As we read the Bible, we need to think about how we came to believe in Jesus. Jesus said, “If you believed Moses, you would believe Me,” but even if you read right through the writings of Moses from Genesis chapter 1 to the end of Deuteronomy, you will not find the name of “Jesus” anywhere there.
Let’s think about this. After Adam sinned, God said to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (Genesis 3:15). He spoke of the Seed of the woman. In the book of Numbers, we read that when many of the Israelites were bitten by fiery serpents, Moses followed God’s instructions and made a bronze serpent and set it up on a pole. When anyone who had been bitten looked at the serpent, he was healed. (see 21:6-9) Also, in Deuteronomy chapter 18 verse 18, God said to Moses, “I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth.” God prophesied that He was going to raise up “a Prophet like you.”
We come across such shadows of Jesus in many places in the Bible. For this reason, they are not to be glossed over or taken lightly. When we read the latter part of John’s Gospel, we become aware once more of our responsibility when it comes to the way in which we approach the Old Testament.
Let’s turn to another verse in the New Testament: John’s Gospel chapter 3 verse 32.
And what He has seen and heard, that He testifies; and no one receives His testimony. He who has received His testimony has certified that God is true. For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God does not give the Spirit by measure. verses 32-34
The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ—the One who was sent by God—spoke the word of God. What is meant by “the word of God”? In John’s Gospel chapter 1 it says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made” (verses 1-3). Jesus was the One who was sent by God, and every word He spoke and everything He did was based on the Old Testament. It was as He said, “these Scripture are they which testify of Me.”
All the many things Jesus said to His disciples and to the Jews are to be found in the Old Testament. He may not have used the exact same words, but the content of what He said is to be found hidden away there. Jesus once said to the Jews, “ [I am just] what I have been saying to you from the beginning” (John 8:25).
The Bible says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This “word” is expressed to us through the book that is called the Bible, so it is not possible to hear God’s word in any other way except through the Bible. There are people in the Bible who met God in a dream, or heard God’s voice, but this was all in order that the Bible might be completed. It is not possible that such incidents could have occurred after the Old and New Testaments were completed two thousand years ago.
In the book of Revelation it says, “For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book” (22:18-19). This is why we need to approach the words of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation with the thought that these are the words of God that He has given to us.
The Eternal Heaven and Earth Created before Time Began
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. John 1:1-4
The word “life” appears in this passage. It says that in the Word there was life, and that the life was the light of men. Earlier we read Jesus’ words when He said, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life.” Here, too, Jesus used the expression “eternal life.”
When we hear the word “light,” we often think of the light of the sun. When this light shines on the earth, the world looks very beautiful, and a person who has been born again through the word of God may be reminded of the time when the light of God’s word shone in his heart. There are also times when a dark cloud covers your heart bringing rain with it. Because of our flesh, even people who have been born again experience times when such fearful shadows pass through our hearts. There are definitely times when we experience difficulties and darkness in our hearts. Then when we approach God’s word, we are aware of the darkness being driven away.
In Romans chapter 1 it says, “His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead” (verse 20). The eyes of a person who knows the Bile can see clearly when he looks at the natural world that everything in it resembles what happens to him in a physical sense and in a spiritual sense. Genesis chapter 1 declares that God created the natural world by His word. People generally think that the natural world just came about by itself, but you cannot say that it all came about by itself just because it was not made by man.
Let’s turn to Genesis chapter 1.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, “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. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day. verses 1-5
Many people misunderstand when they read this passage. First it says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” then it says, “The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep,” and then it says, “God said, ‘Let there be light.’ People tend to put these three points altogether as one. Even people who know the Bible tend to think that when it comes to the six-day creation, this is just an expression that is used to portray a very long time that is divided into six parts.
But at the end of verse 5, it says clearly, “So the evening and the morning were the first day.” The passage we need to consider the most deeply in order to understand the Bible is this first verse here: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” It says clearly, “In the beginning.” In John’s Gospel, it also says, “In the beginning was the Word.” There is no beginning or end to God. When it says “in the beginning” here, it refers to a time before the realms of time that have been given to us. When we read Genesis from the beginning, we come to see there was a point at which time was given to us; the point at which “the evening and the morning were the first day.” The time before this first day belongs to eternity.
Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect and the acknowledgment of the truth which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began. Titus 1:1-2
It says here, “before time began.” The King James Version of the Bible translates this as “before the world began.” Other translations use the expression, “long ago.” Clearly this was a time that cannot be calculated with the human brain.
“In the beginning was the Word.” “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” When we think about these verses, it becomes clear that everything was formed before “the first day.” From various passages in the Old Testament and from the book of Revelation, we can see that God’s expression of time is based on the moon. In Revelation chapters 21 and 22, we find that the history of mankind will enter eternity, and it says that in the eternal new Jerusalem there is the tree of life which bares twelve fruits every month. This passage refers to the time of a month, even though it is talking about the realms of eternity which is beyond our present time.
There is something we need to understand here. The time it takes the earth to turn on its axis we express as one day, and the time it takes the moon to orbit the earth we express as one month. Yet, from the Bible we can know that the period of “one month” belongs to the world of God. The moon has been given to mankind in order that we might know this.
People always set themselves at the center of what they say. This is why they say that one orbit of the moon around the earth is one month, and when the earth turns once on its axis that is one day. Yet, it is God who has revealed to us through the Bible that a day is the time it takes the earth to turn around once on its on axis, and a month as the time it takes the moon to orbit the earth. God reveals this to us. As the earth carries out one orbit around the sun, the moon orbits the earth twelve times. We express that period of time as one year. This is the direct opposite of how we generally understand time. We calculate time by what is visible to our eyes, but the earth orbited the sun and the moon orbited the earth even before man lived in this world. The distances and angles at which they follow their orbital paths have continued as they have always been without changing.
Of course, when the waters above the firmament poured
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