Prof Zebulon No E12

A) Creation (6 days of creation - an overview)

The word "yom" in Hebrew means day and it is used 1250 of times throughout the Old Testament and it always describes a period of 24 hours or, said differently, a period from sunrise one day to sunrise the next day. Still, some people have a problem with the fact that the act of Creation in Genesis 1 & 2 happened in 6 days literal of 24 hours. As we have discussed before, some Bible-believing Christians try to put millions of years between each day and you know what? It just doesn't work; the only logical way of calculating the time is in 6 twenty-four- hour days.

If the Lord had wanted us to know that Creation had taken 6 literal days, what word for day could He have used? Of course, "yom". But if the Lord had wanted us to know that the Creation process was over a long period of time, He would have used much different wording, possibly the word “eth" which means a season or a time. The context in the Hebrew clearly gives the meaning of words and no other meaning is logical. In Exodus 20:11 the Bible states “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it".

Let me ask you a question: Is the Sabbath day an undetermined period of time? No, of course not, it lasts 24 hours and is from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday; Jews today use that very same chronology. However, we, as Christians, tend to complicate matters. Why would we do that?? God only knows...... As we have discussed before, the Bible must be taken literally otherwise we "interpret" Divine Revelation and who knows what humans can come up with.

D) The Bible (Its writers)

The Bible is not a book that contains the Word of God; it is the Word of God!! The Creator wanted His people and the people of the world to know His laws and His promises. The writers that God used are so vast in comparison and so diverse that only a divine miracle could have brought these 66 books together. We don't have time to look at each writer in detail so I'll leave that up to you for your own study but we can say, that in most cases, the writers did not know what the others were writing and the writers were simply doing what God had instructed them to do and they had no idea that those scrolls would become the Bible we have today.

As we know, Moses is the largest contributor to the Old Testament (The Pentateuch and some Psalms); Paul is the largest contributor to the New Testament (13 Epistles). Isn't great that the two largest contributors to the Bible have so many things in common? I guess the Lord knew what He was doing.

1) Both had humbling desert experiences: Moses 40 years as a shepherd in the land of Midian and Paul 3 years in the desert of Arabia (Gal 1:18) 2) Both had a thorn in the flesh: Moses had a stuttering problem Exod 4:10 and Paul had an affliction that he asked God three times to remove (2 Cor 12:7-10); 3) Both had received formal education and training : Moses in the courts of Egypt and Paul at the feet of Gameliel (Acts 22:3); 4) Both wrote the two main outreaches that God made to His people: Moses spoke of the Law of God and Paul spoke of the Grace of God.

The Lord preserved His Word over the ages and it is still as true as ever: can you imagine how many people tried to destroy it since its inception; it boggles the mind!! Isn't our God awesome??!!