Updates from Edwin Croyle

“And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.’   So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he them, male and female created he them….And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (KJV).

(Forgive me for posting a picture of myself, but I am an example of a man who was molded by the hands of God, a man who had the breath of life breathed into him by God.   From that moment, the moment of my creation, not the moment of my birth, I became an eternal being loved by God.   Your picture inserted here would be just as valid.)

These three verses seem to establish rather clearly my relationship with God.  I was made in His image.  All of us, men and women, have been made in His image and have had the breath of God breathed into us.  Throughout creation we are told that “God said,” and it came into being.  Not so with the ones chosen to be His companions, the ones with whom He would fellowship.  He molded us with His hands.  With those He molded, you and I, He BREATHED HIS BREATH INTO OUR LUNGS.   How special is that?  We have been formed by the hands of God, and we have had the very breath of life, the breath of God, breathed into our lungs.  When He formed us with His hands, He made us to be like Him, unlike anything else.  We were set apart from the beginning.  And when He breathed His breath into us, He made us His forever.  How can anyone or anything ever be as close to God as those he created for His pleasure.  If we are created for His pleasure, then He desires that we return His love willingly.   Thus He gave us free will—free will to love Him or not.  He also gave free will to the angels.  

When God created the universe, He did not create evil, but evil was present in the mind of satan who exercised his free will to attempt a coup.  He wanted to become god.  From the beginning, satan lost the war and a place was created for him and his followers—a place just about as opposite from the Garden of Eden as possible—a place called hell.  All who choose sin, opposition to God, will be assigned to hell for eternity.  

Soon after Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden, satan began his scheme.  He tempted them by asking questions about God and what He said.  He pushed for an answer that was not quite what God said, but similar enough that Adam and Eve were deceived and gave the answer he wanted.  They stretched the words God said, and they allowed satan to convince them that God didn’t really mean to keep them from knowing the difference between good and evil.  So they sinned, and by doing so, separated themselves from God.  They were dismissed from the Garden of Eden, and the gate was locked.  

But because God loved mankind, a way back to His side was put into play.  God sent His Son, Jesus, to earth to receive on Himself all the sins of all of mankind and pay the penalty for all of them.  Jesus’ human body died, and He went to hell.  He went there in the place of all of us who have sinned, a unanimous condition of mankind.  What satan saw as his greatest victory, turned out to be his greatest defeat when Jesus came out of the grave in victory, leaving all our sins behind.   Jesus offered this victory over sin, death, and hell to all of us, and those who accept it will not only escape hell, but will go a place better than the Garden of Eden, heaven.

I can sum up my relationship with God as being a beloved son who disobeyed his Father and deserved punishment.  But, my big brother convinced my Father to let Him accept my punishment and let me back into close, loving fellowship with my Father as though I had done no wrong., 

 

To be followed by three additional blogs, my relationship with Father God, my relationship with Jesus, and my relationship with the Holy Spirit.

“For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or power:  all things were created by Him and of Him” (KJ21).

 

There are certain laws of nature that make the universe function so that it is suitable for mankind to live and enjoy.  These laws are invisible in themselves, but their effects are certainly visible in our daily lives.  They affect us every day of our lives, and God created them as surely as He created the sun, the earth, and all its environment.  We are told in Amos 5:8:  ”Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night, who calleth forth the waters of the sea and poureth them out upon the face of the earth.  The Lord is His name” (KJ21).  The portion of this verse that reads; “…and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night” speaks of day and night, the process whereby everything on earth has time to rest between times of action, and He made this day/night cycle to pass across the face of the planet so that there is always someplace where it is day and someplace where it is night.  There is always daylight somewhere, and there is always dark of night somewhere.  That means that sunrises and sunsets are constantly occurring.

Further in the same verse, “…who calleth forth the waters of the sea and poureth them out upon the face of the earth” describes what we call the water cycle.  Rain or snow falls, flows toward the oceans, and evaporates, only to be carried over the land and water the crops again.  This is the water cycle by which plants and animals are provided with needed water.

Water, itself, has a unique property.   Everything contracts--gets smaller as it cools.  Water does the same until just above freezing, when it expands and continues to expand for a few degrees below freezing.  This causes ice cubes to float.  It also causes rivers to freeze over because this frozen water stays above the flowing water and insulates it so rivers don’t freeze solid to the bottom and kill all the fish.  It also provides a method whereby arctic villages can be provisioned by trucks driving over the tops of frozen rivers and lakes during the winter.  It also allows water to flow year round to turn the turbines of dams to produce electricity.  God had all of this in mind when He created.

Water is an interesting compound.  It is made up of hydrogen, a very explosive gas, and oxygen, whose presence is necessary for any fire to burn.  When God put these two fiery elements together in a special combination—two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen—a substance is formed which puts out fires.  God is amazing.  Table salt is made up of sodium and chlorine, two poisonous substances when ingested alone, but when God put them together in His special compound, sodium chloride--one atom of sodium with one atom one chlorine—table salt is formed, and our steaks taste better.   Without sodium chloride we could not live.  Again, God was thinking ahead.

Much of God’s creative action is visible in land forms. water features, plants and animals, but just as important are the innumerable physical and chemical processes that He put in place.  When we consider all these processes, we are doubly amazed at the creative aptitude and power of our great God.

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? (NIV)

 

Can you agree with me that God must be bigger than what He created?   This picture was taken by the Hubble telescope.  Lots of stars, right?  Not so fast, what you see are not stars; they are galaxies.  Okay, lots of galaxies.  Ten thousand galaxies, at least that is how many galaxies astronomers have been able to determine that there are in this picture.  Okay, I’m impressed, but how big a portion of the sky does this picture include?  If you were to hold a dime at arm’s length and look at the sky, you will see just how much of the sky this covers.  I’ve read that the camera was focused on a rather dark section of the sky.  Astronomers estimate that a galaxy contains from 100,000,000,000 to 400,000,000,000 stars.  These are some pretty big numbers.  Let’s take a look at a small galaxy, one that contains 100,000,000,000 stars, and let’s use something familiar to examine the size of that number.   Suppose I were to give you $100 every minute of every day.  How long do you think it would take for me to give you $100,000,000,000?  No, too short, guess longer.  My calculator shows that it would take a little over one thousand nine hundred two and one half years for you to get your $100,000,000,000.   Okay, this is not a good time to think about the national debt.

Close by creations, Jupiter and Saturn

So, God must be very large to have created all of this.  If He is that large, can He have any thought about me, one person on one planet near a medium-sized star like our Sun?  Well, He knows me, and He knows you.  He loves me and He loves you.  He loves each of us enough to want to have us with Him, not for 100,000,000,000 years, but for eternity.  He did something very special to make that happen.  He sent His Son, Jesus, to accept the penalty for every sin that has ever been committed—yes, mine, yours, and everybody else’s.  If we are willing to accept this fantastic gift, the forgiveness of our sins, then we will spend eternity with this great big God.  I’ve accepted His gift, salvation, and if you have, I’ll get to meet you someday.  I’m looking forward to that.  So, it turns out that God’s heart is also bigger than the universe He created.   This news is too good to keep to ourselves.  We need to share it with everyone--friends, neighbors, family, and even with people that we may not even like very much.

Further away creations, a spiral galaxy and a barred-spiral galaxy 

A magnificent creation by our magnificent God!

(And He knows your name.)

All photographs from the Hubble telescope.

“God: ⁹ Let the waters below the heavens be collected into one place and congregate into one vast sea, so that dry land may appear.  It happened just as God said. ¹⁰ God called the dry land “earth” and the waters congregated below “seas.” And God saw that His new creation was beautiful and good” (VOICE).

 

All it took was one little sentence, “Let the waters below the heavens be collected into one place and congregate into one vast sea, so that dry land may appear.”   And dry land appeared—that is, the mountains, the valleys, the plains, the seashores, the cliffs, the canyons—they all appeared just as he said they would.  Have you looked at Mount Everest?  Have you looked at the Grand Canyon?  

Have you looked at the deep valleys in Switzerland?  Have you looked at the great plains, the breadbasket of the United States?