A Hidden History: Formless and Void

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

The earth was without form, and void;

and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Genesis 1:1-2, NKJV

 



 

First there was God--Father, Word, and Spirit.

 

Then there was Wisdom, with which He made plans.

 

Then there were Angels, stars of light in the expanse of God.

 

Then there was Heaven, the abode of angels and the pattern for creation--not the physical heavens of creation, but the trans-physical, trans-dimensional Spiritual plane from which God's omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence emanates.

 

And then there was Creation.

 

Out of nothing, God created everything.  He called into existence the things that were not and they were, from invisibility brought into being the things which are seen.  By His word He framed the ages and the worlds, laid the beams of the heavens and the foundations of the earth.  He spoke, and it was, and because He speaks, it remains.

 

It wasn't the world that we know now.  It was the original earth, the one before Adam, and what it was like we can only surmise.  Perhaps this was when dinosaurs roamed the earth.  Perhaps there were orders and races of creatures of which we have no remains whatsoever.  Perhaps there were civilizations long before ours that are now buried and unfound in the earth or the depths of the sea.  Imagination could fill this untold tale with all sorts of details.  Suffice it to say, when God creates something, He creates it complete and good, just like He intends.

 

But something happened.  Genesis doesn't tell us what happened or when, only that it did. 

 

The earth that God created in perfection was thrown into chaos and confusion, emptied of its fullness, and shrouded in darkness. Jeremiah's vision says that the mountains trembled and the hills moved back and forth, that men disappeared and the birds fled, that the fruitful land became a wilderness and all its cities were broken down.  The cataclysm that left earth formless and void and dark was brought about by the presence of the Lord and His fierce anger.

 

Isaiah and Ezekiel give us glimpses of what precipitated the destruction.  The anointed cherub Lucifer, the most beautiful and highly placed of all angels, rebelled in pride against the glory and power of God.  Seeking a place above and beyond the exalted position in which God had placed him, he defiled the sanctuaries of his ministry.  He led others to join him in his iniquity.  He refused to repent, instead corrupting the earth and all that was in it with the extent of his sins.  At last, God acted.  Lucifer was cast from the mountain of God to the earth and there denuded of his heavenly glory.  The fire of God consumed him, devoured him, reduced him to a blackened, ashen specter of what he once had been.  In the sight of all who knew him, Lucifer's beauty and majesty were stripped away and he was consigned to an ugly, pitiful, desperate existence on its way to a single destination--the everlasting fire that God prepared for him at the end of all things.

 

Looking over the ruins of the earth and the corruption and devastation therein, God acted again.  The earth and all that was in it must be washed away, the filth of Lucifer's rebellion eradicated completely.  God flooded creation for the first time, filling the earth with water until it was formless and void and silent and dark.

 

I cannot help but remember the verse from Isaiah that tells us, "When the enemy comes in, like a flood the Spirit of the Lord lifts up a standard against him."  That's exactly what happened.  God used his Spirit to fill the earth with water and cleanse it from the destruction of Lucifer's fall.  And once the destruction had been destroyed, the Spirit rested.  The breath of God moved like wind over the waters, hovering, brooding, waiting.

 

For the light was coming.

A Hidden History: Eternal Stage

 

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

Genesis 1:1, NKJV

 

God's creation is tripartite in nature, heaven above, hell below, and earth in the middle.  This is the setting for all that happens from the beginning of creation to the end of time.  It is a grand stage of universal proportions, set within the confines of an infinite God, and managed exclusively by Him.  It was designed by His will, and made for His purpose.  And here we watch the eternal plan of the ages unfold in a drama unparalleled.

 

The heavens consist of three levels--first, middle, and third.  The first heaven is all that we can see, the expanse of the universe that extends from our terrestrial sphere outward, including all the galaxies and stars and planets that are all integral parts of God's glorious creation.  The middle heaven is that which exists on a spiritual plane between the habitation of man and the dwelling place of God.  Here the war is waged between the forces of good and evil.  And then there is the third heaven, the eternal abode of the triune Godhead.

 

We catch glimpses of Heaven--the third or highest heaven--throughout the Scriptures, but the writers are often reticent in their tellings.  There is the original Eden, that garden of pleasantness and delight that is filled with  all manner of glory and beauty.  In the midst of the garden is the holy mountain, the heavenly Zion, and on its bejeweled heights is the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.  At the center of the citadel stands the temple of tabernacle of the testimony of God, in the courts of which sits the throne encompassed in rainbows of brilliance and filled with lightnings and thunderings and voices.  In that heavenly temple, there is a sea of glass, an altar of incense, a seven-fold lamp, and behind its doors rests the ark of the covenant--all of them patterns for what will be on earth.  Though God cannot be contained by any created structure, here He sits enthroned in power and majesty, the almighty overseer of all that is, and with him the Lamb slain from before the foundation world and the Spirit burning as an eternal flame.  Here the angels come to worship, and here the future awaits God's creation.

 

The earth is home to humanity, perhaps of all life in the universe, and consists of three parts as well--sky, land and sea.  This place we know personally and very well.  Here God placed those created in His own image.  Here He watched them wrestle with temptation and fall victim to its sway.  Here He initiated redemption, fulfilling through the fallen the force of His salvific plan.  Here the seed of the woman and the Son of man became the pinnacle of God's purposes, giving His own life and spilling His own blood as the price to ransom all of creation from the devil's grasp.

 

And then there is hell, which came lastly and more recently into existence, and it consists of three parts as well, each with its own place in the plan of God.  When Lucifer fell prey to his own pride, he led a third of the angelic hosts in a failed revolt against God.  Their rebellion resulted in the formation of the lake of fire, a prison of eternal punishment for evil and all those who choose its ways over the will of God.  When Lucifer tempted Adam and Even in the earthly Eden with promises of godhood, death was introduced to what should have been an immortal humanity.  Their bodies would return to the dust from whence it came, their life breath would return to God from whence it came, and their souls--that eternal part of them--would await judgment in a holding place called the grave.  And finally there is the abyss, where fallen angels are held in chains and darkness awaiting their judgment.

 

The earth and its heavens as we know them are temporary.  When their part in the plan of God is done, they will be folded up like a garment, consumed with fire Divine, and recreated as the new heavens and the new earth wherein righteousness dwells.  But Heaven and Hell are eternal.  One will forever be the paradise of God, the other everlasting fire and torment for the lost.  Our final destination is dependent upon our choices, just as Lucifer had his choice, and Adam had his.  So will we choose death and eternal separation from God, or will we choose life forever in the presence of the One who made us?

 

Let us choose life!

The Big Adventure

Life with my Dad was many things, but one thing it wasn't ever was dull.  The man lived for excitement and adventure.  To hear him tell it, he grew up wrestling alligators and handling water moccasins in the Bayou Teche.  He played championship-winning basketball as a teenager, jumped out of airplanes in the 82nd Airborne Infantry, fought Germans like mad during his time in Europe (when the War was a 20-year-old memory), and joined the police force to work undercover narcotics in the roughest parts of town.  He ate monkey fingers and fermented fish dip with Laotians, drank homemade ale with Russians while they sat in homemade saunas and beat each other with handfuls of twigs, loved hot peppers, and sucked the fat out of crawdad heads.  He rode motorcycles and shot guns and played yard football and walked the rivers of Texas and the deserts of New Mexico looking for arrowheads, stone tools, and pottery left behind by ancient Americans.  He went to Mexico often when we lived on the border, traveled to Russia three times to preach the gospel to those who had never heard, substitute taught in the Reservation schools around Albuquerque, worked as a bank security guard, and took on four troubled churches as a pastor and set them on a good course.  There weren't very many things he wouldn't try...at least once.

 

But as long as I live, there is one tale I will never tire of telling, Dad's last big adventure on this terrestrial sphere.

 

When he was forty-nine years old, having two bad knees and a history of strokes, Dad came to my place for a weekend visit and early on Saturday morning determined to conquer the Florida Mountains.  Taking a canteen of water, a .22 revolver, and his trusty Spaniel Sugar as a companion, Dad drove out to the acreage he owned south of Deming, New Mexico, navigating a rocky county road to the base of the mountains below Spring Canyon, and there embarked on a climb that took him up the east side of the Big Floridas to a place they call the Eye of the Needle, a rock-arch formation on the heights.  Sitting in the middle of an old eagle's nest, from which he could see for sixty miles in any direction, he called us on the cell phone, exulting in the glory of God's creation and his own conquest of the mountain peaks.

 

The rest of the afternoon passed with us sitting at home waiting for his return.  He kept calling us with progress reports of his return trip, but we could tell he wasn't making much.  Daylight turned to dusk, and still he wasn't home.  And then nighttime fell and finally he called again with these words, "Well, I'm all wore out, and Sugar is all wore out.  I guess we're gonna spend the night on the mountain." 

 

An unsheltered October night in the desert?  I don't think so!  "Where are you?" I demanded, and he told me where to find the car.  "I'm about a hundred yards from the car," he said, and I told him, "We're coming for you."  I called my right-hand man and closest friend, a former sheriff's deputy from Arizona who had done search and rescue before.  We loaded into his Blazer and drove to the mountain.  We found the car quick enough, and Dad was no where in sight.  We started hollering, and way off in the dark distance, we heard him shouting back.  I thought it might help if he fired off his gun, but my friend took off in the dark, walking a straight line to my father.

 

A hundred yards my foot!  That man was a quarter-of-a-mile up the side of the mountain...completely exhausted and looking a little worse for wear.  And then we heard the story.  On his way down the mountain, the trail had collapsed under him, sending him in a downward tumble midst rocks and dirt that left him slightly bruised and did no favors for his bad knees.  He coaxed the dog into jumping off the ledge to him, found an eight-foot yucca stick to use as a staff, and set off in the direction of his car.  Then his dog AND his legs gave out completely.

 

Determined not to let a little thing like the inability to walk stop him, Dad got Sugar on his lap and started scooting down the trail.  That would explain how he tore the seat out of his britches and got cactus thorns in his butt.  He did his very best to get off that mountain before dark, but he didn't make it.

 

So there he sat, waiting for us.  Sugar came down the trail to meet us, her little fat body quivering and shaking with both exhaustion and excitement to see us.  She led us back to him, and when he saw us, up from the ground he arose, maneuvering that long stick around in such a way as to nearly take our heads off.  He was going to walk the rest of the way by himself!  But after falling twice, we got on either side, wrapped his arms around our shoulders, and together we got my Dad off the mountain.

 

Back home, Mom got him bathed and in bed, and the man slept for about fifteen hours.  But what a story he told!  He had even brought feathers back from the eagle's nest, and that stick remained on my porch till the day I moved.

 

That was Dad's last big adventure.  He died three months later following a simple procedure on his knee, passing from this earthly existence into the adventure of eternity...which is where he'd been headed all along.  From the day he met Jesus Christ as savior and Lord, Dad had been on his way to heaven.  For twenty-two years he served the Lord with every ounce of strength and ability that he had.  He brought in my Mom, and me, and countless others, to the saving grace of Jesus Christ.  And for the last eighteen years he has been with the Lord.

 

My wife and sons know him only by the pictures I have and the stories we share.  With Son Number Three on the way, I wish more and more that he was around to love them and show them the way.  But I'm thankful that he showed it to me, and I pray that I'm as good a guide as he was.  I may never climb the Florida Mountains to the Eye of the Needle to sit in an eagle's nest, but I know one day I will sit beneath the shade of the Tree of Life on the banks of the eternal river that flows from the throne of God.  And there I will join him with my boys in the reunion that will never end.

 

Happy Father's Day, Dad.  We'll see you soon!