The Modern Creation Trilogy. Dr. Henry M. Morris

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened (Rom. 1:20–21).

      But there is another important teaching of Scripture on the theme of thanksgiving. There is a greater number of references in the Bible to giving thanks and praise for God’s work of salvation and personal guidance than even for His work of creation. Christ’s work of creation is foundational, but His work of salvation is both transformational and motivational! We are “created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Eph. 2:10).

      A beautiful study of “first mentions” is found in the Bible in this connection. The main Hebrew word for “give thanks” is yadah, which is often translated “praise.” It occurs first in Genesis 29:35, when Jacob’s wife Leah gave birth to Judah: “And she said, Now will I praise the Lord: therefore she called his name Judah.”

      As events later developed, Judah turned out to be the most Christlike of Jacob’s sons (in his willingness to give up his life for his brothers), and he was selected as the one through whom Christ would come (Gen. 49:10). Thus, the first mention of giving thanks to the Lord introduces us, in a human type, to His coming work of salvation.

      The New Testament word for “give thanks” is the Greek eucharisteo. It occurs first in Matthew 15:36–37, in which the Lord Jesus Christ manifested himself as Creator and sustainer, creating a great quantity of food for the multitude: “And he . . . gave thanks. . . . And they did all eat, and were filled.”

      The first recorded thanksgiving in the Old Testament was for Judah, whose very name means “thanks,” pointing forward to God’s work of salvation. The first recorded thanksgiving in the New Testament was by the promised Son of Judah, the Lord Jesus, whose very name means “salvation,” looking back to God’s work of creation. Today, let us praise the Lord continually, first for His splendid creation, but even more for His gracious salvation!

1 Stanley D. Beck, Bioscience, vol. 32 (October 1982), p. 738.

2 Ibid., p. 739.

3 Gilman Ostrander, The Evolutionary Outlook, 1875–1900 (Marston Press, 1971), p. 1.

4 Mary-Elaine Swanson, Mayflower Institute Journal (August 1983), p. 5.

5 Dr. Elias Boudinot, Address to the New Jersey Society of the Cincinnati (July 4, 1783).

6 Marshall Foster, Mayflower Institute Journal (August 1983), p. 1.

7 For listing and exposition of all these references, see Biblical Creationism, by Henry M. Morris (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1993), 276 p.

      Chapter 9

      Jesus Christ — Creator and Redeemer

      Christians are so accustomed to thinking of Jesus in His human manifestation that they tend to overlook the fact — even though they know it doctrinally — that He was also our great Creator. We can never fully understand, at least not in this life, the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, but we can believe them.

      Before His incarnation in human flesh, Christ was one with the eternal Father as God the eternal Son, and also one with the eternal Holy Spirit — one God, in three persons, the Holy Trinity. At His incarnation, He became the Son of Man, evermore thereafter to be in human flesh, while still retaining His deity and eternal status as Son of God.

      Though we cannot understand these mysteries, we can at least feel them, and know them by faith as true when we read the Scriptures and experience the presence of the Lord Jesus in our lives, through His Holy Spirit. And in our study of creation, we do well to remember that all three persons of the godhead participated in the work of creation and now participate in the work of conserving, or saving, their creation.

      Since it is the second person, the Lord Jesus Christ, who “declares” God to us (John 1:18) as we see Him on the earth in His incarnation, hear Him speak through the Scriptures, and sense His presence through the Holy Spirit, it is His work of creating us and then redeeming us from sin that we wish to emphasize in this chapter. Therefore, when we speak of God, whether as Creator or Redeemer, in a very real sense we are speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ.

      King of Creation

      The most important of all truths, the foundation of all doctrine, the beginning of all reality, is the fact that God in Christ is Creator! There is no possibility of really knowing the fullness of anything until we first know that the origin and meaning of everything is God. What He does is right, and what He says is true — by definition! (See John 14:6.)

      “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” These opening words of the Bible constitute what is at once the most simple and the most profound statement ever made. This is the most widely known sentence ever written, easily understood by the simplest child, yet inexhaustibly compatible with the most advanced scientific comprehension of the universe. The eternal God created time in the beginning of time. The infinite God created the unbounded space of the heavens. The omnipotent God created the elements of matter comprising the earth and all other systems within the space/time cosmos. The transcendent God created, for He was prior to created time and external to created space. The Creator is an eternal, infinite, omnipotent, transcendent Being.

      Furthermore, God is both personal and omniscient, capable of creating spiritual and intelligent beings who in turn can examine and comprehend the intelligible universe that He created. And since He created both the universe and the creatures who must comprehend it, it is clearly necessary that acknowledgment of Him as Creator must precede any meaningful study and understanding of His creation.

      When the primeval words of Genesis 1:1 were first spoken and recorded (most likely to and by Adam himself), there was no need to defend them, for there was no one who disbelieved them. But then, through Satan (and man’s disobedience), sin came into the world. In heaven, at the very throne of the King of creation, one of God’s created spirit beings, the anointed cherub Lucifer, rebelled against his Creator (despite the revealed fact that he had been “created” — Ezek. 28:15). Lucifer sought to “exalt his throne” and to be “as the most High” (Isa. 14:13–14); therefore, he was cast down by God to the earth (Ezek. 28:17), the dominion of those human persons whom God had created “in his own image” (Gen. 1:27) — and for whom Lucifer and all other angels had been created to be “ministering spirits” (Heb. 1:14).

      On earth, as “that old serpent” (Rev. 12:9), Satan led the first man and woman (Adam and Eve) to follow his own rebellious desire to be “as gods” (Gen. 3:5), and since that tragic time all mankind has shared in Adam’s primeval (or original) sin, “worshiping and serving the creation more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever” (Rom. 1:25). In the minds and hearts of men, God is no longer King, and, therefore, they are “without God” (literally “a-theists” — Eph. 2:12). They now love “the things that are in this world” (1 John 2:15), and “walk according to the course of this world” (Eph. 2:2), serving “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4), but there is no hope for men in this world (Eph. 2:12).

      Nevertheless, it is Lucifer (now become Satan, the devil, the adversary) who has been dethroned, not God! God is still on His throne, the eternal King of creation.

      It is important to note in Scripture just a few СКАЧАТЬ