Whitcomb, John C: Genesis Chapters 1 Through 11-01 ~ Class-1

Genesis one through eleven this week. He, uh, did Genesis twelve through fifty for the second year students. You come back next year, you'll have the rest of the book of Genesis with Dr. Wickham. Uh, Dr. Wickham is a graduate of Princeton University and Grace Theological Seminary, where he received his master's and doctorate and taught for many years there at Grace. That's where Mr. Wicks and myself, uh, sat under his ministry and greatly appreciate everything he gave us as students there at Grace Seminary. Uh, he is, uh, now a, uh, preacher, teacher, scholar at large for the Conservative Grace Brethren group of churches, and associated with their workmen schools of theology, for which he produces, uh, video lectures, notes, and live lectures, and they, uh, train their ministers in various locations around the country, uh, through that avenue. So we're very happy to have Dr. Whitcomb here with us this week. Please give him your undivided attention and a real World Life Bible Institute welcome. Thank you. And friends, it's a great joy to be with you today, tomorrow, Thursday, and God willing, Friday. Appreciate so much your prayers. I was very, very sick a year ago, and I understand that Dr. Davis was too, and God has raised both of us up for further ministry of his word, for which we are profoundly thankful. If I become weak and weary before the morning's over with, they have provided a chair for me to collapse into, so, uh, pray that I will have strength for the, uh, for the day and for the glory of God. Yes, we just thank the Lord for this privilege of opening the only book God ever wrote, chapter one, Genesis, verse one. Let's pray. Father, I do need your help. We all need your help to open the eyes of our understanding, that the light of your eternal truth might shine down deep into our being, that we might worship you in spirit and in truth, and love you more and more because of what you've told us about yourself. I thank you, Father, that you have glorified your son Jesus as the one through whom the worlds were made, the one who guides and protects the world's systems moment by moment, the one who demonstrated once and for all your love for the world by his substitutionary atoning death on the cross and his bodily resurrection from the dead. Thank you, Father, that he's soon coming, maybe today, to carry away the church. And when we see you, Lord Jesus, we'll be like you, when we see you as you really are. May this, uh, great expectation, this blessed hope, shed light on our pathway through the darkness of this world. I praise and thank you in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. Friends, Genesis one one is one of the hardest verses in the whole Bible. It's easy to read it, but to mastermind what God means by what he said in this opening verse requires, of course, the help of the Holy Spirit of God, who wrote this book through the pen of Moses thirty four hundred years ago. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. One of the toughest problems Bible-believing Christians have today is to understand when the beginning was, to say nothing of, uh, who did what at that beginning. And so we start off our study by looking at the most important New Testament statement on how we can understand Genesis. And it's not on the basis of intellectual brilliance, which, by the way, is helpful as a tool, but not essential. The thing that really counts, of course, in the sight of God, is what's going on in our heart as we listen to him speak to us. So Hebrews eleven three tells you how to understand Genesis one one. See that word understand up here? That means not guessing, hoping, debating, wondering, arguing. God guarantees that we can absolutely understand the essential things about creation if we approach him this way, by faith. And that doesn't mean just an emotional thing either. It means taking God at his word because of who he is. And even a child can do that, you see. God doesn't put a premium on academic brilliance. That's fine, but it's not essential. The essential is, do I really believe God when he speaks to me because of who he is? That's biblical faith. And God said if we approach his word, his revelation, the Bible that way, then we can understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God. In what way? So that what is seen, the sun, moon, and stars, and earth, atmosphere, oceans, plants, animals, and people. What is seen was not made out of things which are visible. They came from the invisible resources of omnipotent, omniscient God. Now, I was once an evolutionist at Princeton University in the early nineteen forties until God, one night in my dorm room, saved me by his grace when a missionary came, and I believe we mentioned some of those things last Friday in chapel. But friends, it was an overwhelming discovery, you see, that God really means what he says in this precious book, and to have deep respect for this word, reverence for the God who entrusted this word to us, so that we can really, really understand what God knows we need to know about him and what he has done and what he's going to do. So this is a guarantee, friends, that we can understand something. Now, the vast majority of scientists in the world today, and this is incredibly tragic, who look at the marvelous complexities of the things God has made, have an faintest idea and care less about how it got here and by whom, and what contribution the Bible makes to this essential knowledge and understanding. And so, uh, before I became a Christian, I believed by faith, and my teachers at the university believed by faith, and my mother and father, who were not believers, believed by faith the exact opposite of this. Let me tell you what they've said and believed. They would say, by faith, we evolutionists understand that the worlds were not prepared by the word of any living God, so that what is seen was indeed made out of previously existing simpler things through endless ages of time by chance. Now, evolution operates a hundred percent by faith, because nobody trust me, has ever seen anything evolve. No one has seen any fish come out of the ocean and gradually become a reptile, and a reptile become a bird, and uh, or a mammal or an ape, and gradually human beings appear. That is purely imaginary. It's a flashback, you see, from present false presuppositions into the eternal past. By what? By faith. Now, the infinite total opposite of that is what God tells us in Psalm 33. It was by the word of the Lord that the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth, for he spoke and it was done, he commanded, it stood fast. Now, that is the dynamic, you see, of creation truth. It's the what? The Word of God. Now we're going to find out, to our amazement, that the second person of the Godhead, Jesus Christ, is the one who spoke the word, see? And that's why, really, he's called the Word, the Logos. He is the infinite, exclusive communicator of the mind of the Father to the minds of human beings. In the beginning, John tells us, was the Word, John one one. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and, and all things were made through him, the Word, and without him was not anything made that was made. And so we say, well, Lord, that is astounding that through a person who is your son, who became our savior, the heavens were made and all the host of them, and all he did was speak the word. Now, he did that all the time when he was here on Earth, and those were his sign miracles. I mean, he saw a hopeless leper and just spoke the word, perfectly clean. Show yourself to the priest. Uh, here's a man who is blind, just speak the word, perfectly healed, could see better than most people, I'm sure. And you know, uh, I just love the sound of divine creation. Everything that Jesus did at the beginning of the world is what he did when he came here to the earth, and the sound of creation, let's practice it now. The only problem with that is it took too long. I mean, all he had to do was think, and it happened. He didn't even have to speak and utter us an audible word, you see? And friends, that is real power. That is infinite power. God says, trust me. I didn't need time or circumstances. All I needed was my will and word, and it happened. And so I say, well, thank you, Lord, for helping me to understand that basic truth. Jesus only had to speak a word, and a rot- rotting corpse called Lazarus came out of the tomb, probably feeling better than he ever had before. It took him no time, just a word. And guess how I got saved, and you did. One word from him, and my salvation took place instantly, see? The light came in, the darkness went out, and that was instantaneous and perfect and permanent. That's how people get saved. You don't evolve into a Christian, see? Now, if Jesus is the one, of course, who made the world, and we've seen that, haven't we, already now, in the Gospel of John. By the way, this is very, very fascinating, because we're going to see right here that, uh, there's a difference between the Word and, and God. You see that? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. Well, who's God then? It's the Father. You say, well, you mean, you mean the Word Jesus is not God? He's not divine? Oh no. Keep reading. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So he is different as a person from the Father, but he's the same in his nature. Like Jesus explained later, he said, my Father is greater than I am positionally within the framework of the administration and management structure of the Godhead. This, the Father is number one, the Son is number two, and guess who's number three? The Holy Spirit. So Jesus is superior administratively in the functions of the Godhead to the Holy Spirit. Okay? But all three persons are divine, eternal, infinite, you see? And that's why we say, well, Lord, that is an amazing statement you've made here in the opening verses of the Gospel of John. Now, back to the Old Testament again. Jeremiah chapter ten, verses ten, eleven, and twelve. The Lord is the true God, he's the living God and the everlasting King. At his wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure his indignation. Now watch that word nations here. Look what's going to happen to them. That includes the United States of America and all the other members of the United Nations, so-called. It includes Israel, which is an unregenerate nation among nations today. That's all going to change soon. But what's the message Jeremiah is to give to the nations? Thus you shall say to them, the gods that did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens. Now that's a deadly threat. If you or I should ever worship a God who does not qualify for worship, not only will our God, but we ourselves will perish forever. See? Now that eliminates the competition. There's only one person qualified, and his name is Jesus Christ the Lord. See? He's the only one that deserves worship. Why? Now here's the acid test. No other God ever imagined in the mind of man created the universe. See? The sun, moon, the stars, the galaxies. Only one person ever did that. And that's why it's a universe, not a multiverse. You don't have competing gods, all each creating something. See? No, there's only one God who created everything, and his name is Jesus Christ, see? Now that's Colossians one sixteen. Through Jesus Christ, all things were created, things in heaven, things on earth, things visible, things invisible. You say, well, what are those things in heaven that are invisible that Christ created? Well, he's going to name them. Thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, those are angels. He created all the angels in heaven. He created everything that you see now in the heavens, the stars, the planets, the moons. And not only that, friends, he created everything that exists on planet Earth. He is the sole exclusive creator of everything, and all other competitors are doomed. Now, you see what a threat that is to your security on Earth? It's because we live in America, where we live in a pluralistic society, where any kind of worship is tolerated, see? But the colossal blunder is to think that just because all religions are tolerated in America doesn't mean they're all true. And we are now more and more targeted as Christians for being guilty of what? A hate crime of implying that somebody else's God is not real. See? Well, Jesus made that crystal clear. I am the way, the truth, and the life, and what? No man comes to the Father but through me. That's absolutely exclusive. See? And here it is in Jeremiah. And so verse twelve ends like this. It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding he has stretched out the heavens. Now, let's listen to this one who created the universe, as he's going to tell us what it was like when it began. Okay? Now, the fact that men and women and various human activities were present from the foundation of the earth is confirmed by the Lord Jesus Christ, who said in Mark ten, from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. You say, well, sir, I never, I never heard a thing like that. You mean to say that, uh, Adam and Eve were here from the beginning of the existence of this earth? I thought the earth was here millions of years before Adam and Eve appeared. That's the most popular view of so-called evangelical Christians in the world today. Why? Because almost all leading scientists in world-class universities say that this world has been here for billions of years before human beings appeared. And so many Christians desperate to be in harmony, you know, with currently popular ideas will say, well, then maybe, maybe Adam and Eve were created a couple billion years after the Earth was created, and that for millions and millions of years, animals were here and dying and so forth, and finally man appeared. Wrong. Jesus, who was there when it happened, says, in effect, trust me now, I don't lie to people, I don't deceive people. Adam and Eve were here from the beginning of creation. Hmm. You mean just like Genesis one says? Yes. By the way, he has an infinite advantage over you and me or any scientist in the world. He was there when it happened, and he did it, and he speaks truth. Now look at Mark thirteen. For those days that the coming tribulation will be a time of tribulation such as not occurred since what? The beginning of the creation which God created until now and never shall. You know when tribulation began on this earth? Just a couple of weeks, maybe, after the world was created, when Adam, the king of the earth, was encouraged by his wife, who was deceived by Satan, to rebel openly against the will of God, and the curse came, and tribulation began right then. Not millions of years after the earth was created, but what? At the beginning of the creation. Then Luke eleven fifty, in order, Jesus said that the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation. And you know who died, don't you, as a martyr at the beginning of the world? His name was Abel, who was murdered by Cain, his older brother. And that happened when? At the foundation of the world. And that's what the Apostle Paul agrees to. He says, since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen. By whom? Animals? No. Men who saw the signs of God's power in everything that they observed. And the Apostle John says, the devil has sinned from the beginning. Now, you see, that's God's way of saying, be careful, dear reader, dear child of mine, not to absorb the influence by popular thinking of this generation in which God has put us. And you'll suffer for this sooner or later, some way or another. You'll be ostracized, targeted by friends. You'll lose opportunities to maybe be a professor at some major university or whatever you think is a great career opportunity when they find out what you really believe about the vital subject of how the world began. Okay? Now here's the really hard one, right here. And God put this, as you know, on two tablets of stone that he gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. He said to Israel, six days you shall labor and do all your work. Why? For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Now, friends, to most people, this is totally absurd. Living as we do, you see, in a world of what? Uniformitarian evolutionism, where everything, supposedly, for billions of years, has been more or less the way it is now. And things have gradually improved, and finally people appeared. And God says, no, no, the whole universe came into being in less than one week. You say, well, that's astounding. How does God expect us to believe that kind of thing? Well, let's take a look at what I call the creation time block. Now take a close look at this. This is a grid, a screen through which God says, you will look at my universe through this one. Here's how you will understand the mystery, the marvel, the truth of creationism. Each creation day is identified within a numerical adjective. You know that? Day one, second day, third. Those numbers mean what? That the word day yom is a twenty-four-hour day, just like in English. You say to your friend, well, how was your vacation last summer? Well, thank you for asking. We had a wonderful eleven-day vacation in Wisconsin with our relatives, and you don't say eleven-day vacation, how long were the days? Because the word eleven qualifies the word, the word days to mean twenty-four-hour hour units, no more, no less. But look what happens when you drop the numerical adjective. America is now experiencing days of great stress. Well, how long are those? Well, I hope they're short. I'm afraid they're long, but nobody knows. It makes a tremendous difference if you add or subtract the numerical adjectives from the word day for days, see? Well, if that weren't enough, God also does what? He gives us an evening morning formula, see? Now watch how it works, friends. And there was evening and there was morning, day one, and there was evening and morning second day, evening and morning third, evening, morning, evening. Well, what's that mean? Well, in, in Hebrew, that means one cycle of planet Earth on its axis in reference to a fixed astronomic light such as the sun, and that doesn't change on Thursdays or whenever you feel like it. You and I are locked into something that does not change, okay? Evening and morning. Okay. Well, if that weren't enough, God, uh, reminded us, you remember, in Exodus twenty eleven, Israel, six days shall you labor and do your work and rest the seventh. Now think of it. It is impossible to imagine an Israelite saying, oh, since God's days are long indefinite periods, that must mean we can work six long indefinite periods, you know, and rest one. No. Impossible. To my knowledge, there isn't a single rabbi in the Jewish world who would say, well, this Saturday, which is of course Sabbath to Israel, let's have a six-hour hour Sabbath or a thirty-five-hour hour Sabbath. No, every Sabbath in Israel begins at six p.m. Friday and ends six p.m. Saturday and never changes. Why? They remember something God said three thousand four hundred years ago to Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai. You see? But you say, well, what do you do then, sir, with two Peter three eight, which says that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years. Does that mean that these days of creation were thousands of years? No, listen again to what it says. One day is with the Lord as a thousand years. To God, he can do a thousand years of work in one day. And that formula, that contrast between God's power and our weakness, is destroyed when you don't take day literally or thousand years literally. See? And to him, a thousand years are but as a day. He never gets older. He never learns anything more. He never gets tired. To him, it's just... I mean, it's only been, you see, three and a half days since Moses, to him, compared to the way we think. Now, finally, look at Genesis one fourteen. Here are the three reasons God created the sun, moon, and stars. Number one, let them be for signs. People need signs of the power and glory of God in the universe, see? Thank you, Lord. That's Psalm nineteen one. the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. Second reason. Let them be for seasons, days, and years. We need a clock calendar, see? Everywhere I go, I have to have a, a clock with me, to say nothing of a calendar. I even brought my alarm clock this morning so I know when to stop, or I'd go on and on and on and collapse. So thank you, Lord, you've given us what? Chronometers out there. The phases of the moon to tell us the months that go, come and go, see? And, and by the way, uh, days and what? Years. What's a year? Well, now we know exactly to the split second how long a year is. It's the exact amount of time it takes this planet to go around the sun six hundred plus million miles once. Three hundred and sixty five days plus a few hours. If anybody ever asks you, how old are you, tell you, tell them, I've been around the sun twenty six times. That's it. Now you got it. And friends, that doesn't change either on Tuesdays or when you feel like it. You see what? We're locked into something. By the way, the third reason he made the universe was what? To provide lights, luminaries for the earth by day and night. You know there's no fourth reason, namely so that there'll be places for extraterrestrial beings to live. No, there aren't any out there, none. You say, that's amazing. Why does God give us so many evidences and, and, and proofs that these are literal days? Because through this grid of the time block, it's not a soft, you know, thing you can stretch or manipulate, it's a time block. It's because through this grid he's going to tell us infinitely important things about himself. Here's one of them. Our God is so great, you ready for this? It doesn't take him billions of years to get his programs launched. See? Time is very important to show us how great God is. So, two thousand years ago, when the creator of the universe was sound asleep in a boat with twelve other men in the Sea of Galilee, look what happened when a storm came. The twelve men in the boat that weren't sleeping, I mean, Jesus was sound asleep. He was exhausted. He had a human nature as well as a divine nature, a non-glorified human nature, see. twelve of those men were in total terror. I mean, we're about to sink, hit the bottom of the sea, and be dead within minutes. So doubtless they were bailing out the boat, and all of a sudden, I mean, what they forgot was that when they got in the boat, Jesus said something special. He said, we're going to the other side, not the bottom. Do you ever do that? I mean, forget the promises of God and get in a state of panic and and anxiety and frustration and fear? Okay. And they decided to do something I can't fathom. They went back and aroused Jesus and rebuked him. Master, carest thou not that we perish? We're about to die, and here you are sleeping. Wake up! I mean, commanding God, you know, wake up. God must have a sense of humor. And he looked at those twelve frightened faces and said what? Oh, ye of little faith. I guess they were supposed to be just praising God, from whom all blessings flow, while they sank. I don't know. Someday God will sit us down and say, dear child, do you know what you could have done, what you should have done, what you might have done if you just trusted me more? And we'll be ashamed. You know something? If it took three days for the storm to end, not one of those twelve would have fallen down before Jesus and said, what manner of man is this that even the wind and waves obey him? See, they would have known intuitively that three days would be enough time for chance to end the storm with no necessary connection to what he said. And that's why astronomers who look through their great telescopes, including one orbiting the Earth called what? Hubble Telescope. They should all be falling down and saying, what manner of God is this that even the universe should obey his word? You know why hardly any of them are doing that? It's because they have put between the so-called Big Bang and what they see today, billions of years, and they are totally committed to the proposition chance could have done it all, given enough time. God says, you can't do that to me. I didn't need billions of years, or millions, or thousands. I didn't even need one week, thank you. But you know, that br- that creates a problem. If he's that great, why did he have to spend a whole week doing it? Why couldn't he just create the whole thing like this? Are you ready? And here's the answer. We found the answer. He's not only great in his power and wisdom, he's merciful and gracious to his people, and he couldn't say to Israel, his people to whom he gave this commandment, you know. He couldn't say, now you do, you do your work like I do. I mean, do everything instantly and never rest. How cruel. So God accommodated his power to their weakness and said, now I'm going to, dear Israel, I'm going to stretch out my creation over six days, and I'm going to rest one day. Now, he didn't need six days, and he certainly didn't need a day to recuperate. That's Isaiah forty. Have you not heard, read that he who created the heavens and earth is not weary? Omnipotence never gets tired. See? He didn't say, oh, I'm so tired, I think I'll rest for a day. That's blasphemy. Okay. But he said to Israel, look, to accommodate you people, I'm gonna give you a model, see, for your cycle of work and rest so we can walk through life together. You work six days like I did, and you rest one day like I did. And we'll walk together. Okay? Like a great big daddy in the snows of northern Minnesota or New York in January, and his little five-year-old boy trying to follow daddy's footsteps and keeps falling down. Daddy looks back, shortens his strides so that, uh, little Johnny can walk in his dad's footsteps as they go together. God says, trust me, Israel, I will accommodate my power to your weakness. Okay? And friends, that brings us to this conclusion. Now here's the big one, you ready? The time block of Genesis one does not dare be stretched, and you don't dare shrink it. Just leave it. It's perfect. God spent all eternity planning how long and in what order the events would be that he created the world, and he says, trust me, this is the way it happened, and here's why. Okay? And I say, well, Lord, I've got a problem, though. Living as I do in the beginning of the twenty first century, all the great scientists of the world would laugh at this. Six days to create the whole universe? And not only that, but look at this. On day number four, the sun, moon, and stars were created. The Earth having already been created three days earlier. You say, this is absolutely ridiculous. No astronomer would say Earth first and sun, moon, and stars later. If you've ever studied secular, godless astronomy. See? You say, well, Lord, I just... I'm, I'm not sure how to handle that one. Well, you don't argue with people. Remember, as we tried to share last Friday morning, you don't rationalize, argue, debate with the unregenerate mind. You don't do that. You pray first that they might be open to the gospel and be saved and learn who Jesus Christ is, because unless you know who he is, you can't understand what he did in Genesis one. You don't start with Genesis one with the unbelieving mind. You start with Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior. Then you come back to see how he made the world. You say, well, now, what do you do with this arrangement, this order of events? Well, you might say to your evolution friend, sir, let's sit down and talk about this for a minute. Let me just start this way, if you don't mind. How do you think the universe and the solar system got here? If he's very intelligent in astronomy, he will hope you won't ask that. Why? Astronomers are in a state of total confusion on how the solar system got here, to say nothing of what's beyond. Did you know that? Take a look. That great big white circle represents what? The sun, one million times bigger than planet Earth. And orbiting around that star, nine little dots called planets. Look here, four little dots right here, the closest ones. Mercury, Venus, and what's this one? Earth. That's, that's us. Can you see Spoon Lake there? Hey, you see, we don't amount to too much. Thank you. Oh, what's this one? Mars. Thank you. And then the great gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, that's trillions of little, uh, ice cubes circling around in the form of rings. And here's Uranus, Neptune, and tiny Pluto. And you say to your friend, please tell me, how do you think all the those planets got there, and that star around which we're orbiting? And he'll say, you know, I I must admit, sir, we've got some really great problems. We spent billions of dollars sending rockets out there to study these planets and, and, you know, photographs of the sun, and the more we see, the more amazed we are. It just doesn't, I mean, we can't explain it. How come the sun, for example, is orbiting so slowly on its axis while the planets are circling around at enormous speeds? See? And they sort of get bigger the farther you go out. See? And they go out two billion five hundred million miles out to Pluto. So on three on three points, the angular momentum of the solar system is ninety eight percent with the planets and only two with the sun. How come? Nobody knows. See? Guess how fast planet Earth is orbiting? Sixty two thousand miles an hour. You say, I don't feel it. Right, because praise the Lord, the air goes with us. So if the air stopped and we didn't, we'd be blown into space like that. I lived in Florida for five years, and I want you to know we got a hurricane down there ten years ago that'll never be forgotten. Wind sweeping through South Florida one hundred and eighty miles an hour. Ever heard of an eighty mile an hour hurricane? Try one hundred and eighty miles. Well, that's nothing. How about a sixty two thousand mile an hour hurricane? Say, thank you, Lord, for keeping the air with us. But, but wait a minute here. To increase the angular momentum of an orbiting, rotating system, like a bicycle wheel, you have to do those three things. Make the outer part heavier, make the outer part further out, see, and then make it do- go faster. And you've got it. Angular momentum. That's one of the greatest principles of the operation of the universe, angular momentum, and and he is totally defeated as an evolutionist to explain how this happened. That's the beginning of his sorrows. Look at this one. We have now discovered that planet Venus, over here, is spinning backwards on its axis while orbiting forward. Planet number seven, Uranus, out here, is not spinning backwards like Venus or forward like the other seven, but spinning sideways as it goes around the sun. Say, wait a minute, if this all is a condensation of a gas dust blob that was spit out by the Big Bang, how do you get these anomalies, these amazing, bizarre contradictions to what we expect to happen? And it's like the planet saying to earthlings, thank you for coming up to investigate us. We have amazing things to show you. We did not evolve at all. Somebody designed us and created us to be what we are and do what we're doing. Thank you. You say, how do you get messages from outer space like that? Well, that's easy. Psalm nineteen one, remember? The heavens declare what? The glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. How often? Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night shows knowledge. We're inundated by avalanches of silent symphonies of testimony from the universe that God made us. Thank you. See? You have to tune in to the messages. But if you think that's amazing, listen to this one. Some of these planets have planets of their own, called what? Moons. Now watch them. Mercury has how many moons? None. Venus has how many? None. The Earth has how many? One big one. Mercury, two little ones, I mean Mars, two little ones. Jupiter, fifteen big ones. Saturn, fourteen big ones. Uranus, five. Neptune, two. Pluto, one. Now watch the moons. You ready? They just can't wait to tell you their message. Jupiter has fifteen big moons. Are you ready? Eleven go this way, four go this way. Retrograde orbits. Backward. Saturn, fourteen big moons, plus trillions of those things we call rings out there, which are so fragile and ephemeral if they had, if they'd been created more than a few thousand years ago, they would have disappeared by now. See, they're chronometers of the solar system too. Now, Saturn has fourteen uh big moons, and thirteen go this way, and one goes backwards. And Uranus has five moons, and they're not going this way or that way, they're going this way. And Neptune has two. one this way, the other that way, and the one going backwards is bigger than Mercury. And the moons have a message for you and me. Here it is. Thank you, earthlings, for coming up at great, great earthly expense to check us out. We want you to know now that you must immediately fall down and worship the God who created us. Thank you. Wow. No wonder evolutionists are very hopeful you won't ask them, how did it all get there? And I say, well, Lord, here- here's the really big one. All the moons and all the planets are totally different from each other in their chemistry, their orbital rate, their spin, their temperature, their const- the Bible says it three times, every star, every planet, every moon God ever made has its own name. See? That's Isaiah 40, Psalm 147, 1 Corinthians 5. They all have a name, which means they're all unique and special. No two snowflakes that have ever fallen are identical in their geometric plan. They're special. No two grains of sand of all the shores of the oceans of the world are identical. No two planets, no two people, no two leaves on trees are identical. God, God emphasizes, specializes in infinite variety within distinct kinds, see? Just to show us they're not just what? Assembly line products that just come off automatically from some kind of a machine called what? Evolution. But, but here's the planet I'm interested in, this, this one down here called Earth. By the way, that's crescent Earth out there, see, taken from where? What, what's this? The moon, our moon, okay? You say, well, that can't be the Earth. It looks like it's hanging on nothing, right? That's what Job said four thousand years ago. He hangs the Earth on nothing. Now, folks, that's absolutely unbelievable. In fact, the ancient Hindu scientists worked for hundreds of years to come up with an answer. They said the earth, nothing hangs on nothing. So what happened was maybe the earth is resting on the backs of four great elephants, the strongest mammals in the world. Some brilliant scientists then said, well, what are the elephants standing on? And someone came up with what? The back of a huge tortoise, the toughest back they ever saw in the living world. Nobody then asked, well, what's he standing on? They knew they were trapped in infinite regression and just left it hanging. Later came the Greeks. They improved on this. They said the Earth is not on the backs of elephants or a tortoise, but on the back of a what? Of a powerful man named Atlas, and nobody dared ask, well, what's he standing on? Now, guess who improved over that one? God. He hangs the Earth on nothing. Nothing you can see or feel, taste or touch or photograph. It's called the mysterious force of gravity. One of the most mysterious forces in the universe. You can't see it, you can't slow it down, you can't stop it, see? And you don't know how it got here. It's here. You say, well, that is incredible. You mean God hangs the earth on absolutely nothing, except a mysterious invisible force that nobody can explain. So I say, well, Lord, I just, I just want to, I want to ask you some things about this planet Earth, please. Okay? Because I live here. That's where I live. By the way, where is Schoon Lake here? How about that? You like that? You see, you can't see Schoon Lake from the moon. Right. In fact, you can't see anything man has ever built on Earth from the moon, except possibly the astronauts said they could see a very thin line over North China, which would be what? The Great Wall. That's it. Well, what about the Jack Wurtz in Auditorium? No. We don't amount to too much in the universe, physically. Okay? But something amazing happened about forty years ago on Earth. Some very courageous men called astronauts decided we're going to the moon. We're willing to go. I can't imagine how courageous those men must have been, you know. three were blasted to bits on the launching pad before they even took off. Three more were almost lost in space forever on Apollo number what? Thirteen. Folks, think of what it took to get to the moon. And six, six Apollo missions got there and deposited two men each on the surface of the moon who walked around on that, on that satellite. Twelve men left footprints on the moon. And Dr. Donald Young, one of the great Christian astronomers in the world today, co-authored with me a book called The Moon, Its Creation, Form, and Significance. We sent a copy to every astronaut that had been on the moon. I met one of them, Jim Irwin, who's now with the Lord, and another one, Charles Duke, wrote back and said, thank you for this book. I just want to tell you that since I came back from the moon, I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Friends, those were very courageous people. Why did they risk their lives to go to the moon? I'll tell you three reasons they did not go there. To feel what it was like to walk on one sixth Earth gravity, which is what it is, or to, uh, see what the Earth looked like from up there, which is awesome. I mean, the Earth is four times as big in the sky from the moon as the moon is to us. By the way, they, a- all of them got real homesick up there. And they didn't go up there just to collect eight hundred pounds of moon rocks for our museums, which they did. I'll tell you why they went. We now know this. To find the secret of the origin of the moon. How did it get there? In order to find out what else? The secret of how the Earth got here. And they were correct. Apollo mission was right. Unless you know the origin of something, you can't really know what it is. Right. But the colossal error was this. They never consulted the one who made it. Colossians two says that in Jesus Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and he was never consulted, nor was his word even looked at. So you know what they ended up with? In spite of the technology, the amazing scientific experimentation that went into the launching those things, the courage of those men. You know what the final result was? They ended up knowing less about how the moon got there than when they went. They really did. They had three possibilities of how the moon got there. Maybe it was just sort of spun off from Mother Earth that was supposedly, you know, billions ago- years ago, spinning at a fantastic velocity and a hot molten, and just sort of threw a piece of itself into orbit. Well, the Apollo mission destroyed that one, because the moon is so different chemically than the Earth, it could never have come from here. Plus the fact the Earth was never spinning that fast, and even if it was, it couldn't have thrown a piece that big out of itself, and even if it could, it couldn't have gone two hundred and forty thousand miles into space and stopped and move into a circular orbit without two or three stage booster rockets. So I say, well, thank you, Lord. I paid big money as a taxpayer to find out something that God's word could have told us less expensive. Father, I just thank you for the wonders of your creation record. Help us to mastermind the essentials, to praise you forevermore for your power and wisdom and grace. In Jesus' name, amen.