Did God Make the Earth in 7 Days? What Happens After Death?

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pastor episode.

Yes, and so today we are looking at two questions,

and the first one is can I just go ahead

and just read it?

Go ahead?

Okay, this is written.

By Mitchell t Hey Mitchell.

And here's what he says, if God took seven literal

days to make all of creation. I think it's written.

I think it's written wrong, because if I were, he.

Wrote it the way he wanted to read it. But no,

maybe it's a copy copy piste.

Yeah, here's the way. Here's the way it reads. If

God took seven literal days to make all of creation,

or the seven days is being used to describe figuratively

how God created the heavens and the earth period.

Oh, it's probably start. There's a there's a thing that

wasn't included. Yes, correct, My question is right.

And so then so then it says it goes on.

I lean more towards the seven figurative days because of

things like carbon dating and looking at science in a

cool way. God gave us to discover how he did

all of these amazing things.

So that's a good question. I think a lot of

people ask questions like that. Yeah, So basically he's saying,

my question is is it is was creation in a

literal seven days, twenty four hours or was it figurative?

Like he's talking about eons of time.

I've heard this too before because even g wears what

movie was it where it was one of the great

founders of the faith, was like a defense attorney? Was

it Amistad? The movie Amistad? Where it was like Thomas Jefferson.

I don't know who it was found founders of the nation.

Yeah, I don't know what it was, but basically it

was one of the great founders of our faith, of

our nation, of our nation. I'm sorry I said faith.

Goodness gracious, that's so funny. You're like, you're like, I

know what you're trying to say, and that's not what

you're saying. Yeah, the founders of our nation, fathers, founding fathers,

but he was answering it. And anyway, it was a

very supposed sort of you know, a movie wasn't real obviously,

but they were. They were. They were piecing us together.

And one of the things that they were trying to

stump them on was to break apart in the Bible.

And he says, he goes, well, how do you know

that it was seven days? And then they basically took

the next like thirty minutes to try to say that

what if the day wasn't an actual literal day. And

it was interesting because he says, that would mean that

nothing could be trusted in the Bible. They tried to

use the argument on the first couple chaps, you know,

first couple of verses and saying like that means that

nothing in the Bible was reliable and it all hinged

on creation.

Was was that a dramatization of the Scopes monkey trial?

It was a really it was a really famous It

was not it was a it was because that was

a famous trial back here.

It was freeing slaves. It was about freeing slaves. It

was about God. What the Bible says about God's value

of the person.

Ok.

And they were trying to break apart in the Bible.

That's okay.

Yeah, So anyway, all that to say this, I've seen

this argument played out in many times til many times, right,

And of course I went to a movie. But what

were you talking about? Monkey trials? What are you talking about?

That was a thing that happened back in the I

think it was the end of the nineteenth century or

maybe early twenties. It is, early twentieth century, and it

was an argument about faith in society and particularly with

regard to evolution. And so there was this big argument

and one of the and it was between two of

the great lawyers of the day, a world famous atheists

and then a world famous Christian, and so it was

a very very interesting thing, and they debated in court

over the veracity of the Bible and creation and all

those kind of things. So that's what I thought maybe

you were talking about, because that sounds very familiar. That's

been just been traumatized a couple of times.

So okay, okay, Well, I mean so literally, the Bible

says in Genesis that he called you know, the sun

and the moon, he created those day and night, and

he said it was night and then day, and he

called it a day, right, do you have that script

in front of you?

Well, in Genesis chapter one, I know, but.

I'm just saying, can you actually read from the Bible?

Let me pull it up.

I thought you had it with you, so I didn't, Okay,

but he said, but he city called that being the day.

So in other words, what I'm trying to say is

he literally defines a day, right, right, So he creates

the greater light which is the sun, and the lesser light,

which is the moon.

So you have, like in the New International version, it

just says, and there was evening and there was morning

the first day, oh right, and then the next one

and there was evening, there was morning in the second day,

and then there was evening and morning, and it was

a third day. So that's how God describes each of

the days of creation is just evening and then morning.

And that's a day, not.

A millennia of evenings and a millennia of mornings. Right, yeah,

So we believe.

It was literal single yeah, singular Yeah, I lean that way.

But let's let's be you know, honest. There are theologians

that debate this topic often, so let's give a couple

of different perspectives. One would be seven literal twenty four

hour days as we experience them now evening morning, sunset, sunrise, daytime, nighttime,

twenty four hours. One spinning of the planet around right

right facing the sun, not facing the sun, facing the

sun again, twenty four hours. So that's one. That's the

literal reading on the page, that's the only way you'd

really read it literally on the page is evening and

morning is one.

Day, because the versus before he created the earth.

That's right. So then there's another one, another view that

these days are figurative and that they represent seasons of

time or eons of time where God, first of all,

there was nothing and then there was light, and light

was spreading throughout the universe over eons of time, and

then you know, over another billion years or whatever, then

God creates the heavens and the earth, and so this's

the stars and the planet, and then the planet cools,

and then finally there needs to be and an atmosphere,

and so then that would be the next day, and

that's you know, thousands or millions of years, billions of years, whatever,

and so each of these days would represent a phase

of creation over billions of years, and that idea was

not an idea until after Darwin's theory of evolution. People

weren't trying to figure out how to squeeze you know,

seven days or six days into now billions of years.

They weren't doing that until the theory of evolution came out,

and then Christians began trying to adapt the literal seven

day thing to billions of years over eons of time.

And then there's there's another gap or another idea called

the gap theory that falls in between those two, also

trying to accommodate evolution. It's called the gap theory, and

that would be that there'd be you know, billions of

years or eons of time between Genesis chapter one, verse

one and Genesis chapter one, verse two, and then that's

how all the things got created. And then and then

God came on this planet and specifically made those things himself.

So there's it. I would fall in the idea of

seven literal days for a couple different reasons. One the

he and I'm not a Hebrew expert, so I'm not

gonna argue this too much, but I do believe that

the word yam just literally means. The simplest translation is

just a twenty four hour day, and that's the word

that's used, and another one would be then well, then

how do you get all this? You know, my son

and I we went into the lou Ray Caverns in Virginia,

which are, according to National Geographic the most decorated caverns

with salagtites and slagmites in the world. And they're stunning,

just stunning. And so we're going through and the guide

is explaining and it takes you know, because it deposits,

you know, minuscule amount of limestone every time I drop

drips of water. And so then because of that, you

can work out time. And it took you know, so

many million year for this cave to come alive and

to have all these things. So on the way out,

my son was asking me, so, how do you feel

about that? Do you really think it took millions of years?

And I said, well, obviously, the science says it only

deposits this much. If the water runs faster, it's not

going to deposit. If it runs slower, it's not going

to deposit. If it goes at this speed, deposits a

little bit of limestone every time. That's how long it

takes He goes, well, how you justify that with seven

six days of creation? And I said, well, God made.

God made plants ready for food. God made birds that

could fly and fish that could swim. God made a

man and a woman and told them to reproduce so

they were old. Right. It didn't say he made a

baby boy and a baby girl and said he made

the man and then he made the woman.

And he didn't make seeds. He made plants right.

He made He made the plants with the seeds in them, right,

which means a pomegranate had all those seeds inside. A

tomato had all those seeds. It was a fully fleshed

out tomato. I said, here's how I think of it,

because my son was having a hard time with it.

He was a teenager. I said, you ever grab the

button on YouTube, scroll it and you and then stop it,

rate exactly where you need it in the show, and

then pick up from that point on. So yeah, I said,

what if God just did that? Because God's outside of time.

The Bible says that a thousand days day is a

thousand years. A thousand years as a day to God

basically is saying God isn't really affected by time. He's

outside of time. He's the one with the YouTube video

in front of him. We're in the YouTube video. He's

the one with YouTube video in front of him, and

he just scrolls it to exactly where it needs to

be for things to be able to get started at

the right point. And so I think he could make

something with age that didn't take that much time, and

because God's not affected by time, and so I don't

have a problem with it being a six day creation.

But what I do know is this, and I've had

conversations with scientists, evolutionary scientists about this, and I said,

here's what I can tell you. Go look at every

four thousand year old document in the world and tell

me any other document that gives this order. There was nothing,

then bang, there was everything. Light first, nothing, then bang,

everything light first. Then from there, as you go through

the list, let me pull it up. The very next

thing is the next thing that needed to be an order,

even according to evolutionists. So he says, first there's light.

Then he says, hey, we're going to need a cooling

planet that's going to need to create water, but we

have to have an atmosphere in order to keep the

water on our planet four thousand years ago. How did

they know that right? And what other document on the

planet had that idea right? Then he says, let the

water under the sky so oceans. Let the water above

be an atmosphere. And then he says, hey, now we're

going to need some plants. So before he puts animals on,

he puts food on. Then he puts fish in the sea,

he puts birds in the sky. He puts sun, moon

and stars for navigation. So now all of a sudden,

we can see the universe. So I'm not saying the

universe wasn't there on the first day or whatever, but

now we can see it through our atmosphere. So it's

thin enough to see through, but thick enough to be

able to keep the air on the planet. Now we've

got living creatures. We've got food for all the creatures

at this point. Then after that he makes people. So

people have sun, moon and stars, they have an atmosphere,

they have a perfect rotation of the planet, perfect distance

from the star. We've got the right heat, we've got

the right oxygen. We've got the right water, we've got

dry land, we've got animals, we've got food. It's in

the perfect order that even an evolutionary evolutionist would say,

we'd need it in this way. He says, fish and birds,

then dry land animals, and then people. It's exactly the

right order. So here's what I do know. God did

it the way you said. Just I think he did

it in six days inte that is six trillion years

or whatever. That's all but the way you say. And

so science is us discovering what God already made. And

I don't think that the issue is how did he

do it? The issue is whether he did it or

whether you've decided to just happen by random Yeah, you

know processes.

Yeah, And so the simple part of the answer to

that question is, you know, he says, well, carbon dating

suggests it takes this many years, but not if God

creates it with age. Yeah.

If it was created with age, then of course it

shows that kind of carbon right now. Yeah, because it

would take that long for the planet the cool. But

if God just fast forward to the point where it

was cool, because he's not bound by time, it's not

a problem. And I don't think that's too fanciful. I

don't think that's too out there. I mean, man, read

some of the crazy articles and popular mechanics and then

come back and tell me that that idea is nuts.

Unlimited universes and time and space and blah blah all

this stuff. Right, So it's a plausible response to a

big question. And then the difficulty is you're talking millions

of years anyways. None of us can fathom two hundred years, right, right,

so to talk about billions of years it is it's

a hypothetical situation. The question is not how did he

do it? The question is do you believe God did it?

That's really the biggest issue.

Okay, we're going to do the next question.

You're ready, which, by the way, read Lee Strobel's book

The Case for Creator Creator. Yeah, I think it's really solid.

Or Norm Geisler's book in Systematic Theology, and he just

has an entire section on God in creation that's phenomenal.

Okay, so here we go on. The next question was

written by Stephen W. K. Stephen and he says, after death,

is the separation of our being simply a division between

body and soul? Or does it involve a more complex

process of where body, soul, and spirit each take on

distinctive roles or destinations.

Yeah, Wow.

Yeah, that's okay, pretty great question.

So frame that just a little bit. What do you

think he's asking here?

Well, I think that he is wondering about, at least

the way that I read it is, he is wondering about,

is it just like our physical body, right, and then

we have a soul? He's like, or is there is

there like a is there a distinct function between the

fact that we are made up of three things? So

Paul clearly names three distinct parts of our being. He

lists body, soul, and spirit, each meant to be made

holy and to be made whole before God. And so

I think he's just wondering more about that.

Yeah, right, this is part of what you know. The

Bible says that we were created in the image of God,

and God is a trinity, the Father's son and the

Holy Spirit, the physical body, the Holy Spirit, you know,

God being the Father.

So God has a way of creating in threes.

Yes, and so we are made in His image, and

we are also a trinity. We are a body, a

soul in our bodies. I mean, that was the easiest

one for us to figure out because we can you know,

feel them, see here, smell, taste, we experience all of

our existence in and through our bodies.

And the Greek word is soma, soa the physical part

of us that interacts with the material world.

Our soul is that part of us that is alive.

God breathed into man the breath of life, and man

became a living soul. The Bible talks about sometimes refers

to animals with the soul, right, So soul, it just

seems to be our life force, which is really interesting.

Did you see that article this last week about there

seems to be a radiation from all living things and

when they die, the radiation goes away the globe. No,

it just was just recent. There's a spectrum and this

is science. It's a scientist that wrote it. I could

probably find it if you give me a second here.

I just read this article. Is amazing that there's a

spectrum where they realize all living things have a radiation

glow and when that living thing ceases to live, the

glow goes away. Right, And so this non Christian scientist

was saying, so is this the soul? Is this the

life force of the human or of the living thing.

It's pretty interesting. So I could probably find it pretty

quickly for you. I should have looked it up before

we got into this. It was unmb I forgot what magazine.

So then your body is easy to figure out. That's

how you're existing, or that's how you're experiencing your existence.

Your soul is that life force that we know goes

away when a body dies. Did you know when our

human dies they weigh less after the death than before

the death. Did you know that?

I certainly did not know that. Yeah.

Yeah, it's almost immediate. Yeah, so it's really weird. That's

your life force is your soul, and then your spirit.

That's the thing I think it's confusing for us. Your

spirit is the thing that makes it possible for you

to engage with God. That's really who you are, right,

that's really who you were made to be. And the

Bible matter that talks about we must worship God in

spirit because God is a spirit. So that's the part

that allows us to connect to our creator. And that's

the part. Remember in the Book of Genesis when God

said to Adam and Eve, if you eat this fruit,

you will surely die, and Satan goes, You're not going

to die, you know he did. He was playing He

was playing semantics with them. Was it true their bodies

didn't die immediately, Their bodies began dying, but didn't die immediately,

but their spirit, their ability to connect on the spiritual realm,

immediately ended. And so then when you read in First

and Second Corinthians, Paul talks about we are dead in

our sins, right, so God sees us as spiritually dead.

And then he says in First Corinthians, but you were

raised with Christ to walk in a brand new life, right.

And so the power of Jesus resurrection then makes it

possible for my spirit to come alive. And that's what

makes it possible for me to have a relationship with

God throughout eternity. Bod he goes to the grave. Some day,

you're going to get a new body. The Bible says,

a body of flesh and bone is what it says.

Doesn't mention blood, which is interesting. But Paul says, you're

going to receive a body of flesh and bone, and

this new body at the resurrection, we will be caught

up to meet him physical resurrection, and then we will

get a new body, and we will be with him

and we will be like him, for we should see

him as he is is what Paul says.

Yeah. So it says our soul is our mind, our will,

our emotions, and it's actually the Greek word psyche, where

we get our word psychology, and it's the seat of

our thoughts, our feelings, our personality what makes us us right.

And then the scriptures that came up here when I

was looking this up Matthew sixteen twenty six. What good

is it if someone were to gain the whole world

and yet forfeit our soul, that is who we are

as a person right Hebrews four to twelve. The Word

of God is alive and act of dividing the soul

and the spirit and the body, which is the joints

and marrow right, and then's on one O three, Bless

the Lord, oh my soul, and all that he lives

within me. Bless his holy name. So it says, in summary,

the soul is your inner life, your thoughts, desires, emotions.

It's what loves, is what hurts, it's what makes choices.

It's eternal and will live beyond your body's death. But

the spirit, that's again, those are the distinctive things, right,

It's the God conscious part of that's in us. She whiz.

How would you pronounce that? It's a numah?

Yeah, numah numah. That's the wind or the or the breath.

Yeah, the wind or the breath of God. Which is interesting,

isn't it? Because God breathes life into atom, right, and

then Adam becomes alive.

And that's literally the Greek word used to describe your spirit.

It's almost every time spirit comes up, it's numa.

And that's also interesting because it says that when they

receive the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, it says Jesus.

Breathed on them, right, Yeah.

So it's the same, it's it's it's got that in common,

which is interesting. So the scriptures that go along with

the spirit is the human spirit is a lamp of

the Lord that sheds light on one's in most being

Proverbs twenty John four. God is spirit, and the worshippers

must worship him in spirit and in truth. And then

Romans eight sixteen. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit

that we are God's children. So your spirit is what

becomes alive when you were born again John three six.

Before salvation, the spirit is dead to God Ephesians two

to one. But through Christ is awakened, empowered, and then

sealed by the Holy Spirit and in Ephesians four thirty. Yeah.

Interesting, So I'm pretty sure I know, Stephen, So this

would be super super useful to you, Steve by Norm

Geisler's Systematic Theology in one volume. Matter of fact, stop

talk to me after church. Someday, I'll just give you one.

But they're like sixteen hundred pages. We give these away

all the time to all of our residents. We give

them away to almost all of our new teaching pastors

and anybody who comes on staff that's coming on as

a pastor. It's one of the things that just kind

of helps put language, clear language, common language among our

staff on our theology. And Norm has an entire section

in there a man and sin and salvation and then

what happens to our spirit in eternity? Right, so those

things so God made us as a trinity, body, soul

and spirit. When we send our spirit immediately died, our

body begins to die. When we die, our soul leaves

our body. And that's when the Book of eccles Era

was it Genesis ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Right,

we go back to the ground, our body goes back

to the ground and we just go back to dirt.

But our soul will live for eternity somewhere if our

spirit is reawakened through Christ and what He did on

the cross, where reawakened to live a new life with Christ,

with the Father Son and Holy Spirit in eternity. That's

what you're envisioning is heaven someday. If your spirit is

not reawakened through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, you have

not received Him as your Holy Spirit, then your soul

spends eternity in hell, eternally, separated from God. Bible describes

torment destruction. So you're going to live forever who you are,

your soul, your personality, who you are, is going to

live forever. The question is is your soul is your

spirit reawakened by God's spirit or not? Do you have

the breath of God in you again or no? And

then in eternity you will be reunited with your body.

Only it'll be perfect. Right, That's what's going to happen.

So that kind of summarizes it all. But if you

want some good reading on it, get that Systematic Theology

and one volume by Norm Geisler and plow through some

of those things pretty great.

Well, hey, that wraps up our time right now, so

hopefully we will see you tomorrow on the Bible Gash