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Richard Dimbleby Lecture 2007 - A DNA-Driven World

19th January 2008, 04:46 pm
Since they are disembodied spirits, where were they when they were disembodied? We know that the spirits of all the dead are in Hades. So, where do these spirits come from? They must have come from the former world. While they were alive, their habitation was probably the former world where Satan exercised his rule. In the Bible we can find another clue that tells us that there were inhabitants in the pre-Adamic world. Isaiah 45:18 shows that the world created by God in the beginning was not waste and empty. Since this verse speaks of the original world, one expression suggests to us the existence of mankind in the previous world. It says, “He is the God / who formed the earth… / He did not create it waste.” This clearly refers to the original creation. Following this it says, “He formed it to be inhabited.” This seems to clearly tell that the earth then was inhabited by some race. As we read the Bible further, we find clues which indicate that there is a detention place for the demons now. The legion of demons in Gadara must have known this. They were in great fear and begged the Lord that He would not “order them to depart into the abyss,” (Luke 8:31) because they would be tormented there (Matt. 8:29). Mr. Pember says that this “abyss” in the original language is abussos; and that “in some passages, such as the ninth chapter of the Apocalypse, this term is evidently applied to a fiery hollow in the centre of the earth: but it is also used for the depths of the sea, a meaning which accords well with its derivation” (Earth’s Earliest Ages, p. 60). In the future Satan will be detained in a bottomless pit in the center of the earth. This is revealed in the book of Revelation. The demons are also detained in an abyss now, yet some of them still have freedom. We must wait until God’s appointed time comes for them to be completely shut inside. This abyss is probably different from the one in the heart of the earth; it is in the sea. Furthermore, at the final judgment (Rev. 20:11-15) when all the prisoners will have been thrown into the lake of fire, there will be no more sea in the new heaven and new earth (Rev. 21:1). However, there may be only one abyss that is divided into two parts. There are other clues concerning the sea being the place of detention for demons. In the Septuagint Bible, the word “deep” in Genesis 1:2 is the same as “abyss” here. We have said that these demons are probably created races that lived in the first world. This corresponds to what we read in Genesis 1:2 because they originally lived on the earth. After sinning, their bodies were destroyed by God; their habitation was judged by God and became without form and void. The whole earth was covered by water and was characterized as “the deep.” It follows then that the spirits of the races at that time were in this “deep”! Finally, on the third day when God restored the earth, He commanded the earth to come out from the water and called the gathering of the waters the sea. This earth was prepared for mankind in the new world. Where then have the former demons gone? We can spontaneously answer that they went into the sea. As we read Revelation 20:13, we often do not understand why the sea will give up the dead which are in it. It is understandable to say that death and Hades will deliver up the dead which are in them, but why will the sea give up the dead who are in it? The common interpretation is that the sea surrenders the bodies of those who are drowned. If so, then the earth should also give up its dead because there are more bodies buried in the earth than in the sea. Yet the earth does not give up its dead. Therefore, the sea will give up the spirits of the imprisoned ones and not the bodies of the dead. Men’s spirits are in death and Hades; the Bible does not say that the spirits of man are kept in the sea. Then whose spirits will the sea give up? It will give up those who are from the other world, that is, the former world. The sequence here indicates this. “The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them.” Those who lived in the former world died first. Therefore, they will be the first beings to be given up; then, we who are of this world will follow after because every man will be judged in his own order. Thus far we have seen the probable origin of Satan, his angels, and the demons. As to how man lived on the former earth, this is something beyond our knowledge. However, we can see some hints in the Bible. Many Bible scholars, Dr. Scofield being one of them, believe that Jeremiah 4:23-26 refers to the condition of Genesis 1:2, in which the earth was without form and void. Although the context of this passage is the desolation of Judah, these few verses of the Scripture have a notably broader view, as if God caused the prophet to view the desolation of the earth in the beginning. If our belief is accurate, then we know that in the former world there was “the fruitful land” and “its cities” (v. 26). The inhabitants then dwelt in cities and some took up farming as an occupation. When they were deceived by Satan, the burning anger of Jehovah came upon them (v. 26) and the earth became “waste and emptiness” (v. 23).From these biblical clues we see the original situation of the earth, the races who dwelt on the earth, the paradise, and the princes, etc. If we are not mistaken in our meditation, we can draw a conclusion concerning the first world and the cause of its desolation as follows: In the beginning of “time” (as opposed to eternity) God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was not waste (Isa. 45:18) but very beautiful and perfect. On this earth there were inhabitants and the number of the inhabitants was great. Before God created the earth and human beings, He had created the angels (Job 38:6-7). He assigned Satan, whom He created, as the leader to be above all the angels. Satan, the most beautiful and wisest of all, the prime of all God’s creation, dwelt in the Garden of Eden. God made him the ruler of the world; therefore, he was called “the ruler of the world” (John 14:30). Many angels were under his rule, and these angels shared in ruling with him. Then, because of his position and honor, he became proud. Due to pride, he rebelled and lifted himself up to be equal with God. He was not satisfied with being a creature, but desired to be the Creator. Therefore, he slandered God before the people and accused the people before God. God found out his iniquity and condemned him. When the time comes, he will be cast to the earth. One third of the angels (Rev. 12) followed him in rebellion and, therefore, became the angels of the devil. God has prepared hell for them (Matt. 25:41), and when the time comes, Satan will be cast into it. In the former world, the inhabitants of the earth, being under Satan and his angels’ rule, were also deceived and filled up with sins. (We can readily understand this when we consider our world situation today.) Therefore, God’s anger was fierce, and He completely destroyed the earth and all the races therein and locked up many spirits in the abyss in the sea. These evil spirits, angels, and Satan himself formed the kingdom of darkness. We do not know how long this period lasted. Later, the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters again, and the Triune God began His restoration work on the world. After His restoration of the world, He created Adam and his wife and asked them to guard it, so that there would be man on the earth to cooperate with Him in heaven to stop Satan’s power. Perhaps God used Adam to test Satan to see whether he would repent. However, he came to tempt Adam; therefore, God cursed Satan. Because Adam fell, he could not bring the world which was under Satan’s rule back to God. On the contrary, the world Adam received from God’s hand was given anew to Satan. Since angels and mankind had failed, God came in the person of the Son to be a man, the last Adam. The Lord Jesus became God’s prophet, priest, and king. When He was on this earth, He was God’s prophet without blemish. When He was about to die, He was able to say, “The ruler of the world is coming, and in me he has nothing” (John 14:30). At His death all who are in Adam were crucified in Him. He was able to include all of the old Adamic creation in His crucifixion because He is God, and He is able to continue on as the new man. His human living had nothing to do with Satan. Through His death and resurrection, He regained the world lost by the first Adam. Every sinner, who is destined to die in the old Adam, can return to God and be saved if he rejects the first Adam through the death of the last Adam and joins himself to Christ in life. This is the meaning of believing in the death of the Lord Jesus. Therefore, whoever believes in the Lord Jesus becomes an enemy of the devil. In everything he attacks us, and in everything we resist him, his angels, and the demons. This is God’s purpose in saving man, and this is a real spiritual warfare. Satan was judged once on the “holy mountain of God,” and he was judged again on the hill of Golgotha. He has been convicted, yet his judgment has not yet been executed. When the time comes he will be cast down from heaven and when the Son of God returns to this earth, he will be cast into the abyss. After one thousand years he will forever suffer in the lake of fire. Now the Lord Jesus holds the authority which Satan had abused, and He will hold it until all traces of rebellion disappear. He has brought His own blood into the Holy of Holies and has cleansed the heavens; He is now a Priest of God. When He returns, it will be the time of the restoration of all things. He will be a King, ruling this world from heaven with all the overcoming saints, in the same way that Satan ruled with his angels in the former time. At that time He will teach the inhabitants of this earth to know God’s will and to worship God, in the same way that Satan did in the former days. The situation in the millennium will be like the situation in the world before Satan sinned. Christ will restore all things to the condition in the “beginning” in order to accomplish God’s original purpose. After this He will burn up the whole world, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth in which the righteous will dwell. Therefore, as God’s children we ought to have a deeper enmity for the devil. For thousands of years God’s only purpose has been for man to be joined with Him to destroy Satan’s authority. Our God is a law-abiding God. He will not take back by force the world which was lost through man. Therefore, He sent His Son to become a man in order to regain what man had lost. We, men who have been saved, ought to cooperate with the unique “Man,” the Lord Jesus. In our life, in our work, in our environment, in our dwelling, and in the world, we should resist the works of the devil. Our resistance is in firmness of faith (1 Pet. 5:9), and not by means of fleshly weapons (2 Cor. 10:4), which is the way of social reformers who are being utilized by the demons. Satan was wise and beautiful! But because of his pride, he ended up in complete ruin. It is dangerous for frail mortals to esteem themselves wise and beautiful! Beware, lest being lifted up with pride, you fall into the judgment of the devil (1 Tim. 3:6). Being self-exalted with pride is not a blessing to man; wisdom rests only with those who fear the most high God Jehovah.
THE EARTH RESTORED THE RECOVERY OF THE EARTH IN SIX DAYS
We have seen that in the beginning God created a perfect world. Later, because of the sins committed by Satan and those who dwelt on the earth, they and the earth were judged by God, and the earth became without form and void. Now we will see God’s work of restoring the earth. In the book of Job, Job mentions the failure of Satan’s rebellion in order to show that it is foolish to dispute with God. “He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength: who hath hardened himself against him, and hath prospered? which removed the mountains, and they know not; which overturned them in his anger; which shakes’ the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble; which commanded the sun, and it rises not; and sealed up the stars” (Job 9:4-7). When did God do this? When did He shake the mountains and the earth, and alter the position of the celestial bodies due to man’s stubbornness towards Him? Since the time of Adam, such an act of God in the world has not been seen. This passage must be a description of God’s judgment on Satan and on the earth under his dominion when he rebelled. At that time God shook the earth and overturned the mountains. The calamity came so swiftly that the mountains were overturned unnoticed. In addition to the earth, the positions of the celestial bodies were also affected. Because of God’s judgment, the sun disappeared completely and the stars did not shine. The world was plunged into darkness. There was no sun and no heat was produced. Consequently, this led to the glacial epoch on this earth. Then, after a long period of time, possibly due to internal heat at the earth’s core (Rev. 9:2), the ice gradually melted. However, the sun had not yet appeared and the stars were still “sealed up.” When the Spirit of God began to move, there was the deep, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Job not only mentions God’s judgment, but also His work of restoration. He says, “Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, / and treadeth upon the high peaks of the sea; / which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, / and wonders without number” (Job 9:8-10, Heb.). The phrase “spread knows? / Or who hath stretched the line upon it? / Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? / Or who laid the corner stone thereof; / when the morning stars sang together.” No matter which earth is referred to here, whether the original created earth or the restored earth on the third day, one thing is definite: before the earth was formed, the stars already existed. As the earth was being formed, morning stars were there singing together, praising the work of God. In Genesis God was only rearranging the stars that were there before. After He had gathered the light into the sun and had made it the great light, He restored the stars and made them appear in the sky to meet the needs of the earth. The Holy Spirit inspired Moses to describe God’s work with human words because the Bible is written for man. He did not speak of the positions and functions of the sun, moon, and stars, but only mentioned their relationship to the earth and man. Although seasons, days, and years have to do with other creatures, the use of the celestial bodies “for signs” is specifically for man, since no one besides man is able to observe the motions of the celestial bodies in order to make signs. God only speaks about the positions and functions of the sun, moon, and stars according to man’s viewpoint. He does not mention other matters. In man’s eyes the sun is the greatest light, the moon is the second, and the stars are still smaller lights. Is it not wonderful that God has prepared such an immense universe for men as small as we? On the fifth day, after the dry land and the celestial bodies had been restored, God prepared to create living organisms to inhabit the earth. “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven” (v. 20). God’s commandment expressed God’s purpose. “And God created great whales, and every living creature that moved, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind” (v. 21). God created these things out of nothing. We do not know what materials God used to make fish and aquatic life. As for the birds, 2:19 tells us that they are made out of the ground. Science tells us that living organisms first existed in the water, then on the ground. Aquatic organisms are the most primitive species among all the animals. Even today, the ocean is still home to the majority of the living creatures. Birds, on the other hand, are the most primitive species of all warm-blooded animals. We can see how closely science resembles the description in the Bible. Although science proves these words, faith believes without the help of science! On the sixth day God went on to create the beasts, the cattle, and the creeping things. Finally, He created man in His own image. We will discuss the creation of man in more detail in later messages. Here we will deal only briefly with the subject. Chapter one covers the creation of man in a brief way to show us man’s position among the creatures, while chapter two describes the origin of man in detail to show us man’s relationship with God. We should notice that man was “created” by God (v. 27). Man did not evolve from a lower class of animal. The word “creation,” as we have mentioned, means the making of something out of nothing. It is a special work of God and not a natural process of evolution. The Bible does not give credence to the theory of evolution, which will forever be a vain idea! On the third day God ordered each type of vegetation, the trees, grass, and vegetables, to yield seed after its kind. Grass cannot change into a tree, neither can one tree change into another kind of tree. On the fifth day aquatic life and birds were all after their kinds. On the sixth day the beasts, cattle, and creeping things were also after their kind. Every creature is after its kind. The Bible does not tell us how these kinds were classified, yet the words “after his kind” is sufficient proof that in those days every creature was of a different kind. Since God has said that everything was “after his kind,” the boundary of each kind was set by God. There is absolutely no possibility for one kind to evolve into another kind. Plants cannot change into animals; even one kind of plant cannot change into another kind of plant, neither can one kind of animal change into another kind of animal. We Christians believe in the Word of God. Anything beyond “thus saith the Lord,” we will not believe. How much less should we listen to a theory that is contradictory to the Word of God? The Word of God is sufficient to solve all the problems. The world may be scornful of our logic, but we are satisfied with God’s Word. Pitiful mortals do not believe in our God. As a result, they drift aimlessly and devise theories for themselves on which to base their faith! They think that it is too incredible for God to bring something out of nothing into being, and to make man out of the dust of the earth. To us, however, for a tiny embryo of one kind of animal to undergo the numerous processes of evolution to become a monkey, and then after many more steps of evolution, to change from a monkey into a man, is something that is far more incredible. Just for a monkey to evolve into a man is incredible. It is much more incredible than God creating man! I warn my readers not to believe such end-times nonsense. Not only should we not believe such talk; we should not even listen to it. We should not read magazines or books that contain these kinds of theories. We thank God that His words are clear and easy to understand. He said, each “after his kind,” and all around us we see all animals and plants behaving according to this word. Formerly, evolutionists said that man’s ancestors were some sort of animal many thousands of years ago. Now they tell us that after many more thousands of years, our descendents will be formless animals without fingers or toes. They are talking things that belong to many thousands of years ago or many thousands of years in the future, things which we will never see or be able to hold up for questioning! Our Bible is a book of the present. At present, all creatures multiply after their own kind. The Bible does not make irresponsible statements! As noted by many previous writers, “Elohim,” one of the names for God in the original Scriptures, is plural in number. However, in Genesis 1:26 the verb used after God is singular in number. It seems incompatible to have a plural noun with a singular verb. However, this indicates that God is three-in-one and one-in-three. Since there is more than one person in the Godhead, the noun does not have a singular designation. Neither are there two persons. Hence, the designation is not dual. Rather, there are three persons. Hence, there is the plural designation “Elohim.” Although there are three, there are not three Gods. For this reason, the verb is not plural, but singular. This reveals that God is triune. Although the Bible does not explicitly state that God is triune, we can find many proofs and indications of this fact in the Bible. There is no doubt that the doctrine of the Trinity is indeed a great doctrine in the Bible. Furthermore, the word “us” in verse 26 indicates the plural number in the divine Persons, while the verb “make” indicates the oneness of God’s purpose. In chapter one, the words “God said” are used thirty-one times. What God said was God’s Word. When we read the Gospel of John 1, we see that all things were made by the Word of God. Genesis 1 alludes to the work of the Lord Jesus in creation. In this way, the Triune God works together in creation. We have “God,” “God said,” and “the Spirit of God.” The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all here. Before God created man, He paused and had a discussion within the Godhead, saying, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion.” As we meditate on this discussion, we realize that God was very serious about this matter. This seems to indicate that our previous exposition is correct. Satan, as well as the previous inhabitants of the earth had already failed. God restored the earth and heaven, and made them fit for human habitation. All the living creatures were ready. The Godhead seemed to be taking a pause to talk among them, “Behold, We are going to create man now!” This is the spirit of this passage. Here God tells us His purpose in creating human beings, “let them have dominion.” Satan had been defeated. Under God’s judgment, he could no longer have dominion over the world. Although in reality he was still free, the judgment on him had already been pronounced. The earth restored by God has nothing to do with Satan; everything on this earth is the expression of a new order. Although Satan still retains his title of “the ruler of this world,” the man created by God is endowed with a free will; he has autonomous power. God established man, apart from the authority of Satan, to have dominion over the newly created living creatures and plants, and over all the earth. If man had been able to carefully guard his God-given rights and power, Satan would have held “the ruler of this world” as an empty title only. God wants to annul the authority of Satan since He has already been judged. For God to have ejected Satan would have been quite easy; but for reasons unknown to us, He wants man to be His co-worker to destroy the work of the devil. Therefore, God created man and let him have dominion. This was the position Satan had once held, but lost. Unfortunately, soon afterward man failed. Man lost his right, and Satan regained his power and dominion as ruler of the world. This we will see when we come to chapter three, but let us be clear about one thing: all of God’s plan and work in this world has one goal, the elimination of the power of Satan. The Lord Jesus called him the enemy (Matt. 13). Therefore, we believers, as God’s chosen people, should constantly bear this purpose of God in mind—the destroying of the power of the devil. In everything we do, we should not ask whether something is good or bad, but how it would benefit God and destroy Satan. If our efforts cannot affect the kingdom of darkness and cause the devil to suffer loss, then we should not do it. In all our work for God, we should not look for superficial results. Rather, we should consider who will profit and who will suffer in the spiritual realm. This is a spiritual warfare and not a struggling in flesh and blood. One day, our judgment before the judgment seat will be measured by this standard. Whether our work will remain or be consumed by fire depends on how much it helps to accomplish God’s purpose. The best way to fight against the power of darkness is, on the one hand, to resist in our spirit the work of Satan, not agreeing with his winning, and on the other hand, to use prayer as our weapon by asking God to destroy Satan’s work and scheme. At the same time, we should obey God’s will practically. Each time we obey God’s will, Satan suffers defeat. Man was made firstly in God’s image, and secondly after His likeness. This does not refer only to man’s physical body. “In God’s image” means that man represents God on earth. “After His likeness” means that man is after God’s kind; in other words, His race (Acts 17:28). Morally and intellectually, there are similarities between God and man, so that man can know God and fellowship with Him. Unfortunately, man has sinned and lost God’s image and likeness. Now man’s ignorance in matters concerning God is beyond imagination.

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Category: Biology - DNA, Lectures, Nano Revolution  |  Comment (RSS)  |  Trackback

2 Comments

  1. Mohammad Ali-Movahedian:

    I think it is so usefull to have these field of LECTURES
    be show in most of international TV chanels,As well As
    to publish science magazines.

    21 January 2008, 5:25 pm

  2. Mohammad Ali-Movahedian:

    no comment

    21 January 2008, 5:26 pm

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