Welcome to Connect with Skip Heitzig. We're glad you've joined us for today's program. If you do, you'll also receive Skip's weekly devotional email to inspire you with God's phyla categories for biological life. But he said everything knowable can be placed in one of five categories.
Time, Force, Action, Space, Matter. Now, I want to say congratulations Herbert. That was really good. We applaud you Herbert.
Wonderful that you could add to the scientific knowledge of the world. However, you just articulated Herbert Genesis 1-1. In the beginning, that's time. God, that's force.
Created, that's action. The heavens, that's space. And the earth, that's matter. And what we start discovering as we go through the book of Genesis is that it's very precise. And these scientists come along and go, wow, look what I just discovered.
Everybody goes, wow, give you a prize, dude, a Nobel Prize. And yet, I submit to you that the man or woman of faith is miles ahead of the man or woman of science. You see, it says in Hebrews chapter 4 or Hebrews chapter 11, which is which are visible.
Did you hear that? He just made a statement of faith. By faith, we believe that everything in the material world is made up of materials you can't see. We call those atomic and subatomic particles. Somebody came along and discovered that all matter is broken up into these invisible particles and that's what everything's made out of.
And they come along and they say, we just made a discovery. The Bible tells us plainly that everything we can see wasn't made up of visible but invisible particles. So the person of faith will be further ahead than even the person of great science. So if you can combine science and faith, and I believe you can quite well, you can be pretty far ahead of the game. In the beginning, God created. I know that we've just barely covered one verse and we'll speed it up as we go, but this is pretty foundational.
Something else. One of the things we discover, and I'm milking it for this reason. God doesn't tell us a lot about his creative process. He doesn't give us much information. If you were to count, there's only 630 words God uses to describe the origin of everything. This is an abridged version of creation. He spent far more time and space talking about Abraham, far more time and space talking about the tabernacle, just a few words speaking about creation. But the purpose of Genesis isn't a biology lesson. How many in Moses' day or Abraham's time would have understood it if it were? It has an agenda to show us briefly the origin of all things and then to take us quickly to the origin of the Hebrew nation through which genealogy would come the savior of the world, the Messiah.
So the book has a definite agenda as it takes us through. So in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Okay. Those people. The modern mind today believes that evolution is such a done deal and such a closed case, it can't even be argued.
And if it is argued, it's by idiotic fundamentals who happen to stupidly believe in the literal inspiration of the Bible. And I'm one of them. But they think it's such a done deal. Everybody knows. Try it.
Talk about this publicly with someone. Everybody knows, they will say, that evolution is a fact. It's a known fact. It's a done deal. It's a closed case. Not so fast. Some of the most brilliant minds in the scientific community would say, not so fast. It is not a closed case.
It is not a done deal. It is still a theory and it is still speculative. A theory is still, as it was in Darwin's time, a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without direct factual support.
Close quote. Now if you studied the origin of the species by Darwin and some of his other writings, you know that one of the glaring problems Charles Darwin saw with the evolutionary theory was the fossil record. He knew that there were huge gaps, inexplicable by him, in the fossil record. That paleontology did not agree with his theory, but he also believed and stated that time would vindicate him. That the more we study the fossil record, the more we will know that evolution is a fact. Over 120 years after Darwin, and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded, we now have a quarter of a million fossil species, but the situation hasn't changed much. We have fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time.
Now, I'm going to tell you a story. It took a long time, billions of years ago. There were gases and explosions and fluids and other explosions and great upheavals and cataclysms and eventually a tiny particle of rubber was formed. It took a long time and it took a lot of processes, but a little tiny particle of rubber was formed and then over thousands and even millions of more years, a tread formed on the rubber.
It became more complex and four of these things formed sequentially and then other explosions and gases and metal formed in any way. Over billions of years, a car formed and came up out of the earth. Now, you're laughing and that is the right response. It's stupid. It's silly. You look at a car or you look at a car and you say, look at a beautiful automobile. It belies design. It's been designed and if it's been designed, there has to be a designer. It's the teleological argument for creation. Anything designed must have a designer. So, if that's true of a car or a watch, what about a brain? A complex human being?
Just happened? A fortuitous occurrence of accidental circumstance? Randomness over billions of years? That's not smart. That defies logic. It defies good science. Now, I will also admit something to you because I studied the sciences. I discovered in my classes, in my courses, in my work before I got into the ministry that most intelligent people do believe in evolution and that stunned me.
It was an eye-opener, but then I discovered why. I truly believe this. Most intelligent people believe in evolution because they believe most intelligent people believe in evolution. They don't want to be an outcast.
They don't want to be considered controversial or stupid, easier to fit in instead of go against the system that many scientists dare to do. If you believe in evolution, I will congratulate you right here and right now. You have way more faith than I have. You're a great man or woman of faith. For you to say that over billions of years, just randomness is responsible for a highly complex carbon life in this biosphere takes more faith than to believe in the beginning God, the first uncaused cause, created force, the heavens and the earth. And that's how the Bible begins. And that's what the Bible appeals to. Can I just say this too? So maybe we won't make it through Genesis 1, but let me just say this too. Do you realize what you will be able to live through in life with great confidence if you believe this?
Can you fathom the kind of stability you can have if you believe this? You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we return to Skip's teaching, misunderstandings about Jesus abound. Some see him as a prophet, others as a moral teacher, and still others as just a myth or mere historical figure. But the Bible tells a different story about who Jesus is. We want to help you know the real Jesus of the Bible by sending you Skip Heitzig's nine-message CD series, Who Is This Jesus? In this eye-opening series, Pastor Skip addresses common misconceptions about Jesus, clarifying both Jesus's humanity and his divinity, to equip you to confidently answer questions about who Jesus really is. We'll send you the Who Is This Jesus series, as well as Skip's booklet for new believers titled Life Change, as thanks for your gift of $50 or more to reach more people with God's love through Connect with Skip Heitzig. Request your copy when you give.
Now, let's get back to Skip for more of today's teaching. I paid for that pretty hefty thing unless they made that beginning statement. You created the heavens, the earth, the sea. And if you did that, then that is my basis of my prayer.
If you did that, then you can certainly answer this. Here's my issue. And before I bring to you my issue, my problem, I'm recognizing who you are. And if you believe that that's who God is, you're going to find faith comes quite easily.
You have a relationship with the one who made the heavens and the earth, sky is the limit. Okay, verse two. The earth was without form and void. Two Hebrew words, tohu v'bohu. Tohu means ruined or empty.
Bohu means vacant. The earth was ruined, empty, vacant. And darkness was upon the face of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. It was without form and void.
It was unfinished in shape. It was uninhabitable by creatures. That was in the beginning. Now, some people see a gap between Genesis 1-1 and Genesis 1-2. They see an initial creation in verse one and then a subsequent recreation in verse two. And that is because the word in verse two, the earth was, you see the word was, it's the Hebrew word hayatah, which can be and often is translated became. And the earth became without form and void. It wasn't made that way in the beginning, but it became that way.
Now follow me here. They will then point to Isaiah 45 and I'm going to read a section of scripture to you. Isaiah 45 verse 18. For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it, who established it, who did not create it in vain. He did not create it, tohu is the Hebrew word.
He did not create it in vain. Who formed it to be inhabited, I am the Lord and there is no other. So, many will point to some cataclysmic, pre-Adamic catastrophe between verse one and verse two. And this is where they will fit the fall of Satan, the fall of Lucifer. Lucifer son of the morning light bear who fell with a third of the angels and was cast to the earth. And some will even say there was a whole human race headquartered in the Garden of Eden over which Lucifer was overseeing and then he fell. He fell and there's all sorts of stories. Now, it is possible that Satan did fall between verses one and two and that the earth became without form and void.
There was a subsequent judgment before a recreation. But I just got to say, I don't know. I wasn't there. Again, the question of Job, where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
I have to say, I wasn't there. So, it is a possibility. It is a theory. It's called the Gap Theory.
I'm not sure. So, let's keep going and look at the six days of creation beginning in verse three. Then God said, let there be light and there was light.
It's even more emphatic in the original. God said, light be. You know, God didn't go, now how am I going to do this? What is the recipe again for light?
How do I work this out? Just, he spoke. The very first words of God recorded in scripture here, let there be light and light happened, light was. And God saw the light that it was good and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light day and the darkness he called night and evening and morning were the first day. Now, notice the phrase, let there be. If you were to count them up, I've counted them for you.
They appear ten times in this chapter. We call these the Ten Commandments of Creation. Let there be, let there be, let there be, let there be. God said that ten times and he framed it by his word and it happened.
God said, let there be light and there was light. Notice in verse five God called the light day, day. Okay, can I just give you a little bit of pre-information for the rest of the Bible? You're going to find three usages of the word day in the Bible. The Hebrew word is Yom. You've heard of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Yom is day.
Three ways it's used in the Bible. One is the portion of the 24-hour period where there is light. That is called the day, it's number one. Number two, the Bible uses the term day for a period of time that is several days or weeks or months or years. The term the day of the Lord is such a usage. It covers a whole bunch of events that don't happen in a 12-hour or 24-hour period. But years, the day of the Lord or the day of Christ is another.
But then the third usage is I believe this usage, a 24-hour period. And whenever you find a numerical adjective like first day, second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day like you do in Genesis, it refers to a 24-hour period. Thus, I do not believe in theistic evolution.
You could see where I was going with that. I don't believe that it took God millions of years and billions of years and he called that period a day and then more stuff took place and he called that a day. God did it in six 24-hour periods and I think that was a long time. I mean God could have done it in six seconds. He took a whole day to do that.
He took his time. So I believe in these six days, 24-hour periods because it says and evening and morning were the first day and evening and morning were the second day. Now in hearing that, you might think, didn't the author get that backwards? Shouldn't it be and morning and evening were the first day instead of an evening and morning were the first day?
Well, apparently not. In fact, the Hebrews because of this verse reckon the beginning of their day at twilight. Sun goes down. They see the first three stars. That's the beginning of the day and it goes all the way through to the next evening when it's twilight again. So if you're in Israel and you want to celebrate Shabbat Sabbath, which is Saturday, it begins Friday evening.
You better get home quickly. And evening and morning were the first day. Brings up a question. God said, let there be light. Yet we don't find the sun, moon and stars created until the fourth day. So how could there be light in our universe without everything that we know as the source or the reflection of light to be present? That's a good question. I can only answer it by saying, I don't know. But I can speculate and I do want to say I'm giving my opinion now.
There's a couple of things here. The Bible says God dwells in unapproachable light. There was in the Old Testament this thing called the Shekinah glory of God, this visible light filled presence of God that appeared in the tabernacle later in the temple for a period of time. It was this manifestation of God and it was in light. It could have been that before God created the sun, moon, stars on day four, that day one, it was simply his Shekinah glory. If you've studied the electromagnetic spectrum, you know that radiation that travels at 186,000 miles per second, photon energy, goes all the way from radio waves up through infrared, then visible light, and then ultraviolet, rentrographic rays, gamma rays, cosmic rays, but even in that visible light, there's a range of size and length of waves so that even without the sun, even without the moon, there certainly could have been just God emanating. Here's another explanation, that on day one, God created the sun, stars, moon, et cetera, but they didn't become visible because of the canopy, the shroud around the earth until day four.
That's what many speculate, but I'll just say I don't know. God called the light day and the darkness he called night, so evening and morning were the first day. Now here's day two. Then God said, let there be a firmament, or a vault, or a dome, is the Hebrew translation of the word rakia. Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters. Thus, God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament and the waters which were above the firmament, and God called the firmament heaven.
And so evening and morning were the second day. Now it's believed that there was at this time a canopy, a water canopy, a vapor canopy, like a dense fog above the atmosphere, in the ionosphere that did a number of things. It encircled the earth, it created sort of a greenhouse or hothouse effect, you'd have temperate, mild, warm climate worldwide, you'd have no barren deserts, you'd have no polar ice caps, there was this uniform temperature created by this hothouse effect because of the vapor canopy that watered the earth. By the way, there's a lot of water up there, even without the canopy.
Kauai, there's a rainforest in Kauai that boasts of 200 inches of rain per year. There's a lot of water up there. But one time it is believed that this canopy of vapor, of water, that watered the whole earth, it would keep mass air movements from being created, winds, hurricanes, etc.
It would filter out the ultraviolet radiation, that very short wavelength radiation that either causes or helps in shortening the lifespan of man so that would account for the longevity of people upon the earth. So that there was the earth, this unformed mass, God created light, then God separated the vapor canopy above the atmosphere, creating this greenhouse effect so that carbon-based life could flourish upon the earth. And He called the firmament heaven. We're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember that when you give $50 or more to help reach more people with the gospel through Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send you Pastor Skip's series, Who Is This Jesus?, and his booklet, Life Change, to help you better understand both who Jesus is and why you can trust what the Bible says and who you are as a believer in Christ. To request your copy of these resources, call 800-922-1888.
That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash offer. For more from Skip, be sure to check out the many resources available at connectwithskip.com slash store. Come back next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's Word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast your burdens on His Word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.
