Meet Your Maker

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Picture me on a stage with stacks and stacks and stacks of books around me, everywhere. Some stacks are high as my waist; some as high as my shoulders, but most stacks far above my head. Can your image it? This would just be a small sampling of how many books have been written on the subject of the origins of our universe—religious and otherwise. Where did mankind come from? How did we get here? It doesn’t matter how much I preach on it or how convincing I might be, I’ll never answer these questions in a way everyone will accept. The debate is just too intense.

However, we need to answer it for ourselves. We need to know where we stand and where we can and cannot bend, because sooner or later, someone is going to challenge our views. If the first professor you run into at college (or online) that questions your God or questions your bible or questions your Christian worldview causes you to give up your faith, then all that tells me is how
weak your foundation was from the beginning. Christians compromise too much.

Some people just cannot bring themselves to say, “In the beginning God . . . !” They say, “In the beginning gases,” or “In the beginning some matter and vapors.” The constant struggle to explain our origin has always been here. The ancient Greeks taught the earth was held up by a god named Atlas. When Greek children asked, “What’s does Atlas stand on?” They were told he stands on the back of an elephant. “What does the elephant stand on?” A Giant turtle! “What does the giant turtle stand on?” On the back of bigger Turtle! Every time they asked, the next turtle got bigger and bigger until they concluded: “It’s easy . . . there are turtles all the way down.” All the way down to what? Do you really want to put your eternal destination in something like that?

Genesis 1:2–4 reads: “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.” I love that the first thing God did was to address darkness. The first recorded words of God are, “Let there be light.” This isn’t the creation of the sun . . . it doesn’t come until later on in day four. How do we have light before the sun, moon, and stars? We’re told, “God dwells in unapproachable light” (I Timothy 6:16). It was because God was there . . . and there was light everywhere.

 

Now I don’t want to be too rigid, but I do have strong convictions here. But that doesn’t mean we have to attend every argument we’re invited to. Beware of people who are overly dogmatic. There have been countless seminars on both Genesis and Revelation. There are people who are convinced they have it all figured out; how God made the world and how the end of times will play out. To them, they have the only right view and the only right interpretation and they dogmatically fight you for their views. Beware of people like that.

As for me, I believe! You see, if we only had an eyewitness there at the beginning, what a difference that eyewitness makes in a court of law when there are conflicting opinions about what happened. If we could find a creditable witness to creation, it would be most helpful. Well I believe we have such a witness. And this eyewitness has gone on record. None of us were there . . . but the Holy Spirit was. And the Spirit continued to lead men to write what God wanted written. For me, we can trust our bibles and enjoy Genesis.


[Ron Otto, preaching minister at Lincoln Christian Church in Lincoln]

 

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