Edited by Mimi Rothschild

 God is omniscient. He knows everything: everything possible, everything actual, everything everywhere, everything anywhere.

God knows all events, all creatures, God the past, the present and the future.

He is intimately acquainted with every detail in the life of every being in heaven, in earth and in hell.

“He knoweth what is in the darkness” (Dan. 2:22).

Nothing escapes His notice, nothing can be hidden from Him, nothing is forgotten by Him. Well may we say with the Psalmist, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it” (Ps. 139:6). His knowledge is perfect. He never errs, never changes, never overlooks anything. “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:13). Yes, such is the God with whom “we have to do!”

“Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, Thou understandest my thoughts afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue but, lo, O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether” (Ps. 139:2-4). What a wondrous Being is the God of Scripture! Each of His glorious attributes should render Him honorable in our esteem. The apprehension of His omniscience ought to bow us in adoration before Him. Yet how little do we meditate upon this Divine perfection! Is it because the very thought of it fills us with uneasiness?

How solemn is this fact: nothing can be concealed from God!

“For I know the things that come into your mind, every one of them” (Ezek. 11:5). Though He be invisible to us, we are not so to Him. Neither the darkness of night, the closest curtains, nor the deepest dungeon can hide any sinner from the eyes of Omniscience. The trees of the garden were not able to conceal our first parents. No human eye beheld Cain murder his brother, but his Maker witnessed his crime. Sarah might laugh derisively in the seclusion of her tent, yet was it heard by Jehovah. Achan stole a wedge of gold and carefully hid it in the earth, but God brought it to light. David was at much pains to cover up his wickedness, but ere long the all-seeing God sent one of His servants to say to him, “Thou art the man! And to writer and reader is also said, Be sure your sin will find you out” (Num. 32:23).

The wicked hate this Divine perfection as much as they are naturally compelled to acknowledge it. They wish there might be no Witness of their sins, no Searcher of their hearts, no Judge of their deeds. They seek to banish such a God from their thoughts: “They consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness” (Hosea 7:2). How solemn is Psalm 90:8! Good reason has every Christ-rejecter for trembling before it: Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance.

But to the believer, the fact of God’s omniscience is a truth fraught with much comfort. In times of perplexity he says with Job, “But He knows the way that I take.” (23:10). It may be profoundly mysterious to me, quite incomprehensible to my friends, but “He knows!” In times of weariness and weakness believers assure themselves “He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:14). In times of doubt and suspicion they appeal to this very attribute saying, “Search me, 0 God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps. 139:23,24). In time of sad failure, when our actions have belied our hearts, when our deeds have repudiated our devotion, and the searching question comes to us, “Love thou Me?;” we say, as Peter did, “Lord, Thou know all things; Thou knows that I love Thee” (John 21:17).

Does God always hear my prayer?

There is no cause for fearing that the petitions of the righteous will not be heard, or that their sighs and tears shall escape the notice of God, since He knows the thoughts and intents of the heart. There is no danger of the individual saint being overlooked amidst the multitude of supplicants who daily and hourly present their various petitions, for an infinite Mind is as capable as paying the same attention to millions as if only one individual were seeking its attention. So too the lack of appropriate language, the inability to give expression to the deepest longing of the soul, will not jeopardize our prayers, for “It shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear” (Isa. 65:24).

“Great is our Lord, and of great power: His understanding is infinite” (Ps. 147:5). God not only knows whatsoever has happened in the past in every part of His vast domains, and He is not only thoroughly acquainted with everything that is now transpiring throughout the entire universe, but He is also perfectly cognizant with every event, from the least to the greatest, that ever will happen in the ages to come. God’s knowledge of the future is as complete as is His knowledge of the past and the present, and that, because the future depends entirely upon Himself. Were it in anywise possible for something to occur apart from either the direct agency or permission of God, then that something would be independent of Him, and He would at once cease to be Supreme.

Now the Divine knowledge of the future is not a mere story, but something which is inseparably connected with and accompanied by His purpose. God has Himself designed whatsoever shall yet be, and what He has designed must be effectuated. As His most sure Word affirms, “He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven, and the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay His hand” (Dan. 4:35). And again, “There are many devices in a man’s heart; nevertheless the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand” (Prov. 19:21). The wisdom and power of God being alike infinite, the accomplishment of whatever He hath purposed is absolutely guaranteed. It is no more possible for the Divine counsels to fail in their execution than it would be for the thrice holy God to lie.

Nothing relating to the future is in anywise uncertain so far as the actualization of God’s counsels are concerned. None of His decrees are left contingent either on creatures or secondary causes. There is no future event which is only a mere possibility, that is, something which may or may not come to pass, “Known unto God are all His works from the beginning” (Acts 15:18). Whatever God has decreed is inexorably certain, for He is without variableness, or shadow, of turning. (James 1:17). Therefore we are told at the very beginning of that book which unveils to us so much of the future, of “Things which must shortly come to pass.” (Rev. 1:1).

The perfect knowledge of God is exemplified and illustrated in every prophecy recorded in His Word. In the Old Testament are to be found scores of predictions concerning the history of Israel, which were fulfilled to their minutest detail, centuries after they were made. In them too are scores more foretelling the earthly career of Christ, and they too were accomplished literally and perfectly. Such prophecies could only have been given by One who knew the end from the beginning, and whose knowledge rested upon the unconditional certainty of the accomplishment of everything foretold. In like manner, both Old and New Testament contain many other announcements yet future, and they too “must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44), must because foretold by Him who decreed them.

Neither God’s knowledge nor His knowledge of the future, considered simply in themselves, are causative. Nothing has ever come to pass, or ever will, merely because God knew it. The cause of all things is the will of God. The man who really believes the Scriptures knows beforehand that the seasons will continue to follow each other with unfailing regularity to the end of earth’s history (Gen. 8:22), yet his knowledge is not the cause of their succession. So God’s knowledge does not arise from things because they are or will be but because He has ordained them to be. God knew and foretold the crucifixion of His Son many hundreds of years before He became incarnate, and this, because in the Divine purpose, He was a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world: hence we read of His being “delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23).

A word or two by way of application. The infinite knowledge of God should fill us with amazement. How far exalted above the wisest man is the Lord! None of us knows what a day may bring forth, but all futurity is open to His omniscient gaze. The infinite knowledge of God ought to fill us with holy awe. Nothing we do, say, or even think, escapes the cognizance of Him with whom we have to do: “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (Prov. 15:3). What a curb this would be unto us, did we but meditate upon it more frequently! Instead of acting recklessly, we should say with Hagar, “Thou God seest me” (Gen. 16:13). The apprehension of God’s infinite knowledge should fill the Christian with adoration. The whole of my life stood open to His view from the beginning. He foresaw my every fall, my every sin, my every backsliding; yet, nevertheless, fixed His heart upon me. Oh, how the realization of this should bow me in wonder and worship before Him!

The Attributes of God
by A.W. Pink

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Matt. 8:16-18.

When the even was come, they brought to him many that were possessed with devils, etc.

Q. WHAT do you here understand by the even coming?

A. By the even coming, according to the sense of the letter, is to be understood the close of the natural day, or the time when the sun sets to this lower world of nature; but according to the spiritual idea contained under the letter, by the even coming is to be understood a state of obscure faith and love in the church, or the close of the spiritual day, when the Sun of Heaven sets on benighted mortals, in consequence of their want of faith in the brightness of his rays, and their want of love for that heavenly warmth which they inspire.

Q. And what do you conceive to be here meant by the possessed of devils?

A. By devils are to be understood the spirits and powers of darkness in the infernal world, and by being possessed of these devils, according to the sense of the letter, is to be understood the possession which these spirits and powers took at that time of the bodies of men; for such at that time was the deplorable state of the Jewish church, in its departure from god and His kingdom, that the infernal inhabitants entered even into the corporeal part of man, and ruled it at pleasure. But by being possessed of devils, according to the spiritual idea, is to be understood the possession which the infernal powers take of the souls of men, by virtue of which possession they obtain entire government over the thoughtless and impenitent, and rule them with the iron rod of diabolical malice and agency. For such is the awful situation of man in this lower world, that he is placed as it were between two kingdoms, the kingdom of light, which is the kingdom of god, and the kingdom of darkness which is the kingdom of the enemy of god, called the Devil and Satan ; the Devil by reason of the diabolical evil by which he is impelled to all kind of mischief: and Satan, by reason of the false principles in which that evil works, and effects its mischievous purposes. Moreover, the inhabitants of both these kingdoms have access to man, and he becomes of necessity associated with the one or the other according to his ruling love, that is to say, according as he is desirous to submit himself to the government of the divine love and wisdom of god, or to govern himself, by exalting his own will and wisdom above the will and wisdom of the most high. It is further to be remarked concerning such association, that, man acquires a life and a form according to it, an angelic life and form if his association be angelic, but an infernal life and form if his association be infernal. Jesus Christ accordingly declares concerning the wicked and unbelieving Jews, You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. (John 8:44).

Q. Can you assign any reason why the possessed of devils were brought to Jesus when the even was come?

A. Yes, if the even be understood according to the spiritual idea above expressed, as denoting the absence of good and of truth in the church, for whenever this is the case, then the members of the church must of necessity become a prey to evil and error, and of course must be possessed of devils, because wherever evil and error are, there the powers of darkness, called the Devil and Satan, must have their abode. It is only therefore in the even, according to its spiritual meaning, that mankind can become possessed of devils, and thus brought to Jesus for deliverance.

Q. But it follows, that He cast out the spirits with His Word, and healed all that were sick — what do you understand by Jesus casting out the spirits with His Word?

A. By the spirits here spoken of are to be understood the powers of darkness, who have their abodes in all man’s natural evils and errors, and by the word of Jesus Christ is to be understood the complex of His divine love and wisdom brought down into the letter, or literal expression. By Jesus casting out the spirits with His Word is consequently to be understood the removal of evil and error through the implantation, the growth, and fruitfulness of heavenly love and wisdom, or what amounts to the same of heavenly goodness and truth. It is not therefore to be understood that Jesus cast out the spirits by the mere sound of His voice, or by any extraordinary act of divine authority or omnipotence separate from His divine love and wisdom, for evil can never be supplanted but by good, nor can error be supplanted but by truth, and therefore it is to be understood, that the voice of the blessed Jesus operated to the casting out the spirits by virtue of the omnipotence of His divine love and wisdom, as formed and contained in it. Hence then may be discovered the obligation imposed on every one, who is desirous of experiencing in his own mind the casting out of the powers of darkness, to cherish carefully in himself the contrary powers of heavenly love and wisdom, or goodness and truth, from a firm conviction that one opposite can never be cast out but by another, in like manner as darkness can never be cast out but by light, nor cold but by heat.

Q. And what do you conceive to be meant by the words which follow, and healed all that were sick?

A. By the sick, according to the spiritual sense O the Miracle, are here meant those who are spiritually sick, and the spiritually sick are all those who are distempered in their understanding, by reason of the influence of false persuasions and perverted thoughts. By healing the sick therefore is to be understood the removal of such false principles and perverted thoughts by the insemination and growth of heavenly truth and knowledge. This operation of healing the sick accordingly follows that of casting out the spirits, because by the spirits are meant the spirits of evil infecting the will of man with disorderly love, and until these spirits are cast out, it is impossible the sick can be healed, since if the love be disorderly in the will, it must of necessity give birth to false persuasions in the understanding; but no sooner is evil extirpated from the will, than error is at the same time extirpated from the understanding, and thus the sick are healed.

Q. But it is added, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses   how do you understand these words? A. By these words I am instructed that all the Miracles worked by the blessed Jesus were of divine prediction, and that thus the prophetic Word and the evangelical are in the most perfect harmony, and accord with each other; the latter being the accomplishment of the former, in the person of the incarnate god. By this god taking our infirmities, and bearing our sicknesses? I am further instructed, that he subjected himself to the assault of all those evils and errors which infest the nature of man, and which are in connection with the powers of darkness, to the intent that he might finally subdue those powers, and deliver man from their tyrannical usurpation. Mention is accordingly made both of infirmities and sicknesses, because infirmities relate to the disorders of evil in the human will, whilst sicknesses have relation to the disorders resulting from false principles in the understanding.

Q. What then is the general instruction which you learn from this Miracle?

A. I learn in the first place to adore the power of that incarnate god, who was manifested to destroy the works of the devil, both in the heart, in the understanding, and in the operation of man, by delivering the heart from the love of evil, and the understanding from the darkness of error, and the operation from the mischievous effects of both.    I learn in the next place to venerate that holy word, which proceeds from this incarnate god, and is embodied in the letter or literal sense of the divine records, and to regard it as the grand complex of the divine will and wisdom let down from heaven for the use of man, by forming in him the same heavenly love and wisdom with which itself is filled.    I learn also that the incarnate god effects all his saving purposes by the instrumentality of   this His holy word.    I learn further that so far as I deliberately cherish any evil or error, in the same proportion I admit into myself infernal agency, and by degrees become a living form of diabolical influence, from which I  can never by any possibility be delivered, but through the reception of the eternal truth, producing in me the blessed fruits of repentance, of faith in Jesus Christ, and of a holy life according to His divine precepts.    I learn lastly to adore that divine mercy, which was pleased in the fulness of time to assume a body of flesh, and in that body to submit to all the assaults of the powers of darkness, for the purpose of subduing them, and thus removing them from man.    I am resolved therefore from now on to take Jesus Christ for my only god and saviour, by believing that he alone has power to deliver me from my natural evils, and thus from infernal association and usurpation.    I am resolved also to venerate His holy word, by believing it to proceed from him, and to contain in its inmost bosom all the fullness  of His love and wisdom, by virtue of which it is in continual close connection with Him. Lastly, I am resolved to cherish this holy word in my heart, my understanding, and my life, from a full conviction that I can never attain any ascendancy over my own natural evils, and thus over the powers of darkness, only so far as the heavenly goods and truths of the eternal word are implanted and bring forth their blessed fruits in my life and conversation, amen.

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Happily for him, he was also ignorant of the strange scholasticism which was taught at Jerusalem, and which was soon to constitute the Talmud. If some Pharisees had already brought it into Galilee, he did not associate with them, and when, later, he encountered this silly casuistry, in it only inspired him with disgust. We may suppose, however, that the principles of Hillel were not unknown to him. Hillel, fifty years before him, had given utterance to aphorisms very analogous to his own. By his poverty, so meekly endured, by the sweetness of his character, by his opposition to priests and hypocrites, Hillel was the true master of Jesus, if, indeed, it may be permitted to speak of a master in connection with so high an originality as his.

The perusal Of the books of the Old Testament made much impression upon him. The canon of the holy books was compose of two principal parts: the Law — that is to say, the Pentateuch — and the Prophets, such as we now possess them. An extensive allegorical exegesis was applied to all these books; and it was sought to draw from them something that was not in them, but which responded to the aspirations of the age. The Law, which represented not the ancient laws of the country, but Utopias, the factitious laws and pious frauds of the time of the pietistic kings, had become, since the nation had ceased to govern itself, an inexhaustible theme of subtle interpretations. As to the Prophets and the Psalms, the popular persuasion was that almost all the somewhat mysterious traits that were in these books had reference to the Messiah, and it was sought to find there the type of him who should realize the hopes of the nation. Jesus participated in the taste which everyone had for these allegorical interpretations. But the true poetry of the Bible, which escaped the puerile exegetists of Jerusalem, was fully revealed to his grand genius. The Law does not appear to have had much charm for him; he thought that he could do something better. But the religious lyrics of the Psalms were in marvelous accordance with his poetic soul; they were, all his life, his food and sustenance. The prophets — Isaiah in particular, and his successor in the record of the time of the captivity — with their brilliant dreams of the future, their impetuous eloquence, and their invectives mingled with enchanting pictures, were his true teachers. He read also. no doubt, many apocryphal works — i.e. writings somewhat modern — the authors of which, for the sake of an authority only granted to very ancient writings, had clothed themselves with the names of prophets and patriarchs, One of these books especially struck him — namely, the book of Daniel. This book, composed by an enthusiastic Jew of the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, under the name of an ancient sage, was the resume of the spirit of those later times. Its author, a true creator of the philosophy of history, had for the first time dared to see in the march of the world and the succession of empires only a purpose subordinate to the destinies of the Jewish people. Jesus was early penetrated by these high hopes. Perhaps, also, he had read the books of Enoch, then revered equally with the holy books, and the other writings of the same class, which kept up so much excitement in the popular imagination. The advent of the Messiah, with his glories and his terrors — the nations falling down one after another, the cataclysm of heaven and earth — were the familiar food of his imagination; and, as these revolutions were reputed near, and a great number of persons sought to calculate the time when they should happen, the supernatural state of things into which such visions transport us appeared to him from the first perfectly natural and simple.

That he had no knowledge of the general state of the world is apparent from each feature of his most authentic discourses. The earth appeared to him still divided into kingdoms warring with one another; he seemed to ignore the “Roman peace,” and the new state of society which its age inaugurated. He had no precise idea of the Roman power; the name of “Caesar” alone reached him. He saw building, in Galilee or its environs, Tiberias, Julias, Diocaesarea, Caesarea, gorgeous works of the Herods, who sought, by these magnificent structures, to prove their admiration for Roman civilization, and their devotion towards the members of the family of Augustus — structures whose names, by a caprice of fate, now serve, though strangely altered, to designate miserable hamlets of Bedouins. He also probably saw Sebaste, a work of Herod the Great, a showy city, whose ruins would lead to the belief that it had been carried there ready made, like a machine which had only to be put up in its place. This ostentatious piece of architecture arrived in Judea by cargoes; these hundreds of columns, all of the same diameter, the ornament of some insipid Rue de Rivoli — these were what he called “the kingdoms of the world and all their glory.” But this luxury of power, this administrative and official art, displeased him. What he loved were his Galilean villages, confused mixtures of huts, of nests and holes cut in the rocks, of wells, of tombs, of fig-trees, and of olives. He always clung close to nature. The courts of kings appeared to him as places where men wear fine clothe. The charming impossibilities with which his parables abound, when he brings kings and the mighty ones on the stage, prove that he never conceived of aristocratic society but as a young villager who sees the world through the prism of his simplicity.

Still less was he acquainted with the new idea, created by Grecian science, which was the basis of all philosophy, and which modern science has greatly confirmed — to wit, the exclusion of capricious gods, to whom the simple belief of ancient ages attributed the government of the universe, Almost a century before him Lucretius had expressed, in an admirable manner, the unchangeableness of the general system of nature. The negation of miracle — the idea that everything in the world happens by laws in which the personal intervention of superior beings has no share — was universally admitted in the great schools of all the countries which had accepted Grecian science. Perhaps even Babylon and Persia were not strangers to it. Jesus knew nothing of this progress. Although born at a time when the principle of positive science was already proclaimed, he lived entirely in the supernatural. Never, perhaps, had the Jews been more possessed with the thirst for the marvelous. Philo, who lived in a great intellectual center, and who had received a very complete education, possessed only a chimerical and inferior knowledge of science.

Jesus on this point differed in no respect from his companions. He believed in the devil, whom he regarded as a kind of evil genius, and he imagined, like all the world, that nervous maladies were produced by demons who possessed the patient and agitated him. The marvelous was not the exceptional for him; it was his normal state. The notion of the supernatural, with its impossibilities, is coincident with the birth of experimental science. The man who is strange to all ideas of physical laws, who believes that by praying he can change the path of the clouds, arrest disease, and even death, finds nothing extraordinary in miracle, inasmuch as the entire course of things is to him the result of the free will of the Divinity. This intellectual state was constantly that of Jesus. But in his great soul such a belief produced effects quite opposed to those produced on the vulgar. Among the latter the belief in the special action of God led to a foolish credulity, and the deceptions of charlatans. With him it led to a profound idea of the familiar relations of man with God, and an exaggerated belief in the power of man — beautiful errors, which were the secret of his power; for if they were the means of one day showing his deficiencies in the eyes of the physicist and the chemist, they gave him a power over his own age of which no individual had been possessed before his time, or has been since.

His distinctive character very early revealed itself. Legend delights to show him even from his infancy in revolt against paternal authority, and departing from the common way to fulfil his vocation. It is certain, at least, that he cared little for the relations of kinship. His family do not seem to have loved him, and at times he seems to have been hard towards them. Jesus, like all men exclusively preoccupied by an idea, came to think little of the ties of blood. The bond of thought is the only one that natures of this kind recognize. “Behold my mother and my brethren,” said he, in extending his hand towards his disciples; “he who does the will of my Father, he is my brother and my sister.” The simple people did not understand the matter thus, and one day a woman passing near him cried out, “Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which gave thee suck!” But he said, “Yea, rather blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.” Soon, in his bold revolt against nature, he went still further, and we shall see him trampling under foot everything that is human — blood, love, and country — and only keeping soul and heart for the idea which presented itself to him as the absolute form of goodness and truth.

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THIS aspect of nature, at once smiling and grand, was the whole education of Jesus. He learned to read and to write, doubtless, according to the Eastern method, which consisted in putting in the hands of the child a book, which he repeated in cadence with his little comrades, until he knew it by heart. It is doubtful, however, if he under stood the Hebrew writings in their original tongue. His biographers make him quote them according to the translations in the Aramean tongue; his principles of exegesis, as far as we can judge of them by those of his disciples, much resembled those which were then in vogue, and which form the spirit of the Targums and the Midrashim.

The schoolmaster in the small Jewish towns was the hazzan, or reader in the synagogues. Jesus frequented little the higher schools of the scribes or sopherim (Nazareth had perhaps none of them), and he had none of those titles which confer, in the eyes of the vulgar, the privileges of knowledge. It would, nevertheless, be a great error to imagine that Jesus was what we call ignorant. Scholastic education among us draws a profound distinction, in respect of personal worth, between those who have received and those who have been deprived of it. It was not so in the East, nor, in general, in the good old times. The state of ignorance in which, among us, owing to our isolated and entirely individual life, those remain who have not passed through the schools, was unknown in those societies where moral culture, and especially the general spirit of the age, was transmitted by the perpetual intercourse of man with man. The Arab, who has never had a teacher, is often, nevertheless, a very superior man; for the tent is a kind of school always open, where, from the contact of well-educated men, there is produced a great intellectual and even literary movement. The refinement of manners and the acuteness of the intellect have, in the East, nothing in common with what we call education. It is the men from the schools, on the contrary, who are considered badly trained and pedantic. In this social state ignorance, which among us, condemns a man to an inferior rank, is the condition of great things and of great originality.

It is not probable that Jesus knew Greek. This language was very little spread in Judea beyond the classes who participated in the Government and the towns inhabited by pagans, like Caesarea. The real mother tongue of Jesus was the Syrian dialect mixed with Hebrew, which was then spoken in Palestine. Still less probably had he any knowledge of Greek culture. This culture was proscribed by the doctors of Palestine, who included in the same malediction “he who rears swine and he who teaches his son Greek science.” At all events, it had not penetrated into little towns like Nazareth. Notwithstanding the anathema of the doctors, some Jews, it is true, had already embraced the Hellenic culture. Without speaking of the Jewish school of Egypt, in which the attempts to amalgamate Hellenism and Judaism had been in operation nearly two hundred years, a Jew, Nicholas of Damascus, had become, even at this time, one of the most distinguished men, one of the best informed, and one of the most respected of his age. Josephus was destined soon to furnish another example of a Jew completely Grecianised. But Nicholas was only a Jew in blood. Josephus declares that he himself was an exception among his contemporaries; and the whole schismatic school of Egypt was detached to such a degree from Jerusalem that we do not find the least allusion to it either in the Talmud or in Jewish tradition. Certain it is that Greek was very little studied at Jerusalem, that Greek studies were considered as dangerous, and even servile, that they were regarded, at the best, as a mere womanly accomplishment. The study of the Law was the only one accounted liberal and worthy of a thoughtful man. Questioned as to the time when it would be proper to teach children “Greek wisdom,” a learned Rabbi had answered At the time when it is neither day nor night; since it is written of the Law, Thou shalt study it day and night.”

Jesus was born at Nazareth, a small town of Galilee, which before his time had no celebrity. All his life he was designated by the name of “the Nazarene,” and it is only by a rather embarrassed and roundabout way [NOTE: The census effected by Quirinus, to which legend attributes the journey from Bethlehem, is at least ten years later than the year in which, according to Luke and Matthew, Jesus was born. The two evangelists in effect make Jesus to be born under the reign of Herod (Matt. ii. 1, 19, 22; Luke i. 5). Now, the census of Quirinus did not take place until after the deposition of Archelaus -- i.e., ten years after the death of Herod, the 37th year from the era of Actium (Josephus Ant., XVII. XIII. 5, XVIII. i. I, ii. I). The inscription by which it was formerly pretended to establish that Quirinus had levied two censuses is recognized as false (see Orelli, Inscr. Lat., No. 623, and the supplement of Henzen in this number; Borghesi, Fastes Consulaires [yet unpublished] in the year 742). The census in any case would only be applied to the parts of the Roman provinces, and not to the tetrarchies. The texts by which it is sought to prove that some of the operations for statistics and tribute commanded by Augustus ought to extend to the dominion of the Herods, either do not mean what they have been made to say, or are from Christian authors who have borrowed this statement from the Gospel of Luke. That which proves, besides, that the journey of the family of Jesus to Bethlehem is not historical, is the motive attributed to it. Jesus was not of the family of David (see Chap. XV.), and, if he had been, we should still not imagine that his parents should have been forced, for an operation purely registrative and financial, to come to enrol themselves in the place whence their ancestors had proceeded a thousand years before. In imposing such an obligation, the Roman authority would have sanctioned pretensions threatening her safety.] that, in the legends respecting him, he is made to be born at Bethlehem. We shall see later the motive for this supposition, and how it was the necessary consequence of the Messianic character attributed to Jesus. The precise date of his birth is unknown. It took place under the reign of Augustus, about the Roman year 750, probably some years before the year 1 of that era which all civilized people date from the day on which he was born.

The name of Jesus, which was given him, is an alteration from Joshua. It was a very common name; but afterwards mysteries, and an allusion to his character of Savior, were naturally sought for in it. Perhaps he, like all mystics, exalted himself in this respect. It is thus that more than one great vocation in history has been caused by a name given to a child without premeditation. Ardent natures never bring themselves to see aught of chance in what concerns them. God has regulated everything for them, and they see a sign of the supreme will in the most insignificant circumstances.

The population of Galilee was very mixed, as the very name of the country indicated. This province counted among its inhabitants, in the time of Jesus, many who were not Jews (Phoenicians, Syrians, Arabs, and even Greeks). The conversions to Judaism were not rare in these mixed countries. It is therefore impossible to raise here any question of race, and to seek to ascertain what blood flowed in the veins of him who has contributed most to efface the distinctions of blood in humanity.

He proceeded from the ranks of the people. His father Joseph and his mother Mary were people in humble circumstances, artisans living by their labor, in the state so common in the East, which is neither ease nor poverty. The extreme simplicity of life in such countries, by dispensing with the need of comfort, renders the privileges of wealth almost useless, and makes everyone voluntarily poor. On the other hand, the total want of taste for art, and for that which contribute to the elegance of material life, gives a naked aspect to the house of him who otherwise wants for nothing. Apart from something sordid and repulsive which Islamism bears everywhere with it, the town of Nazareth, in the time of Jesus, did not perhaps much differ from what it is today. We see the streets where he played when a child, in the stony paths or little crossways which separate the dwellings. The house of Joseph doubtless much resembled those poor shops, lighted shop, by the door, serving at once for kitchen, and bedroom, having for furniture a mat, some cushions on the ground, one or two clay pots, and a painted chest.

The family, whether it proceeded from one or many marriages, was rather numerous. Jesus had brothers and sisters, of whom he seems to have been the eldest. All have remained obscure, for it appears that the four personages, who were named as his brothers, and among whom one, at least, James, had acquired great importance in the development of Christianity, were his cousins-german. Mary, in fact, had a sister also named Mary, who married a certain Alpheus or Cleophas (these two names appear to designate the same person), and was the mother of several sons who played a considerable part among the first disciples of Jesus. These cousins-german who adhered to the young Master, while his own brothers opposed him, took the title of “brothers of the Lord.” The real brothers of Jesus, like their mother, became important only after his death. Even then they do not appear to have equalled in importance their cousins, whose conversion had been more spontaneous, and whose character seems to have had more originality. Their names were so little known that when the evangelist put in the mouth of the men of Nazareth the enumeration of the brothers according to natural relationship, the names of the sons of Cleophas first presented themselves to him.

His sisters were married at Nazareth, and he spent the first years of his youth there. Nazareth was a small town in a hollow, opening broadly at the summit of the group of mountains which close the plain of Esdraelon on the north. The population is now from three to four thousand, and it can never have varied much. The cold there is sharp in winter, and the climate very healthy. The town, like all the small Jewish towns at this period, was a heap of huts built without style, and would exhibit that harsh and poor aspect which villages in Semitic countries now present. The houses, it seems, did not differ much from those cubes of stone, without exterior or interior elegance, which still cover the richest parts of the Lebanon, and which, surrounded with vines and fig-trees, are still very agreeable. The environs, moreover, are charming; and no place in the world was so well adapted for dreams of perfect happiness. Even in our times Nazareth is still a delightful abode, the only place, perhaps, in Palestine in which the mind feels itself relieved from the burden which oppresses it in this unequalled desolation. The people are amiable and cheerful; the gardens fresh and green. Anthony the Martyr, at the end of the sixth century, drew an enchanting picture of the fertility of the environs, which he compared to paradise. Some valleys on the western side fully justify his description. The fountain, where formerly the life and gaiety of the little town were concentrated, is destroyed; its broken channels contain now only a muddy stream. But the beauty of the women who meet there in the evening — that beauty which was remarked even in the sixth century, and which was looked upon as a gift of the Virgin Mary — is still most strikingly preserved. It is the Syrian type in all its languid grace. No doubt Mary was there almost every day, and took her place with her jar on her shoulder in the file of her companions who have remained unknown. Anthony the Martyr remarks that the Jewish women, generally disdainful to Christians, were here full of affability. Even now religious animosity is weaker at Nazareth than elsewhere.

1. He appears by the side of the Ancient of Days.

2. His face like appearance of a man, and yet so lovely,  like that of one of the holy Angels.

3. This Son of Man’ has, and with Him dwells, all righteousness.

4.  He reveals the treasures of all that is  hidden, being chosen by the Lord, is superior to all.

5. He is destined to  subdue and destroy all the powers and kingdoms of wickedness.

6.  His Name had been named  before God, before sun or stars were created. He is the staff on which
   the righteous lean, the light of nations, and the hope of all who mourn  in spirit.

7. All are to bow down before Him, and adore Him.

8.  He was chosen and hidden with God before the world was created, and
   will continue before Him for ever,

9.  The Messiah is to  sit on the throne of glory, and dwell among His saints. Heaven .

10. The Messiah forgives you of all of your sins and washes you as white as snow.

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The MorningStar Academy

Mimi Rothschild

In the light of the weaknesses found within the day-age theory, some people have invented another theory called the gap theory. The gap theory, or ruin and reconstruction theory, proposes that God originally created the heavens and the earth in Genesis 1:1. There was then a judgment and a cataclysm, some kind of catastrophic event by which the earth was judged and became “without form and void,” as noted in verse 2. Proponents suggest that there is good evidence for this in the text, because “darkness was upon the face of the deep,” and darkness is evidence of sin. Then “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” According to the gap theory, the word for “moved,” which connotes brooding, indicates that God was brooding over this evil chaos, thus providing additional evidence for a gap and a judgment. The basic tenet that nothing chaotic comes from the hand of God demands a context of judgment upon sin between verses 1 and 2.

With Genesis 1:2 viewed as evidence for some catastrophic event, many people have tried to place all the geologic ages between the opening verses of Genesis and thus provide adequate room for evolution. They project that God created an original heaven and earth which He judged. He then recreated some of the animals, so a six-day creation could still be maintained.

First, let us consider the arguments presented in favor of this theory. The Bible says. “And the earth was without form, and void” (Genesis 1:2). The word for “was” in Hebrew is the verb hayah, the basic Hebrew word for being. It is used 1522 times in the Pentateuch alone. Fifteen hundred times it is translated by its simple usage “was,” but twenty-two times it is used with the idea of “became.” Each time it is translated “became,” the context denotes a change taking place: Lot left the city with his wife, she was walking with him, she was a woman, she turned and “became” a pillar of salt. Such a change occurs in all of the instances translating this word “became.” However, one cannot supply this translation in Genesis 1, which demands the simple usage of the word “was.”

The proponents of the gap theory say that the words “without form and void” indicate some chaotic condition as a result of judgment. They point to verses in Jeremiah 4:23-26 and Isaiah 24:1, where the same words are used to refer to some type of catastrophic event. But both of those instances refer to a time when people living in an area experienced a judgment, a destruction, because of which the whole territory was laid waste and desolate to the extent that it became unpopulated. With that in mind, note Isaiah 45:18, “For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else.” In this description there are no people. It is the description of an earth which is incomplete and unfinished. The word “vain” here is the same word which is translated “void” in Genesis 1:2. The earth was empty and void of life or empty and vain. God said He created it not in vain, but to be finished and inhabited by people. In this particular verse (Isaiah 45:18) the earth is not complete, so there can be no reference to any destruction and judgment, for in order to have a judgment there would have to be inhabitants to judge.

“And darkness was upon the face of the deep.” Those who insist that darkness is evidence of sin conclude that verse 2 gives evidence of sin on the earth which resulted in cataclysm and judgment. True, darkness sometimes gives the impression of evil, but notice what God does with the darkness. He says, “Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1:3-5). If darkness is evidence of evil in verse 2, then it is also evidence of evil in verse 5. But the latter darkness He calls night. Must night, then, be considered evil? To the contrary, God, who sets up a system of light and darkness, says the whole system is “very good” (Genesis 1:31). The darkness of verse 2, then, simply means the absence of light. God solves that problem by creating light.

The final statement of verse 2 is quite direct and literal. “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” merely signifies that the Spirit of God was present and that water existed.

To argue for a gap between Genesis 1:1 & 1:2 and to place the geologic ages there is to formulate some very serious difficulties. If a judgment had been placed upon these earliest life forms, they would be buried in the earth, producing some kind of fossil record. This fossil record is found in the various geological strata and is really a record of the death, decay and destruction of plants and animals on the earth, laid in sedimentary strata by some kind of water action. Philosophically, if we try to correlate this with the Genesis account of chapter 1, then we are saying that death is the element to bring new forms of life upon the earth. This assumes that man is really the result of death over a vast period of time. Certain types of animals unfit to survive lost their ecological niche and died out; some new form of life entered, and ultimately man came upon the earth.

In opposition to this argument, Genesis 1-3 proclaims that man was created perfect by God. Because of man’s disobedience to God, sin and death entered into this world for the first time. The Bible states that death came as a result of man’s disobedience to God’s law, whereas, according to evolution, the geologic record says that man is the result of death, having evolved from earlier animal ancestors that are now extinct.

What will we find, then, if we place the record of the geologic column into a gap between Genesis 1:1 & 1:2? We will discover buried in all the strata throughout the earth – every square foot of ground upon which Adam walked in the Garden of Eden – evidence of the destruction of animals and plants. But God created this garden in which (according to the gap theory) every rock contained evidence of death and destruction of animals in the past, and He said of this garden that it was “very good.” In addition Romans 5:12 tells us that by Adam’s disobedience death entered into this world for the first time. A gap between Genesis 1:1 & 1:2, into which the fossil record is placed, demands that Adam find death evidenced in every rock he looks at. How, then, can one honestly say that by Adam sin and death entered into the world for the first time? If we destroy that premise, we basically destroy the doctrine of sin and ultimately the basis for salvation, which is established upon the premise that Adam, a perfectly created individual, fell into sin, and his disobedience brought death into this world for the first time. On that basis Jesus Christ came to save that which He created.

Proponents of the gap theory suggest that the sun, moon and stars were created in verse 1 but that God did not make them appear until Genesis 1:16, which introduces two different lights, the greater to rule the day and the lesser to rule the night. They claim that the word “made” (verse 16) does not mean that God directly created them on that day, but that He unveiled them – He uncovered the cloud or vapor that kept them from being seen. This explanation is given in the Scofield Bible, whose notes contend that the verb asah indicates that God made the sun, moon and stars to appear. If this is true, and God simply remade them or made them to appear, we must ask what is meant by the verb asah in Genesis 1:26: “And God said, Let us make man in our image.” Does this mean “Let us make man to appear”? Does it suggest that God uncovered man from the dust, perhaps taking one of the destroyed fossil men and remaking him? Was man merely unveiled or allowed to appear? To be consistent, one would have to accept such a description.

God seems to use two words asah and bara, interchangeably, for in Genesis 5:1 He says, “In the day that God created [bara] man, in the likeness of God made [asah] he him.” And the Lord God says He made (asah) the earth and the heaven, whereas in Genesis 1:1 God created (bara) the earth and heaven. Genesis 2:4 tells us, “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created [bara] in the day that the Lord God made [asah] the earth and the heavens.” In Exodus 20:11, “For in six days the Lord made [asah] heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.” We must conclude, therefore, that asah is not to be translated “made to appear,” but simply “made” or “created.”

A number of serious theological questions arise if we accept the thesis that God remade the sun, moon and stars. Does that mean that He also remade man? And if He made man over, then was man pre-existent before Adam? If so, this pre-existent mortal was totally destroyed and God did not save a remnant; in other words, His first creation was a total failure. But can God fail? If so, must we be fearful that He is failing now? And what about the souls of the men who were eliminated in this gap judgment before verse 2? Were they living souls condemned to hell? We may forego such questions if we remember the Bible’s clear statement that Adam was created as the first man. In fact, because the first Adam, though created perfect, fell, Christ, the second Adam, came to save.

Since many gap theorists place most of the fossil record in the gap between Genesis 1:1 & 1:2, serious problems arise for them concerning the Flood. If any evidence of this gap judgment survived today in fossil remains of animals and plants buried by a cataclysm after Genesis 1:1, one could not affirm the occurrence of the worldwide Flood in Genesis 6,7 & 8. This catastrophe would probably erase most of the evidence of any previous cataclysm and rearrange the fossils so that one could not separate the fossils and determine which were from the gap judgment and which were from the Flood judgment without limiting the effects of the Flood. In light of this, it seems contradictory to place the fossil record in the gap and thereby deny another portion of Scripture, namely the universal Flood.

The gap theory requires cataclysmic judgment upon sin in order to produce an earth “without form, and void” (Genesis 1:2). Heretofore we have considered judgment upon pre-Adamic man; however the gap theory at times assigns the cause to the fall of Satan. That is, Satan was ejected from heaven and was cast to the earth, supposedly causing judgment upon it. We read a description of this fall in Ezekiel 28, beginning with verse 12, and in Isaiah 14, beginning with verse 12. God says that Lucifer was a created being, the “anointed cherub that covereth” (Ezekiel 28:14). He was perfect from the day of his creation until the day that iniquity was found in him. Satan at one point decided that he himself would like to be the recipient of worship. He decided in his heart that he was as high as God: “I will be like the most High” (Isaiah 14:14). He worshipped himself rather than God and placed himself before the Word of God. Satan was created perfect, but he fell.

The Biblical statement concerning Satan’s fall is quite clear, but keeping in mind the gap theory’s contention, let us turn to Genesis 2:1. “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.” The “host of heaven” refers to two things in Scripture: stars and angels (cf. Nehemiah 9:6, Revelation 12:4). Throughout the Psalms, Job, and several other books the “host of heaven” is repeatedly referred to as angels. In addition, the Bible tells us that angels rejoiced at the creation, but it does not say which particular stage of the creation. In Genesis 2:1 God finished the heavens and the earth and all the host of them, which would include the angels’ creation within that six day event. Exodus 20:11 concurs, explaining that God “made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is” - including angels – in six days. Affirming, then, that angels (including Lucifer) were part of the six-day creative process, we find God saying in Genesis 1:31 that He saw “everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” If God saw everything that He had made, He saw Satan. But if we accept this aspect of the gap theory, we would have to say that god beheld all that He had made, and, behold, every thing was very good – except Satan. In terms of the conclusion to this Genesis chapter, any evidence of sin on the earth or in heaven would transform God into a liar. And He does not say His creation is just good, but “very good.” In other words, Satan could not have fallen before the end of the sixth day.

Scripture itself does not seem to validate the gap theory’s argument that the fall of Satan and his followers, who were “cast . . . to the earth” (Revelation 12:4), fashioned an earth of darkness, without form and void. In fact, a full reading of Revelation 12 (cf. verse 9) speaks again of Satan being “cast out into the earth,” but this is yet a future event. Since his fall Satan has argued with God over the tempting of Job and debated with Michael over the body of Moses, and at present he has access to the heavens as the accuser of the brethren to Jesus Christ, the Christian’s advocate with the Father. Scripture fails to support any view that Satan’s fall caused a cataclysm, whether past or future.

Is a serious study of creation and a careful examination of the Genesis record essential to our Christian faith? Many people tell us that the Christian’s responsibility is simply to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. They tell us that the Christian should just try to glorify Him and not become overly concerned with doctrine and certain difficult areas of the Bible. After all, we really don’t possess a revelation that tells us how everything came into existence, but one which gives us spiritual guidelines and clarifies our responsibility to proclaim Jesus Christ. With that in mind, they say, why be concerned with creation? Why study creation at all?

An approach to Genesis from such a perspective would seem to lessen the significance of Biblical creation. In addition, Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection, Hugo Devries and his idea of mutation, and other events of the last hundred years, such as the Scopes Trial, have suggested that it is unscientific to believe the Biblical account. Thus many scientists have accepted only the theory of evolution. Finally, certain theologians of our day have yielded to the statements made by these scientists and inform us that the book of Genesis does not give a clear notion as to how God created the heavens and the earth, that it does not tell us when He created them, and that Genesis is not an account we can accept literally. Basically, the first eleven chapters of Genesis impart only suggestion or a “figurative rendition” of a beginning. We are told we cannot receive these chapters as literal truth because, after all, we “know” that the world evolved. Thus science classrooms around the country propagate the theory of evolution. Genesis is deemed the great myth of our time; anyone who believes it must be considered foolish.

What can we do about our dilemma? What defense can be established? Let us address ourselves first of all to the theologian who has thrown out the first eleven chapters of Genesis on the basis that it is non-scientific and cannot be accepted literally. Suppose we grant him that premise for a moment. We will reject the passage in question, labeling it myth and allegory. We will disclaim any statement in the passage regarding science, for we know that evolution is a valid law of science. On the basis of such a premise, however, and in an attempt to be consistent, we must necessarily throw out any references to these eleven chapter that appear in the rest of the Bible. Why? If the first eleven chapters are untrue, then a reference by any other writer to the first eleven chapters would only serve to perpetuate falsehoods.

Turn first to Exodus 20:8-11:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath day of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.

If we eliminate the first eleven chapters of Genesis, then we must throw out this reference to those eleven chapters, for here in the eleventh verse we read, “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.”Such a statement is foolishness if evolution is true. Note, however, that this little verse appears in the midst of the Ten Commandments – and is the basis for one of the commandments. In effect God is saying, as I, God, created the heavens and the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh, so shall you, man, work six days and rest on the seventh. Remember the seventh day; keep it holy and worship Me. James tells us that if we are guilty of breaking one of the commandments, we are guilty of breaking them all. If we deny the accuracy of verse eleven, we deny a premise upon which one of the Ten Commandments is based. And if Moses is untrustworthy here, we may well doubt is credibility elsewhere.

To dispute the correctness of verse eleven is to conceive that God, who revealed to Moses the writing on stone tablets, revealed something which contained a lie, which is contrary to His nature. If He wrote there with His own hand that He created everything in six days and we have proven scientifically that He could not do it. Then God has lied to us from the tablets of the Law. In addition, an inaccurate Mosaic account, here and throughout the Pentateuch, would bring into disrepute other verses in the Old Testament that deal with the Law, because the entire law is focused upon the Ten Commandments. If the Ten Commandments are wrong, the Law is void.

Many Old Testament writers refer to God’s work of creation in terms of the Genesis account. We read in Ecclesiastes 7:29, “Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright . . .”The Psalmist says, “For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast” (Psalm 33:9); creation of the heavens was “the work of thy [God's] fingers”(Psalm 8:3). In Proverbs and in most of the prophets appear numerous references to God’s having created. God’s own testimony to the prophet Isaiah clearly specifies the consequences of setting aside the first eleven chapters of Genesis.

Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel, and his redeemer the Lord of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God. And who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it. And set it in order for me. Since I appointed the ancient people? And the things that are coming, and shall come, let them shew unto them. Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have not I told thee from that time, and have declared it? Ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? Yea, there is no God; I know not any.

Isaiah 44:6-8

After castigating man’s idolatrous worship, He continues,

Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself.

Isaiah 44:24

In the following chapter we read,

I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me . . . I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things . . . I have made the earth, and created man upon it. I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded. Hi have raised him up in righteousness, I will direct all his ways. He shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price, nor reward, saith the Lord of hosts . . . For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens. God Himself that formed the earth and made it, he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord, and there is none else.

Isaiah 45:5,7,12,13,18

Disregarding the authenticity of the first eleven chapters of Genesis on the basis that God did not create the heavens and earth requires that we reject the testimony of Isaiah – the testimony of God Himself – and declare that God is telling us a lie.

Now let us turn to the New Testament, still upholding the premise that evolution, as a valid law of science, supplants the first eleven chapters of Genesis. In Matthew 19:3-5 the Pharisees came to Jesus, “tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?”He replied, “Have you not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female. And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be on flesh?” In this passage verse 4 is taken from chapter 1 of Genesis, verse 5 from chapter 2. If evolution is true – if all things came about by natural causes, the results of such processes as natural selection and mutations, and uniformitarianism – we cannot accept the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, who placed His credence on the testimony of Genesis 1 and 2. Either Jesus did not know that the world evolved, He was deceived by some foolish idea that it was created, or He deliberately deceived us because the people of His day could not understand evolution and thus He patterned His words after ideas that would be acceptable in His day. None of these three choices helps the Bible very much. If we cannot accept His teaching concerning spiritual things, such as heaven and a life hereafter?

If the testimony of Matthew is not credible, we must doubt the gospel of Mark, which concurs with Matthew. The third gospel writer, Luke, in the book of Acts (chapter 17) recounts the experience of the Apostle Paul in Athens. Preaching on Mars Hill, Paul speaks of “the unknown God.” He introduces this particular God as the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the one who “giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.” Not only in the book of Acts and the gospel of Luke, but also in the writings of John we find reference to the creation account. In fact, the gospel of John begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”He says of this individual who was in the beginning with God, “All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.”Must we throw out the testimony of John because he begins his book with a faulty premise, the idea of creation? If this were so, we would have to discard the epistles of John and even Revelation. In Revelation 14:7 the angel in he midst of the tribulation period cries out one message, “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the foundations of waters.” Apparently this angel was not informed that everything evolved.

In the writings of the apostle Paul, beginning in Romans 1, he speaks more than once of creation. “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse”(Romans 1:20). Paul is telling us here that if we are willing to accept the fact of creation and examine things from this point of view, the invisible attributes of God are evidenced by the creation.

If Paul is mistaken in Romans, we may have difficulty accepting his statements in other epistles, but let us focus upon some of his other declarations. In Colossians he affirms, “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist” (Colossians 1:16,17). The entire passage refers to Jesus Christ. If the creation account of Genesis 1 and 2 is not to be accepted as literal fact, we invalidate this presentation of Jesus Christ as Creator and deny a portion of His nature. We would also have to dismiss the testimony of Paul in I Corinthians 15:39, “All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.”Here Paul delineates four distinct kinds of flesh, each created separately. Every seed has its own body. If we sow barley, we will reap barley. One never plants wheat and reaps pomegranates. We always reap what we sow because things only reproduce after their kind, which is in accord with Genesis and the law of biogenesis.

Paul also tells us in I Corinthians 11 that

. . . a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. (Verses 7-11)

He stresses that the first man was created in the image of God, but the first woman was taken from the side of Adam, created for the man. The first man did not come from a woman. That is impossible if evolution were true, for in evolution the first man would have had to be born of some female ancestor.

The author of Hebrews begins, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds” (Hebrews 1:1-2). If the worlds were not made, but evolved, the testimony of this book would become untrustworthy. Later in the book we likewise read, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Hebrews 11:3). This text, incidentally, affords an interesting description of the atom, of which all things consist.

The testimonies of James and Peter coincide with that of Paul. We find in James 1:18, “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” God does not have any creatures if He did not create anything. We might add, of course, that if everything evolved, there is no need for a God. The apostle Peter is consistent in confirming the fact of creation. “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 father fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” Peter comments, “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; Whereby the world that then was being overflowed with water, perished” (II Peter 3:3-6). He is citing here the fact of creation and the fact of the Flood. Note also that he is basing the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ upon these two events – the creation and the Flood. According to Peter, if we cannot verify the creation and the Flood, we have no way of verifying the second coming of Christ. Peter insists that any man who disbelieves those two accounts disbelieves the coming again and is willingly ignorant of the facts. If evolution is true, of course, Peter is willingly ignorant.

We have now disposed of all but one book of the New Testament. However, even the book of Jude presents a few problems, for it mentions Adam and angels, both of whom were created.

If evolution is true, we do not have a New Testament to preach. Jesus Christ is a martyr and a liar, a man who died in vain. If everything evolved, then you are the result of natural processes and possess no sin nature, but are simply the consequence of your animal ancestry. As Freud says, we must work hard to get rid of the beast in man. If evolution is fact, we have no Christian ethic, no morals, no future life. If we throw out the first eleven chapters of Genesis, the Word of God is nothing more than a book. In fact, there would be no Word of God.

To be logical and reasonable, then, since I am not willing to repudiate the opening chapters of Genesis, and because I have personally met the One who wrote them – Jesus Christ, who possesses supreme power and ultimate authority – I must accept what the Scriptures have to say. I will accept literally the first eleven chapters of Genesis, that God created the heavens and the earth in six literal days. I will affirm that creation took place rather recently, that man fell into sin while living in Eden, that there was a worldwide Flood.

Why is creation important? Because without creation there is nothing else. If there is no Creator, then there is no Saviour either. When someone says, “Present the message of Jesus Christ,” I heartily concur. But we must present the creative message of Jesus Christ because of who He claimed to be. Picture in your mind the person of Jesus Christ. Do you envision a man with a beard, perhaps rough and rugged, walking upon the earth? Do you see a man talking to children, at the well speaking to the woman, walking on the water, hanging upon a cross? If so, your picture is of Jesus Christ incarnate, in fashion like a man, performing an earthly ministry among men.

The apostle Paul, however, tells who Jesus really is, proclaiming that “we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” He is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.” By Jesus Christ “were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in the earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him” (Colossians 1:14-16). Notice the all encompassing creative power of Christ. Everything that exists is either in heaven or in earth, visible or invisible. His power comprehends thrones and dominions, principalities (angels) and powers. All of these things were created by Him and for Him, and by Him all things consist. In other words, He is the power which holds the entire universe together. Thus creation is important because of its relationship to the One who created.

We have a tendency at times to be excessively concerned with what man has to say. When some professor tells us that evolution is a proven fact, or when we take the Bible off its inspired plane and attempt to make it coincide with man’s theories, we begin to have problems. The Bible instructs us to be “ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you” (I Peter 3:15). This certainly includes the realm of scientific knowledge.

A fable is told of a small monkey who lived in the wilds of the jungle. He began to wonder why he and his friends did not go down to the river in the cool of the evening. After all, they went down after lunch in the warmth of the day to do a little skinny dipping. It would be equally delightful to go for a moonlight swim. He asked some of the other monkeys, but no one really seemed to know. Finally he came to his uncle, the wisest of all the monkeys in the clan. “Uncle, why don’t we go down to the river in the cool of the evening?”

His uncle replied, “We don’t go down there because the crocodiles come out. Crocodiles like to eat small monkeys.”

That bothered the small monkey a little bit, but he had never seen a crocodile. His friends likewise had never seen a crocodile. So he queried, “Uncle, have you ever seen a crocodile? How do you know crocodiles exist?”

“This information has been passed down to us from generation to generation. It is a well-known fact. If we could write, it would probably be recorded in the Dead Monkey Scrolls someplace.”

“What does a crocodile look like?”

“It is reported that crocodiles are long, thin animals with bumps on their bodies. They float down the river like logs. They have two beady eyes, sharp teeth, terrible breath – and they enjoy eating monkeys for dinner.”

That was rather frightening to small monkey, but he continues his questioning of other monkeys and could not find anyone who had ever seen a crocodile. Ultimately, he was convinced that crocodiles simply did not exist, so he set out one evening to prove his new-found wisdom. It was a beautiful evening, the perfect time to get rid of that old wives’ tale and superstition passed on by monkeys’ uncles. So ecstatic was he in his new-found wisdom that he did not even notice a log floating down the river. He wasn’t a bit perturbed when he heard a rustling in the brush behind him, when he felt hot breath down his back. Small monkey soon became crocodile’s dinner. The monkey had said that he refused to believe in crocodiles, but the old crocodile just chuckled, “O foolish monkey, to have said in your heart, there are no crocodiles.”

Man today considers it foolish to believe in God. He will ridicule you and call you a fool. But God replies, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 14:1). Man today with his new-found wisdom worships the creature, paying homage to his own knowledge and intellect. God warns, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22). Peter says that the man who denies creation, the Flood, and the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ is willfully ignorant of the facts. Personally, I would rather be called a fool by man because I believed in the wisdom of God than to be called a fool by God because I heeded the vain babblings and teachings of man. Just because man denies God and His law does not make God’s law null and void. I can deny the law of gravity all day, but the moment I step off a thirty story building, I fall in one direction. I can deny it all the way down, but my denial does not mean that I am not bound by its restraints. Man today, in denying God and His law, is still bound by the restraints of God’s law.

Creation – Why?

Is a serious study of creation and a careful examination of the Genesis record essential to our Christian faith? Many people tell us that the Christian’s responsibility is simply to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. They tell us that the Christian should just try to glorify Him and not become overly concerned with doctrine and certain difficult areas of the Bible. After all, we really don’t possess a revelation that tells us how everything came into existence, but one which gives us spiritual guidelines and clarifies our responsibility to proclaim Jesus Christ. With that in mind, they say, why be concerned with creation? Why study creation at all?

An approach to Genesis from such a perspective would seem to lessen the significance of Biblical creation. In addition, Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection, Hugo Devries and his idea of mutation, and other events of the last hundred years, such as the Scopes Trial, have suggested that it is unscientific to believe the Biblical account. Thus many scientists have accepted only the theory of evolution. Finally, certain theologians of our day have yielded to the statements made by these scientists and inform us that the book of Genesis does not give a clear notion as to how God created the heavens and the earth, that it does not tell us when He created them, and that Genesis is not an account we can accept literally. Basically, the first eleven chapters of Genesis impart only suggestion or a “figurative rendition” of a beginning. We are told we cannot receive these chapters as literal truth because, after all, we “know” that the world evolved. Thus science classrooms around the country propagate the theory of evolution. Genesis is deemed the great myth of our time; anyone who believes it must be considered foolish.

What can we do about our dilemma? What defense can be established? Let us address ourselves first of all to the theologian who has thrown out the first eleven chapters of Genesis on the basis that it is non-scientific and cannot be accepted literally. Suppose we grant him that premise for a moment. We will reject the passage in question, labeling it myth and allegory. We will disclaim any statement in the passage regarding science, for we know that evolution is a valid law of science. On the basis of such a premise, however, and in an attempt to be consistent, we must necessarily throw out any references to these eleven chapter that appear in the rest of the Bible. Why? If the first eleven chapters are untrue, then a reference by any other writer to the first eleven chapters would only serve to perpetuate falsehoods.

Turn first to Exodus 20:8-11:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath day of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.

If we eliminate the first eleven chapters of Genesis, then we must throw out this reference to those eleven chapters, for here in the eleventh verse we read, “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.” Such a statement is foolishness if evolution is true. Note, however, that this little verse appears in the midst of the Ten Commandments – and is the basis for one of the commandments. In effect God is saying, as I, God, created the heavens and the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh, so shall you, man, work six days and rest on the seventh. Remember the seventh day; keep it holy and worship Me. James tells us that if we are guilty of breaking one of the commandments, we are guilty of breaking them all. If we deny the accuracy of verse eleven, we deny a premise upon which one of the Ten Commandments is based. And if Moses is untrustworthy here, we may well doubt is credibility elsewhere.

To dispute the correctness of verse eleven is to conceive that God, who revealed to Moses the writing on stone tablets, revealed something which contained a lie, which is contrary to His nature. If He wrote there with His own hand that He created everything in six days and we have proven scientifically that He could not do it. Then God has lied to us from the tablets of the Law. In addition, an inaccurate Mosaic account, here and throughout the Pentateuch, would bring into disrepute other verses in the Old Testament that deal with the Law, because the entire law is focused upon the Ten Commandments. If the Ten Commandments are wrong, the Law is void.

Many Old Testament writers refer to God’s work of creation in terms of the Genesis account. We read in Ecclesiastes 7:29, “Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright . . .” The Psalmist says, “For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast” (Psalm 33:9); creation of the heavens was “the work of thy [God's] fingers” (Psalm 8:3). In Proverbs and in most of the prophets appear numerous references to God’s having created. God’s own testimony to the prophet Isaiah clearly specifies the consequences of setting aside the first eleven chapters of Genesis.

Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel, and his redeemer the Lord of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God. And who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it. And set it in order for me. Since I appointed the ancient people? And the things that are coming, and shall come, let them shew unto them. Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have not I told thee from that time, and have declared it? Ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? Yea, there is no God; I know not any.

Isaiah 44:6-8

After castigating man’s idolatrous worship, He continues,

Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself.

Isaiah 44:24

In the following chapter we read,

I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me . . . I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things . . . I have made the earth, and created man upon it. I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded. Hi have raised him up in righteousness, I will direct all his ways. He shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price, nor reward, saith the Lord of hosts . . . For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens. God Himself that formed the earth and made it, he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord, and there is none else.

Isaiah 45:5,7,12,13,18

Disregarding the authenticity of the first eleven chapters of Genesis on the basis that God did not create the heavens and earth requires that we reject the testimony of Isaiah – the testimony of God Himself – and declare that God is telling us a lie.

Now let us turn to the New Testament, still upholding the premise that evolution, as a valid law of science, supplants the first eleven chapters of Genesis. In Matthew 19:3-5 the Pharisees came to Jesus, “tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?” He replied, “Have you not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female. And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be on flesh?” In this passage verse 4 is taken from chapter 1 of Genesis, verse 5 from chapter 2. If evolution is true – if all things came about by natural causes, the results of such processes as natural selection and mutations, and uniformitarianism – we cannot accept the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, who placed His credence on the testimony of Genesis 1 and 2. Either Jesus did not know that the world evolved, He was deceived by some foolish idea that it was created, or He deliberately deceived us because the people of His day could not understand evolution and thus He patterned His words after ideas that would be acceptable in His day. None of these three choices helps the Bible very much. If we cannot accept His teaching concerning spiritual things, such as heaven and a life hereafter?

If the testimony of Matthew is not credible, we must doubt the gospel of Mark, which concurs with Matthew. The third gospel writer, Luke, in the book of Acts (chapter 17) recounts the experience of the Apostle Paul in Athens. Preaching on Mars Hill, Paul speaks of “the unknown God.” He introduces this particular God as the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the one who “giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.” Not only in the book of Acts and the gospel of Luke, but also in the writings of John we find reference to the creation account. In fact, the gospel of John begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He says of this individual who was in the beginning with God, “All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.” Must we throw out the testimony of John because he begins his book with a faulty premise, the idea of creation? If this were so, we would have to discard the epistles of John and even Revelation. In Revelation 14:7 the angel in he midst of the tribulation period cries out one message, “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the foundations of waters.” Apparently this angel was not informed that everything evolved.

In the writings of the apostle Paul, beginning in Romans 1, he speaks more than once of creation. “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). Paul is telling us here that if we are willing to accept the fact of creation and examine things from this point of view, the invisible attributes of God are evidenced by the creation.

If Paul is mistaken in Romans, we may have difficulty accepting his statements in other epistles, but let us focus upon some of his other declarations. In Colossians he affirms, “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist” (Colossians 1:16,17). The entire passage refers to Jesus Christ. If the creation account of Genesis 1 and 2 is not to be accepted as literal fact, we invalidate this presentation of Jesus Christ as Creator and deny a portion of His nature. We would also have to dismiss the testimony of Paul in I Corinthians 15:39, “All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.” Here Paul delineates four distinct kinds of flesh, each created separately. Every seed has its own body. If we sow barley, we will reap barley. One never plants wheat and reaps pomegranates. We always reap what we sow because things only reproduce after their kind, which is in accord with Genesis and the law of biogenesis.

Paul also tells us in I Corinthians 11 that

. . . a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. (Verses 7-11)

He stresses that the first man was created in the image of God, but the first woman was taken from the side of Adam, created for the man. The first man did not come from a woman. That is impossible if evolution were true, for in evolution the first man would have had to be born of some female ancestor.

The author of Hebrews begins, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds” (Hebrews 1:1-2). If the worlds were not made, but evolved, the testimony of this book would become untrustworthy. Later in the book we likewise read, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Hebrews 11:3). This text, incidentally, affords an interesting description of the atom, of which all things consist.

The testimonies of James and Peter coincide with that of Paul. We find in James 1:18, “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” God does not have any creatures if He did not create anything. We might add, of course, that if everything evolved, there is no need for a God. The apostle Peter is consistent in confirming the fact of creation. “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 father fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” Peter comments, “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; Whereby the world that then was being overflowed with water, perished” (II Peter 3:3-6). He is citing here the fact of creation and the fact of the Flood. Note also that he is basing the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ upon these two events – the creation and the Flood. According to Peter, if we cannot verify the creation and the Flood, we have no way of verifying the second coming of Christ. Peter insists that any man who disbelieves those two accounts disbelieves the coming again and is willingly ignorant of the facts. If evolution is true, of course, Peter is willingly ignorant.

We have now disposed of all but one book of the New Testament. However, even the book of Jude presents a few problems, for it mentions Adam and angels, both of whom were created.

If evolution is true, we do not have a New Testament to preach. Jesus Christ is a martyr and a liar, a man who died in vain. If everything evolved, then you are the result of natural processes and possess no sin nature, but are simply the consequence of your animal ancestry. As Freud says, we must work hard to get rid of the beast in man. If evolution is fact, we have no Christian ethic, no morals, no future life. If we throw out the first eleven chapters of Genesis, the Word of God is nothing more than a book. In fact, there would be no Word of God.

To be logical and reasonable, then, since I am not willing to repudiate the opening chapters of Genesis, and because I have personally met the One who wrote them – Jesus Christ, who possesses supreme power and ultimate authority – I must accept what the Scriptures have to say. I will accept literally the first eleven chapters of Genesis, that God created the heavens and the earth in six literal days. I will affirm that creation took place rather recently, that man fell into sin while living in Eden, that there was a worldwide Flood.

Why is creation important? Because without creation there is nothing else. If there is no Creator, then there is no Saviour either. When someone says, “Present the message of Jesus Christ,” I heartily concur. But we must present the creative message of Jesus Christ because of who He claimed to be. Picture in your mind the person of Jesus Christ. Do you envision a man with a beard, perhaps rough and rugged, walking upon the earth? Do you see a man talking to children, at the well speaking to the woman, walking on the water, hanging upon a cross? If so, your picture is of Jesus Christ incarnate, in fashion like a man, performing an earthly ministry among men.

The apostle Paul, however, tells who Jesus really is, proclaiming that “we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” He is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.” By Jesus Christ “were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in the earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him” (Colossians 1:14-16). Notice the all encompassing creative power of Christ. Everything that exists is either in heaven or in earth, visible or invisible. His power comprehends thrones and dominions, principalities (angels) and powers. All of these things were created by Him and for Him, and by Him all things consist. In other words, He is the power which holds the entire universe together. Thus creation is important because of its relationship to the One who created.

We have a tendency at times to be excessively concerned with what man has to say. When some professor tells us that evolution is a proven fact, or when we take the Bible off its inspired plane and attempt to make it coincide with man’s theories, we begin to have problems. The Bible instructs us to be “ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you” (I Peter 3:15). This certainly includes the realm of scientific knowledge.

A fable is told of a small monkey who lived in the wilds of the jungle. He began to wonder why he and his friends did not go down to the river in the cool of the evening. After all, they went down after lunch in the warmth of the day to do a little skinny dipping. It would be equally delightful to go for a moonlight swim. He asked some of the other monkeys, but no one really seemed to know. Finally he came to his uncle, the wisest of all the monkeys in the clan. “Uncle, why don’t we go down to the river in the cool of the evening?”

His uncle replied, “We don’t go down there because the crocodiles come out. Crocodiles like to eat small monkeys.”

That bothered the small monkey a little bit, but he had never seen a crocodile. His friends likewise had never seen a crocodile. So he queried, “Uncle, have you ever seen a crocodile? How do you know crocodiles exist?”

“This information has been passed down to us from generation to generation. It is a well-known fact. If we could write, it would probably be recorded in the Dead Monkey Scrolls someplace.”

“What does a crocodile look like?”

“It is reported that crocodiles are long, thin animals with bumps on their bodies. They float down the river like logs. They have two beady eyes, sharp teeth, terrible breath – and they enjoy eating monkeys for dinner.”

That was rather frightening to small monkey, but he continues his questioning of other monkeys and could not find anyone who had ever seen a crocodile. Ultimately, he was convinced that crocodiles simply did not exist, so he set out one evening to prove his new-found wisdom. It was a beautiful evening, the perfect time to get rid of that old wives’ tale and superstition passed on by monkeys’ uncles. So ecstatic was he in his new-found wisdom that he did not even notice a log floating down the river. He wasn’t a bit perturbed when he heard a rustling in the brush behind him, when he felt hot breath down his back. Small monkey soon became crocodile’s dinner. The monkey had said that he refused to believe in crocodiles, but the old crocodile just chuckled, “O foolish monkey, to have said in your heart, there are no crocodiles.”

Man today considers it foolish to believe in God. He will ridicule you and call you a fool. But God replies, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 14:1). Man today with his new-found wisdom worships the creature, paying homage to his own knowledge and intellect. God warns, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22). Peter says that the man who denies creation, the Flood, and the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ is willfully ignorant of the facts. Personally, I would rather be called a fool by man because I believed in the wisdom of God than to be called a fool by God because I heeded the vain babblings and teachings of man. Just because man denies God and His law does not make God’s law null and void. I can deny the law of gravity all day, but the moment I step off a thirty story building, I fall in one direction. I can deny it all the way down, but my denial does not mean that I am not bound by its restraints. Man today, in denying God and His law, is still bound by the restraints of God’s law.

As autumn comes on, we love to get outdoors into the crisp fall air! You don’t have to choose between study and fresh air when you take some learning scavenger hunts to support your studies.

Just give your students paper and writing implements, maybe a digital camera or a sketch book, and a list of things to hunt for. Have a great walk, and come home with a lot of teaching points for the rest of the day.

Signs of Fall
• Birds flying south for the winter – monarch butterflies, too.
• Color in the leaves of trees and shrubs.
• Seed pods on the ground, sticking to your socks, and floating in the air (collect them and make a lapbook or labeled display).
• Chipmunks chattering.
• Ripening fruits: grapes, pumpkins, apples, more.
• Blooming flowers: Michaelmas daisies, chrysanthemum, and bittersweet.
• Cooler temperatures at night.
• Morning mists.
• Pine cones fallen on the ground, along with some nibbled acorns and nuts.
• Yellowjackets getting busy.

Architecture Walk
• A-frame
• Arch
• Casement window (a window that opens by swinging out, not sliding up)
• Columns
• Dutch door (a door divided in half, so the halves open separately)
• Eaves
• Gables
• Keystone
• Mullions (the vertical piece between windows)
• Oriel (a box-like window that sticks out from the wall)
• Shutters

Alphabet Walk
• Try to find an example of every letter before getting home.
• Decide whether you’ll include “accidental letters” – the half-circle gate that looks like a C or the O-shaped manhole cover.

You can take scavenger hunt walks at any time of year, but the fall is a particularly nice time to do it.

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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of Learning By Grace, Inc. the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.

If the leaves are turning color where you live, you can make use of them in your homeschool lessons. Here are some fun ideas:

• Press leaves. Just find an assortment of fall leaves and put them carefully between the pages of an old phonebook or another book you won’t need to read for a while. Lay the book flat in a dry place and set a couple more heavy books on top of it. When you return in a few weeks, you’ll have perfectly pressed leaves for your scrapbook. Label them to make a leaf identification book or leaf collection. See how many different leaves you can find in your neighborhood!
• Preserve leaves. You can buy glycerin at the drugstore. Collect freshly fallen leaves and set them into glycerin just as you would put flowers into water. Soon you’ll have beautifully preserved leaves for plant study, or for household decorating. Spraying leaves with hairspray doesn’t work quite as well, but it’ll do if you don’t have access to glycerin.
• Wax leaves. Old fashioned waxed paper makes great leaf art. Put leaves between two sheets and carefully iron them together at low heat. You can make many different designs, from simple single leaves to complicated pictures built up from leaves, and then fix the leaves in place by this method.
• Rub leaves. Put leaves down on a flat surface so that the veins show. Lay a sheet of paper over the leaf and gently rub with the flat side of a crayon or with a pencil. You’ll have a fine textured tracing.
• Pound leaves. Put leaves between pieces of white cotton (a pillowcase is perfect). Take your cloth and leaf sandwich out to the sidewalk or patio and carefully but thoroughly hammer the cloth everywhere there are leaves. The leaves will make neat patterns on the cloth. Iron them to set the color. Some leaves work better than others. Try different kinds, keep track of your results, and you have a good science experiment, too.
• Bleach leaves. Arrange leaves on the front of colored T-shirts. Put a fairly strong solution of bleach into a spray bottle and spray on the leaves and shirt. An adult should do this part, with care. You’ll be surprised by the colors that appear!

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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of Learning By Grace, Inc. the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.