In Lesson # 14 we should
have learned:
1.
That God always was.
2.
That God created heaven and earth.
3.
That the old heaven will be replaced by a new heaven in the end.
4.
That the perfect earth, which God created, was laid waste by Satan.
5.
That Satan was on the Holy Mountain of God and that he walked in the
Garden of Eden.
When we concluded Lesson #
14 we were discussing Ezekiel 28: 12-19. Please
open your Bibles to that passage now and read verse 15: “Thou
wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou was created, till iniquity was
found in thee”
There are many proofs in
the Bible that Satan was in Eden. The best known one is found in the Genesis
account of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. (Genesis 3: 1-7) In these
passage he is described as being the serpent. But there is a better one found in
the Book of Job. “Now there was a day
when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came
also among them. And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan
answered the Lord and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up
and down in it.” (Job 1: 6-7)
If Satan was in Eden, it is
obvious he had some familiarity with the earth. We believe Satan was given the
earth to be his private domain. After
all, He was chosen by God to be the anointed Cherub wasn’t he? “Thou
art the anointed Cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so…” (Ezekiel
28: 14) But when iniquity was found in him. (Ezekiel 28: 15)
God could not allow him to stay in such an exalted position so he was
“kicked out” of God’s heaven, given his own heaven above the earth and was
made the god of this world.
That’s a lot of
information to swallow, so let’s look at the paragraph above very carefully.
God kicked Satan out of heaven
Where do we find proof of
that? Look at Isaiah 14: 12-17. Notice the passage begins with “How
art thou fallen (kicked out) from
heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground,
which didst weaken the nations!” There
are two proofs here:
1.
Lucifer, another name for Satan, fell from heaven.
2.
He fell down to the ground.
Then Isaiah goes on
to tell us in verses 13-14 the reason why God dismissed Satan from His presence.
These reasons coincide with the statement in Ezekiel 28: 15 “till
iniquity was found in thee.” Let’s look at the reasons, there are five
of them in Isaiah 14: 13-14: “For thou
hast said in thine heart:
1.
“I will ascend into heaven,
2.
“I will exalt my throne above
the stars of God:
3.
“I will sit also upon the mount
of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
4.
“I will ascend above the heights
of the clouds;
5.
“I will be like the most High.”
Because Satan was so
smart and so beautiful (Thou sealest up
the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.” (Ezekiel 28: 12)) He
became a very prideful being. God does not like it (is jealous) when men, or any
created being, think they are equal or better than He is and pride is the number
one item on God’s hate list. Yes, God does have a hate list. “These
six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto Him,
2.
“A lying tongue,
3.
“And hands that shed innocent
blood,
4.
“An heart that deviseth wicked
imaginations,
5.
“Feet that be swift in running
to mischief,
6.
“A false witness that speaketh
lies,
7.
“And he that soweth discord
among brethren.”
So God stripped Satan of
his position of authority, kicked him out of the mountain of God and created
another heaven from which he would operate. (We will discus that in detail in
another lesson.) But we are discussing the reason why the earth was laid waste
and must get back to that thought.
We believe that Satan and
his followers, the group of angels that believed Satan would usurp God’s
position, ravaged God’s perfectly created earth. We believe this took place
before Genesis 1: 2. Once God had seen the destruction of His perfect creation,
I believe He destroyed the earth with a flood that pre-dates Noah’s flood. And
I believe that verse two validates that. Let’s look at the rest of the verse.
“…and darkness was upon the face of
the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
In order to fully
understand my premise of a flood before Noah’s flood we need to define the
face of the deep, this we will do with Scripture.
Job 38: 30 says: “The
waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.”
Whatever the deep is, I know that the face of it is frozen. But where is this “face of the deep” located? The answer
to that is – before the throne of God. (Revelation 4: 6) “And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal…”
Question, what does frozen water look like?
It glistens like crystal, doesn’t it? I believe there was a massive
area of water just under the mountain of God and that the face of it was frozen.
“You’re stretching the truth there,” you say. Am I? Let’s see if I am.
In order to prove my point
I want to go to a passage of Scripture that indicates from whence the waters of
Noah’s flood came. Genesis 7: 11: “In
the sixth hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth
day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken
up, and the windows of heaven were opened.”
If that is not enough, let
me quote another passage of Scripture: “Praise
Him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens,”
(Psalms 148: 4)
Let’s look at that
graphically.
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God's Throne
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Face of the Deep
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The Deep
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Water
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Water
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Heaven
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Water
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Earth
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What do we have here? We
have the earth covered with water, a heaven separating the waters that covered
the earth from another body of water that we call the Deep; the face of the
deep, which is before the throne of God, is frozen.
Then Genesis 1: 2 continues
with: “And the Spirit of God moved upon
the face of the waters.”
In conclusion, Genesis 1: 2
tells us about the earth becoming something other than what God intended – it
was laid waste. I believe the
reason it became such a disaster was the work of the Devil. So God flooded the
earth and re-created it. (That will be discussed in another lesson.)
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