(Whew . . . I had to return a brand-new laptop after it stopped working and the computer repair store told me its hard drive was failing. All this happened the day after I returned from graduation ceremony at University of Tennessee. My nephew graduated summa cum laude in nuclear engineering. On top of everything else, my head has been so plugged up from week-old cold made worse going through the mountains and then sleeping next to air-conditioning unit in hotel room. I told someone at work that it feels like someone shut the top of a Weber grill over my head. Here is an old post and I will have a new one tomorrow.)
When God created humans with a soul, He literally placed a bodily shape inside of us meaning, in essence, there’s a person inside of our body.
Not only is there the account of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16 as proof, but Paul makes clear in II Corinthians 12: [2] I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.
[3] And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;)
“If this guy’s caught up in the third heaven and Paul says, ‘I can’t tell if he’s still in his body or not,’ then when he wasn’t in his body he must have still looked like he was," explains Richard Jordan.
“He said, ‘By looking at this guy I can’t tell whether he’s dead or alive. He’s up in the third heaven, though.’ So what’s up in the third heaven is his soul. But what did he look like? Paul didn’t say, ‘Well, he died but I don’t know who he is up there.’ When out of the body he looked just like he looked in the body.
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“Some people wrongly have the idea that when we get our glorified body in heaven, we’re all just going to be carbon copies of one another, but Paul makes clear in I Corinthians 15:35-38 that the resurrected body bears your distinct identity.
“Paul writes, ‘But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.’
“Because we’ll have our own personal body with its own personal appearance, we’re not just conscious of being in someone else’s presence, we can put a name to them and a face.”
“Not only will we recognize and know those we’ve personally met in our lifetime, but we’ll be familiar with people we’ve never come face to face with.
“In Matthew 17, Peter instinctively knows who Moses and Elijah are even though there were no introductions given. While Peter had studied about the two men, and was taught things about them, he couldn’t have known what they looked like since they lived centuries before he did.
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"While Luke 16:25 reveals we’ll have memory in heaven, remembering incidents and things that happened on earth, we’re not going to have bad memories surrounding any of the people we encounter in heaven.
“You’ll say, ‘Hey, there’s Brother Rick,’ and all you’ll remember is Christ in Brother Rick and not all that was ‘I, not Christ’; that will all be gone. The blood of Jesus Christ is going to cover all the bad-memories stuff for you. It’s just going to be gone, and what you’re going to remember is Christ and who you are in Him.
“In our relationships with one another today, the key is to have Christ living in us so that when we meet up there, we’ll have something to remember.
“Paul urges in Romans 6:11 to ‘yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead,’ meaning the resurrection life we’ll have for eternity is the life we are to have live in us right now.
“The key is to let our resurrection lives be in effect today so that when we get out there in our resurrection body, the life we then live will already be familiar to us.
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Adam was only two days old when he appeared on the scene in Genesis as a fully mature 30-year-old adult.
“If you had anatomically examined Adam, he’d appear 30, so how would we know he’s two days old?” asks Jordan. “God told you. He created him with the appearance of being older. So, if He created the world with the appearance of age, how is it then that you look at the world and say, ‘Look, see, it’s really young’?
“How can you prove it’s young by its appearance if it’s created to appear old? You follow that? That’s the logic used by Creationists, and that logic just leaves me to say, ‘I thank God for Genesis 1:1 and Hebrews 11:3.’
“Verses tell me is there’s something to the ‘ruin- reconstruction theory’ include Genesis 2:4: ‘These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.’
“Notice it doesn’t say, ‘This is the generation’? No, it says, ‘These are the generations (plural) when He made the six-day creation.’ The six-day creation is not the generation of the universe; it’s the generations. If that’s the first creation, don’t you think that word ‘generation’ would be singular?
“The second time this word’s used is in Genesis 5:1: ‘This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him.’
“Now, Seth is the beginning of the book of the generations of Adam, right? But is Seth the first child Adam had? Cain and Abel came before Seth. The ‘book of the generations of Adam,’ refers to a starting point in time that skipped two previous sons at least.
“Now, why did it do that? Well, look at Genesis 4:25: ‘And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.’
“It says ‘another seed.’ We’re talking about the Messianic line here! The Messianic line started with Abel, but Abel got knocked off and was replaced by Seth. So, when you look at the second time the word ‘generations’ is used, it skipped over previous generations.
“Genesis 6:9 is the next time the word’s used. The verse says, ‘These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.’
“God begins a new generation in the earth. God wiped out a previous generation before Noah, meaning there was a destruction of the old world and then a new starting point.
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“Genesis 2:4 is at least consistent with the use of the term ‘generations’ in Scripture. That suggests there was a previous ‘generations of the heavens and earth’ before the Creation of the six days in Genesis 1:3 and following.
“Genesis 1:28 says, ‘And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’
“God said what? ‘Replenish the earth.’ And do what? ‘Subdue it.’ If you subdue something, doesn’t that imply it needed to be put in subjection? If something’s in perfect harmony, would it need to be put in subjection? That implies it’s in rebellion, doesn’t it?
“Man’s original commission is made in light of the world being in rebellion against God. And he’s told to go out and replenish the earth. Now, people say, ‘Well, that word replenish really means to fill it up.’
“But if you look back at verse 22, it says, ‘And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.’ That word fill there is exactly the same word translated replenish in verse 28.
“When they translated that word in the King James Bible, they chose specifically to translate it replenish and not fill. They knew what they were doing and they did it on purpose. Now, why would they do that?
“By the way, the re concept in ‘replenish’ means what? Fill it again. ‘Plenish’ it again. Why did they do that? Genesis 9:1 says, ‘And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.’
“He’s saying, ‘Replace; repopulate the earth. Replace the previous occupant with a new set of occupants.’
“The implication all through here in Genesis is that there could have been, and probably was, a previous . . . the old world. And the heavens which were of old, and the earth, they perished in a flood—probably the flood in Genesis 1:2."
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