Just Noticed Something . . .

I love when this happens! God and His Word are amazing . . .

I have for awhile believed that Psalm 104 is referencing the global flood of Noah* and giving us an amazing description of the topographic changes that occurred in this upheaval of judgment—giving us all the description we need to be confident in the flood as the defining element in explaining the geography around us. It says in verses 5–9:

He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved. You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.   ESV

Note that it says the mountains rose and the valleys sank down. It makes sense to me that the earth would have been created a lot more "mild" in terrain then we see it now as our command was to take dominion over it, so it needed to be accessible. But after the curse, and then the flood of judgment, it became far more harsh and inaccessible, and Creation groans awaiting redemption. I believe these verses give us a very real and literal description of a geographic season when the entire earth was transformed dramatically in a very short time, not in the long periods of time evolutionists require who don't believe in the flood or its ensuing changes.

But . . . I also believe that far more of the Old Testament then we probably realize is, while being true and literal, also a picture and foreshadow of Christ to come, and this morning in my reading through the Bible I saw something in a passage I'd never seen before. In Luke 3 it says of John the Baptist that he will preach ahead of Jesus and and fulfill the words of Isaiah. It says these words are:

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness:  'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"   (Luke 3:4-6, ESV)

So, in the flood of judgement the mountains rose and the valleys sank down . . . and in Christ, the one who takes from us God's judgement, "Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways."

Wow! This spiritual picture of what Christ did for us is amazing! God has become accessible, Christ has carried and become the curse, and the path to and for God is made! What man was cut off from is now available. Isn't that amazing!

God is so good, and what He has done in and for us so amazing, and His Word so rich and deep and valuable and inspired! Thanks, Lord, for all!

* Some people believe these verses describe Creation, but I don't think that's possible because it says of the waters, "You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth." and if that was Creation then it is a lie, because clearly they did in the global flood of Noah, but never again after that due to God's promise sealed in the rainbow. For other posts in which I've talked about Psalm 104 see this and this. As a note that meant something to me, I was really encouraged after reading different commentaries that ascribe Psalm 104 to Creation to read Michael Oard's books on Creation (he is an atmospheric scientist that defends a literal Genesis reading) and find that he agrees with me that the Psalm has to be talking about the flood.

As High as the Heavens . . .

This collection of five photos from the Hubble Space Telescope is awesome and I wanted to share it with you! (I love just cruising the Hubble site and looking in wonder on what God has created, and I have over a gigabyte of photos from them on my hard drive! I put a link to the Hubble site below.)

The Bible says that the heavens declare the glory of our God and the heavens are, indeed, massive and glorious beyond our ability to fathom or comprehend. I tried to keep this picture small enough to not clog your internet, but large enough for you to see some detail. Try clicking on it to enlarge it and see if that helps. For the image in this post I brought their 5-picture sequence into a draw program and put in the arrows to help it make sense. In a nutshell, in each case the "next" picture in the sequence is an enlargement of the small square in the previous picture. So, if you follow it across and then down, the last picture is probably not even a visible fraction of the first picture! And this is all in just one tiny slice of the sky we could probably cover with our tiniest finger nail! Wow, when Isaiah writes, "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Is 55:9) it really makes us pause and wonder!

Our family has been watching a lot of Creation videos lately and one thing that really comes through in them is just how immense our known universe is. There are billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy alone, and there are billions of galaxies, each with their own collection of billions of stars . . . and as the heavens are higher than earth (higher than we can even fathom!) so are His ways and thoughts higher than ours! It really gives us some pause for thought. What comfort to know I am trusting my life to a God so huge and wonderful and glorious! (Note: as of 1999 the Hubble Space Telescope people were estimating there were 125 billion galaxies . . . and that was 10 years ago!) I find that if I can keep the size of things like this in perspective in my mind the things in this life that seem really big to me often just shrink as a result.

Enjoy the picture! Let me know if you like this and I can share some more of my favorite Hubble pictures. If you want to cruise the Hubble site (awesome pictures, not so accurate date estimates) the link to a good starting page is: http://www.spacetelescope.org/bin/images.pl?searchtype=bestof . I also have posted quite a few of my favorites on our church web site in the Photo Gallery section in an album called, "The Heavens Declare."

(Also, you may have noticed, I added a few fun widgets to the blog that should be neat to watch as the blog grows. One is a live activity feed which shows where people are visiting from. There is also one that shows the most recent comments. At the bottom of each post a widget now suggests other posts I've done that it senses are similar and that might interest you if that one did, and there is another that shows some of the different tags that I have used for posts. You can click on any of the tags shown and it will show you other posts which have that same tag. Let me know how you like these widgets, I thought they were fun.)