I think Brother Bob articulated our feelings this morning. He said, my heart's very heavy for Brother Willie. I said, you know, it's similar to a situation with Joan being in the hospital. I didn't know I loved her that much. You get in a situation like this and you start to feel the love you have for somebody. I mean, I can only imagine what the disciples felt watching the Lord be crucified. Only imagine. That stuff is out there beyond my understanding. Anyway, let's get on into our Sunday school lesson this morning. We were looking at the ages of the earth. Last week we started with 2 Peter, the first age of the earth, which mentions that the earth is standing in the water and out of the water and then being overflowed with water, perished. And that is unlike anything that anybody has ever known up until this time. And I don't know if you recognize how closely that fits between Genesis and Peter, where it talks about the earth standing in the water, out of the water, being overflowed with water, perished. And you get back over to Genesis, and that thing immediately is down in the water. And God has to separate the water from the water and create that firmament in the midst. like Peter should have been Genesis 1-1 and moved right on through, because that's how easily those things fit together, and they fit perfect. And he moves on through, the water was already there at that point, he didn't have to create the water, and he created a firmament. What did you create, God? I created a nothing in there. I created this vacuum. And this week we'll start in with the third age of the earth, and that begins over in Genesis 2 verses, four through eight, actually an age of the earth would start whenever God begins to make changes in it. If you want to know when did this happen and when did that happen, it's when the beginning of that change took place. And if you want to know when the end of that first age was, where the earth standing in the water and out of the water was, it was when God did something to it and it sank. I don't know what went wrong back then. We can only kind of guess, but whatever it was was not good. I don't have any doubt about that. And it might fit in with Satan, you know, when the angels fell and the third chose against him and that was real close to the heavens because it talks about the heavens were of old and the earth standing in the water and out of the water. You say, which heavens? Well, it might've been only two. You say, which two? Well, if you've got the earth, and then you've got heaven up here, and you've got something in between it, anything that's in between it is another heaven. He tells us that when he says he created it, and the first heaven is where the birds fly, and the second heaven is where the stars, and the sun, and the moon, and the galaxies are, and the third heaven is where God dwells. But you go back into Genesis 1, and it says, in the beginning, God created the heaven, singular heaven. You say, well, what happened back then? Who knows? I mean, God doesn't give you any periods of time. He doesn't put very much meat on those bones. It's almost like some of these crazy dinosaur skeletons that they find, and especially Cro-Magnon man and stuff like that. You actually look at those things and you find out that about 75 to 80% of them are plaster of Paris filling in pieces that they're just guessing. Well, the feet this big, it must be supporting something this big. Well, that's just a guess. I remember that one story about the jawbone of the pig, you know, and the guys did some stuff with it, buried it, and the guy come out and he'd carve and dates the thing back to 150 million years ago or some crazy thing. And the guy pulls out the rest of the jawbone and says, there it is, that thing was alive two months ago. Now, you can fool some of those things, but when you get right down to it, for us, we're gonna have to either take what God says by faith, or we're gonna be left to our own devices. And if you're left to your own devices, believe me, you're gonna come up with the wrong answer. To understand and really grasp what God says when he says, your ways are not my ways, that is a great enlightening. And you'll argue your opinion at the drop of a hat and you'll even drop the hat to do it, to support what you believe, to reinforce what you believe. That has to do with pride. But when you begin to understand when God said, your ways are not my ways, your thoughts are not my thoughts, for my thoughts are higher than your thoughts, my ways are higher than your ways. When he says those things, you have to begin to realize, wait a minute, if I think this, then that's suspect. So anytime that you find something in the word of God that contradicts it or seems to contradict it, you better start releasing your grip on your opinion. if you want the truth. Now, if you don't want the truth, if you wanna feel good about yourself, you can do that, but that's only temporary. You know how drugs are kind of a temporary fix to feeling good? Well, that's what pride's like, and that's temporary through your lifetime, and then when that's over, big awakening. Anyway, moving along here, you go back into Genesis 2, 4 to 8. These are the generation of the heavens and of the earth, when they were created, in the day that God made the earth and the heavens. And every plant of the field, before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field, before it grew. For the Lord had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed." This heavy dew came up every morning. You've heard the word dew point, and it has to do with the saturation, the moisture content in the air, you know, and the temperature change. So what was happening is every night the air had cooled down. And when it got to a certain point, reaching dew point, that moisture was wrung out of the air and it actually fell down on the top of the ground. So during the day, the warmth of the sun would evaporate it, it would warm it up, and then it would go back down at night. A little similar to what's going on now, except now you got clouds and it goes way up higher. Then there's a whole lot more water and it moves around and it doesn't happen every night. Now if you want to grow something, you know what you're going to do? You're going to put that thing in a greenhouse and you're going to control that water where you get just enough moisture every day. You don't want too much. I don't know if you've ever grown plants indoors and watched them turn yellow because they got too much water. Roots love to be in high humidity area. They like air around them. They like to be able to breathe, but they want as much moisture as that air can hold down in that ground. And when you start flooding them, then they can't absorb the moisture properly. They actually starve to death. Anyway, there's probably no clouds every night you got this dew. Now this thing really contrasts to everything that you've been taught in schools, and especially in the last 20 years. I mean, back when Brother Selden was in school, they were probably still teaching creation. And he said, we didn't even know about those clouds, strato-nimbulus, and nimbulus, and cumulus, you know, and cirrus. And how many of you know that those cirrus clouds up there are ice crystals? Those are the real thin ones. How are you keeping that ice up there, God? Hot air rises, and cold air comes down. And here's this layer up there of these ice crystals, and they stay up there. He makes some really neat stuff. Don't you see that? Don't you see those big old cumulus clouds, you know, coming straight up? I remember one time I was flying around with my flight instructor and we were flying up toward Atmor. We're about halfway up there, you know, and he looks off to the right, you know, and here's this big old thundercloud, you know, and the rain is pouring down. I said, man, that looks neat. He said, yeah, but don't get close to it. I said, is it really bad over there? He said, yeah, it's bad. That old cold air, when that rain comes out of it and that stuff comes crashing down, he said that air comes with it. You ever seen a garden hose? You start spraying a garden hose to wash off your sidewalk, and here's this big old push of air, and the leaves take off before the water ever hits them. That's what's going on here, that stuff. God has just got a way of designing things and making stuff that'll impress you if you just pay attention a little bit. But anyway, you got these scientists teaching you about the Big Bang. The Big Bang, now that's perfect. That's the greatest explanation they can come up with. That thing, it's got so many holes in it, it's worse than a screen door. They say, well, there's a missing link. No, there's 50 million missing links. You realize that if you actually applied what they teach you in a lot of this stuff, that you'd have to come to the conclusion in another million years from now that cars evolved from each other. And it was just a missing link between man and cars. Well, why? Because they're all similar. They all had wheels, they all had engines, they all had these headlights, they all had this basic shape to them, you know, and they were dirty on the bottom. You gotta stop and think. If you actually apply all this stuff, later on in life, you're gonna have to realize that all art Must be one strand of evolution. Why? Because it's all made with some kind of a medium. That's man's creation. Anyway, so they got this big bang. And let's see, we got a big bang that started it all. Show me any bang that you've ever seen that created anything. What about an atomic bomb? Doesn't that create some kind of stuff? Yeah, it does. It creates condensation, it creates these temperature changes. But wait, all that stuff was already there. And it destroyed massive amounts of stuff to start with. And then it creates life. Now that's perfect. I mean, here you've got this superheated explosion that creates life. Example? You want to see any of that applied? Does any of that make any sense? It doesn't to me. I mean, when you stop and think about it, we're going to get life from this super hot explosion. And now all of a sudden there's life somewhere starts up. Well, that was after everything cooled down. That's like saying we're going to sterilize this thing and then we're going to keep it in a sterile environment. And then all of a sudden germs are going to be there. You start with a sterile environment through the explosion, you put it out in the midst of a vacuum, everything out there is sterilized, and then all of a sudden we got life. You know what they do? They move immediately from the Big Bang right on to proving that their theory is right. They start reinforcing their argument. And that's all they've got is an argument. And there's something about the inside of a lost man that hates God. There's none that seeketh after God, there's none that doeth right. And if they have an opportunity, they're going to destroy any thought of God whatsoever, because they don't like to retain Him in their thoughts. That's what's going on. When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became foolish in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened. And God says, okay, buddy, you want to think like that? You just go right ahead. You can believe all you want about that nonsense, and it doesn't have to make any sense to anybody except you, and you can believe it just like it's true, and you'll never see the fallacy of it. Now, if you don't believe what they tell you, you know what they do? They get out their magic wand, and they begin to wave their magic wand around. You say, well, when did life show up? Well, that was millions of years ago. Well, you're telling me that went from sterile to creating living organism in millions of years? Well, that might have taken billions of years. And if you still don't believe it, they'll go on out to trillions of years. They'll go to trillions of trillions of years. Because no doubt, if you give it enough time, anything is possible. And that's what they think in their mind. They think anything is possible. Question, even if life showed up, where'd the food come from to sustain it? Don't you realize you not only have to have life, but you have to have something to sustain it immediately? You can't just have life show up, and then all of a sudden, now there's life. I mean, not only did this Big Bang produce life, it produced a full array of the elements necessary for everything that you know of. This Big Bang created all that. Let alone going back and saying, well, what created the bang? Well, where was the spark from? How much energy did it take to make this bang? Where'd that energy come from? Nothing can come from nothing. That's a fact. And the laws of entropy, which is that everything will achieve its own level. The hot will get cooler, and the cool will get warmer, and the high will get lower, and the lower will fill up. That's the law of entropy. The sun's burning out. They talk about how many billions of tons of hydrogen are being converted into helium every hour up there on the sun. It's burning out. What's gonna happen after it burns out? Well, we'll have another big bang. And they teach this stuff in school to your kids. Elementary school kids, junior high school kids, high school kids. By the time they're done, those kids are repeating what they were taught. I know a missionary over in England. And he's having a seminar with his church, and he's teaching some stuff. And she looks at it, and she just kind of shook her head. And I said, you know, all of us are subject to repeat what we've been taught. And that's all we'll ever be able to do unless God gives us something brand new. You know that? You know what happened to you when you got saved? You became a new creature in Christ Jesus. Old things were passed away. Behold, all things will become new. Something brand new that never existed before and it wasn't through an educational system. Something happened to you that changed you. And all of a sudden you became aware of things you never were aware of before. What was it? It was your creator. What did he do? He made you a new creature in himself. He opened your understanding. Your foolish heart, which was darkened, was lit up and he moved in. He turned on the lights and moved right in there. And you've been different ever since. And as a Christian, you're gonna be just as vulnerable to everything you're taught as you were before because you still have that same flesh, you still have that same pride. I wonder how much pride your soul has. You know how much? Zero. You know how you know that? Because that part's holy. He cleansed it with His righteousness, and there isn't any pride in there. You know what your soul rejoices in? Your soul rejoices in your Creator. You rejoice in His magnificence. You rejoice in the things that He's done. You know what your flesh likes? You like the sense of accomplishment you get from the things that you build and that you make and that you work on and that you develop, and that level of success you feel when you've done something you desire to do and you complete the task. That's your flesh. Your soul doesn't get anything out of that. You know why? Because your soul's eternal. And it's not connected to the temporal, the things that are seen. It's connected somewhere else. I know a guy that writes that song, you know, then sings my soul, my savior God to thee. That was not about just the temporal things he was looking at. That was what his creator had made and he was rejoicing in the God that made that stuff. It wasn't just when I feel the gentle breeze, oh, I like that gentle breeze. It wasn't either. It was then sings my soul, because it went right back to Him, the eternal part of it. Anyway, you need food. You can't live on air. You can't live on light. You can't live on dirt. Life needs an organic source of nutrition or nourishment. You guys don't eat anything that sustains your life that's not organic. You gotta have something else to put inside of you. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I mean, how many of you really know which one came first? Come on now. You know God made the chickens. And then he said, let them reproduce after their own kind. That's like that insanity, you know, if a tree falls in a forest and there's nobody there to hear it. You talk about their foolish hearts darkened. I've seen people actually arguing about that intently. my brother-in-law arguing with me about it intently. I mean, if there's make any noise, well, if you're not there, they hear it. They absolutely lose the ability to think any rational thought processes whatsoever. And worst part is they believe it and they believe it just like a religion. It's incredible. Anyway, look at Timothy, 1 Timothy 6. 1 Timothy 6. Mentioned last week about lawyers and all the politicians are coming from lawyers. Most all of them are. They're not all, but most of them are. But it says, woe to you lawyers, for you've taken away the key of knowledge. You know a system built on lawyers is a pretty shaky system just by knowing that much. You don't have to know much more than that. Look at this over here in 1 Timothy 6, 20 and 21, it says, O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust. Avoid profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science, falsely so called, which some professing have aired concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen. You know what's going on there? He's saying, these guys out here, they're doing everything they can to eliminate God, to eliminate the truth. And he says, you better be real careful when science, listen, is in opposition to your faith. You gotta be real careful there. You say, well, is all science bad? No. I mean, physics, there's all kinds of stuff about science. It really is true and it's right. But when you find it in opposition to what God tells you, You better avoid it. You better run. You better get away. So let's avoid the oppositions and stick with what makes sense. Now what makes sense? Genesis 2, verses seven to 10. And when I say it makes sense, this stuff makes so much sense, it just falls together. You don't have to work at anything. Genesis 2, verses seven to 10. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, and the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted and came into four heads. I jump down to verse 25. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Do you realize how much sense that little tiny explanation by God makes when you look at this stuff rationally and you begin to think beyond just what you were taught? There's everything you need in those few verses to explain the whole thing. Right there. You don't need anything more than that if you have any kind of a rational thought process at all. Why is that? Well, you've got a designer with the resources and then a sequential creation of events to a finished product. And it's all right there. You don't have to start, there was a big bang. Where'd the bang come from? Well, nevermind, but that took trillions of years. You don't have to worry about that stuff. Everything you need is right there. And know what? That makes sense. You got this completed state of creation preceded by a sequential creation, preceded by somebody that thought about it, designed it, and brought all the necessary elements together to make it happen. Doesn't that sound like a few things that you've seen before? Where do you think this building came from? Well, there was this big bang. That's how much sense this stuff makes. And the more you know about what's around you, the more you realize this stuff is designed. It's designed by somebody that is so far above our ability to think and understand and ability to create and make things that we're just left out there in the woods someplace. They can't even figure this stuff out. They think we have done something when we found something new. You didn't do anything. It's because you found it. That's like a kid saying, man, I really did something. I found this Easter egg. You didn't do anything. Somebody put it there. Somebody came up with the Easter egg or whatever the stuff is that they hid, and then you come along and you find it. You haven't done anything. The act of finding something, what is that? We're going to name it after me. This is the nightlinger bug. You know, why? Because I'm somebody now. I found it. Let's see you make one. I get so frustrated hearing this stuff, it literally just antagonizes me. I say, just shut up. I mean, I'd rather listen to a commercial about cleaning fluid. I would. The stuff they say makes no sense to me whatsoever. It makes all the sense in the world to them. Beware of science, falsely so-called, if it's in opposition. What else? It matches what we see around us every day, doesn't it? Don't you see that same kind of chain of events and everything going on around you consistently through your life? You don't have to be told about something that happened trillions of years ago that nobody can prove, nobody can demonstrate, nobody took pictures of, nobody was ever even there. You see this stuff happening around you and it's just, right there it is. Makes all the sense in the world. They were naked, not ashamed. Think about that a minute. You say, where are we going with that? Back to kids. I mean, I got a little grandson named Jonathan, man, every once in a while I look over and he's pulled his diaper off or his pants off and he's running around with nothing on. He don't care if he's inside and outside, he don't care if there's 20,000 people around him. You know why? Because he's not ashamed. That's all that's missing. What's missing in that kid? The knowledge of good and evil, that's what's missing. When do you get that, God? You get that whenever you're taught it. When do you get taught it? You get taught it by me, I teach it. Wait a minute, I thought we taught. You can't teach that. You realize that? You can't teach the knowledge of good and evil. You try it. You take that little kid and start telling him you're naked, you're supposed to be ashamed, you're naked, you're supposed to be ashamed, you're naked. See how far you get. You know when that kid gets it? He gets it when God teaches him. then all of a sudden one day it's, ooh, I'm uncomfortable now. Why are you uncomfortable? It wasn't anything you told him. You told him a million times. It ain't gonna make any difference. God has to do something to make those changes. He says, don't eat that. There's a tree. Don't put that in your mouth. Don't eat that. How many times have I told you, don't eat that? Ew, get that dirt out of your mouth. Don't you see the comparison? Don't you see the similarity in what God tells you and what you actually see in reality? The evidence, the proof on a daily basis all around you. Kids sin, they go run and hide. If they don't hide themselves, they try to hide what they did. Put it behind their back, you know. I love it. You been in a cookie jar? No. Are you lying to me? No. What's that all over your mouth? Nothing. They just keep on lying. You know one of the greatest evidences you ever saw? Who did that? Billy. Susie. My sister did it. My brother did it. And if it's an only child, they resort to that famous, not me, that was the guy, not me, he's the one that did it. Don't you see that? You don't have to teach them to lie. You can't teach them not to be ashamed. You can't teach them, don't put it in your mouth. And all of it's right there, and it's right in front of us. It's just like God said, this stuff is there every day for somebody to see if they're looking. And unless you start looking for it, you're gonna miss out on some of the greatest things that God has given us to understand himself. Who made them naked, people? God did. Who put that nature in them? God did. Why'd you do it, God? I've got a purpose beyond them living or dying. What's your purpose, God, that's greater than living or dying? Me. I made them for myself. Let's close this morning in prayer.