This is what the LORD says: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?”declares the LORD (Isaiah 66:1-2).

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’ But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King (Matthew 5:33-35).

In my last post I made reference to John Walton, Old Testament scholar at Wheaton, and to his conclusion that the Genesis creation account, when seen in the context of the nations surrounding Israel, demonstrates all the attributes of a temple inauguration ceremony common to that era.  The prime difference, of course, is that in Genesis the Creator of the heavens and earth is inaugurated, not fanciful man-made idols.  It was in essence the very lamp of truth that Israel was to lift up for the nations around them to see so that they could be drawn to worship the one true God also.  And Israel’s miracle-filled establishment and existence was the evidence. [Walton's PowerPoint lecture on this is here.  Click on his photo to see the presentation.]

Walton’s colleague Gregory Beale, a New Testament scholar, has taken this concept and brought it through the Old Testament and all the way through the New Testament to the end.  He shows that Eden, the wilderness tabernacle, and the Jerusalem temple all have similar attributes and are places of God’s presence on earth—with His priests,  servants, and stewards occupying and being nourished by the surrounding area.

And as Eden had a river that watered the gardens and became the headwaters of many rivers going out to the nations (Genesis 2:10-14), so from God’s throne in the coming New Jerusalem there flows a river (Revelation 22:1-2) along which grows the tree of life which provides for the healing of the nations.  This is clearly the same tree of life we see in the garden of Eden—and from which mankind was banished.  Losing access to the sustenance of that tree led to the death of Adam and Eve—and all the rest of humankind.  But in the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of the new heaven to the new earth, people will gain access once again to the tree that provides such nourishment that those who eat of it will not die.

Man, this is exciting stuff: the Bible has perfect bookends!  So what should all this mean to us who are between the bookends?  Well that’s a study that clearly will not end until the End—in part because in the books that rest between is the story of Jesus, God in human flesh, and the salvation He provides for us and the restoration He provides for the creation.  At the culmination of all things where the New Jerusalem becomes the worship center of the cosmos, we will see the final proof of Jesus deity: the last chapter of the Revelation tells us that the throne in the Holy City rests on the dais “of God and of the Lamb.”

What does this mean about the wonder of creation, the theme of this website?  The implications are huge and provide food for thought and study that will no doubt occupy us and influence our living until the coming of the Lamb, who will be greeted with exuberant joy by all the creatures of earth: “Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, forever and ever!’” (Revelation 5:13).

If all nature is expectantly waiting for that grand finale, as Paul tells us it is (Romans 8:18-21), it means that believers have more affinity with the natural world than we do with the world of men who are rejecting “the Lamb who was slain” for them.  The natural world is filled with fellow worshipers all yearning for the enthronement of that Lamb—and for its release from the curse and its coming blessed coexistence with the children of God, who will also be finally free.

It is proper to weep over creation’s pain and abuse, but all the while remembering that we do not “grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Both followers of Christ and the suffering creation will share in the glory to come.

[Jesus as Lamb and Lion painting by Spencer Williams.  Be sure to look at his site.]

By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea into jars;he puts the deep into storehouses. Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the people of the world revere him. For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm (Psalm 33:6-9)

I have good Christian friends who are young-earth creationists, old-earth creationists, creation scientists, intelligent-design creationists, evolutionary creationists, and theistic evolutionists. I don’t have any friends who are atheistic evolutionists—primarily because both at work and at leisure I’m surrounded by followers of Christ.  But, to be frank, I have to confess that after following the creation-evolution debate for more than forty years, I’ve come to believe that those who look at life’s origin according to Genesis mostly as a question of science are belittling Scripture.

Let me explain.  By “belittling” I’m referring to the word’s original connotation: “to regard or portray as less impressive or important than appearances indicate.” In other words, trying to squeeze into human categories and understanding what is outside of human comprehension.  I don’t believe that anything in God’s creation can be made to fit perfectly into any human categories. Genesis is one of the world’s grandest statements of truth—with meaning and implications that we can only begin to grasp.  Science philosopher Michael Polanyi expressed it like this:

The book of Genesis and its great pictorial illustrations, like the frescoes of Michelangelo, remain a far more intelligent account of the nature and origin of the universe than the representation of the world as a chance collocation of atoms.  .  .  .  The scientific picture denies any meaning to the world, and indeed ignores all our most vital experience of this world. The assumption that the world has some meaning which is linked to our own calling as the only morally responsible beings in the world is an important example of the supernatural aspect of experience which Christian interpretations of the universe explore and develop. [My emphasis -DO]

I feel that “creation science” often belittles God’s Word and “secular science” belittles God’s world.  Typically those who say that special creation alone gave origin to life and those who say that evolutionary processes alone gave origin to life seem to imply that they have some comprehensive explanation of the origin of life.  They don’t.  Nor do you or I.  Life is so awesome and its origin so beyond our ken that our primary response to it should be worship (what Paul was surely implying when he said that the natural world reveals the Creator’s eternal power and divinity in Romans 1:20).

These conclusions of mine (simple, incomplete, and non-comprehensive as they must remain) have caused me to be fascinated with the studies of John H. Walton both in his book The Lost World of Genesis One and his study of the entire first book of the Bible The NIV Application Commentary on Genesis.  One of his most significant conclusions is that the Genesis account of creation is part of a temple ceremony and that its purpose, in part, was to proclaim to nations surrounding Israel and especially to the children of Israel that there is only one true God and that the earth is His temple.  So Walton would go beyond John Calvin who saw the earth as “the theater of God’s glory” and say that the earth is “the temple of God’s glory.”

This emphasis, then, has significant implications regarding the theme and purpose of this Website: celebrating the wonder of creation.  A theater is a place where you go to observe, and its elements are mundane.  The observer has no responsibilities in a theater but perhaps to applaud.  A temple, on the other hand, is a place where you go to worship, and its elements are sacred.  In a temple you are a participant and have responsibilities.  In the next few posts I would like to explore the implications of seeing the cosmos as God’s temple.

(NOTE: My introductory statements are not an invitation to make WOC a platform for the creation-evolution debate, which I feel is terribly disruptive in the church.  Those discussions can better take place at venues dedicated to that one issue.  If you’re interested in reading my concerns about that debate, you might want to read the RBC Discovery Series booklet on it: “The Genesis Account of Creation: Diffusing the Controversy.”)

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”  Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. (John 14:6-9).

Through several years in the mid-eighties I was director of communication for Bibles for India (now Mission India).  One of our projects was to develop a seminar on the “New Age Movement” (NAM) that was sweeping through the West at that time.  We called the seminar “The New Age of Paganism.”  We were especially concerned about the friendly but false face the NAM was giving to Eastern religions and philosophy and the faulty judgments New Age adherents were making about Christianity.  We concluded that the “new age” was simply the “old lie” that people could be gods.

Here’s a good overview of the NAM from Wikipedia:

The New Age Movement is a spiritual and quasi-religious Western movement that developed in the latter half of the twentieth century. Its central precepts revolve around “drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational psychology, holistic health, parapsychology, consciousness research and quantum physics“ in order to create “a spirituality without borders or confining dogmas” that is inclusive and pluralistic. Another of its primary traits is holding to “a holistic worldview,” thereby emphasizing that the Mind, Body and Spirit are interrelated and that there is a form of Oneness and unity throughout the universe. It further attempts to create “a worldview that includes both science and spirituality” and thereby embraces a number of forms of science and pseudo-science.

That’s an excellent summary of what we were dealing with then—and the entire global community continues to deal with today.  Our judgment was that the NAM was creating a popular alternative to Christianity based on both a misunderstanding of Christianity and of Eastern religion/philosophy.  We saw that people were rejecting the gospel of Jesus Christ by denying human sinfulness and the need of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice for sin and by actually claiming that each person was God in the flesh (via Oneness or Monism).  And the NAM was also making inroads with the big nature agencies like the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society because of its earth-friendly nature and earth-deifying modes of worship—one of the reasons, of course, that conservative Christians rejected both the NAM and active caring for the creation.  And that turned out to be another of our acts of “throwing out of the baby with the bathwater.” (New Age images sources A and B)

In my research for the seminar I discovered a troubling thing about the church.  Much of the appeal of the NAM was directly related to characteristics which were missing in the church and should have been there: understanding the holistic union of mind, body, and spirit; recognizing the need to care for the earth; staying aware of new scientific discoveries and conclusions; valuing personal relationships; and grasping the need for community—community that included the natural world that surrounds us.  It was these lapses in Christianity that Francis Schaeffer said would make pantheism the religion of the Environmental Movement (saying it a good ten years before the NAM burst on the scene).  He was right.

There’s a lot of truth in the New Age Movement—which reminds us that the most important ingredient in deception is the truth it contains.  Satan’s favorite color is not black; it’s off-white.  His Infernal Majesty delights in seeing people come close to Christ but still miss Him.  I’m of the opinion that cults and false religions often have their appeal because they offer something that’s missing in the Christian faith.  The NAM draws in some of its adherents by respecting the Mind of the universe (the one we call God), offering warm and caring personal relationships, centering on the spiritual side of human nature, seeing the importance of caring for creation, “reducing, recycling, and reusing,” celebrating the wonder and mystery of creation while keeping up with scientific findings, praising the virtues of simple living, rejecting the idea that material wealth is what creates happiness, and supporting community sponsored agriculture (CSAs).

Those are all good practices—even Christian practices, and the more we ignore them, the more we may drive people away from Jesus and from the church.  Give some thought this week to incorporating some of these into your own life—while centering on our Creator-Savior: Jesus Christ, the One, sadly, that New Age adherents reject—to their eternal peril.

[Read what Dr. Paul Brand believed about God's good earth in the RBC Ministries booklet of that title.  You can read it online or order a couple copies without cost.  Link: "God's Good Earth" ]

[Go to the ECHO website to see a model Christian agriculture research center, and read about a church that is doing a lot to care for creation and for people here. Read "A Call To a Simpler Life" by its pastor, Tri Robinson.]

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.   We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time (Romans 8:18-21).

Is the earth doomed?  So it would seem from the news.  From oil spills to too much rain to too much heat in the US, to wildfires in Russia, to worst floods in Pakistani history, to the collapse of fisheries throughout the oceans, to continuing drought in Africa—and now to a huge “ice island” breaking off from the Greenland icecap that could barge its way south into shipping lanes and mow down Canadian oil rigs.  Are we now reaping what we’ve sown?  What is the earth telling us?

The truth is that it’s pretty hard to “read” the earth accurately.  It doesn’t give us verbal messages.  But to many ecologists and climatologists it seems to be saying, “I’ve had it with you people; now you’re really going to get it!”  Secular scientists by the score are sinking into deep depression for fear that mankind has caused the earth’s natural equilibrium to go beyond the tipping point and there is no stopping the Great Environmental Crash.  “There is no hope.”  That’s the conclusion of more and more scientific researchers.

Yet there is hope—a hope expressed in the Christian Scriptures that, as far as I know, does not appear in any other faith.  It seems, in fact, that the biblical passage for today is a message for our era—for this very moment in history.  The natural world is groaning both from human abuse and from the curse God placed on it after the Fall, but the apostle Paul tells us that this groaning is from the pain of childbirth—a pain that we know is also filled with the hope and potential of new life.  Because of the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, mankind has been given the opportunity of rescue.  But that same act also made certain that the creation too will be refreshed, restored, reunited, and reconciled to God.  This will happen in full, of course, when Jesus Christ returns to set up His kingdom.  So the earth will be healed for certain.

Note another thing: Paul does not say that the creation is looking for Jesus to return to make things right.  He says that the creation is looking for the time when the true followers of Jesus Christ are finally revealed.  Yes, we know that revelation will happen at the return of Christ, but the joy and expectation of the natural world is linked to God’s children—to God’s people.  We will have something to do with creation’s restoration then. But there’s another point:  God’s children will indeed be revealed in the Consummation, but we are God’s children now.  We know what is good and right now; so we can be doing what is good and right now.

I believe that Francis Schaeffer had it right when he said this about what we should be doing now:

On the basis of the fact that there is going to be total redemption in the future, not only of man but of all creation, the Christian who believes the Bible should be the man who—with God’s help and in the power of the Holy Spirit—is treating nature now in the direction of the way nature will be then.  It will not now be perfect, but is must be substantial, or we have missed our calling.  God’s calling to the Christian now, and to the Christian community, in the area of nature—just as it is in the area of personal Christian living in true spirituality—is that we should exhibit a substantial healing here and now, between man and nature and nature and itself, as far as Christians can bring it to pass.
(Francis Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology, Tyndale House, 1970, pp. 68-69)

If Christians rallied to this call (even forty years late) and became outspoken and hard-working creation champions, I’m convinced that thousands, if not millions, of people without hope might have their ears turned toward the hope expressed in the Word of God—and to its gospel message.  What a wonderful double blessing they could receive: redemption for their souls as well as hope for the earth, God’s good creation.  Isn’t it possible that this dual hope could be the basis of a great turning to Christ in what might be the final agony of creation before its rebirth?

[CBS news photos]

Yesterday’s instructions for accessing my biblical worldview presentation sent you to a non-functioning link.  Sorry.  If you’d like to see it and even download a version of it for your own use, follow the link below:

Click on the title below to bring up the presentation on Slideshare.  To see it full-screen (recommended), click on the “full” screen icon at the bottom right of the presentation box.  To exit, hit your “Esc” button (usually at the top left corner of your keyboard). Then click on the back arrow to return to WOC.

The Biblical Worldview