THE HEAVENS DECLARE

THE HEAVENS DECLARE

                “The heavens declare the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words. Their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth and their utterance to the end of the world. In them He has placed a tent for the sun.” Psalms 19: 1-4

                From the greatest expanse of the heavens to the tiniest microbe in the soil, everything in nature silently gives witness to a divine Designer. And just as planets orbit the sun, so do electrons, protons and neutrons orbit the nucleus of an atom. These consistent patterns shout for a Designer.

                The Artist has placed His signature on everything that exists so that mankind in studying the various systems of life may glorify His name. But men, professing to be wise, have become fools. “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened.” Romans 1:21

                “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.             

                Nowhere is the stubborn foolishness of man more evident than in the field of quantum physics. When we stare into the realm of the impossible it is finally within our grasp to understand what the Bible is saying about creation. The Bible tells us that the things that are seen are made out of things that are not seen and that the things that are not seen are eternal, while the things that are seen are temporary. The quantum Physicists could not have described it better and yet they diverted their praise to other gods.

                Gary Zukav said this concerning the patterns of organic energy or patterns of universal order described by the Chinese as ”Wu Li”:

                “The world we “see” may seem solid and predictable, but at bottom we are entitled to wonder whether “matter” even exists at all in any permanent way, or is just a momentary meeting of forces that we call “matter’ as a convenience. Interestingly enough, this echoes some things said centuries ago by the Buddha and other eastern philosophers about the fundamental nature of reality.”

                So in their foolish side stepping around the real Creator God, they gave glory to other gods and thus Quantum Physics became the darling of the New Age Movement and the New Age people, instead of giving glory to God, made gods of themselves claiming that we ourselves create reality.

                So New Agers end up doing what Christians should be doing, living in harmony with nature, choosing healthy lifestyles, and living in the constant awareness of God in all things. But in denying the true God of heaven, they turn rather towards Pantheism in believing that God is in everything and that everything is God. They are so close to the truth and yet so far. God IS in everything, being omnipresent and everything is upheld by the word of His power. But God also reigns above everything and is Himself outside of our space/time. And yet they have retained godhood for themselves, denying all credit to our Creator.

                If I may indulge in a little theoretical physics of my own, I would speculate that before the fall of man, spirit and matter were one. In other words there was a sort of divine pantheism in which the Spirit of God was indivisibly linked with His material universe. As such, all that He had made was “self-correcting” so to speak, thus making that which is “seen” eternal.

                When Adam rebelled and fell, thus joining forces with the prince of darkness rather than the God of creation, it caused a rift… a tearing apart of the Creator from His creation. God had to separate Himself from our rebellion because His infinite self-correcting nature would have immediately destroyed the rebellion and mankind would have been permanently without hope.

                So the self-correcting presence of God stepped aside and entropy began. The universe began to unwind and to die and it is continuing to die according the laws of thermodynamics. This also ties in on a cosmic scale with inalterable axiom of God that the wages of sin is death. Death is separation from God and separation from God leads to entropy on every level of existence.

                But a part of the great hope that we have as believers is that when this 7000 year envelope of time 6000 years of which houses the rebellion, God will create a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Entropy will cease and the universe will be returned to its eternal self-correcting state where the Spirit of God and the matter He creates become one again.

                Now this scenario brings up a question. After all, Satan rebelled and fell before mankind fell, so why did the great rift between God and His physical creation not occur when Satan fell? The answer might surprise you and mind you this is only speculation, but there are Bible texts that suggest just this:

                Let us just say that Satan is a spirit and as such he is not a part of the physical creation. So while His rebellion caused a rift and a war in heaven during which He and his followers were kicked out, this affected the spirit realm but not the physical realm.

                Now let us take this a step further. Mankind is unique in all of creation. He is both spirit and matter. In man both the spiritual realm and the physical realms are linked together and between the two realms lies man’s soul. In his rebellion man’s spirit died thus making him a soul driven, soul controlled being and the soul without the spirit is dead. The soul, in other words, with its mind, will and emotions is borne of the flesh and not the spirit.

                James brings out this point for us saying: “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.” James 2:26. We have paid attention to the first part of that statement but not so much the second part. Man, without the spirit is dead and as such Adam died the instant that he was separated from God.

                But why did this cause a rift in the physical universe? I think that David answers that for us saying:

                “What is man that Thou dost take thought of him? And the son of man that Thou dost care for him? Yet thou hast made him a little lower than God and dost crown him with glory and majesty! Thou dost make him to rule over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put ALL THINGS under his feet.” Psalms 8:4-6

                When God created this physical universe, He also created a unique creature to rule over it. Man, being both spirit and matter, was put in charge of His entire physical creation and mankind by his very nature was equipped to belong in both realms. Man was in fact the unifying factor between spirit and matter. So when Adam fell and his spirit side died, spirit and matter were torn apart and Adam was left vulnerable and a servant of creation rather than master of it. He now had to go out and till the ground to scratch out a living.

                And, of course, the universe fell into entropy as Paul tells us In Romans 8:20-23 saying:

                “For the creation  was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption (entropy) into the freedom of the GLORY OF THE CHILDREN OF GOD. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons , the redemption of our body.”

                Can you see now why Romans 8:19 says: “For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God?” When Man is restored to his rightful place, then the creation will be restored as well and even though we have the first fruits of the Spirit we have not yet been given that dominion over the works of God’s hands. And we are not yet mature enough to be given such an important role. As long as we are selfish and self-centered and greedy and flesh- ruled, we will not qualify for our intended role in God’s universe.

                This is why Romans 8 is so pivotal. We MUST learn to live by the spirit rather than by the flesh, for it is in living by the spirit that we will once again in time be given dominion over the works of God’s hands.

                This also adds another dimension of understanding as to why God entered into the human race and within Himself restored the dominion of man over the works of His hands. In becoming a man, He became the first fruits. In Christ the dominion is restored and we are in training to rule and reign with Him over the works of God’s hands once again. For this cause HE is bringing many sons to glory.

                In this then we can see that Dominionist theology is premature. Man wants to take back the dominion without first becoming like Christ… and we can see historically what a mess religion has made whenever we try to enforce our dominion over the world. We become just as corrupt as the kingdoms we are called out of. We have left out the part of the equation in which we must become like Christ before we can reign with Him.

                This in turn sheds new light on the fivefold ministry of the church in “building   up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ…. speaking the truth in love we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ.” Ephesians 4:12b-13, 15.

                We are in training to rule and to reign with Christ over the works of His hands. This is why false grace is so devastating. We sell ourselves short of the training and as such we may “get saved” but we will never qualify to rule and reign with Christ. The rewards that we receive in heaven are related to crowns and crowns indicate royalty and leadership in the coming kingdom. We are destined to be a kingdom of kings and priests and as such we  still have much to learn.

                Satan is terminally jealous of us, for we have been created by God and designed to rule over the works of God’s hands and not Lucifer. This is why he is always seeking to tear us away from our destiny and to rule in the place of Christ. He wants what he can never have and it drives his greedy mind crazy.

                In quantum physics we gain a glimpse into the way things operate and how it is that the things which are invisible are eternal and why matter is temporary. Everything is held together by the word of God’s power and when this training time is over, then the elements will melt with a fervent heat and God will create the universe anew in which there will be no entropy, no rebellion, no sickness, sorrow or death.

                Scientists, by denying God His rightful place in all of this, sell themselves short of the majesty of the purposes of God and our destiny as the human race… redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. Think on these things.