Presenting The Genesis Gap, Gensis 1:1-2 RADIO AD:

Transcription

1 Presenting The Genesis Gap, Gensis 1:1-2 RADIO AD: There is an ancient Book that remains a mystery to most of the Earth's inhabitants. It tells us why we are here, reveals the mysteries of Heaven and the horrors of Hell. And the Hero is God Himself, in our Lord Jesus Christ. Learn of the Ancient of Days by listening to Bible believers Fellowship, Saturdays at Noon and Sundays at 9:30 PM, on 91.5 Freedom FM. OPENING: Welcome to Bible Believers Fellowship and the ministry of bbfohio.com and our very important study of, The Genesis Gap. This message is important for several reasons. First of all, the Biblical doctrine of the Genesis Gap is important because it is BIBLICAL. Much of what we read in the Bible will make no sense without the foundational truth found in this doctrine of The Genesis Gap. Secondly, this message is important because it is rarely being taught, today. We will discuss in the message but just 50 years ago you would be hard pressed to find a fundamental Christian pastor not teaching this truth. Such are the days when men will not endure sound doctrine. Thirdly, this message is important because, sadly, many who hold to the Young Earth theory teach outright lies and distortions, falsely claiming that those of us who believe in the Biblical doctrine of the Genesis Gap are making room for the belief in evolution and many of these Young Earth theory teachers consistently lump Gap believers in with

2 evolustionits. For these three reasons, and more, we urge you to pay close attention and take notes. You will find a special page on our web site dedicated to the Genesis Gap where this message and more like it from this ministry and from others will be found at bbfohio.com And now, we being our study of the Biblical doctrine titled, The Genesis Gap: Genesis 1:1-2,... THE MESSAGE: AMEN. Some of you have heard of this referred to as, The Gap Theory? It's not a theory, it's Biblical. Nothing in the Bible is a theory. Now, there are differences of opinion on it, even among those who believe in the Gap. I'm presenting you with my understanding of the Genesis Gap and I want you to understand that we're not laying this out and saying that you either believe this or hit the road. But one of the reasons that this needs to be covered, as I said, is that there are too many Young Earth Creationist groups (and I'm going to name names, Ken Ham is one of them... I respect the work the man and his work against evolution but he is putting a dividing line and saying that if you believe in the Gap, you're a heretick. And Kent Hovind, who is now in prison, has done the same thing in the past. And there are others...) that will present the Gap Theory and will present it in a dishonest fashion and then they'll make it an issue of fellowship. I haven't met anybody who teaches the Genesis Gap who does that. They don't make it a

3 test of fellowship and they don't refer to Young Earth creationists as hereticks. But I do refer to some of them as LIARS. And they stop lyin' and I'll stop calling them liars. But they know they are lying and that's why I point them out that way. Now,... so that's all I'm going to say about the whole thing of fellowship. This isn't a matter of your getting along with me or anybody else but it is a matter that, I believe that, if you don't understand the Genesis Gap you won't be able to answer questions as you're reading through the Bible. You won't understand things... I'll refer to one of those things and that's the Fall of Lucifer. Without the Genesis Gap and an understanding of this, you really don't have an answer for one major question and that is this: How many of you have read the account of Adam and Eve in the Garden? Genesis 3? Did you know that sin existed before Eve sinned? Did you know that? Because the way that that Young Earth Creationists teach it, you wouldn't believe that. But if you READ it, Genesis 3, there is a serpent in the garden SINNING. Lying to Eve. Deceiving her. Blaspheming. Adding to God's word. Deleting God's word. Perverting God's word. Committing all of these different sins, including a liar who is pretending to be a serpent when he's NOT. All before Adam and Eve sinned. How'd that happen? Well, if you take the Young Earth Creationists position, you can't explain that. And they don't even TRY. They just avoid it. So, that's just one of the questions where if you don't understand this Genesis Gap, you're not going to have an understanding of... You know Satan's a main character in the Bible? (laughter...) How bad is it for you to read your Bible and not understand one of the main characters. And if you don't understand the Genesis Gap, you don't understand that. And that's why it seems to be a pretty, uh, common thing to those who teach that Young Earth Creation point of view also deny that a devil can get into you as a Christian. I'm here to tell you that if you don't think a devil can get into your body, you're already deceived and ready to BE a possessed Christian! Your body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit but you can grieve the Holy Spirit and you can let things in. And you DO and don't deny it! Why can you let things, but don't think that you can let a devil in? You can. Devils can get in your mind! Where's your mind? Your mind functions within the skull...

4 the brain. That devil got into your head. That's part of your body. That devil possesses that territory in your body if he gets in there. Amen?? (Amen!) You can explain to me after the service how that's not true, if you don't think that's true. But if you let the devil control your mind, you are allowing him to posses your mind. If I jump in, uh, I don't know if you've seen Chris Jones car, but it's pretty sweet. (Laughter.) If I jump in that car, and I take off down the road, and I don't ever come back, I possess that car. (Chris: Amen. ) Chris is sayineg amen, and uh, weeping. Wipe the tears! Guess what? He still owns it! He still owns the title deed! But I possess it. And, oh boy, Chris don't ever let me do that, Chris, or I'll hammer down on that thing. (Laughter.) Your body's the same way. You are bought with a price, but you choose who you to allow to control it right now in this life. Let me tell you something; are you controlling it? Shame on you. You're not even supposed to be controlling it. You're supposed to present your body as a living sacrifice, and God is supposed to control your body. So if you're not letting God control your body, somebody else is, and if it's not you who is it? Alright, we'll move on, but I'm just telling you this is the kind of stuff you're hearing taught today because they don't understand this doctrine. Now, in our previous Wednesday study, I've mentioned the sea of glass, and I want you to make note of that, if you didn't hear that message, it's related to what we're studying this morning. We'll touch on it as we go through this morning's study. We were studying Revelation 15:1-4, The Sea Of Glass.

5 Now I want to read the text, Genesis 1:1-2, if you got your Bible open; if not, you can look up here and read it with us.

6 Now we're going to start by taking a very close look at that right there. How many of you know that you should read the Bible? Amen? (Amen!) How many of you know you should also study the Bible? Amen? (Amen!) There's a difference. There's this goofy guy on the internet for rebuking people saying that reading and studying is the same thing, and it's not. Reading the Bible is good, but you also need to sit down sometimes and study and that means to study upon, it means to meditate upon. It means to look at it, word by word, verse by verse, and slowly consider what it's saying. And, so, a lot of Christians read the Bible the way I would drive Chris's car constantly peeling out. (Laughter.) You gotta slow down! Look at what you're reading, and study it!

7 Now the first verse eshows God's perfect work. How many of you know that when God does something, it's perfect? Amen? (Amen!) Can you tell me the one thing that God ever created that wasn't perfect when he created it? Then everyone here just admitted that you believe in the Genesis gap. Because there's no way that God created what we read in verse two because it's not perfect. We'll come back to that in just a second. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Did he create that perfect?

8 Amen? (Amen!) Yes, he did. Now, the layout's clear when you compare scripture with scripture, and that chart you saw was produced by a fella named Jeffrey Mardis. Brother Mardis is a wonderful believer, he wrote the book, I'll show you the book he wrote in a little bit, What Dwells Beyond. Back in 2010 he lost his hearing. And now the only thing he hears is a ringing. He is still serving the Lord! Just pray for Brother Jeffrey.

9 He produced this chart, and I'm stealing it. That's what Christians do. (Laughter.) Amen! You know my theme is, Why reinvent the wheel? You know what I'm saying? The dwelling place of God is THE heaven, which was already in existance. And then you have him create the earth. At this time, it appears that there is a direct fellowship. God is light, and what he creates is perfect. It appears that this place was a place of light, not of darkness. And that there was this direct fellowship there was no sin! In Genesis 1:1, no darkness! And then, in verse 2, we'll see that all of a sudden there's nothing but darkness. Now just think about that for a minute. In verse 2, it's dark. Do you think God created it that way in verse 1? No! In him is light, and is no darkness, the Bible says. He created this, but something happened and turned it into something like this, where it's pitch black darkness, and covering waters. How many of you know there's a flood that's talked about in the Bible that is not Noah's flood? There is Noah's flood, but a lot of Christians, every time they read about a flood, they put Noah in there. You want to know how whether it's Noah's flood or not? It'll tell you! When the Bible says it's talking about Noah's flood, it's talking about what? (Noah's flood.) You are so bright! All of you. (Laughter.) But then there's references to a flood that don't mention Noah. Why? Because Noah wasn't there! What we have is a flood in verse 2. God's judgment on Lucifer's sin and kingdom, that's going to be on our next study on this issue. But we see a world that is without form and void. I'm not going to be move on ahead with the whole chart in depth, but this third screen that shows the waters divided, that's what we studied in our message in Revelation, the sea of glass. There was waters divided above the firmament, and below

10 the firmament. The Young Earth Creationists created this idea of there being a water vapor above our atmosphere. I used to believe that, because I was taught that. The Bible says that this water that is above the firmament is not just above our atmosphere, the firmament contains the sun, moon, and stars! So the water is above all of those things, not just above our atmosphere, so there's no way it's referring to a water vapor sack, or whatever you want to call it, around the earth which is taught even to this day by Young Earth Creationists nonsense! The Bible doesn't teach that. It teaches waters above the firmament, which then we see is frozen. It's as a sea of glass, or like a sea of glass. It's not glass, it's like one, and so forth. Get that message in Revelation, we go into depth on it. Then, beginning in verse 10 through 31, the third heaven is made, or established, where the birds fly, and all that, and so forth with all the creation. We'll come back to that at another time. So, in verse 1, we saw this creation, which we all said is prefect because we can't ever find a place where God created something that wasn't perfect. But then in verse 2, we see, Without form and void. Read that again with me.

11 Now, something changed between verses 1 and 2. The earth now, we see it, is without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Now, that's what this second panel is describing in Brother Mardis' chart that we're using. God did not create things in that condition in verse 2.

12 If you mark your Bible, this should be marked! Isaiah 45:18. The question is, Would God create things in that condition found in Genesis 1:2 that the Young Earth Creationists claim he did? Isaiah says, No! Isaiah will tell you that God does not create things in that condition. He created things perfectly in Genesis 1:1, and then they BECAME the condition that we read in verse 2. You don't need the Hebrew to understand what this is saying, but just for your information, the toho is the word created void, it's translated void in verse 2 in Genesis 1, it's the same translated not in vain. It's the same phrase. It's the same thing. God would not create things He says, not created in vain. He didn't create it in void,

13 in the state of chaos, as we call it, without form. So we know that Genesis 1:2 is not the condition that God created things in, because Isaiah says so right here. He says, he formed it to be inhabited. That's referring to it being inhabited by man. You can't inhabit what we see in Genesis 1:2. We can inhabit what we see in Genesis 1:1, as far as we know, but in Genesis 1:2, it's uninhabitable. It can't be habited. (Laughter.) So, I want you to let that sink in. What does the Bible say? Really, most of this stuff is so simple, it just comes down to believing what you read. The Bible says God would not create things the way it looks in Genesis 1:2. So he didn't. Amen? (Amen!) He didn't! Do we have to go to the Hebrew? That's what it says. It says it was without form and void. Isaiah says he wouldn't create things without form. He would not create it in vain. He created it to be inhabited. Now, as we go along here, I hope you're also not just getting facts, but seeing how to rightly divide the word of truth, and how NOT to handle God's word. There's a right way to read the Bible, and a wrong way. There's a lot of wrong way being taught today.

14 God would not create it the way it is in Genesis 1:2, so what he created in Genesis 1:1, something changed, and that's what we call, the Genesis Gap. Now, not to confuse you but I also taught on another gap. You know there's numerous gaps in the Bible? We're living in one right now. It's called the church age. It's a gap. To think that God doesn't make gaps is nonsense. There's gaps! There was a gap called the book of Acts. Inbetween the 69th week and the establishment of the church, there was a transition period of Acts, and it overlaps. There's a gap, I believe after the Rapture! After the Rapture there's going to be an unknown amount of time, of course, most of us agree,

15 it's probably not going to be very long, but there's an unknown amount of time between the Rapture and that confirming of the covenant in Daniel 9:27, which starts the seven year coundown of the 70th week of Daniel. There's a gap there! There's a gap after the tribulation that people can't figure out. Something happens after Jesus returns and there's these 1,260, and there's 1,290 days, and another in the 1,320 days, and you're like woah, what's with all these differences in days? Well, there's some kind of gap even there! Between the old and new testament, there's a 400 year gap. God is a God of gaps, amen? (Amen!) Now, turn over to 2 Peter 3, and I want to show you one of these flood references that people always read into it and say it's Noah, and in 2 Peter 3 it doesn't say anything about Noah in the text. But it talks about a flood. If you read your Bible, the way you're supposed to, Genesis through Revelation, or at least read through the Bible. Now I admit I don't start in Genesis and go through Revelation any longer, I used to do that. Now I break it up. I read Genesis, Matthew, and then Romans. Then I go back to Exodus, Mark, 1 Corinthians. Then I go Leviticus..see what I'm saying? I mix it up. I still go through the whole Bible, and as you read through your Bible, whatever your technique is, these little tid-bits I'm giving you this morning is going to open up your eyes to some things. It's not only what you're going to learn right now, but what you're going to learn as you continue to read God's word. Continue to open things up. I had a nice conversation with John. Moriah was over at John and Gill's house, and hanging out with Jennifer and Johnny over there, playing Mario Brothers, or whatever it was. Over there partying. (Laughter.) I went up to pick up Moriah, and John comes out, and we have conversation, and what do we do? It's a wonderful thing folks!

16 You can exchange! He was telling me things he was asking about Mount Pischa. I'm telling him things that he's probably heard before, but I was telling him things. That's what it's like Christian fellowship. You know what? Who cares about the Super Bowl. (Amen!) Who cares? Bronco's going to win by 10 points! Final score 31 21! That is my prediction by the way. (Laughter.) Who cares? Who gives a flip! You know, a bunch of tattooed millionaires knocking each other down. That's how someone described it yesterday, I thought, that's pretty good. You know, their wins and losses, it doesn't matter. It doesn't amount to a hill of beans. I'm not saying...you want to talk about the Super Bowl, talk about it! I'm not a legalist! I'm not going to walk around saying, Didn't you listen to me? Did you listen to my message this morning? I don't want to hear that Super Bowl talk! No more fooseball talking! (Laughter.) You know what, people talk about their fishing...you know what! You ought to be able to talk to Christians about God's word! (Amen!) God's Book! You get around some Christians, you start talking about the Bible, and they just nod off on you. So when they come to 2 Peter 3 and they read it, they see Noah's flood but it ain't in there. Genesis 1:1 is where it's telling you to look. The context is the beginning of the creation.

17 That's telling us that we're not at verse 2 in Genesis. And then, we watch as Peter takes that context he just gave you, and he makes a differences between two worlds. Then we watch as Peter take that context he just gave you, and makes a difference between two worlds! It's not the world before Noah's flood, and after, because that's the same world, folks. God washed this world we're in now with a flood. By the way, there's this movie coming out, in April, and what's his name? Uh, Russel Crowe? It's probably going to be as goofy as can be. But I want to see that thing, because there's one part of it...it's like Passion of the Christ, you remember that? Mel Gibson? It had some goofy

18 nonsense in it. Remember that part where he's supposed to be the devil, and he's got that old man that was supposed to be a baby, but it was a hairy old man? Remember that? How many of you watched The Passion of the Christ? You remember that part where he was holding that ugly ol' baby? What gospel was that in? I haven't found that in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. He got that from some Catholic, mystic, Saint Catherine, or so and so. You know what? There are things in that movie, though, that really gave us a view that we'd never seen in a movie about Jesus before. I always complained that in these other Jesus movies he's dying on the cross, and he just doesn't look like he's been through much. He's still got his makeup on, you know what I'm saying? (Laughter.) If you're going to go and do a crucifixion scene of Jesus, he ought to look like he's been through it! Because the Romans put him through it. They beat them near death before they crucified them. He's face was busted up. What do you think they did? The Bible says they punched him in the face! They weren't love pats. His head, it was a crown of thorns folks, pressed down on his brow, and the blood...so, I think this thing with Noah's flood, this movie coming out, it's got some dumb parts to it, I already know like when the flood's about to come, the people has got this big army coming after Noah's boat. I'm like, I didn't read that in Genesis, where did they get that? But then the part where the fountains of the deep burst open, I've seen a clip of that, and that's pretty wild. That's what I think it looked like. So, if you get a chance to watch that, especially if you get to see it free on TV or something, just check out those parts of it. This flood is not talking about the world before Noah's flood, or after Noah's flood. We've already been told the context. The context goes back to Genesis 1:1-2. What world is that overflowed with water? Genesis 1:2! Read it! Have you seen anything about Noah yet? No! Go in the verse before and after and you won't. Now look what it says in verse 7.

19 There's a reference to a flood that happened in the world that then was. It tells you where it's at, it's in Genesis 1:2. There are still people who will teach that that's Noah's flood! It's not! It's right here. The covering waters. Genesis 1:2.

20 Now, I want to advertise here for Brother Mardis. I don't make any money off this book, and it's actually available if you have a Kindle or an e-reader, or if you want the.pdf version, you can get it for? What is it, $2.99? Dirt cheap! And one of the best books you'll ever read! As a matter of fact, for 2013, that is hands down the best Christian book available. If you have a reader in your family, someone who will actually read, and you want them to learn the book, and you can't get them to read the Bible, but you think they'll read a book about the Bible right there, man. It's about $20 hard copy, but if you know that person's going to read it, it's worth $20. But if they have a Kindle or an ereader, for $2.99? It's like 500 pages! Charts, and pictures, everything, if you get the.pdf version! Awesome stuff. So, there it is. I don't make any money off of that. Although, if Brother Jeffrey wants to send me some money...(laughter.)

21 Now, I gave you that preference, I'm not going to name all of these, but you can make a list. These are the guys. If you listened to any of those men, you heard the gap! Now, just look at that, and I'm telling you, that's Fundamentalist Christianity in America, up until the last couple of decades. These were the men that God raised up. These were the leaders of the church of Jesus Christ in the United States of America, and around the world!