Tag: creation

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Bible Insights

God’s Creative Force

God

Jeremiah provides a succinct summary of God’s creative force: power, knowledge, and wisdom. Through it, he established the entire universe, our physical realm of existence.

Power

God is a god of power. He is all-powerful, that is, almighty; he is omnipotent. There’s nothing he can’t do; nothing is too big for him, too complicated, or too hard. He unleashed his unlimited power to create us, our world, and the universe we live in.

How he did it doesn’t matter, but he was there at the beginning and before the beginning, creating our temporal reality out of his power.

Knowledge

Power without knowledge is, at best, a wasted effort; at worst, it is a tragedy. Fortunately, God is also a god of knowledge. He knows all things; nothing is beyond his comprehension. He is omniscient.

Creation is birthed by his power and through his knowledge.

Wisdom

Without wisdom, knowledge and power have no purpose. God is wisdom; he exemplifies the ultimate in understanding. Wisdom guides power and informs knowledge to create something truly marvelous. In his wisdom he made all things, working perfectly together in the ultimate masterpiece.

We are an amazing creation, living on an amazing world, stationed in an amazing universe. We applaud God for making it all, using equal parts power, knowledge, and wisdom.

Thank you, God. You are awesome.

[Read through the Bible with us this year. Today’s reading is Jeremiah 51-52 and today’s post is on Jeremiah 51:15.]

[Discover more about the Bible at A Bible A Day.com: Bible FAQs, Bible Dictionary, Books of the Bible Overview, and Bible Reading Plans.]

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Christian Living

Another Way to Worship God

For the past few days I’ve helped on a home improvement project. I’ve urged my body forward, performing physical tasks long ago forgotten. There’s an ache that permeates my muscles and reaches into my joints. But it’s a good ache; it’s an ache of accomplishment.

When God completed his creation, he said, “It is good.” When our remodeling project is finished, we will likewise take a step back to survey the results and say, “It is good.” I think that will please our creator who will receive our work as an act of worship.

The opposite of work is idleness: watching too much TV, playing too many games, persisting in meaningless conversation, and sleeping when we don’t need it—wasting the time God gave us and squandering what he intended us to be.

Though we need rest and to guard against busyness, we also need to avoid the opposite.

God made us to do things: to work and to create. When we do as he intended, we sense fulfillment. When we do so for his honor, we worship him. Then we rest.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Christian Living

Do You Appreciate Nature?

Nature

Enjoying God’s Creation

In the pre-dawn haze, I perched at the edge of a meadow. From a distance I watched three whitetail deer arise from their slumber, moving with deliberate slowness as though waiting for their circulation to return and their muscles to wake up.

I don’t know if they saw me, smelled me, or heard me, but at once all three looked in my direction, freezing in time and place. For an eternity of seconds, we stared at each other.

They were wary, but not afraid; they were cautious, but not fearful. They did not know to fear man and this man was in complete awe of them.

Sensing it was again safe to proceed, they sauntered towards the woods. The fawn was not keeping up and once he realized this, it took only a couple of graceful leaps to restore contact with his parents. As a group they continued meandering towards the border between field and forest.

At the fence separating meadow and woods it took one mighty bound, seemingly effortless but extraordinary in power, for the first to clear it. Then the second and finally the third; they were gone.

I thanked God for letting me witness the wonder of his creation and to be in awe of him for his created things.

And then I sensed something extraordinary: God appreciates his creation even more than I.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Bible Insights

Questions in Genesis: Number Six

Genesis

Asking respectful questions about the Bible is not a sign of rebellion or indication of disbelief, but can be a means of more fully pursuing the God who is revealed in the Bible. It is from this perspective that I’ve been pondering the creation account and asking some questions.

My final query is:

Question 6: People were not made until midway through the sixth day, so there were no eyewitnesses to most of God’s creative efforts. How then could details that no one saw have been known, passed down from one generation to the next, and then recorded in the Bible?

The solution is that God would have had to tell his creation of how they came to be. Just as a parent leaves out details when a young child asks “Where do babies come from?” so, too, God must have left out details when he explained our origins to us. Still, I want to know more.

However, Moses puts my inquiring mind into perspective, confirming that God has kept some things from us:

“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever.”

God is, in many ways, a mystery—and that is one of the things that draws me to him.

[Read through the Bible with us this year. Today’s reading is Deuteronomy 28-30, and today’s post is on Deuteronomy 29:29.]

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Bible Insights

Questions in Genesis: Numbers Three through Five

Genesis

Continuing with my questions about the Genesis account of creation—but never doubting that we and the world we live in were created by God—focus on the person of Cain—who killed his brother Abel—asking questions 3, 4, and 5.

Question 3: At this point in the story, only three (living) humans have been identified: Adam, Eve, and Cain (Abel is dead). So, who did Cain marry? The conventional answer is his sister. Yuck! In addition, it would have been a genetic disaster. A more reasonable answer is that God had created other people as well, and from them, Cain picked his bride.

Question 4: If there were only Adam, Eve, and their offspring, why would Cain need to build a city? Surely, one couple and their offspring would not warrant Cain constructing a city. The reasonable explanation is that as Cain wandered the earth, he encountered other people to live in it.

Question 5: Cain was afraid that the people he encountered in his wanderings would kill him. God’s solution was to put a mark on him to protect him. Why did Cain need this mark for protection? Certainly, his family would know him. Only if there were numerous other people, would this be an issue.

Again, I ask these questions, not to poke holes in the Bible’s creation account, but to acknowledge that we are lacking details. In my next post, I will pose my final question and offer my conclusion.

[Read through the Bible with us this year. Today’s reading is Genesis 3-5, and today’s post is on Genesis 4:13-17.]

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Bible Insights

Questions in Genesis: Numbers One and Two

Genesis

By faith, I believe that God created us and the universe in which we live. But that resolute statement does not preclude questions about the biblical account of our origin. Here are two of them:

Question 1: On the fourth day of creation God made the sun to separate day from night and to mark the passage of time. If it wasn’t until day four until we knew what a day was, how then could the first three days have been measured and counted?

Consider that if someone was in pitch-black, solitary confinement for a period of time and then later given a watch, he would still not know how much time had already passed.

Question 2: What about Eve? In Genesis 1, it says that on the sixth day God created man and woman—at the same time. In Genesis 2, the timeline is different. The world is made. Adam is created and placed in the garden of Eden to care for it and all the animals.

Then God realizes that his creation is incomplete. Adam is alone. So then God makes Eve. This occurs after he made everything else and not at the same time he created Adam. Which is it?

More Genesis questions will be asked in the next post about Cain.

[Genesis 1:14-19, Genesis 1:27-31, Genesis 2:4-22]

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Bible Insights

Questions In Genesis

genesis

In my prior posts, In the Beginning, Creation or Evolution, and the Time-Space Continuum I pondered about the reality behind our origins.

The Bible’s book of Genesis provides us with an explanation of how things began. This is an account that would have been comprehensible to ancient man, one that would have sufficiently answered the timeless question of “Where did we come from?” in a way that a primitive people would have understood.

But the debate for a modern man is if the Genesis saga is mere mythology, scientifically sound, or theological truth. I hold firmly to this third view and am simultaneously open to the second, while firmly rejecting the first.

As I read the creation account in Genesis, many questions come to mind. These are not faith-confronting issues, but rather ponderings that lead me to conclude that there is more to the story than what the Bible provides.

I will share my creation queries in future posts, not to poke holes in the creation narrative, but to stand in awe of a creator who has all the answers, but didn’t feel it germane to share the details.

So, despite unanswered questions, I am unfazed. Isn’t that what faith is?

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Bible Insights

Creation or Evolution?

Creation or Evolution (3)

If we were created, as the Bible says, how did it really happen?

I have heard different views on the subject:

  • Creation occurred in seven literal 24 hour days.
  • Creation occurred in seven increments of time, paralleling the evolutionary time-line.
  • Creation occurred when God made all of the requisite ingredients, setting the stage for evolution to transpire. He then sat back and joyfully watched things happen.

One of these is probably true—or perhaps there is a completely different understanding. It is easy to fixate on the details and lose site of the critical unifying element: that God was instrumental in creation.

The rest doesn’t matter—not really.

[See my prior posts on this subject: In the Beginning… and The Time-Space Continuum.]

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Bible Insights

The Time-Space Continuum

Time-Space Continuum

My prior post, “In the Beginning…”, may lead some to quip, “Well, where did God come from?”

If there is the assumption that God’s existence is like that of our own, then a creation view has the same limitation as an evolution view: something had to come from nothing.

However, in considering the creation account in the book of Genesis, we see that God made the heavens (space), lights—the sun, moon, and stars (space), and the sky (space). Clearly, God made space.

Physicists tell us that space and time exist on a continuum. That is, space and time are co-existent. Ergo, if God created space, then he also created time.

If God created time and space, then he has to exist outside of the space-time continuum; he is timeless and therefore eternal, with no origin and no beginning.

To accept creation, one must have faith that God always existed, whereas to accept evolution, one must accept that something came from nothing.

For me, the former perspective is less of a stretch.

[Read through the Bible with us this year. Today’s reading is Genesis 1-2, and today’s post is on Genesis 1:1.]

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Reviews of Books & Movies

Video Review: Everything is Spiritual

Everything is Spiritual

Reviewed by Peter DeHaan

A unique educator with the flair of the entertainer, Rob Bell, from Mars Hill Bible Church, gives a powerful and compelling discourse on the spiritual reality of man’s existence in his inspiring and awe-filled video, Everything is Spiritual.

Beginning at the beginning with the Genesis narrative of creation, Bell, quickly segues into a confident and rapid-fire recitation of scientific facts and mind-boggling concepts. He reminds us of the vast complexity, grandeur—and strange behavior—of stars and the universe.

Then equally he adeptly dives into the minuteness, intricacies—and strange behavior—of quarks and matter at the sub-atomic level.

Rather it is interstellar astronomy or quantum physics, the physical reality in which we find ourselves is both amazingly unexplainable and confoundedly complex—and only part of the picture.

Factor in other dimensions and the idea that time need not be linear or unidirectional and the certainty arises that there is more to reality than mere physical existence.

At the intersection of these grand convergences of the huge and minute, of the physical and non-corporeal, stands man. Seemingly, everything is spiritual.

[Read more reviews by Peter DeHaan of other faith-friendly videos and movies.]

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.