during that time. So he was there before these developments to place, which was there during that little process as well. And then he talked into this account that she was there during that time. She tells us that she was present there as the master builder, as the architect. Let's read it. The Lord possessed me. Now there are a lot of individual points of exegesis and translation that are interesting and difficult and I'm not going to try to solve them. I'll just have an NIV. I'm just reading the NIV version and then it will serve our purposes. The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his word. Now see we're trying to maybe discover what this in the beginning mean. Does it mean something as I said back there before these other developments? Or is in the beginning something that is co-extensive with the whole period of creation. The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work before his deeds of old. Now here he's describing the creator and his creative acts. And in the beginning it said to be something that was before the Lord engaged in these works of all these creative acts. And so in the beginning therefore, here it probably said I would say you have an inspired exegesis of Genesis 1 verse 1. And what it is telling us then is that in the beginning is before the rest of these things happen. And the next verse says virtually the same thing. I was appointed from eternity from the beginning, the Ray Sheet same word from the beginning, before the world began. So as I said in that article it's sort of on the interface there between pre-creation and then the creation itself. How can we describe God's existence apart from time and space in the beginning of it. It's all very difficult. That's the kind of language you have to use. But in the beginning is right there at that interface between God's eternity and the space time continuum. That's where it was from eternity from the beginning before the world began. When there were no oceans. Now think of the development of the narrative in Genesis 1 and 1. Where do you read about the oceans being the dominant thing? Because wisdom is telling us she was there before that particular development. Well of course right away from day one on it's water, water everywhere. It's the deep in the darkness. And so she's saying right before things began to be described in Genesis 1 and day one and two and so on. I was there already in the beginning. When there were no oceans I was given birth. When there were no springs of bounding and water. And then she moves on. And as you move along through the 3rd day and you have the land and the mountains and so on. And so that's where we have proceeded. Now we moved along and wisdom is telling us I was there before this. I was there before that and I was there before the other thing. And she's moved through the first three days of Genesis 1 before the world began to be long and wisdom is telling us I was there before this. I was there before that and I was there before the other thing. And she's moved through the first three days of Genesis 1 before the mountains were settled in place before the hills I was given birth. Before he made the earth or its fields or any of the dust of the world. That all seems to be describing quite well. But it's attributed to day three. It doesn't have the creation of the land and so forth. Now the interesting thing happens. Instead of moving along in a straight line from there someplace, she backs up to the situation at the beginning again and moves through it again just as on the framework interpretation. You would move back to the beginning of this page. It's flopping over on me. Now I was there. She goes on to say when he set the heavens in place. She was not only there before all these things happened. That was theme one. I was there before that. I was there in the beginning. But then she goes on to say I was there during the process. I was there when he set the heavens in place when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep. But when did God do that? When did God set the heavens in place and marked out on the horizon on the face of the deep? Well that's day two, very plainly. When God established the rakia, the heavens up there separating the waters above from the waters below. And that would have established the sweep of the earth, the sea below. She was there during that period, day two. When he established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep, that's even more clearly day two is enough. Day two, what happened? When that rakia was set up there the waters that were under the heaven were separated from the waters that were above the heaven. That's day two. And so she's back at that point. She had gone up to what we had the day three with the mountains and so on. Now she's back here again here. Come up to day two and incidentally what are the waters that are above the heavens? Well I think here's your inspired interpretation of that. That's the clouds. And so one shouldn't be trying to speculate about some bodies of water out there and space somewhere and some sensible reformed exities. I have actually tried to do that. I don't think they're so sensible when they do that. It's just described in the clouds that are up there. And then when he gave, now, now, let's go on to verse 29. And here we find ourselves moving. Now I'll help you think again from day two, once again back to day three. When he gave to the sea, it's boundary. So the waters would not overstep his command. And when he marked out the foundations of the earth. Now that plan is when God bounded the waters horizontally by the emergence of the dry land. He said he said boundaries to the sea and the dry land he emerged. And so we are back on day three. When he marked out the foundations of the earth. So this is my point. To try two themes. Wisdom was there before these things happened. And then you go back to the beginning of the process. Wisdom was there during this whole process. And now we come to the punchline as we said, what was she doing there? Why should we follow wisdom? What commended? Not just because she's an old timer and was here when those things were happening, but the role that she played then. And so it goes on to say I was there as the master builder. I hope that's how they translated here this craftsman. All right. Then I was the craftsman at his side. I think that this is a little bit of a point, not just the builder, but the master builder who conceived. He conceived the plan herself, the architectonic concept. And then she conceived it. And as the process went along day by day. There was the announcement of pleasure that the architectonic plan was being followed. That's what it means that each day when God looks and he saw and it was good. That's not a moral statement. That the thing was morally good. Some of the things didn't even have moral nature that were very good. When Genesis 1 says that God saw that it was good, it matches the design. The building process has been true to the architect's plan. Wisdom sees her plan coming into effect and she's delighted. It's good. It's good. It's good. The sixth day, it's all very good. The climactic thing that brings you to the Sabbath. And then I was the master builder there at God's side and I was filled with delight day after day. That's the personified thing. God looking at his work, taking pleasure in it. This is good. Here is wisdom taking delight in the accomplishment. And what was she especially delighted with? What was the greatest achievement of the sixth day? Well, of course, it was the image of God, all of whom type creature there, man that had been created. And so she says rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world but especially delighting in mankind. Isn't it a wonderful poetic retelling of Genesis 1? And in such a way that stylistically, it shows us this thing not just in a chronological scene, according to the inspired. So that there's all of that that is usually a proverb, say, but it also then coming back to where we were. It tells us that in the beginning, before all these other developments took place back there with God in his heaven at the outset. Well, let's try to be up to keep moving we sure do. All right, Genesis 1, 1. In the beginning is the upper register. Heaven is the upper register. More precisely than in Genesis 1, the earth, more precisely what Genesis 1, 1 affirms is that God created not just the spatial dimensions immediately accessible to man down here that we can see and so on, but he created the heavens too. That is, he created the invisible realm of the divine glory and the angelic beings. This interpretation of the heavens, the word heavens in Genesis 1, 1 is referring to the invisible heavens. This interpretation is reflected in the Apostle Paul's exposition of Genesis 1, 1 in terms of Christ in his role, his Christological exposition. Paul declares that the sun, the sun, created all things that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. So here Paul is trying to do justice to the role of the sun as that one who was the logist, apart from whom nothing was created, he was involved in the whole thing back there. And when Paul is trying to rephrase what he finds in Genesis 1, 1, and he attributes to the sun, he emphasizes that along with the invisible things that were created, the sun created the invisible things. In fact, these are the one he emphasizes and the invisible things, the thrones, the dominions, principalities, powers, that's part of what you should find in Genesis 1, 1. And likewise, Nehemiah in chapter 9, if you read Nehemiah's prayer there in Nehemiah 9, 6, Nehemiah reflecting on the Genesis creation account finds a reference there to the invisible heaven of the angels. And the only possible reference is the heavens of Genesis 1, 1, and there are some other, there are some, another line of argument that will take the time for now. So Genesis 1, 1, in the beginning, heaven's both point to the upper register. Let's move on to the second verse. And again, we're looking for upper and lower register things. The spirit of God was hovering over the deep in the darkness. And we're going to do a lot more now with this reference to the spirit, not tonight we want to have time for it, but especially when we're dealing with the subject of man as being made in the image of God. And at other points, when we are talking along this very line we're talking about the way in which heaven gets reproduced here on earth, we are going to try to develop the evidence to show that the phenomenon that's going to get done here in the history of Israel, the pygophony where God appears on earth in the cloud of glory, that hovers above Israel, leads them through the wilderness and so on, that enters into the tabernacle of fields, that enters into the temple, that there's enthroned there, that phenomenon of the glory. The glory, which is the manifestation of God's visible presence here on earth, is the spirit. There's a lot of evidence that equates this particular form of God's self manifestation with the third person of the Trinity. So in the case of the second person of the Trinity, yes, he manifests himself in the angel of the Lord, in the Old Testament, in the incarnation, in the New Testament, but we usually don't think of the Holy Spirit as having such a form of manifestation. But the Bible identifies this glory cloud with the spirit and it's the one that one of its features is that it hovers over creatively, it hovers over very creatively so that the only thing which is conceived of is the Son of God. It hovers over Jesus, that is baptism at the transfiguration, the cloud, and this glory cloud in the future, I will try to develop the evidence that the Bible does identify as the third person of the Trinity present on earth. And so I'll just say that now and I'll probably link the extragetical discussion now. But here we are now with the spirit, we're in Genesis 1 verse 2 now. Here is the spirit. And the Hebrew word there is Merahepath, he is hovering over it. It's a bird imagery, huh? It's avian imagery. Here's the first metaphor for God in the Bible. It's the bird, the one that spreads its wings over and shelters. In fact, in Deuteronomy 32 verses 9 and 10 Moses makes use of this language here in Genesis 1, 2 of the spirit hovering over the creation, the deep and the darkness to bring it into structured form. Moses later on uses that to describe. That's one of the proofs of this, to describe the glory cloud as it hovered over the Israelites when it found them in that chaotic wilderness and then led them along in all of the beautiful imagery that we have about under the shadow of his wings and so on and the Psalms, that that all is related to this. And so that's the picture here. It is the glory of God. This manifestation of God is a glory and in fact, I won't try to develop it now. But I've been developing this thought in such a way that the third person of the Trinity not simply appears in this temporary form from time to time of the Shakyana glory cloud on the earth, but actually that right from the beginning there was a sort of a permanent, if you will, embodiment of the third person of the Trinity in the glory that constitutes heaven itself. Not that's a big subject, but what it was down to again in terms of comparing the second and third persons of the Trinity, that just as the second person of the Trinity at his incarnation in the flesh so that he took on a permanent form which he will have forever. Just so although unrecognized, the third person of the Trinity at the creation of the world took on embodiment is the right word because it's not a body as in the case of Jesus. But what kind of language can we use? The third person of the Trinity takes on a form of manifestation which currently is visible only in heaven, but at last we will be able to perceive it. And that that is a permanent embodiment of the spirit for which I have coined a word to try to go with incarnation. I call it using the word doxol which means glory and doxation. So I think there's in our development of the doctrine of the Trinity, there is this place for the development of this concept that, along with the idea of the incarnation of the sun, there is the manifestation of the third person in a permanent way in the glory that is the very glory that is the heavenly temple itself. So something then that we will be discussing quite a bit, I hope, before we're done. There's the spirit, there's that glory of God which is heaven, heaven and earth, spirit is the equivalent of heaven, and down below the deep in the darkness. But of course down in this realm below, not glory spirits, is going to be replicating his heavenly nature, his heavenly sphere, his heavenly temple. So as we said earlier, down on earth, right away in the Garden of Eden, you have the glory of heaven, you have the heavenly temple replicated. What's the Garden of Eden? Garden of Eden is a place where there's the mountain of God which is crowned by the presence of the glory spirit, by the glory of God. I don't know how you picture Eden, I'm trying to go by the evidence in Ezekiel and elsewhere, but what he thought was in the Garden of Eden, and he speaks about the mountain of God there. So the heavenly reality was reproduced there in the Garden of Eden. That was a little reproduction of heaven on earth, just as later on the land of Canaan, with its temple and so on, is a reproduction of the heavenly reality. And Moses has to go up the mountain to get the design, because the sign is the heavenly reality, and then the tabernacle, and then later on then the temple will reflect that. But all through history, before the fall on, heaven has been reproducing itself in this prototypical way to lead us on throughout all of our history until the last we get up to the real heaven. And then up to that real Sabbath, the rest again with God. These are the big pictures that are already emerging. All right, so one, two. Now, beyond the second verse, beyond the second verse, we had days 2.26. All right, days 1-6. And these two are divided into upper and lower register scenes. And God said, let there be. Now, what do you picture when you hear that? There's God up on his throne, all right? Right from the beginning, of course, he's been up there that they're in heaven. And from that place, he issues sovereign commands. And then down on earth, there is the fulfillment. So fire left there being and fulfillment, that that's what's going on during these particular days. And out of them all, let's just come up to the 6th day. And God says, let us make man. Now, that's one of the other, one of the fires, let there be, let there be. Now, he says, let us make man. And that let us is very eloquent. And that points, once again, very directly to the fact that we are dealing with the upper register. Of course, a question that's been discussed. Why does God say let us? Let us make man. And, of course, a traditional view of the matter is that this is reflecting sort of communication among the persons of the Trinity. Let us do this. And that is a, you know, an established traditional view, but I don't think it's the right one at all. And the view that has been taking over more and more, and no matter what the theological point of view among exegesis is rather than one that recognizes that this is language which reflects a certain aspect of heaven that the Bible emphasizes very strongly. Namely, that as God sits there and thrown, the picture is of a courtroom, a palace, and he sits and thrown in the midst of his whole court of angels. And that they are pictured as a council that he consults with. And that's another thing that when we talk about man being made in the image of God, I'll stop and I'll go through those verses with you that show that wherever you get this language of let us from the mouth of God, the explanation of it is always right there in the reference to angels. There are always a bunch of angels around on the scene when God said let us. And like in Isaiah 6, Isaiah 6 just to take one of them while we're at it, remember the call of Isaiah. And God says now, now whom shall I send and who will go for us. But before you come to that, the whole story has been about God's own, his throne with all of these and heavenly beings all around him, holy, holy, holy. The whole scene is full of the members of God's heavenly retinue of his counsel, so that when he says who will go for us, there's simply no misunderstanding he's referring in and out through the angels as part of the divine counsel, the heavenly scene is where you hear this kind of let us God consulting with his angels. Let's make man now in our image, when we come to it, we'll be saying that man is made in the image of God, man is made in the image of the angels because the angels are also made in the image of God. They are also the sons of God and how often you hear it said that man is the only being that's made in the image of God. Not so, the Bible speaks about the angels. Also, the term Elohim is used in Psalm 82 for God, the God who takes his stand in the midst of the Elohim who are the angels and they enter into judgment with humankind under it who are judges and so on who are also Elohim is the pastor of the Jesus Christ. But the biblical evidence is that it isn't just God and man in this kind of relationship but the angels are called the sons of God and the concepts of image of God and the sons of God, of course, are over live. So that's another big story. But right here then, the let us make man in our image tells us once again that it's God up there in heaven consulting with his angels at this point, not that he needs their advice but in his condescension. Let's get it on it and man is made in this image. So let us do that. There's the archetype. There's the archetype. And the reference that I think especially when he says let us make man in our image is to God as he is manifest in that glory spirit that we have been talking about. So we'll be trying to tie those two things together. But in any case, man then is this made down. So upper register, lower register, upper register, lower register and the relationship between the two is the copy. But in human language and human literature, the copy down here becomes the language that is used to describe what's going on up there when you want to talk about what God is like to use human anthropomorphic language. What is going on down here is used to describe the reality that's going on up there and so it is with the days when it comes to describing the time factor in the creation of the world across these seven days, when it comes to describe the time factor, you use the language of human experience. The ordinance of the Sabbath down here, it's the seventh day with us receiving six days, you use that as a metaphor, as a powerful, as a figure of speech to describe what is beyond all of that existence of God himself. That's pretty much the argument I would make for the taking the days of Genesis then figuratively rather than literally I'm not really done. I think some of the best evidence now has to do with demonstrating that the narrative sequence is not sequential. If you can demonstrate that the sequence of the narrative does not correspond, it's not intended to correspond to the actual chronological sequence. If you can demonstrate that, well of course you have demonstrated also that the thing is figurative, not literal. To show it's non-sequential is once again to show it's figurative and there's a couple of arguments that I want to mention that but I think it's time for a break. Make a little faster time with these last couple of points I want to make. What we try to do is to argue that the days are to be understood figuratively and now trying to demonstrate that the account is also to be understood as not intended to reflect the chronological sequence. These are really just further arguments than that is figurative because of its non-sequential and of course it's figurative in that sense too. What indicates that then that the author has arranged things thematically rather than straight forward chronological feature is the fact that the themes are so conspicuous that as we said I won't go through all again but the kingdoms and the kings three days great. So obviously what is going on and shows such a strong interest in the development of themes which elsewhere his book is accomplished in contradiction of chronological. So that sort of sets up a probability even if you didn't have any other evidence that this strong thematic interest would suggest that something other than straight forward chronology is on his mind. But then there are some other features that nail it down first and this one could take forever and I'll refer you to that article of mine for all of the details. Let me pray now today's one and four. The fact that when you've gone through days one, two and three and you come to four you find yourself back where you were on day one tells you that you haven't proceeded chronologically. And now read the text yourself there's nothing profound about this. All we're saying is here is the God created to introduce the light into the situation so that he gave light on the earth. It separated the light from the darkness and the effect then of setting up the cycle of light and darkness or in day and night. Those were the results that were produced on day one. The presence of light and the structuring of light in such a way as to produce the well known phenomenon of the cycling series of light and darkness day and night. That's the kingdom. That's the kingdom of light that was produced. Now according to his thematic structure, now he's going to deal with the king of that realm in each case. The kings of day five rule over the realms of day two and the kings of day six rule over on day three. Here, day four, God created the luminaries, the sun moon and the stars, made them. He set them in their place and for what purpose to accomplish the things that have already been said to be accomplished over here on day one, namely to give light on the earth and to divide the light from the darkness and set up the cycle of day and night. Exactly the same products are attributed to day four, as I've already been attributed to day one and the only difference is that from the perspective here, here is the result and here is the cause. So that is a matter of fact. If you wanted some sequence, day four is before day one, at least logically, here is the cause that produces that result and so on. Now, this is the point where the so-called literalists, you know, are anything but literal. They're squirming here because this overthrows their whole literal approach to the thing, this non sequential thing. And in my article, I go through all of the wiggles of the squirming to try to avoid the obvious here and I won't stop to do that. But you know, they try to make it out that nothing really happened here that God didn't make the luminaries at this point at all, but they just appeared. They were there all along and now all day forces is that they appeared and so that's the way they would get out of it, but this is not what the text says. All the language which everywhere else is used to describe actual creation, that he made them, he put them there and so on. All of that language is used for the creation of the Sun, Moon and Stars at this particular point. And so we are no longer dealing with the chronological sequence, we are following themes, we have now gotten onto the theme of kings. So that is one decisive argument, that's the end of the figurative view, that's the end of the sequentialist view. The other argument now is the one that I wrote in that article back in, let me see if I can find it. Yeah, here it is. It was back in the 50s. It was May 1958 back in the Westminster Journal, May 1958, and I call it because it had not rained and in a minute you'll see why I used that. And the same argument I sort of refurbished and added at the end of this other article on space and time in the Genesis Cosmogony. And let's see if we could just quickly see what the point of it is. So the question we have to ask is this, during this period of creation however long it actually was, and however long it was, it was a fixed closed time. It is a definite period of time, and it's closed, with the end of the sixth day, that it is closed. God's in His continuing seventh day, but the sixth day blocks of creative acts, that is closed. And within it, all the significant variety of creative stuff that God was going to create, He has created within that block of time. And where there are acts of absolute origination, I mean, definite absolute supernatural creation, of course there were. And X marks the spot, okay. Here is where God zaps the situation, supernaturally, there was nothing God creates, the heavens and the earth. He creates the heavens, the invisible realms, already populated with the angels. That's different than the creation of the earth, where the population of the earth, the visible sphere has to develop as Adam and Eve, multiplying so on. And the heavenly realities, that amazing first act of God, that the big bang was also the epiphany, flash I call it, okay. The invisible part of it was this glory flash that produced the glory of heaven with all of the angels. That was pure ex-Nihilo supernatural creation, okay. Are there any more exes, any more zaps along the line? Certainly, Adam was created. No room in the Bible for the concept of macroevolution, including the creation of the body of man. That's direct supernatural act. No man as to his body is not the development of a biological continuum as if he were produced from some advanced hominid form and a living biological process. Here is a definite act of God, supernaturally creating Adam. Likewise, definite supernatural act creating Eve from the body of Adam. So there's a couple more exes. How many more do you want? How many more do we need? The creation of life, each kind of flower, I don't know. But all I want to say is I'm ready to accept a thousand or a million actual supernatural production on God's part. No problem with that. Now, however, a separate question is this. Once God has created anything, well, now Providence comes into play. It isn't as if you can say there was a period of creation. After the period of creation was over, then Providence begins. Providence is simply describing the relationship of God to that which he has produced, as he relates to it as its governor and its preserver and sustainer, especially when you think he of life forms. And that's what Providence has to do. Now, this is the question that all of us have to think about and ask it as the Bible gives us an answer. During these six days, however long, what was the modus operandi of the divine Providence? Did God act in terms of preserving life in the world according to procedures that we today would analyze and recognize and call something like natural law? Or was his Providence as supernatural creation? Now, and it's one of each of these views that we're talking about has to accommodate. And my contention is that no view, whether the literalist or the day age view, no view that says that the narrative sequence is the historical sequence and accommodate the answers to the question that's given to Genesis 2.5. So, once again, maybe you can turn to your Bible. Genesis 2.5 following simply assumes an answer to this question without arguing, just takes it for granted. And the answer it takes for granted is of course God was not acting providentially in a supernatural way. Of course, God was just following natural procedure when it came to the best illustration right away, example of vegetation or something. When it came to preserving the plants or our life, God didn't resort to supernaturalism to keep these things alive once he'd made them. He didn't make them in fact until he had the kind of an environment in which they could exist in a normal way. Now, that's what I say Genesis 2.5 tells us. Let's look at it. So, it takes us back to a point again now, and by the way, Genesis 2.4 and following are not a second account of creation. Everywhere almost any book you pick up, they'll tell you that you have two accounts of creation. The Bible Genesis 1 is the first one, and then Genesis 2.4 and following is the second one. In fact, in the history of modern higher criticism, these things were seized upon as two creation accounts which came from two different documents and the differences were played up to be contradictions and so on. Actually, this is not a second account of creation. It has the heading over it, which appears ten times in the book of Genesis, and wherever it appears, describes not the origin, the ancestry of the person. The subsequent history of that person here, the thing named is the heaven and the earth. But these are the generations of the heavens and the earth. That heading tells us that what follows is not an account of where the heavens and the earth came from. So, this was a second creation story, and it's an account of here the heavens and the earth. Now, what happened on the heavens and the earth? And the story tells us, especially about those earthings made in the image of God and what they did in the world. So, it's not a second account of creation. Nevertheless, as it starts out here, it does dip back into the creation period just as in the beginning of the next of those sections in Genesis 2.5. Before it goes on to give the whole history of Adam's followers, it dips back into the creation and says Adam was created in the image of God. So, here in 2.5, it dips back into the creation account to some point along the line when there were no shrubs in the field that had yet appeared and no plant of the field had yet sprung up. So, there's our first point then in the first five, no vegetation. Why no vegetation? Simple, unassumed, unargued because the Lord God had not sent rain under the earth. That is 5A, 5A, 5A. Yeah, explanation for no vegetation, no rain. Further explanation for lack of vegetation. Taking account of the fact that even where there's no rain, if there's the human agricultural surround who can dig canals from the river over here and so on, mankind can make up for the lack of rain by doing this and the other thing, but here there was no man either. So, no natural supply of water, no irrigation ditches as a product of human technology. And so, that's the situation. And of course, my whole point is involved in that, but we'll come back to it. Meanwhile, the text goes on then in verse 6. And here's where there's lots of translation problems. Again, I refer you to my article for the details of the linguistics of the thing. This particular version says, but streams came up from the earth and water, the whole surface of the ground. .1 is that this makes, it's looked like a contradiction of the preceding verses. The preceding verses said there was no supply of water that's necessary for the plants to grow. And then verse 6, as this thing is translated as most translations go, it seems to be saying that when there was no supply of water, there was a terrific supply of water. There are all these streams watering the whole face of the other ground. So, that won't do. The first thing you have to do is to translate the verb tense correctly. And this particular Hebrew verb can be translated in what we call the Inceptive way to begin to do something. So, however you're going to translate the non-translated streams, the verb is going to have to be, that was the situation there. There was no water. Then we now are coming to the solution. God's solution to the problem. And then the solution is now he begins to provide the supply of water that had been referred to it because there was no rain. And what is his solution? Well, the word that's translated here streams is the Hebrew word aid. And the best evidence now that we have is that it refers to rain clouds. Then the rain clouds began. The whole cycle of distillation of the water and the rain clouds went up and provided the rain. So, answering to the fact that there hadn't been any rain, now we come to the solution to the problem. Then the rain clouds got produced, and they watered the whole surface of the ground. And then man has been so six refers to five being there. And then it goes on in verse 7. And it picks up the fact that it has said there was no man there. And now it tells us about the creation of...