THE FOURTH CREATIVE EPOCH-DAY
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament [expanse, atmosphere] of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years: and let them be for lights in the expanse [atmosphere] to give light upon the earth; and it was so. God made [or caused to shine—a different verb not meaning created] two great lights; the greater light for the rule of the day [to indicate the time of day] and the lesser light, the night; the stars also.
The achievements of one epoch-day were carried over into the next, and we are justified in supposing that the light of the first day became more and more distinct during the next two, as ring after ring came down from the waters above the firmament to the waters below it, until by the fourth epoch-day the sun and moon and stars could be seen; not so clearly as now on a bright day, until after Noah’s flood—the last of the “rings”; but clearly discernible, nevertheless, through the translucent veil of waters —as now on a misty day or night. Sun, moon and stars had long been shining on the outer veil of the earth, but now the time came to let these lights in the firmament be seen; to let the days—previously marked by a dull, grayish light, such as we see some rainy mornings when the sun, moon and stars are invisible for clouds—become more distinct, so that the orb of day might by its course mark time for man and beast when created, and meantime begin to oxygenize the air, thus to prepare it for breathing animals. Later on in the same 7,000-year day, the moon and stars also appeared—to influence the tides and to be ready to mark time in the night for man’s convenience.
We are not to suppose that the development of plant life ceased during the fourth day, but rather that it progressed —the increased influence of sun and moon serving to bring forward still other varieties of grass and shrubs and trees. Geology shows advances, too, at this period—insects, snails, crabs, etc. Fish-bones and scales are found in coal seams, too; but this does not disturb the order; for the formation of coal-beds evidently continued after the third day—thus running into the Reptilian period. This “day” corresponds most closely with what geology designates the “Trias” period. Evening and morning—Day Four of seven thousand years, or 28,000 years from the starting of this work—closed, witnessing great progress in the earth’s preparation for man.
THE FIFTH CREATIVE EPOCH‑DAy
“And God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let fowl fly above the earth in the open atmosphere of heaven. And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, with which the waters swarm, after their KIND and every winged fowl after its KIND. And it was as God designed.”
How the warm oceans of the earth swarmed with living creatures, from the Jellyfish to the whale, may be judged by the profusion of life in the warm southern seas at the present time. Reptiles, living partly in the water and partly on the land (amphibious) belong also to this period, during which present continents and islands were gradually rising and again subsiding, at one time deluged by larger or smaller rings coming down, and at another washed by tidal waves. No wonder the remains of shell‑fish, etc., are found in the highest mountains. And no wonder the immense beds of limestone in all parts of the world are sometimes called “shell‑fish cemeteries,” because composed almost exclusively of conglomerate shells. What a swarming there must have been when those untellable trillions of little creatures were born, and, dying, dropped one by one their little shells! We read that God blessed them in multiplying. Yes, even so lowly an existence and for so brief a time is a favor, a blessing.
Let us not contend for more than the Scripture record demands. The Bible does not assert that God created separately and individually the myriad kinds of fish and reptiles; but merely that divine influence, or spirit, brooded, and by divine purpose the sea brought forth its creatures of various kinds. The processes are not declared, one species may, under different conditions, have developed into another; or from the same original protoplasm different orders of creatures may have developed under differing conditions. No man knoweth, and it is unwise to be dogmatic. It is not for us to dispute that even the protoplasm of the Paleozoic slime may not have come into existence through chemical action of the highly mineralized waters of those seas. What we do claim is that all came about as results of divine intention and arrangement, and, hence, were divine creations, whatever were the channels and agencies. And we claim that this is shown by the facts of nature no less than by the words of Genesis, that however the creatures of the sea were produced, they were brought to the condition in which each is of its own kind, where the lines of species cannot be overridden. This is God’s work, by whatever means brought about.
This day, or epoch, corresponds very well to the Reptilian age of the scientist. Evening and morning of Day Five was 35,000 years from the commencement of the work of ordering the earth as man’s home and kingdom.
THE SIXTH CREATIVE EPOCH‑DAY
“And God said; Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind. And it was so; God made the beast of the earth after its kind and cattle after their kind and earth‑reptiles after their kind. And God saw it was so done and approved.”
By this time matters on this earth were becoming more settled; the crust was thicker by hundreds of feet of sand and clays and shells and coal, and various other minerals gathered, some from crumbling rocks thrown up by earthquakes, some from the “rings” once surrounding the earth, and some from animal and vegetable deposits; besides, the earth itself must have cooled considerably during those 35,000 years. A sufficiency of earth’s surface was now above the sea, and well drained by mountain ranges and valleys to be ready for the lower animals, which are here divided into three kinds: (1) earth‑reptiles, cold‑blooded, breathing creatures – lizards, snakes, etc.; (2) beasts of the earth, or wild beasts, as differentiated from domestic animals, specially suited to be companions for man, and here referred to as (3) cattle. The air also by this time would be purified of elements unsuited to breathing animals, absorbed from it by the rank vegetation of the carboniferous period, as the excessive hydrocarbons had been absorbed from the oceans by the minute shell‑fish, preparatory to the swarming of sea creatures which breathe.
Here, again, we need not quarrel needlessly with Evolutionists. We will concede that, if God chose, He could have brought all the different species of animal life into being by a development of one from the other, or he could have developed each species separately from the original protozoan slime. We know not what method He adopted, for it is revealed neither in the Bible nor in the rocks. It is, however, clearly revealed that in whatever way God chose to accomplish it, He has fixed animal species, each “after his kind” in such a manner that they do not change; in such a manner that the ingenuity of the human mind has not succeeded in assisting them to change. Here is the stamp of the intelligent Creator upon His handiwork; for had “Nature” or “blind force” been the creator, we would still see it plodding blindly on, at times evolving and at times retrograding; we would see no such fixity of species as we behold all about us in nature.
We may reasonably assume that it was Just at the close of the sixth epoch‑day that God created man; because his creation was the last, and it is distinctly stated that God finished His creative work, not on the sixth, but “on the seventh day,” the division of the man into two persons, two sexes, being, evidently, the final act.
“And God said, We will make man in our image; and after our likeness let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every reptile that creeps upon the earth. So God created man in His image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them, and God blessed them and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue and control it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the heavens and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
In view of our remarks, foregoing, that the Scripture language does not forbid the possibility of the plants, water‑creatures and land‑creatures being more or less developed, or evolved, in their various kinds, it may be well for us to note the wide difference in the language used when referring to man’s creation. The latter is a specific declaration of the direct exercise of divine creative power, while the others are not, but rather imply a development:
“And the earth brought forth grass,” etc.
“Let the waters bring forth the creeping creature,” etc.
“Let the earth bring forth living creature after his kind, cattle,” etc.
There are two accounts of the creation – the one we have just been considering, which treats the matter briefly and in its epochal order, and another which follows it in Genesis 2:4‑25. In other words, the division of the chapters was at a wrong place – the two accounts should each constitute a chapter. The second one is a com on the first, explanatory of details. “These are the generations,” or developments, of the heavens and the earth and their creatures, from a time before there was any plant or herb. The first and principal account gives the word “God” when speaking of the Creator; and the second, or commentary account, points out that it was Yahweh God who did the entire work, “in the day” that He made the heavens and the earth – thus grasping the whole as one still larger epoch‑day, including the work of the six already enumerated.
The word God in the first chapter is from the common Hebrew word Elohim, a plural word which might be translated Gods, and which, as we have already seen, signifies “mighty ones.” The “Only Begotten” of the Father was surely His active agent in this creative work, and He may have had associated with Him in the execution of its details a host of angels to whom also the word Elohim would be applicable here as elsewhere in the Scriptures. It is appropriate; therefore, that the second, or commentary, account should call our attention to the fact that Yahweh the Father of all was the Creator, whoever may have been used as His honored representatives and instruments. The added particulars of the second account respecting man’s creation may properly be considered here.
It declares: “Yahweh God formed man of dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives, and the man became a living being.”
God was glorified in all His previous works and in every creature, however insignificant, even though none of them could properly render Him thanks or appreciate Him or even know Him. The divine purpose had foreseen all this from the beginning, and was preparing for man, who was intended to be the masterpiece of the earthly, or animal, creation. It is not said of man as of the sea creatures, “Let the seas swarm,” nor as with the lower earthly animals, “Let the earth bring forth”; but it is recorded, on the contrary, that he was a special creation by his Maker, “made in his own image.” It matters not whether the image of the Elohim be understood or the image of Yahweh, for were not the Elohim “sons of God,” and in His likeness in respect to reasoning power and moral intelligence?
We are not to understand this “image” to be one of physical shape; but, rather, a moral and intellectual image of the Great Spirit, fashioned appropriately to his earthly conditions and nature. And as for the “likeness,” it doubtless relates to man’s dominion – he was to be king of earth and its teeming creatures, like as God is the King of the entire universe. Here is the battlefield between God’s Word and so‑called Modern Science, to which the whole world, especially the learned including the leaders of thought in most theological seminaries, and the ministers in most of the prominent pulpits, are bowing down. To worship the scientific God called “Evolution.” The two theories are squarely at issue: if the Evolution theory be true, the Bible is false from Genesis to Revelation. If the Bible be true, as we hold, the Evolution theory is utterly false in all its deductions as respects man.
It is not alone the Genesis account of man’s creation in the Divine image that must determine the matter, strong as are the declaration of the Word: the entire theory of the Bible supports the Genesis record, and stands or falls with it. For, if man was created otherwise than pure and perfect and mentally well endowed, he could not, truthfully, have been called an “image of” God; nor could his Creator have placed him on trial in Eden to test his fitness for everlasting life; nor could his disobedience in the eating of the forbidden fruit have been accounted sin and punishable as it was, by a death sentence; nor would it have been necessary to have redeemed him from that sentence.
Moreover, “the man Christ Jesus” is declared to have been the “anti‑lutron,” the ransom‑price (or corresponding price) for this first man’s guilt, and He must, therefore, be considered a sample, or illustration, of what the first man was, before he sinned and passed under the Divine condemnation of death.
We know, too, that there are today, as there have been in the past, many noble natural men, all of whom God declares are sinners, and, as such, unrecognizable by Yahweh, except as they penitently approach Him in the merit of Christ’s sacrifice and obtain His forgiveness. The standing of all who thus come unto God is declared to be only of His grace, under the robe of Christ’s righteousness. The outcome, we are informed, must be a resurrection, or restitution, to perfection ere any can be personally and entirely satisfactory to the Creator. And yet it was this same Creator who communed with Adam before his transgression and called him His son, and who declared that Adam and we, His children, became “children of wrath” and passed under condemnation because of sin, which Adam did not have when created a “son of God.” (Luke 3:38)
As surely as “all the holy prophets since the world began” have declared the coming Millennium to be “times of restitution of all things spoken,” so surely the Evolution theory is in violent antagonism to the utterances of God through all the holy prophets. For restitution, so far from being a blessing to the race would be a crime against it, if the Evolution theory be correct. If by blind force or other evolutionary processes, man has been climbing up by tedious endeavors and laborious efforts, from protoplasm to oyster – from oyster to fish –from fish to reptile – and from reptile to monkey. From monkey to lowest man, and from lowest man to what we are. It would be a fearful injury to the race for God to restore it to what Adam was, or possibly to force the restitution further back to protoplasm. There is no middle ground on this question; and the sooner God’s people decide positively in accord with His Word the better it will be for them, and the more sure they will be of not falling into some of the no‑ransom and evolutionary theories now afloat and seeking to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect. Let God be true, though it prove every Evolutionist a liar. (Rom. 3:4)
We cannot here go into the details of Adam’s creation, to discuss his organism, or body, his spirit, or breath of life, and how these united constituted him a living being, or soul. This has already been presented in a different connection.
Their fruitfulness in posterity was evidently in no manner connected with the transgression, as some have assumed, but was a part of the Divine blessing. The only relationship of the fall and its curse, or penalty, in this respect was, as stated, an increase of the mother’s conceptions and sorrows, corresponding to the man’s labor and sweat of face. These have borne the more heavily in proportion as the race has become degenerate and weak, mentally and physically. The object of the fruitfulness will have been attained when a sufficient progeny has been born ultimately to fill (not replenish) the earth. True, an immense number have already been born – possibly twenty thousand millions – and are now asleep in the great prison‑house of death; but these are none too many; for the present land surface of earth, if all made fit for man, as it ultimately will be, would hold two or three times this number, without taking into consideration the possibility of other continents being raised from the depths of the seas as the present ones were in the past.
Scientists of a skeptical turn of mind have for a long time been seeking to prove that man was on the earth long before the period assigned in Genesis, and every bone found in the lower clays or gravels is scrutinized with a view to making the scientist a world‑wide reputation as the man who has given the lie to the Word of God. We have already referred to the unreliability of such evidences,[1] as the finding of arrow‑heads amongst the gravel of an early period. In some cases at least these have been proven to have been the work of modern Indians, who had shaped them near the spot where they found the suitable flint‑stones.╂
At a meeting of the Victoria Philosophical Institute not very long ago it was stated that “a careful analysis had been undertaken by Professor Stokes, FRS, Sir J. R. Bennett, Vice‑Pres. RS, Professor Beale, FRS, and others, of the various theories of Evolution, and it was reported that, as yet, no scientific evidence had been met with giving countenance to the theory that man had been evolved from a lower order of animals; and Professor Virchow had declared that there was a complete absence of any fossil type of a lower stage in the development of man; and that any positive advance in the province of prehistoric anthropology has actually removed us further from proofs of such connection, namely, with the rest of the animal kingdom. In this, Professor Barraude, the great paleontologist, had concurred, declaring that in none of his investigations had he found any one fossil species develop into another. In fact, it would seem that no scientific man had yet discovered a link between man and the ape, between fish and frog, or between the vertebrate and the invertebrate animals; further, there was no evidence of any one species, fossil or other, losing its peculiar characteristics to acquire new ones belonging to other species; for instance, however similar the dog to the wolf, there was no connecting link, and among extinct species the same was the case; there was no gradual passage from one to another. Moreover, the first animals that existed on the earth were by no means to be considered as inferior or degraded.”
We quote briefly from Sir J. W. Dawson, LL.D., FRS, from his summary of his recent findings respecting “The Meeting Place of Geology and History.” He says:
“We have found no link of derivation connecting man with the lower animals which preceded him. He appears before us as a new departure in creation, without any direct relation to the instinctive life or the lower animals. The earliest men are no less men than their descendants, and up to the extent of their means, inventors, innovators, and introducers of new modes of life, just as much as they. We have not even been able yet to trace man back to the harmless golden age [of Paradise]. As we find him in the caves and gravels he is already a fallen man, out of harmony with his environment and the foe of his fellow creatures, contriving against them instruments of destruction more fatal than those furnished by nature to the carnivorous wild beasts... Man, as to his body, is confessedly an animal, of the earth earthy. He is also a member of the province vertebrata, and the class mammalia; but in that class he constitutes not only a direct species and genus, but even a distinct family, or order. In other words, he is the sole species of his genus, and of his family, or order. He is thus separated by a great gap from all the animals nearest to him; and even if we admit the doctrine, as yet unproved, of the derivation of one species from another in the case of lower animals, we are unable to supply the ‘missing links’ which would be required to connect man with any group of inferior animals...
“No fact of science is more certainly established than the recentness of man in geological time. Not only do we find no trace of his remains in the older geological formations, but we find no remains of the animals nearest to him; and the conditions of the world in those periods seem to unfit it for the residence of man. If, following the usual geological system, we divide the whole history of the earth into four great periods, extending from the oldest rocks known to us, the eozoic, or Archaean, up to the modern, we find remains of man, or of his works, only in the latest of the four, and in the latter part of this. In point of fact, there is no indisputable proof of the presence of man until we reach the early modern period... There is but one species of man, though many races and varieties; and these races, or varieties, seem to have developed themselves at a very early time, and have shown a remarkable fixity in their later discovery... The history in Genesis has anticipated modern history. This ancient book is in every way trustworthy, and as remote as possible from the myths and legends of ancient heathenism.”
Prof. Pasteur, the great bacteriologist, was an outspoken opponent of Darwinism; and expressed himself as follows: “Posterity will one day laugh at the foolishness of the modern materialistic philosophers. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the works of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged in my work in the laboratory.”
Virchow, the Russian savant, though not a professed Christian was similarly opposed to the Darwinian theory of the development of organic beings from inorganic, and declared: “Any attempt to find the transition from animal to man has ended in a total failure. The middle link has not been found and will not be found. Man is not descended from the ape. It has been proved beyond a doubt that during the past five thousand years there has been no noticeable change in mankind.”
Other naturalists have also raised their voices against the Darwinian views.
In view of these facts how foolish appear the occasional essays of “Doctors” or “Professors” who feign learning by discussing “missing links” or suggesting that the little toes of human feet are becoming useless and will soon be “dropped by nature” as “monkey tails have already been dropped.” Have we not mummies well preserved nearly four thousand years old? Have we not life‑sized, nude statuary nearly as old? Are tails shown on any of these? Are their little toes anywise different from ours of today? Is not the whole tendency of all nature downward? With plants and the lower animals is not man’s wisdom and aid necessary to the maintenance of highest types? And with men is not the grace of God necessary to his uplift, and to hinder gross degeneracy such as we see in “Darkest Africa”? And is not this in accord with Scripture? (Rom. 1:21, 24, 28)
It is appropriate that the Lord’s people keep well in mind the caution bestowed on Timothy by the Apostle Paul: “O Timothy... avoid profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so‑called.” (1 Tim. 6:20) To see any truth clearly we must look from the standpoint of the Divine revelation. We must “See light in His light.” Then looking abroad through nature under the guidance of nature’s God, the effect will be to expand both heart and intellect, and to fill us with admiration and adoration as we catch panoramic glimpses of the glory, majesty and power of our Almighty Creator.
Evening and morning, Day Six, at its close, 42,000 years after “work” began, found the earth ready for man to subdue it, yet still, as a whole, unfit for him. Knowing in advance of His creature’s disobedience (and of His entire plan connected with His sentence of death, His redemption and the ultimate recovery from sin and death of all rightly exercised by their experiences), God did not wait the creation of man until the earth would all be ready for him, but merely prepared a Paradise, a garden in Eden, perfecting it in every way for the brief trial of the perfect pair, leaving to mankind, as convict laborers, the work of “subduing” the earth and at the same time gaining thereby valuable lessons and experiences.
THE SEVENTH EPOCH‑DAY OF THE CREATIVE WEEK
“And on the Seventh day God ended the work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.”
Noting the upward, progression sequence of the six days, and keeping in memory the fact that the number seven of itself implies completion and perfection, we naturally would expect the Seventh Epoch‑day to be more marvelous than its predecessors. And so we find it: only that its important part is for a time – until the “due time” – shut to our mental eyes of understanding by the general statement that God rested on the seventh day from all His work. How strange that He should rest the creative work at a point where it seemed just ready for completion, as though a workman should prepare all the materials for a structure and then desist from further activities without accomplishing his original intentions!
But the whole matter opens grandly before us when we perceive that Yahweh God rested His work of creation, ceased to prosecute it, because in His wisdom He foresaw that His designs could best be executed by another means. God saw best to permit His creature Adam to exercise his free will and fall under temptation into sin and its legitimate penalty, death ‑ including a long period, 6,000 years of dying and battling, as a convict, with evil environment. God saw best to permit him thus as a convict to do a part of the subduing of the earth; that to bring it as a whole toward its foretold Paradisiac condition would be profitable to man under the circumstances; that it would be expedient that man realize the principles underlying Divine righteousness and the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and be thus prepared for the grace to be brought to the world in due time.
However, one of the chief reasons for Yahweh’s cessation of the creative work undoubtedly was that it might be accomplished by another ‑ by His Only Begotten ‑ in a manner that would not only glorify the Son, but glorify the Father also, by displaying the perfections of the Divine attributes as no other course could do. This was by the giving of His Son to be man’s redeemer – an exhibition not only of Divine Justice, which could by no means violate the decree that “the wages of sin is death,” but which simultaneously illustrated Divine Love – compassion for His fallen creatures to the extent of the death of His Son on man’s behalf. Divine Wisdom and Power will also ultimately be exhibited in every feature of the arrangement when completed.
It may be suggested that for the Father to desist from the perfecting of the creative plan in order that the Son might do this work during the Millennium, by processes of restitution, would be no different from the previous creative operations, all of which were of the Father and by the Son – without whom was not anything made that was made. But we answer, no. The relationship of the Son to the work of restitution, with which this Seventh Epoch‑Day will close and bring terrestrial perfection, will be wholly different from any of His —previous works. In all the previous creations the Son simply acted for Yahweh, using powers and energies not in any sense His own; but in this grand work to come He will be using a power and authority that are His own – which cost Him 34 years of humiliation, culminating in His crucifixion. By that transaction, which the Father’s wisdom and love planned for Him, He buys the world, buys Father Adam and all his progeny, and his estate, the earth, with all his title to it as its monarch “in the likeness of God.” The Father delighted to honor the “First Begotten,” and therefore planned it thus, and rested, or ceased from creative processes, that the Son might thus honor Him and be honored by Him.
God rested, not in the sense of recuperating from weariness, but in the sense of ceasing to create. He beheld the ruin and falls of His noblest earthly creation through sin, yet put forth no power to stay the course of the death sentence and started no restitution procedures. Indeed, by the law which He imposed, He precluded any opportunity for His exercise of mercy and clemency toward Adam and his race, except through a ransomer. The penalty being death, and that without limit, everlasting death, “everlasting destructtion,” and it being impossible for God to lie, impossible for the Supreme Judge of the universe to reverse His own righteous decree, it was thus rendered impossible for the Creator to become directly the restorer of the race, or in any sense or degree to continue His creative work in the condemned man or in his estate, the earth.
Thus did Yahweh God manifest His confidence in His own great plan of the ages, and in His Only Begotten Son to whom He has committed its full accomplishment. This confidence of the Father in the Son is used by the Apostle as an illustration of how our faith should so grasp the Anointed One that we also can trust every interest and concern to Him, as respects ourselves and our dear friends and the world of mankind in general: the Apostle’s declaration is, “We who have believed do enter into rest... He that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.” Believers, like God, have perfect confidence in Christ’s ability and willingness to carry out all of Yahweh’s great projects in respect to our race, and therefore rest, not from physical weariness, but from concern, from anxiety, from any desire to take the matter out of Christ’s charge, or to attempt to secure the result by any other means.
If our Creator’s resting, or desisting from coming promptly to the relief of His fallen creatures, has in any degree the appearance of indifference or neglect, it was not really so, but merely the outworking of the wisest and best means for man’s assistance – through a Mediator. If it is suggested that the restitution work should have commenced sooner, we reply that the period of the reign of Sin and Death, 6,000 years, has been none too long for the bringing forth by births of a race sufficient in number to “fill the earth”; none too long to give all a lesson in the “exceeding sinfulness of sin” and the severe wages it pays; none too long to let men try their own devices for their own uplift and note their futility. Our Lord’s First Advent to provide the ransom price for the world so that He would have a just, equitable right to come again to bless, uplift and restore all who will accept His grace, although it was more than 4,000 years after the blight of sin and death entered, is, nevertheless, declared in Scripture to have been in God’s due time: “In due time God sent forth his Son.” Indeed, we see that it would not even then have been due time, except for the Divine purpose to call and gather and polish and make ready the elect Church to share with the Redeemer in the great Millennial work of blessing the world; God foreseeing that it would require this entire Gospel Age for this election, sent His Son for the redemptive work just long enough in advance to accomplish it.
THE PERIOD OF DIVINE REST, FROM CREATIVE AND ENERGIZING ACTIVITY IN CONNECTION WITH THE EARTH
How long is it since Yahweh ceased, or rested in, His creative work? We reply that it is now a little more than six thousand years. How long will His rest, or cessation, continue? We answer that it will continue throughout the Millennium, the thousand years of the reign of the great Mediator, effecting “the restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.” (Acts 3:21) Will the confidence of Yahweh in the outworking of His plan, which led Him thus to rest it all in the care of Jesus prove to have been fully justified? Will the conclusion be satisfactory? Yahweh God, who knows the end from the beginning, assures us that it will, and that the Son, at whose cost the plan is being executed, “shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied.” (Is. 53:11) Yea, all believers who are resting by faith in their Redeemer’s work – past and to come – may have full assurance of faith that “eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things which God hath in reservation for those who love him,” specially for the Church; but also the lengths and breadths and heights and depths of love and mercy and restitution blessings, for all those of the non‑elect world, who in their Millennial day of grace shall heartily accept the wonderful Divine provisions on the Divine terms.
Six thousand years past and one thousand years future, seven thousand years of Yahweh’s “rest,” will carry us to the time when the Son’s Millennial reign shall cease because of having accomplished its design: the restitution of the willing and obedient of mankind to the Divine image, and the subjugation of the earth under man, as his estate, his kingdom. Then the Mediatorial throne and reign having served their purpose, and all corrupters of the earth having been destroyed, “the Son shall deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father,” by delivering it to mankind for whom it was originally designed, as it is written. (Matt. 25:31,34) “Then shall the King say unto them... Come, ye blessed [approved] of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” mundane creation. (1Cor 15:25-28)
It is the length of this Seventh Epoch‑Day, so distinctly marked by history and prophecy, which furnishes us the clue to the length of all the other epoch‑days of the creative Week. And the whole period of seven times seven thousand years, or forty‑nine thousand years, when complete, will lead up to and introduce the great Fiftieth, which we have already noted as prominent in the Scriptures, as marking grand climaxes in the Divine Plan; Israel’s day Sabbaths culminating in 7x7=49, leading to and introducing the fiftieth, or Pentecost, with its rest of faith; their year Sabbaths 7x7=49, introducing the fiftieth, or Jubilee, year; the still larger cycle of 50x50, marking the Millennium as Earth’s great Jubilee. And now, finally, we find the Sabbath, or seven day system, on a still larger scale measuring earth’s creation, from its inception to its perfection, to be 7 times 7,000 years – 49,000 years, ushering in the grand epoch when there shall be no more sighing, no more crying, no more pain and no more dying, because God’s work of creation shall then have been completed so far as this earth is concerned. No wonder that that date should be marked as a Jubilee date!
Continued to Part Three – “In The Beginning”
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╂We are not ignorant of the theory of a pre‑Adamite man and the attempt thus to account for the different races of the human family. But we stick to the Bible as God’s revelation and, hence, superior to all human conjectures. It declares the solidarity of the human family in no uncertain terms, saying: “God made of one blood all nations of men.” (Acts 17:26) And again that Adam was “the first man.” (1 Cor. 15:45,47) Again the story of the deluge is most explicit to the effect that only eight human beings were saved in the ark, and they, as Noah’s family, descended from Adam. The variety of human types, or races, must be accounted for along the lines of climate, customs, food, etc., and especially along the lines of the seclusion of the various peoples in various quarters from each other, by which peculiarities became fixed. This is illustrated by the fact that Europeans living for a long time amongst the people of India or China gain a measure of resemblance to their neighbors, while their children, born in those lands, bear a still stronger resemblance in skin and features – affected no doubt by the mother’s surroundings during the period of gestation. An illustration of such assimilation is furnished by the Chinese of one district, who identify themselves with the Israelites scattered by the troubles which closed the Jewish Age – about AD 70. These Jews have become so thoroughly Chinese as to be undistinguishable as Jews – the hardiest of races.