'''CHAPTER ONE: FROM THE BEGINNING'''
CHAPTER ONE
FROM THE BEGINNING
Have you ever looked up into the sky at night and wondered about the stars? Some are big. Some are small. Some stars are so far away that it takes many years for their light to reach earth. Some stars have planets and moons that circle around them, just like the earth and our moon circle the sun.
Where did they all come from?
For every star that you see in the night, there are countless others that you cannot see. This is because they are too far away.
But imagine that you could see them. Imagine that you could see millions and billions of stars—yellow, orange, red, blue and white— spread across the blackness of space. Together with countless planets, moons, comets and other heavenly bodies, they make up the Milky Way Galaxy.
Now imagine a countless sea of galaxies that spread across the darkness of night. This is the universe.
How did the universe come to be? Where did our earth, moon and sun come from? And what about the other planets and stars that make up the universe? Where did they come from?
To find the answers, we must look backward in time. Before you were born…before your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were born…before the first human being walked the earth…before the earth, moon, sun, stars, galaxies and the entire universe existed… There was God.
Everything Begins With God
Everything you can see, hear, smell, touch or taste came from materials created by God (Genesis 1:1). He is the Creator. He created everything in the universe—including you!
But no one created God. He never had a beginning (John 1:1-2), and He has always lived (Hebrews 7:3). There was never a time when He did not live—nor will there ever be one (Revelation 1:8; Isaiah 57:15). This is why He is often called the Eternal or Ever-living One.
This is hard to understand because we are physical. We can only understand physical things through our five senses—sight, touch, hearing, taste and smell.
But God is Spirit (John 4:24). He is not limited to five senses. And we cannot know Him or the things He has done unless He tells us.
And He does, through His written Word—the Holy Bible. In it, God reveals many wonderful things, which we cannot learn on our own unless we seek and obey Him (Deuteronomy 29:29). The Bible is a special book that reveals who and what God is, and why He created us.
What Does God Look Like?
Since God is Spirit, we cannot see Him. But do you want to know what God looks like?
Go look at your face in a mirror. What do you see? Two eyes, a mouth, a nose, hair and two ears. Guess what? God has two eyes, a mouth, a nose, hair and ears, too. He also has two arms, legs, hands and feet, just as you do. This is because God created you in His image and likeness (Genesis 1:26).
The Bible says that His hair is as white as snow, His eyes like flames of fire, His feet the colour of brass. He has a deep, booming voice, and a face that shines as bright as the sun (Revelation 1:14-16)!
As you can tell, no one looks exactly like God.
God is a Family
God is not alone. Just as you have a family—a father and mother, and maybe brothers or sisters—so does God. In fact, God is a Family. His Family is now made up of two Beings: God the Father and the Word.
They have always lived and always will. The Word, or Spokesman, later became Jesus Christ, God’s Son (John 1:1-2, 14). They are both God. And, just like you have a family name (such as Smith or Jones), which is the same as your parents’ last name, the Father and Christ also share a family name—God.
Just as the father is the head of the family, God the Father is the Head of the God Family. The Word (Christ) carries out His orders. Together, God and the Word planned and designed the universe. And through their awesome power—the Holy Spirit—they created everything in it.
God and the Word always agree with each other. They never fight or argue. They live together in perfect happiness and harmony. This is because their Family has government. God the Father leads and makes the final decisions, while the Word reports to Him and carries out the Father’s commands. Both God and the Word talk to each other and plan things out. They use their supreme wisdom to come to the right decisions. But the Father is the One who has the final say. And the Word always obeys Him.
God Creates Angels
Before the universe was made, God created hundreds of millions of angels. Like God, angels are made of spirit and can live forever. But unlike God, angels did not always exist. And they cannot create life.
Angels (like humans) are free moral agents. This means that God allows them to decide and choose for themselves whether or not they will obey Him. God never forces people or angels to obey Him. In His mercy, He wants everyone to freely choose His way of life.
After creating the angels, God created all the stars, planets, moons and galaxies that exist—the whole universe! Millions of angels sang for joy, especially when God created the earth (Job 38:7). They knew that it would be handed to them as part of a very special assignment.
Great War in Heaven
The Eternal gave a unique mission to one-third of all the angels: They were assigned to live on the earth and take special care of it. If they succeeded, they would eventually be given the entire universe to take care of and rule under God. At first, the angels were happy about their assignment. They wanted to do all that they could to make the earth a beautiful garden paradise of peaceful meadows, green forests, sandy beaches and sparkling oceans.
But as time passed (the Bible does not say how long; it may have taken millions, even billions, of years), something changed. It all began with Lucifer, who was an archangel. God appointed him leader over the millions of angels who lived on the earth. Full of wisdom and beauty, Lucifer was the smartest, most perfect being God had ever created (Ezekiel 28:11-14). While God ruled the vast universe from His throne in heaven, Lucifer ruled over the earth from his throne in the Garden of Eden. He obediently carried out God’s commands.
But one day, Lucifer allowed a wrong thought to enter his mind.
Instead of getting rid of it and replacing it with right thoughts, he allowed even more wrong thoughts and feelings to guide and control his mind. He soon became full of pride (verse 15). Instead of being thankful for the assignment God gave him, Lucifer became bitter and angry. He wanted more power, more responsibility—and he wanted it his way, not God’s.
He began to think that he knew better than God, that he was smarter than Him. Lucifer allowed himself to think that he was greater than he really was—even greater than his Creator! Eventually, Lucifer came to believe that he should be God! And he reasoned that the only way to do so was to take God’s place and remove Him from His heavenly throne (Isaiah 14:12-14).
Lucifer’s wrong thoughts and attitudes led him to sin—to break God’s spiritual laws of love and outgoing concern for others, first toward God, then toward people (I John 3:4; Romans 7:12-14). Lucifer the archangel became God’s enemy.
He convinced the other angels around him to believe that his way was right. Through lies and deceit, Lucifer talked them into believing that God and His ways were unfair and unjust.
In turn, those angels convinced other angels of the same lies. Eventually, all the angels who lived on earth—one-third of all the angels God had created—rebelled against their Creator (Revelation 12:4; Job 4:18). They followed Lucifer into breaking God’s laws, and refused to obey the Eternal.
Though originally created with super-intelligence, the minds of the fallen angels became twisted and evil. They decided their way—selfishness, greed, cruelty, putting themselves first before others—was somehow better than God’s Way. They decided that, if God would not do things their way, they would have to remove Him as Supreme Ruler!
Lucifer and the rebellious angels—now transformed into demons— foolishly invaded heaven to take over God’s throne. But God—armed with the limitless power of His Holy Spirit, and backed by twice as many loyal angels—put down the rebellion. He cast the evil spirits back to the earth. God then changed Lucifer’s name, which meant “morning star” or “shining one,” to Satan the devil, which means “adversary,” “accuser” and “slanderer” (Ezekiel 28:11-19).
Life on Earth Destroyed
Because they had failed to overthrow their Creator, Satan and his demons were full of hatred and bitterness. Like spoiled children who could not get their own way, they wrecked the face of the earth.
Earthquakes shattered and trembled across the planet, while volcanoes burst and overflowed with molten lava.
Poisonous gases filled the sky, choking everything that breathed, and shutting out the sunlight. The oceans and seas smashed against the land until the whole earth was covered with water. All physical life (dinosaurs, plants, insects and other prehistoric life) was destroyed.
Today, the scarred and beaten moons and planets, in decay within our solar system and throughout the universe, remind us of that great angelic war.
Satan’s rebellion proved to God that there was only one kind of being that could be trusted to manage and rule over His creation— other God-beings!
The Awesome Potential of Man
God is love (I John 4:8). His way of life is based on His spiritual laws of love and outgoing concern for others. It is the way of giving, assisting, helping, sharing and cooperating with others (Matthew 7:12; 22:37-40). Our Creator is not selfish, cruel, heartless or hateful. He does not—and cannot—think those ways. He cannot break His spiritual laws of love, which means that everything that He does is for the benefit of others. This is God’s holy, righteous character.
Godly character is: (1) The ability to know and decide what is right from wrong. (2) To choose the right way over the wrong way. And (3), despite overwhelming obstacles, to do what is right and reject what is wrong. Holy, righteous character is so precious, so special and unique, that it cannot be created all at once, in an instant. Just as it takes much time, patience and learning to be able to paint a beautiful masterpiece, godly character must be developed and grown over a long period. It is impossible for God to instantly create a being (whether angel or human) that has His character.
Instead, it must be developed over a lifetime of experiences.
And God wants to develop His character in you! God wants you to become just like Him: Fair, honest, patient, selfless, trustworthy, pure, innocent, kind, humble, sincere, good, reliable, truthful, respectful, peaceful—without sin!
Since the fallen angels (now demons) were made of spirit, they cannot die. They are doomed to live forever in misery as selfish, proud, greedy, angry, twisted beings. Never again will they experience the joy of living God’s way of life.
The Eternal understood that only another God-being—one who thinks and lives like God, and always puts others ahead of himself— could be trusted to take care of, manage and rule over the universe. So God decided to reproduce Himself—to expand His Family, just as your parents decided to expand their family by having you. He decided to create physical beings—humans—in whom He could develop His righteous character. With a small portion of His Spirit working in their minds, they would literally become God’s sons, yet still be physical. If they practiced seeking and obeying Him throughout their physical lifetimes, He would change them into spirit so that they could enter His kingdom. With His holy character fully developed within them, they would become just like God!
Only then could they be trusted to manage and rule the universe God’s Way. Beginning with the earth, they would convert, or change, dead, battle-scarred planets and moons in countless galaxies throughout creation into garden paradises. They would also help and guide other humans into developing godly character so that they, too, would be born into the ever-expanding God Family.
But, if human beings refused to obey their Creator—if they rejected His laws and practiced the way of greed, selfishness and vanity— the way of sin—God would have to reject them. In His mercy, He would end their physical lives, never allowing them to suffer forever in misery like the fallen angels.
Therefore, God the Father and the Word, guided by their supreme wisdom and intelligence, spent many years carefully planning and preparing for their next creation—MAN!
Back toTHE STORY OF THE BIBLE VOLUME ONE