Sound of Faith

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Greetings, friends and new listeners, and welcome to the Sound of Faith. I'm Sharon Hardy Knotts, thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Today's message is part two of a three-part series I did on Genesis: The Recreation of Heaven and Earth.

In part two, we discuss days two, three, and four. In this exciting account, we discover the greenhouse effect the earth once enjoyed due to a canopy of waters that protected it. We will also learn about the zodiac, how it declares the Gospel, and how it has been corrupted in the Genesis series, part two.

R. G. Hardy: We're going to go right into the Word this morning. I'm a little short on time and I have a lot of material to give to you today. We got a lot of good feedback from last Sunday's message, and we discussed what happened on the recreation of the earth. We talked about how God created it from scratch, but then it became a chaotic wasteland. We talked about how Lucifer's fall plunged the earth into such a chaotic condition that it was nothing but a vast area covered in darkness and water.

We learned how the Spirit of God hovered over the water, dividing the darkness from the light, calling it night and day. We learned that there was a big gap between verse one of Genesis 1 and verse two of Genesis 1. Between the initial creation of the earth in verse one, there was a chaotic, tumultuous, calamitous event when Lucifer fell, and then God recreated the earth in verse two.

We're going to continue in Genesis 1 today. I don't know how many days we'll cover, but we're going to begin today in Genesis chapter 1, verses 6 through 8. "And God said, 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.' And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."

So, let's stop here. The firmament. The Hebrew word is *raqiya*, and it means a vast expanse in the heavens that held up, like a canopy or a great blanket, a band of water. A band of water was being held up by this firmament that God called heaven. Now, I want you to think about this for a minute and try to visualize imagery in your mind.

So, we have this vast blanket or canopy of waters being held up by the sky, which we would be able to see. Now, this would serve as a global greenhouse for the earth. How many know what a greenhouse does? It has an even warm temperature, even in the wintertime. You can grow tomatoes and flowers and such.

If the earth had this greenhouse effect by these waters that were being held up by this firmament, then that means that the earth would have a uniform warm temperature on the whole globe. Without a variation in temperatures, we wouldn't have wind. We wouldn't have wind, and in that case, because we wouldn't have wind, we wouldn't have rain. There would be no cycle of rain.

However, because of the greenhouse effect, there would be evaporation and condensation, evaporation and condensation, and what that would do is it would result in dew forming on the ground. That would bring forth a lush tropical vegetation all over the planet.

Also, this blanket of waters would also filter out the ultraviolet radiation from the sun, the cosmic rays that bombard us all the time now, causing mutations in the gene pool. It causes many people to get skin cancer and other cancers from the ultraviolet rays. Therefore, if there was this blanket of waters filtering out those rays, we wouldn't have the gene mutations. We wouldn't have the ultraviolet rays and the cosmic rays beaming down on us, and there would be a long lifespan.

There would be longevity of life. That would be what would happen when that canopy of water existed. However, this huge, humungous canopy of waters would also provide an enormous and incalculable amount of water needed if there was ever going to be a worldwide global flood.

Now, there are many verses throughout your Old Testament that speak about the firmament, and I'll quickly just give you some of them. In Job, there are a lot of verses about the creation, even God speaking in the first person, because He was asking Job, "Hey Job, where were you when I created?" And then God goes through a whole lot of things that happened. But we read that it says that God spread out the heavens, and that would be in Job 9:8 and Job 37:18.

In Psalm 104:2, it says God covers Himself with light as a garment, and He stretches out the heavens like a curtain. That's why I like to use the word canopy. Think of that curtain that's holding up all this water. Psalm 136:6 says to Him that stretched out the earth above the waters. Psalm 148:4 says praise Him, you heavens and you waters that be above the heavens.

Isaiah 40:22, God sits upon the circle of the earth that stretches the heavens as a curtain and spreads them out as a tent. Again, that idea of a canopy. I like the fact that it said God sits on the circle of the earth. Do you know that there are people today that belong to the Flat Earth Society? I mean, I could understand it back then if they had a Flat Earth Society.

But today? And you say, "Don't you see all the pictures from space?" No, all that's all rigged by the government. But the Bible tells us that the earth was a circle. Tells you right here God sits upon it. Isaiah 48:13, "My hand has also laid the foundation of the earth, and My right hand has spanned the heavens." I like this: "When I call unto them, they stand up."

You know, that fits in with my message I brought out a lot last week. God just spoke and His voice went out and gathered the atoms and brought everything together and created whatever He said. Jeremiah 10:12, He has made the earth by His power, He has established the world by His wisdom, and has stretched out the heavens by His discretion, in other words, by His understanding.

God had a purpose in making this canopy of water, all of the things I just mentioned about the greenhouse effect it would have been upon the earth, because when God created the earth, He made it such a beautiful, beautiful planet. Job 26:7, He stretches out the north over the empty place and hangs the earth upon nothing.

I really like this one. It goes right in with what I preached last week from Genesis, where it says and the earth was void and without form. Remember I gave you the Hebrew words? What were they? *Tohu bohu*. That's easy to remember. Say *tohu bohu*. See, you speak Hebrew now. So, it meant it was a void, empty place covered with darkness and water, but God stretched out over that empty place.

He stretched out the heavens. Where it says and it hangs upon nothing, okay, so how is the earth hanging upon nothing? Oh, this is another one of my favorite verses I gave you last week. We know in Hebrews 11:3, it says He created everything by the Word of His power. What is the Greek word for Word? *Rhema*. Thank you, *rhema*, the spoken word.

And then I told you Hebrews 1:3 says He not only created it by *rhema*, the spoken word, but He upholds it by the *rhema*, the spoken word of His power. We just gotta try to get this idea in our little puny minds, that He spoke and it was created. And now, all of these millennia later, we don't know how much later for sure, but they're still hearing His Word and they're still being hung there by His Word.

When I read this here in Job, it says He hung it on nothing because the nothing is something. It's not something visible, but it's His spoken word. They still hear Him speaking and they stay in their orbits. The earth doesn't move half a degree one way or the other. If it did, we'd either be a fireball or an iceball and life on earth would be uninhabitable. But He spoke them where to go and they still hear that command and they stay right where they belong.

So, here I have a question. What happened to this canopy, to this curtain, this thing that God created on day two? What happened to this that was holding up all those waters? Because we know the earth is not moderately warm all over, is it? I mean, think Siberia. So, we do have wind on the earth, do we not? Oh, yes. We not only have wind, sometimes we have great winds in the form of typhoons and cyclones and tornadoes and hurricanes.

And there are places on the earth where there is no vegetation. It's just dirt or sand. And we know that we're suffering now from the ultraviolet rays of the sun, especially people that live below the equator. And I'll even say this especially lighter-skinned people have to be more careful. For instance, on the continent of Australia, they have a lot of skin cancer there, a very high percentage of skin cancer because of the fair-skinned people getting all that light.

And I know myself, I do not dare go out without high SPF on because I had a little spot on my nose and I didn't know what it was. It was like a scale that just never went away. I'd exfoliate, it'd always come back. And I finally went to see about it and they told me it wasn't cancer, but it was like precancer, but they removed it and you can't even tell it. But so now, you know, that dermatologist said, "Don't you dare go outside without SPF on."

He told me, you know, I need to cover everything and I thought, you know, I gotta get a little bit of sun so your body can get some vitamin D. But I'm very cognizant of this. And we know the human gene pool has been marred with disease and there are shortened lifespans. Man does not live anywhere near the time after creation.

I threw that question out there, but before we answer it, turn into chapter 2 of Genesis and let's look at verse 4. "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground."

So, we learn here there was no rain. When God created Adam and put him in the garden to till the garden and take care of it, Adam never saw rain. And it did not rain for 1,656 years. Let me show you when it rained. Turn into Genesis chapter 7 and look at verse 11. "In the six 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. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights."

The first mention of rain in the Bible is right here. Because not only were the fountains of the deep in the water in the oceans, God released fountains of water shooting up, but it said the windows of heaven were opened. And God pulled back those curtains. Let's look at chapter 8, verse 1. "And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged; the fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained."

So, this is what happened to that canopy of water that God had created on day two. When He sent the flood in the time of Noah and the earth, the entire globe was covered in water, covered like the depths of the ocean. Because simultaneously, the deep, deep fountains in the seas released their water and at the same time, God opened the heavens and allowed that canopy to fall down on the earth.

I can only think of one word: inundation. So that the earth was totally covered, and this meant that there was a global flood, an entire global flood that covered the entire globe. But to seal His promise after He brought Noah and his family out of the ark when finally the earth had dried enough for them to come out, God sealed a promise that He would never again release that kind of water on the earth for a global flood.

Oh, there are local floods, but I'm talking about a global flood that destroyed every living thing. Go to chapter 9, let's look at verse 11. "And I will establish My covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, 'This is the token of the covenant which I make between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.'"

So, God said, "I'll never again destroy the entire earth with a flood." You know, I have to imagine after Noah and his family were on the earth and began to set up their home again and go to a normal life and begin to plant food and such, I can imagine that the first time it rained, he was probably really looking up there for that rainbow. He was probably thinking, "Lord, where is that rainbow?" It probably took a few times before they could relax and realize God keeps His promises.

And he was looking up there for those beautiful colors: red and orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The rainbow. The rainbow is God's token. Some people have taken it and corrupted it, but it belongs to God, and we need to claim it back. It's His promise. And do you know that right after the flood, the lifespan of man dropped 200 years? Right away, it dropped 200 years.

And within four generations after that, it dropped another 200 years. So we can see that the removal of that canopy of water and the loss of that greenhouse effect greatly influenced the earth. And also, we can assume that the flood probably did a lot of damage to the soil and probably caused it to lose a lot of its nutrients. And I also say this because of the fact that God then told Noah, "Hereon, you and your family can eat meat." Up until that time, they were vegetarians. They ate no meat. How many knew that? Only after the flood did they start eating meat because God understood, He knew that they had lost a lot of nutrients. Imagine all that water, the effect it would have had on the soil. And that's why they were allowed to eat meat after that.

So, that was what we see here that happened on day two. We'll go back to Genesis 1, verse 8. "And the evening and the morning were the second day." So now, let's go to verse 9. "And God said, 'Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear': and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas: and God saw that it was good."

So, you see it's plural there for the seas. And God saw that it was good. So, by this time, there's a lot more water on the earth than there was when God created it. And I didn't check it, but I believe that the earth is like 70% water today. It's about 70% water, the oceans and the seas. And God gathered them and separated them.

I like what God's asking Job. "Okay, Job, where were you? Can you answer this question: who shut up the sea with doors?" That means God put boundaries around the sea. Job 26:10, He surrounded the waters with boundaries. Psalm 104:9, You set a bound that they may not pass over. So God put the seas and the oceans where He wanted them, and He gave them verbal commands: you can go this far and no further.

It's only when there is like a volcano that erupts under the water that then you get that tsunami effect and they overflow the land. But they have their boundaries. So, we ended verse 10 saying, and God saw that it was good. I want you to think about this. This is day three, right? It was the third day, did we not see that? And God said that it was good.

So, if it's day three here and God saw that it was good, it's only the second time that God said that. Are you thinking about this a moment? Day one, God said, and it was good. Day two, that was verse 8, and the evening and the morning were the second day. Period. Let's go on to day three. Ah, God did not say it was good on day two. Did you catch that?

So, why did He not say it was good on day two? He said it was good on day one. God said let there be light and there was light and God saw the light and it was good. When we did day two, we don't see anything about Him saying it was good. But now we're on day three and God says it was good. He didn't bless day two and say that it was good. So, the question is why?

All right, I'm going to give you one good answer. Ephesians 6:12, "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in," King James says "high places," but the Greek means "the heavens," *epouranios*, the heavens. In the heavens. Ah, who's ruling in the second heaven? Satan. We learned about his fall. He used to be Lucifer, the beautiful covering cherub, but he fell and took one-third of the angels with him, we learned last week. And so now he's ruling in the second heavens. He's not ruling in the pit. He's going to the pit eventually. Revelation tells us he's going to get thrown in the pit, but he's not there yet.

Sharon Hardy Knotts: I hope you are following us in this comprehensive study from my Genesis series, part two, The Recreation Days 2 through 4. In this eye-opening account, we discuss the greenhouse effect of the firmament that once covered the earth, making it a virtual paradise with universal warm temperatures and lush vegetation before there was rain.

What happened to the firmament that altered this canopy of waters? You may be surprised to learn that day two is the only day God did not speak of His handiwork saying, "It is good." Why? Find out who is entrenched in the heavens and why God did not bless this day. The Bible forbids astrology and consulting the signs of the zodiac because they are corrupted by Satan.

Yet Scripture says, "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows forth His handiwork." Discover what each of the twelve signs of the zodiac really relate in the story of Messiah, the serpent's demise, and man's redemption. If you'd like more of this teaching, the entire three-part series is available on three CDs for your love gift of only $20 or more for the radio ministry.

You will receive part one, The Recreation of Heaven and Earth, part two, Recreation Days 2 through 4, and part three, Recreation Days 5 through 7. Send your minimum love gift of $20 to Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203, or go to our e-store at soundoffaith.org, where MP3s are also available. But to order the Genesis series, the complete set of three CDs by mail, send your love gift of $20 or more to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203, request SK777. Until next time, this is Sharon Hardy Knotts saying, "Maranatha."