The Unknown Genesis

After writing my previous, as luck would have it, my daily reading took me to Psalm 102 and there, to my surprise, was what was probably the Scriptural source for Paul’s words in Hebrews 1:10-12. Psalm 102 reads:

25 Of old You laid the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the work of Your hands. 26 They will perish, but You will endure; Yes, they will all grow old like a garment; Like a cloak You will change them, And they will be changed. 27 But You are the same, And Your years will have no end.
Psalms 102:25-27 (NKJV)

FYI, I’m currently working my 5th or 6th “Read the Bible in a Year” plan. And for at least ten years I’ve always been on high alert for verses that describe the creation, and creating the creation, and can give me clues to understand science, and God, and show a skeptical people how the Bible and science are (in the terms of Romans 1:18) both testaments to God as the author of creation. Yet I didn’t remember that one! See why we should never stop reading?

So I came across Psalm 102 and was really surprised to read the Hebrews 1 verse I’d just written about. Pleasantly surprised, I might add. Anyway, I want to preempt a couple of questions someone might ask, realizing that Paul might have been quoting a scripture rather than expressing his own unique revelation, and whether that affects my original point. It doesn’t. In fact, it makes my point even more something to be appreciated. Here’s why:

First: whether Paul got his knowledge about the things of the universe being but short-lived and ephemeral by hearing or reading makes no difference. Indeed, Jesus himself describes reading and comprehending a scripture, as well as hearing Him say something and comprehending, as “hearing”. And one can only comprehend/hear anything God says if the Holy Spirit has allowed or aided us in the hearing. Paul, by whichever means, still knew, and trusted in that knowledge enough to teach it as fact, even to an audience that should have been as skeptical as he, since they also believed that God and all his works were permanent, unchanging, eternal. And, none of them – surely – had no idea whatsoever what the “heavens” really are.

Second: My main point, my reason for bringing our attention to that verse, was that this is totally revelatory knowledge that “the heavens” are only temporary and cyclical – that is, that the heavenly bodies, planets and stars and nebulae, and so on, each have a distinct lifetime and fit into a recycling system, a creative process in itself embedded in the far greater timescape of the universe; that stars and nebulae and even galaxies all come to an end, like garments. And in God’s created order of the universe, all are discarded (recycled, actually) and new ones made and put in place to live out their own “lives” – for our viewing, says the Bible. That should not have been known 2000 years ago. Even modern science has only recently, by hard work and great technology, come to know it. But here, with Psalm 102, we’ve gone back at least another 500 years! The Bible didn’t get the scoop on our sciences by 2000 years – it beat them to the knowledge by at least 2500 years! Paul was, at least, repeating a 500 year old revelation.

And my point? That the Bible tells us many things, big things, that only the Author of the Bible could possibly know, and have told to the scribes who recorded them for our times, some two or three thousand years later. And that is a testimony, which no one can refute, that whoever Authored the Scriptures either knew the history of the universe, or created it.

We don’t need to go to Genesis to get some powerful testimony about the Creation, and find more evidence for the translation and interpretation of Genesis which we offer here, and scientific support for the Biblical account of creation. We can go to Hebrews, Chapter 1.

As in John, we are told that the Son, whom we call Jesus, was the actual creator, that He made the Universe: “…and through the Son he created the universe.” Heb 1:2, (NLT)

In my book* I compared this manifestation of the Trinity to the way Microsoft creates software: God the Father is the creative genius, the Intelligence, the Designer and Authority behind the creation, setting forth the nature and shape and rules/laws of operation of our universe, and the Son as the one who did His bidding, who actually executed and carried out the creation. At Microsoft Bill Gates sets out how he wants his product to look and work, tells his engineers what he wants and is fully confident they will execute his words, and create Windows 7 (within the limits of human capacity and foibles, of course).*

As we’ve pointed out so many times before, this declaration that there was a beginning, that the universe has not been here eternally but came into being, and for some reason took on a very intelligent, and orderly, and lawful design, was not something science believed or accepted until this last century. Indeed, the beginning, which scientists call/designate the “Big Bang” was a very contentious “theory” for many years, mostly because it allowed there was a point of creation, and most reasonably a creating power and creative order/plan which atheists had all but denied with their claim the universe was eternal, having no beginning or origins. The Bible, therefore, knew something science had to discover.

Hebrews also tells us that it is by God’s design, the laws of physics and astronomy He has ordained for this universe, and the efficacy of Jesus, that this universe stays, continues to exist, and will continue as long as he is faithful to the father (and so we rest easily, right?): “… he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command.” Heb 1:3 (NLT)

This is something scientists are still uncertain about. Einstein was so convinced that the universe was stable and certain to go on forever that he amended his own mathematics and theory of relativity because his formulas found too many scenarios in which the universe could/would end in either an awfully slow explosion or inevitable implosion (back into the point – “singularity” – of the orginating Big Bang). But soon astronomers discovered the universe is expanding in what appears to be an ever-accelerating expansion (that slow explosion Einstein first foresaw but could not believe). And they are still trying to figure that out. It makes everything ridiculous: a perfectly designed, beautifully designed universe simply wasting itself away into useless nothingness. To cope with such apparant inanity (they might find comfort in understanding God and having faith that Jesus will not let that happen, but…) the scientists are always coming up with new ideas. They are usually pretty wild and hardly “scientific” or reasonable theories, like multiverses or multi-”greater places than space” that can create ever more and ever new universes. But that’s not all that bad. At least the scientists, in the process, only prove to themselves is just how unique, and intelligently designed THIS universe really is. And without God doing just as the Scripture says, how it shouldn’t exist!

But here’s where Hebrews really says something that may seem a rather little point, but really is a huge, prescient observation that scientists have only been discovering and studying in recent times:

“You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth,
And the heavens are the work of Your hands.
11 They will perish, but You remain;
And they will all grow old like a garment;
12 Like a cloak You will fold them up,
And they will be changed. Heb 1:10-12 (NKJV)

Or as the NIV says it, “They will wear out like a garment. You will roll them up like a robe; like a garment they will be changed.“

Here we have a text written two thousand years ago, by a very nonscientist person, who has no idea of what this planet, or the stars and galaxies are, but should, if anything, given his beliefs about God – and like most scientists before Einstein – assume they are fixed and eternal. Yet here he is, still, writing that they are not! Paul writes that the stars and galaxies (the heavens) are just like a garment. They have a limited “lifetime”. They will each come to an end, wear out like a garment will, and then be discarded and replaced with a new garment! “They will be changed“!

Scientists were at first upset to discover that stars and planets, etc., come and go, that they serve their time and then are ended, to be replaced (recycled) into new ones, to adorn God’s heavens with even greater glory! But today one of the biggest tasks of astronomers and physicists is to observe and describe, and hope to figure out those very “life cycles” of the things in the heavens. Until we could study them with our telescopes and satellites, we pretty much thought just the way Paul should have, that they are absolutely fixed, eternal parts of the universe, those twinkling lights that have been there in the skies forever. But Paul had the word, the knowledge of a greater wisdom, and told us otherwise!

* Hey Mom, What About Dinosaurs?“