"In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move." --Douglas Adams
This is my new blog. It's a Bible study blog. See, there's this big book called the Bible that seems to be widely loved, as well as widely hated, and I'm going to study it. Right here, right now. It's an impossible book to ignore; whole people are saying their lives have been changed because of this book. It's a really OLD book, it took something like 1,600 years to complete it as it is now, and somewhere around 40 different authors. And it changes lives.
I'm choosing to start with the beginning of Genesis because that's what the Spectacle service is covering, and I've been studying Genesis 1 all week, and so have others around me - including my pastor - so I'm able to draw from various sources. It's a fitting place to start a blog with too. See how obvious a choice this was for me?? Man, I'm good at taking the path of least resistance!
The book of Genesis was written by Moses. Ever heard of him? I like him. You'll have to meet him sometime. Not much fun at golden-calf-casting parties, but his conversations are usually pretty stimulating. Just don't bring up law if you don't have the weekend off.
Actually, the first five books of the Bible were written by Moses; originally as one book in five parts, called "the Pentateuch." The word Genesis comes from a Greek word meaning "Beginning." The title Genesis itself was taken from the Septuagint, which was the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament. The Hebrew title was Bereshith, meaning "in the beginning," which, you'll notice are the first three words in the book. Now, there is this funny thing that happens, that you may hear about, where the first five books use two different Hebrew names for God: Elohim and Yahweh. Elohim was the general name for God, and Yahweh was the very personal name that God gave to the Hebrews. Yahweh translated to Jehovah later. Don't let anybody tell you that this variation in names implies that different authors other than Moses wrote the Pentateuch. There's no evidence for it, and the hypothesis is a stretch.
It's like.. I'm reading about this idea, and it sounds like they've invented these four fictional characters who hypothetically wrote the Pentateuch, complete with personalities, and then arbitrarily pointed at this passage and that, and said "oh, this one was written by Fred!" It's ridiculous. It was written by Moses. Nobody, no Jew or Christian ever had any reason to lie about that.
Moses probably wrote all five books in the desert. I'm just assuming that's the case, because he wrote the books to the Israelites, and he was only ever WITH them in the desert. I'm looking for the date by skimming Wikipedia, but whoever edited the Genesis page last says the Pentateuch wasn't written by Moses. So that's no help.
So, I'm only going over the first verse of the first chapter in the first book: Genesis 1:1 to-night. The whole book of Genesis covers a time period that Moses wasn't alive for, and this chapter covers a time period that mankind wasn't alive for. The stated reason for Moses having the audacity to say "this is what happened" is that he was given the information by the only person who WAS there: God. The Israelites may have had a written or oral history to pass on to Moses. I like to think that Jews back then passed the time by reciting genealogies all day and correcting their peers whenever they made a mistake. Because that's funny to me. Jews didn't have iPods to listen to while they were being slaves to Egypt, so IT'S POSSIBLE, OKAY??
So let's dive in.
Genesis 1
In the beginning...
When? The beginning. When's that? It doesn't say. Moses doesn't say when. God doesn't say when. There are all kinds of theories as to when. Scientists are ALL OVER the date of the Universe, and that's cool. At some point they'll come to it. Right now, they're thinking about 3.7 billion years. A lot of Christians would refute that, and place the literal six days of creation mere days before the existence of Adam, only a handful of thousands of years ago.
There are some Christians who believe that there were gaps of time that aren't mentioned in the text. I don't think so, BECAUSE they aren't mentioned in the text. The rest of scripture tends to be honest about that kind of thing. The scripture, in fact, doesn't say much of anything regarding the workings of the Universe, time or date or anything. One thing I would like to assert right now is that I DO believe that the seven days were literal 24 hour periods, because Jesus asserted that He died to pay the penalty for very literal sin, from a very literal fall, by a very literal Adam and Eve in a very literal garden of Eden.
Think what you will about that, but if you believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that the events in the beginning of Genesis were figurative or metaphorical, you have a logical inconsistency. Nobody ever went to Hell for a logical inconsistency, but I sure don't like 'em. Ha. Moving on...
In the beginning God...
Four words in and suddenly we have FAITH!!! This fourth word is where the Bible loses believers. The Bible as a whole spends very little time arguing the case for God's existence. God just comes and says "I AM" and we just have to deal with it. The Israelites just had to deal with it. And really, these people weren't THAT different from people to-day; they're as hard-headed as anyone to-day. Almost MORE hard-headed. I don't think God chose them to be His holy people because they were the BEST people. They saw God send miracles and plagues in the midst of their time of slavery in Egypt, but if He doesn't show up for a little while, or if Moses disappears up a Mountain for a bit, they think "welp, God's gone. Better make a new one." They were skeptical of God's existence.
It almost seems like God chose the Jews because they were the only race that would actually crucify Jesus when HE came around. Not even Pilate wanted to do that. Unless that's a racist thing to say, in which case it DOESN'T almost seem like that.
The Bible starts with "In the beginning God..." to place God BEFORE the beginning. God asserts that He existed before existence existed. He existed before there could be a before. That's huge. Science has it that time responds to gravity, making it probably space - they call it space-time - and the Big Bang Theory asserts that both space and time were all in one consolidated place until it stretched out as far as it is now. And God, way back in Genesis, says to Moses "I am the hands who stretched them out." Bringing us to our next word:
In the beginning God created...
God here not only asserts that He was before the before, but that He created it. The very first thing that happened in this Universe is that GOD CREATED. There was nothing there, and God created something out of nothing. God does that a lot; it's the unique thing about God's creation. Humans create. I know this for a fact, because I am a creator. I create art all the time. There are a number of people in existence who can create things; inventors, artists, architects, builders, writers, anyone who's ever invented a new word... creativity is a family trait. It's one of the ways that God, our Father, made man in His image. But not a single person creates out of nothing. They use stuff to create other stuff. It's a stuff cycle. God doesn't do that. He has nothing to make anything with, but that just doesn't stop Him.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
God created everything. Heavens and earth. The above bits and the below bits. The in between bits? That's implied. When God says "I am the Alpha and the Omega" he implies the other letters. Pretty sure. God created everything! The first thing that happened to everything is that God created it. He existed before it, and then He created it.
This implies things.
Pastor Glenn covered what it implies best at the Spectacle service. The fact that God created everything means that God is unique from creation. GOD WAS NOT CREATED. He was not invented, He was not born, He did not grow up, He wasn't built or written with a character development sheet and D&D stats. He was before the before. And He's not the same as it.
The tailor isn't the tux. (Put that on a shirt, someone.)
Pastor Glenn used an illustration that I felt was appropriate, which was himself building a shelf. I like that he used a parable, because Jesus used parables, and Glenn wants to be like Jesus. Including the carpentry apparently. So he buys wood and builds a shelf, but he doesn't like it and so he tosses it out. And nobody should question his right to do so. The shelf is his, he made it, and he can do with it what he wants. If someone ELSE throws his shelf out, he has the right to be upset about it. The point of the illustration is that God - being the creator of everything - has authority over everything. He created time, space, matter, and eventually life, and He's got full sovereignty over all of it because He made it.
As I said, God doesn't go through a lot of trouble arguing His own existence, He just says "I exist, deal with it." This first verse is a heavy pill to accept for a lot of people, because if you believe this, then it has rippling implications throughout the totality of your life. This verse denies atheism, or that there are multiple equal gods, or that matter has always existed in some form; and in the proceeding books, it goes on to deny, based on this stated authority, that there are multiple correct paths or truths.
Since God created time and has authority over it, He isn't bound by it, as this and other verses say; and that means this verse denies the existence of chance and luck, which in turn denies the notion that we evolved from previous incarnations of life by means of chance and luck. This verse also denies the notion of pantheism that God is a PART of creation.
This is the beginning of a gigantic love story about God and about us. Throughout the rest of this chapter, God creates everything to suit us before He even creates us, and He created it FOR us, because He LOVES us. It's a love story. As I stated before, he has always had every right to toss us away like a shelf He isn't pleased with. But He didn't toss us away after we sinned against Him in the garden, and He didn't toss us away when He flooded the earth, and He didn't toss us away when we built idols to foreign gods in the desert, and He didn't toss us away when we nailed His Son to a couple planks of wood. In fact, we see in every part of the Bible that it's during the worst bits of human transgression that God proves just how much He loves us.
God sent His son, Yeshua, commonly called Jesus, to save us, not in spite of our transgressions, but because of them! Because He loves us! And the incredible part is, that because God created time, and is therefore sovereign over it; that implies that the event in Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" happened while God fully knew that we would sin, murder, steal, commit adultery, follow other gods, reject His existence... He KNEW that. And He STILL sent His son to become fully human and cover that sin and make it right for us, so that we might ultimately go be with our Ultimate Father in His kingdom forever.
Nobody knows WHEN the "beginning" happened. And if they do, they're probably wrong. But the creator of it loves us, and He ruled over the beginning and He rules right now, and He will continue to rule into eternity. He IS the alpha and the omega; the beginning and the end and everything in between. And He is with us. The beginning is near, everybody. That's what He said.
