When God

"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Tell Me, if you have understanding.

Who determined the measurements?  Surely you know!

Or who stretched the line upon it?

To what were its foundations fastened?  Or who laid its cornerstone,

when all the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Or who shut in the sea with doors, when it burst forth and issued from the womb;

When I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band;

When I fixed My limit for it, and set bars and doors;

When I said, 'This far you may come, but no farther,

and here your proud waves must stop!'"

God to Job, Job 38:4-11, NKJV

 

 

Have a cookie, I might say if you ever came to my house for a visit.  And as you taste the most wonderful chocolate chip cookies in the world, you mumble around a mouthful, "These are the best cookies I've ever had!  Did you make these?"

 

No, I say.  A bomb went off in my kitchen the other day, bursting bags of flour and sugar, both white and brown.  It exploded a carton of eggs, broke a bottle of vanilla, laid down a layer of lard, scattered the salt and baking soda, blew a bag of pecans out of their shells, and tossed chocolate chips everywhere.  Two eggs, half a cup of Crisco, two-thirds of a cup of white sugar, two-thirds of a cup of brown, one teaspoon of vanilla, a teaspoon each of baking soda and salt, a handful of chopped pecans, and half a bag of chocolate morsels landed in a mixing bowl.  In the chaos, all of it was stirred up and spooned out in just the right portions on a cookie sheet that got hit with a splash of non-stick cooking spray.  The force of the blast threw open the oven, tossed the cookie sheet in, and a piece of debris initiated the baking sequence in the oven.  And as everything else settled neatly back into place in my kitchen, a batch of cookies was expelled from the oven after fifteen minutes at 340 degrees, thrown onto a baking rack, and left for us to find when we arrived home, cooled and ready to eat, a cold mug of milk that had poured itself sitting right beside them.

 

Really?! you might exclaim, awed but accepting, because it makes absolutely perfect sense that a cataclysmic explosion in my kitchen would result in the best batch of cookies ever.  And did I mention that I had none of those things in my kitchen to begin with.  In fact, I didn't even have a kitchen.  This house wasn't even here when the bomb went off.  This was all just a grove of trees...

 

Nope, I would reply.  Here's your sign.

 

When there was nothing, nothing at all, nothing except God, eternally existent as FatherSonSpirit, God decided to make everything.  When One is all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere present all the time, One can do pretty much anything One wants, and He wanted to do this.  Way, way back there in the very beginning, when God started start, He intentionally brought into being all things that are now, have ever been, and ever will be, placing them perfectly within the time and space of Himself.  He didn't just fling stuff out there and hope it turned out okay.  Like an artist or an engineer or a pastry chef making cookies, He made it all, just so.

 

Imagine for a moment that you could witness the miracle of creation...

 

When God thought up then founded the universe.

 

When God determined its measurements and established its boundaries.

 

When God fixed every galaxy, every star, every planet, moon, asteroid, comet and speck of cosmic dust in place.

 

When God filled the empty seas with water and told the tide how far to wash up on the shore.

 

When God swaddled the earth in an atmospheric garment.

 

I wasn't there to see it myself, but just reading about it makes me want to rejoice over the great goodness of our Creator.  What a Mighty God we serve!

 

Conceived

"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?"

God to Job, Job 38:4, NKJV

 

Before anyone objects and cries, "The earth doesn't HAVE a foundation!  It doesn't sit on anything!" let me just say--It doesn't mean what you think it means.  I know the imagery that the vocabulary brings to mind, sometimes inspiring incredulity at the very idea.  After all, we know, we KNOW that this ball of rock and dirt and water and magma is spinning swiftly on its axis as it hurtles through space in an orbit around the sun.  It doesn't sit still, much less on a foundation.  I understand.

 

But compared to the ancient languages, English can be so limited at times.

 

To say that God laid the foundations of the earth is to say that God began it; it originated with Him.  God founded the earth and fixed it in place, set it in motion, and determined both its rotation and its revolution.  God established the earth in its solidity, appointed it in its form and function, and ordained it with a purpose.  God laid it out from idea to fulfillment.

 

That's in the Hebrew of the Old Testament.  The Greek is even richer in meaning.  It speaks of throwing or laying down.  Literally, it means to conceive, in the sense of insemination, or to plant a seed.

 

Our Great God is the Founder of the universe, and the Father of all that is.  He is the initiation of life, and the source that sustains it.  Everything in existence is the fruit of His will and action, the work of He entire being.  God didn't just make it in a distant and absentee sort of way.  He personally imbued it with His very essence.  That is why the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork.  Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge.  All creation speaks His majesty, revealing His invisible attributes, culminating in us who were created in His image and after His likeness--to look like Him and to be like Him.

 

Therefore, let us worship Him who made us, and give Him all the glory and all the praise and all the honor for Who He is and all that He has done!

 

 





Foundation

"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?"

God to Job, Job 38:4, NKJV

 

When construction begins on a building, many preparations must be made before the building is ever built.  One doesn't just go out with sticks and stone and throw up a structure with no planning or preparing and expect it to stand, at least not for very long.  A building is not built randomly or by accident.  There is a process.

 

First, the plan.  An idea is conceived in the mind of a visionary, who expresses the concept to an architect, perhaps, or an engineer who uses their knowledge and skill to begin drawing up a plan that will bring the dream into reality.  A site is chosen for the project.  Land must be surveyed, plotted, measured, and tested.  Grades must be shot.  The ground must be evaluated.  The plan for the building is matched to the place, and more plans are drawn, situating the construction on the site and detailing all the preparations that must be made before one piece of equipment is activated, before one inch of ground is disturbed.

 

The plans must be submitted for examination, for evaluation, for multiple approvals.  Adjustments are made.  Permits are purchased.  A project manager is appointed.  Bids for the work are solicited, submitted, considered, and contracted.  Workers are hired.

 

Dirt work begins.  Some must be taken out, more brought in.  It must be leveled, tamped down, made firm to properly bear the weight of the construction.  Footings are dug.  The size of the building determines the type of foundation that must be laid, the depth and breadth  of the footings, a support structure that will be mostly underground and likely unnoticed by those who will later marvel over the final construct.  Forms must be built, rebar fixed in place, concrete poured.

 

When the foundation is ready, the building can go up.  If at any point along the way the foundation is not laid correctly, it imperils the entirety of the process and the future of the structure.  The foundation must be sure.  It's true for a tool shed, a house, a parking garage, a tower, a palace.  Whatever is built must have a solid foundation.  And if that is true for something that man builds on the earth, the same must hold true for the earth upon which everything is built.

 

First the plan, conceived in the heart and mind of the eternal, immortal, invisible, and only wise God, carried out in the power of His will by the authority of the Word under the moving of the Spirit.  And for a foundation there could be only one starting place, a single cornerstone upon which all other construction must take place.  And that cornerstone is Christ.

 

All creation began upon that one original building block, and continues upon it today.

 

"Behold, I lay in Zion

a chief cornerstone, elect, precious,

and he who believes on Him

will by no means be put to shame."

1 Peter 2:6, quoting Isaiah 28:16

Where Was I?

"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Tell Me, if you have understanding.

Who determined its measurements?

Surely you know!

Or who stretched the line upon it?

To what were its foundations fastened?

Or who laid its cornerstone,

when the morning stars sang together,

and all the son of God shouted for joy?"

Job 38:4-7, NKJV

 

It's the oldest book in the Bible.  Written down even before Moses penned the Pentateuch, perhaps even recorded by Moses from the tellings he heard from Job's kinsmen in the desert during those forty years of exile from Egypt, it tells of a cosmic struggle over the soul of one righteous man.  God testified of Job that he was upright and blameless in all of his ways, that he feared God and shunned evil  The devil wagered he could make Job turn away and blaspheme God, if only God would lower the hedge of protection He had raised around Job.  And God took the bet.

 

It wasn't really a gamble, not for the One who already knows all because He sees all.  From God's perspective it was already a done deal.  But the devil had to try, and Job had to be tested, in order to prove that what God knew was true.  For two chapters we witness the many trials and afflictions of Job.  Arab terrorists strike his possessions, driving off his flocks and herds, slaughtering his servants, stealing the caravans of riches as they approached his coffers.  Winds of destruction struck the house where his children were feasting, killing them all.  Stricken with disease, cursed by his wife, sitting naked on an ash heap scraping his festering sores, Job spends the next thirty-five chapters cussing and discussing his tribulation, defending himself against the accusations of his three closest friends, one young upstart, and finally God Himself.

 

As Job questions the day of his conception and birth, his numerous good deeds and many years of devoted service to The Most High, and the unjust nature of his latest calamities, God shows up in the midst of a whirlwind and begins to ask a few questions of His owns.

 

I laid the foundations of the earth, Job.  Where were you?

 

I determined the earth's measurements, Job.  Where were you?

 

I stretched out the lines of its dimensions, Job.  Where were you?

 

I laid its cornerstone and fastened its structure to the foundations I laid for it, Job.  Where were you?

 

And when I did all that, the morning stars burst into song.  Myriads upon myriads of angels, sons of God every one, lifted up a shout that greeted the creation of the universe.  With joy they exulted over the work of My hands, one anthem, one thunderous ovation of adulation and praise.

 

But where were you, O man?  Where were you when I did all that in my own Name, with my own power, for my own pleasure?  Where were you?

 

In the resounding silence, God then asked this question:  Then who do you think you are to question me?

 

I am one finite man, created one wintry night forty-five years ago, who came into this world naked and screaming and completely ignorant of the world and its wonderings.  I have since received a decent education.  I am well studied and thoughtful.  I believe I am not unintelligent.  But how could I possibly seek to challenge the infinite One who has been around forever and brought into being everything that is?  The same God who created the universe created me, knew me and called me by name, had all my days written in a book, and knew all of my words before I had ever spoken them.  How can I try to tell Him something He does not already know, or explain to Him something He does not already understand?

 

I can't.  Which is why He has left nothing up to my own tiny brain to figure out on my own.  He gave me His word to read, to learn from, and to understand.  He gave me His own testimony, His personal report of everything I need to know about life and godliness, from beginning to end as far as I am concerned, and the rest He reserved for Himself and asked me for a little faith in the One whose hands formed and fashioned me in the first place.

 

If you don't believe, I guess it's yours to question and try to find other answers.  As for me, I believe.

Chosen

 

 

He chose us in Him

before the foundation of the world,

that we should be holy and without blame

before Him in love,

having predestined us

to adoption as sons

by Jesus Christ to Himself,

according to the good pleasure

of His will,

to the praise of the glory

of His grace,

by which He has made us

accepted in the Beloved.

Ephesians 1:4-6, NKJV

 

 

 



If the universe is not a cosmic accident, if the world is not a fortunate happenstance, if life is not a random product of a chance meeting of two proteins floating in a primordial soup billions of years ago, but rather all was made according to the plan, purpose, pleasure, and will of God, how in the universe can I believe that me and my life are anything less?

 

I am fully aware that thoughts like the ones I am about to express go against the grain of human nature.  They contradict many of our human notions of choice and free will.  They are contradicted by centuries of church doctrine and dogma in certain circles of denominational establishment.  Nevertheless, when I read in His Word that He chose us before the foundation of the world, I have to go with that over any other interpretation.

 

Before time began.

 

Before creation came into existence.

 

Before there was air to breathe or life to breathe it.

 

Before the foundation of the world, God had a plan and I was part of it.

 

Not I alone, but all those who would ever believe do so according to the sovereign choice of Almighty God, a choice not based on arbitrary selection, but rather on His omniscient foreknowledge of all that is, all that has ever been, and all that will ever be.  God, in His absolute authority and in His eternal existence, knew all things before anything was, saw all things before anything was even there to happen.  And I say it that way because from our perspective that knowledge and sight is past, but from God's perspective everything is now.  All of time and space exist completely within the person of God, so our past, present, and future are all right now with God. 

 

He is ageless and timeless and measureless and limitless.  He has all power and authority, and works all things according the counsel of His own will.  He is both in possession and in control of everything without question.  He allows His creations to make choices, to exercise self-determination, to decide what they want for now and all eternity, but no move can be made that is outside the purview of the all-knowing, all-powerful, everywhere-present all-the-time God.

 

Like the Psalmist I can say, Such thoughts are too wonderful for me.  They are higher than my human understanding can attain.  I don't fully comprehend the divine complexities of the conjoined inner workings of God's predestination and my human will.  But I accept in faith the truth of the Word of God that says even though I chose Him, I was already chosen in Him before the foundation of the world.  Before I reached my decision for Christ, and every decision for Him since, I was already predestined according to the foreknowledge of God to be conformed to the image of His Son, to be adopted as His son, and to bring praise and glory to Him in that acceptance.

 

Thank You, Jesus!

Foreordained

 

You were not redeemed with corruptible things,

like silver or gold...

but with the precious blood of Christ,

as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.

He indeed was foreordained

before the foundation of the world,

but was manifest in these last times for you

who though Him believe in God,

who raised Him from the dead

and gave Him glory,

so that your faith and hope are in God.

1 Peter 1:18-21, NKJV

 

 

Jesus was always the plan.

 

He wasn't Plan B.  He wasn't the emergency contingency or the backup plan.  He wasn't God's second plan after the first one failed.  He was the beginning of the first and only plan that God ever had for the universe, for humanity, for you and me.

 

Before God brought forth the whirling, cosmic mass of creation, before God lit the stars and set them in place, before God placed a little blue planet in orbit around its average yellow sun, before God caused life to arise from the waters and mud of that third rock from the sun, before there was anything, there was a plan.  Not only did God have a plan to create, but God had a plan to redeem the creation that would be corrupted by the free will choices of His creation. 

 

The plan was going to break His heart.  It was going to require personal sacrifice and pain.  It was going to require the shedding of His own blood, the death of His own Son who would be the physical extension of Himself to a planet and a people who would spin out of control away from Him.

 

But that was the plan.

 

Before time began, the Godhead determined of itself and in itself and among itself that One must die for all.  If We're going to create it, We're going to have to let it have a life of its own, a mind of its own, a will of its own.  If We're going to create it to serve and worship Us, We must give it the choice not to, the ability to refuse and turn away, the power to wound us, to hurt us, to reject us.  And then We must give it a way back through Us.  Through Our love for it.  Through Our deliberate, willing sacrifice for it.  Through Our blood that We will shed for it.

 

We must be poured out.  We must be the price that is paid.  For there will be no earthly treasure great enough, no amassed wealth vast enough, no great and honorable deed worthy enough to redeem them.  No thing done by this creation without Us will be powerful enough to save them from themselves.  We must be the One to save them.  We will make them perfect, We will let them fall, We will teach them truth, We will call them back, We will let them choose.  We will give them earthly life, which they will deliver up to death.  And then We will deliver Ourselves up to death so that We can give them eternal life.

 

It was predetermined, foreordained, decided ahead of time.  The Second person in the Trinity, the One who was the Word, would also be the Son and become the Lamb, to redeem all creation from destruction and save a humanity that may have forgotten, but still needed, a Savior.

Before

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  But what happened before that?  People always wonder what God was doing before creation, before time began, often scoffingly speculating that He was just hanging around out there in the void for innumerable eons until just a short while ago.  The Bible doesn't tell us, specifically, what God was doing...but it does give us a few glimpses.  Nothing was going on in time and space, but there was much going on in God.

 

"You loved Me BEFORE

the foundation of the world."

Jesus, in John 17:24, NKJV

 

Before God started start, there was a wonderful relational existence happening between the Father and the Son, and I believe we can also say the Spirit.  Before the beginning, they three were one and together, separate and inseparable, distinct and indistinguishable.  They were the same, but different, and between them all there was the eternal love upon which all truth is built.

 

"Now these three abide," Paul wrote, "faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love."

 

Jesus said the greatest commandment was love.

 

He also said, "Greater love has no man than this:  that he lay down his life for his friend."

 



Jesus knew the love of the Father, because they shared this amazing relationship together from all eternity.  Jesus spoke of the glory, the magnificent excellence, in which they existed before the world began, and he spoke of the love.  And these were the things He knew He had come to reveal during His brief sojourn on earth among men--the creation that had been made through Him and by Him and for Him.  Just as they were made for Him, He also had been made for them, and given to them, by Almighty God.

 

"For God so loved the world

that He gave His only begotten Son,

that whoever believes in Him should not perish

but have everlasting life."

John 3:16, NKJV

Maker

All things were made through Him,

and without Him nothing was made that was made.

John 1:3, NKJV

 

He made it all.

 

Everything in this universe was made, created, brought into existence and given form and function by the Great Creator.  It's such a simple concept, easy to understand, no further explanation necessary.  And yet there are those who refuse to accept it.  They cannot believe in a designer and a builder who could fashion the elaborate wonder that is all creation.  Instead, they invent elaborate explanations under the guise of science, theories that have not now nor can they ever be proven.  It was an accident, they say, a great cosmic, cataclysmic coincidence that just happened to produce perfection out of the chaos.

 

Now, I wasn't there, at the very beginning.  But He was.

 

I wasn't privy to the omniscient workings of the omnipotent God.  But He was.

 

I wasn't present to witness the formation of all creation.  But He was.

 

The Word was.  The Word was with God.  The Word was God.  That same was in the beginning with God.  He who was not created but ever existed as the eternal Son of the Living God was there at the beginning.  He had the unique perspective of being the agency through which God acted, the means and method to God's intended end, which is to say, the beginning of all that will ever be.  God did nothing independently from Himself, but utilized each and every facet of the triune Godhead that is Himself, manifested to us as Father, Word, and Spirit, to bring both the visible and the invisible into being.

 

Through the Word, God made all things.

 

By the Word, God made all things.

 

And the inspired apostolic author of Colossians says that for the Word, God created all things.

 

The eternal Word was in complete agreement and cooperation with the Father and the Spirit when they brought forth from within themselves the miracle that is Creation.  The quick and powerful Word was in unity with the trinity when they made everything from nothing and gave it existence and purpose.  The spoken Word made it so, and keeps it so, and the inspired Word tell us so.

 

Jesus made it all!

 

For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. 

All things were created through Him and for Him.

Colossians 1:16, NKJV

Eternal Word

In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

John 1:1-2, NKJV

 

When the Spirit inspired Moses to record the Genesis account of creation, He moved upon him to pen the phrase, "In the beginning God".  Fifteen hundred years later, that same Spirit directed the Apostle John to start the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the same way.

 

In the beginning...

 

Before there was a universe.  Before there was a milky way.  Before there was a sun and its orbiting planets.  Before there was earth.  Before there was man.  Before there was anything, there was God.  Eternity past is nothing more than the eternally existent God.  The Alpha and the Omega.  The First and the Last.  The Beginning and the End.  No further explanation is ever given except this:  God Is, God Was, and God Always Will Be.

 

He was always God the Father, but He was also always God the Son, and God the Spirit.  The triune godhead is a mystery and a revelation all in one, both understandable and inexplicable.  Understandable because the Bible repeatedly shows the three-in-one nature of God, inexplicable because it continually insists upon a one-and-one-alone identity of God.  Such is a truth that we accept in faith, and then explore by the leading of the Lord as we grow to know Him.

 

It must also be recognized that the Father did not create the Son or the Spirit.  He didn't bring them into being as lesser gods, inferior or secondary extensions of Himself.  These three--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost--are all eternally existent, together and distinct, separately the same and completely equal, working together in cooperative relationship, responsibility, authority and accountability.  They each have their own roles, their own identities, and yet they are inseparable, indivisible.  They can be seen individually in the progressive revelation of Scripture, but they are still One God.

 

In the beginning God.

 

In the beginning was the Word.

 

The Word was WITH God.  The Word WAS God.  He was in the beginning with God.  He was the beginning--the originator and source--of all the things that came from God, and still is.

 

He is the word spoken by the living voice which embodies the concept and very idea of God.

 

He is the sayings of God, the moral precepts of God, the decree and mandate of God.

 

He is prophecy.  He is the declaration of God with power.  He is continuous dialogue with God and instruction from God.  He is proclamation.  He is testimony.  He is narrative.

 

He is the subject, that which is spoken of.

 

He is the mind, the reason, and the will of God.

 

Because He is God.

 

Now hear the Word of the Lord!

When

In the beginning, God created...

Genesis 1:1, NKJV

 

There is a lot of conflict between various disciplines of study regarding the beginning of all that is.  There is conflict between people, even conflict within, over when God did anything.  It's understandable considering, for instance, that the sciences extrapolate that the universe is billions of years old and the Bible indicates the first man Adam started counting the years of his life only six thousand years ago.  The question then is asked, when did God create everything?  If Genesis says He did it all in six days, and we take the Bible literally, then wasn't the sixth day only six millennia ago?  If light has only been shining since 4000 BC, how did it reach us from stars and galaxies that are billions of light years away?  Is the earth billions of years old, or is it only 5 days older than mankind?  Is science right, or the Bible?  Questions that lead to controversy that lead to conflict, and I don't think any of it is necessary.

 

I've studied the genealogies carefully for nearly forty years, because I am fascinated by lines of ancestry and descent.  I've calculated and figured and added and subtracted, and like all those others who have gone before me with their mathematical formulas, I can only conclude that Adam really did live only 6000 years ago, and died a mere 5000 years ago.  I accept that as truth, because I believe the Bible is accurate and should be taken literally.  But does the Bible say that the Earth is only 6000 years old?  Think carefully, because that answer isn't nearly as clear cut.

 

When was the beginning?  The Bible doesn't tell us; it simply states that there was one.  In the beginning, way back at the very beginning of all things, when God started start, God created the heavens and the earth.  Time started ticking, and the universe started spinning, and they've been doing so ever since.  But the Bible doesn't then go on to say that immediately God took the next six days and made everything else.  In fact, it gives us a bit of a mystery.

 

In the Bible, when God makes something, it is always good and perfect and without need for improvement.  But Genesis Chapter One Verse Two reveals the picture of Earth as a fixer-upper, a planet that is without form, void, dark, completely in chaos.  That doesn't sound like something God did.  Many before me have pointed out that there is another verse in Scripture that speaks about the Earth in the same way.  Jeremiah 4:23 says, "I beheld the earth, and indeed it was without form, and void; and the heavens, they had no light."  And the men were gone, and the birds had fled, and everything was wasted, and all the cities were broken down in the presence of God...

 

Without going into an entire theological, exegetical breakdown, let me sum up by saying the Bible never repeats itself without reason.  Jeremiah was having a vision tying the judgment of God back to the very beginning of the world, a world that was formless and void and dark because God had overthrown it in judgment.

 

You see, the Bible is the revelation of God's dealings with humanity, a humanity that He created 6000 years ago on an earth that is older than that.  How much older?  He doesn't tell us.  There is an eternity past and an eternity future that God does not reveal to us in His word, so I don't concern myself so much with when God did it.  I just know that He did.

It Takes Faith

By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God,

so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.

Hebrews 11:3, NKJV

 

I wasn't there when Noah built the ark.  I wasn't there when Moses and the Children of Israel passed through the sea on dry land.  I wasn't there when the walls of Jericho fell.  I wasn't there when David killed Goliath.  I wasn't there when Elijah went to heaven in a whirlwind and a chariot of fire.  I wasn't there when Jesus walked on water or turned it into wine.  I wasn't there when He made the blind to see and the lame to walk, the deaf to hear and the dumb to talk.  I wasn't there when Lazarus and Jairus' daughter and the son of the widow of Nain were raised from the dead.  I wasn't there when the stone was rolled away, revealing an empty tomb three days after the death and burial of Jesus.  I wasn't there when Jesus went to heaven with the promise that He is coming back some day.

 

I didn't see any of those things with my own eyes.  I didn't hear any of it with my own ears.  And I don't know anybody who did.  But I have a book that tells me it is so.  It's not just any book, it is the collected written works of God, written by holy men of old as they were moved on by the Holy Spirit.  And it has stood the test of time. 

 

It is truth that has changed the lives of countless millions through the millennia.  It is truth that has saved the sinner, healed the sick, comforted the broken, encouraged the faint, strengthened the weak, and directed the lost.

 

Try as they might, no man has ever disproven its words, no matter how much they disagree.  Kings have tried to destroy it, heretics have tried to corrupt it, atheists have tried to dispute it, all to no effect.  The Word of God is a sure foundation and has withstood every test.  The louder men try to contradict it, the more confidence it gains.  Evidence is continually uncovered that verifies its truth.  There are more ancient manuscripts in existence for this text than any other body of writing, and in spite of what the skeptics say, from one end of the old world to the other, those ancient manuscripts are in complete agreement regarding the most important truths anyone has ever proclaimed.

 

So when I'm asked, "How can you believe this?" my answer is simple.  I have no reason not to believe it.  I have no problem with history; history agrees with me.  I have no problem with science; true science will always verify the veracity of the word.  I do have a problem with theories and unproven hypotheses, with scientists-so-called who start from false premises to promote fanciful claims, because they have placed their faith in something besides this book and its Author.

 

I wasn't there at the beginning.  No man was.  But I believe that in the beginning, God created.  It takes faith to believe that.  Of course, it takes faith NOT to believe it.  Faith that the finite mind of man can truly understand and explain the practical infinity of time and space and matter without God.  Faith that human reason and intellect are the highest achievements of natural selection and random acts of adaptations.  Faith that there is no higher law, or higher morality, or higher purpose in life than to make oneself happy.  Faith that there is no Higher Power.

 

It all takes faith, but I don't have the faith to believe in nothing, not even myself.  I know myself too well.  So I believe in God.  I believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and my personal Savior.  And I believe in the Bible as God's absolute and final word on any given subject addressed in it.

 

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for,

the evidence of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1, NKJV

World-Builder

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:1, NKJV

 

It's amazing to me that with all of the science and technology that we have developed, all the advancements in knowledge and ability that we have made, we still don't have anything close to a complete understanding of the universe we live in.  With the largest telescope that has ever been made, astronomers can still only estimate the size of what they can see.

 

It is estimated that there are One Hundred Billion Galaxies visible through the Hubble Telescope, and it is further estimated that telescope advancements could bring into our visibility another One Hundred Billion Galaxies beyond that, with who knows how many galaxies that we cannot see awaiting our discovery.

 

It is also estimated that there are, within each galaxy, One Hundred Billion stars.  And in our galaxy, The Milky Way, scientists hypothesize that there are Seventeen Billion Earth-sized planets.  Not one has ever been found, but conventional wisdom and statistical probability insist that they must be there.

 

Not all galaxies are the same, though they have been placed into three categories:  Spiral, Elliptical, and Irregular, with several sub-classifications within those categories.  And not all stars are the same; they come in different sizes.  There are Hyper Giants and Super Giants, Bright Giants, simple Giants, and sub-Giants,  Dwarf stars, and sub-Dwarfs, and they come in an assortment of colors--red, white, blue, brown, yellow, and orange.

 

Scientists think that our sun is about Four Billion years old, with about Seven Billion years of light left in it.  Some eon, it will balloon into a red dwarf, then collapse into a white dwarf before it pops out.  Or so they say.

 

There are eight (or nine or ten) planets revolving around our little yellow sun.  Four of them--Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars--are terrestrials, made up of metal and rock; perhaps the asteroid belt beyond Mars was a fifth before it cracked up.  Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants.  Uranus and Neptune are ice giants.  Beyond that are Pluto and something they're calling Eris, and lots of other bodies classified as dwarf planets.  Added to that are the comets, asteroids, ice, and space dust.

 

Our planet, planet Earth, is perfectly placed within its solar orbit.  Any closer, we'd fry.  Further away, we'd freeze.  And our Sun is perfectly placed within the galaxy, a rather backwater system in a quiet corner away from the more volatile regions of space.  In other words, Earth is the perfect house for humanity, a house built by God.

 

For that house God created light and water and air, sea and land and sky, grass and flowers and bushes and trees, birds, fish, and animals.  Last of all He made man, the first man, created in His own image and after His likeness.  He planted a garden home for that man to live in, gave him every fruit and vegetable imaginable for food to eat, surrounded him with the animals, made from his flesh a companion, and put him in charge of taking care of the place.

 

I am one of seven billion human descendants of that First Man, living on one planet among nine in our solar system, revolving around one star among 100 Billion in our galaxy, dancing in the cosmic spin of 100 Billion other galaxies with as many stars as ours, and that's just what we estimate that we can see.  Who knows how much more there is out there?  And all of it built by the great Creator, maker of heaven and earth.

 

If God did all that, with Divine design and execution, why do we sometimes fail to believe that God can do something for us?  I promise you, friend--God is able, if we will believe.

 

For every house is built by someone,

but He who built all things is God.

Hebrews 3:4, NKJV

Creator

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:1, NKJV

 

Work with me a moment.  Go outside.  Take a look around you, a long, slow, careful look.  What do you see?

 

From my front porch, I can see acres and acres of soft green grass and fragrant clover.  The crape myrtles are leafing out.  The peach tree has blossoms on it that will, hopefully, become peaches.  The cows in the pastures around us are dropping gangly calves.  The birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees are thriving on this marvelous spring day. 

 

Looking upward, I behold the vast blue sky, swept with high wisps of cloud.  And last night, the black velvet night sparkled with countless diamonds of stars, their light reaching us from billions of miles away.

 

All that I see and everything I can't see were created by God.

 

In eternity past, there was only God.  Almighty, infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.  Even those words fail to adequately define or describe Him, for the greatness that is God cannot truly be expressed in words.  There was timeless eternity, and then God started start.  Time began, and from nothing, God created everything.  From the foundation of His own self, he laid out the heavens and the earth, using nothing except His own creative power to do so.  He formed the atoms, fit the molecules together, fashioned the substance of everything that has ever been and ever will be, and flung it all into place.  From the tiniest quark to the farthest reaches of the universe, God actively brought into being the entirety of all that we know.  And He continues to span and hold it all in the palm of His hand.

 

That's the Creator who made us.  That's the Creator in whom I believe, who I desire to know personally.  That's the God I love.  Because after He finished making the universe, He made a special place for the one creation that He would make in His own image and after His own likeness.  The God who holds the universe had you and me in mind all along, but before He could create us, He had to create a place for us.  And He did it infinitely well.  We are not the accidental result of a random process of universal happenstance.  We were planned and prepared for, designed and produced by the Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth.  The All Powerful made us, the All Knowing made a plan for us, and the Always Present continually makes a way for us to know Him in an up-close and personal way.

 

All we have to do is open our eyes and see what God has done.  And when we understand just how infinitely and eternally powerful our God really is, then we will know that we can trust Him with everything in our lives.  He really does have the whole world in His hands.

 

 

The Big Bang Theory

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth..

Genesis 1:1, NKJV

 

At least as far back as Aristotle, humanity has been looking for scientific explanations of the universe.  Thousands of years of philosophy and debate and speculation and theories and rationalizations have brought us no nearer a definitive answer than we were when the debate started.  Every scientific theory is still just that--scientific theory.  And when reality contradicts theory, they add more theory to explain away the contradictions.  Don't believe me?  Read up on the big bang theory sometime.  It's a hoot.

 

The whole universe was in a hot dense state, then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started...wait!  And I'm not talking about the TV series.

 

A speck of matter imploded on itself about fourteen billion years ago, give or take an eon, casting the cosmos into the farflung reaches of nothingness and giving it a hurricanic spin.  Gasses and particles gathered together and stars were born, drawing more particles and elements into their gravitational pull until planets were formed, and somehow in all of that cataclysmic chaos, a little yellow sun in a backwater part of our galaxy gave rise to eight or nine or ten planets.  The third rock from the sun was a little blue one, perfectly placed by the accidental serendipity of the whirling universe so that it was neither too hot nor too cold, but just right.  In the primordial soup of earth's surface, a pair of amino acids met, bonded, and formed the first proteins, which over the process of time developed into the building blocks of all life on earth.  First the one celled organism, then the jellies, then the tadpolic progenitors of the fish that sprouted feet, flopped onto land with an aberrant intake and exhaust system, climbed a tree, evolved into the ancestral primate that produced both monkeys and mankind, and now here we are today, the pinnacle of an evolutionary process which politicians now claim will be the doom of the universe unless we change our fossil-fuel consuming ways...

 

And I know people who actually believe what I just described.  Unfortunately, it's all just theory.  No, excuse me.  Not just one theory, but innumerable theories mashed together in a morass of mental gymnastics that defies coherent thought.  And these theories are widely accepted as fact, not on the basis of empirical data and evidential proof, but on the assumption that each theory in and of itself is true.  Even wilder than that, put ten scientists in a room together, and they'll probably present fourteen differing opinions on how all of those theories fit together to give us the universe as we know it.

 

The Big Bang Theory makes for great television.  But truth?  Not so much.

 

The Bible gives us the origin of the universe in one simple statement:  In the beginning, God created.

 

The all knowing, all powerful, everywhere present all the time God originated all that is in a thought and made it by an act of His own will, speaking it into existence with one miraculous phrase, "Let there be!"  And it was.

 

We are not told when He did it, in terms of years or millennia or eons, but He started start.  In the beginning, God was already there and He began it.  We are not told how He did it, except that He took nothing from nothingness and made it something, and did so with the limitless power and ability of an infinite Almighty God.

 

If belief begins with God, then believing the rest is not difficult.  It's when we choose not to believe in God that we begin looking for other answers.  And in our limited capacity, we develop theories.  Did you know that Charles Darwin started out as a believer?  But when his daughter tragically died, he rejected the very idea of God and began looking for another explanation.  Start with the wrong premise, and you will never arrive at the correct conclusion.  But when you start with God, everything else falls into place.

 

 

Forever God

In the beginning, God...

Genesis 1:1, NKJV

Can you fathom forever?  Can a finite mind fully understand the infinite?  Is it possible to grasp the endless nature of eternity?

Everything that we know has tangible substance, form, function, definability.  There are points and lines and boundaries, discernible limits, measurable distances, Everything has a beginning and an end.  Everything that is wasn't always was, and won't always be.  Life itself is the mad dash from birth to death, encompassing everything from the life cycle of a single cell to the winding down of the whole wide universe.  And everything in that universe is composed of something else, where all the many parts make up the whole.

Everything, that is, except God.

Before the beginning, there was God.  Before the heavens and the earth.  Before light and darkness.  Before all that is and all that will ever be, there was God.

Nobody made Him.  Nobody created Him.  Nobody gave Him life.  He simply is.  And was.  And will be.  Forever.  In all dimensions and directions.  Without end.

From start to finish, all of time is confined within Him.  From the tiniest speck of cosmic dust to the largest stellar body, from one end of the physical universe the other, all of creation is contained within Him.

Throughout all eternity, forever and ever, He is God.  He is all powerful.  He is all knowing.  He is everywhere present all the time.  There is nothing that is out of His sight or beyond His reach.  There is nothing that surpasses His ability or authority.  His is the final and absolute word, the only word.

And this eternally existent God has created us and asked us to put our faith, our trust, our confidence, and our hope in Him and Him alone.  Is it too much to ask, that we trust an unknowable future to a knowable God?  Is it too much to ask, that put our hand in the hand of the One who made it all and holds it still?  Is it too much to ask, that we place our faith in the one who is greater than everything and less than nothing?

I cannot fathom forever, but I'm willing to believe in the one who not only can, but is forever.