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this morning uh well yesterday we found out that um Tim and Jenny and their family are ill with the stomach virus and so I'm going to take up Sunday school today and we got into a discussion last
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week on the phrase in Genesis 1 verse 2. where we read that the Earth was formless and void tohu babohu
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tohu babohu and there was quite a bit of discussion last week last week as to what that means and how it relates to how you know the the ongoing issues
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regarding the debate concerning creation creation versus Evolution but in fact the the the the phrase is there and we're going to talk some more about
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that phrase tohu babohu this morning formless and void and and being there it demands attention
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but just because something is in scripture and demands attention doesn't necessarily mean we're going to be able to definitively solve all of the
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problems as was noted last week the Bible is is amazingly silent regarding the origin and nature of the Angelic host
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okay and so you know I know that Billy Graham once wrote a book called angels I don't know where he got his material but you wouldn't be able to put a pamphlet together if you pulled your
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material from scripture okay so there's a lot of imagination speculation that goes into it all of which of course is dangerous but for some reason and probably because
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of Deuteronomy 29 29 which when Angela stole my Bible years ago to have it rebound she put it on the back or the the guy who did The Binding was one of my
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favorite verses the secret things belong unto the Lord Our God but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever that we may do all the words of this law
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it seems to me that the nature and purpose and Origins and whatnot of the angelicos are among the secret things that belong to God and that we're not really supposed to
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pry into it nonetheless there's enough given to us to us to make us wonder and want more and it really begins right there in verse 2 of Genesis chapter 1. where we
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find that the Earth is formless and void the phrase so the direction I'm taking because I know from discussions with Tim that that's not where he's taking Sunday
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school not going into the origins of of Satan or how old is the earth or what about the dinosaurs that's that's not the purpose the purpose is more a focus
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on biblical theology focusing on God as a creator so it's somewhat providential that he's ill today because I can have a one-off
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talking about this particular topic and then he can pick up next week Lord willing because I'm not going to be here and um and go on with the the plan but what
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we're really dealing with in this issue of kohu mabohu
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it's a branch of theological studies known as The Odyssey and um and um it deals with technically it's it's it's a defense of
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but the primary question that theodicy deals with is what is the origin of evil if there were no evil in the world there
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will be no theodicy there would be no discussion and so this is a philosophical Branch it's not one for example that we necessarily deal with on Thursday nights because again there's not a whole lot
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whence evil where does evil come from that of course leads to but the the origin and nature of Satan you know when was he created when did he
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fall what was the nature of the war in heaven and the Rebellion okay um again the the scriptures allude to these things these things but don't give us much in the way of
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detail the reason that the phrase tohu babohu is significant is not only that it's right there in Genesis 1 verse 2.
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but there's two words only appear two other places in the Old Testament Isaiah Jeremiah and in both places they are clear references to Divine judgment
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and the result of divine judgment so given that um Jewish rabbis Christian theologians
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for millennia for millennia have discussed the nature of Creation in light of this phrase okay in verse 2 and the Earth was formless
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and void and darkness was over the surface of the now now The New American Standard says deep and I think that's an unfortunate
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rendering because the word is Abyss and you and you you can I think easily see the difference in connotation between the
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Deep which would simply mean for example the oceans which by the way weren't quite there yet everything was covered with water okay but and the abyss what is the abyss
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I mean biblically what do you think of when you hear the word Abyss pardon me hell yeah that the place where
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Satan and the false prophet you know will be cast into the abyss but in other words Abyss has a different connotation it is also deep right
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but it has a different has a judgmental con connotation so the point being is in verse 2 verse 2 the words that are used aren't good words
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biblically nice words nice words right they're not happy smiley face words so theologians have have dealt with this and and again both Jewish and Christian
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theologians rabbis have tried to um explain what what does this mean what was what was what were things like before God said let there be light
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that's verse 3. and in a sense we can say verse 3 begins the week of creation but verse 2 sets a background
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that we would not necessarily expect having read verse 1. in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth does that make sense now Tim alluded to a verse in Isaiah 45
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where the the prophet or the Lord basically says through the prophet I did not create things void and yet here in chapter 1 of Genesis
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verse 2 we find that everything is formless and void and darkness and there is a great
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so we're not going to be able to to answer and I do want to get to the point where we deal with um the excesses the excesses of interpretation regarding this verse
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it is easy to to go beyond when you have just a little verse I mean let's just think for example what has been done with the word millennium
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okay how many places do we find that word in Scripture one which means it is a Biblical concept right and cannot be ignored
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what has been done with that word a whole lot right a whole lot more than one verse would warrant and and I think there's an analogy there number one if
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it's there you can't ignore it number two if it's only there a little bit then you need to be careful how big an edifice you build on that one little brick as a foundation so and there has
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been much built on this verse two that really is um is is some of the foundation of sand but I want to talk about some of the issues uh first of all that we're dealing with
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I mean we are clearly presented in scripture with the reality of an Angelic host and I think we are also not quite as clearly presented in Scripture
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with the reality that this Angelic host itself consists of a hierarchy of beings we read of beings in um in Ephesians we
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battle not against flesh and blood but against the rulers and the powers and the principalities we we have the word the heavenlies which does not just refer to the atmosphere
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but rather the beings that inhabit that atmosphere that the Angelic host we have the the um the creatures that surround the throne
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both in Isaiah 6 and in Revelation we have the the 24 Elders we have the four living creatures we have the cherubim the seraphim we have the archangels so
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you know there we also have of course Satan the great accuser okay so there there's it's not just my guardian angel and and you know it's not Clarence who's
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got his wings um we don't get wings when we go to heaven there's a whole B there's a whole realm of being of being that exists
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that exists and that occasionally intersects the realm of humanity but very very occasionally it's a realm and and that's why there's
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so little mention of it in scripture because those are the times when those two worlds have have intersected and so there's a description of the of
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the men who encountered Abraham prior to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah they were not men obviously they were we know learn later they were angels and the leader of the three was the the Lord
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of hosts he was he was the the uh the pre-incarnate Son of God okay so why there's a lot going on there and yet the Holy Spirit and the father never deigned
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to say okay this is where they all came from this is what they're like this what their purpose is and this is what's going to happen to them and we do know some of what's going to happen to them when we read Revelation
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but so the Angelic hosts both good and Fallen you know what can we
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we can say this they exist they exist and from that one statement we can conclude this
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that's right exactly we're told in Scripture that all things have been created by Him and there is nothing that exists that was not created by him right and of course the Lord Jesus Christ is the is the executor of that creation and
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so we know then that the angels are and we see this in scripture even with Satan we know that they are subordinate
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to the will of God so they they are not independent agents any more than man is so we know some things but really we know we there's less
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there's more in the class of what we don't know than um in the one that of what we do know
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exactly well no I'm talking about both I'm talking about both the the good and the evil they were all created by God they were all support because we see in Job that Satan is subordinate to God right that that he is even though he is a
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rebel the leader of the rebels we we hear the phrase in Revelation there was war in heaven and really when you think about that that's that's a that's a remarkable
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concept uh not only that there could be war in heaven but what a war that must be
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so when we talk about the Angelic host I'm I'm talking about both um I I personally believe that of the Angelic hosts the the um the the foremost the highest of them was
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Satan that he was the greatest of them okay um and and I say that even even on the basis of of a letter to Jude you know that even Michael the Archangel
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refused to issue a railing judgment against Satan but rather said the Lord rebuked you rebuked you so if they're it's we like to think when we think of hierarchies we often think of military
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of military um and so if there was a five-star general among the Angels it was Satan okay and so it's there um but what what is um
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what is difficult for us in the in respect to Genesis is Satan appears in Genesis 3 already notorious
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already notorious for his subtlety and already fallen okay so we must conclude because we have no
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um we have nothing in the seven or the six days of creation to indicate otherwise we must conclude that the angels
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both existed both existed and some roughly a third you know we hear and whether that's allegorical or literal in Revelation
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a third of the Angelic hosts rebelled and Fell From Grace prior to the creation of man
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we have no evidence of that we we have uh well what we do have evidence of evidence of as I said is Satan's presence
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and we don't know how long it took for Adam to fall to fall but we do know that his
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primary commission was to be fruitful and multiply
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because Cain was conceived in sin in sin now I'll grant that these are implications okay they're implications there's no hard fast data but there are also
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implications that have been consistently made by both Jewish and Christian theologians for the past three thousand years and that is the Angelic host already
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existed at some point at the very earliest we would our latest we would have to place the creation of the angels on day one when God said let there be light
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we don't know how long no we don't know how long the time was we have no indication but
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every indication from scripture in terms of Adam's fall in particular I'm thinking of the one where God made a covenant with man but he made his own plans or or you know the the phrasing there in the Hebrew I think
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it's in Amos but is is rather vague but it basically means he sinned and even the narrative in Genesis does not lead us to believe that there was much
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time between Creation in the fall okay there's no indication that there was a great deal of time between those two how much time it took
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um to for for the angels to be created and to fall uh you're right it could have happened in a day could have especially if I'm saying that I don't think it took long for Adam to fall
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I don't think it necessarily had to take long for Satan to fall that's not the point the point is we have a passage in
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that is indicative of something other than the good and the very good creation that we read of in days one through seven and that's where I'm going okay and that is
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verse two verse two all right so we have the Angels now the um the other issue that we have is in
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now now of course we think of time according to our watch right and we think of the beginning and we think of words like before and after and during are all within a mentality of time that
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um I don't have that one written down but I I in fact would make that connection for this reason we're going to get to that when we talk about Isaiah 14. prophecies can be against specific
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Nations and specific people while also using the terminology of a cosmic condemnation of the forces
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behind those Nations and kings okay so oftentimes the condemnations against the human agents of evil are well beyond what they could possibly
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be capable of doing and that is because God is Not only condemning the agent he's condemning the source does that make sense
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make sense that throughout scripture throughout history there have been two battles going on going on one that we've seen here on Earth but the one that we don't see is in the
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heavens and the scriptures often speak of both or speak of the one in terms of the other Revelation is one of those places apocalyptic is a style of writing that
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does just that it speaks of things in terms that are cosmic when in fact it is addressing terms that are mundane or events that
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are on this Earth so we we can read for example Isaiah 14 and realize that the prophecy again is against the king of Babylon but also realize as the Jews realize
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this terminology is not human it's beyond the king of Babylon okay so we're gonna we're gonna look at that in a moment but time
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is another issue that I think we are we're really incapable of doing anything more than realizing that we're incapable
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time and space are connected and you can't have space without time you can't talk about space yes
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isn't possibly not in the same time space Dimension that we are reading of in Genesis and you know to whom we are most indebted for that insight Einstein okay and it wasn't exactly the
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creation of the physical universe that started time it was a creation of light because Einstein has shown us that light
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is really the essence of time it travels it travels and everything is related to the speed of light of light okay now we have not yet fully grasped
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the implication of that but I I love to tell my chemistry class the significance of this
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that's essentially the transition between matter and energy is it not we've been able to go in One Direction
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God was able to go in another okay because we can rewrite this that's the speed of light okay and in the beginning
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you know on day one God said God said let there be light now there's a there's a a whole universe
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of God glorifying information in that phrase and even it is is an odd phrase that God should say let there be light
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because we know in Scripture that God is right but if if we think about time we tend to
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think of Eternity as um endless time right we think according to the number line we understand at least the concept of
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infinity and we tend to think of Eternity as infinite time but what if eternity is timelessness
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and that's about as far as we can go isn't it because how do we conceive we who are beings of this space time and always will be frankly we're not going to become angels
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but being bound to this space-time dimension of creation the most we can say is think are things like God is Spirit
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does anybody really know what that means God is light and we can say eternity is timelessness
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which may mean that the whole discussion is being built on the wrong Foundation to begin with that when we get to Genesis 1 we are dealing with a beginning and we're dealing with the beginning
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of the space-time Dimension that will now have no end and in which man is the Supreme creation
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so let's say just for the sake of argument and please understand I do not intend to be dogmatic on this we're dealing in an area where we have little points of biblical data
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okay and we do not have excessive yeah I mean those of you have known me know that I am not dogmatic on the meaning of the millennium I have no interest and I don't think any
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of us do in in the leadership of of building glorious edifices on single verses of scripture but just trying to understand as best we
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can what God has revealed so is it possible and we have some indication of this
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realms in God's reality okay you agree all right all right if we talk about the heavenlies this is where we're talking about God
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we're talking about a a realm in which our understanding of time has no bearing and no connection
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and here when we talk about the cosmos we're talking about creation we're talking about man and we're talking about
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the whole of our perceptive universe that which we can see with our eyes and hear with our ears we can put under the microscope or see through the telescope it is subject to our understanding
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but do we accept that there is far more than is subject to our understanding and then even scripture is one of the reasons I think maybe why scripture doesn't give us any uh detailed analysis
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of of this realm because we wouldn't even understand the terminology being used you know I've said this before we we send out
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send out uh we think that there are there's life in outer space we send out radio waves and we send out um uh exploring spacecraft that have you know uh copper plates or gold plates
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with a figure a Michelangelo's figure of or as a da Vinci Da Vinci's figure of man you know and then of course we we say we come in peace in in English and
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Russian and Chinese and because we know that those aliens out there speak at least one of those languages why are we so naive to think that there are if there are and I do believe there
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are other beings they're called angels why do they think that they would even be receptive to any form of communication that we have that we can just follow my point
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okay we're so man-centered that we think the rest of the universe must understand exactly how we speak we don't even understand how one another speaks so how would we think there there is more out there
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and our minds know that we were created in the image of God and so there is this eternity set within the human heart but it's past finding out
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so we come to this verse then and and that's um tohu VA bohu and and this this is again I'm not being I'm not trying to be dogmatic here
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are we in agreement in agreement that the words used in chapter 1 verse 2 of Genesis of Genesis are unusual
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in terms of the nature of the meaning and the connotation of the words formless void darkness and Abyss
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negative they are words of judgment is only used twice in the rest of scripture so you can't build a much on
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that um but that's kind of the focus formless and void
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chapter 4 verse 23. a judgment against Judah and Jerusalem I looked on the earth and behold it was formless and void
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and to the heavens and they had no light okay so Jeremiah 4
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this is a judgment against all the nations and particularly against Edom okay so that's the context pelicant and Pelican and Owl shall inherit it and owl and Raven shall dwell in it
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and he shall stretch out the line of formlessness tohu formlessness tohu and the Plumb line of emptiness bohu
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so the two words now bohu is not used anywhere else in the Old Testament tohu is used elsewhere but together they're only in these three
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passages Genesis 1 verse 2 Jeremiah 4 23 and Isaiah 34 11. and this is the uh the
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line of formlessness tohu and the Plumb line so it's the level
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and the plum is what he's saying okay the Plumb line
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bohu okay all right prophetic language is often couched in terminology of previous events
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so we will be as Sodom for we would become as Gomorrah we find in Isaiah but it's it's speaking of a destruction that would come upon us but for God's
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grace that is of the same character as the destruction of Sodom Gomorrah centuries before so it's common for the language of the prophets to uh to allude
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to and and to reminisce of the past these two verses do just that they're using a phrase that has only found one place and that's right in the
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beginning in Genesis 1 verse 2. so they are they are alluding to a condition that is described by these two words together tohu and bohu okay
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the significance to both Jewish and Christian exegetes in this regard is that whereas there is no inference of judgment in Genesis 1 verse
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2. there is absolute inference of ultimate Divine judgment in both of these
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voice hailing back to this phrase found its use in judgment passages
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which by implication means that Genesis 1 verse 2 was also a Passage now do you understand the logic of that
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they must be negative this must be a negative idea otherwise I wouldn't be applicable
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you never you never you never hear of anything God anything God promising in the future that he will build the city of God and make it like Sodom and he'll make it like Gomorrah yeah so there is a there is a sense in
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which certain phrases and certain words carry a negative connotation with them everywhere they go
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that in some way God made yeah there was something there and this is how it has been taken and this is where I'm going with this okay because because I think it's been taken too far and I want to to put a a hedge of caution okay
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but this this passage has not been ignored over the Millennia and it has never been viewed as a positive verse verse 2 of chapter one by
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any Jew by any Christian it has never been said oh you know this is what God started with started with now God doesn't start with these things these are the things that throughout the
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rest of scripture are the result of his judgment does that make sense these these words are not and this is how it's been taken okay this this is
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the primordial matter with which God then created the world that's how it's been interpreted to show that matter itself is eternal
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which is of course the view of evolution but it was the view also of the Greek Hellenist Jews as well as early Christians especially the platonic ones
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the the the the idea in in the Greek philosophy is that matter is eternal and it also within Greek philosophy matter is negative
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so that would help account for the words that are being used these are negative words and so we conclude oh look God took this in Kuwait Eternal negative matter and he
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put it together and he made the world implies four implies a four the heavens and the Earth
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and then in verse to its formers right which is which is like what does that mean we don't really really know and I guess one of three things I want to or really
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two things I want to try to refute a couple of negative directions that this teaching has gone and then conclude on the only note that we can truly stand
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everyone everyone has okay no one no one on any side of the issue as far as I've read and I've read quite a bit has has viewed this as a vacuum and in fact the rabbinic teachings take
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tohu and bohu as material things but one thing that is absolutely material is the abyss because that's a location
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formlessness as as John Lucia said form is implied by creation and it absolutely is a result has a form uh formlessness
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implies form implies form it does not mean vacuum and what again our understanding of those words has to be guided by the use
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of those words throughout the rest of scripture because that is what every Jew would think when they read Jeremiah 4 for Isaiah you know 34 they would think
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you know that that's terrible that's not just nothingness just nothingness that's you know to take your thought another further if these words are being used to signify
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nothingness then that will lead to the doctrine of annihilationism that when God judges he is simply going to annihilate the wicked well we know that's not biblical
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he's going to destroy the wicked and he's going to punish the wicked but the Wicked Will exist to endure that punishment forever
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punishment forever okay so the words are there the only because we're at the beginning of the Old Testament the only place that we can gain any
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biblical understanding of those words is from the rest of the Old Testament and when we do that it's always a negative look back look back all right so
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we we know from scripture that God created by Fiat EX nihilo okay so one of the negative and false directions that this verse has been taken is the teaching of Eternal matter
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and I'm I'm saying that is a false teaching but it's it's it's beyond what is written because if we're going to take the meaning of the words and the rest of scripture we also have to take the nature of God as Creator and shine
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it back okay and and if these things are even viewed as material and I do think they are form of some sort they still are under the the rubric of
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God as the creator of all things so no matter is not eternal also this has been used to try to explain uh how there could be
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an old Earth when the scripture at least from creation on gives us an indication of a much younger Earth and so this is called The Gap theory
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that there's a gap between verses two and three and in that Gap there was an earth that was populated by the dinosaurs
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and also studying science that is the thing that is the thing that is a very very uh popular Christian response to evolution is that there was a world before this world and that's all
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in this verse okay this verse is not strong enough to Bear the load of that theory and it also uh fails on several accounts
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[Music] dinosaurs would then have to be added to this list if we don't know where they came from came from because last thing I know there was no Angelic being called Tyrannosaurus Rex
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and certainly the Angels had more functional arms
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there's no Angelic fossil record okay all right we should be looking for that shouldn't we dinosaurs uh at least to the extent that they are
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um manifest in the fossil record which is not nearly as much as science wants us to believe to believe but we also know the concept of Extinction and we know that animals can go extinct
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within within centuries we don't need millions of years for animals to go extinct but what we cannot do in my opinion is we cannot take created animals
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and push them because not that now what we're doing is we're now we're now creating a third realm okay these two realms we learn
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about in Scripture a whole lot more about this one than this one right but this one's mentioned does anybody deny that that one's in the Bible is there any any intermediate creation
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not not explicitly certainly okay so that that is going beyond what is written on the one hand and it's really the extremes on the one hand you have eternal matter that the Greeks believed and and many Jews picked up on
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on the other hand and many Christians and on the other hand you have the the uh the view of a gap and of a creation before the creation and again that is
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far more than verse two can carry all we can say about in my opinion what we can say about verse 2 of chapter one is this
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there was something there before God declared light the adjectives about which are universally negative
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and are associated consistently with judgment beyond that beyond that we don't know but then the second thing we can say is
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that God was Sovereign and The Sovereign creator even over that circumstance we read again in Isaiah God saying I am
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the one who creates Darkness and Light that that he is The Sovereign over to the darkness he is The Sovereign over
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all things all things when tohuvabo who is used in Isaiah and Jeremiah who is the one who brings it about not Satan
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God okay these are not the result of Satan's work in Isaiah and Jeremiah they are a result of God's judgment so not knowing any more details
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and really perhaps not being able to shed much light we still can look at a verse like this and say you know what God is sovereign over that circumstance
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whatever it may have been but the caution is again to be careful to to recognize what is
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written to contemplate what is written to compare what is written but not to go beyond what is written
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the spirit the word the word is literally brooding and and it indicates you know it's not I mean you know that's kind of that would be the visual image the visual image
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would be the spirit hovering but the word is more like brooding and that and that that word has a connotation of uh thought
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contemplation and it and it's it's kind of an this is my image my image all right and that's all it is but it's it's it's the image of God the godhead
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and this this ties into second Corinthians where where the God who said let there be light has shown the light of Salvation into our hearts clearly a reference to Creation okay so
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think of those connections as I conclude God contemplating
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darkness and the abyss and thinking and thinking what is the solution
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that was the material world at creation that is the situation of every Fallen soul into which God speaks the light of Jesus Christ he contemplates the darkness the formlessness The Emptiness and the abyss
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yes yes thank you yes let's pray let's pray father we do give you all the glory for creation and even though there clearly is a
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negative side we know that you are sovereign over it and though we do not know the why or even the whence of evil we know that you are sovereign over that
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as well as well we know that you will accomplish your purpose For Your Glory and we thank you
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that when you looked into the abyss of our dead Hearts you spoke light in Jesus
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we pray that in all discussions like this one we would keep in mind your majesty your omnipotence but also your grace and your mercy
