:37

Job 36, but it talks about how Bohemoth's tail was the size of a cedar.

47:44

Well, cedars in Lebanon, it's a cedar in Lebanon. The cedars in Lebanon. And it also mentions a large animal like a dinosaur in Psalms as well.

47:57

But I mean, a cedar was anywhere from 20 to 50 feet in height.

48:04

So I mean, yeah. And that's the tail. So I mean, we have no other creatures other than dinosaurs to describe an animal like that.

48:15

And again, I take the Bible very literally. You know, this was Job, the first book that's ever written.

48:23

So it makes sense that they would have been existing and not extinct by that time. So yeah,

48:28

I mean, again, there's a lot in science and a lot in our world that meshes with the

48:34

Bible. But not if you don't want to be accountable to a God who loves you enough to hold you to the same standard.

48:44

So, and I have to give a plug. I have to give a plug right now because I'm going through a series in our church called

48:51

Don't Judge Me. And we're going through the book of Judges. And what everyone in the

48:56

Bible struggled with, we struggle with. And that is we want to do what's right in our own eyes. That's what the book of Judges is all about.

49:03

And the reality is I can do what's right in my own eyes. And honestly, you shouldn't judge me because you're not my judge.

49:11

However, there is a judge, right? And we all are accountable to him. And there is a way that seems right unto a man, but the in there of are the ways of death,

49:22

Proverbs 16 says. So, we have to live our lives either by our way or God's way.

49:27

Anyway, that was my 22nd commercial for that. I appreciate it.

49:33

I am making notes right now for the next thing I'm going to schedule you for this podcast. And it's the three heavens, the atmosphere.

49:39

Okay, yeah, let's go into that. Yeah, no worries. Absolutely go down a rabbit hole. Is that why people live so long?

49:46

Is that why they're worth it? Absolutely, 100%, 100%. You know, if the dinosaurs were taken out by an asteroid, does that include the great...

49:53

Was that the great fall? Is that, you know, why did people survive after that? You know, I don't want to go into it, but...

49:59

Sure, sure, yeah. I'll just talk it down. Okay, this is... Absolutely. So amazing.

50:05

This is so cool. Okay, I'll just keep going. So, we're at the second day. And then God said, let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let the ground and let the dry ground appear.

50:16

And it was so. God called the dry ground land and gathered waters. He called seas and God saw that it was good.

50:22

And then God said, let the land produce vegetation, seed bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it according to their various kinds.

50:28

And it was so. The land produced vegetation, plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds.

50:35

And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning the third day. So right after that, he jumps into, you know, creating the sky.

50:44

And after that, he gets into animals and winged birds and living creatures and mankind and creating mankind in his own image.

50:54

And God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish and the fish on the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.

51:03

Then God said, I give you every seed bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.

51:09

They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground, everything that has breath of life in it,

51:17

I give every green plant for food. And it was so. So this place sounds amazing.

51:24

It sounds like candy land. It sounds like everything is edible and tame and not trying to pick up him.

51:29

I feel like that, it just, it sounds like it is subdued that, you know, Adam is about to enter the scene here.

51:36

And it doesn't really sound like a caveman situation. It does not sound like Adam's about to like, go find homes and caves and kind of be up against the saber -toothed tiber and the woolly mammoths.

51:46

I mean, again, this is my messed up time. Yeah, that's a good stage. But it sounds perfect.

51:54

It sounds like the best place ever to be. I mean, could you just shed some light on your understanding of what that could have looked like, especially today?

52:02

Like, do you think even that's possible today to have a visualization of this perfect earth?

52:08

Or do you think once Adam and Eve sinned, that was no longer obtainable? Well, revelation, and it's not revelations, but revelation, the one revelation is this, that God will create a new earth in the image of the old earth.

52:31

So there will be a new heaven on earth that is the

52:37

Garden of Eden again. So we will experience what you are describing again.

52:43

The Bible is super clear about that. Jesus, when he - Or does he like, do we just not know?

52:49

No, like, so the book of Revelation is one revelation.

52:55

And the one revelation is that God is going to bring heaven down to earth.

53:01

And he is going to recreate a new earth. And that is the revelation, that God will restore the earth to its original state, and better than it was, is how it's painted, the picture that's painted.

53:22

So that's going to happen. But let me just take you through some of what you read, because it will describe this, what seems like utopia.

53:33

First of all, it doesn't say that it was subdued. It says to subdue it and to multiply it.

53:41

So he was giving them real responsibility and real authority in the last verse there.

53:49

So they did have like work. There was work before the fall of men, like work's not a bad thing, right?

53:58

But everything, every point of creation, he's revealing a part of himself.

54:05

And again, this could be an entire podcast. But in the beginning, God, that's

54:11

Elohim, which is the name for almighty, like it's a plural.

54:19

It's like a plural of the heavens, right? Like Adonai would be specific, like he's the

54:27

Lord. He's sovereign. Yahweh is the pre -existing, all -compassing one.

54:35

Like he is, but he always has been, right? The eternal one. But Elohim is this word that would have told them, there's far more to God than you could ever imagine.

54:49

And then it gives us both the spirit, but it also gives us

54:54

Jesus. Because in Genesis, you have let there be light. That's the first thing is, and God said, let there be light.

55:03

And when you get to John 1, it says, in the beginning, again, that are sheep, okay?

55:10

So in the beginning was the word. So now it's literally mirroring what

55:17

Genesis is. And John, at the age of 90, after walking with Jesus when he was 15, he's had 75 years to think about this.

55:27

And he sits down in Ephesus and he says, in the beginning, let's go back to the beginning. In the beginning was the

55:34

Logos, the word. And the word was with God. And the word was God.

55:40

And he's basically saying that when he said, let there be light, it was not

55:46

Elohim. It was Yahshua. It was Jesus.

55:51

Jesus is the light. And it goes on in John 1 to tell us he's the light. So now you have God, the father,

55:57

God, the son, and then the spirit of moved on a voidless, spaceless, like nothingness, right?

56:07

So there was chaos and darkness. And then

56:12

Jesus enters the scene and there's light and the spirit moves, and then there's order.

56:18

So God is taking something that's out of order and placing it in order. And he's taking something that is dark and making it light.

56:28

God, the father, God, the son, God, the spirit. And then you move all the way down to verse 26.

56:36

And he says, let us, plural, let us make man in our image.

56:43

So now you have this trinity, this triunity, this triune

56:48

God saying, we, this perfect fellowship of Elohim, plural, we,

56:57

God, would like to make man in our image stamped with our likeness for a purpose that Revelation tells us in Revelation 4 .11

57:11

is to please him, to bring him glory and to connect and have fellowship with him.

57:17

So I think I told you this on the phone one time when we were speaking, that the entire Bible can be summed up with God reconnecting with man through Jesus.

57:26

That is literally the story. Every page points to God wanting to reconnect with man through Jesus.

57:37

Yeah. Oh my gosh. That is such a beautiful parallel of what's written in the beginning and what is fulfilled later with Jesus.

57:46

And just, you know, God did a very large creating world in that creation.

57:52

And then Jesus did it again, just through his people and his love. So that is, and thank you for providing those translations.

57:59

I mean, that's why the experts are here because, you know, there's no way that I could get that. Is there any other part of -

58:05

I'm a geek when it comes to that stuff. I'm a geek when it comes to that stuff. Like I love, I love the deeper you dive, the more you're like, this has got to be true.

58:15

Like you can't, the deeper you go and the more you like, try to like, gotcha, you know.

58:23

But the more you find out and the more you kind of piece together, you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

58:29

Your faith is still required. But just like Paul said in Hebrews 11 .1,

58:35

I think Paul wrote Hebrews to the Hebrews in Rome. He just said, faith is a substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

58:46

And so it really, it gives you this evidence like, oh wow, you know, this is, this is the evidence of the things that I can't see, that I can't know.

58:55

Oh my gosh. It's just like too, it's so much. It's so hard to just immediately react to.

59:00

Like it truly is something you need to like, marinate it and sit with because it is so much. And I think just like Genesis does hold that power.

59:08

And I think every single book after really just does support that one claim that the whole Bible is Jesus reconnecting

59:13

God with his people. And I think that's why we start with it. I mean, it is so powerful. I'm reading it from a very basic Christian level, but did

59:22

I miss any part of Genesis that deserves more spotlight? You know, I kind of scanned through a couple of the verses since it was, you know, 30 verses, but creating light, you know, we haven't gotten into man yet.

59:32

We haven't gotten to Eden. I want to really save that and give it its own spotlight. But even just its own creation and, you know, how that was received back then, how it might have been told differently if it was received today.

59:45

I mean, how can we really make this very hard to digest because it's full of flavor?

59:52

Yeah. How do we make it digestible? So if you just, if I could just take from Genesis one, something that everyone needs to remember because Satan is constantly trying to, to get us to think that A, God doesn't exist or B, if he does, he's not good.

01:00:14

And Genesis one just paints a totally different picture because every time he creates, he says it's good.

01:00:20

And then he gets to man and he says, it is very good. Yeah. Like God is so loving and so intent and he is so powerful and so outside of who we are.

01:00:31

And he's eternal. And I know it's hard to wrap our minds around it, but I don't want a God that I can wrap my mind around. I want a

01:00:37

God that I can, I can come to and know that he is above me and he is beyond me, but he is, he's with me.

01:00:48

And in Genesis one, one, one of the greatest verses in all the Bible, if not the greatest verse, when he said, he said, in the beginning, there's time,

01:00:59

God, it's a force that whatever you want to call it, it's a force. God made man, right?

01:01:08

But God made the heavens. Okay. There's space and the earth, there's matter.

01:01:17

So you have time, space, and matter all being created by force.

01:01:24

And, and a lot of people are gonna, are gonna, are gonna be really trying to get underneath all of that and say, well, why or how, or all of these questions.

01:01:36

And, and the answer is because he loves you.

01:01:41

And I think most people miss that. He created the heavens and the earth and he doesn't tell us why.

01:01:49

And he doesn't tell us how, because he has written in our hearts that we know he exists.

01:01:59

And that's what Romans 2 says. Romans 2 says stamped on our conscience is that there is a

01:02:05

God. We are all inherently created to know he exists.

01:02:11

So that's why all of the rabbis and all of the pastors for centuries have just said, in the beginning,

01:02:18

God. He doesn't need to explain himself because he has already baked into us.

01:02:23

He's wired us for worship. He's wired us to know he exists inherently.

01:02:30

And so we can fight against it. We can say that he doesn't, but the reality is we all know that he's there.

01:02:35

And 11 times is the number of times in 2022 that LA County residents thought of the afterlife.

01:02:48

11 times a day. Oh, and so research tells us that people all around us.

01:02:55

Now, I don't know what other counties are thinking about, but I know my county, okay? The county I love and I serve in.

01:03:00

I know the people all around me are thinking about the afterlife. They're thinking about death. They're thinking about what happens next. They're thinking about God.

01:03:07

They're thinking about these things because it is existential. It is incredibly important, but don't miss the who behind the why or the who behind the how.

01:03:19

And it's a God who is loving, who has created us for relationship.

01:03:26

And he has stamped his image on us and in us. And his purpose is unchanging and his care for us and his loving kindness for us is unchanging as well.

01:03:38

And so it's just Genesis 1 is just him saying, we're in this together with God and he wants fellowship with us.

01:03:46

And the only way to have relationship with him is through his son. I can't help but think about you at 17, kind of living this lukewarm

01:03:56

Christian life, me two years ago, living a lukewarm Christian life and wanting to know

01:04:01

God, but not confirmed, but still within our conscious wanting to know the answer, worth enough for you to explore so many different religions, worth enough for me to continue asking questions to now we're on a podcast.

01:04:14

And I think that if we go back to the original purpose of this podcast, it's for the person listening right now, that's like,

01:04:20

I'll give it a go. I'll give it a chance. And I just think it's really important. I feel like what you're saying is like, there's a reason you're giving it a go.

01:04:29

There's a reason you're even considering it is because that stamp of consciousness, that stamp on our consciousness, sorry, is that living seed within us that God originally placed when he intentionally created the world.

01:04:42

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well said. I mean, you said it. I was just trying to make sense of it in my mind.

01:04:50

I want, you know, I'm definitely going to follow up with you on so many more topics because you've already been a wealth of knowledge,

01:04:56

Pastor Peter, but, you know, how do we, you know, I just want to give you a chance, you know, how do you want to plug, you know,

01:05:01

New City? How do you want to plug New Life and, you know, get people connected with you if they have questions? Because I don't have the answers.

01:05:07

That's why you're here. So people, you know, if they can, if they want to, you know, how do they get more questions?

01:05:13

I'm sure people are going to have questions and maybe some anger, which is totally valid, but where can they redirect it?

01:05:19

And if it can't be at you, I'm not trying to, you know, put a target on your back. Where would you direct them?

01:05:26

Yeah, so, I mean, I would just encourage them. We put all of the messages out online and I would just start there because every weekend

01:05:34

I'm going to, you know, unpack something different. And again, I'm not the greatest speaker, but I really want it to be extremely biblical and, you know, focused on what's most important, how to apply it.

01:05:48

And, you know, we, I mean, we get into, you know, the original languages, but we also get into the applications and how to really live out these truths as well.

01:06:00

And so, you know, you can find that on our website. If I could throw out our website, it's findnewlife .church.

01:06:09

So findnewlife .church. Or, you know, feel free to look me up on, you know, whatever social platform.

01:06:17

I don't, I only have two. So Twitter and Twitter and Instagram.

01:06:23

So it's just my name, Peter Mord, M -O -R -D -H. So that's cool. Thanks for making yourself public.

01:06:29

I really hope that this triggers a reaction in people, even if it's maybe not eagerness and joy and happiness.

01:06:35

But if you are sitting here right now, maybe thinking like, I didn't agree with that. Like you deserve an answer.

01:06:41

You deserve a response. And maybe it's from Pastor Peter, but maybe, you know, what would you tell,

01:06:47

I guess, your 17 -year -old self if you kind of listened to this and was like, nope, that pisses me off or whatever. Where would you tell them to go?

01:06:54

Would it be to a Bible study or would it be Google? Yeah. Well, if it pisses you off, that's probably good.

01:07:01

Like it probably is revealing something in you that is gnawing at you that you need to kind of explore.

01:07:09

And so I would get around a community of people who are willing to explore the truth, who are open -minded enough to look at Scripture.

01:07:17

A lot of people who are disagreeing with Scripture have never read it from cover to cover. With an open mind and an open heart,

01:07:23

I would just encourage you to start reading the Bible. And don't read it looking for yourself. Read it looking for God.

01:07:30

And it will change you. It will transform you. Because when you go to Scripture, not looking to find yourself, the, you know,

01:07:39

Proverbs says, is just he only cares about knowledge so that he can know himself.

01:07:45

And that's a very small existence. But a whole world opens up when you realize, okay, maybe there's more to this than I'm seeing.

01:07:53

And again, I know a lot of people don't like Christianity because of the judgmental, self -righteous, you know, aura about it.

01:08:01

But I'm trying to change that one church at a time. And I really believe that Jesus followers should be some of the most accepting and incredibly loving and yet truth -filled people.

01:08:14

Because, you know, every time I hear someone say, well, that's not my truth. The reality is we don't have truth.

01:08:21

There's only one standard. There's only one truth. And so there's only one measurement. And, you know, we may not like that, but it is, that is true.

01:08:30

I mean, we have to come back to, is the Bible true? And if it is, let's follow it.

01:08:36

You know, does God exist? If he does, then his son desperately wants relationship with you.

01:08:43

And that's it. Wow, so well said. Thank you so much for your time today, Pastor Peter.

01:08:48

I cannot wait to have you back. Yeah, no, I'm all about it. Yeah, let's do it again.