“I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and
fire, and vapor of smoke.” Acts 2:19. “And there were voices, and thunders, and
lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the
earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.” “And every island fled away, and the
mountains were not found. And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every
stone about the weight of a talent.” Revelation 16:18, 20, 21.
As lightnings from heaven unite with the fire in the earth, the mountains will burn
like a furnace, and will pour forth terrific streams of lava, overwhelming gardens and
fields, villages and cities. Seething molten masses thrown into the rivers will cause the
waters to boil, sending forth massive rocks with indescribable violence and scattering
their broken fragments upon the land. Rivers will be dried up. The earth will be
convulsed; everywhere there will be dreadful earthquakes and eruptions.
Thus God will destroy the wicked from off the earth. But the righteous will be
preserved in the midst of these commotions, as Noah was preserved in the ark. God
will be their refuge, and under his wings shall they trust. Says the psalmist: “Because
thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation;
there shall no evil befall thee.” Psalm 91:9, 10. “In the time of trouble he shall hide
me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me.” Psalm 27:5. God’s
promise is, “Because he hath set his love upon Me, therefore will I deliver him: I will
set him on high, because he hath known My name.” Psalm 91:14.
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Chap. 9 - The Literal Week
Like the Sabbath, the week originated at creation, and it has been preserved and
brought down to us through Bible history. God himself measured off the first week as
a sample for successive weeks to the close of time. Like every other, it consisted of
seven literal days. Six days were employed in the work of creation; upon the seventh,
God rested, and he then blessed this day and set it apart as a day of rest for man.
In the law given from Sinai, God recognized the week, and the facts upon which
it is based. After giving the command, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,”
and specifying what shall be done on the six days, and what shall not be done on the
seventh, he states the reason for thus observing the week, by pointing back to his own
example: “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in
them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and
hallowed it.” Exodus 20:8-11. This reason appears beautiful and forcible when we
understand the days of creation to be literal. The first six days of each week are given
to man for labor, because God employed the same period of the first week in the work
of creation. On the seventh day man is to refrain from labor, in commemoration of the
Creator’s rest.
But the assumption that the events of the first week required thousands upon
thousands of years, strikes directly at the foundation of the fourth commandment.
It represents the Creator as commanding men to observe the week of literal days in
commemoration of vast, indefinite periods. This is unlike his method of dealing with
his creatures. It makes indefinite and obscure that which he has made very plain. It is
infidelity in its most insidious and hence most dangerous form; its real character is so
disguised that it is held and taught by many who profess to believe the Bible.
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“By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the
breath of his mouth.” “For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood
fast.” Psalm 33:6, 9. The Bible recognizes no long ages in which the earth was slowly
evolved from chaos. Of each successive day of creation, the sacred record declares
that it consisted of the evening and the morning, like all other days that have followed.
At the close of each day is given the result of the Creator’s work. The statement is
made at the close of the first week’s record, “These are the generations of the heavens
and of the earth when they were created.” Genesis 2:4. But this does not convey
the idea that the days of creation were other than literal days. Each day was called
a generation, because that in it God generated, or produced, some new portion of his
work.
Geologists claim to find evidence from the earth itself that it is very much older
than the Mosaic record teaches. Bones of men and animals, as well as instruments
of warfare, petrified trees, et cetera, much larger than any that now exist, or that have
existed for thousands of years, have been discovered, and from this it is inferred that
the earth was populated long before the time brought to view in the record of creation,
and by a race of beings vastly superior in size to any men now living. Such reasoning
has led many professed Bible believers to adopt the position that the days of creation
were vast, indefinite periods.
But apart from Bible history, geology can prove nothing. Those who reason so
confidently upon its discoveries have no adequate conception of the size of men,
animals, and trees before the Flood, or of the great changes which then took place.
Relics found in the earth do give evidence of conditions differing in many respects
from the present, but the time when these conditions existed can be learned only from
the Inspired Record. In the history of the Flood, inspiration has explained that which
geology alone could never fathom. In the days of Noah, men, animals, and trees,
many times larger than now exist, were buried, and thus preserved as an evidence to
later generations that the antediluvians perished by a flood. God designed that the
discovery of these things should establish faith in inspired history; but men, with their
vain reasoning, fall into the same error as did the people before the Flood—the things
which God gave them as a benefit, they turn into a curse by making a wrong use of
them.
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It is one of Satan’s devices to lead the people to accept the fables of infidelity; for
he can thus obscure the law of God, in itself very plain, and embolden men to rebel
against the divine government. His efforts are especially directed against the fourth
commandment, because it so clearly points to the living God, the Maker of the heavens
and the earth.
There is a constant effort made to explain the work of creation as the result of
natural causes; and human reasoning is accepted even by professed Christians, in
opposition to plain Scripture facts. There are many who oppose the investigation of
the prophecies, especially those of Daniel and the Revelation, declaring them to be so
obscure that we cannot understand them; yet these very persons eagerly receive the
suppositions of geologists, in contradiction of the Mosaic record. But if that which
God has revealed is so difficult to understand, how inconsistent it is to accept mere
suppositions in regard to that which he has not revealed!
“The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are
revealed belong unto us and to our children forever.” Deuteronomy 29:29. Just
how God accomplished the work of creation he has never revealed to men; human
science cannot search out the secrets of the Most High. His creative power is as
incomprehensible as his existence.
God has permitted a flood of light to be poured upon the world in both science
and art; but when professedly scientific men treat upon these subjects from a merely
human point of view, they will assuredly come to wrong conclusions. It may be
innocent to speculate beyond what God’s word has revealed, if our theories do not
contradict facts found in the Scriptures; but those who leave the word of God, and seek
to account for his created works upon scientific principles, are drifting without chart
or compass upon an unknown ocean. The greatest minds, if not guided by the word
of God in their research, become bewildered in their attempts to trace the relations
of science and revelation. Because the Creator and his works are so far beyond their
comprehension that they are unable to explain them by natural laws, they regard Bible
history as unreliable. Those who doubt the reliability of the records of the Old and
New Testaments, will be led to go a step further, and doubt the existence of God; and
then, having lost their anchor, they are left to beat about upon the rocks of infidelity
