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Ex Nihilo

By November 7, 2011August 30th, 2022Lost in Translation

I almost didn’t write a post this evening – I couldn’t think of a single thing to write about. Janet is still in Williamsburg, I have been busy working all day, nothing really interesting has happened and I was just about ready to think about bagging the post for today and coming back at it tomorrow.

Don’t get me wrong – I love writing TBTB, but I never want it to be forced and if I can’t think of appropriate subject matter, I’ll cut down the days I write each week and see how that goes. Anyway, I finally sat down to face the blank page and as is my custom, I shot up a quick arrow prayer to God – something like, “Alright Lord, how do I create something out of nothing?” And the answer came back loud and clear – God created everything out of nothing and therein lies one of the greatest miracles of all.

Because the entire foundation of the world was created by God, and although it is beyond our feeble minds to comprehend it, God did not re-arrange other matter, or take some other universe and create our world – he did it “ex nihilo” (pronounced ex nee-low) – meaning that he created something out of nothing. Now to us, that just doesn’t make sense – after all, we can turn water to steam, or water to ice, but we still start with water. But God didn’t – he started with nothing and created everything.

Now the scientists among us are probably saying that this is impossible, but at the risk of quoting Scripture, from Luke 1:37, “…nothing is impossible with God.” Just because we can’t understand it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. So what’s the truth here? Did God really create the “heavens and the earth” ex nihilo? Or did he cheat a little bit and just rearrange some things?

And if God did create the world from nothing, where did God come from? Who created Him? Well, although it may not seem to be much of an answer, God has always existed – no beginning and no end – eternity backward and eternity forward. And God is the only being that can claim this. By the way, God includes Christ and the Holy Spirit – the Godhead – the Trinity – the three distinct parts of the Trinity – separate but fully together.

As hard as we try, we just can’t physically prove that God has always existed. To be sure, that’s because other than God Himself, nothing else existed and so we don’t have any eyewitnesses or reports to verify the voracity of what God claims. We call that faith – from Heb. 11:1, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Get it? Certain of what we do not see….. In other words, as Christians we believe that God has always existed because we have faith that God’s word is true. And that’s what He claims. At the same time, that’s what makes it so tough for some people to just accept the claims of God. Because the existence of God is something that defies explanation in our physical world. And even if you can get past that one, what about the idea that God created everything – including us, from nothing?

Well, once you accept the fact that somewhere in the equation it is necessary to quit depending on your own senses and just believe, you have reached the beginning of the understanding of the concept of “ex nihilo.” God is so awesome, so omniscient, so all powerful, that He spoke the entire thing into existence. That’s right – spoke… He didn’t dig with a shovel, or lay out blueprints, or hire a bunch of angels to do His bidding – he “worked” by speaking everything into existence.

So, assuming you can accept the teaching here – and I know that I’m asking you to take a small leap of faith – here’s how it happened: God, the Trinity, has always existed – just accept it – because you can’t prove it and neither can I. He created the angels, from nothing, including Lucifer, considered to be the most powerful angel, who later competed with God, fell from his position and became known to us as Satan.

Then, when God was ready to interact with Man, the first verse of the Bible, our verse for tonight, Gen. 1:1, tells us, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” After the creation story, before the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden, who was there with Adam and Eve? – yep, Satan, in the form of a serpent. So Satan had to fall from the legions of angels before the creation of the world. By the way, that makes Satan an angel – admittedly a fallen angel – but an angel nonetheless.

My encouragement this evening is to let you know that you can trust God. When you have doubts about whether what He says is true – just believe. Chalk it up to the fact that our minds are just too small to understand some things. And my prayer is that you will take your concerns to God and that He will send you a miracle – something that will convince you that what He claims about Himself is true. Because in this day and age, the church has been given the mandate by God to be his emissaries. And in order to influence others to believe, it is important that we believe first. Have a great day!

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