More Than Medicine
More Than Medicine
DWDP: Let there be an Expanse
Can science and faith coexist, or are they forever at odds? Join me, Dr. Robert Jackson, as I recount my personal journey of harmonizing Darwin's evolutionary theory with the biblical account of creation. Through the insights of creation scientists like Dwayne Gish and Henry Morris, I've found a balance that strengthens my faith and offers a new lens through which to view the wonders of Genesis. In our exploration of Genesis verses 6 through 8, we turn to scriptures like Psalms 33:6-9 and 1 Corinthians 2:14 to unveil how spiritual truths often require faith as a precursor to understanding, much like a child's first moment of clarity when grasping a complex concept.
We then venture into the intriguing waters of the water vapor canopy model proposed by Henry Morris. Imagine a world where a celestial canopy creates a greenhouse effect, explaining the pre-flood lushness and the astonishing lifespans of biblical figures. We navigate the potential climate implications of this model and address various objections, drawing parallels to modern hyperbaric treatments that might just hold the key to its feasibility. Finally, we invite you to join our community of faith, sharing the journey with friends and family through our podcast, and engaging with the resources of the Jackson Family Ministry. Let's continue to explore the timeless messages of the Bible, together.
https://www.jacksonfamilyministry.com
https://bobslone.com/home/podcast-production/
Welcome to More Than Medicine, where Jesus is more than enough for the ills that plague our culture and our country. Hosted by author and physician, Dr Robert Jackson.
Speaker 2:Papa, can you tell me a story? Do you really want me to tell you a story? Well, you go, get your brother and your sisters and I will tell you a story. Well, you go, get your brother and your sisters and I will tell you a story. Welcome to Devotions with Dr Papa. Grab your Bibles, gather around and let's look into the written Word, which reveals to us the living Word which is our Lord Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2:We're continuing today in our study of the book of Genesis. We're still in chapter 1, and today we approach verses 6 through 8. Let me read these verses to you Genesis, chapter 1, verse 6 through 8. Then God said Let there be an expanse. Now, if you grew up reading the King James Version like I did, that word expanse is firmament. Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters. God made the firmament, and this New American Standard Bible says expanse. God made the expanse and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse, and it was so. God called the expanse heaven, and there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
Speaker 2:Now, when I was in college back in the mid to late 1970s, as I'm sure many of you were, darwin's evolutionary dogma, his evolutionary theory, was being taught as accomplished fact, which disturbed me greatly as a young Christian. I understood even then that evolutionary teaching was not accomplished fact. I understood that it was a theory, but it was being taught in the classroom as if it were factual, and that caused me a great deal of distress, of distress. The professors brooked no digression or dispute or debate in the classrooms and, of course, a lot of my classrooms had 200 students, so there was really no room for discussion or debate. I was fortunate, though, at that time, that there were a group of Christian scientists they called themselves creation scientists who were looking at the scriptures and looking at science through the lens of scripture and beginning to write and publish their perspective, and it was a biblical creation perspective, and it was so refreshing for me as a young Christian because it bolstered my faith. I wanted to be scientific and I wanted to study the sciences, but I did not want to discard my biblical faith, so I was thankful for Dwayne Gish and Henry Morris and others like them who were publishing their research, and we'll talk about a little bit of that today in our discussion During that.
Speaker 2:Well, let me read to you a scripture passage from the book of Psalms, chapter 33, verses 6 through 9. It says that by the word of the Lord the heavens were made and by the breath of his mouth all their host. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap. He lays up the deeps in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him, for he spoke and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast. Now, that's exactly what Genesis, chapter 1, is telling us that God merely spoke and the heavens and the earth sprang into existence. He created everything out of nothing and he did so merely by speaking the Word.
Speaker 2:Now, many years ago, I heard a statement that said I never would have seen it unless I had believed it. Now, ponder that a moment. I never would have seen it unless I had believed it. Now, you see, that's the opposite of what we most often hear. That phrase usually says I wouldn't have believed it unless I'd seen it. Well, you see, in the spiritual realm it's the other way around I never would have seen it unless I had believed it.
Speaker 2:1 Corinthians, 2.14 says the natural. Man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for their foolishness to him, neither would he understand it, because they are spiritually discerned. And you see, there are lots of things in the Word of God and actually a lot of things in the physical realm that cannot be understood except with the eyes of faith. Faith comes before sight. Faith comes before seeing spiritual truth, faith comes before comprehending spiritual truth. Holy Spirit gives spiritual illumination, holy Spirit gives spiritual insight, and that's why you and I need to refrain from debating or arguing with our lost friends about controversial issues like creation and debate, like transgender issues, like abortion versus pro-life.
Speaker 2:We must do like Billy Graham's daughter, anne Graham Lott said. She always says give them Jesus. We have to give them Jesus first because, you see, when they are born again into the kingdom of God, holy Spirit gives them spiritual life and on the heels of that he gives them spiritual eyes to accept spiritual truth. Prior to that, it's like trying to explain the sun to a blind man. Have you ever seen a third grader suddenly get it, suddenly understand something like the multiplication table? Or trying to explain to them something about the physical sciences? And then all of a sudden they get it and they'll say oh, now I see. Well, you see, the same thing happens with your lost friend when he's suddenly transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God's beloved son. All of a sudden they will see with spiritual eyes and they become automatically pro-life, automatically pro-life. All of a sudden they're against transitioning young boys and girls into something that they're not. All of a sudden they become pro-life advocates and suddenly they believe automatically that God can speak the heavens and the earth into existence merely by saying the word, and they need no convincing. You see, holy Spirit persuades them.
Speaker 2:Now let's go to our lesson for today and let's look at these verses, which are so preposterous to the lost mind but altogether conceivable to the mind of somebody that's been illumined by Holy Spirit, when the Bible says that God said let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters. Now I want to read a little paragraph from Henry Morris's book the Genesis Record. On the first day, the earth was still of dominantly watery aspect. Other materials were in solution or suspension. Sounds like a scientist talking, doesn't it? Presumably, with the water, mainly in the liquid state, some of these waters were to be separated from the greater mass of waters, however, and placed high above the rotating globe, with a great space separating them from the waters below. The lower waters would provide the water base for living flesh and for earth processes. The upper waters would provide a sort of protective canopy as the psalmist said, a tent to dwell in for earth's inhabitants, and the space would provide an atmospheric reservoir to maintain the breath of life.
Speaker 2:The power required to effect such a tremendous separation once again came from God's spoken word Let there be a firmament or expanse in the midst of the waters. Now, that was Henry Morris, just speaking from a scientific perspective. So now we need some definitions. Firmament there's that King James Version word that I grew up with. In the Hebrew word there is rakia R-A-Q-I-A rakia, and it literally means expanse, and that's the word we see in the New American Standard Bible, and it literally means spread out thinness, spread out thinness, and it correlates to our modern word for space. Space is like a technical term and the expanse correlates to the word space. And in verse 8, the Bible says that God called the firmament or the expanse heaven. Now we need to explain this word heaven a little bit.
Speaker 2:Expanse and heaven are synonymous terms and both mean space, either space in general or, depending on the context, sometimes a particular region of space. And there are three particular heavens or regions of space that are mentioned in Scripture. For example, there's the atmospheric heavens In Jeremiah, chapter 4 and verse 25, it talks about the atmospheric heavens where the birds fly. And then there's the sidereal heaven In Isaiah, chapter 13 and verse 10, it talks about the heavens where the stars are located. And that's what that word sidereal means. It means of or relating to the stars and the planets, and the Bible often refers to the sidereal heaven where the stars are located. And then there's the heavens of God's throne, and Hebrews 9, verse 24, refers to the heaven where God's throne is located. And then there's the term the highest heaven, and that's also used referring to the entire universe of space. It comprises all spaces.
Speaker 2:In 2 Chronicles 2, verse 6, refers to the heaven of heavens or the highest heaven. So the context in this passage in Genesis, chapter 1, makes it plain that the expanse or heavens referred to here here is the atmospheric heaven. So the atmosphere is separating the waters below from the waters above, and the two bodies of water were ready for the uh, essential, their essential function in sustaining life on the earth in the future, ie in the next few days. Now I want you to understand that back in the 70s, when I was in college, it was so encouraging to me that there were scientists like Henry Morris and others that were proposing scientific models by these creation scientists that would explain what was happening here when the waters above were separated from the waters below, and, you know, nobody really understood what that meant, but they were making scientific models that they proposed that would explain what was happening here.
Speaker 2:So one of the models that they explained way back then was called the water vapor canopy model, and what they proposed was that there would be a. There was way back when, of course, nobody was there. Then no scientist was there. Way back then Only God was there, and so this was a. Then no scientist was there. Way back then Only God was there, and so this was a model, and it was a model proposed based on their understanding of the way things are today, and it was called the water vapor canopy model and they proposed that there was a transparent.
Speaker 2:And they proposed that there was a transparent water vapor canopy all over the earth and it allowed the light of the heavenly bodies to penetrate. And of course the Bible says that the lights of the stars and the moon were given for light upon the earth and they were given for signs and for seasons and for days and for years. So it could not have been clouds, it couldn't have been fog, it couldn't have been ice crystals, because all of these things contained water droplets or ice crystals and they would have been opaque. So it had to be some kind of transparent water vapor that would allow the light of the sun, the moon and the stars to penetrate so that you could utilize the sun, moon and stars for signs, for seasons, for days and for years, because that's what they were given for. And so there's a list of benefits that Dr Morris lists in his book that I'd like to share with you and kind of gives a description of what he, in his model, thinks the world would have been like if there were a water vapor canopy.
Speaker 2:And this is just a model that he proposed, and he thinks that the water vapor canopy would have had the ability to transmit the incoming solar radiation so that you had the seasons and the days, etc. But it would retain and disperse much of the radiation reflected from the Earth's surface and it would serve as a like a global greenhouse effect and it would maintain essentially a uniform, pleasant, warm temperature all over the Earth. So the whole Earth would be like a greenhouse and with uniform temperatures that would prevent wind storms and hurricanes and tornadoes and all the things that we see on planet Earth today, and there'd be no global air circulation like what we see today, and so everything would have a uniform temperature and there would be no rain and instead there would be a heavy dew that would fall every night and there would be like a lush tropical paradise all over the planet with large plants. All the animals would grow, probably some of them to very large size, would grow probably to some of them to very large size and, interestingly, the people would be protected from harmful radiation because of the water canopy which would allow them to live to very old age, which in fact is what happened before the flood. The Bible tells us lots of people lived 600 to 900 years of age.
Speaker 2:And some people object to this water canopy theory because they theorize that the canopy would create a great high atmospheric pressure, which Dr Morris says would actually be salubrious and healthful, because the high pressure would create a healthy environment and, as you know, in modern science today, doctors place patients in hyperbaric chambers to treat things like non-healing wounds. So high pressure can be very healthy. And if people had lived in that high pressure environment all of their lives, well, their bodies would have adapted to it so that water canopy would have provided a large reservoir of water in the upper atmosphere that God would have used when the great flood came. In fact, the Bible says that God opened the windows of the heavens and the fountains of the deep when the flood came. So where did all that water come from when he opened the windows of the heavens? Well, it came from that water vapor canopy that surrounded the planet. Now, all of that's just a theory. It's just a proposed scientific model. That model has all manner of issues that other scientists have proposed and have discredited that model.
Speaker 2:But all I'm saying is that when I was a college student, it was intriguing to me that there were scientists who were looking at the Scripture that were proposing models that would explain this verse of Scripture where God separated the waters above from the waters below and they created the expanse that was in the middle.
Speaker 2:And God made the expanse and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above, and he named it heaven. And then there was evening and there was morning, a second day, and there's that formula again morning and evening, another day, a 24-hour period of time. And, just like I explained to you before, when God spoke the word and created the expanse, nobody said a word because there was no one there to say anything at all. You're listening to Devotions with Dr Papa and I'm your host, dr Robert Jackson. If you like what you hear, I pray that you would share it with your friends and your family, that you would like it share it, follow or download, and we'll be back again next week to look at the next verses in Genesis, chapter one, where once again God will speak something into existence.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this edition of More Than Medicine. For more information about the Jackson Family Ministry, dr Jackson's books, or to schedule a speaking engagement, go to their Facebook page, instagram or their webpage at jacksonfamilyministrycom. This podcast is produced by Bob Sloan Audio Production at bobsloancom.
