The concept of God's eternal plan by examining the six days of creation as a framework for understanding historical dispensations. It argues that the Genesis creation account, particularly the separation of waters on the second day, serves as a type for God's redemptive work. The message highlights how God's creative acts, like bringing light and establishing the firmament, parallel His spiritual work in salvation, where divine wrath is held back for believers through Christ's sacrifice on the cross. The sermon concludes by emphasizing that just as the firmament protected life during creation and Noah's flood, Christ's sacrifice provides eternal safety for believers from God's judgment.
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And the Spirit gave assurance that I'm his and he is mine. So I prayed to God in earnest and not caring to our folks said, for the blessing, my poor soul it must be spread. When at last I pray, I touch him, and like thoughts from split and still, just so quick salvation reach me.
Oh, bless God, I know it's real. Oh, it's real, it's real, oh, I know it's real. Praise God the doubts are settled, for I know, I know it's real. And I hope you will, if you don't know it right now tonight, that it's real to know the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.
Been knowing him for 19 years now. Enjoy talking about him and singing about him. And as McKay was bringing out in his previous message, he's a real friend, a friend indeed, a friend that sticketh closer than the brother. We welcome you tonight to our at our street chapel our special meetings and you that are visiting with us a special welcome to you the meetings will continue each night at 730 through Friday night we hope you can make each night along a pencil and paper take notes and follow along and receive the blessing of the Lord from his precious word as we review the chart from eternity to eternity I know everyone would be what lies ahead, and only that can be found in the Word of God.
Now let us turn to number 64, number 64. Shall we stand as we sing this? Thou alone, Lord Jesus, and true peace in heart. Thou dost know the sorrow of the human heart.
Thou who came from glory, hear that heart who win, for sinners, the blessed one for sin. There is none, Lord Jesus, there is none like me. For the brokenhearted, there is none like me. laid and with their skin.
Through thy blood, Lord Jesus, boldly enter it. Gladly hear thee falling, come to thee and rest. to their heavy burden on thy loving breast. There is none more Jesus, there is none like thee. For the heavy laden, there is none like thee.
Thank you. May be seated. And now, Mr. H. G. McKay from Greensboro, North Carolina. Now, there were no questions on the box last night or yesterday morning, which can just mean one of two things. Either the people in Burlington know all the answers, which I imagine is true, was so satisfying in his explanations that there was nothing left to ask about, that I seriously questioned, because I would hesitate to think that my messages yesterday were so satisfying that they'd fall into the category of the young preacher.
He had been taught at school that his sermon should have three effects. Three characteristics. They should be moving. They should be soothing, and they should be satisfied. So he remembered that when he was preaching his trial sermon, and he hadn't got on very far until half the people got up and left. He said, Thank the Lord, it's moving. And so he continued. And he'd gone a little further, and he glanced over, and he saw that quite a number were asleep.
So he's appraised the Lord. It's soothing. And at the conclusion of his marvelous message, why one brother was so thoroughly disgusted that he said to him at the door, he said, That'll do me the rest of my life. He said, Praise was satisfying, isn't it? So I wouldn't like to think that yesterday's messages were satisfying because we'd like to have you bank the rest of the week each night in the will of the Lord. But if you do have at any time any questions regarding the chart, the subject that we're covering, or any of the statements we may make, if you just write out that question, put it will attempt to give an answer at the next service.
Now, all of the colored charts are gone. They went very quickly. I thought that I had just the same number of charts as keys, but there are two of these keys left. Now, if any of you got a chart and didn't get a key, this is coming to you. nation written by the late Mr. Booth who designed the chart. You'll find in it some things that I do not have time to cover in these studies. And so many of you got a chart but didn't get a key.
Now this is coming to you, so you get that at the conclusion of the search. There's still a number of the course on dispensationalism. that I wrote, if you'd like to secure a copy of this course. Now, it can be read as a book. I wrote it with that in mind. It can also be used as a reference because we try to cover to some extent completely, and yet that isn't a great description at all because you can't completely cover any subject in the book.
Bible. But we tried at least in some measure of fullness to cover the subjects that referred to, for instance, conscience. I point out in the chapter on the dispensation of conscience that conscience can be in 12 or 14 different conditions. So when a person says, my conscience doesn't bother me, well, it may be that your conscience need to go to the doctor. It could be an condition. And the Bible speaks of 12 or 14 different conditions that conscience can be in. We've had to cover all that. And then a good friend, John Phillips, took the material and added to it some very, very helpful questions that help you to get the right to the heart of it.
And Amaze Bible School published it as one of their senior courses. So if you'd secure a copy. We have a few left back there. Some had asked, and I brought along some copies of my booklet on women's head covering, which has been rather widely distributed throughout the continent. Now, before we turn to our passage that we're studying, Genesis chapter one, I want you to turn, please, to 2 Corinthians chapter four. I'm not only trying to impart a little bit of instruction regarding dispensational and prophetic matters, but even more so, I want to try and point out to you certain things that can be of help to you in your own personal study of the Bible.
If I can encourage you to study your Bible yourself, that will be more valuable than anything thing that I will say from this platform. So we are sometimes asked or challenged, we might even say, as to have we any right to go way back to Genesis 1 and take the account of creation and use it as an illustration or a type of creation. salvation and other important matters that we have fully unfolded in the New Testament.
Are we on scriptural grounds in doing that? Now, there are those today who completely reject any typical teaching from the Word of God. There are those who completely reject the use of the Old Testament as types of the new. Of course, in their rejection, they are going completely against Scripture because we read that all these things happened unto them, not unto the Israelites. All these things happened unto them, so they're actually historical events, but they happened unto them and are examples or types, word is, and are written for our admonition and for our instruction.
But in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, now those of you last night know that we moved on into the first day, and the characteristic of the first day of recreation, reconstruction, was that God said, Let there be light. Now there's so very much more that could have been said, but frankly, as I thought over last night's message, I wondered what I did say because I could think of so much that I should have said. But at least we saw that God said, let there be light. Now how are we on scriptural ground?
Or are we just using our imagination when we say that place on that first day of reconstruction is a picture, an illustration, a type, whatever you care to call it, of that which takes place when God speaks to a human heart in the 20th century. Well, in 2 Corinthians 4, we read in verse, let us read verse 3. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
When you're blind, you're in the dark. So here are people, and they are in spiritual darkness because of the blinding work of the God of this age, Satan. They are in the dark, just as we saw the earth to be in natural darkness. In verse two of Genesis one, in that chaotic condition that was the result of sin and rebellion against God. But now look at verse 6. But God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness.
Isn't that Genesis 1 and verse 3? Certainly. But God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Of course, we could go on with that, but you can see from that the Spirit of God is leading the Apostle Paul here to tell us that the God who commanded light to shine into that dark scene of chaos in the original creation or after the original creation had been marred by sin, that same God is the God who shines in our hearts to bring the light of the knowledge, the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.
Now to Genesis chapter 1, please, because I want to try and do an almost impossible task tonight, I want to try and look at two days' work. Now, that could well occupy six or seven very profitable studies, but we're just going over the surface because before we know it, the week is going to be gone. Genesis 1, verse 6, and God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was all. And God called the firmament heaven, and the evening and the morning were the second day. under the heaven, be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear, and also. And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together the waters called He seized. And God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the earth-yielding seed, and the fruit-tree-yielding fruit after His kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth, and it was all.
And the earth brought forth grass, and herbs yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself after his kind, and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day. Now we saw in the first day, as God brings cosmos out of chaos, as He brings order of disorder, we saw that the initial movement of God was to bring light into that scene.
Now it was not the full-ordered, arranged light. of the fourth day. When we come to the fourth day, we will see not the sun created, nor the moon created, nor the stars created, but we'll see them set in their proper place. And there will be many spiritual lessons for us to learn from that tomorrow night in the will of the Lord. But there was light. As I read this, I am fully convinced that the Son itself was part of the original creation of verse 1.
In that dateless past, how long ago we have no way of knowing, and those scientists who make us area of study, their special discipline, they think nothing at all of differing with each other by three or four or five or a couple of hundred million years. But we do not know and no one knows when. But I believe that the sun was part of the original creation. But here we have the earth, enshrouded in water, in absolute darkness, God sees, and light comes on the scene.
Not the full flood of light, I repeat, but nevertheless light. Enough light, shall we say, to reveal the chaotic condition. Now I have mentioned that this chart that we're using is based upon the thought of taking these six days of reconstruction to illustrate the six outstanding periods of time during which God's purposes regarding the human race are moving on toward God's destiny.
goal. We saw that God's goal in reconstructing the earth was that there might eventually be on that fruitful earth. There might be a man and his bride ruling and reigning over that sinless scene. That was God's purpose in reconstructing the earth. That is what we will see when we come to the sixth day. And that reminds us that God's purposes concerning the earth and the human race move on toward this goal, eventually this earth that has been ruined by sin, that still bears on every hand the marks of the fall and the resultant curse on the earth.
This scene is yet to have those marks removed, and the curse will be lifted. from creation, once again the earth will be as God intended it to be. And ruling over that fair scene will be the God-man, our Lord Jesus Christ, his bride, the true church associated with him in that millennial age, and for 1,000 years. And that is what we will talk about rather extensively when we come to the sixth day.
But ruling over that scene will be Christ and his church. His church composed of born-again believers from the day of Pentecost when they church began to the rapture of the church, which may take place at any moment and which we will be referring to tomorrow night in the will of the Lord. Now that's the church period. Pentecost, the coming of Christ to the air. Everyone during that period that is saved by believing on Christ and is regenerated by the whole Holy Spirit of God becomes a member of the body of Christ.
Now you may be hearing a lot today about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Well, don't believe nine-tenths of it, because those who are talking about don't know what they're talking about. There is only one verse in the Bible that explains what the baptism of the Holy Spirit is. baptism of the Holy Spirit is. And I challenge any man anywhere to show me anything in the 66 books of the Bible that explains the baptism of the Spirit apart from 1 Corinthians 12 and verse 13.
That's the only verse in the Bible where God tells you what the baptism of the it. And by that we become members of the true church. But now you see God's purposes are moving on an orderly way toward that. That is why I love to study the dispensational dealings of God, because we bring before me an orderly movement of God from beginning on to the consummation, and I believe that is moving right according to God's timetable.
Now, the first day then that we were noticing last night and which a measure of light came on the scene, and yet all that light did was reveal the ruin. It didn't change it. But it revealed it. Now, when man fell in the Garden of Eden by disobedience, he received, or at least, we won't get into theological argument about whether he had a conscious before or not. That has been debated back and forth.
But one thing we do know, if he had a conscience that wasn't operating, but it began to operate, and he had within him that which was an inward monitor of right and wrong. That gave a measure of light, and from the fall of Adam, to the flood, and that is our first dispensation. You'll notice it's marked from Adam to Noah. Now, disregard, if you've got one of those colored charts, the 1656 years.
That's taken from Bishop Usher's chronology, which is generally used in our Bible. I'm not going to go into that, is a subject in itself, but just disregard the 1656. I don't know whether that's the length of it. You don't know. Bishop Hushard didn't know, and nobody knows. Well, I don't mind being ignorant. Everybody else is ignorant, too. I hate being ignorant when everybody else has the answer. But when they don't, it kind of relieves my mind I'm not quite so embarrassed. We don't know, and it doesn't matter. But we know that...
was a period of time during which the want of conscience was given to man. Now all our conscience did was reveal his ruin. Conscience doesn't correct what is wrong. It reveals what is wrong. So during that first period, according to the Scripture, that's the only thing they had, I mentioned the Book of Creation, which would tell them of a Creator.
I mentioned the promise that was given in the Garden of Eden, Genesis 3.15, that would tell them of a coming Redeemer, but the only life they had on right and wrong was that inward monitor, which we call a conscience, you'll find its work described in Romans chapter 2 and verse 15. But, as we saw in our study last night, that light, while it revealed the correction, was the only thing that God could say was good.
God saw the light. that it was good. And I was reminding you that it's only what God himself creates that is good. Only good thing in me, just to use myself in illustration, the only good thing in me, after 47 years of Christian life and 45 years of privilege of serving the Lord, the only good thing in me is what the Lord put there. years ago. The new nature, the Holy Spirit, and that is why the Apostle Paul said, I know that in me that is my flesh, but no good thing.
Well, there was a good thing dwelling on, the Holy Spirit, but it wasn't dwelling in his flesh. That's why I was very careful to say, I know that in me that is my flesh, dwell of no good thing. conscience, man left to his conscience, became so depraved that the flood was the result. We cannot take time to go into the details of that, but you read in Genesis chapter 6, and you'll see how thoroughly ruined and depraved man had become under the light of conscience.
didn't do a thing to change him, but it revealed what he was. And yet, God said during that day that the light was good. And I was just thinking, why in my bed last night after I reached my home, Greensboro? I was just thinking as I went back over some of these things, isn't it delightful that even in that dispensation of conscience that ended with a human race so utterly and absolutely depraved that God had to wipe them completely off the scene with the exception of eight persons.
Isn't it delightful that during that time, the only two men, no, pardon me, two of the three men that you read of in your Bible who walked with God were found during that discipline. sanction. Now, I'm not saying, please don't quote me, that only three men walked with God. No, no. Oh, no. But the Bible only speaks about three men definitely as walking with God. One was Enoch. The other was Noah. The third was Levi. And only of those three are we definitely told they walked with God.
Now, the first two were during that dispensation. Many years ago, there was an outstanding Bible teacher in New York City by the name of Haldeman. Dr. Haldeman was a very fine Bible teacher. As a young man, I had most of Dr. Haldeman's books on my shelves. I have most of them yet. Somewhere in those writings, I've long since forgotten where, but somewhere in those writings, he's speaking about Enoch, walking with God. And in his inimitable style, Dr.
Haldimand described Enoch as walking with God to the slush and the slime of that antediluvian world. world. I've never gotten that. That must be near on 40 years, maybe more, since I read that. But it always graphically brought before me the terrible moral conditions of the antediluvian world, and yet here's a man he walks with God through the slam of it all. People say what a terrible they were living in. Well, it's bad. It was worse before the flood.
and yet two men walked with God. Enoch, Noah, you and I can walk with God. There's no issues. There's no reason why we can't walk with God. You say, but you don't know the circumstance of my life. No, I don't. But you read about Noah, the days in which he lived, and figure out whether yours are worse than his, and he walked with God. But now you come to a second day. God is going to move on, and I better do that. We've got ten minutes to cover two days, so we've got to go in high gear.
Here's the water. Now God has dealt with the darkness. us. Now God is going to deal with the deep. There are the waters, just enveloping that sea. Now there couldn't possibly be any light there, could there? You couldn't have light if all you had was water. You couldn't even have marine life. If all there was was water. There must be some source of oxygen. If there's going to be life, and so we find God, and He says, Let there be a firmament to divide the waters above and the waters below, and God made firmament.
God didn't create it. Because God simply took 79 parts of nitrogen. and 21 parts of oxygen and put them together and made a perfect atmosphere in which man and plant life could live. Now, but had it been a different mixture, we'd all have been going around laughing all the time.
You ever hear a laughing gas? That's all it is. It's nitrogen and oxygen. But it's a different combination. And wouldn't it have gotten weary so if everybody in that were just laughing all the time at the top of their voices, they'd say, let me out of this madhouse. what the world would have been. And yet the evolutionists try to tell me it just happened. Well, I'm so glad it didn't happen in that combination with all and laughing. And you could think about other combinations of what would have taken place. What you see, God did, God made, not created.
And I wish I'd longer to talk to you about these two words. the one to make out of nothing, the other to make out of existing material. And God simply took these two gases. Now let's stop and think of the problem that God was faced with. Here is water with all its tremendous force and power. You know enough about that, I don't need to stop and talk about it. There must be some of it above. There must be some of it below, or you can't have life.
And how is God going to keep those two apart? Oh, you say that's comparatively simple. You could make a tank. You could put a partition in the center keep one part of the water away from the other. But now, wait a minute. You've got to have something more than the water divide. You have to have light. So you have to have something that is strong, and yet the light must be able to come through it. Oh, you say that's simple. We just make a partition of glass. Now, wait a minute.
You're going to have passing through upper part of the firmament, you're going to have celestial bodies of incredible size traveling at incredible speed. We'll talk just a little about that tomorrow night. And they've got to go through that. What a problem. Holding back millions of tons of water. And yet, opaque enough for the light to come through and flexible enough for the heli-bodies to sail through them, and even in our day for the astronauts to go through.
Didn't God have a problem? Yet what did He take? Just two gases. things that in themselves seem weak and almost useless. Yes, and two things that in themselves could be deadly, because you know how deadly nitrogen can be. You know how combustible oxygen is. And yet, God takes these two apparently weak objects.
He puts them together in just right combination, and he makes a firmament that's been holding ever since. And waters above have only once come through. That was enough life. When the windows of heaven were open, we're told, the fountains of the deep were broken up, and once again the water came together. What happened? Destruction. Death. All except the eight who were in the ark. But apart from that time of judgment, that wonderful firmament that seems so ridiculous when you look at it from a human standpoint so weak so insufficient has been holding that tremendous sea of water that's up there and the light has been streaming through and the celestial bodies have been following the odd appointed orbits ever
since right through it any hindrance. What a problem. What a solution. God faced a greater problem. That problem was that you and I were sinners, completely ruined by sin, unholy, and God was a holy God. And God was a righteous God, and yet God is a God of love. How could a loving God remain holy and righteous and just, and yet hold back the waters of judgment from you and from me so that we'd be safe for all eternity?
problem. What did God use? Something that in the eyes of man seemed utterly ridiculous. A cross and a dying man with a crown of thorns on his head. But that's what happened at Calvary, my friend. If I might use expression, God made the divine firmament at Calvary. And there his beloved Son endured the meeting of the waters.
In Psalm 42 and verse 7 we read, Deep calleth unto Deep at the noise of thy water doubts. All thy ways and thy billows are gone over me. When God made the firmament on that second day of creation, there was a deep below and there was a deep above. But they were separated, so they were held back by that firmament. On Calvary Cross there was a deep of human anger, hatred surging around the cross of Christ.
But there was a deeper deep that I might use that clumsy expression. There was a wrath of God against sin out there. And deep deep, and all the waves and the billows of divine wrath rolled over God's beloved Son. Just as in Noah's day, the waters from above along the ark, the waters from beneath surged around that ark, the ark bore the waters of judgment, and those inside were say.