Continue to part 3
Daily Bible Study
The Plan of God
(PART 2)
In our last study we learned that God's plan began even before Genesis 1:1, which was His creation of
the heaven and the earth. It began in the eternity past with our Father's desire to have a happy, loving
family, with whom He could share all of eternity future and all of His creation, which He has made
especially for them! Perhaps we should pause and look ahead to the future where we find written in
Rev. 21 that when the salvation plan of the Plan of God is completed at the end of the Millennium,
He shall come and dwell with His children/us and they/we shall inherit all things.
Rev. 21:2
And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
[3] And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is
with men, and
He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself
shall be with them
, and be their God.
[7] He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my
son
.
We all look forward to that time which, incredible as it may seem, is now drawing nearer and
nearer. But we must now return to the time before the beginning, before Gen. 1:1, when God
brought into being all of His many children, including you and me, who are "sons of God", even
as we are called in the Bible. That's right, you were, and you are, a son (read child at this point
if you like) of the living God, and you and I are literally "older than the hills".
Oh, you never heard of such a thing, you say! Now remember what we said in the opening
study... you can either stick around and allow us to completely and thoroughly document this
from His Word OR you can reject it because you never heard it before and because it sounds a
little strange to you. It is your choice.  
So once all souls, His children, were brought into being, our loving Father then proceeded to
build for His family the most beautiful Home in all of the Universe and He called it Earth.
(Those of you who have been following our study of Ezekiel know that in chapter 16 of that
book God eventually chose a favorite location of His own on earth where He will reside forever.)
Then, when our Father had finished building, i.e. creating the earth, His children were so thrilled
and so excited that they literally shouted for joy! Here's your documentation:
Job 38:1
Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,
[2] Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?
To give you some background here: Job has been listening for 36 chapters to his mainstream
preacher buddies, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite (pronounced "shoe-height", which I
believe qualifies him as the shortest man in the Bible, heh, heh), and Zophar the Naamathite,
give him really bad advice and counsel about God, who is not too happy about it! We find
written a few chapters later in Job 42:7: "And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these
words unto Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite,
My wrath is kindled against thee, and
against thy two friends
: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job
hath.
Unfortunately, preachers often don't speak of God or His Word the things that are right! The
point is, we now have the written Word of God and we are to listen to Him through that Word.
If what man tells you is written therein, then hold fast to that which is good. If what man tells
you, even this man, ever contradicts what is written therein, then pitch it. However, make sure
you do your homework before you accept or reject it. Your own opinion doesn't count as far as
God is concerned!
[3] Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.
When you answer to your Father, your preacher won't be there to answer for you. What will
you say when He asks why you haven't read and studied His Word?
[4] Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast
understanding.
If you don't have understanding, which comes from studying His Word, then don't answer
because your chances of being right are pretty slim. And as we just read, when you give out
unknowledgeable and incorrect information about Him, He becomes angry with you (which is
not a good thing). So let's just wait and let our Father tell us the answer. That is how we acquire
understanding.
[5] Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line
upon it?
[6] Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone
thereof;
Now that's a good question! How in the world did He hang this planet in the midst of space?
What holds it there?
[7] When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
ALL of the sons of God, including you and me and Job, etc., shouted for joy when God created
this beautiful earth. He said so! You just read it! And we loved it, else we wouldn't have shouted
for joy! It must have been stunning to say the least, for we will see that it was quite different
back then than it is now. Nevertheless, we have come to Genesis 1:1 where God created the
heaven and the earth for His children:
Genesis 1:1
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Why did He create the earth?
Isaiah 45:18
For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth
and made it; he hath established it, He created it not in vain,
He formed it to be inhabited
: I am the LORD; and there is none else.
He created the earth to BE INHABITED! By whom? By ALL of His sons, His family that He
created which was you and me and Job and Moses and Sarah and Adam and David and
Deborah and Paul and Judy and Eve and John, etc.
So the earth was very beautiful back then when the Behemoth of Job 40:15, the dinosaur,
roamed the earth. There was a water canopy that enveloped the entire globe which made it a
virtual greenhouse with lush vegetation from the Arctic to the Antarctic. That is why the
Mastodons and Mammoths that have been discovered in the tundra and in Northeast Siberia,
which were instantly frozen at a time we are going to soon read about (the Bible tells us exactly
what caused the extinction of dinosaurs and mammoths) had grass in their bellies and buttercups
in their mouths. You can read about them on the Discovery Channel's website. Here is the link
and an excerpt:
http://www.discovery.com/exp/mammoth/discoveries.html
GREAT MAMMOTH
DISCOVERIES
In Northeast Siberia, a villager showed a Cossack named Yaklovski a tusk he'd hacked
from "one of those great hairy devils up on the under-cliff of the Beresovka River." The
Cossack, in turn, told a local police official, who notified the Imperial Academy of
Sciences. In September 1901, zoologist Otto F. Herz was sent to retrieve the mammoth
carcass before it was devoured by wild animals. Herz and his crew spent nearly a
month meticulously removing the giant's still largely intact body from the ice. Its stomach
was found to contain more than 33 pounds of grass. The mammoth's remains were
stuffed, with about one-third of the animal's body, including its tail, made up of its actual,
preserved skin. The rest of the specimen in Leningrad's Zoological Museum is covered
with restored skin. Herz kept a journal detailing his discovery. Listen to what he wrote.
There is something else in Isa. 45:18 which is extremely important to our understanding of the
Plan of God. Notice that it says "the LORD that created the heaven and the earth", so that we
know we are talking about the same Creator and creation of Gen. 1:1, created it NOT IN
VAIN!
We must now interrupt the story flow and do a short, simple, but scholarly word study because
we MUST understand what this word "vain" means. It is the Hebrew word "tohuw" and here is
its definition from Strong's Concordance*:
tohuw, to'-hoo, Hebrew 8414; from an unused root meaning to lie waste; a desolation (of
surface)
, i.e. desert; figurative a worthless thing; adverbial in vain :- confusion, empty place,
without form, nothing, (thing of) nought, vain, vanity, waste, wilderness.
In other words, Isaiah 45:18 declares that God DID NOT create the earth in the condition of
"tohuw", a desolate wasteland, which is the condition in which we find the earth in Gen. 1:2, and
it reads:
Genesis 1:2
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
The two words translated "without form" in this verse come from a single Hebrew word which
is exactly the same word "tohuw" we read of in Isa. 45:18 that was translated "vain". Here in
Gen. 1:2 it SEEMS to say that God created the heavens and the earth (vs. 1) and it WAS
"tohuw" when He made it, meaning it was a desolate wasteland without form. So which is it?
Isaiah said specifically that He DID NOT make it that way.
It is truly amazing how just one word either mistranslated or translated poorly can have such a
tremendous influence on the world of Christianity, and right from the beginning, the very second
verse in the Bible. We will not allow poor scholarship to obscure the truth of His Word. Here is
the definition of the word "was" in Gen. 1:2:
hayah, haw-yaw', Hebrew 1961; a primitive root [compare Hebrew 1933 (hava')]; to exist, i.e.
be or
become, come to pass (always emphatic, and not a mere copula or auxiliary) :- beacon, ×
altogether, be (-come, accomplished, committed, like), break, cause,
come (to pass), do, faint,
fall, + follow,
happen, × have, last, pertain, quit (one-) self, require, × use.
This is EXACTLY the same word translated BECAME in Genesis 2:7 "And the LORD God
formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man
became a living soul.  
God did not create the earth in a state of utter waste and desolation. It BECAME that way! (If
you have an NIV Bible it will note the word "was" in Gen 1:2 as "or became".) The question is
"How" and "When" and "Why" did the earth become such a desolation?  We will read the
"specific" answers to all three in our next study. Don't miss it, because the fascinating answers to
these questions lay the very foundation for understanding why we are now in flesh bodies that
will someday perish! Wouldn't you like to know? You can!
* A Strong's Concordance is a book containing an index of all the words in the King James Bible
and all the verses in which they are contained, with a numeric link to the dictionaries in the back
of the concordance of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words and their definitions. It is
really quite simple to use and if you don't understand Hebrew or Greek (which most Christians
do not) then you should have one if you are serious about studying God's Word. With this
valuable study tool you can "check out" the information contained in this study. You can obtain
one at most any bookstore or directly from this Chapel at
(
http://www.kingschapel.org/Orderfrm.htm).