Creation & Science (Genesis 1:14-25) Part III

Genesis 1:14-25 Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years;        and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so.    God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.         Then God said, "Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens."God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.             God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind"; and it was so. God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

As with Part II of this series I would refer you once again to Dr. Kent Hovind a.k.a. Dr. Dino. He has some very fascinating things to say you about the moon and the heavens. One thing worth noting is that science has so often argued that the universe is billions of years old. And yet the moon’s orbit around the earth linearly increases by fractions of an inch every year. The result being that if the earth is billions of years old then the moon would have originated from somewhere inside the earth’s crust, and would have had to launch from the earth’s surface. Same goes for the oceans. Oceans have a linear, measurable increase in salinity every year. In other words the oceans get a very tiny fraction saltier every year. If the earth was billions of years old, then the oceans would be as salty as the Dead Sea.

All of which is irrelevant to a man’s salvation, but important in the order of creation. So God creates time and space, He then creates the universe, earth, and commands the earth to bring forth vegetation. Now he is making an environment that is habitable to other life forms. Stars are formed, and our galaxy is interacting with time and space so as to fix the orbits of the planets and stars. Perhaps it is here where God causes the earth to wobble thus giving us the seasons, and the moon is placed in orbit creating tides. From these tides water is allowed to circulate, moving nutrients, and oxygen. From the seasons the earth is now regulating its temperature… all in preparation for life.

And then behold in fifth day God commands the waters to create life. “Let the waters teem with life,” He says. “Let birds fly above the earth…” Then He commands the creatures, “Be fruitful and multiply…” Yes it all is God’s creation as verse 21 indicates, but there is no mention of the mechanism. He commanded and the earth created. Neither support nor denial of evolution, and yet evolutionist acknowledge this order. The vegetation came first, and something crawled out of the ocean next. That’s the basic theory. And yet a book written thousands of years before Darwin has the exact order already laid out. This is not genius, this is divine knowledge place with mankind so that they would know God did it, when science later would learn the order, and seek to understand the mechanism.

It’s the Journey not the Destination

John 19:30, “Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, "It is finished!" And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.”

Having not written in so long my heart is overflowing with so much of what has been my conversations with the Father. And today a series of events, starting with Mary Kemp’s facebook post of “Confessions of a Pastor’s Wife” led to the outflow of this post.

Why do we as human beings get so caught up in ourselves and our emotions? Why do we get so focused on a destination? Even more so I wonder why the Bible does so little to address our emotions that really are such a huge controlling factor in our lives? Have you ever stopped and taken a deep look into what controls and influences your emotions on a daily basis? How much of our anger, emotional exhaustion, sadness, impatience is present because we have encounter obstacles to our destination of peace, happiness, financial success, the perfect family, the perfect marriage… the perfect anything?

It ought not to be this way. If Christ coming to the earth was about dying on the cross, then why wasn’t He nailed to it as a baby? If Christ’s only destination was salvation to a corrupted world, why did He rise from the dead? Christ coming to earth was about His journey here. It was about the words He said. It was about the people He met. It was an example in the trials He faced. How must the Son of God have felt when He could not heal someone, as was the case in His hometown. Christ felt pain. He felt emotion otherwise we would not know of His compassion. We would not know of His fear in the Garden of Gethsemane. Without Christ’s journey we would not have seen His human emotional despair on the cross when He cried out, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me.”

Mary Kemp, whom I love, has for a very long time been in her husband’s (whom I also love) battle with cancer. Today her post, like so many before lays bare her emotional struggle with the journey. She knows and acknowledges God’s grace and mercy, but like us all, there seems to be the loss of focus that we have to be IN the journey. In the storm is Christ. In the tragedy is the shaping of our soul. So very very difficult to embrace, and even more difficult to understand.

How many of us have felt like Mary when she writes, “"There is a lot riding on this, Lord. People are watching us and seeing how we handle the pressure and how we respond to well, basically everything.” How many people think the answer is the destination beyond the storm.

If our actions (sin), or inactions (disobedience) are the source of our journey, then let us repent quickly. But if our journey is out of a pure heart, if it is based on walking in righteousness, then may that journey preform every work it has to do on our soul. Let us SHARE in Christ suffering.

I will tell you that Dusty and Mary are not on this journey alone. There truly is “a lot riding on this.” But it is not riding on the destination. It is riding on the journey. We all have the same fate in life. But we all have different journeys. Dusty is a God fearing man, and pastor of a very large church. Perhaps the journey the congregation shares with them is that they must learn to keep their eyes on God and never a man. Perhaps they need to more deeply explore their own souls. Perhaps there is someone out there whom God has commanded to pray but has not. Who knows? But in the journey is Christ, and Christ alone. And it is Him in the journey for all of us. Most certainly their journey purposefully includes emotional breakdowns, so that they can know Him more. It certainly includes Mary bearing her soul, that we all may benefit and ourselves know Him more. But don’t let any of us think for one moment that another’s salvation or relationship with God relies in our hands or with our actions, or with our journey. That was paid once and for all, and that responsibility and reward lies only with Him because of His journey.

Christ on the cross was not the destination. But a beginning of a new journey where He can walk with all of us, not just the twelve. Now you and I are in the boat of life with Jesus. Sometimes it is in a storm. Where is Christ? Is He asleep? Is He walking on the water? Is He praying? I can’t answer any of these questions for you, but I MUST ask myself these questions about my journey.

I will close with something equally as important. We do not get to question other’s journeys. But we can reflect on how their journey applies to our very own soul. And we must question our journeys to find Christ either exposed or hidden in them.  

Just as Christ could have been crucified as a baby, God to could call us to heaven immediately upon salvation. But He does not. The life we walk, the journey we take is good for our soul. As I preach to myself… we must learn to embrace the journey. A concept I am only infrequently acquainted with.

Creation & Science (Genesis 1:6-13) Part II

Genesis 1:6-13 Then God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them"; and it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a third day.

There is a man who went to prison for not paying his taxes by the name of Dr. Kent Hovind a.k.a. Dr. Dino. Aside from not practicing Christ’s words in Luke 20:25, "Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's…” Dr. Dino has some of the most convincing arguments of proving up the Bible in terms of creation v evolution. If this is a subject that fascinates you then I would encourage looking up his YouTube videos and listening to them with the understanding that only Christ and the Father speak the complete truth. But fascinating arguments none the less.

That said, Dr Hovind argues that this scripture refers to the earth being encased in a water bubble. That above the atmosphere was a gigantic bubble of water. Remember, there was never rain on the earth until the time of Noah’s flood. It was this bubble burst was the primary cause to the biblical flood. It too would have led to higher oxygen content of the atmosphere, which would have led to reptiles and other living things growing to enormous proportions. For Dr. Dino this explains the dinosaurs, which too are mentioned in the bible.  

Moving into day 3 of the creation story I am drawn to one key statement by God. He said, “Let the earth sprout…” This theory of evolution, and it is just that… a theory and not a FACT, is not in conjecture completely contradicted by the word of God. God said, “Let the earth sprout…” He did not say ‘I will make plants,’ He commanded the earth to do it. How can the earth do that? Perhaps the mechanism is some evolutionary process? Perhaps something else, but why do Christians doubt the infallibility of the word of God based on incomplete science.

My point is that life has enough distractions without allowing some ungodly intellectual to convince you that thier human reasoning, and study of science can every compare to expanse and greatness of a God who not only created the universe, but set everything in it in motion.

The smartest man I have ever know personally was a Catholic Priest and my high school math teacher. His name was Father Leininger. He told us that he read a novel a night. When asked how he did it he said, “Do you have to sound out every letter in a word to say it and comprehend it? Well I first taught myself to read two words at a time, and then three words at a time, and then a sentence in the same time it takes to read a single word.” Eventually he trained his brain to read a whole page at a time. And we even tested him on this, and it was remarkable that he could read a whole page in a second and then answer detailed questions about its content.

This impossible task was accomplished with the human brain, and yet even the highest IQ individual is a complete imbecile when compared to the understanding, comprehension, capabilities, reason, judgment, love of the Father. God will never be found to be a liar, whether we understand His words of not. But there is plenty of science to prove God, though so many are unwilling, or unable to accept it. Our tasks as Christians is to approach with faith, positive faith, patiently waiting to understand the truth. Until then, we should question science in view of the Bible, and not the Bible in view of science even though the Bible will stand any test given it.  

Father Leininger

Creation & Science (Genesis 1)

Genesis 1:1-5 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.”

One thing that I really don’t see a lot of in the Christian world is the discussion of Genesis. But as a child I attended a Church of Christ private elementary school, and in every chapel period we heard another story from the Old Testament. These were valuable lessons that stick with me today some forty-five years later. Additionally we were taught that the Bible is the infallible word of God. That every word is true and inspired by God. So as I aged and was confronted with science and the educational system, it led me to questions. Questions of the infallibility of the Bible as the word of God. In Catholic high school I was taught that scripture was not necessarily perfect, but perfect for instruction, for symbolism, for the Christian, but not necessarily completely factual. But I would argue that it is indeed infallible. That not one word contradicts observations by Science. So let’s begin here, it what very well may be a multipart series.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” God existence is eternal. He never had a beginning, and never will have an end. He is not bound by time and space. And in Genesis 1:1 we see that God is creating time and space as understood by Albert Einstein. He created the dimensions. He created a space outside of his plane of His existence in that moment. God, in this act, created Gravity… gravity being the interaction of energy with time and space. So God’s first act in the creation of the universe we know was to create the canvas for which to paint it on. He created time and space, and by default gravity.

“The earth was formless and void…” There was no earth, there was only time and space which to the writer most likely appeared as water. God moved over the surface of time and space. Or perhaps literally this new dimension of time and space was born out of God’s manipulation of water. Clearly I do not understand the literalness of this verse, but at the same time my lack of understanding does not make it any less true. The point is time and space was created first, and there was nothing but time and space.

“Then God said, ‘Let there be light…’” Here God might have well said, ‘E=MC²” “Let there be light” as said by God, established the law by which energy would interact with this new creation of time and space. E=MC² dictates that when Energy exceeds the speed of light (C) then mass is formed. Yet until just recently science dictated that the speed of light could not be exceeded. However recent discoveries suggest that our universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, which offers plenty of explanation as to how mass is formed. And so not God has the canvas of time and space, the paint of the transformation of energy to mass, and his creation of the universe as we know it is about to begin. But first he must separate the light form the darkness.

The darkness, most likely know by science as dark matter, remains but a theory with no concrete evidence of fact. But certainly to come, and certainly the God particle comes from this one line of scripture.

“God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” This act of God call an evening and a morning a day will be critical later in study of Christianity and Judaism. A God day starts at sun down, not midnight. 

Peace

Matthew 10:34-39, "Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves sone or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it."

I was at lunch the other day with my Dad, and as his tradition he blessed the food. But in that prayer he asked God for peace. Immediately Matthew 10 came to mind, along with an understanding of what Jesus was teaching us.

Regardless of your beliefs; life has difficulties. As I write this I have a step-son in jail, 3 friends in epic struggles with cancer threatening their lives a too early an age. Another friend struggles with being left by his love. And I am sure you can come up with your own examples of peace robbing distress. These difficulties, these challenges are very much the sword Jesus describes. Luke called the sword "division." But this division that on the surface appears as turning family member against family member are really nothing more than God dividing our traditions, our teachings, our idea of religion from what is truly a living relationship with Him. Are you... are we... standing on a tradition taught to us because of the family we were born into? Or are we standing on a vivid relationship to the Father. If we are standing on a real relationship then by necessity of our soul and character we must have a life that confronts "healing doctrines." If we stand on relationship then by necessity we must have a soul changing life that confronts "prosperity doctrine," ministry doctrines, being saved by works, church attendance, tithing, sin and all other things that were meant to lead us to God and relationship; but that have been exploited and misused by "religion" and tradition. The division divides truth from fiction. The division is proving our soul, it is refining our soul's relationship to the father.

John 14:26-27, "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful."

Christ again reminds us that our peace is not going to be found in family, or suedo families like churches, local groups, or others at all. In those things there are too often traditions. Helpful as they are in leading to Christ, they are not Christ and we each must individually walk our own path. My cross is not your cross. My path is not your path. But if I seek God, if I faithfully step today where He says step, then I am listening to His teacher the Holy Spirit. Circumstances and the path may be scary as hell... but my soul has peace. In this we fulfill loosing our lives to find it for His sake.

Be blessed, and peace be with you.

It’s Not What You Do… It’s Who You Know

Matthew 7:21-23, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will says to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I NEVER KNEW YOU; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’”

I think that I could write another book based on Chapter 7 of Matthew, but today I choose to focus on just these 3 versus. And the reason is that with the Pope visiting the US today, I can’t help but look back in my life and look at the false importance I gave to Ministers and ministry. Too often I believed that a particular Pastor was closer to God than I could ever attain myself. Even in my own self-worth I valued casting out demons, and seeing God’s miracles of healing over my relationship to Him. I wanted to see the miracles, and if I am truthful wanted others to see the miracles so that I could judge myself, and be judged by man as being closer to God.

But man’s judgments… even our own judgments, do not count in our relationship to God. We cannot ask ourselves if our jobs have importance. We cannot count on our pious acts to afford us eternal life. On the contrary we must ask ourselves, do we know Him? Or perhaps we should ask, does He know us?

And so as the Pope visits attracting millions to his masses. As Catholics faint in his presence, I wonder aloud. Does Pope Francis know God? Does he have a relationship with Christ? Though truly the answer is none of my business as I do not follow him, I also wonder aloud, do I know Him?

To that question I have a resounding answer, YES!

What is your answer to the question of, do you know Him? Do you know God the Father? Do you know His Son?

If you cannot say without qualifier, “yes” then by all means look for someone who teaches knowing Christ.

Being Pope does not mean you know Christ. Being a convicted felon does not mean you do not know Christ. That is a question that can only be answered in your heart.

What I can tell you with certainty, is that if you want to know Him. If you will seek Him, you will find him. (Matt 7:7) Seek HIM!

The End Times

Psalm 125:1-2, “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds His people both now and forevermore.”

There are a lot of good people in this world that believe we have hit the “end times.” People worried about a myth of “global warming.” Others afraid of the Mayan Calendar, and Planet X causing massive global floods. Others believe America is going to hell in a handbasket because of Gay Marriage, and liberals in control of the government media complex. Isis, Iran, radical Islam have many in fear, or looking for Christ return.

If these are your concerns, if these thoughts consume you… cause you to hoard food, ammo, or make survival plans, then I would challenge you to stop and reflect on your relationship to God. If you think a homosexual getting “married” has anything to do with your own salvation then turn inward. Examine your own heart, and call out to God for wisdom. Proverbs 2:6, “For the Lord Gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.

To those who think global violence is a sign of Christ return, for those who “fear” the tribulation, I would remind you of Jesus’ own words. Matt 24:6, “You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are NOT frightened, for those things must take place, but THAT IS NOT YET THE END.”

For those worried about floods, either by Planet X of Global Warming… God will not be found a liar. Genesis 9:11, is as true today as it was the day He spoke it. “I establish My covenant with you; and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood destroy the earth.”

For those who think Gay Marriage is the end of America, please read John 8. Sin is sin is sin. There is no distinction between adultery, homosexuality, lying, or any other sin. And yet Christ said, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone…”

Have faith. Have faith that does not worry about predicting the future, but trust in God being in complete control of it. Believe what Paul wrote in Romans 8:28, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God…”

Love God, and everything else will take care of itself.

Never forget Psalms 24:1, “The earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it.”

The end is not near, no nearer than it was a thousand years ago. Pursue God, love God, and you will be undeterred by these distraction. You will stand in confidence on your day of judgment.