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THE PROMISE THE BEGINNING OF ALL CREATION BEFORE THE BEGINNING of time, there were no tall trees, majestic mountains or starry sky. Only God was there. He tells us what happened in his true book, the Bible. God created, that is, made out of nothing, the heaven and the earth. But the world had no form and it was empty. Suddenly God said, "Let there be light!" and there was light. You see, God has all power and using only his almighty word he created all that is found in heaven and on earth. God created everything in six normal days. That's right, it did not take him millions of years. God's Word, the Bible, confirms the six days of creation when we read, "There was evening, there was morning--the first day." It stated the same for the second, third, and on through all six days. Each day God spoke, "Let there be," and by his almighty word there came into being--light, sky, dry land, oceans and rivers, green plants and trees, sun, moon, and stars, fish, livestock and wild animals. There was definite order in all that God did and made. But the best of all visible creatures was specially created on the sixth day. It was man. It was woman. Man and woman are special for many reasons. Adam, the first man, was formed out of the dust of the ground by God himself. And the first woman, Eve, was made by God from a rib of Adam. Indeed, they were specially made. Man was also special because he was created in the image of God. That does not mean that man looked like God. Man cannot look like God because God is a spirit. God does not have flesh and bones that human beings have. To be made in God's image means that man at creation was perfect like God, without sin and with a perfect knowledge of God. In fact when God finished all of his creative acts, he said that they all were "very good." In addition to his body, God gave to man and woman a living soul. Only to mankind did God give both a body and a soul. No other visible creature has such a soul. Beside being specially made and created in the image of God, man was given rule over all the earth and what is in it. He was to take care of the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, over livestock, the earth and all the creatures that move on the earth. What a tremendous responsibility God had given to mankind. But today, because of sin, mankind does not always take care of God's creation as it should. We abuse the beautiful world God created. We pollute the air with dark smoke and fumes. We dirty the rivers with waste water. We scatter trash in our cities and in the countryside. We kill wildlife and cut down trees without replacing them. We have not been good caretakers of God's creation as we should have
been. Our world is NOT the beautiful creation as God made it. Instead of abusing our bodies and the world, we should be thankful to God. We should thank him for our health. We should take good care of our bodies. We should praise God because we have been fearfully and wonderfully made. No other creature can think as we do. No other creature can use its hands as we do. No other creature has a soul as we have. That soul is a gift of God. Through faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our soul one day will return to God who gave it. May we then raise our voices in praise to God saying, "O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good!" __________
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