A Warning from Experience
Let this be a warning. It is too easy to get out of the habit of Bible study. I have been ‘less than 100%’ for over a week now. Nothing contagious, per the doctor, but I’ve had trouble breathing and have missed as many days at work as I’ve been over the month of January.
Just before Christmas, I decided I was going to stop trying to ‘catch up’ with my daily devotionals and start fresh January 1. I regret to say that I have NOT kept up with them like I had planned. I also had planned to start a ‘chronological read through’ of the Bible. This was something I actually wanted to do in 2024, but let the first few weeks get by me. For 2025, I was going to do it!
Well, it hasn’t happened. Last night I was talking with a sister in Christ about this very thing and she turned me on to one published by Bellevue Baptist in Memphis. She got a late start too, but that’s the one she’s been following. I have made the commitment to myself to follow through this year. I’m not going to get discouraged if I miss a day or three, as I don’t want that to derail everything.
So why am I sharing this? Why am I admitting that I have failed myself, and you, and God? Because I want you to understand just how easy it can be to fall off of the wagon. I have recently made the comment that it is a DAILY recommitment, and I have failed to do this myself.
Now for the record, I’ve still been attending church, even when my body didn’t feel like it, and I’ve been keeping up with my Sunday School lessons, but not to the extent that I usually do; nothing extra, which means in my life, I’ve been failing. If you happen to be right there with me, then join me in recommitting RIGHT NOW! Join me as we dig deeper!
If you have NOT fallen to the side like I have, Praise the Lord!!! Keep it up! I commend you and am thankful for your journey! Please pray for me and others I share this boat with.
The Right Plan for You
Here’s the Bellevue page - https://www.bellevue.org/bible/ They have a hard copy available for purchase. As a lot of you know, I use E-Sword for my studies and have tried to find a ‘version’ or copy on it. No such luck. They do list a YouVersion though, if that would help some of you.
At any rate, there are several ‘plans’ available on the web. My dear Sister in Christ Darla was sharing how Bellevue has a podcast and other resources to help with study. She spoke highly of it, so I’m going to keep those resources in mind! I did finally find an E-Sword ‘Bible Reading Plan’ that gives me what I need, sans the study notes.
Please let me know if you choose to follow theirs and what your experience is! Meanwhile I’ll begin the E-Sword version.
Before “The Beginning”
Obviously, we begin with Genesis 1:1. This is the ‘beginning’ - the start of EVERYTHING, right? Not exactly… It is the story or account of the beginning of what we can experience. Not to be pedantic at all, but God Himself has no beginning. God is outside space and time. He is the Creator Being; He was here ‘before’ the universe. Of course time wasn’t created until the universe began, so ‘before’ is an odd term to use.
In our mortal, finite minds, we can only comprehend what we can imagine. We can imagine yesterday and we can even muse on tomorrow. But how can we fathom a time ‘before time began?’ We can’t! I can imagine what it was like on earth in a time before I was alive, but I have no personal point of reference for this.
Boy this is hard to explain. The act of explaining it means you are putting it into a definition, and it’s impossible to define. What was here before Genesis 1:1? There was no here. There was no there. There was God. Where did God come from? That question assumes there was a place to come from, but ‘places’ didn’t exist before the beginning. At least what we refer to as places.
Faith and Science: A Conflict?
I have huge respect for Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis. He has opened my eyes to see things in a Biblical context in a way I never had before. Schools teach that the earth is millions or even billions of years old, yet that doesn’t coincide with Genesis. Even if you take it as allegory, which was the first way I was given to understand it as a child, it still doesn’t fit with what scientists say are geological ages.
There are people that are so ‘stuck on science’ that they ignore miracles. They also ignore contrary science when it is starting them in the face. Take for example the almost universally accepted method of measuring the decay of certain isotopes to ‘date’ something. Many scientists accept the idea that the earth is millions or billions of years old based on certain dating methods. This is contrary to the fact that the same dating methods routinely show the ‘age’ of trees buried by volcanic eruptions to be millions of years old as well.
When I was younger, I remember when Mount St. Helens erupted. I had a brother in law at the time that even brought some of the ash back to Tennessee. Less than twenty years later, trees were uncovered and ‘dated.’ I remember when this happened and the tremendous pressure from the eruption caused a change in the buried items. Things were tested and dated and ‘proven’ to be thousands and even millions of years old.
Now, am I saying for a fact that the world is NOT millions of years old? No. I wasn’t around all that time. That’s the whole point. Observational science is where you can either observe something taking place, or you can observe it being duplicated in the lab. Fossils are another example. We are taught that fossils formed over millions of years, but in the lab we find that fossils are formed when conditions change rapidly, not slowly.
In other words we can recreate fossils in the lab by applying extraordinary circumstances, such as what would have happened during the flood of the Bible. Things buried in a short amount of time under a tremendous amount of water will have the scientific effect of creating fossilized remains that APPEAR to be millions of years old.
The First Verse: A Foundation for Faith
I’ll hold off on other flood talk for when we get to that. For now let’s just say that the first chapter tells the WHY and the WHO more than the HOW. We are not told if God used a ‘big bang’ event or not, and it doesn’t really matter. The fact is that God spoke it into being. How did He speak it? And was it really ‘spoken?’ How could sound travel when there is no space to travel through?
Again, these are all words we use to describe something in ways that we can understand. Did God simply ‘think’ and it happened? Did God create a heavenly council first and do things through them? There are many thoughts around these things and we are not told with complete clarity what the answers are. Keep in mind that we are not given the answers to everything we WANT to know, but God has given us what we NEED to know.
So what do we NEED to know from Genesis 1? That God is in control. That He created everything we know, see, feel, touch and think about. He formed the earth, then made it where it would sustain life. He made light, the sun, the moon. He made the plants and the animals. Think about that for a moment. Before mankind was created God set up plants and animals. The oxygen cycle was in place before Adam breathed his first. There was no evolving - it was just put in place.
A Challenge and a Truth
And one last thing. If the first verse of the Bible is true, and it is, then every other verse is at least possible. If God is the Creator of everything, then He has the power to do anything He wants. Just as God set everything in place with intention, we, too, must be intentional in studying His Word. Let’s continue this journey together! I challenge you to read Genesis 1:1 again, and maybe read some commentaries on it as well. Let it be the foundation for YOUR journey as well!
Blessings and Grace to you!
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