TEXT: GENESIS 1:26-28

SOMEONE HANDED ME AN ARTICLE FROM A READERS DIGEST MAGAZINE LAST SUNDAY AND AS I READ THAT ARTICLE, IT JUST KINDLY SET MY MIND TO THINKING. WE LIVE IN AN INTELLECTUAL AGE WHEN SCIENTISTS AND ARCHAEOLOGISTS AND A WHOLE HOST OF OTHERS ARE TRYING TO PIECE TOGETHER A THEORY THAT WILL EXPLAIN THE FOSSIL BONES, TEETH AND SKELETONS OF PREHISTORIC ANIMALS THEY ARE FINDING IN VARIOUS PLACES ON THE FACE OF THIS OLD PLANET. OF COURSE THOSE PEOPLE WILL NEVER ACCEPT ANYTHING THAT A PERSON SUCH AS YOU AND I MIGHT SAY, AND EVEN A LOT OF CHRISTIANS WOULD MAINTAIN THAT THERE IS TOO MUCH PRESUMPTION INVOLVED IN WHAT WE SAY ON THE SUBJECT. I WONDER HOW MANY OF YOU REALIZE THAT ABOUT 90 PERCENT OF WHAT THE SCIENTISTS AND ARCHAEOLOGISTS PUT TOGETHER ON THE SUBJECT IS NOTHING MORE THAN PRESUMPTION? THEY CRAWL AROUND ON THEIR HANDS AND KNEES WITH A CAMEL HAIR BRUSH AND A FINE TOOTH COMB LOOKING FOR WHATEVER BITS AND PIECES THEY CAN FIND, THEN THEY TRY TO CONSTRUCT WHAT THEY BELIEVE THE CREATURE LOOKED LIKE WITH WHAT THEY HAVE, BUT TOO MANY OF THEIR PIECES ARE MISSING. THEY JUST HAVE TO GLUE IT ALL TOGETHER ON ASSUMPTION. IT SEEMS THEY THINK IT IS ALL RIGHT FOR THEM TO ASSUME CERTAIN THINGS, BUT ANYONE ELSE MUST HAVE UNQUESTIONABLE PROOF OR THEY WILL NOT ACCEPT IT. BROTHERS AND SISTERS, THIS MESSAGE IS NOT FOR THEM, IT IS FOR GOD’S PEOPLE WHO ARE CAPABLE OF RECEIVING REVELATION FROM WHAT GOD INSPIRED HIS PROPHETS TO WRITE. I REALIZE THIS IS NOT A SALVATION MESSAGE, BUT MAY GOD MAKE IT INTERESTING ENOUGH TO ACQUAINT OUR SPIRITUAL MINDS WITH WHAT IS WRITTEN I THE BIBLE. MANY OF YOU MAY THINK IT DOESN’T MATTER TOO MUCH ABOUT THESE THINGS, BUT I BELIEVE THE PEOPLE OF GOD OUGHT TO AT LEAST AVAIL THEMSELVES OF THE OPPORTUNITY TO FIND OUT WHAT CAN BE LEARNED FROM THE SCRIPTURES, SO THEY WILL AT LEAST HAVE SOMETHING TO THROW BACK AT THOSE WHO MAKE FUN OF THEM FOR BELIEVING IN GOD. WHEN ONE OF THEM STANDS TELLING YOU THAT WE ALL CAME FROM MONKEYS, YOU OUGHT TO AT LEAST BE SETTLED IN YOUR SOUL AS TO WHO YOUR ANCESTORS ARE. IT IS TRUE THAT THE BIBLE DOES NOT GO INTO LENGTHY EXPLANATIONS OF WHAT TOOK PLACE ON THE EARTH BEFORE ADAM CAME INTO THE PICTURE, BUT CERTAINLY THERE IS ENOUGH WRITTEN FOR THE HOLY GHOST TO TAKE IT AND REVEAL THE REST OF WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW. LET ME TELL YOU, SAINTS, YOU WILL NOT FIND ANYTHING IN THE BIBLE THAT WOULD EVER LEAD YOU TO BELIEVE WE SPRANG FROM MONKEYS. MAN HAS CONCOCTED THAT THEORY BECAUSE GOD HAS ALLOWED THEM TO FIND CERTAIN THINGS THAT DEFINITELY DO DATE BACK TO A TIME BEFORE THE WRITTEN HISTORY OF THIS WORLD BEGINS. THEY HAVE NO CONFIDENCE IN THE BIBLE ACCOUNT OF MAN’S BEGINNING BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO REVELATION OF A JUDGMENT OF THIS PLANET BETWEEN VERSES 1 AND 2 IN THE FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS. THEREFORE, WHEN THEY FIND BONES AND SUCH LIKE OF HUMAN-LIKE CREATURES WHICH DATE BACK INTO PREHISTORIC TIMES, TO THEM THAT RULES OUT THE CREATION ACCOUNT IN THE BIBLE.

ARE YOUR ANCESTORS MONKEYS?

Someone handed me a little tract the other night. It showed a monkey dressed in a pair of overalls and he was supposed to be saying, Imagine them trying to make a man out of me. Then on the back was a poem supposedly written by this monkey. It was written about things that he would not do, things that a monkey would not do, but man in his unregenerate state is doing them. For a monkey to write such a poem is just about as realistic as for man to have sprang from one, would you not agree? Men everywhere are searching for answers, but the answers for saints of God are not going to come out of a cave someplace; they will come out of this blessed word of God as the Holy Ghost sees fit to reveal them to us. There is no denying the fact that life existed on this planet long before God began to create what we have recorded history on. You cannot go into a museum and look at giant tusks from a Mastodon elephant and deny that life existed on earth in the prehistoric ages. Teeth and bones from these Mastodons were found when excavations were made for the New York City subway system, but there has never been such a creature on earth since the day God created Adam, gave him a body, and put him on earth at the head of all His creation. You may as well settle it in your mind even though some animals are fast becoming extinct, there is still a representation of what God created, which we find recorded in Genesis 1 and 2, and everything that was in Noah’s Ark in a true representation, was in our Garden of Eden, and everything of the animal kingdom that is here today was in Noah’s Ark, so they really are finding bones, skeletons, and skulls and such like from an age before our Garden of Eden. Regardless of what they find though, they can never use it to prove their theory of evolution; it will always be just a theory. In this article I was reading, there was one part that really struck my attention. In certain areas of Africa, they have discovered skeletons, skulls and certain other fragments of fossilized bones that they think are that of human beings. They are trying to use that to prove their theory of evolution, trying to bridge the gap between what they know as fact and what they believe, which is based only on a theory. Every time I read something like this, it causes me to be thankful to God for what He has caused holy men of ages past to write about the resurrection of our bodies. It gives us the hope that one day we will live again, in our same bodies. Job was not thinking about evolution when he cried from the depths of his soul, “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.” (Job 19:25-27) Do not tell me that old fellow was looking for another body of some kind. After what he had suffered there would have been little to cause him to desire to come back in another body and start all over again, but he had a revelation in his soul that had nothing to do with what he liked, or disliked about his present life. As for his present life, he said, “My kinfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me. They that dwell in my house, and my maids, count me as a stranger: I am an alien in their sight.” In the natural, he was in a sad shape; he said, My servant will not even answer me when I call to him, but, Praise God! He still had a revelation in his soul, that none of these circumstances affected. That is how we are to be in the face of all that is thrown before us in our daily lives. Regardless of how much scientific theory we may have shoved in our faces, we should have a revelation in our soul that could never be affected by any of that. Listen to a few more words of Job. This will help you to better understand the difference between Holy Ghost revelation and scientific theory. What old Job had was more than just a theory, and we can not find any evidence that would suggest Job got his revelation from something that was written by someone else. We will not read straight through, but just listen to some of what he said. I am reading from chapter 14. “Man that is born of woman is of few days, and full of trouble. (We know that is the truth) He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not. So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. O that thou (speaking to God) wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time and remember me! If a man die, shall he live again? (He asked that in the form of question, but he knew the answer. Listen to the rest of this verse 14, and verse 15.) All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. Thou shalt call and I will answer thee”. That was not just a theory, nor was it an assumption; it was a revelation hid in his soul.

ASSUMPTION

Now I will show you how we must assume certain things. We cannot prove that Job was a descendant of Abraham, but I believe his revelation marks him as being from that patriarchal lineage of Abraham. After Sarah died, Abraham married again, and fathers many sons. Naturally, we can only assume that Job came through that lineage, but his fear of God, and the revelation he held in his bosom gives us every reason to believe he did. At least that is an assumption that makes more sense than the one which has us descending from monkeys. We have as much right to assume certain things that are not completely spelled out in the word of God, as the evolutionists do to try to connect up their theories. When it comes to the resurrection of the dead though, we do not have to assume; it has been made very clear to believers from what is written in the Bible. If you are one of those who believe in a resurrection, but you have always thought that we would get new bodies or maybe I should say, different bodies, you do not really believe in resurrection; it would not be resurrection, it would be reincarnation and would fit into their evolution theory. If that were true, the scriptures would need to read like this, Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and was crucified at the hands of wicked and evil men. He was buried in a new tomb and on the third day He came back to life in a different body. It doesn’t read like that at all, does it? On the 3rd day, He came back in the same body that He had suffered and died in. Otherwise, He could not have showed them the nail prints in his hands, nor the sword wound in His side. Now if Jesus rose from the dead in His same body, so will every other saint likewise, or God would not have had Paul write that, “Christ is risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept.” (1 Cor. 15:20) Brothers and Sisters, we are saying these things to show you that God, inn His word, has made specific promises and provisions, from which we learn that there is coming a time when the ground will have to give up every body of every human being that has ever walked upon the face of this earth. On the other hand, there is nothing whatsoever written about a resurrection of animals and beasts that have lived and died right along with man. That is why I say that all the bones and fossils they are finding in their excavations are bones of animals, animals from a prehistoric era of time when God had His angelic family in a garden to be tested. Do not tell me angels never had to be tested, or I will just simply ask you, How come there are good angles that serve God and bad angels (demons) that serve the devil, God’s adversary? They had to make a choice somewhere. God did not create a great host of bad angels, no more than He created Lucifer (the devil) to be a bad angel.

LUCIFER’S FIRST ESTATE

Somewhere back in time, millions of years ago, this planet was inhabited by a form of life, and He who to us is God of all creation, was God of that prehistoric era also. Greek mythology might have it that there was war in heaven among the gods, and the one we serve became the ruler of this world order. Every child of God knows better than that. Furthermore, I will say this, there are very few genuine Holy Ghost Christians out there crawling around on their hands and knees looking for bones to prove some kind of anti-God theory. Holy Ghost Christians spend their time excavating in the pages of this blessed word of God. There is still much traditional rubble to be swept and shoveled out of the way in order to uncover the pure truth of God’s word, but like I have said many times before, I believe it is the will of God for the end time bride of Christ to be revelated on all these subjects that have remained a mystery through the years. In Isaiah, chapter 14, and Ezekiel, chapter 28, we read words from two different prophets, words written more than one hundred years apart, but they both give us a little glimpse of Lucifer, the devil, before he became the adversary of God, his creator. Isaiah is the only one that ever named him or called his name, a name that speaks of brightness, or morning star, according to the Hebrew word it was translated from. This was the angelic name he had before he was cast down from his place of authority. Isaiah does not mention the names nor titles that other scripture writers, as well as the Lord Jesus attributed to him. This same angel, in his fallen state, is referred to as Satan, the Devil, the deceiver of mankind, the old serpent, and in other terminology, but Isaiah just calls him Lucifer and goes on to tell about him, how he began to exalt himself to be equal with God. Turn to Isaiah 14:12-15, “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning? How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, (Do you see what God looks at? The heart. It is what we have in our heart that makes the difference with God. So Lucifer has said something in his heart. In other words, thought and planned earnestly.) I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the North: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.” This was a warfare between spirit beings, but not a warfare between rival gods. It was one of God’s angelic beings that became puffed up with pride and became jealous of God to the point where he planned how he would exalt himself to be equal with God. Of course, his tactics have remained the same ever since then. He was lifted up by pride, but he recruited a third of the other angels to take sides with him against God. That resulted in Lucifer, along with all the rest of them, being cast out into the earth, to be known as evil spirits. These are the demons that constantly badger the children of God. Naturally, they are all subject to their leader, Satan, the devil, but their chief aim is to defeat the plan and purpose of God. Some are delegated to promote pride, others jealousy, others selfishness, and right on through all the things that are contrary to holiness and righteousness. Just as God is full of righteous attributes, and His angels promote and work toward directing men in right ways, Satan is full of unrighteous attributes and his angels, (demons) are busy trying to lead mankind in his ways. That is what they are doing on this side of Genesis 1 & 2. We will get to what happened on the other side a little later.

LUCIFER’S GARDEN – ADAM’S GARDEN

Right now, I would like for us to turn to Ezekiel 28:13-17. I believe that will be far enough for you to get the picture. You will notice in verse 12, that this lamentation was directed upon the king of Tyrus, but as you read the verses mentioned, you will have no difficulty recognizing that it is to Lucifer, the fallen angel. “Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; (An angel) and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore, I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.” Here we have two Old Testament prophets writing about this character, Lucifer who became puffed up with pride and jealousy, and determined to rebel against his creator. The writing of these prophets was more than one hundred years apart, but they both had the low down on old Lucifer. What they both had to say about him helps us to begin to get some insight on this character which is called Satan, the devil, Lucifer, the anointed cherub, the father of lies, and a murderer. As we begin to look into the scriptures that deal with this old fellow, we can better understand some of the things that scientists are finding in our generation. You will notice as you read these verses, that this did not take place in our Garden of Eden, for it has never been pictured as a garden of fiery stones. Our Garden of Eden, mentioned in Genesis, is pictured as a garden of plant life, trees, herbs, grass and so forth. In other words, the Eden in Genesis is not to be connected with the Eden of Ezekiel 28 at all. One is a natural garden of vegetation on earth, while the other is a spiritual setting, yet related to the planet earth. The earth is God’s testing and proving grounds, first for His angelic family, then for His human family, and everything on it was created by God. Furthermore, anything that has ever been on it was created by Him. If there were dinosaurs, God made them. If there were giant lizards, God made them, horses the size of dogs, God made them. If there were men-like creatures on earth millions of years ago, God made them also, but they were not human beings, they were animals. The Holy Ghost can guide a person through the scriptures and settle his mind on this subject of evolution that is so widespread in our day, but the evolutionists themselves do not care what the Bible has to say. They have their theory and the only ones who will ever accept the scriptural answers are the few who get born again by the Spirit of God. We do not try to rove by the scriptures that there never was a prehistoric animal kingdom. We know there was, but we are fully persuaded by the scriptures that we did not evolve from anything back there. The Bible tells us that this old planet was in a void state, in complete darkness with no life whatsoever when God began to create that which fills the earth today. That void state was no doubt brought about by a judgment of God upon that prehistoric world.

GOD’S WORD HAS THE ANSWER

As you travel through the painted desert of Arizona, you see evidence of an ancient giant forest. There are huge logs lying there, completely petrified, and we know the deserts of Arizona are not capable of growing trees like that. Why are they there? And how did they get there? They have to date back to a time when what is a desert today, was no doubt, a tropical area of vegetation with much moisture. It would have required such, in order to have those giant trees towering toward the heavens. In every continent of the world today, you have vast areas of desert land. From China to Russia, Egypt, Australia and America, and all over this world, you have arid and semi-arid desert land, and many times these areas are where they find so much fossilized matter, just the opposite of what you would expect in these places today. Naturally, as children of God, we believe the answer is to be found in the pages of God’s holy word, so we do our digging in the scriptures while the world is out there crawling around and digging in the earth. Let them find their bones and whatever else may be out there: they will still not know the story behind whatever they find unless they get it from the word of God. I believe the creator can put the story together for us and I believe He wants us to know, even though there is not one bit of salvational value in a message such as this, This is strictly to help the people of God reconcile the things they are hearing all around them in this atheistic world of today. The devil knows his time is short; therefore, he is doing his utmost to take one last slap at God before he is bound in the bottomless pit, by trying to erase from the minds of degenerate humanity the existence of God. The devil knows that God is ONE, and that HE (the one God) created everything, even those animals that filled this earth in an era of time before Genesis, chapter one. He also knows that he can only do what God will allow him to do. Nevertheless, he keeps right on deceiving as many as will listen to his lies and give him any place. This thing about a Neanderthal man that we are supposed to have evolved from is just another in that long line of deceptions that Satan has injected into the minds of all who refuse to accept truth from God’s word. It is true they have found skeletal remains of such a creature, in Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia, but Saints, let me assure you of this, they were not sons of God. As I have said already, they were part of that animal kingdom that God uses in testing His angelic family in prehistoric ages.

TWO ANIMAL KINGDOMS

I am trusting God to help me put words together that will enable you to see why the Neanderthal man, as they call him, could not have been a son of God. You and I were created to be sons of God. We are sons of God by our natural creative birth, then we are spiritual sons of God because we have been born again. We are under a death sentence because of our genealogical connection with Adam until th new birth sets us free of it, and that only sets the inner man free. The outer man is still destined to die if time stands long enough. One thing we are sure of though, the Bible teaches us that every last human that has lived on this earth all the way from Adam to the very end, will eventually be resurrected. It is not the plan and purpose of God for human bones to lie in the ground for a million years for future inhabitants to be crawling around looking for. The Bible does not make any provision for animal life to be resurrected, and that ought to tell us something, but the last book in the Bible, Revelation 20:10-15, tells of how every last human will be resurrected and judged. Of course, you all understand that these verses are dealing with a time beyond the millennium reign of Christ, after Satan has been loosed for a little while and given a chance to test all those who were born during that one thousand years. No saint from this age of grace will be judged at the great white throne. That is when all the wicked dead from all ages will be raised up, judged, and cast alive into the lake of fire and every person born during the millennium will be there, either to be granted immortality or cast into the lake of fire with Satan and all the rest of those who rejected God when they hd their chance. When that judgment is finished there will not be left in the ground the bones of one single person, but animal bones will remain right where they are, undisturbed. Now if God has used this six thousand years to test and prove man and the Bible tells us clearly what man’s final disposition will be, leaving the animal kingdom out of the picture, would it not be scripturally sensible to believe that God would have done likewise with His angelic family, and the animal kingdom that was present in their time of testing? Just as man was given an animal kingdom to rule over, so was the angelic family given an animal kingdom to rule over. It was not the animals that were being proven in either setting. The animals never sinned against God; therefore, it is not necessary for God to deal with them in any way of judgment or reward. They live their life on earth and when they pass off the scene that is the end of them as far as we can tell by the scriptures. Like I said earlier: a subject like this of necessity involves some assumption, but believe we have as much right to assume as any scientist, especially when our assumption has two logical ends. Brothers and sisters, we know Lucifer was not created as a mean, murdering, lying and stealing character; the Bible tells us that he was perfect from the day he was created until iniquity was found in him. We have already read it in Isaiah 14. So there had to be a time when he gave expression to the free choice God had entrusted to him. That then, branded him as a liar and the father of lies. There had to be a time when he exercised himself in the act of murder and since he was a spirit being and all the other angels were spirit beings, what was he murdering? You do not murder a spirit. Yes there had to be a turning point somewhere along the line in order for Jesus to make the statement he made in John 8:44. Let us read it. Jesus, in speaking to a group of stiff necked and hard hearted Jews who were confronting Him, made this statement. “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” Can you tell me then, when did Lucifer begin to lie and murder? He was the anointed cherub, created perfect, but like man, he was given freedom of choice or he never could have lied and murdered.

ONE GOD CREATING

Based upon what we find in the scriptures, I am going to tell you what I believe took place in an era of time which could have been millions of years before our Garden of Eden. I say millions of years because of the age that scientists place upon some of the fossils and such like that they find, even though, how long ago, is not important to us in dealing with this message. Regardless of what lived on earth in the prehistoric age, and regardless of how long ago it may have been, let us settle once and for all how they got here. God created every last one of them. Now we know from the scriptures that God has a great host of angels that serve Him and assist in working out His plan for mankind. We know also that God created those angels, for those who believe the scriptures know that God is a sovereign Spirit that dwelt all alone before He began to create. We learn from the first chapter of Ephesians that God counseled with Himself and that all things are after the counsel of His own will. He meditated and predetermined what He would do before He ever began to create anything. You must believe that first of all or you will run into many scriptures that will not dovetail. You will have loose ends that you cannot tie together. That is why the Trinitarians have so many things they are not able to explain nor tie together. They will not accept the fact of God’s creative order, nor will they accept the fact that God was speaking to His angelic helpers when he said, Let us make man in our image. They insist that He was speaking to Jesus and the Holy Ghost, believing that God is three persons and refusing to reconcile all the other scriptures in the Bible that declare He is one. When they insist that God was speaking to Jesus and the Holy Ghost in Genesis 2:26, they have to ignore verse 27, which says, “So God created man in His (singular) own image, in the image of God created He him; (Where is your trinity in that verse?) male and female created He them.” So by revelation we understand that God is one and that He was speaking to His angelic helpers who were spirit beings, just like He is a Spirit and that man was created a spirit being in the day he was created. God made him a body from the dust of the ground, later. We learn from the scriptures that there are bad angels, called demons as well as those good angels that assist God. We know that God created them also, but He did not create them as bad angels; they were created perfect just like Lucifer, but given freedom of choice and they chose to follow Lucifer when he determined to make himself equal with God. Lucifer was already a fallen angel when Adam was created and placed in the Garden of Eden, so the question is, When did he become a fallen angel and what brought it about?

WHAT CAUSED ADAM’S FALL?

I am sure you have read in Luke, chapter 10, where Jesus sent seventy other disciples (the twelve apostles not included in the seventy) before Him, with a commission to heal the sick and announce that the kingdom of God had come nigh unto them. When those seventy returned later, rejoicing because the devils (demons) were subject to them through the name of Jesus, He said to them, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” (In the book of life) This is just to let you see that Jesus confirmed the fact that Satan, the devil is a fallen angel. He had not just become a fallen angel when Jesus said that, for we know that he was lurking in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were still in their state of innocence, before their disobedience. It was this fallen angel that worked through the serpent, which at that time was Adam’s servant, to lead Eve astray, away from the known will of God. He was already a liar by then, so he just inspired the serpent to lie to Eve. Eve said, God told us not to eat of the tree of knowledge lest we die, but the serpent said, Ye shall not surely die: God knows you will become like gods, to know good and evil the day you partake of this tree. Now this serpent was not the devil; the devil was using him to get Adam and Eve out of the will of God. How did he do it? He lied first of all, then began to make it appear that God was withholding something good from them to keep them from becoming like Him. Satan knew how to get these animals to do things: I will show you what I mean after I make a point about something else. Remember, Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden and given an animal kingdom to rule over. God made him a help-mate and gave them a command to replenish the earth, in other words, to fill it again. That is what the word replenish means. If the man and his wife had obeyed God’s command, they would have had sex relations only when the woman’s cycle came to the place where she would have conceived and bare another son of God. But what happened instead? Satan used the serpent to coax Eve into having sex relations strictly for pleasure instead of just for replenishing the earth. When Eve discovered this relationship could be used for pleasure, she coaxed Adam into partaking also. That broke God’s command and caused Him to activate the death penalty that He had warned them would follow such a disobedience. When he activated the death penalty, He cast them out of their Garden of Eden. Until they disobeyed God, they had been in Eden, a garden of trees and much plant life. They could have obeyed God’s command and lived forever, but they exercised their freedom of choice, disobeyed God, and God cast them out of the garden. Now what did Ezekiel say to Lucifer? “Thou has been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering.” He went on to say (prophesying to him by the Spirit of God) Thou wast perfect from the day thou wast created until iniquity was found in thee. Our beauty has caused you to be lifted up; therefore, I will cast you to the ground. He had been in his Garden of Eden, just like Adam was in his Garden of Eden before he sinned. Just as Adam was cast out of his Garden of Eden, so had Lucifer been cast out of his when he exercised his own will over the will of God. The both knew the will of God and chose to do something different, causing them to be cast out of their Eden. Lucifer’s Eden was a garden of precious stones, while Adam’s Eden was a garden of plant life, but the point is, they were both cast out of their garden when they disobeyed God. We know what Adam’s disobedience was, and what took place prior to that disobedience, but what we want to look into now is what must have took place prior to Lucifer’s disobedience.

LUCIFER – MURDERER & LIAR

Genesis 1:1 tells us that, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” but it does not tell us how many millions of years passed before verse 2 picks up the account of God brining the earth out of its chaotic, void state. The writer did not give any hint at all of what took place to cause the earth to be void, with darkness upon the face of the deep, but I am completely convinced that this void state was a result of a former judgment of God upon whatever inhabited the earth in that prehistoric era of time. For the answer as to what inhabited the earth then, we look both at the Bible and to scientific excavations. We know they are finding evidence that the earth at one time had huge animals, dinosaurs and such like that could not have possibly existed on this side of Genesis 1:2, and the Bible furnishes us with evidence that God’s angelic family had to go through a time of testing whereby their loyalty to God their creator was proven. Therefore, we believe that Lucifer was placed at the head of God’s angelic host and given an animal kingdom right here on earth to rule over. They were huge in size, but they lived in peace with each other. Since Lucifer was a spirit being without a tangible form and all the other angels were likewise, Lucifer, by his own free choice, became a spirit of murder. Since spirit beings do not kill each other, how did he actually become a murderer? He no doubt began to entertain himself by inspiring those huge animals to attack each other. All he had to do was begin to sow discord among them the very same way that he does among mankind even today. Eventually, they began to rise up against each other and lock themselves in a death struggle. God probably let it go on for some time before He called Lucifer into his presence to give an account of what was happening. Murder was a product from the heart of Lucifer; not from God. So by reading between the lines we can see why Jesus had a right to accuse him of being a murderer from the very beginning. Now we will look at what was probably his first lie to God, making him a liar, and the father of lies. You who are parents will know exactly what I am talking about. How many times have you caught your little boy in some kind of mischievousness and when you would say, Son, what are you doing? What would his answer be? Nothing. I wasn’t doing anything, Daddy. What is he doing now? He is lying. Instead of confessing his wrong doing, he is lying, saying he was not doing anything. That is, no doubt, exactly what Lucifer did. When God said, Lucifer, what have you been doing to cause all that killing? I can just hear him saying, N-O-T-H-I-N-G, when all the time God knew exactly what he had been doing. I am convinced that these deserts which stretch out for miles and miles on the various continents of this earth are not a result of the flood of Noah’s day; I believe they are marking the sits of those prehistoric battlegrounds. I believe God has allowed them to remain as infallible proof of a prehistoric past. Of course they are finding proof of such an era in other places also. A large museum in Springfield, Missouri, has a skeleton of a dinosaur that they have pieced together from what they have found. They also have a glass cage that contains a dinosaur footprint. Somewhere back in that era of time a dinosaur stepped in a swampy area and left that print. Something happened which caused that area to become petrified so that it looks like a huge rock with a large footprint pressed into it. That glass cage holds evidence that somewhere back in time there was a gigantic reptile which left a footprint to be discovered in the area of Southern Illinois. Scientists claim that at some time in the prehistoric past Southern Illinois was a swampy country, a place such as dinosaurs would have lived in. As we have already mentioned, there is a petrified forest out in Arizona which also stands as present day proof that at one time there were giant trees growing there that could not have possibly been this side of our Eden and besides that, they are located right near the edge of a desert land. We all know it takes a lot of water to grow large trees. They just do not grow in desert type areas. So all the fragments of evidence that can be put together, point to the fact that this very planet at one time was inhabited with huge beasts, reptiles, and there is some evidence that there were large birds which had teeth, and all such like, and that something happened suddenly which caused these various fragments to be preserved for a testimony that they existed. What happened so suddenly that some of these animals have even been found with a preserved cud of grass still in their throat or mouth?

THREE ARCHANGELS – ONE A DEVIL

I believe God looked out upon the animal kingdom that He had created, which had previously lived together so peacefully and saw them ripping and devouring one another, and called Lucifer, the angel which had the rule over this kingdom, and asked him what he had done to cause al this killing and devouring, and like I said a little while ago, that gave Lucifer his first opportunity to lie to his creator. He was already a murder; now he adds a lie to his offenses. By this time he had already schemed and plotted among the other angels, and had convinced one third of them to take sides with him. That put them on a side against God, so when God cast Lucifer out of Eden and stripped him of the glory and authority that had been bestowed upon him, one third of this angelic host was doomed to the same fate as he, because they were not loyal to God. I believe God judged the world that time, just by rocking it a few degrees out of relationship to the sun and it suddenly froze up. That is why they could find the frozen bison with a cud of green grass still in its throat. It was in the process of belching up that cud when it was suddenly frozen. Scientists claim that is the only way that grass could have been preserved. Now if God suddenly froze everything right where it was, it could have easily been preserved for millions of years, in what science calls, the Ice Age. You must admit, there has to be an explanation somewhere for all that has been found and pieced together, and determined to be millions of years old, when our history only goes back some six thousand years. I do not doubt what they find, nor do I necessarily doubt the age they attribute to it, what I reject is their explanation of it in evolution, leaving the creator out of the picture. Furthermore, I reject completely any idea that any form of human creature existed before Adam. What they refer to as the Neanderthal man and all the other species of so-called evolved man, can be nothing more than part of the animal kingdom which God used to prove angelic beings. Those angels that remained loyal to God when they were tested are at the right hand of God assisting in executing His plan for the ages to come. We find that some of them are guards, others serve as messengers from God to His servants, and others are referred to as ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation. Only three of them are called by name in the Bible. That is Lucifer, now known as Satan, the devil, Michael and Gabriel. They are all spirit beings without any physical form, but at times they take on a theophany body in which they appear to men on earth for the purpose of conveying a message from the presence of the Lord. Such was the case with the men that appeared to Abraham when he was sitting in the door of his tent in the plains of Mamre, then the two went to Sodom to deliver Abraham’s nephew, Lot, and his family before they destroyed the city. Many times it was angels that appeared to the old prophets with the word of the Lord for them to deliver to their generation. God has always used angels in whatever He does on behalf of mankind. God Himself is the highest form of life. His angels stand next to him, and man is third. God is a Spirit, and His angels are spirit beings, and man is also a spirit being. That is the divine order of it.

BETWEEN VERSES ONE & TWO

Brothers and Sisters, I have not yet read my text completely as I had meant to do, but we will in a little bit. Right now, let me say this, I am not as interested in explaining every detail of what I believe about the prehistoric age, as I am in explaining why man did not have his beginning until after God brought the planet earth out of its chaotic state of void that we find in Genesis 1:2. This business of evolution the way educated men of the world teach it, is so foolish even little grade school children ought to be able to discover all the loose ends that they can not tie together. With only a very small percentage of assuming when compared to their theories, and how much they must assume, we can take the word of God and put together a picture that makes sense to a child of God. Any believer who reads Genesis 1:1, knows God created everything. Even though there may be millions of years of elapsed time between the first and second verses, we still know that God is the beginning of everything, even time. Notice how that verse reads “In the beginning God (That puts you all the way back to the place where there was nothing but Him) created the heaven and the earth.” God could have had many chapters written between the first and second verses of that one chapter if He had had any reason to do so. He could have told all about a great animal kingdom that filled the earth and how this angel, Lucifer, ruled them with delegated authority and what a beautiful sight it was to see all those huge animals going about their daily routine as meek ad gentle as a little lamb until the day Lucifer thought an evil thought. He might have told how Lucifer began to sow discord among them until they got to the place where they were killing and devouring each other, and how Lucifer seemed to get so much pleasure out of watching them rip each other open in a battle to the death of one or the other. Then we would have read how it was necessary to judge the planet by freezing it up for a few million years and how Lucifer and all those who sided with him were cast down from their first estate, and how all that host of fallen angels would be known as demons, instead of God’s helpers. And because of that judgment the earth was rendered void, useless; there was no life left upon it and darkness covered it all until the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, Let there be light and there was light. We all know what happened from there on; the Bible tells us. It does not give details on how God brought it about except we see that it was by the spoken word. It was a time when God had thawed out those ice caps and He was bringing the earth back into a livable condition. We do not know how much time was involved in those first three creative days; they could have been thousands of years as far as time is concerned, for God did not work it all out in days of twenty-four hours. It is referring to an allotted time when God will accomplish certain things, but certainly is not tied to a day of twenty-four hours. In the creation account God placed the sun and the moon to rule the day and the night on the fourth day of creation. Then in the fifth and sixth day God created the living creatures, fish, fowl, cattle and all te animals and creeping things, and in that sixth day we come to what I will use for a text. Let us read Genesis 1:26-28. “And God said, Let us make man in our image.” This is when God made the man in His own image. He was a spirit being, just a little lower than the angels; there was no flesh involved in that. God made him a body from the dust of the earth at a later time after He had finished all His creative work in the spirit realm. The only point we are making here is that it was what we call the inner man that God created in His own image; when He put him in a body of flesh in order for him to have physical contact with the earth: that had nothing to do with the image of God, for God did not have any kind of physical form. “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” I know I have already covered most of this verse, but there are always a few that fail to catch the significance of certain points the first time. That is why I like to take every opportunity to clear up this question of whether God is one or three. If it were not for this verse we have just read, I seriously doubt that Satan could have persuaded anyone to believe that there is three persons in the Godhead, but at the same time I realized God allowed certain things to be said to confuse and confound the minds of those who try to know and understand Him strictly from the standpoint of the mind. That is what most of those Bible schools and seminaries are designed for. They go in there without the Holy Ghost and take the Bible verse by verse, search out all the Hebrew and Greet that it was translated from and build them a theory that they consider to be exactly in line with the mind of God, when without revelation that only the Holy Ghost can give, they miss most of it a million miles. They read where it is speaking of God being the Father of all creation and the Father of Jesus who is the Christ. Then they read where Jesus was the Son of God, and that all the fullness of God dwelleth in him. They see where Jesus prayed to the Father and how He spoke of the Holy Ghost that the Father would send in His name, and without the Holy Ghost to give them understanding of these things, naturally when they read Genesis 1:26, where God said, Let us make man in our image, they are absolutely sure that God would have to be three persons and each of those three persons would have to be equal in authority with the other two in order for each one to do what they find being done in the scriptural record of God’s working with mankind. What other conclusions could the natural mind come to? It takes the Holy Ghost to put scripture with scripture in a way that all these loose ends are tied together to form a beautiful picture of the one true and living God who fills all these offices in the expression of His many attributes. Once the Holy Ghost allows you to see that God was talking to His angelic helpers when he said, Let us make man in our image, you will have no trouble understanding the Godhead, for it is that very verse which natural reasoning just cannot cope with.

LET US – GOD AND HIS ANGELS

Some who hear me say that God was talking to his angelic helpers in verse 26, say, Brother Jackson, you are just assuming that. Let me say emphatically, No! I am not assuming that. It becomes real as you allow the Holy Ghost to show you how the angels work with God, all the way from Genesis to Revelation. Think about this, when God drove Adam and Eve out of the garden, who did He put there to guard the way to the tree of life? Was it Jesus, the Son or was it the Holy Ghost, or do you see angels? Read Genesis 3:24, “So He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden cherubims, (angels) and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life.” So we see that God put angels there, with a flaming sword, to guard the way to the tree of life. What did the apostle Paul say about angels in Hebrews 1:13-14? “But to which of the angels said He at any time, sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool? Are they (the angels) not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” Of course they are. God created the angels to be His helpers. They assist Him in all His dealing with man. It was not that God had to have help; it is simply that He wanted to share Himself with life, giving expression to His Father attribute. He had to produce another in His own image and likeness in order to be called Father; He had to have something to worship Him in order to express His attribute as God, and so on. It was revealed to the apostle Paul that God meditated and counseled with himself before He ever began to create anything. During that time He perfected a plan whereby He would be able to express all His attributes in a creature that would one day glorify Him. Not only will He be glorified in His angelic family, but also in His earthly, human family as well as the animal kingdoms. By giving His creation freedom of choice so they could turn from Him if they choose to, He has been able to express His attributes as Redeemer, Intercessor, Judge, as well as God, Father, Creator and all the other abilities that lay within Him. He will move His redeemed family into an eternal age that will be without end, and every trace of sin will be completely obliterated. Then will be fulfilled the scriptures that speak of a new heaven and a new earth. They are new because there is no trace of anything that has ever been a part of sin and rebellion. Redemption will have placed God’s foreknown sons back in relation to Him as though they had never sinned. In that eternal age, every living creature will glorify God. Now some will say, could not God have created only those who would worship Him in the first place? Yes. He could have done that, but they would have been just like manmade robots which do only what they are programmed to do. Where would be God’s honor and glory in such a creation that had no other choice? This way, when it is all completed God will have a family that has every last one had a chance to reject Him and every one will (by their own free choice) have chosen to worship and honor God. You know yourselves that when someone says, I love you, by their own free choice, it means more to you than if you had to pin them down and in some way force them to say it. You inherited that feeling from God.

REPLENISH – A SPIRITUAL NUGGET

Let us get back to our text scripture and read verse 27. “So God (singular) created man in His (singular) own image in the image of God created He him; male and female He them.” This verse shows that when the act is carried out, there is no plurity of Gods for man to be created in the image of. God created a spirit being in His own image. He was created in the image of God who is Spirit, but a little lower than the angels which are also spirit beings. Man was not created to be an angel; therefore, he will never be one regardless of what some people may think. He was like the angels though, in that he was a spirit being. God created His angels to live strictly in a spirit realm, while He created man who is also a spirit being, to have an earthly habitation in a body of clay. Paul said in Hebrews, quoting what David had said in the Psalms, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honor and dist set him over the works of thy hands.” He goes on then talking about Jesus who was manifested to taste death for every man and how He was made perfect through suffering and was not ashamed to call us brethren. He had to be just like us in every way, yet remain free from sin in order to be an acceptable sacrifice for the sins of lost mankind. “So God created man in His own image.” Notice the command He gave them now as we read verse 28. “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” How many of you know what the word, replenish means? Every one of you, of course. There is your first nugget, hidden right there in God’s command to the man He had just created. You may say, I don’t see anything. I do! Hallelujah! Praise God forever! If the earth had never been filled with anything before, God would have just said, plenish the earth. That means fill it up. But saints, when he said replenish, that to me says it was full before and Adam has just been given a command to refill, that is, r-e-f-i-l-l; when you put r-e in front of plenish, you have a word that means to refill or fill up again. When we see the word replenish, in verse 28, then we can go back in verse 2, and read the word void, with a little more understanding. If you write a check, then for some reason you decide not to let the check go through, what do you write across if? Void. That means the check has been rendered useless. If you draw up a contract on something, then change your mind, you write void across the face of it. Right? You have rendered it useless, inactive, no one would honor a check or a contract with void written across the front of it. That word means it has been rendered useless. That is exactly what the Ice Age was to this old planet. The Ice Age to this planet was just like the word, void, across your check. It rendered the planet useless. That is why it was without form and void. It was frozen into a solid clump. Practically every one of our scientists agree that something happened suddenly, which halted all life upon the planet. It was a universal thing from the ice caps of the northern regions to the fossilized desert. Wherever they find something from that era of time, it seems as though life was suddenly brought to a halt. It has left a great gap in what they have been able to piece together, but they still try to span that gap by having present man as something that evolved from what was way back there. There is a certain amount of evolution that has taken place since our Garden of Eden, but I assure you, it does not go back beyond Genesis 1:2. True evolution is what has taken place in the family of each species that came across the flood in the ark with Noah. He brought one pair of horses, but now we have dozens of different breeds. It is the same with every other animal on the earth today. Noah brought one pair for replenishing purposes and of the clean beasts, he brought extra for the use in worshipping God, but my point is this, Noah brought one pair of everything and turned them loose to replenish the earth with their kind. From that one pair, through the process of cross breeding, and through a process of evolution brought about by different climates, different types of food, different geographical conditions and so forth, we now have a vast variety in every family, but they have not evolved from one family to another. Look at the human family around this world. Every person that has been born on this earth since the flood is a descendant of Noah. There was Noah, his three sons, and their wives, a total of eight humans with the same commission that God had given to Adam.

REPLENISHING COMMAND RENEWED

Let us read Genesis 9:1 & 9:18-19, “And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth. (Fill it up again) and the sons of Noah, that went forth out of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japeth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.” How many different nationalities of people do you suppose there are on the earth today? It does not really matter whether there are one hundred or one hundred thousand, every last one of them came from the family of Noah, and through a process of evolution, the world is populated with what you see today. Evolution in its place is acceptable to all of us, but when they try to carry it to the place where they have man evolving from some other species, that is abominable. They would have man evolving from a little old hump-backed, snaggled-toothed, bow-legged creature that lived in a cave, walked around with a club in his hand, and hung from a tree limb, just scavengers. What a perverted picture from what the Bible describes to us. But did you know that is just about what man falls to in his rejection of God. Instead of evolving into a higher form of life, humanity in our day seems to be turning into what the evolutionist claim we evolved from. Isn’t that the picture you see among those who have rejected God and given themselves over to carnality? If you haven’t notice it yet, just begin to look around you when you are out in the public; you will see what I mean. You remember I said God could have filled in between verses 1 & 2, of the first chapter of Genesis. It is true, He could have, but to the believer it isn’t necessary for there is enough scattered through the rest of the Bible for us to put the picture together and there was no point in doing it for the unbeliever. Let them have their theories. They do not believe in God, so why would they believe any kind of record God would make even if He explained every detail?

GOD IS THE BEGINNING

We have St. John 1:1 for a beginning to what we believe and teach, which reads like this, “In the beginning was the word, and the word as with God, and the word was God.” Now I ask you, what is a word? It is an expressed thought. Every word is a thought before it becomes a verbal word. How beautifully this goes with what Paul said in the first chapter of Ephesians. Let us read a couple more verses here, then we will turn to Ephesians. John 1:3, “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made.” Talking about the word, which was a thought in the mind of the great eternal Spirit, John said this. Now let us go to Ephesians for a few verses, then we will compare what we have read from the Bible with what the evolutionists teach about the same thing. We will read verses 4-11 in the first chapter, for in these few verses we find predestination before the foundation of the world, the oneness of the Godhead, and that this one God is working everything after the counsel of His own will, even though His angelic family is assisting Him. “According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love; having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will. To the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace; wherein He hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself. That in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in Him. In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.” Did you catch that last part? He works all thing after the counsel of His own will. Those few verses standing alone are enough to show a believer that God is one, and that He is working out plans He made when He counseled with Himself before the world was ever created. The first chapter of Genesis shows this great eternal Spirit carrying out those plans, and I believe every word of it. Now let me tell you one theory that unbelievers have of how this old world came into existence. Some of them believe this earth was once a particle which flew off the sun when molten masses of gas became so intensively hot it exploded. The piece now called earth came flying through space, and as time passed it eventually slowed down and became as it is today. My next statement is only for the sake of answering such a theory. I know how the earth got here, but for their sake let me say, what difference does it make how God did it? If that is how the earth got here, but for their sake let me say, what difference does it make how God did it? If that is how the earth got here; so be it, but that raises another question, where did all those gases in the sun come from? The sun, being a molten mass of gases is still a creation of God. Even their wildest theories, when they are run back as far as they can go with them, still leave a place that requires the work of a creator. When I say, I know how the earth got here, I simply mean that I am completely convinced God created everything. For me to try to disprove anyone’s idea of how he put His creation where it is would be very foolish. If God chose such a way as this to sling the earth into its particular orbit, that is His business, he still has to be the creator of it. We do know that the very heart of the earth is nothing but a molten mass of gases. That is what causes these geysers to shoot steam into the air ever so often. That is also the reason why certain parts of the world have volcanoes erupting, spewing lava. If the heart of this earth is a raging inferno of gases, as they claim it is and we do know that volcanoes and geysers have been spewing forth for centuries, then who are we to say that this earth is not an offshoot of the sun? If God made that pit of fire down there and I am sure He did, and he made the one they call the sun and I am sure He did, then why could it not be that? We do not need to know how He put it where it is, just as long as we believe the scriptures which teach us that God created all things. That will keep us out of trouble, even if we never know how He created. It was all by His spoken word, but there are many avenues it could have worked through.

A PRECISE BOOK

Our purpose in printing this message is mainly to show by the help of almighty God, that we did not evolve from a creature that lived on earth millions of years ago and that the creature called the Neanderthal man was not a son of God, but such a message opens up many avenues so we may as well cover whatever we have room for. Surely God has a purpose in everything His people do; therefore, I believe there are those somewhere out there that this message will help to settle and establish in the faith. If that be so, maybe some of you will take time to drop us a line and confirm it. Many times we find that some folks are 95 percent straight on what they believe and just getting a point or two settled takes care of what is left. May that be the case as some of you read this article. I realize that scientists are continually discovering bits and pieces of evidence that prove life existed on this planet before our Garden of Eden, and naturally, that points to a prehistoric age; therefore, if we just close our eyes and refuse to deal with anything that goes back farther than our actual history, we are leaving the minds of our young people open to whatever interpretation these evolutionists put on what they find. If time stands a few more years, our young people are going to need everything we can possibly teach them about God in order to cope with the degenerate, atheistic spirit of the age. Like I said earlier, the devil is trying his level best to blot the memory of God out of the minds of this present generation. Children are taught that it is old fashioned to believe in God the way the Bible presents Him. To mention the resurrection of the dead will really brand you as a fanatic, even in many so called churches of our day. I was just thinking the other day how accurate and precise the Bible actually is. Man is the only creature in this world today that has not carried the same language all the way through and the Bible tells us exactly why. Hallelujah! The dog barks the same the world over, the cats meow the same, roosters crow the same, mules, ducks or whatever else you may mention have retained their same sound expressions the world over all through the ages, while the languages of man are too many to mention. Furthermore, there is not another book on the face of this earth other than the Bible and those written with the Bible as their authority that tells why it is like that. When we turn to the 11th chapter of Genesis and start reading in the very first verse, here is what we find. “And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered aborad upon the face of the whole earth.” God had given Noah and his family a commission to be, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, but here in the plains of Shinar just about one hundred years later, all their descendants were gathered together, building them a city, and determined to move no farther. This was completely opposite to God’s commission, so the Lord comes down to take a look at their city, and their tower. It is all right here in the Bible if the educated minds of modern day mankind would accept it. Notice verse 5, “And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be retrained from them, which they have imagined to do. (Watch this next verse now. There are two things that stand out in it.) Go to, (the Lord is speaking here) let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all th earth; and they left off to build the city.” Where else can you find an explanation for all the various languages that are spoken by God’s human family? In that same verse we see where God used His angelic helpers, for He said, Let us go down. This is another place where the Trinitarians think they see three persons in the Godhead, but like Genesis 1:26, God is speaking to His angelic helpers. I can see one angel going to one family, another to a different family, and so on until that great mass of people were completely unable to communicate with each other. Just try to imagine what happened when they showed up for work the next morning. They had worked the day before, all speaking the same language and with the goal in mind to build that great city with its tower reaching into the heavens. But after their visitation from God’s angelic helpers, they went to work the next morning and each one wondered what had happened to the others. It was like they were cursing each other, or making fun of each other. It didn’t take much of that to get them ready to travel. Those who spoke the same language probably began to gather together, and move out away from the others, until they were scattered abroad. I do not believe the Lord had His angels pick them up bodily and scatter them over the face of the earth. That is just another place where God did not see fit to go into details on how the thing was accomplished, nor how much time elapsed in the process. One thing we do know for sure though, the earth has been replenished and there is every dialect imaginable being spoken, all because of something God did some 2200 years before the birth of Christ.

BEFORE THE FLOOD

In other messages, we have gone into much detail describing the events that led up to the flood of Noah’s day. We will not say much about the two trees in the midst of the Garden of Eden, for we have a message in print already which deals exclusively with those two trees. Nevertheless, Adam and his wife Eve disobeyed God and partook of the forbidden tree in the midst of the garden. Because of that disobedience, God drove them out of the garden, away from His presence and imputed a two-fold death sentence upon them for their disobedience. In the process of time, Eve learned that she had conceived and would bare a child into the world. However, when the fulness of her time arrived, she bare two sons instead of just one. Some have thought they were twins, but by revelation from the word of God, we know that they were the products of dual conception. Cain was conceived from a sex relationship with the serpent, which was a manlike animal, and Abel was the son of Adam. You have all read how Cain killed Abel in a jealous rage and how God cursed him and he went out from the presence of the Lord to dwell in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. Abel’s murder left Adam without a seed, but he knew his wife again and she bare him another son which they called Seth. From these two, Cain and Seth, there sprang two lines of people upon the earth. Seth’s descendants were sons of God, having come through Adam, God’s son, but Cain’s descendants were from the seed of the serpent which was animal. These two lines remained separated for many generations, but we read in Genesis, chapter 6, that the sons of God (Seth’s line) began to get their eyes upon the daughters of men (Cain’s line) and before long they were intermarrying and producing children that had no time for God. Those sons of God were pure, having no wicked attributes in them, but when they began marrying those daughters of Cain’s line, they brought children into the world that had wicked attributes in them, for their forefather on their mother’s side was a jealous, conniving murderer. In verse 5, we read, “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth and it grieved Him at His heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both men and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” God was going to judge the earth and destroy man whom He had created in His own image, from it, but there was one man in all that multitude that found grace in His sight. He was the father of three sons, and the sons had wives. God told this man, Noah, to build an ark for the saving of his household, and also for the preservation of one pair of every creature He had created. We all know the story of the flood. It came just like God told Noah it would, but Noah had obeyed God, built the ark and was ready to go aboard with his family and al the animals that God instructed him to take when the tie came. Noah kept all those animals, along with his wife, their three sons and their wives, in the ark for a full year before the earth dried sufficiently for them to leave it. God spoke to Noah and told him to come out and after he was out, he built an altar and worshipped God. When the Lord smelled the sweet savor of Noah’s offering, He made a promise to Himself never to smite the earth to destroy all flesh ever again. Then God blessed Noah and his sons and commissioned them to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth just like He did Adam and Eve, and all those animals back there. He sealed the covenant He had made with them by placing a rainbow in the clouds as a token and a reminder of that covenant. Never again would He destroy all flesh from off the face of the earth. We do notice here though, that God is consistent with His language. When he said, replenish, this time, everyone could understand the terminology. It meant refill and everyone understood that the earth had been filled before. But when He said it the first time to Adam and Eve, I am sure there are some who think God did not use proper terminology. His grammar is perfect every time. If He says remake something, you can be sure it has been made before. If He says to reestablish something, you can be sure that it has been established before. Therefore, when He told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, you can be absolutely certain that the earth had been filled before; God makes no mistakes. He is not like us, always having to apologize for saying something wrong or for misjudging something. His judgment and His grammar are exactly what He means for it to be, every time, without exception.

WHY THE DIFFERENCE?

Now, let me ask you a question. Have you ever wondered why man is always finding evidence of a prehistoric age, but other than just a very few fragments, he never finds any trace of the ancient civilization before the flood? To me it proves that there is a great architect working out a beautiful plan. As for the earth’s habitation before the Garden of Eden, the scriptures say very little, but God let those bones and other fossils be found and scattered enough nuggets through the scriptures for the Holy Ghost to use in revealing to His people how they happened to be there. On the other hand, the Bible tells us exactly how God destroyed that pre-flood generation of people, as well as every other living creature that was not in the ark but very little is ever unearthed that can be used as tangible evidence of such a generation. Isn’t that just like God to work it out in such a way that smart minds do not have anything that they can use, and at the same time allow His people who believe His word to have a complete record of it. Praise His name! He buried all those bodies Himself and no doubt, He let everyone of them completely decompose and return unto the dust that they came out of. Archaeologists can bore and dig until they wear themselves completely out, but they will not find the remains of that generation. If God ever permits man to go up there on Mt. Ararat and dismantle that old ark, bring it down and put it on display, that will be quite another story. Talk about a memorial of a judgment hour; they will have it. Then the people of God can look those atheist’s in the eye and say, what about this? How can you deny the accuracy of the Bible now? God may allow that and He may not. I will say this, if that old ark is still up there, God has preserved it for some reason. Just the same, I am thankful to God that we do not have to depend on scientific theories for what we know about Him. I am thankful that He has given me the privilege to send my grandchildren into those public schools with something in their understanding that will keep them from swallowing these scientific theories. We cannot give them the new birth; only God can do that, but we can give them something to hold in their minds while they are forced to sit and listen to those atheistic teachers yak. I have always felt that they should at least give the Bible equal recognition, along with all these other theories. Of course, they are not likely to do that, so let us make sure we teach them enough at home to offset the difference. Let them know that every living soul today is a descendant of Noah, a man who was righteous before God in the midst of a world of wickedness and violence.

ONE BLOOD

I was asked a question concerning something the apostle Paul said to the Athenians as he stood in the midst of Mars’ Hill, preaching to them. The question stems from verse 26, in the 17th chapter of Acts. As Paul stood there that day, the Holy Ghost moved upon him and he said, “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, to the unknown God. Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though He needed any thing, seeing He giveth to all life and breath, and all things; 26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation.” The question is this, Was Paul referring to what God did through Adam, from Eden, or was he referring to what God did through Noah, from the time of the flood? Paul’s statement has to stop at Noah. In the ark with him were his three sons, which were the progenerators of all the earth’s inhabitants from the human standpoint. The Black people are descendants of Ham. Semitic people came from Shem, and from a geographical standpoint, their habitation is mostly in the Middle East, while Japeth fathered your Anglo-Saxon, Asiatic people. If you go before the flood with Paul’s statement, you cannot even find scripture that marked the bounds of their habitation. The whole society was a mixture, genetic wise, as a result of Cain’s descendants intermarrying with Seth’s descendants. That is why God judged them with the waters of the flood. The whole earth was overspread with wickedness and corruption. God looked upon His creation and said, every imagination of the thoughts of man’s hearts is only evil continually. It grieved Him at His heart, and He said, I will destroy the man whom I have created from the face of the earth, even the animals, beasts fowls of the air and so forth. He delegated Noah, the only righteous man to be found to preserve a pair of everything for replenishing the earth after He once again judged it. Now this was not some evolved creature from a prehistoric age that God was going to destroy; it was the descendants of His very own creation, the man He had created in His very own image, along with the serpents descendants, and all the rest of that animal kingdom. So the bounds of their habitation was never set before the flood. On the other hand, Paul’s statement lines up perfectly with the scriptures on this side of the flood.

NEW HEAVEN – NEW EARTH

Before we get completely away from the flood, maybe we should look at a statement made by the apostle Peter. We hear a lot of talk about a new heaven and a new earth in the ranks of Christianity these days. I have no objection to the use of these terms, for they come from the Bible, but for people to think that God will completely destroy this present planet and also the heavens, and make them completely new by another act of creation is absolutely contrary to the scriptures. He did not completely destroy the earth in either of the previous judgments, but you would have to agree if you heard someone say God made a new earth. Have you ever heard anyone say, I have been a new man ever since the Lord took hold of my life? Sure you have. Did you take the remark literally or did you realize that you were looking at the same piece of flesh that was burdened down with sin before the Lord did a work in him? Of course you did. I will read you one verse from the 21st chapter of Revelation, then we will turn to 2 Peter, chapter 3. Now, Revelation 21:1, “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.” We will go to 2 Peter 3:10-13, and then we will back up to the first part of the chapter to read something that will help you understand Bible terminology. This is the apostle Peter speaking, “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens hall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat and the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? (Listen now) Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” That was quite a bit to read, but now you know exactly what Peter said about God’s judgment on this old planet at the end of this age. If just take those words literally without any revelation of God’s plan of redemption, well, you know what you will have. That is not the picture at all; God is working out a process of redemption that takes in every aspect of the earth and everything thereupon. We will just back up to verse 3 where Peter is giving his reasons for writing this second epistle, that their minds might be stirred up and that they might be made to remember the words of the prophets and the commandments of the Lord’s apostles and says, “Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. ( Notice this 5th verse.) For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: (what happened?) Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” What did he say happened to the world that was before the flood? He said it perished. Did the planet itself perish or was it just the evil that man had brought upon it that perished? The answer is obvious. We all know Noah walked out of the ark on the same planet earth that he had lived on before the flood. The difference was, God had cleansed it and make it new through the cleansing. It will be the same way when the fire hits it; the fire is only to destroy the sin and evil that is present. The earth itself will go right on making its orbit while the fires of God’s judgment are hitting it. When God is finished cleansing it with His judgment fires, it will be new again. This is the only new earth the scriptures give us any right to look for. Just try to imagine yourself in Peter’s place. He had read Isaiah 65:17, “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind,” and in his epistle, he said, “Nevertheless we, according to His promise, (What promise, Isaiah 65:17) look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” He was a man prone to have visions like in Acts 10, when God was preparing him to take the gospel message to Cornelius and those of his house, so just suppose he had seen a vision of this old world on fire, a raging inferno devouring every wicked thing. Then, suppose he saw another scene where peace and righteousness were abounding in a completely renewed earth. Would he not have been likely to express it as he did? That is how God puts the picture together for believers. He has inspired others to write details of how the earth is made new again. None of them contradict the others, but it takes the Holy Ghost to show us that. The natural mind must read the Bible and see only what the natural eye picks up, while God’s children are privileged to read it through that great eagle eye of the Holy Ghost. What a glorious difference! Praise God! We will conclude the message with a further word on this baptism of fire that is yet ahead for this old world, but now, I would like for us to think upon something else for a few minutes.

GOD CONSCIOUSNESS

Since we are dealing with what is referred to as the Neanderthal man, maybe we could ask another question that would provoke some serious thought. In the ruins of every ancient civilization that falls within the history of man when they examine those ruins, what do they find? They find his temples, his altars, or some other signs that show he worshipped something. Some of them even offered human sacrifices, but nevertheless, as human beings they had a consciousness of being a sinner that stood in need of offering something in an effort to appease the deity they desired to worship. In every era of man’s history, there is evidence that he worshipped something and offered sacrifices. Now my question is this, if this Neanderthal man was a son of God, where is the evidence that he ver made any attempt to worship? They may have found certain rare marking that they attributed to that, but any such is purely an assumption, with not one speck of evidence to back it up. I say they will never build a telescope that can look far enough to find any such evidence, for animals do not build altars and worship God. Man’s consciousness of his fallen state causes him to make an attempt to worship something, yet death had continued to reign in the flesh of every man all the way back to Adam’s hour. Every year, thousands upon thousands of human bodies are layed beneath the sod to face the eminent destiny of decay and corruption and finally, to be swallowed up by the very elements of the earth that they came from. But, Praise God! Two thousand years ago there was a little baby born to a young virgin girl, who would one day change that cycle. He did not evolve from some far flung creature of the earth; He was born exactly as the prophets of the old had said He would be. Furthermore, in His short life upon earth in mortal flesh, He fulfilled every single prophecy that He was supposed to fulfill, even into the grave and out again, to remain alive for evermore. Hallelujah! Because He lives, we shall live also. He is living evidence that there is an all wise God behind every scripture that is recorded in the Bible. The very prophet that Peter got his new earth scripture from, also prophesied of the virgin birth of Christ 700 years ahead of the time of fulfillment. Isaiah 7:14, “Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bare a son, and shall call his name Immanuel, or Emmanuel.” (A name meaning God with us) Brother! That beats evolution all to pieces. When you have the word of God to stand upon, there is no chance involved; it is right to the point every time. That is why I say, if those religious leaders had not been so wrapped up in their traditions, they could have been ready to receive their Messiah when He came to them, just by studying what the prophets had told them to watch for. It is the same in our day; those who are spiritual will recognize the Antichrist to be such before he ever makes his move, just by what the word of God has told us to watch for.

ANGELIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Talking about the birth of Christ brings us right back to the fact that God has always allowed His angels to take an active part in His dealing with mankind. When it came time for God to answer Zechariah’s prayer and grant him a son by his barren wife, Elizabeth, who came to make the announcement that the prayer was granted? Gabriel, one of the archangels that stands in the presence of God, appeared to Zechariah while he was going about his priestly duties in the temple. Six months after Elizabeth conceived, who appeared to the young virgin girl, Mary, and announced that she had found favor with God and would conceive in her womb and bring forth a son that would be called the Son of the Highest, and whose name would be called Jesus? Gabriel, of course. I say all this just to be sure you see that angels do fit into the picture as helpers of God, but I am completely convinced that they had to go through their age of testing and prove to be loyal to God before they were entrusted with such responsibility. The fact that a great host of them sided with Lucifer was already a fallen angel in Adam’s Garden of Eden proves that the angels time of testing was before them. Then the fact that Jesus called him a murderer and a liar from the beginning proves he had to have something to murder in an age before Adam’s age. Do you see how it all adds up when you look at the whole scope of what is involved? It becomes especially real to you as you examine the scriptures and discover how accurate and precise they are on what you are able to confirm yourself. Just to see how faithfully God honors His word in our own lives ought to be enough to give us confidence in the integrity of His word from Genesis through Revelation. When the Bible says that God created the world and all things in and around it, that should settle it. When you read something that does not seem to add up right, just remember, God had it written like that to hide it from the eyes of the great scholars, but He will reveal it to those whom He has foreknown. It is upon revelation of His word that He is building His church.

REGENERATION

We have talked about the significance of the word replenish that God used in His commission to Adam and to Noah, but there is another related word used by Jesus in Matthew 19:28 that is worthy of mentioning here, for it speaks of this God-man’s purpose and commission on earth. Let us start with verse 27 and read it. “Then answered Peter and said unto Him, behold, we have forsaken all and followed thee; what shall we have therefore? And Jesus said unto them, verily I say unto you, that ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” When we examine this word used by Jesus, we find that it has the same potential as the word replenish. Let us look at it without the r-e, first. The word generate carries the same basic meaning as the word create, procreate, etc. So when r-e is placed in front of it, just like plenish, it means to do it again. Adam and Noah were both commissioned to refill the earth while Jesus the God-man came with a commission to recreate something. Paul confirms that in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore it any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” Yes, Jesus was the regenerating man, the recreating man, the redeeming One. His commission is to restore the earth, man, animals and everything that God created in the beginning, back to its original state of beauty and glory. Therefore, in the light of what sin has done to God’s original creation, it really does require a recreating process in order to bring everything back to what it was before Adam’s fall. Man has groped and struggled through 6,000 years of seeking to find his way back into the realms of eternal life and communion with his creator, but that can only become a reality to us when we commit our lives fully into the hands of this regenerating God-man Jesus. When time moves into the millennium, that will be the earth’s Sabbath. All the struggling will be over. Man will no longer be seeking eternal life; he will have it. The animal kingdom will no longer kill and devour each other, for Satan, the devil, the evil spirit that has caused them to do that for 6,000 years will be bound in the bottomless pit. That is when the prophecy of the old prophets that spoke of the cow and the bear feeding together and the lion eating straw like a bullox, will be fulfilled. That is when the suckling child shall play on the hole of an asp (a venomous snake) and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice den. That is when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. Like we said earlier, Satan is a spirit; therefore, if he is a murderer, that simply means he is a spirit of murder. He feeds his murderous spirit into man and beast until he gets them killing and devouring one another, then he just lays back and enjoys it all. Brothers and sisters, when these Mexicans and Spaniards get into a bullring with cape and dagger in hand and tease those huge animals until they get them to charge at them. I want you to know, they are not doing that because some righteous angel is standing around patting them on the back. No, sir. Those matadors are men, created in the image of God. They were created to have dominion over every other living thing that moveth upon the earth. In the beginning they had spiritual authority to rule the animal kingdom, but when man disobeyed God and fell, he forfeited his spiritual authority and has had to rule them with physical force ever since. Man is still the sovereign ruler over the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea and every animal and beast of the earth, but he has to use his God-given intellect to outsmart them and subdue them. We read also how gladiators have fought to the death entertaining fallen man and how beasts have been pitted against each other to fight to the death of one of them strictly for the entertainment of degenerate mankind. What is behind it all? It is that same old spirit that caused those great dinosaurs back there in a prehistoric age, to come tearing at each other, slashing and lunging through those forests, tons and tons of flesh battling one another to the death. Please do not try to tell me I have imagined all this; the evidence is too strong for that. It takes a perverted spirit to motivate such killing and destruction. God never created anything to kill, before nor after the Garden of Eden. That is contrary to His nature. He is the author of life. Satan is the author of death. Therefore, when Satan is bound and case into the bottomless pit for one thousand years, there will be no one around to provoke the animal kingdom to kill and devour one another, so they will lie down together in peace. By the time one thousand years have passed the earth will again be populated with millions of natural people that will be born during that time. That is why Satan must be loosed for a little season before the great white throne judgment is set. That judgment is to completely rid the earth of all traces of sin and death. That is when death and hell must deliver up the dead that is in them to be judged and cast alive into the lake of fire. Not one speck or particle of anything that has been a part of sin will be left in the ground to move into the eternal age. Every wicked person from Cain on down will be resurrected and burned alive for their rejection of God and their wicked deeds upon earth will determine the length of their punishment before they are completely obliterated. The only part of them that will not be utterly destroyed is that part that God took from Himself to cause them to have life in them; that will return to God when every trace of their individual identity has been destroyed.

FOSSILS UNDISTURBED

When God has finished His redeeming and restoring work on this old planet, those fossilized bones and whatever else there is from a prehistoric age will still be left lying right there. They were present, you know what I mean; God left those evidences of a prehistoric age, when He created Adam and placed him in the Garden of Eden, his paradise, and God’s redeeming work among mankind is simply to restore the earth and its inhabitants back to what it was then, so whatever is left from the prehistoric age will remain right where it is. I am absolutely sure that God means for the bride of Christ to be a scripturally enlightened people, a people free of tradition and superstitions who will be led by His Spirit into all truth. Some folks feel that many things in the scriptures are not really important enough that we should spend time on them. I feel that whatever God had written in the Bible is there for a purpose and the bride of Christ will understand all things before she is called to meet Jesus in the air. John must have had something to base his statement on when he said, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shallseeHim as He is.” Now we all know we will not rise to meet Him in our mortal bodies; we will be changed into immortality first, but I am also convinced that the living element of the bride of Christ is going to know something about what is written in the word of God, something that reaches beyond weekly Sunday school lessons in denominational churches. There are yet many things that God will reveal to His true church before her translation into immortality, and we do not know all of what they may include, but one thing I am sure of, the revelation of those seven thunders that John spoke of in Rev. 10:3, is part of it. We will not leave here until we know what those seven thunders uttered. We hear people say, Jesus could come any minute and we know they are referring to the time when He comes to fulfill 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, which is speaking of the translation of the living element of His bride, and the resurrection of the dead in Christ, but I want to assure you that is not correct. There are certain things to be revealed to the bride and please do not forget, the bride is a universal body of believers, and whatever revelation she is yet to receive will take a certain amount of time for it to reach its universal scope. God is not going to supernaturally speak to every individual that is to make up his bride; He will perfect us through the ministry of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, just like Ephesians 4:11-15, says He will. It is right that we should keep ourselves ready to meet Jesus at any moment with whatever revelation we have, for He could come for us as an individual, in death, at any tie, but He will not come for His church, as a body, until some more scripture has been fulfilled. You hear me say things like, we are at the end or the time is at hand, but when I make those statements I am referring to the time when God will close the door of grace to Gentiles. That absolutely could be just any time, but the rapture will not take place as soon as the Gentiles are cut off, and neither will the bride remain here past the middle of the week of Daniel to be caught in the great tribulation. She will be taken up somewhere in the first half of the week.

FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT

I am going to close the message shortly, but there is yet a thought I want to leave with you. The Ice Age caused darkness upon the face of the deep and when God said, Let there be light, He was bringing the earth out of that darkness. That is a picture of how He deals with a lost sinner who is born in sin, shapen in iniquity, and came into the world speaking lies. Before God begins to speak to us, we are in a state of darkness just like the earth which was void and useless. But just as God began to move by His Spirit upon the face of the deep, then spoke to bring light, so was it with our lost souls. One day he began to stir out souls with conviction of our need to be saved from that void condition; then He began to speak, “Listen, I want to talk to you.” The first thing you knew, light began to break forth in your heart; that old hard heart began to melt. Little by little, God thawed you out, melted you down, and set you free from your frozen, hard-hearted, void state of being and caused the sunlight of His love to shine upon your soul. The next thing for you was the water baptism that remitted your sins, then the Holy Ghost and fire to complete your rebirth. From there you walk right on, over a process of time, into perfection, complete redemption. That is exactly what God is doing with this old planet. Why did Peter refer to the flood of Noah’s day as a type, or figure, of our baptism? Simply because what God is doing with the earth and what He is doing with His people is a parallel. Here is what I mean. The earth was without form and void in total darkness and useless. The Spirit of God began to move, then He spoke to bring the earth out of darkness into light. In process of time, He put it through a water baptism, where sin was judged and buried beneath the water. Somewhere up ahead is a baptism of fire which will complete God’s work of redemption. We are fast approaching the hour when, with a baptism of fire, God will purge this old earth of all sin forever. This old planet will move off into its eternal age completely renewed, regenerated, completely free from every trace of sin. I am so thankful this morning that the captain of our salvation, the redeeming One is at the helm, guiding us right through to eternity. God bless you, everyone. Amen.