CREATION’S CHRONOLOGY 3 (of 4)

“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.”
Psa. 90:12.

Chronology is the science of Time; and Time is the measure of celestial motion. We have coined the word from two Greek words: Chronos (meaning time), and logos, a discourse.’ Without chronology history would be a blank, or a muddle. By chronology we learn the sequence of events in the world’s history. But as in other so-called “sciences” there is the false as well as the true. False chronology, which is really not chronology at all, gives a fictitious and an inflated number of years for the history of such countries as Babylon, Egypt and China, as also for the history of the world. The celestial bodies, by their different motions, not only measure out time in smaller portions such as days, months, and years, but they also measure out much longer periods, in various known cycles of eclipses and transits. And as these cycles work backward to a common beginning, viz., the Date of Creation, we can tell the number of years since that beginning. If therefore speculative writers, whether the so-called “Higher Critics,” or the astronomers, give us fanciful and dilated numbers for the years of the world, we have now the means of testing their figures by the great clockwork of the heavens. And the present position of the various shining orbs, the jewelled fingers of this magnificent timepiece, with their different but known rates of motion, show that they started together in the year 0, 1656 years before the Universal Deluge, or 2168 before the birth of Jacob. This is a grand fact, which no amount of ridicule or scoffing can upset; and it can be tested by strict calculation by anyone who has the ability, and the honesty fairly to investigate the claims of the Bible. This fact also shows that there must have been a “Beginning,” and a creative Beginning, such as that which is revealed in the Fourth, or Sabbath, Commandment. We therefore quote that Commandment with the greatest confidence:

“Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy, Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work: but the Seventh Day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shall not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within. thy gates:

For in sıx DAYS the Lord (Jehovah) made heaven and earth, the sea, and ALL THAT IN THEM IS, and rested the Seventh Day; wherefore the LORD blessed the Seventh Day, and hallowed it.” Ex. 30:7- 11

This is clear and straightforward: and let those refute it who can. Now if God in six days made heaven and earth and the sea, with “ALL THAT IN THEM IS,” I should like to know how much of them existed before? Evidently nothing.

We cannot allow the unsupported quibble which some offer us that these “days” were “long periods of time;” because the Seventh Day, or Sabbath, we know was, and is, a day of twenty-four hours! Besides, nothing but literal days will agree with the celestial cycles. According to this divine testimony there could be nothing of the present universe before the six days of Creation. For instance: there could be no sun, as the sun was made on the fourth day of Creation-week. Gen. 1:14 – 19. No sun, no seasons; no seasons, no fruits of the earth; no fruits of the earth, no one to subsist thereon! What then becomes of imaginary geological and evolutionary epochs? or a so-called pre-Adamite race? Arguments in favour of the latter are sometimes advanced, even by professing Christians, based on the recognized meaning of some scarce Hebrew word, or words, which, God willing, we may examine on a future occasion; but for the present we take our stand on the plain Word of God, as expressed in the Fourth Commandment, that, “ In six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and ALL THAT IN THEM IS”! And on the basis of this unimpeachable testimony we are convinced that nothing of the present Creation, whether in heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth, existed, or could exist, before the six days of Creation week, which our Lord himself speaks of in the New Testament as “The Beginning,” Mat. 19:4

From this “ Beginning” we have already traced down the Bible line of Time to the Universal Deluge, when “all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered.” Gen. 7:19. There are ministers and clergymen, men pledged to support Bible teaching, who try to belittle this testimony of a Universal Flood, and who essay to make it mean only a partial deluge; but the language of Moses is explicit and clear, and it ought to be received or rejected. Those who reject the testimony of Moses should also be prepared to reject the testimony of the New Testament; but such rejection is always based on a false Cosmogony, and on ignorance of the true form, and order of the Universe.

The Apostle Peter, in his second epistle, shows that this would be so in “the last days.” He says : “There shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the Creation.

For this they are willingly ignorant of, that by the Word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth” (or land) “standing out of the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” II. Pet. 2:3

This order, of which so many are now ignorant, by reason of a “science, falsely so-called,” is in perfect harmony with the Second Commandment of God’s Law, which says that heaven is “above,” the earth (or land) “beneath” and “the water under the earth” Ex. 20:4. But when men openly reject the Law of God, and the teachings of the New Testament, we need not be surprised if they are given up to strange delusions that they may believe a lie. But there are some, I am sorry to say, while professing to know God’s Law, and keeping the Sabbath of the Fourth Commandment, who still refuse to believe the order of Creation as given in the Second Commandment, preferring the globular and evolutionary theories now, alas! so popular. I refer chiefly to an American sect of Sabbath Keepers, who are antedating what is known as “the third angel’s message,” while imperfectly understanding the message of the first angel. See Rev. 14:6-9. The first angel’s message will, in due time, instruct the world that the God we ought to worship is the God “that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.” This is according to the order of the Second Commandment, which order is evidently intended to comprise the whole of the Bible Universe. That this order will be insisted on by an angelic messenger, at the close of this dispensation, again shews the importance, and the need of, this divine insistence.

But, in the meantime, if we may accept man’s so-called “science” before the Word of God, respecting the revealed order of Creation as given in the Second Command, then why may we not also accept a – humanly-appointed rest day instead of the Sabbath of the Fourth Command? Let us be consistent, brethren, and not be guilty of the sin of unbelief in God’s own Word. If the so-called Protestant may reject the Cosmogony of the Second Command, can he conscientiously blame the Romanist who rejects its prohibition of idolatry? Let me entreat the brethren generally, and Sabbath Keepers in particular to be consistent, and to shew their reliance on every Word of God. The “WISDOM of this world is foolishness with God.” And it is written: “Every Word of God is pure: He is a shield to them that put their trust in Him. Add thou not unto His Words, lest He reprove thee. and thou be found a liar.” Proverbs 30:5, 6.

However, those who still respect the divine records, will accept the teaching of an inspired Apostle, as well as that of Moses, that the Deluge was universal and that the “world” that then was, perished.

I had thought to add something on the reasons (revealed) which induced God to send such an awful catastrophe upon the world, but my article grows too long, and some of my readers are probably not yet prepared for what can be said under this head. But to some extent the same reasons will ere long again prevail, as is shown by the rapid spread of spiritism, and the reopened intercourse between human beings and demons, See Luke 27:26, compared with Gen. 6:4. However, if readers desire it, and the Editor’s space permit, I may some time, God willing, return to this particular subject. At present I must pass on, and give our readers something further on Bible Chronology. Those who studied my first Table, giving the A.M, years of the Patriarchs before the Flood, will not find much difficulty in following the subjoined Table III., which gives the A.M. years of the Post Diluvium Patriarch, and brings the Line of Time, according to the Bible; down to the birth of Jacob, the father of Israel, in the year of the world, 2168.