Open your Bibles with me, please, tonight to 1 Timothy 6. I'll be starting there tonight. Tonight I'm beginning what will probably be a two, maybe a three-part message dealing with the creation of the universe, and more specifically, actually, with the issue of geocentricity. Geocentricity. The word means an earth-centered universe. where the earth is actually the center and the focus of God's creation. Versus the other universe model of heliocentricity wherein the earth revolves around the sun, we have a sun-oriented, sun-centered solar system that's relatively tiny actually in a far more vast and endless universe. As a result, as I've said before, some of the emails I've received on this subject, I have been researching this issue of heliocentricity versus geocentricity. I want to encourage all of us to approach this issue with a teachable spirit. As for me, many of you will testify that I've never been afraid of being corrected in my doctrine. I learned very early in my Christian life. When the Lord showed me the meaning of the parable of the sower, which the meaning of that parable is, when you reject God's light, He sends darkness. And I don't want to ever be in a position where I'm resisting some truth that the Lord is trying to lead me to. Because I want to grow as close to the Lord as I can. I want to know as much as I can about Him and His Word and how He operates. And I certainly don't want to be in a position where I'm resisting the truth being stubborn. Because stubbornness, as Samuel told King Saul, stubbornness leads to idolatry. And so, I'm very grateful again that this issue was raised with me. It's really an important topic in light of its recent popularity. And I think it has relevance to our lives as well and how we view God and how we view the universe. I had heard about this subject, but I had kind of dismissed it, as most Christians do these days, as kind of an extreme position that really takes certain Bible passages literally that I thought should be taken figuratively. But I now have to say as a result of my study that I have found that the concept of geocentricity really is a very fascinating subject. Although many have taken geocentricity these days, recently, in a direction that makes the concept look very ridiculous. But regarding the view and the model of the universe known as heliocentricity, that we've all come to believe, that we've been taught in childhood to believe by the Jesuit education system that Brother Reg talked about, the Copernican model of the heliocentric or sun-centered solar system that is a relatively tiny speck in a vast and endless universe. My first conclusion is that although heliocentricity does comport with God's physical laws of inertia, gravity, centrifugal and centripetal force, which by the way are real physical laws that were created by God, by the way, not by Isaac Newton. But the concept of heliocentricity does seem to be and is directly contrary to Now what the Bible teaches about the earth, the sun and the stars and therefore I've come to believe that the Copernican model or the heliocentric model of the solar system and the universe may be actually another in a long line of mass deceptions and as such may well be a possible set up for the strong delusion or the mass deception prophesied in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. My second conclusion however on this topic is that the recently popularized flat earth theory that has taken the internet and YouTube by storm over the past year or so and the view that the Bible is a flat earth book pretty much falls flat on its face and must be flatly dismissed as scientifically, I believe, untenable. Untenable. Unacceptable. And disproven by the real physical laws of inertia, gravity, and centrifugal force. which are again God's laws, not Isaac Newton's. And also clearly disproven by clearly observable phenomenon and evidence that some flat earthers readily admit they can't explain, such as the red moon we're going to be looking at tonight. Such as, you know, you can see the sun when it's setting on the underside of clouds, which some flat earthers admit they just simply cannot explain. And other more popular flat earthers like Eric Dubé, dismiss these arguments with disinformation and with conclusory arguments that sound like they are based on no more than an 8th grade education. It's really just preposterous what some of these guys are saying and it's become very popular. So personally I've come to believe that flat earth theory that has been popularized has been popularized actually to intentionally discredit the true geocentric model which geocentric model fully agrees with the bible holds to a literal interpretation of the Bible. It is based on provable scientific data, which actually harmonizes better with Einstein's theory of relativity than the heliocentric model does, which is around Earth in a geocentric universe. And by the way, which is also supported by scores of real Bible-believing physicists and astronomers like Malcolm Bowdoin and like Dr. Gerard Bowe. the view of a geocentric universe with a spherical earth at the center and the focus of all God's creation. In presenting this truth, I want to return to Genesis 1 tonight to build a foundation. But as a foretaste, one of the main reasons from the Bible that I'm beginning to come to this conclusion, which is actually also an apparent paradox or an enigma, one of the biggest stumbling blocks for unbelievers. And that is the apparent, the obvious, and very important, inescapable conclusion you have to come to of the sequential order of creation given by God in Genesis chapter 1 that you cannot get around, which is actually the foundational cornerstone for the entire Bible. And so, it's very important for our understanding of this topic Remember that the heavens and the earth were created on the first day, but the sun, moon, and stars were not created until the fourth day of creation. That's a very important point that we need to remember on this topic. And so, I'm going to begin this message by laying some groundwork relative to our approach to the Bible and our approach to the book of Genesis. And I'm going to deal with a discussion of theistic evolution and progressive creationism and the gap theory as opposed to the literal approach to the Genesis creation account that I believe is foundational to the entire Bible and to the gospel itself and also to this issue of geocentricity. From very early in my Christian life, within probably a few weeks or maybe a few months after I first got saved about 28 years ago, I have been a young earth creationist. I have been taking a literal approach to the book of Genesis and believed in a young earth. I would give partial credit for my early position on Genesis to Dr. Henry Morris and to his Institute for Creation Research, ICR, which was founded back in the 1970s. And this was after, for me personally, having been taught far more liberal of view in the church I was brought up in as a child. I was taught of view known today as what we call progressive creationism, which is a slightly less skeptical position than theistic evolution, but both of which, those two positions, compromise the truth of God's Word with the lies of the devil about evolution. And they both say that we have to either dismiss the Bible's account of creation as allegory or fairytale, as a theistic evolutionist do, or else we have to somehow harmonize evolution with the creation account. But that's exactly, by the way, why Paul said to his son in the faith, young Timothy, the preacher, in 1 Timothy 6, verse 20, Paul said, O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust. He said, avoid profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so-called. You might want to underline that phrase, science falsely so-called, because that's evolution. Science falsely so-called. And he says, which some professing, some professing Christians have gone the way of this science falsely so-called and have erred concerning the faith, Paul says. There are today many Christians and also many false Christians, make-believers, who have erred concerning the faith, as Paul says here, because rather than avoiding profane and vain babblings, they have actually been led astray by what Paul calls the opposition of science, falsely so-called, and in particular by the false science of evolution. That is not based on any semblance of true science. That in fact stands in direct opposition to scientific observation and the physical laws of thermodynamics. The theistic evolutionist may call himself a Christian. And there are many that do, by the way. But they reject the authority and inerrancy of the Bible. They reject the Genesis account of creation as a fairy tale. And they say that God formulated the physical laws of his universe and started the big bang going, but then kind of stepped back and let nature take over. That's the theistic evolutionist approach. The progressive creationist On the other hand, such as Dr. Hugh Ross, on one side of his mouth says that he believes in the authority and inerrancy of Scripture. But then on the other side of his mouth says that we have to allow for billions of years of evolution and somehow fit that into the Bible's timeline, which I'm here to tell you we do not have to do. And so doing, the progressive creationist also actually denies the authority and the inerrancy of Scripture. And so in that sense, the theistic evolutionist is really more honest than the progressive creationist. The progressive creationist usually applies what's called the day-age theory. The day-age theory, which claims that each of the six days of creation, as presented in Genesis 1 and 2, represent long geological ages, during which evolution allegedly occurred, assisted by God along the way. So because both of these positions actually, progressive creationism and theistic evolution, accept the atheistic mechanism of evolution as the means that God used to create mankind and the universe. And progressive creationism is really just a slightly laundered version actually of theistic evolution, both of which, as I said, attack the inerrancy of scripture and lead to actually a dead end result of doubt and skepticism. And so for purposes of this message, I'm basically going to lump both positions in the category of theistic evolution. Perhaps we should call it theistic convolution since it's such a convoluted position. But the position is based on two main presumptions or premises, both of which are false. First presumption is based on is that the theory of evolution is true. They both presume evolution has to be true. And the second presupposition or presumption or premise is that God used evolution to create the world slowly over gradual processes of mutation and natural selection that took millions of years, as the Darwinians would say. So theistic evolution or convolution starts by accepting a godless, irrational theory that has no scientific support whatsoever, that is completely disproven by true science, and that was proposed by godless humanists to explain how we got here without having a Creator to be subject and accountable to. It's not a good premise to start with. And then it tries to add some form of intelligent God back into that irrational equation, which, by the way, is the most foolish and ignorant proposition indeed. And though there are many people who cling to this position, who call themselves Christian, the little God with a small g, that they insert back into this irrational equation is not the God of the Bible. And the Jesus that they may claim as their Savior, by the way, is not the Jesus of the Bible. Because the Jesus of the Bible is the very One that spoke the universe into existence by the power of His Word and by the Word of His power. Hebrews 11, chapter 3. You might want to turn to Hebrews. If you go into Hebrews, John, Colossians, In Hebrews chapter 11, the great chapter on faith, the hall of faith, verse 3 says, "...through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." Not only does this verse say that the God of the Bible simply spoke this world and this universe into existence in a matter of six days, But when he did that, by the way, he spoke through the person of his Son, Lord Jesus Christ. Through faith, the writer says, we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God. That means by the Lord Jesus, by the way, as attested to in multiple New Testament passages. John chapter 1, 1 through 3. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same, the Word, Jesus, was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, John says. And without Him was not anything made that was made. The Word of God made everything. The Lord Jesus. And then later in that chapter we read, And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We know that's the Lord Jesus. Back to Hebrews chapter 1. Presents the Lord Jesus as the Creator who spoke this world into existence. Hebrews 1 verse 1. God, who at sundry times in diverse manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son. whom he hath appointed heir of all things, and by whom also he made the worlds." Who? Jesus. Who? Being the brightness of His glory. Jesus is the brightness of the Father's glory. The glory of the Father shines through the Lord Jesus. And Jesus is the express image of His person. That's why Jesus said to Philip, Philip, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. Jesus is the express image of the Father's person. And upholding The Bible says, "...all things by the word of His power." Jesus made everything. He spoke it into existence. And then it says, "...He upholds all things by the word of His power." He holds everything together. By the way, if this globe is spinning, Jesus started it spinning. And if it's going around the sun, He started doing that. And He's going to keep it. He upholds all things by the word of His power. Colossians chapter 1 says just about the same thing. Colossians chapter 1 verse 12. He says, "...giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son, in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins." And then, Paul says the same thing that he said back in Hebrews. "...who is the image of the invisible God." Jesus, again, is the image of the invisible God. Paul says, "...for by Him," by Jesus, were all things created that are in heaven, that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things, Paul says, were created by Him, by Jesus, and for Him. And then Paul says, And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. Repeating what Paul said back in Hebrews, upholding all things by the word of His power. So the Lord Jesus made all things, holds all things together by the word of His power, and, by the way, by the power of His word. So on that basis, we need to understand that any attack on the creation account as presented in Genesis is a direct attack on the role of the Lord Jesus in creation. And that's why these theistic evolutions have a different Jesus than the Jesus presented in the Bible. Further, throughout the Bible, both Old Testament and New Testament, the Genesis creation account is taken literally All through the Bible, not as allegory, not as figurative, not as fairy tale. The Ten Commandments, God said to Moses. He thundered from heaven, actually, to the people, and then he wrote it with his finger on the tables of stone. He said, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. 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. You know, God thundered that from heaven, and then he wrote with his finger on that stone. that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day." Perhaps that's why the Communists don't like the Ten Commandments. The Genesis account is taken literally in the genealogy preserved in 1 Chronicles 1. Luke, the Gospel writer, took the Genesis account literally when he gave the genealogy of Christ in chapter 3 of his Gospel. The Apostle Paul took the Genesis account literally throughout his writings in 1 Timothy chapter 2 and explaining why women are not to be placed in authority over men in the church. Paul said, why? For Adam was first formed and then Eve and Adam was not deceived but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Paul bases his position on church polity on what took place in the Garden of Eden because he took it literally. Turn to Romans chapter 5 please, Romans chapter 5. The Apostle Paul took the Genesis account literally. And he made it very clear that a literal view of Genesis is essential to a proper understanding of the Gospel itself. Romans 5, verse 12. So, by the way, an attack on the creation account is also an attack on the Gospel itself. Paul says, Romans 5, verse 12, "...wherefore, as by one man..." You see that? "...as by one man sin entered into the world and death." You might want to underline that phrase. By one man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin. And so death passed upon all men, for they all have sinned. Then Paul says in verse 17, For if by one man's offense death reigned by one, Adam's sin brought death into this world. That's what he's talking about. Much more, they which receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as by the offense of one, Adam, judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so, by the righteousness of one, the Lord Jesus, the free gift of salvation, came upon all men unto justification of life. So then, verse 19. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. That's the whole point of the passage. But the apostle Paul, not only And this passage clearly took the Genesis account literally throughout the New Testament in his epistles. He says very clearly in this very important passage, which is central to the very truth of the Gospel, where and when sin and death both entered the world. And he says that death itself began with and resulted from God's just and righteous judgment of Adam's sin. That's when death entered the world, not before. On the other hand, theistic evolution, or convolution, presumes that evolution is true and therefore relies upon millions of years of death and decay and gore before man finally came into being. It's impossible theologically. It's impossible biblically to take that position. It's heresy to take that position. So the theistic evolutionist-convolutionist compromiser The theistic convolutionist says that death is natural. It's natural. That death is actually just a natural part of the process of creation. That's what he says. But the Bible declares in no uncertain terms the truth that is essential and foundational to the gospel itself. That death is a curse. Death is our enemy. The last enemy, Paul says, that shall be destroyed is death. It is our enemy. It's not natural. God did not use death to create life. And the Bible also says, this is central to the gospel, that death is a result in the wages of sin. Death is our enemy and it's also the result in the wages of sin. And of God's righteous judgment on that sin. Romans 6.23. We all know the passage. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. Paul makes that point, by the way, again in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Verse 21, where he says, For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam, all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. He repeats there in 1 Corinthians 15, that death entered this world through Adam's sin. Verse 45 of 1 Corinthians 15 says, And so it is written, The first man, Adam, was made a living soul. By the way, Paul took that literally. First man, Adam. We'll come back to that verse. First man, Adam, was made a living soul. The last Adam, Jesus, speaking of Jesus, was made a quickening spirit. By the way, that's how Adam was a type of Christ. Not only did Paul take Genesis literally, but he says that death entered this world as a result of Adam's sin and that there was no death in this world before Adam sinned. Man is not and cannot be The end result of millions of years of death and gore and decay, which finally after combined with Darwin's concepts of natural selection and mutation of the species, and somehow assisted by this little god of the theistic evolutionist compromiser, produced the first man with an eternal soul. It didn't happen that way. It couldn't have happened that way. There was no death in this world before Adam's sin. The Genesis account is clear. By the way, there were no carnivorous animals that killed other animals until after Adam's sin. There was no death in this world until God Himself allowed a substitute for Adam and Eve. And God Himself, in Genesis 3 verse 21, after He had said, In the day ye eat thereof ye will surely die, God instead allowed a substitute. In Genesis 3 verse 21, God Himself shed the blood of an innocent animal, either a lamb or a bullock, to make coats of skins. Not only to clothe Adam and Eve, but also to atone for their sin. To lay down that principle that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. Paul took Genesis literally, and so did Jude. By the way, the half-brother of the Lord Jesus, as he wrote in verse 14 of his epistle. He said, and Enoch also, the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, of all their horrid speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against them." Jude and the Apostle Paul both took Genesis literally. And by the way, so did the Lord Jesus Himself. In Matthew chapter 19, verse 1 through 9, Jesus based His response to the Pharisees' question on marriage and divorce, on what God decreed when he made Adam and Eve. In Matthew 23, verse 35, Jesus referred to the blood of righteous Abel. Speaking of Adam and Eve's son, how he prophesied actually to Cain before he was murdered by his own brother. So again, Paul, Jude, the Lord Jesus, they all took Genesis literally. So any attack on a literal approach to the creation account as presented in Genesis is not only a direct attack on Christ's role in creation, it's a direct attack on the truth of the gospel. It's a direct attack on the entire word of God and on the nature and the character of God himself. The creation account in Genesis chapter 1 and 2 is therefore foundational to the entire Bible. And our interpretive approach to Genesis will determine our approach to all of the Bible, to all Scripture. So again, the little God of the theistic evolutionist is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible did not take millions of years by trial and error and mutation of the species and survival of the fittest to try to figure out how he wanted to create the world and the creatures in it. He didn't do things like that, by the way. He didn't do things by trial and error to try to figure out what he wanted to do. He knew what he was going to do before he started. In John, chapter 17, the Lord Jesus prayed to the Father. He said, I have glorified thee on the earth. I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. Remember that prayer? Before the world was, the Lord Jesus shared the glory of his Father. And the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, knew how the universe would be created. And timeless eternity passed way before time, space, and matter was created. He did not take millions of years to do what he had planned to do by trial and error and by using death and decay in the process along the way. Not only did he know what he was going to do before he did it, but he also proclaimed repeatedly through the six days of creation, that what he had done was very good. And it didn't need to be changed. He did it right the first time, by the way. God got things right the first time. He never had to go back and undo or redo or hit the go back button or anything like that to redo what he had done the day before. He did not create by trial and error, by mutation of the species. Turn please to Genesis chapter 1. Genesis chapter 1. Theistic evolution, therefore, makes sin and its consequences meaningless. It teaches a false view of God, which includes a false view of the Lord Jesus and his role in creation, a false view of the Bible itself, a false view of science, by the way, false views of man, of sin, and of the gospel. It makes a mockery of the Bible and turns it into a book of fairy tales rather than as God's inerrant and infallible word. And therefore, no one who calls himself a Christian, has any excuse for holding on to such an unscientific, irrational, anti-Bible, anti-God, and anti-Christ position, but then closely associated with the heresy of theistic evolution, and also historically inserted into the Genesis account to allow for billions of years of unrecorded history, to allow for the alleged age of the universe and the earth being billions of years old, There's another heresy known as the Gap Theory. The Gap Theory, which is the heresy that actually included, is included in the study notes of several popular Bibles, including the popular Scofield reference Bible and Dakes. This message is continued on part two of the series. We hope you listen to the entire message.