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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | has the world always existed? | Gen 1:1 | IJELUB | 35314 | ||
Has the world always existed? or did it have a beginning? if it began, what is your belief about how it began? | ||||||
2 | has the world always existed? | Gen 1:1 | Lionstrong | 50560 | ||
Dear IJELUB, You ask, "Has the world always existed? or did it have a beginning? if it began, what is your belief about how it began?" Your question is a good and fundamental question. It is one that the Bible (God’s propositional communication of real truth to man) addresses several times and in several ways. Your question is fundamental because something must have always existed; something must be eternal. The answer the Bible gives differs fundamentally with the answers of all other religions and philosophies. Secularism, atheism, or the scientific worldview teach that time, space and energy have always existed, and that the chance combination of these impersonal factors have produced the wonderful beauty and complexity of the universe. Such views leave us with no reasonable explanation for personality. love, meaning, purpose, or morality. The gods of all other religions of the world take something to make something else. Here you have two things that are eternal, the gods and “stuff.” The personal and impersonal are equally eternal. Here you have a dualism and the problems associated with it. In the Bible you have no dualism in eternity. In the Bible you have One eternal only and it is personal, the personal triune God of the Bible, the Lord God Almighty, the one and only true and living God. He shares eternity with no one and no-thing. When the Father created the heavens and the earth through the Son, he did not “step out on to space” as some poets have written. There WAS no space to step out on to! We childishly picture God hovering in space and creating worlds. Wrong picture! In fact, there should be no picture in your mind at all, not only because God is invisible, but because at creation there was no space! All there was, was God! “For in Him we live and move and have our being.” Before the Invisible Eternal God created space and everything else, all there was, was God. And unlike the gods of the world’s religions, God did not take something to created the heavens and the earth. There was nothing to take! Then how did he do it? He commanded it into existence. “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, And by the breath of His mouth all their host.” And God created the world for a purpose. As the above quoted evangelist went on to say: "The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; neither is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things; and He made from one, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we also are His offspring.' "Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead. " Acts 17:24-31. I invite you to take advantage of the Bible study tools available to you on the Study Bible Forum, and do a word search and study of create, made, make, form, fashion, etc., and how there terms are related to God. Peace, |
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