SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, featuring the radio ministry of Pastor James W.
SPEAKER_00: Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of the land of Florida.
SPEAKER_00: Our prayer is that these half-hour Bible study programs will bring the lost to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and enable the saved to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: Now here's your host, Pastor James W.
SPEAKER_00: Knox.
SPEAKER_02: And a very pleasant good day to each and every one of you.
SPEAKER_02: I'm Brother James.
SPEAKER_02: I greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
SPEAKER_02: And I welcome you to the Preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast.
SPEAKER_02: This is the fourth in a series of messages presenting to you a study entitled Earth, the center of the universe.
SPEAKER_02: Earth, the center of the universe.
SPEAKER_02: And we have been talking about the fact that Earth is the only planet in the universe which has intelligent life or i any kind of life on it.
SPEAKER_02: We showed that conclusively.
SPEAKER_02: We showed that God was the creator of this earth.
SPEAKER_02: Then we talked about the the two schools of thought, catastrophe versus uniformity, basically Bible-believing Christianity versus evolution.
SPEAKER_02: And we showed that the biblical record is the true scientific record.
SPEAKER_02: And the evolutionary theory is just that it's a theory, it's a religious belief and a religious faith, but not founded upon truth.
SPEAKER_02: And then we talked about Earth's first catastrophe.
SPEAKER_02: We discussed Satan's rebellion, his desire to be more than the anointed cherub ruling over a race of created angels on planet Earth.
SPEAKER_02: We talked about his desire to ascend to the sides of the north, exalt his throne above the stars of God, be like the Most High, actually be the God of this universe.
SPEAKER_02: And as a result, not only was he cast down, not only were those angels that rebelled with him brought into judgment, but the heavens and the earth, in particular the earth and uh in our study, was uh dealt with in a very severe manner, God catastrophically uh judging the earth that then was, the world that then was, and we want to take up our study on the program today with the matter of reconstruction.
SPEAKER_02: Reconstruction.
SPEAKER_02: Now, no catastrophe is an accident.
SPEAKER_02: Something more than the law of chance is directing and controlling the stupendous energies of the universe.
SPEAKER_02: If there are crashes of remote suns, these cannot be called catastrophes in the sense that we are accustomed to use the word.
SPEAKER_02: If the earth alone is the theater of life, then only such a cataclysmic movement of the heavenly bodies as would affect the earth would truly be called a celestial catastrophe.
SPEAKER_02: We have seen not only the evidences of a catastrophe in our solar system, but also the occasion for it.
SPEAKER_02: The fruitful place was a wilderness.
SPEAKER_02: All the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord and by his fierce anger, Jeremiah 4.26.
SPEAKER_02: However, the destruction of the beautiful sphere of their dominion was not the full punishment that was to be meted out of God's rebellious subjects, or to God's rebellious subjects.
SPEAKER_02: The earth became a disfigured, desolate waste because it was the place of sin, but the sinner himself was not to escape.
SPEAKER_02: An infinitely wise God was to devise some plan of retribution that would be just to his loyal subjects as well as for those who rose up against him.
SPEAKER_02: Since pride was the cause of the first foul iniquity that was to mar the holiness and happiness of heaven, the omniscience of God was to formulate a penalty in just proportion to the transgression.
SPEAKER_02: The sin of pride was to be punished by an exhibition of grace.
SPEAKER_02: A subordinate race was to be created and placed upon the earth.
SPEAKER_02: Out of the very clay of their future home, new creatures were to be formed that in the divine plan were destined to supplant the fallen angels.
SPEAKER_02: Although vastly inferior to those mighty and majestic creatures with which God surrounded himself before the day of creation, they were to have dominion over the earth.
SPEAKER_02: Moreover, the divine instructions were be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.
SPEAKER_02: This truly is the understanding that the Psalmist had.
SPEAKER_02: When we read the eighth Psalm, we gain the impression that the writer is a great astronomer.
SPEAKER_02: He speaks as though he had just come from one of our observatories, where he had been looking into the depths of the universe through a great telescope.
SPEAKER_02: But David did not have access to a modern observatory.
SPEAKER_02: We can only understand the wisdom of his marvelous words when we recognize that he spoke by inspiration of God.
SPEAKER_02: But if he was inspired to look forward and see what we see, might not he also have been inspired to look back into Earth's earliest ages and reveal the hidden knowledge of prehistoric scenes?
SPEAKER_02: David has this to say in Psalm number eight, and beginning at verse one of that Psalm, Psalm number eight, and the first verse, here the Bible says, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth, who has set thy glory above the heavens?
SPEAKER_02: Out of the mouth of babes and suckless has thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger?
SPEAKER_02: When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the Son of Man that thou visitest him?
SPEAKER_02: For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor.
SPEAKER_02: Thou madeest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands.
SPEAKER_02: Thou hast put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas, O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth.
SPEAKER_02: When the sweet singer of Israel considers the heavens of the stars, he asks, as we all might ask, who know that the earth is but a grain and the mountain of creation, what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the Son of Man that thou visitest him?
SPEAKER_02: Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor, but the man after God's own heart was not without an answer.
SPEAKER_02: There is a reason for such a marvelous exhibition of grace.
SPEAKER_02: Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
SPEAKER_02: That is why God saw fit to create these subordinate sons of soil, to supplant the sublime sons of sovereignty, as one writer said.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Because of thine enemies.
SPEAKER_02: Pride made the angels enemy of God.
SPEAKER_02: And in the wisdom of God, pride is to be punished by an exhibition of grace to a vastly inferior creation.
SPEAKER_02: This subordinate race, created and placed upon the earth, might well be called the sons of reconstruction.
SPEAKER_02: For we shall now see how the entire earth is to be reconstructed for their presence.
SPEAKER_02: If we make a careful study of the first chapter of Genesis, we notice, interestingly enough, that God uses the term create three times.
SPEAKER_02: It's employed in connection with the creation of the earth in the first verse, the creation of animal life in the 21st verse, the creation of man in the 27th verse.
SPEAKER_02: In all other places, may is the term, and it has the inference of reconstruction or made out of materials already in existence.
SPEAKER_02: Thus the opening chapter of Genesis describes the successive steps of the Creator as he reconstructs from a chaotic condition the earth, once perfect and complete, and makes it a fit habitation for his new creation, man.
SPEAKER_02: You see, if you look carefully there at Genesis 1, the Bible makes it very clear that there was a creation, 1-1, fell into chaos, 1-2, and then God makes this, makes that, makes the other thing.
SPEAKER_02: On the fifth day, God created the animal life, the great whales, and so forth.
SPEAKER_02: Then on the sixth day, God created the man.
SPEAKER_02: These are new beings.
SPEAKER_02: This is a new uh type of creature.
SPEAKER_02: Originally, what was here were the angelic beings.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, this would explain quite possibly, I'm not saying this absolutely, not it's not a dogmatic statement, but uh certainly seems this is where your dinosaur uh bones would fit in and so forth, these entire races of uh creatures that don't seem to be a part of this present uh creation, this uh restoration, if you will.
SPEAKER_02: But as you think about this in Genesis chapter one, it's a marvelous thing to see how the accuracy of the scripture, how perfectly God has set forth his word so that we see the difference here between this matter of creation, this matter of making.
SPEAKER_02: Now, few of us realize how thin is the envelope of atmosphere that sustains life.
SPEAKER_02: The veil of air that is so vital to the life of the human race is no deeper in proportion to the vast bulk of the earth than a coat of paint is on the outside of a large building.
SPEAKER_02: Beneath our feet, and but a few miles above our heads lie the regions of death.
SPEAKER_02: As John Ruskin so beautifully pictures it, and I quote When the earth was prepared for the habitation of man, a veil of vegetation was spread between him and the gloom of the grave, and the veil of a cloud between him and the burning heat of heaven.
SPEAKER_02: Between earth and man arose a leaf.
SPEAKER_02: Between heaven and man was spread a cloud.
SPEAKER_02: End of quote.
SPEAKER_02: The leaf and the cloud are the signs of the habitable world.
SPEAKER_02: The leaf, that is to say, vegetation, is necessary because animal life is not capable of building itself up from inorganic matter.
SPEAKER_02: The cloud, that is to say vapor, is essential because the plant is likewise dependent upon it.
SPEAKER_02: In a physical sense, man is born of water, and any world fit for his habitation must stand out of the water and in the water.
SPEAKER_02: Second Peter chapter three, verse five, John chapter three, verse three.
SPEAKER_02: Of the blazing brilliance of the first earth, we can only conjecture.
SPEAKER_02: It may have been in itself a self luminous orb where the angels walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
SPEAKER_02: He who maketh his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire might well have constituted these immortal creatures for dwelling in any one of the majestic suns, uh, which uh mark this universe.
SPEAKER_02: But with destruction came desolation and darkness, and out of that empty waste there was reconstructed an abode where man with his finite limitations could exist.
SPEAKER_02: He who commandeth the sun that it rise not, and sealeth up the stars, now laid the foundation of the earth, that it should not be removed forever.
SPEAKER_02: This is what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_02: How clearly the psalmist saw the creative process.
SPEAKER_02: In the one hundred and fourth Psalm he sings, Thou coverest it with the deep as with a garment.
SPEAKER_02: The waters stood above the mountains, at thy rebuke they fled, at the voice of thy thunder they hastened away, they go up by the mountains, they go down by the valleys, unto the place which thou hast bounded for them.
SPEAKER_02: Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over, that they turn not again to cover the earth.
SPEAKER_02: Now surely the primary reference here would have to be to Noah's flood, because they did turn again to cover the earth in Noah's day.
SPEAKER_02: But we see that the earth is born out of water, that uh mankind is dwelling on a planet that uh has a water birth just like the man does.
SPEAKER_02: The thirty-eighth chapter of Job likewise contributes uh its description.
SPEAKER_02: Attention has already been called to the fact that the opening verses refer to a perfect creation, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy, but closely following God's work of reconstruction is eulogized.
SPEAKER_02: In verses eight to twelve in Job thirty-eight, who shut up the sea with doors, when it broke forth as if it had issued out of the womb, when I made the cloud the garment thereof, the thick darkness a swaddling band for it, and break up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther.
SPEAKER_02: Here shall thy proud waves be stayed.
SPEAKER_02: Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days, and caused the day spring to know his place.
SPEAKER_02: It's interesting to note that in both passages mention is made of a thick covering spread over the earth.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, it is spoken of as a cloud of thick darkness, and this explains why the record of Genesis states that darkness was upon the face of the deep.
SPEAKER_02: The sun was already in existence, having been created in the beginning, but its rays were unable to penetrate the pall of darkest night that surrounded the planet.
SPEAKER_02: Layer upon layer, in almost infinite succession of closely packed clouds, filled the atmosphere and absorbed every particle of light long before it could reach the surface of the earth.
SPEAKER_02: But when in the fullness of time God saw fit to commence the new creation and prepare the desolate earth for the abode of man, this dense barrier which shut out the light began, at His word, to disperse.
SPEAKER_02: Clouds still surrounded the earth, rendered invisible the heavenly bodies, but light was inevitent as it is on a cloudy day.
SPEAKER_02: It was not until the fourth day that the veil of cloud was finally broken and the sun, moon, and stars first appeared.
SPEAKER_02: When we realize that just such a condition exists about many of our planets today, we are not surprised that the earth at one time in its history should have been wrapped in swaddling clothes of water, cloud form.
SPEAKER_02: In his fascinating book, Evolution of the Worlds, Professor Lowell endorses the account in Genesis.
SPEAKER_02: And he indicates that, like other planets, the earth passed through a period in which it was so covered by blankets of cloud that there was not so much as a glimpse of the sun or the stars.
SPEAKER_02: But when God set forth his hand to create the animal kingdom and his crowning creature man, he first disseminated the earth's covering that the grandeur of the sun and moon might be revealed, and the beauty of the starry vault might declare the glory of God.
SPEAKER_02: And now that the earth has been prepared for his habitation, man is created.
SPEAKER_02: Created, not made.
SPEAKER_02: This is a something new.
SPEAKER_02: This is something that has not existed heretofore.
SPEAKER_02: He was not a part of the work of reconstruction, but created directly and independent of it.
SPEAKER_02: True, his body was prepared from the very dust of his home, but he was to be infinitely more than a higher order of the animal kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: The evidence of the divine touch precludes the possibility of bestial origin or of man's being evolved from a lower order of creation.
SPEAKER_02: He was created in the image of God, body, soul, and spirit from the beginning.
SPEAKER_02: In addition to sense consciousness, given to all members of the animal kingdom, he was given self-consciousness and God consciousness.
SPEAKER_02: He's a triune being that the man is.
SPEAKER_02: No beast of the field, no fowl deer, no fish of the sea, no creeping thing, is a triune being, body, soul, and spirit, self-conscious, sins conscious, and God conscience.
SPEAKER_02: From the very first, the image of God was to be found in him, in that he would have a capacity for righteousness and holiness.
SPEAKER_02: Here is a chasm between brute creation and the human race that can never be bridged.
SPEAKER_02: There's no missing link.
SPEAKER_02: Because there's no link.
SPEAKER_02: There's no link to be missing.
SPEAKER_02: Evolutionists will never find the missing link that will account for the acquisition of a God consciousness in the hearts of men.
SPEAKER_02: Again, as has been pointed out by Dr.
SPEAKER_02: William A.
SPEAKER_02: Williams in his book The Evolution of Man Scientifically Disproved, the law of increase would make it impossible for the human race to have begun before the time of Adam.
SPEAKER_02: With great mathematical accuracy, he has ascertained that if the Jews doubled their numbers every 161 and one-quarter years since Jacob's marriage, almost uh 3,900 years ago, or just over 3,900 years ago, depending upon whose chronology you take, there would today be 15,393,815 Jews on the face of the earth, or just about the number that is generally reported.
SPEAKER_02: On the other hand, he points out that if the race began 100,000 years ago, and some evolutionists contend it was two million years ago, even if the rate of increase was only one-tenth that of the Jewish race, the present population of the earth would be more than four quintillions.
SPEAKER_02: Many times the present number, of course.
SPEAKER_02: Even the wiping out of the human race by the flood must be conceded to account for the present population at a normal rate of increase.
SPEAKER_02: A study of statistics indicates that the world's numbers double every 168.3 years.
SPEAKER_02: That's declining rapidly because we haven't had a big-time uh world war or any great famine or pestilence lately.
SPEAKER_02: This uh AIDS thing might uh balance the thing back out.
SPEAKER_02: But on a rough estimate, over uh time, if you take all the times up until these last days, about 168.3 years, plus or minus a few uh months, has been the average time uh required for a doubling of the world's population.
SPEAKER_02: The application of this ratio of increase to the family of Noah would approximately provide the present population.
SPEAKER_02: To calculate even from Adam's time would make our numbers many times larger than they actually are, and here is an unanswerable fact that evolutionists have to overlook.
SPEAKER_02: It would destroy their entire theory.
SPEAKER_02: Now we have to argue from the evidence already submitted that the earth was prepared for man rather than that he is a product of its development, and that the clearing of the skies on the eve of his advent was that the heavenly wonders, which he alone could appreciate, might declare unto him the glory of God.
SPEAKER_02: When Paul made his famous sermon to the Athenians, the seat of the ancient intellectual culture and art, he clearly showed his familiarity with the accepted origins of Grecian history.
SPEAKER_02: In quoting a line from the Grecian poet, for we are also his offspring, Paul established a common ground for Grecian history and biblical fact, and he demonstrated that the former corresponded with the latter.
SPEAKER_02: The ancient scientists and scholars had no bestial theories as to their origins, but rather accepted the facts that had been handed down to them from the earliest ages.
SPEAKER_02: Did you know that Greek history begins with the war of the giants and records later how two of these mighty creatures, Prometheus and Epimethus, I can't ever get the pronunciation on those things right, E-P-I-M-E-T-H-E-U-S.
SPEAKER_02: One of those guys, the word Theos in Greek meaning God, okay, Epimegod or Promethe God, had in charge the office of making man, providing him and the animal kingdom with the faculties necessary for their preservation.
SPEAKER_02: Upon the different animals, the various gifts of courage, strength, swiftness, uh wisdom were bestowed.
SPEAKER_02: When man was made, in order that he might be superior to the other animals, Prometheus went up to heaven and lighted his torch at the chariot of the sun and brought down fire to man.
SPEAKER_02: With the gift of fire came man's dominion over the earth.
SPEAKER_02: That's the Greek history.
SPEAKER_02: Persian records show that the great god Aoura, A-H-U-R-A, made the heavens in the first epoch of time, the waters in the second, the earth in the third, the trees in the fourth, the animals in the fifth, and man separately and sovereignly in the sixth.
SPEAKER_02: The cosmology of the Aztec Indians of Mexico is very remarkable.
SPEAKER_02: After the creation of the heavens and the earth, the maker and molder Tepan Gukumatas G U C U M A T Z, said The day draws near the work is done, man is to be ennobled.
SPEAKER_02: He is the son of light and the child of whiteness.
SPEAKER_02: Then asked the builder and molder of man, What think ye of your bee?
SPEAKER_02: Your language, your limbs, are they not good?
SPEAKER_02: Then they looked and saw all that were beneath the heaven, and they gave thanks, saying, Thanks to thee, O maker and moulder, that we have been created, that we have be.
SPEAKER_02: Some tribes of North American Indians have records which state that the great spirit made two figures of clay, to which he gave life by breathing upon them.
SPEAKER_02: The Otachnians say that Tiroa, their God, made man of red earth, which we know is the real meaning of the word Adam.
SPEAKER_02: The Norwegian gods created man out of an ash tree and woman out of an alder.
SPEAKER_02: Odin gave them life and soul, Vili, reason and motion, they bestowed upon them the senses, expressive features, and speech.
SPEAKER_02: Midgard, the garden, was then given them as their residence.
SPEAKER_02: Now these historical records from the four corners of the earth differ sufficiently to make it impossible that one account should have been copied from another.
SPEAKER_02: And yet they agree so conclusively in essentials as to make them another positive proof of the events recorded in the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: It is also worthy of notice that there is not so much as a suggestion that man could have been evolved through a long process of evolution, but that his creation was separate and superior to that of the animal kingdom in every race of people on the face of the earth except educated infidels in the civilized world of the last days.
SPEAKER_02: I use that term civilized very loosely.
SPEAKER_02: It's interesting to observe this in this connection that only those creatures that have been brought into existence by a direct creative act of God are spoken of as his son.
SPEAKER_02: Such were the angels.
SPEAKER_02: And yet it's more than that because a son of God is a being that that is sinlessly perfect at its beginning.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, now the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, certainly not a created being.
SPEAKER_02: We know that's uh an ancient pagan heresy.
SPEAKER_02: We know that God has uh forever been Father, Son, Holy Spirit, these three are one, first John chapter 5, verse 7, Genesis chapter 1, Genesis chapter 11, uh, Colossians chapter 1, Romans chapter 1, so forth.
SPEAKER_02: We we understand there's a Godhead.
SPEAKER_02: But when God creates a specific created act, such as the angels, such as Adam, who in the genealogy of Luke is so-called the Son of God, Adam's natural descendants are not the special creation of God.
SPEAKER_02: Adam was created in the likeness of God, Genesis 5.1 says his descendants were born in his likeness.
SPEAKER_02: Genesis 5.3, scriptures, the scripture says, Genesis 5.3, that Adam begat a son in his own likeness after his image.
SPEAKER_02: Therefore, all men born of Adam and his descendants by natural generation are the sons of man.
SPEAKER_02: And it is only by being born again that they can become the sons of God.
SPEAKER_02: In the New Testament sense, in the biblical sense, you have to be created again, a special act of creation by God to become a son of God.
SPEAKER_02: John chapter 1, verse 12.
SPEAKER_02: As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.
SPEAKER_02: Even to them that believe on his name.
SPEAKER_02: Only those who receive the Lord Jesus Christ are given this sonship, are made new creatures.
SPEAKER_02: Second Corinthians 5 17, these are the sons of Adam who have been born again.
SPEAKER_02: But their new birth, their second birth, is called regeneration, a second generating, a second giving of life.
SPEAKER_02: Nothing is plainer in the Scripture than the fact that the presence and power of the Holy Spirit is absolutely necessary before a son of Adam can become a son of God.
SPEAKER_02: The divine injunction to Adam was not only to replenish the earth and thus raise up a race to supplant its former inhabitants, but to assume the sovereignty of the garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_02: He was commanded to dress it and to keep it.
SPEAKER_02: To well, it was Adam's responsibility to care for this garden that God had planted eastward in Eden and placed him in.
SPEAKER_02: It'll be easier for us then to understand why Satan should seek to subdue our first parents.
SPEAKER_02: God had not deprived this archangel of his wisdom, though it had been changed by his fall from the noble power of a prince to the cunning devices of a great deceiver, finding this inferior creature Adam over the kingdom which he once governed?
SPEAKER_02: Have we not an abundant explanation for Satan's intense jealousy and hatred, his willingness to resort to any means to defeat God and wrest from man his lost inheritance?
SPEAKER_02: But God was just to Satan.
SPEAKER_02: Though deprived of his possession, he was not to lose his power until this inferior creation should have proved its fitness to fulfill his place.
SPEAKER_02: Are we surprised then that Satan should embrace the God given opportunity to test out this subordinate supplanter, this man, and torment and torture him on every possible occasion after man's pitiful failure had once more enabled him to gain possession of this earth?
SPEAKER_02: Do you see now, do you understand now why people all the time say, Well, why didn't God stop Adam from sinning if he could have?
SPEAKER_02: Listen, that was one act in a great drama being carried on on planet Earth.
SPEAKER_02: What about your place?
SPEAKER_02: God didn't keep you from sinning, you sinned, but he'll born you again, he'll save you, he'll regenerate you, he'll make you his son if you'll repent of that sin and call upon his name.
SPEAKER_02: That's your place right now in God's words on earth, the center of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for tuning in today.
SPEAKER_00: Join us every weekday for another episode of the Preaching of the Cross Radio Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: For hundreds of hours of in-depth expository Bible teaching, please visit our YouTube channel, James W.
SPEAKER_00: Knox Sermons, our sermon audio page, Bible Baptist Land, or our website, Bible Baptistland.com.
SPEAKER_00: Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.