Messiah In The Old Testament Episode 8
Biblical Creation Story
Welcome to Messiah In The Old Testament. We have been spending a lot of time in the last few episodes looking at the creation stories from around the world. And as we said in the beginning, there are literally dozens to hundreds of these creation stories and they're just scattered all over everywhere. Just look at North America and South America alone. You’ve got an Inca story and an Aztec story. You’ve got all the various Indian tribes [in the United States]. Up in Canada, you’ve got the Ojibway story and you’ve got the Inuit story. We chose the Cherokee story because the Cherokee story, I think, is the most colorful and the most enjoyable all of all of them.
In the Cherokee story, if you’ll remember, we had Galun’lati which was heaven, a granite arch and then nothing is below. And the earth was created from the from the waters when the water beetle came down etc. Then we moved over from the Cherokee story over to China.
And China as we said there were many, many versions of the same story. The Chinese story starts out with the cosmic egg and inside the cosmic egg there are the opposites fighting against each other, the ying and the yang, and they generated Pan Gu, the giant.
Then we moved over to the Babylonian story where we had Apsu and Tiamat and then Apsu and Tiamat got together mixed their waters and created the next generation of gods. Then we moved over to the Greek story.
And the Greek story, if you remember, started with a bunch of nothingness. And there were five primordial gods in that nothingness. And two of those got together and hatched this giant golden egg.
Then we went down to Egypt and we looked at the giant primordial sea, the expansive sea full of nothingness except for the eight gods which resided in the waters.
And those eight gods got together created the disturbance in the pyramid shape Ben-Ben came up out of the waters. And finally, we ended up back here United States once again where we looked at the modern scientific story.
The modern scientific story starts with the singularity and the Big Bang and then goes through how everything was created from there on from random chance and evolution. The story I’m going to tell today is a story that I think is an enduring story. It is certainly historically the most widely read and understood and believed story of all these creation stories which we have told. And I think it's an important story for me to tell to you today. This story was written in the Tanakh and in the original Hebrew language. I'm going to read you just three verses from the beginning as a means of introduction.
So, this is Genesis chapter 1 verses one, two and three. You’ll have to pardon me if I have a trip up on my Hebrew (reading in Hebrew) or in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was void and chaotic and without form.
And darkness covered the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was brooding or fluttering over the face of the waters. And said God, “light be, and light was.” In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now think about all the other creation stories we discussed.
Let's go to the Cherokee story: In the beginning Galun’lati. Now the Cherokee do believe in a supreme being. They have a God above all the other gods, but they have a pantheon of gods that rule over various parts of life, some animal spirits, some humanoid spirits. But in the beginning, they believe that their supreme spirit was the one that created everything, created Galun’lati before the whole creation of the world.
In the Chinese story: In the beginning cosmic egg, full of ying and yang. In the Babylonian story: in the beginning sweet water and bitter water fighting against each other creating chaos.
In the Greek story: In the beginning expansive nothingness with primordial gods. In the Egyptian story: a giant expanse of water full of primordial gods.
In the modern story: singularity, Big Bang. Now, in the beginning God, a single entity. Now the name actually is a plural name but will go over that in our next session. There is a lot of discussion about the name Elohim. We’ll will get to that a little bit later. The creation story starts out with the creation of basically everything, the heavens, the earth. But there are certain elements which are not set in place.
The earth, as we are told, is tohoo vubohoo. It's full of chaos and it is void. It is empty of any kind of life. We know that darkness is covering over these deep waters that are covering the earth. There's no land, there's just dark water. Sounds pretty familiar so some of our other stories. Now enter Elohim.
Elohim introduces his Spirit into the mix and his Spirit then hovers over the waters. The Hebrew word literally it's the work for fluttering or like a hen brooding over her chicks. So, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God is brooding over the earth and that is what brings this chaotic ocean into order. And then we start the systematic creation. The first act of creation is a spoken word and it's the word, “Be light and light was.” That was the third verse that I read you in the Hebrew. It literally says, “And said Elohim be light and light was.
So, light appears and then the dark oceans are illuminated. And God separates the light and the dark. And he creates light for the day and dark for the night and this was the first day. So now, we have this sphere of oceans and there is light and there is dark.
On the second day Elohim then moves on to separate the waters. He separates the waters that are in the oceans from the waters that are above the oceans. And he sets the sky with the water vapor, the clouds and so we have the vapor above and the oceans below. And he sets what the Hebrew calls a raquia in place. And this is a protective coating around the earth to prepare for the next creation.
On day three Elohim tells all the waters to gather up into one single place. So, the waters gather together and they expose dry land. So now we have ocean, we have dry land. And God then puts vegetation on the land. And it says specifically that when he created the vegetation, and this is true of all of the creation that follows, that the trees, the shrubs, the fruit trees, all the things that he creates he puts the ability for them to replicate and to increase in number on the earth. So, literally the Hebrew says it's seed bearing seed.
So, God covers the earth in the vegetation. Now we know from later verses that it wasn't like instantly covered with trees and all that stuff. He put the trees on there and expected the trees to grow and the grass to grow. And so is a process that wasn't just an instant oop were done, it was it was an ongoing process and this is true of all the other creative acts.
On day four God takes the light that he had already created with his: Be Light. And he takes and he fashions stars in the sky and those stars are arranged so that, you know the zodiac. We have the rotation of constellations so he set seasons in place.
And then he set a greater light which was the sun and the lesser light which was the moon to rule over the day and to rule over the night. And it says specifically that he put into place these days, these seasons, these years, and obviously months. So, time was then put into place.
On the fifth day God pays attention to the oceans and he tells the oceans to be filled with the creeping, small animals as well as the giant animals like the whales the Leviathan and other animals that inhabit the ocean. And he created the winged birds. Now again he didn't completely fill the ocean to capacity or fill the skies to capacity with these animals. He gave them specific instructions. He told the animals that you are to be fruitful and to multiply and to fill the earth. That same instruction, as we'll see in a minute, also applied to the animals and to the man that he created. So now we’ve got the ocean with all the creatures necessary to reproduce and fill the ocean with life.
Then on day six, God pays attention to the earth. And he says livestock, animals that creep along the ground and the wild animals you are to go and populate the earth. So, he creates all these animals and he tells them to be fruitful to multiply and to fill the earth. Now after all this had been done,
God then created man. Now the word for man is adom which literally means red. Adam was created from the earth. So, God takes the earth, fashions the man and he creates the man to bear his image. So, the man was created to look like God, to be like God, to be an exact representation of God.
So, man then is created and the life is blown into him. The Nefesh, the breath of life is blown into the man and the man then becomes a living being. Man is given that same instruction to be fruitful, multiply and to replenish the earth.
On the seventh day God rested and thus ended the seven-day creation cycle. Now we know from the later verses that follow, that the earth was not completely vegetated, that there were rivers flowing and that God planted a garden in the East.
And he placed the man in that garden, the garden of Eden. Now if you take all those individual parts that we just you went through on the days
of creation, you'll see a lot of similarities with the other stories. So, let’s just, for example, look at the creation of man. Think of the other stories.
In the Greek story, Prometheus was tasked with creating man so what did Prometheus do? He made a clay figure and he had his sister Athena put the breath of life into him, so obviously [there are] similarities. Of the concept of all the oceans being taken in the one place and the creation of dry land, in the Egyptian story we’ve got Ben-Ben coming up in the shape of the pyramid creating dry ground so Ra can come up and then illuminate the creation.
The creation of light, be light. Ra climbing up on Ben-Ben is a good example for that. So, each of these examples where things are created, we’ll see in Pan Gu with the metamorphosis of different parts of his body becoming creations.
In the story of Apsu and Tiamat, Tiamat’s body being cleaved in half by Marduk and being turned into various parts. So, they're obviously echoes of one creation story which is being heard in all the stories. My personal belief, and you can choose to believe it or not believe it, that's your choice. I believe that there was one single creation story, which was oral tradition obviously it wasn't written down from the beginning. But if you believe as I do that there was a worldwide flood and that Noah and his family survived the flood in the ark and then they went out and populated the earth, there would be one creation story that was told by Noah to his sons and then his sons to their sons and etc. etc. etc. And this creation story would be spread throughout the earth. Obviously, it would find regional variation and obviously there would be differences. But there is enough similarity that it makes you sit back and say I think that this is a very plausible thing.
The same is true with the flood story and we will go through that when we get to Genesis chapter 6 where we talk about the flood. There are flood stories from all over the earth and I’ve collected those as well. And we will try to do the same thing, looking at different flood stories. So,
this first installment in Messiah In The Old Testament reveals how God got this whole thing started, how God created the heavens and the earth and then day by day by day created more and more and more and more things. So, against this backdrop, we’re going to get into it in our next episode, which is going to look at the specifics of Elohim in the first or initial part of creation and how that reveals Messiah to us.
Now as I said you can choose to believe what you want to believe. You can choose to believe what I believe. You can choose to believe the modern story of the Big Bang and the all the scientific evidence for the membrane theory and the oxygen being produced by the single celled organisms and everything becoming more and more and more complex. You can believe that and I have no issue with you doing that at all. I don't think that the issue here is whether you specifically believe a certain story or not, it's what you do with Messiah. That is what really matters. And that is the purpose of our show. We’re going to portray Messiah in almost all of the Old Testament Scriptures and you’re going to have to make a choice. What am I going to do with Messiah? What you do these revelations that Dr. Smith is telling me about Messiah? That's the important part. And I hope you'll bear with me as I as I go through all these things. And if I make mistakes, forgive me and if you don't agree with what I say, that is fine. I have no issue with that at all. And again, the important thing is what are you going to do with Messiah. So, join us next time as we reveal the very first prophecy in the very first verse of the Bible revealing how Messiah was involved in the creation process.
Thank you for watching our show today. We hope that you enjoyed watching it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Now, after watching this episode you might be saying to yourself, “Who is this Messiah that Dr. Smith is talking about?
Is he talking about the Christian Messiah? Is he talking about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born of the Virgin Mary. And then lived a blameless and holy life on the earth, And then was tortured and
crucified. And after he died he then was resurrected from the dead after three days. Then after people witnessed this, he was then taken up bodily by Elohim into heaven from the Mount of Olives.
Or is Dr. Smith talking about the Muslim prophet Isa. Isa Ibn Maryam, the messenger, who was sent by Allah to bring a message to the people. The Quran says he that lived a holy and blameless life, was born of the virgin Mary. He fulfilled all the Jewish prophecies in exact accordance. But one difference, instead of being crucified, he then was taken up by Allah into heaven before the Romans laid hands on him. And he awaits there now in the fourth heaven where at the end of days at the day of judgment he will be revealed to all.
Or is Dr. Smith talking about the Jewish Messiah? The Messiah who has not yet been revealed, that the entire Jewish world is waiting for his revelation. Now, the beautiful thing is that you can hold to any of these beliefs. And we can all still learn together about Messiah. We can learn about our Christian Messiah. We can learn about our Jewish Messiah. We can learn about our Muslim prophet Isa who will be revealed. It doesn’t matter what you believe. You can even be an atheist or agnostic and still learn from this program about Messiah. Now, I have to admit I am a Christian so I approach things, obviously, from a Christian point of view. And I promise you, as we reveal these prophecies, which I believe have all been fulfilled through Jesus Christ. Or will be fulfilled when he comes back, returning in the clouds in the same way he was taken up. I believe that all of this is true, but I promise you I will do my very best to present these prophecies from a neutral point of view. And try to keep my Christian bias to a minimum. Obviously, it will pop up from time to time but I will try to stay only in the Tanakh and try not to get into the New Testament very often. Now, if you want more information about Messiah, we have resources for you.
We have a website which is findingmessiah.org. Now, on that website you are going to find several resources. You will find links to all the videos, all the episodes that we have created so far. You will find links
to download the transcripts of any of these episodes. And then you will find a section where you can get more information about Messiah through frequently asked questions. And then there is a section for donation. If you want to come alongside our ministry at Finding Messiah.
Now, there’s going to come a time in this series where you are going to be confronted with the question: What are you going to do with Messiah? Who do you believe Messiah is? Which of these Messiahs do you believe Dr. Smith is talking about? And Messiah will become real to you if you look at all the information presented and come to your conclusions. So, join us as we continue our journey through the Old Testament Scriptures looking for all the Messianic Prophecies. And join us next time as we reveal those to you.
