The Elbert County tribune., 1913-01-03


GOLDEN TExT-'Tn the beginning
God created the heaven and the earth
Gen. IL.
In our scheme of Lessons we return
to the Old Testament and confine our
study for the ensuing year to the first
six books OF the Bible.
The word Genesis means begin
nings," and in the book of that name
we see recorded all the information
of the beginning of things that our
heavenly father deemed necessary in
the development of the scheme of re-
demption.
After all the assaults of its enc
inies, and of the skeptics. the first
verse of the book of Genesis contains
all the clear. concise. and positive
knowledge man possesses about the
origin of this Universe. God ere
ated." not, God is all and all is God"
Pantheism has no ground upon which
to stand. 'In the beginning God ere
ated." therefore he is above and was
before the heaven and the earth.
The beginning of all right thinking
and true living of every proper rela.
ton of life, is God and yet we are
Withholding that knowledge from
young America upon the specious
plea that the bible is sectarian.
Truth of the Trinity.
Following this statement of the Gre
alton come the steps of rehabilitation.
for the words in verse two denote
waste, void, or confusion and one
Hebrew scholar contends for the word
ruin" See also Isa 45:1S r. v. Thus
1t seems that upon this created earth
there must have come a judgment,
presumably upon some pre-Adamite
race and that what follows, verse two,
is not the original creation but the
steps whereby this earth was made
ready as a habitation for man.
Lord Kelvin said. scientific thought
is compelled to accept the idea of Gre
ative power" There is wonderful
agreement between modern science
and the account In Genesis q The
biblical accounts by their wording
provide for both creation and the evo-
lutionary development of created
things; (2) Science has failed to pro-
duce matter, life, or the soul of man;
and of these in each instance the
bible says God created while of all
else 1t says he made.
The great truth of the trinity Is re-
vealed in these first three verses ~
God. v. 1; (2) Spirit. v. Q; and (3)
God said"-the word, see John IL.
Verse five does not call the light
day meaning twelve hours, but rather
a period of time, just as we speak of
an Arctic day" which is six months.
Animal life cannot assimilate these
elements unless they are already fixed
in organic vegetable life. How and
where life originated no science has
discovered. Pasteur's dictum that,
cit is nothing but life which gener-
ates life." still stands unshaken. And
SO the constant and only satisfactory
answer to the questions. how, where
and why, of all these things of this
material universe is God. God Gre
ated. God made, he created, and then
set into being those forces and laws
whereby the earth. the sky. the sun
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broken regularity. He made possible
those processes whereby man devel-
ops. the oak grows, and animal and
vegetable life reproduce each after
its own kind.
: But creation was not yet complete.
Man. the last created. was the crown
ing glory of this earthly creation
Verses 26-30 will be studied in con-
nection with next weeks lesson and
are referred to here simply to give a
complete account of creation. It
would be well. however, to refer to
the fact that the great God and Gre
ator made provision for the immortal
souls of mankind by arranging for his
training in the knowledge and charac-
ter of himself. the father, by the in
stitution of the Sabbath, as soon as
he had prepared a place in which
man was to dwell.
The dignity and majesty of the Ian
guage of Genesis is sublime.
Astrologers tell us that our sun and
solar system is only one of perhaps q
million others. A recent writer tells
US that ray OF light which would
travel the equivalent of nine times
around the earth in one second would
take nine years to travel across the
great nebula in the constellation OF
Orion. And God made" all of this.
THE fool hath said in his heart there
is no God" and 1t is the man next
door to the fool who tries to stipu-
late what God ought or! ought not to
do.
What beautiful story this is to
tell to children. A mother drew her
three-year-old sons attention to the
beauty of field and mountain and
added God loves the beautiful and
loves little boys too" Neither spoke
for a moment Then the son asked
his mother IL she were praying.