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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/norman-crawford/creation-genesis-1-1-25b/
Brother, there's a lot of the things I can't maybe grasp on all this dissertation of going into all the details, but give me a little help on Mark chapter 10, where it says from the beginning of the creation made he male and female.
So what creation is that? If that is the coming in of the creation by Genesis 1 and 1, it must have been the sixth day after that, that he formed male and female. That's one of the things that helped me a little in the understanding of the creation of man, that helped me over the thought of the day, like I have to agree, no gap theory in my thinking because of that, plus other scriptures.
But I just wonder, is that a helpful statement?
It came from the Lord Jesus, and considering the fact that he spoke and it came into existence, I would think he knew what he was talking about. But of course that verse we read in Exodus as well, that is a verse that is repeated in numbers of places, and as we read it says in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in the midst.
So it includes verse 1 with the rest of the verses of Genesis 1.
Brother, can I just drop back, sorry I'm not helping you move forward, I'm going to take you back to a fundamental question. Why do you believe Genesis 1 to begin with? Now you have touched this, I just want to underline this.
I'll give you the answer that I would give to an unbeliever who asks that. You're not an unbeliever, but this is what I would tell an unbeliever. I would say to him there was a man in this world and he said he was God.
He was a man whose entire history was written before he was ever born, and he fulfilled that history perfectly by dying on a cross of shame and rising again the third day from the dead. He said these words proceeded out of the mouth of God.
He's my Lord and I believe him.
Now I think that that is crucial to our whole handling of this passage, sorry if I make it too simple. The fact of a risen Christ is my reason for believing this book. This is not blind faith that somebody handed this book to me and I believe it because they say it's God's word.
I believe this because of a living Christ. And therefore I accept the statements of this chapter based on the same interpretive principles that I understand the remainder of the word of God. I cannot change the rules in order to accommodate science.
We interpret scripture and even, you didn't say this and this is not the case, but even if every evident fact contradicted it, it's not blind faith, it is faith that is based upon the revelation of the supernatural in the person of Jesus Christ and I believe his word.
He said the scriptures cannot be broken. Good enough, I'll stop there. So that this is the seed plot of the Bible. So consistent with every interpretation, it would flow from Genesis. So the Bible would prove itself to be accurate because it's divinely inspired.
So if Paul speaks about the first man dusty and the second man is spiritual, the Lord from heaven, he refers back here and again he refers in 1 Corinthians 11 as the headship of man. And another thing is someone might say, well in the beginning chapters here you have day and it's in three different ways.
Isn't that correct? You have a day as just a plain day, like we call it night, night season. Then you have in the day that God created the heavens and the earth, that's a week. But here, how do we know that this is day?
Because consistent with the scriptures, wherever you get the numerics in front of the day, day one, day two, day three, or whether you get it in number seven with the tribes, you will get it consistent wherever the numerics is, it's a literal day of 24 hours.
So I'm just saying that stamped in this Bible from Genesis is consistency. I haven't mentioned it yet.
No, thank you. How do we have a day? What makes a day? Let's be very simple. What makes a day? It's the sun that makes a day. The rising and setting of the sun, day and night. So that's what's called a solar day.
But there was a day before the sun.
Yes, that's true, brother. I'm referring to these six days. Yes. In other words, God made light before he made the sun. Is that what you're saying? Yes. That's right, he did. That's absolutely true. He separated the light from the darkness.
But we're talking, you're very right, brother, but we're talking about the time of these days now, and the evening and the morning tell us that it's a solar day.
I don't think you can make it anything else. I think that's one of the strongest arguments, the evening and the morning. We know the Lord said, oh, there are not 12 hours to the day. That shows that we do speak about day in contrast to night.
But from the beginning, we've got the morning and the evening. Well, there's nobody who would disagree with that. There's a 24-hour day, each of these days. Absolutely.
We do believe, don't we, that God could have spoken, or without speaking. I don't know how he would have done it. But God could have created what came in the end of six days total in a moment. So why go as far as six days, let alone millions of years?
Why does God work day one, day two, day three, day four, day five, day six? Why does God do that? Do we have any light on that question?
Well, I think that God always works according to a plan. He's a God of order. And I don't know whether I'll be shot down on this or not. But I believe we have a view. I believe that the work of these six days shows that God is working now in dispensations.
I've always looked on it as six dispensations in the seventh, when man is in dominion. When Christ comes to reign. I've always looked on these. That's right.
I'm right on something. I'm right on most things. My reason for raising that question, in keeping with what Mr. Paisley is saying, is this. I would say that the word beginning here is like an absolute beginning.
In the vastness of what has no measure, neither beginning nor end nor dimension, God drives a stake into the middle of it and he says, this is a beginning. I am going to accomplish a work. And in light of that, I think we need to understand there was no work that he did before.
And any work that he does after will be subservient to what he's doing here. We are looking at a tremendous purpose that God has in view. And in fact, let me just go a step along the line that Brother Albert has taken us.
From the foundation of the world, from Genesis 1 -1, there is something that God is working toward. A kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world. God is working toward a time when his son, a man, will reign in this world.
So God is working from that beginning. This is a most critical beginning. We need to understand there's something great in the mind of God that's involved in what we're looking at in Genesis 1.
There's not so much given to us this chapter to deal with theories of science. Science is not the objective. The objective is a man. He's creating the world. He's laying it out in order that he might place a man in dominion.
So God is working in the future. It's all based on the beginning that God established here.
Nor is it a book that really is dealing so much with the universe. The Bible is a book that has to do with man and death, really. That's the story of the Bible. So science is not so much in this at all.
Can we get a clarification on that beginning? John 1 -1, in the beginning was the Word. I would take that to be eternal. There's no measurement to that.
What is this beginning now? My problem is, it's hard to speak to your father here when you're speaking, but my problem was making two different beginnings. I know most of the brethren do. I can only understand one beginning.
In the beginning, time has a beginning. But what John 1 -1 says is, in the beginning was. So what it's saying is, at this moment of the beginning, he was.
Out of that beginning now comes the creation.
When that moment of time beginning, when the beginning happens, he was. Therefore, that means he always existed. Anything one breath on the other side of the beginning is eternal.
In fact, what was created in that first verse of Genesis 1 was time, space, and matter. What you have then following is what God does with that time, space, and matter. I can very simply say it like this, Brother David.
Whatever you can say was the beginning, God was there. Which means, therefore, he was eternal.
John 1, in a sense, takes you to a beginning without beginning.
John 1 is the beginning without a beginning, and John 13 is an end without an end. He loved them unto the end. So there's no end to that. What we're doing, brethren, we're far more interested in the rock of ages than we are in the age of the rocks.
But to tell you the truth, there are young folk here, and they are facing these theories all the time. Don't let us deceive ourselves. Whenever we have had meetings on creation, has it been boys and girls that have come and said, we needed this?
Do you know who has come and said we needed it? Grandparents. They said, our grandchildren come to us and ask us, can you explain this? So you see, we do need it. There is an awful lot of unbelief out in that wicked world that is Satan's system.
And he has done a masterful job on the minds of people.
The first verse here does away with all those ideas, doesn't it? Polytheism, which is numerous gods creating, and eternity of matter that you mentioned. In the beginning, God created, so there was no eternal matter.
Teaching that ruling in space for centuries of time became a ball and so on. In the beginning, God does away with eternity of matter. And polytheism, and atheism, in the beginning, God. And all these different ideas that are in the world, verse 1 confutes them all immediately.
Even the idea of pantheism, which is involved in environmentalism today.
Well, nature and God as one is what they are teaching.
Yes, as one and one is showing, is that God exists apart from his creation. Pantheism is not valid. Fatalism is another.
You know, it's all fatal. No purpose. No purpose. So it's pantheism, or polytheism, or atheism, or agnosticism, or eternity of matter. Everything is refuted here in verse 1. In the beginning, God.
Let's look at verse 3, brethren. I think we have gone over verses 1 and 2. God said, let there be light, and there was light. Now, there are those who believe, of course, that this was a hazy sort of light that came through a great bank of clouds and this sort of thing.
When God said that, there would be light. I'm certain that it was light. God made it.
And it's perfect. It was good, wasn't it? Yes. He said it was good. And wouldn't it be supported by what Mr. Paisley mentioned earlier? 2 Corinthians chapter 4. God literally reads, For it is God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, who hath shined in our hearts.
So that you can see clearly there that it might give the light of the knowledge of the glory. The radiancy is the word there. So it was certainly a wonderful light. There was nothing hazy about it.
And that's the parallel, isn't it? Yes, that's right. It's remarkable to me that the first thing God stamps on creation is his character. God is light. Now, that's not to limit the character of God, God is light, to physical light, but physical light will reveal the character of God.
So here's a physical representation of what God is. God is stamping his creation with his very character.
And the scientist says, if I may just say, the scientist says that you must have light before you can have life. But in fact, we did in John 1, in him was life, and the life was the light of man. And here we have the very same principle, don't we?
I am the light of the world, he said. Yes.
John 9. Same thing. Same thing. That God said is a key phrase, isn't it? Some 11 times, maybe? 10 times. 10 times. And it should be underlined because it throws you right back to faith in Hebrews 11. By faith we understand the very ages or the worlds were framed by the word of God.
So there we have it, and God said, and they came into being. In fact, I think numerics in this first chapter are important in the sense of 3 and 7. Now, I've noted, in fact, I've marked it down very briefly.
God created 3 times, God made, God blessed, God named, God divided, that's all 3 times. And 3 is the number of divinity, divine number. And then 7 times, God saw, God said good, 6, and very good on another occasion, and let there be.
And what I'm saying is 3 and 7 says that a triune God created a perfect earth at that point. So I'm just incorporating that, that if we could understand that this book, right from the beginning, has the principles for our interpretation as we move onward, the number 3, the number 7, and God said, and God's word, for it's the very word of God by which we get the new birth, really.
I just mention those things. And the 4 times that it says it was so, it was instantaneous. Right. God spoke, and it was so.
Is that important, the title of God here, Elohim? Yes. Isn't it? 35 times in these 2 chapters, it's Elohim. And then 2 ,700 times in the Old Testament, he's presented as Elohim. But when it comes to the creation, when it comes to the man himself, he breathed into his nostrils, the word there is Jehovah Elohim.
Isn't that the first time it's used, Jehovah Elohim? Yes. It's Elohim for creation, but when it comes to imparting not only physical life, but man as a spiritual being. Relationship with man. Relationship with man.
So it's Yahweh Elohim. Isn't it? That's it.
You agree with that? I do indeed, yes. And Yahweh, or Jehovah, as we normally call it, really is formed from 2 words. It means the God who exists in himself. We're talking about the heaven of heavens, and Solomon said, the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee.
So here is the God who exists in himself. He doesn't even need a medium in which to exist. He exists in himself. That's the first meaning of Jehovah. The second meaning is the God who ever reveals himself.
So this is what we've got here now. As soon as man is made, you have the God who reveals himself, and that is the whole story of revelation throughout the scripture.
We understand that creation is calling something in the being that was not.
Ex nihilo, from nothing. From nothing. Yeah.
What is the expression here, let there be? This isn't creation then. No. The creation of verse 1. Yeah. Introduce this.
Now let there be light. Yeah, it's difficult to divide up those 6 expressions that are found here into different meanings because they are used interchangeably. It was divine order, divine arrangement, divine pattern, divine act.
You know, I don't have difficulty in trying to divide up those words to have a special meaning in each case. Like we mentioned that when it came to the creation of man, he created man and he made man.
There was light in the universe before there was a sun. Isn't that what you're seeking to impart? Well, there is, yes. Pure light.
There is here. And that's a pure light here. But coming out of verse 2, now he's separating the different things. That's right. He's distinguishing them.
I think that's the thing. He's dividing them to show us clearly how it comes.
And all of that runs into the first day. Good.
The firmament above the heavens has often been a problem, especially to young believers. Let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the waters. This is verse 7, which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.
And it was so. And God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. It doesn't say it was good. No.
No, why? That's right. Why? In these others it's good, but not this one. There's someone in that firmament that spoiled it. Is there? That's very likely, brother. The prince of the power of the air. I've always noted that in the things when it says it was good, it was good.
But come here, it's missing for some reason.
Would it be the flood? Would it be the thought that that water one day would come down and flood the earth?
I thought it was the dwelling place of the prince of the power of the air.
Well, that's very likely, but I think that the physical description here is that there are equal waters in the atmosphere as are on the face of the earth. That's an amazing thing. There's an ocean above our heads.
And very truly there was an ocean above in this day of creation. There was an ocean above and an ocean beneath. But actually there are waters in the heavens even at any given time. The atmosphere holds enough moisture to fill the oceans of earth.
That's quite staggering to us, but you can easily see. Now, how did Moses know that? This is the word of God. And, of course, modern meteorologists, they tell us this is true. But, of course, here's a man who writes this in days that were supposedly primitive.
We think of the spiritual things as our brothers done with light, bringing light to us in Corinthians 4. There's a separation principle here, isn't there? Things above from things below. We set our affections on things above.
This is the first suggestion of separation. It's not the first suggestion of separation.
Yes, in the beginning God separated day and night. And God is always the God who is separated light from darkness and never will.
So things above are separate from things beneath.
Could we see a distinction between the purposes of God and the fulfillment of God's plans? Let there be as purpose God made the firmament as plan fulfilled.
That's good. Could I just go to 2 Peter 3 to read a little bit in relation to this day? Knowing this, that there shall come in the last days scoffers walking after their own lusts and saying, where is the promise of his coming?
For, since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. Genesis 1 .1. So that the rational mind of man says everything is uniform from then to now. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old and the earth standing out of the water and in the water, whereby the world that then was being overflowed with water perished.
But there's a different arrangement now. The heavens and the earth which are now by the same word are kept in store reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. I would take it that in day two we are looking at the fact that there is a totally different geophysical arrangement of the earth.
Earth and sea you mean? Well I'm in day two, the water is above the firmament and the water is beneath the firmament so that there's an expanse between waters above and waters beneath so that the earth is stored with water.
And now there's a different arrangement, the earth is stored with fire. And we're looking at judgment from the water, Noah, judgment from the fire in a day yet to come.
That's what you're reading there.
Brother Oliver, that passage in 2 Peter 3 is critical to the understanding of what Hebrews 11 and 2 says, the things which are were not made of things which do appear. In other words, what is happening in the world today didn't produce this earth like it is.
That's what it says in Hebrews 11 and 2. And you see, this is what ungodly men say. This is really uniformity theory. All things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. Peter says not so.
How does he prove it's not so? There was catastrophe. The catastrophe of the flood. And you see the idea is very clear, well it mentions the flood, mentions Noah brother, I can't make it any different.
The thought really is there then that that was actually believed by the world until uniformity in geology was introduced in the 18th century. Catastrophe was the entire teaching about geology until men came along who said not so, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation, and they introduced the whole idea of the geologic ages and viewed in the strata from sedimentary rock and so forth.
Would you say then that Peter is actually saying that men were saying that God had never interfered, if there'd be a God, he's never interfered with his own creation. Now Peter says this is what they're willingly ignorant of.
That God did interfere, that's Genesis 6, isn't it? They didn't even read Genesis 10. No. Where the earth was divided in the days of Peleg. I think so. The earth has undergone a number of changes. The one he quotes is the Genesis 6 one.
Genesis 6.
Genesis 6. There's some, you intimated in the beginning that says God was there, you know the scientists, they say God was there, but then he let things form as they would. And they don't believe in what you're saying, divine intervention.
And if we believe in divine intervention coming in, he not only intervened, but the greatest act of divine intervention was the coming of Christ.
That was the greatest act. But as our brother Oliver pointed out, the two big contrasts in 2 Peter 3 are, he stored the universe with water and with it destroyed the earth with the flood, and the next time he stored it with fire, which he will do in the future.
Right. So it shows you that the Ark of Noah really is a picture of how God will move man out of a scene that's being burned up into an eternal condition. Absolutely. Rather than what we usually apply the Ark to.
You know. That's right. It's bringing man out of a burning world into the new heavens. Do you agree with that brother? I do, yes.
Good. You can see the Ark there. When you said they didn't read Genesis 10, brother Paisley, in the days of Peleg, the earth was divided.
What did you mean by that? Well, I mean that what you have here is, at the beginning, was all land and sea.
You know. Let's look at that, just what our brother is just saying here. Verse 9. Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear. And it was so. And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters he called seas, and God saw that it was good.
Now, let me just make a suggestion because this isn't something I'm stating dogmatically, but there is good reason to think seriously about it. The continents of earth, if you look at a map of the entire world, you'll find the continents fit together.
Like a jigsaw. Yeah. You'd just think they were fitted, wouldn't you? How did they get where they are now? In the days of Peleg, God divided the earth. Not the peoples, not the nations, but the earth.
Physical.
Physical earth. I'm glad you agree with me there, brother. I forgive you for all the other disagreements. So God opened up the parts of that jigsaw that are described in Genesis 10. Yes. And the reason was that if man were all on one earth, they would have done away with each other.
You know, if it hadn't been for the English Channel, for instance, and World War II, the Germans would have overcome it. Isn't that right? Oh, that's right. It was a miracle.
Dunkirk was a miracle. Mr. Proctor, you're speaking about one land mass. That's right.
One land. And, of course, the waters are called seas. I don't have difficulty with that because if there was one land mass, then the seas were on all sides of the land mass, you see. And so this is the reason you can have disbursement of population.
This is the reason we have people in North America who look like they came from the Orient. Walked across. There were no seas dividing. And, you see, people say, well, there must have been a different evolution take place in Australia because they have different kinds of marsupials there.
Well, they just were adapted to that environment, that's all. So they found a place for their home. But here's an interesting thing, that in 1 Chronicles 1 and 19 where you have the chronology, it actually mentions about this man Peleg because in his days the earth was divided.
So it's not just found in Genesis 10, it's also found in the chronology. It's a vision, that's right. And this is interesting. Now this is just a matter of interest to you. What is called plate tectonics is actually the idea that the earth can move.
And a man by the name of John Baumgartner at the Los Alamos National Laboratory has done a great deal of work on this using one of the most complex computers that is known to man. And he has come up with the idea that this happened in a very quick fashion.
Not millions of years. Not even years. Days. Now why did it stop? Why did it stop moving? Well, obviously God had a plan in that too. And when at the building of the Tower of Babel, the languages were confused so that men would separate from one another, then God determined exactly how those continents would be placed.
And he has done that. So, I think so.
Earth. Continents. Earth, no. Continents, yeah. Well, resurrection is the idea in this, day three. Always when you get to day three, it's resurrection. The earth coming above the waters. And resurrection brings fruitfulness.
I think that's a lesson we can learn there.
And the Lord Jesus himself uses that, doesn't he? Except the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. So he's looking at seed and the resurrection of that seed is actually the ultimate picture of his own death and resurrection.
Isn't this, Mr. Crawford, would you mind saying, isn't this implicit in this, it's a denial of what they say in one of the descriptions of evolution. They have a saying, I'm sure it's here, it's in Our Side of the Ocean, that what came first, the chicken or the egg?
Well, the answer is here. It's always the chicken that comes before the egg and the seed is in itself. Which is another important principle. Yes, indeed. It's the principle of gospel spreading. Spreading the seed of the word, too.
Seeding ourselves.
Maybe verse 11, brethren. God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth. That was so. Then the description of how that happened, and the earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit whose seed was in itself after his kind.
And God saw that it was good. The evening and the morning were the third day. Now on this third day where you have vegetation, you have life beginning in that form. It is not soulish life because when God created the creatures, he used a word that means soulish life.
This is vegetable life. But you notice in the principle here that our brethren have just been saying that each is after his kind. That is very, very important in all creation. Now let me go back to some of the natural things again, if you will, just for a moment, bear with me on this.
How do we know what the history of the earth is before men start to write history? Well, there is a history in the rocks. The rocks contain fossils. The various layers of sedimentary rock contain fossils.
Of course, the evolutionist tells you that the simplest fossils come first, and that maybe is one of the worst misnomers that you could ever think of to call anything simple that has life. The very simplest cell of life that we know that has the ability to repeat itself, replicate itself, it is so complex.
There are about 400 components in a single DNA, and there are at least five or six chemicals with which each component is linked in perfect order, in perfect sequence. If you've ever seen some of those diagrams which show just how the components are put together in DNA, it staggers you.
It has to be perfect. Did it come about by chance? Did it come about by chance plus time? No. It's the creative act of God. He is the depository. The Lord Jesus I'm speaking of now is the depository of all life.
In him life was, and all life must come from him. So he gives life even to the vegetation. And, of course, in the fossil record, let me say this again, that men have done a circle reasoning which is almost unforgivable.
They have what they call index fossils, and they use those index fossils to date the rock. Well, then, how do they know how old the fossils are? By the rock in which they're found. Is that a circle? It sure is.
So they know the age of the fossils by the rocks, and they know the age of the rocks by the fossils. But, you see, the whole thing is invented. It is purely an invention of men under the control of Satan.
And it just cannot be. Because, actually, the fossil record reveals that this sedimentary rock was deposited with tremendous speed. You know this likely. That sometimes in Siberia, say, these great mammoths have been found, their flesh not even decayed because they were inundated, and they were frozen instantly with vegetation in their stomachs, and it hasn't even decayed.
What kind of vegetation is it? Tropical. How did you get tropical vegetation in the Antarctic or the Arctic? But that happens again and again. The dinosaur fossils show definite evidence of living in a tropical climate.
So what we're saying, brethren, about the I was coming back to the idea of the firmament above and the firmament beneath, that actually what God has really done is he has made an earth that has one climate, the entire earth, no Arctic, Antarctic, everything, perfect climate, so that these creatures could develop and grow.
Men could live for 900 years. What changed it all? The flood. And so great was the sudden cataclysmic change of the flood that you have the fossil deposits over every part of earth suddenly deposited in sedimentary mud, if you will, and then solidifying because of pressure and heat, and you have I've seen coal formed in an hour in a lab.
It doesn't take ancient times to produce fossils. It takes pressure and heat. And, of course, that happened as a result of catastrophe, which is 2 Peter 3.
And there is even present-day evidence in the last 15 years, when did Mount St. Helens blow? Yeah. Of the forming of layers of rock within, what, a week's period of time as a result of the explosion, the volcanic lava being cut by the cutting through rock and so on.
Why does it say here in this, to get back to this chapter, verse 11, let the earth bring forth grass? I've often wondered, the Hebrew word there is tender grass, always tender grass in this passage. Something has affected the normality of plants and plant life.
The curse is evident. But tender grass brings me to a millennial day, doesn't it? You know that it'll come down as rain upon the tender grass so that what you have here is a millennial picture, what it will be like in the day to come.
Do you think the tender grass is pointing to that David's idea, it'll come down like rain upon the tender grass? I think it is, personally, if I may say, Mr. Crawford, that I think that the whole scene is the fact that God had, when he put that man eventually, which we'll come to later, in the garden, he had the day when he would have the world into a garden.
That's the idea of the tender grass. And this would be answered in the millennial day.
So that if in six days he created the world, or the earth, and all that's therein, the seventh day he rested was very symbolic, for Hebrews 4 says, there remaineth a sabbatical rest for the people of God.
And then the Lord Jesus said, my father worketh in here too. I worked, so the rest was broken. But going to that millennial day, there remains a sabbatical rest for the people of God. Millennial day.
Right. So Genesis 1 is not only the description, as our brethren have clearly told us, of a physical creation. God is actually giving us in it his plan for the ages. He's describing for us his purposes for this creation and all that's connected to it.
Couldn't you see in this order here, too, the provision of God? In other words, animals would need something to eat. All right. But this is provided first.
Yeah. And that is an amazing fact, brother, that God has provided so perfectly for his creation, in kindness, in wisdom, in power and might. And there probably is nothing that ever afflicts us that there isn't an answer for in the creation God has made.
And our total nutrition, this is a staggering fact, isn't it, that God has made fruit, vegetables, actually that provide nutrition in every aspect of the human need and animal need, too. How wise he is.
I would think some of the vegetables must reflect the fall, though. Like broccoli? I was thinking more of bananas. In accordance with our brother Bill, it would be safe to say that these six days are chronological and they are logical, in the sense that, as our brother Baker said, too, the first three answer to the last three.
If there's going to be animals, grass is first, the environment is made first, and then that which will occupy it. And God is a God of intricate order. I mean, I don't think you mentioned this, brother, if you did, excuse me for repeating, but when you come to these first three days and the second set of three days, notice that the third day is a two-stage day.
Land first. When we get over to day six, it's land animals. Then the second thing is seed, food. And again, the second stage of day six, God says, now, food for man, and I've got the same food for animals.
So God works in perfect order. It's just an amazing lesson as to the character of God.
Why did you emphasize, brother, he did the stars also? I'm interested. We're coming on, but the time is going quickly. I don't want to miss it. All right.
Let there be lights. Let's look at verse 14. It was so, verse 15, that God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. I think that what we have here is a viewpoint from Earth.
This is a revelation for man, and God is giving us a viewpoint from Earth. And God does that. There's many, many passages in Scripture that show that characteristic. In other words, we read in the Bible about the sun rising and the sun setting.
That's from an earthly viewpoint. It reminds me of the king, the wise king, a man under the sun. And God in grace to us. You know, there's a case of that when the Lord Jesus stood before Pilate. He said, Thou couldst have no power at all against me except it were given thee from above.
If he had said from my father, Pilate wouldn't have had any understanding of what he said. But being a pantheistic pagan, when he said from above, he immediately thought of the gods in the heavens, you see.
So the Bible does that. And this is doing it here. It's giving us the viewpoint from Earth. But I think it's staggering that it says in such a simple statement, he made the stars also. Really three words.
And stars. And stars also.
He made just stars. Just three simple words. Yeah. And that's good because when he introduces the heavens and the Earth here, when he brings man in, as you're saying, he doesn't put them that order. He puts it Earth from man's point of view, and then the heavens.
So really in the beginning we're looking from above downward, and then when man comes in the picture we're looking upward from Earth. Okay. But add to that now, Frank, the answer to the problem people have about millions of light years and how does the light get to Earth in millions of light years in a young Earth.
The fact is God's creation was geocentric. Now the Earth is not the center of the universe, but the Earth is the center of God's purpose, and therefore he forms from Earth out. So I have no problem that every star had its pencil of light on Earth from its very origin.
God created the channels for the light at the same time he created the stars.
That's why of all the senses you have, the eye is the greatest of all.
Yes. And, you know, just to go back to our naturalistic thing, Charles Darwin said that the human eye was so complex that his theory of evolution could never explain it. That's what he said. He said that.
When touching, I touch here, I feel, I smell. But I can look at stars millions of miles away. It gives the eye the greatest sense that we have.
And isn't that what God uses, like Psalm 102, to show man his own frailty and to show man his shortness of existence?
The eye is not satisfied with seeing. There's only one satisfying principle in the eye, and that's gazing at Christ himself, the creator of the star.
He has a chapter in that book, the problems that he had, didn't he, in that, Darwin? Yeah. And the eye was one of them. Yes, he does. And so he has problems, and we don't have problems because we believe God.
But he looked upon the eye as one of the most amazing parts of man, although he was an evolutionist.
Brother Norm, in verse 14, I can understand how the sun, just the sun for the moment, determines years, Earth rotating around it. I can understand how the sun determines days, the Earth's rotation on its own axis, and seasons and its tilting and orbit around the sun.
What about signs? Tell me, to be honest. I never thought of it. Tell me. Oh, yeah.
There are going to be signs in the sun in the day to come. Matthew 24. Matthew 24.
Yeah. We link it together with that. I wonder if it even, I wonder if it even begins in Psalm 19, that it is a truth that goes out from the sun relative to God's very person and character and power. As a brain group.
Yeah. So I wonder if God hasn't got messages in nature and it will certainly be true in a day that's coming. Romans 10. Yeah. Their line has gone out of nowhere.
Dan, were you going to say something? I have a question in relation to light. At the beginning in verse 3 it talks about God divided light from the darkness. Now you get into verse 14 and he makes the sun and the moon.
And the sun is what gives us our light. Why did we need an additional light? Was not the light of verses 3 sufficient? Or was this the grace of God giving man light in which he can live in? Yeah.
You know, as far as I know, dear brother, no animals or man or even anything that we would say has soulish life existed in that pure light that came from God. So I think you've got the right answer. I believe God gave us light that we can bear.
I think the day is coming, however, when we will look upon light that we can never bear now.
So it shows the mercy of God in creating the sun and the moon. That's right. He is making an earth for which man and animals and things can dwell.
When does the annual revolution around many days and hours and minutes, is that? Of the sun? 365 days, 5 hours and 49 minutes. It's never been late once. Like all those aircraft you sent in Detroit yesterday.
God makes that to a minute. 365, 7 hours, 5 hours and 59 minutes.
All the same. These first four days all provide the conditions for life, don't they? That's right.
And we're only have five minutes left, brother. Maybe I should do this just right now. You have in verse 20, the beginning of this fifth day. And you have these great whales, living creatures, so forth, winged fowls.
And God blessed them and said, be fruitful, multiply and fill the waters and the seas. That's a most amazing statement. Actually, the oceans of earth are teeming with life. Fill the oceans. And certainly that is exactly what has happened.
I know there are some young folk here that were asking a question. Would the rest of you have patience with me if I try to answer it for a moment? Where do the dinosaurs come in? Here we've got these great creatures that God made.
Did dinosaurs exist? Is that just a fairy tale or were there really dinosaurs? Oh, yes, there were really dinosaurs. Men didn't invent the bones. Although sometimes they'll take a very small bone and produce a very great animal out of it.
But how did these creatures get so immense? How did they get so tremendous in their size? Well, I tried to explain to you that before the flood, there was a canopy over the earth, which made a perfect climate, which produced all the food that would be ever necessary for even such creatures as that.
But here's a strange thing about what men have learned about dinosaurs. We grow. I only grew until I was 15, thank the Lord, and stopped growing then. Some of us are still growing. What do you mean? But see, these are creatures that grow as long as they live.
So the very tremendous sized creatures were very, very old, had lived a very, very long time. So when Noah went into the Arctic, did he take dinosaurs? See, this is a question that young folk often ask.
How could he get those huge creatures into the Arctic? But you see, the average size of a dinosaur, this is what they tell us, would be about the size of a German shepherd. So could he take dinosaurs into the Arctic?
Surely he could. And these creatures, of course, that were so tremendous, how were they destroyed? It is very likely that the flood had a great deal to do with their destruction. Some must have come out of the Ark and continued.
And these people tell us that we do not have ancestors, at least we do not have progeny of the dinosaurs today. We don't have offspring of dinosaurs. I'm not so sure about that. There are cold-blooded lizards that are very like them anyway.
Well, they walked into the Ark of their own accord anyway. Sure they did. Yeah, that's right. I've always believed that, that they were in the Ark. They're so small when they begin. The environment that they were living in before the flood was such that they could feed tremendous feeding and grew to tremendous size.
And the fossil remains before the flood even show that plants were of tremendous size. And the fruit was so prodigious, you know, on those plants. So that's very simple. Okay, let us just look at the end here just for a moment.
God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind. Cattle, creeping thing, and beast did the earth after his kind. And God saw, and it was so. And God saw that it was good. So you have the entire creation.
I think what we can do, brethren, is read it with confidence, with assurance. This is the Word of God. There is nothing that we know that can contradict it. Men's ideas and thoughts would certainly dismiss it.
But as I've said, I'll go back to what I said at the beginning. When men begin without God, they wind up in confusion. And you can see how our dear brethren see in this such great spiritual truth as well as the physical creation coming into being.
After his kind is important, isn't it? Very much so. We should emphasize that.
See, there is no possibility. Whenever men produce a hybrid, whether it's a plant or an animal, it's sterile. They don't produce a new kind. So God has seen to that. That's part of the protection that God has put into his creation.
And, of course, that completely dismisses the idea of kinds coming from, well. Cloning. Yeah. Okay, let's just. You've seen you brought that up, brother. Whenever men do anything like that, they begin with the life that God made.
They don't create life. They don't produce life. They can't make the simplest lifestyle. So what they're doing is they're just producing from what God has already made.
Well, you and I have already discussed the idea of cloning with the image of the beast even. Yes, very much so. Following on. But after his kind. As you have said, they've crossed the line with the tiger.
They've had a tiger and put it in the zoo. But tigers cannot reproduce tigers. Horse with the ass and they produce a mule. But it's exactly the same. That's the end of it.
Can't go any further. I'm a bit over my head here and you can sort me out here. But when you're talking about hybrids, you take one of one kind, one of another, and you produce something different. Actually, evolution requires two of the same kind that produces something different.
And that's an impossibility. Actually, hybrids aren't really related to the breaking of the kind.
No, but we're just trying to show that the boundaries that God has put on the species. You can see that.
No, I understand. But I'm just pointing out that actually what even beyond what is hybridization is what the evolution is teaching.
And this is the day of DNA investigation and tremendous discoveries. And what that really has done is to prove to us even much further that when animals or birds or even plants adapt to their environment, that ability was already in the original DNA.
It was already there. And God put it in to begin with. And I don't know that we know this, but every one of us have exactly the same color. It's called melanoma. All have one color. It just happens that some have more of it than others.
That's all. But see, God has done that in perfection so that we adapt to our environment. And animals do in color, sometimes even in size. That is not evolution. That is what Darwin saw. And from that little basis, he built this tremendous monster.
And it has no evidence for its truth at all. Thank you.