So, but thanks for coming tonight. Thank you, Teresa, for filling in like that. That was great. Got a nice voice. Yeah. Unless that was everyone else that was here. I heard you coming through. It was very good. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. No, I couldn't hear you, actually. I was watching you and I couldn't hear you. Yeah, I got one of those voices too, brother. Tonight we're going to take a look at a number of different scriptures together, but we are gonna focus in on one or two areas in particular. In the Bible, the Lord makes a declarative statement. In Revelation 22, 13, and I know you guys have been going through Revelation and finishing up, but the Lord says of himself, he says, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. So what I wanna do tonight is kinda look at some things in the beginning and some things sort of at the end. And in between there's this thing that we call our life, okay? We live in between a beginning and an ending. And first part I want to kind of center on the Lord, and then the second part, I'm gonna talk a little bit about us and how we live and how we do things in this world in which we live. So I don't have a particular outline other than that, sort of like the beginning and the end. So that's the outline. So let's just have a word of prayer as we look into the scriptures tonight. Lord God, thank you for our time together. Thank you for these dear brothers and sisters. Lord, it's such a good thing to be here among brothers and sisters who love you and love your word and love their pastor. And we do continue to pray for Sister Deb that you would raise her up, Lord, and keep her here with us until you come back to bring us home together. I pray that all the time with my wife, Lord, that you would keep us together until you come and bring us home. And it's this coming Wednesday that you have brought us together 42 years ago, and I thank you for my own wife, and I pray for her tonight also, Lord. But thank you for these people, bless them now, bless your word, Lord, intend to it, and teach us through your Holy Spirit. Lord God, we pray and ask in your name, Jesus, amen. Yeah. Yeah, 42 years. Yeah, no kidding. I know, 42. Yeah. Yeah. They beat us by a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, I was over there on their anniversary day. What are you guys doing today? Nothing. Truth be known, we're not really, Debbie and I aren't doing anything either, so might go out for dinner or something, I don't know. So again, I'm gonna kind of wind around a little bit, but it will have a focus on some things in the beginning and kind of things in the end. I've been, recently I've been studying, or actually reading books about science. I've always liked science, never been very good at it, didn't pursue a career in it, but I always like the idea of science, learning. And in particular, books, I like to read now about the beginning of things. Science books about the beginning of things. One book I picked up, you've probably heard of the man, he's dead now, Stephen Hawking. And he wrote a book called A Brief History of Time. It was actually a bestseller. It sold about 10 million copies and he probably rightly assessed that not many people read it and I can see why. I picked up a copy and I was reading, but it got me thinking about stuff. It got me thinking about the beginning and time and the things that people wrestle with and he wrestled with it in his own way and others have wrestled with it. And I read about a scientist and he said, when speaking about the beginning, because this message is about the alpha and omega, the beginning and the ending, he said this about the beginning. He said, there was a day that had no yesterday. That's a scientist speaking. And then another one said, there was a time without time. Now, while they don't recognize it, because they're atheists, while they don't recognize it, they're actually kind of getting to the truth. There was a day that had no yesterday. That was before the end, in the beginning. In the beginning was the first day, and there was something before that, and that something was God. But they don't see it that way, so there is, they were sort of kind of getting at the truth without realizing it. You've probably heard of the poet T.S. Eliot. He was a publisher and famous poet. I think he was born like in 1888 and died 1960-something, so not that long ago, actually. And in a book, it's called The Origin of Time, he said this. This is one of the great minds. Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future. And time future contained time past. If all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable. Does that sound like a word salad to anybody? Okay, this is one of the great minds. By the way, not only does it really not make any sense, but he's not right anyway. He said that all time is unredeemable. Then why did God tell us to redeem the time? Right? This is what happens when you don't have a mind that's looking at the scriptures. And we will be looking at some scriptures together, I promise you. Invariably, when you ask a physicist or an astronomer, those kinds of people, questions like, what is time anyway? How did everything begin? You'll get many different answers, many different pontifications, and what that really means, I think you know, is they don't really know. The honest scientists will tell you, don't really know. The Bible, however, does not shy away from such questions. It provides the only answer that is correct, truthful, and, by the way, scientifically relevant, as we'll see as we go through the Scriptures here tonight. The problem is not with what the Scripture says. The problem is that the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. That is the problem. Now with that, let's turn to some scriptures together. Let's look at Isaiah chapter 57 and we'll look at Isaiah chapter 43. We're just gonna start winding our way into this tonight as we consider the beginning and the end. In Isaiah chapter 57, and we'll look at one verse, number 15. Familiar verses, I hope. Isaiah 57, 15 says, for thus saith the high and lofty one, that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. God says he lives in eternity. He lives outside of this space and time that you and I live in right now. Look over at Isaiah chapter 43. In Isaiah 43, and verse number 10, Isaiah 43 and verse number 10. God says, ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant, whom I have chosen, that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he. Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. So God makes it clear that not only is He the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, but He makes it clear that in the beginning, even before the beginning, there never was a God before Him because there is no other God before Him. He is the one and only true God. In Psalm 90 verse 2, I'll just read it to you. It says, Before the mountains were brought forth, wherever thou hast formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. Before in the beginning, before the beginning of this thing called time, there was God, from everlasting to everlasting, dwelling in eternity. Speaking of Jesus, the prophet Micah declares, whose going forth have been from old, from everlasting. This is the reason why Jesus Christ can offer eternal life. Because He is eternal. So He can offer that as a gift to us. Now, if you would, turn over with me to Romans chapter number one. Romans chapter number one. We're looking now at the beginning. As you're turning there, Psalm 19 verse 1 says this, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork. So I'm trying to show God here through the scriptures and what he says. He says in Psalm 19, he says, the heavens declare God's glory, his majesty, his power, his greatness, which he alone and no one else possesses with him. And it says that the firmament showeth his handiwork. His firmament, you know, is from Genesis beginning, right? Where God created the firmament, he placed in the firmament, he placed inside that thing, he placed the sun, the moon, and the stars to give light and for seasons and all that stuff. And if a person is honest with themselves, they can look up into the heavens and see God's handiwork right before their eyes. They don't have to go any further than that. But let's look at Romans chapter number one, And we're going to stay here in the beginning for a bit before we get to the end. In Romans chapter 1 verse number 20, great chapter 1 of Romans, speaking about mankind from the beginning and how God has revealed Himself to mankind. And he says in verse number 20, for the invisible things of Him, of God, from the creation of the world, that's in the beginning, are clearly seen. being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. God says that he can be clearly seen, no, understood to some degree, by the things that he created, the things right before our eyes. The verse says that God, since God has revealed himself to mankind, really, mankind has no excuse. In the book of Romans, chapter one, you find that out. There is no excuse, there's no escape without Christ. The text talks here about the Godhead. We can see in this creation that God made the Godhead. Now, the Godhead is a word that you know more probably as Trinity, because most of us grew up knowing about, learning about the Trinity. That is that God is one God, but three persons. Three in one. And so, Not surprisingly, your King James Bible has the word Godhead, the three in one. Guess how many times in the scriptures it shows up? Three times. Now, if you had a New International Version, or a Revised Standard Version, or an English Standard Version, you know how many times Godhead shows up? Whoever said that, yes, zero. You get the lollipop. Zero. It doesn't show up at all. And if you had an American Standard Version or a new King James Version, it shows up just two times. But here's God perfecting His Word, even in that little thing. He says the Godhead, and it's three times in your King James Bible. The text says here that by looking at the things that He created, we can understand something about the Godhead, this three in one. There is something about this that we can understand. Now, one of the most rejected Bible verses by Christians is 1 John 5, 7. Let me read it to you. For there are three that bear record in heaven. the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. That's a rejected verse by most Christians because most Christians don't have that in their Bible. And so when you bring it to them, they just reject it. And if they do a little study, they just reject it. It's an amazing thing, but God said, I'm going to reveal myself, this three in one in the Godhead in creation before your very eyes. And of course he did. I mean, one of the things he did is a special creation. He made mankind. And we are a three-part being. We are a special creation made in the image of the Godhead. And the Bible says in Genesis 2-7, And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That's our body. and breathe into his nostrils the breath of life, the spirit of God goes in, and when that happens to that body of clay, man became a living soul. There's the three parts of mankind, special creation. In God's creation is the Godhead revealed. But he said something about it being revealed up there and out there in Romans. So let's look in the beginning, let's look at Genesis chapter number one. Genesis chapter number one, verse one. We're going to spend a little time on and off with this verse tonight. Genesis 1.1. Familiar verse. Here's a prime example of this revelation of the Godhead in creation. Genesis 1.1. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. By the way, if you have, I told somebody this recently who said, Oh, I found this new Bible. I forget what the, name of it was. He said, it's just like a King James Bible, but it doesn't have these and those or something like that. It wasn't even the new King James, it was just something else. I said, really? I said, let me see it. So he showed it to me and I said, look at that. The very first verse is different from the King James Bible that you just said. It's so much alike because his Bible said in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and it's not what it says. He created the heaven and the earth and we won't go into that. I know your pastor has taught you on those things. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Here is the Godhead. What's it showing us? It shows us all the building blocks of reality right here in this verse. And there's just three. And these three are a unit. You cannot have one without the other. They are a three-in-one, the three-in-one that make up one universe. Those three things are right here, watch. Beginning, that's time. Heaven, there's the space needed. Earth, there's the matter. This is all three in one. God's revealing himself in the very creation. Those three building blocks give us everything that we know and see and feel and do. It's our reality is this time, space, and matter. This is where we live. And notice in those three components, and I know you know this, but I'm kind of repeating some things that you probably know, but space just has the three components, right? Length, width, and height. It isn't space if you don't have those three. It's just three in one. That's all there is. And matter is maybe a little different, but not really. But matter has three components, right? Solid, liquid, or gas. All three composing what we know as matter or energy. Matter really is energy that's in motion that just hasn't been set free yet. That's important. Right here. It's got potential energy in it. All things that are held together has energy in it. And these three things here are broken down into, right, atoms. And outside of oxygen, or hydrogen, an atom is a three-in-one. It's a proton, a neutron, and an electron. God is showing you that in the beginning, when He created things, He created it in His image after the God had a three-in-one. And we have time. Now time, we know, consists of past, present, and future. You can't have the past without the present. You can't have the present without the future. And you can't have the future without God. Because in Him we live and move and have our being. That's what the Apostle Paul said in Acts chapter number 17. So let's look at this. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. I want you to see how simply but accurately God gives us an account of our beginning. It's scientifically accurate. That's what you would expect from God. He says these three things, this is all that was needed. Everything you see, He's saying, had a beginning. Except, of course, the source. God is the source. He was the energy. It was His word as He spoke it into existence. So this actually is very scientifically accurate. Somebody had to create something. Right? I mean, what other way is there? And His creation, by the way, as you go through your Bible this year or however long we have of this year, notice creation was a big deal to God. He thought it was a pretty big deal. He talks about it over and over in the scriptures, and he put it right there in the beginning of the book. Chapters 1 and 2 is all about his creation. In Revelation chapter 14, it says in part, in verse 6 and 7, worship him that made heaven and earth and the sea and the fountains of the water. Creation was a big deal to God. If you ever read the book of Job, and we say that Job is this book that talks about human suffering, and it does, But the interesting thing, after all these great discourses that take place in the first 36 chapters of Job, about all these questions of life and suffering and all those things, God comes along and He doesn't start to answer Job's questions about, you know, life and death and all. He says, where were you when I created all this stuff? Creation was a big deal to Him. It's a big deal because Jesus Christ, the Creator, made all that was, and nothing that was made was made without Him. He made it all. Jesus loved His creation. He died for His creation. In particular, I'm talking now about you and I, His special creation. It says in 1 Peter 3.18, For Christ also hath suffered once, once suffered for sins, the just, for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit." So Jesus loved His creation, died for His creation, and Jesus today is holding all of this together. Look at Colossians chapter number 1. Colossians 1, look at a couple verses. So in the beginning, Well, before the beginning, there was God. In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. And then in Colossians 1, verse 16, again, we see creation pops up. For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist." Now that word consist is a scientific term. Consistency is to hold together. Now scientists don't know what holds everything together. They don't know why the atoms don't split apart automatically. They come up with words like, you know, the strong force holds them together. Again, they're getting at something that they don't fully understand what they're talking about, but that sort of is what holds it together. It's the strong force, but what's that strong force? It's the Lord. The Bible says, who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person and upholding all things by the word of His power. He holds everything together by the word of His power. That's what He does. And when you begin to understand this, when you accept this, I'll say it that way, when you receive that truth by faith, now you can begin to understand things about creation. I remember talking to a young atheist once, and he wanted me to prove God to him. And I said, sorry, I can't. It takes faith. I'm not going to hide from my faith. I'm not going to run from my faith. I'm not going to disguise faith. It takes faith. Now, I can show you God in the scriptures, and if you take a step of faith, I told him, God will meet you there, halfway, whatever, all the way, almost, but you got to take that first step. And it's not blind faith. It's just a step of faith. And the Bible says, through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. He put this all together by His Word. He holds it all together by His Word. And as His special creation, you and I were created to bring glory and honor to Him. That's why we were created, according to Revelation chapter number four. Unfortunately, mankind has largely rejected this, right? I mean, how much of the world is living to bring God pleasure? They don't even know who He is. And it's not God's fault. He put all this up in the heavens. He says, look, those things declare my glory. They're my handiwork. They show me. And then he also said that I can reveal myself in time and history, and he did. He gave this whole creation to reveal himself to mankind. It is a big deal to God, this creation. And he gave man a conscience to look up and to wonder, who is this that made this? And then, if that wasn't enough, He brought forth Christ. God into this world, Emmanuel, to bring forth Christ. And then, if that wasn't enough, He gave us His Word that we can read and understand and see the significance of this. But unfortunately, when they knew God, the Bible says in Romans chapter 1, They glorified Him not as God. Neither were thankful to that God. And because of that, they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish hearts were darkened." That's what happens when you reject the truth of the Word of God. You become vain in your mind, your heart grows dark, and deceived. But I want to examine this verse a little bit more. Look at Genesis 1 again. Are we in Genesis 1? I forget. Is that where we're at? Okay, Genesis 1, please. I want you to see in Genesis 1 with this very simple statement how God destroys the foolishness of man in man's theories of God, theories of creation, theories of origins. And God says, look, you're without excuse in this thing. Now let's take a look at this. So the Bible says here, in the beginning, God, God, God. Out goes the atheist. God is going to destroy mankind's imaginations with this one verse. Not only was this scientifically relevant, that we had the matter, that we had the space, and we had time, all the building blocks needed, and the power being the Word of God, which is what you needed, not only was it scientifically accurate, but He picks, God picks on all of man's imaginations. In the beginning, God. Take your pick. Out goes the atheist. Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, a more contemporary one, Richard Dawkins. Anyone ever hear of Richard Dawkins? Wrote the book, The God Delusion, okay? The many college professors, all sorts of scientists like that Stephen Hawking that I mentioned earlier, who say that there is no God. God says, no, in the beginning, God. He destroys that with that simple statement. The atheists have no real explanation for where things came from, including how he got life. Now, they pretend to know, they come up with theories, but they really don't know. And they may say something like I mentioned earlier, well, there was once a day that had no yesterday. Yeah, but that doesn't explain anything without the Word of God. I mean, it's a true statement, but it doesn't explain anything. Or maybe you've probably heard the pansermia thing, that aliens from another planet or another whatever seeded life on Earth. Okay, have you heard that one before? That's a popular one, believe it or not. Great intelligence, right? That doesn't explain anything anyway. I mean, if that were even true, where'd the aliens come from? See, someone had to be the originator of these things. Now look at that verse again. In the beginning, God created. So out goes that evolutionist, according to God's word. Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, okay? Richard Dawkins, he said that God is a delusion because he couldn't wrap his mind around a God who was uncreated. He says somebody must have created him. No, somebody's men and women create idols. They create false gods. So he couldn't wrap his mind around it, so he said it must be a delusion. I mean, that makes no sense at all, but, you know, these evolutionists, God says, no, I created. In the beginning, God created. You know, nothing evolves, right? Nothing can evolve. You've heard of the, what is that first law of thermodynamics, right? Entropy, it's called. It's the law of order to disorder. In any kind of information system, you start off with a certain amount of information in that system, whether it's biological, like me, or whether it's any kind of system, and you start off with more information, but the information winds away, it winds down, and it gets worse and worse and worse. Evolution says just the opposite. And this is the law of thermodynamics. The Bible says, no, everything corrupts. Everything's winding down. Even the universe, the heavens and the earth shall wax old, the Bible says. And it will, and it is, and they do understand that, that the earth, they understand that somehow this thing is winding down. The universe is winding down. That's entropy. God created, nothing can come, I mean, nothing's evolving. I mean, I don't know how else to say it. I had somebody once wanted me to talk to him about, you know, evolution and those types of things. And I said, well, nothing evolves. Nothing's ever evolved. He said, I said, show me something that evolves. Show me something today that's evolving. He said, well, it takes millions of years. Okay, show me something that started a few million years ago. Where is it today? I don't see it. Nothing evolves. There is no missing link. The missing link is missing because there isn't one. It's just that simple. And the fossil records, they prove evolution is a farce. They prove that nothing evolves. If there was going to be evolution, you would see in fossil records changes. Right? Changes. There's things going upwards, supposedly. But that's not what you see in the fossil records. In the fossil records, you see complete life forms. That's all you see. And the, you know, even that the fossils are an interesting thing because there's only one time in history they were ever created. I mean, we have millions, we know there's millions of fossils. They were only created one time. If something died today, if I died somewhere on the road tonight and my carcass laid there long enough, something would begin to eat it and there'd be no more Eddie. Right? So my point is, is that you can't have fossils without something happening quickly to them. And there was only one time in history that that happened. All the fossils that they found only come from one time in history. We know about Noah's flood. Scientifically accurate that that's what took place to create those millions of fossils. They can't exist in any other way. The only form in sedimentary rock created by rapid pressure on something. So here's the formula that the evolutionist comes up with. Nothing plus time plus chance equals everything. Now they don't say it that way, but that's what they're saying. Nothing. Well now, nothing means no thing. That's not possible. I mean, it's not possible to have no thing. Space, this right here is not nothing, this is something. It's not possible to have no thing. And then it says, plus time, and they always say, well, it takes a really long time. Yeah, that's accurate too, isn't it? Long time. And then plus chance. Chance is not energy, it's not power, it does nothing. Chance is nothing. That can't exist. You see, someone had to be eternal. that someone is the God of the Bible. He declares Himself so. So it says here, it says, in the beginning, God. Now notice, it's singular, God. Yes, we know that he's three in one, but it's one God. So what's my point? Well, out goes all those man-made notions of various and many gods that are just lots of God. He says, no, there's only one God. So out goes all those ancient religions that have really just kind of come forward, but the ancient religions of Babylon, Egypt. Today, Hindus, They believe in many gods. God says, no, in the beginning God, one God. Taoism, Chinese folk religions, Japanese Shinto, most traditional African religions are believing in multiple gods. Various other, I'll call them faiths, such as Wiccans, Wicca, you know, witchcraft stuff. They believe in multiple gods and gods of creation, you know, the forest and those types of things. No, God says in the beginning, God. One, singular. So God is destroying all of these man-made things. Look at it here again with me. In the beginning God created the heaven. Now, that's very important. He created the heaven. That tells me that God is transcendent, not immanent. Now, I'm not saying imminent. I'm saying immanent. I-M-M-A-N. Okay? Not imminent. Immanent. It's hard to get it out without it sounding the same. Immanent means that He's part of creation. But the Bible says no. God has transcended. In the beginning God created that thing over there. He's not in that thing. He's over here. He created that thing over there. That's a big thing. You know how many people believe that God is somehow in creation? That He's in the rocks? He's in the flowers? He's in, you know, pretty much just anything. Now you may see God's design in creation, and I hope you do, but He's not in creation. He is separate from that. Okay, so with that, out goes the Unitarianism, Brahmanism, Creation Science, New Age Philosophies, and all the stuff you get from PBS and NPR, and the New Age Meditation, Eastern Meditation. Out goes all that stuff because they believe that you are one with the universe. That kind of stuff. And by the way, this is more serious than you may imagine. I remember years ago, when I was working, My boss, the CEO, called me down into his office, which he often did, you know, I wasn't surprised by that, but I got there and he says, shut the door. Okay, so I shut the door, and he said, you know, I was watching this guy on PBS, and I can't remember if it was Deepak Chopra or Wayne Dyer or Dwyer or something like, yes, yeah, it was one of those guys, and my boss was talking, and he said, you know, he said that God was in the streams, and God was in the oceans, And he said, what do you think about that? Because he knew I was a Christian. And by the way, he got saved before he passed away, so amen. But he said, what do you think about that? And I said, no, that's wrong. God is separate from his creation. And I took him right to this verse. I said, in the beginning, God created that stuff. He's not in it. He's separate from that. He created that. And this is a big thing today. People think that they somehow are part of the universe. And, you know, this New Age concept, it just goes right back to the garden. You shall be as God, someone once said. Right? That's the same. See, you're divine. Divinity's already in you. That's the idea. But today it's even worse. Because not only are you divine, but the earth is divine. Remember when we were, the propaganda called Earth Day when we were little kids? That was propaganda, come on. I mean, plant a tree or whatever. Okay, I'll plant a tree, fine, but that was propaganda. If you don't think it was propaganda, go back and do the research. It was propaganda. There was a whole book, what do you call it, like a textbook written on how to bring forth the Earth Day and everything that was going to go with it. Today's modern day environmental movement. Today we're supposed to worship the Earth as Gaia, right? Mother Earth. Just go look at the United Nations. Ask the people at the UN. They'll tell you we're supposed to worship this Earth. We're supposed to take care of this earth from this this kind of notion that the earth is somehow a living sentient being and divine Somehow we are now we're told that well, we need to protect Mother Earth. God said I'll give you dominion over the earth and We are to take care of the earth, but he didn't say that the earth needs protecting from us. He gave us the earth to exercise dominion over it, but they say, no, man on the earth, mother earth needs to be protected from mankind. Well, that's not scriptural. From this we get something, from this notion of Mother Earth needs to be protected, from this philosophy of that the heaven is God and God is the heaven and the universe is God and God is the universe, from that we get this thing called sustainable development, which you've probably heard that term, sustainable development, big deal. I first read about it 25 years ago, sustainable development. You read the literature, it sounds good, but what it really means is you bad people, hands off Mother Earth. That's what it means. Now, they've dumbed it down for us because sustainable development apparently was too difficult to understand, so they just call it climate change. What do you think that is? What do you think that's all about? Climate change. I know because your pastor teaches you this stuff, but I call it man-made climate change. Or made up, excuse me, man-made up climate change, not man-made, man-made up climate change. You do know that in the oxygen that we breathe and stuff, the concentration of the boogeyman, carbon, what is it, carbon dioxide, that's supposed to be the stuff killing us? I'll give you a hint, it's a life-giving gas, but okay, it's supposed to be killing us. The concentration of that in the atmosphere that we breathe is 0.02%. 200 parts per million, that's nothing. That's not possible to be causing any man-made global warming. The whole thing is a lie. But it comes from this idea that Mother Earth needs to be protected because God isn't separate from the creation. God is that creation. That creation is God. That universe is God. It's eternal somehow, and Mother Earth needs to be protected. Now, I'll give you one more thing on this climate change. This ought to really drive it home. There was a woman by the name of Irena Sendler. She lived between 1910 and 2008. Not that many years ago she passed away. She was born and lived in Warsaw, Poland. During World War II, Irena Sendler rescued 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghettos. The ghettos were under Nazi occupation at the time, and she would smuggle the children out in her utility bag. And then she would put them, hide them in a wagon that had hay. And then further, she had a dog that would sit there, and the dog apparently didn't like Nazis because every time anyone came near, the dog would bark. And so that if any of the children were making noise, it would cover the noise. And she rescued 2,500 children like that. And she was actually then caught by the Nazis and beaten terribly, but she made it through. In 2007, one year before she died, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Okay, probably deserved it. Apparently, what she had done during World War II wasn't good enough that year, however, to beat out Al Gore and his model about man-made climate change. Do you need to know anything more about climate change than that? So it says here, let's go back to our text. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The earth. Here's God creating matter. Now again, that's important. God's destroying the thinkings of mankind because the Greek philosophers who have influenced countless philosophers of our day and scientists of our day taught that matter was somehow eternal. See, even they will begin to realize something had to be the day that they didn't know yesterday. Something had to be eternal. They just refuse in their heart to say it was the God of heaven. It says here, in the beginning God created. God created. God, while separate from His creation, is involved with His creation. In other words, He is a personal God. He can be known. He takes responsibility for His creation. He took great care in providing everything that we need to sustain life. You know, if the sun were just a little further away or a little closer, we would die. We would cease to exist on this earth. He takes great care to make sure that we would have seed time and harvest, hot and cold, summer and winter, according to Genesis chapter 8. There is not going to be any man-made climate change that's going to stop things. In the beginning, here is God creating time itself. I want to talk just a little bit about time. We're not going to be much longer. In the beginning, God now is creating time because God dwelt in eternity. And then God just made this, I don't know what it would be, a little bubble of time, space, and matter. And He created time. Time, according to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English language, 5th edition, says this. Time is a non-spatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future. But that doesn't really tell you what time is, does it? Not only that, it's not even right anyway. It says that time is an irreversible succession coming out of the past, into the present, and into the future. That's not how time moves. History moves that way. We think of World War I came before World War II came before the Iraq War because that is history. That's the way history moves. Time doesn't work that way. Time comes like this. Time comes at you one second at a time. Why? Because God wills it to be so. The One who created time itself gives us this time. He gives us one second at a time. And if you live an average lifespan of 70, 75, 80 years, you're going to have two and a half to three billion seconds of this time granted to you until the Lord says it's enough. Truly, the Bible says, for in Him we live and move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said, for we also are also His offspring. Time comes to us from the future. Now, I want to talk just briefly about the end. Turn to 1 Peter 4. Just a couple more verses, we'll be done. 1 Peter 4. So in the beginning, we had God. He gave us this precious gift of time. And it says in 1 Peter 4, 7, but the end of all things is at hand. Be therefore sober and watch unto prayer. See, one day, unlike what the scientists think, one day a big bang is coming. Not in the creation of the universe, but in the destruction of the universe. That's why I said before, all matter is energy, potentially. Potential energy. One day, see God holds this, by Him and His word of His power, all things are consistent. They hold together. And one day when He speaks that word, all these atoms are gonna fly apart. And we're gonna have atomic explosions like never before. Because even the heavens are unclean in his sight, the Bible says. And he's gonna have to clean up even the heavens. And so we read, let's turn to 2 Peter chapter number three. 2 Peter chapter number three, we read this verse. 2 Peter 3.10, familiar verses to you, I hope, I believe. But the day of the Lord will come. Now, I could stop there with a period and that'd be okay. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise and the elements shall melt with fervent heat. The earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. That's that big bang that's coming. That's the Lord letting go of those atoms. Now, it goes on. And this is now where it gets practical and personal. Verse 11, seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness? That's a key question for each one of us to consider. Each one of us has to live in the in-between, from the beginning to the end, our beginning, our end, that little dash in between the gravestone that says, born, died, that's us. And we get to answer that question. Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons, make it personal, ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness? The end of life on earth This generation of man is coming to an end rapidly. The end is near for this world, the time of this world. Now I understand there's gonna be, you know, we've got a rapture coming, we've got a seven year tribulation, we've got a millennial reign of Christ, then we have eternity. But I'm saying that before the rapture, this phase of mankind's about to come to an end. Probably very soon. So you get to answer that question. Now maybe you haven't done the best that you could for the Lord. Maybe you've allowed something to destroy your fellowship, relationships, your faith, whatever that may be. But the Lord's not done with you yet. He can restore those years. He can redeem that time for you. He can restore the years that the locusts have eaten, those locusts of fear. Locust of unforgiveness, the locust of bitterness, those things that destroy our relationships this way and this way. He doesn't want us to live there. He wants each one of us to consider what manner of a person are you going to be? The Apostle Paul said, Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended. I didn't get it all yet. I don't have it all yet. But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. And so I'd like to say to you, all's well that ends well, but make sure it ends well. Proverbs 19.20 says, So let me bring this to a close. God has a plan for the rest of your days, however many they may be. I don't know, you don't know, none of us know how many days we have. But He wants you involved in the greatest ministry that you can have. the ministry of reconciliations, 2 Corinthians chapter 5. He wants us to be about reconciling souls to his Savior because Jesus Christ is worthy of every single soul that this world has ever produced because he died for all of the world, not just you and I, and he's worthy. So he wants us to be busy. He said, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. So what time is it? Well, it's late, as I said. Society is falling apart all around us. The fabric of our societies, not just here but around the world, but here you can see it, it's just coming apart. We are now the divided states of America. And a kingdom divided against itself will not stand. It can't stand. It is a time when your adversary the devil is roaming about, emboldened by the lax attitude of God's people. Now I'm not talking about anyone here in particular tonight. Talking about all of us, any of us, any of us at any time, we sometimes shrink from the things we ought not to shrink from. It's a time for Christians to awake to righteousness, and as the Bible says, in sin not. It's time to forget those things which are behind, like Paul said, and press toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. It's a time to be bold in your faith, to contend for the faith. It's a time to earnestly pray for the souls of your lost ones, like we did here tonight. It's so refreshing to hear prayers for salvation of loved ones. Do your part in that thing. Be prayerful about it. And do what you can. Time is a very precious gift from God. None of us knows how many days we have, how many seconds we have. I love the verse that says in Psalm 31 15, My times are in thy hand. Use what he's given you wisely for his glory. You'll be glad you did when you stand before him one day. And we all will stand before him one day. Maybe, well, I think everyone here, I hope, has trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. I believe you have. So, I just say with you, I humble myself before the Lord. We need to humble ourselves before the Lord, and we need to do His will to the best of our ability, because He is the Alpha and Omega, and He's giving us a beginning and the end, and we have just a little precious time left to do what we need to do for Him. Let's pray. Lord God, thank You for our time together. Thank You, Lord, for the patience of Your good people here tonight. I thank You for my brothers and sisters, for their attentiveness and being able to be here, Lord, even as we get a little bit late in the hour. Thank You, Lord. Thank You for Your Word. Thank you that you speak to us, you speak truth to us, you speak truth into us, and we want to take that same truth in a loving manner, in a gracious manner, give that same truth out to those we know and love who don't know the Lord Jesus Christ. Or to those we may not know, but hope to know. Or maybe those that we don't know and don't even hope to know, but just want to get the truth to them with a gospel track or whatever. Embolden these, your saints here, Lord God. May you show them each and every day the power of the Word of God in their lives and the Holy Spirit working through them through that Word. Lord, strengthen and embolden each one of us to your glory, to your honor, until you come and get us. Lord God, we praise your holy name, and it's in your name, Lord Jesus. Amen.