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.
No comments:
Post a Comment