3 Ways God Saves You From Drowning—The Second Day of Creation
The history of the church is one astonishing deliverance tale after another. At every moment she is threatened to be engulfed and drowned by the floods of persecution, internal explosion, anti-God philosophy, apathy, and materialism. Yet the Lord who said on Day Two, “Let there be a firmament-expanse between the waters to separate water from water,” continues to provide breathing space and life for his church.
My son was two years old at the time. We were in our neighbor’s yard, standing next to their swimming pool. He stepped into the water and fell like a stone. For a split second (though time slows in these situations, and it seemed much longer), he didn’t struggle or try to get out—he simply sat on the bottom of the pool. I reached down instantly and hauled him out. I was much more disturbed than he was, and shocked at how quickly and silently a little child could drown.
God’s church is always in danger of drowning.
God’s church is always in danger of drowning—suffocating in the waters of outward persecution and inward materialism and temptation. This applies to us as a body, and this applies to us individually. But we need not fear, for our Savior—from the very beginning—showed how he can deliver us from the chaotic suffocating waters in whatever form they come.
In Genesis 1:6-8, we read about God’s work on the second day:
And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
The “expanse” (raqia) separates the water that made up the original formless, empty, lifeless, black, and watery chaos (1:1-2). It creates a horizontal space between water that is above and water that is below. And God called it “Heaven” (shamayim), which is the very common Hebrew word for the place, both seen and unseen, that is far above the surface of the earth.
Raqia, thus, is a sturdy barrier that God stretches out above the earth. And when we put this with its name, shamayim, “heaven” or “sky,” we see that on Day Two God made the sky, a powerful spacious barrier that holds apart water that is down from water that is up.
What, though, is the water that is above? Proverbs 8:27-28, a very beautiful picture of creation spoken by “Wisdom” personified, tells us:
“I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep.”
The “waters below” are the oceans, and the “waters above” are the clouds.
What a magnificent picture that God paints before our eyes! First, we see creation: formless, lifeless, lightless, empty, and watery. This is the raw material. On Day One God floods creation with light. And periods of light will alternate with periods of darkness to make “day and night.” Yet, although creation is no longer black, it is still a formless watery chaos. On Day Two God builds structure, a firmament-expanse, a sky which separates water below from water that is above.
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The Lost Awe of Majesty
Majesty, in particular, is emotive, or affective. It indicates greatness in sight or sound that is also wonderful. Bigness that is beautiful. Imposing size that is viewed with delight, imposing power received as attractive. While having significant overlap with divine dominion or lordship, majesty does more. Dominion and lordship are more technical and prosaic; majesty rings more poetic, with the awe of worship.
In 1977, California pastor Jack Hayford and his wife visited England during the Silver Jubilee (25th anniversary) of Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne (1952). They were struck by the grandeur of the celebration, and the manifest joy of the people in their monarch. While there, they visited Blenheim Palace, birthplace of Winston Churchill, and famous for the magnitude and stateliness many Americans today know through watching Downton Abbey.
Driving away from the palace, overcome with awe, Hayford found himself reaching for words — language that would transpose the weight of the earthly experience into the key of heaven. As he stretched, the word that seemed most fitting, both to describe the stunning magnificence of the palace, and how it pointed to the superiority of the reigning Christ, was majesty. According to a California newspaper’s retelling of the story,
As the Hayfords pulled themselves from that regal palace and drove away, Dr. Hayford asked his wife to take a notebook and write down some thoughts that were coming to him. He then began to dictate the lyrics, the key, and the timing to a song now being sung by Christians worldwide. (“Story Behind the Song: ‘Majesty,’” St. Augustine Record, August 13, 2015)
Hayford’s impulse to reach for the word majesty, however much he knew it at the time, was profoundly biblical. Majesty is indeed a frequent, and carefully chosen, attribute in Scripture of the living God — a trait often overlooked in studies of the divine attributes, but an important witness of both the prophets and apostles, one that sheds brilliant light on other well-rehearsed attributes, and one that is truly, deeply, wonderfully fit for worship, as Hayford at least intuited:
Majesty! Worship his majesty!Unto Jesus be all glory, honor, and praise.Majesty! Kingdom authority,Flow from his throne, unto his own;His anthem raise!
Purple Mountain Majesties
Those, like Hayford, who reach for the word majesty often find themselves standing before, or remembering, some natural or manmade wonder that is both imposing and, at the same time, attractive. In our language, as in biblical terms, the word captures not only greatness but also goodness, both bigness and beauty, awesome power together with pleasant admiration.
Mountains might be the quintessentially majestic natural feature. Psalm 76:4 declares in praise to God, “Glorious are you,” and then adds, “more majestic than the mountains.” Alongside the illustrious plain of Sharon, which had its own peculiar glory, Isaiah’s hope-filled prophecy of future flourishing for God’s people hails “the majesty of [Mount] Carmel” (Isaiah 35:2). Yet alongside mountains, we also might attribute majesty to gold, or some precious material or gem, fit for a king, that dazzles the eye with its beauty, as Job 37:22 links God’s “awesome majesty” with “golden splendor.”
Not only natural phenomena, but also the work of human hands, when on a grand scale, might have us reaching for majestic. Lamentations 1:6 mourns the loss of such civic majesty after the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon, and not long after, Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon’s king, professes to have built his city “by [his] mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of [his] majesty” (Daniel 4:30) — this, just before his great humbling.
How, then, does the common use of majesty for mountains and mansions, gold and cities, relate to attributing majesty to God?
What is Divine Majesty?
In bringing together both greatness and goodness, both strength and beauty (Psalm 96:6), majesty is not only a fitting term for mountain majesties but a particularly appropriate descriptor of God, who is, above all, “the Majestic One” (Isaiah 10:34).
At a critical juncture in the history of God’s first-covenant people, as they assemble under the leadership of Solomon, to dedicate the temple, the king prays, in his great wisdom, “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty.” Consider those first three — greatness, power, and glory — often associated with majesty elsewhere, as revealing angles into the attribute of divine majesty.
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What Is the Meaning of “His Number Is 666”? — Revelation 13:16–18
The number 666 symbolizes man exalting himself as God. It is idolatrous humanism. It is what Adam reached for in the garden of Eden, and it is what lies of the heart of all idolatry. Truly, the hearts of humans are idol factories because sinful man desires to be like God. The number 666 perfectly matches the agenda of the beast and the false prophet to worship that which is created instead of the Creator. And chief of all things created is man.
In Revelation 13:16-18 we read the following about “the number of the beast”:
Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666. (Rev. 13:16-18)
What is the meaning of “his number is 666” in this passage?
The Number Six Is Related to Man’s Creation on the Sixth Day, and It Has the Biblical Symbolic Value of Imperfection Due to Man’s Fall
The mark that the false prophet places on people is a sign of ownership and loyalty, indicating that the Antichrist beast is their lord and master. Their thoughts and actions are given to the service of the beast. The number six is related to man’s creation on the sixth day. It has the biblical symbolic value of imperfection due to man’s fall, while the number seven symbolizes divine perfection.
Six is repeated three times in Revelation 13:18 because repeating something three times represents the divine superlative (e.g., “‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!’” (Rev. 4:8: see also Isa. 6:3).
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Can We Really Believe in Demonic Possession?
In taking seriously the issue we need to be wise to those who would glam on to the opportunity provided by stoking either fear or fascination with the occult. We confess and testify to the veracity of the negative spiritual world and its existence to be sure. That being said we must be able to see that which is true and bring the full weight of God’s cleansing power upon its destruction.
Thinking through how demon possession works in 2023 and how it remains an active force even when so many people do not believe in its existence can be a difficult labor. In some ways writing on this matter can sound like taking time to ponder through leprechauns, fairies, and other mystical forest creatures. Most enlightened people, usually of a settled upper-middle class bourgeoisie mindset are of the opinion that we have moved passed such notions and need to spend our time in the real world. However, it has been the opinion of the last several Tuesday essays that it is actually the comfortable suburban types who need to get with the program. Not only is demonic activity still with us, denying its existence is dangerous for the well-being of humanity. The aforementioned forest deities are likewise more with us than some would bother to consider. More on them later.
Today as we get back into the question I want to ask a few leading questions. First of all, why, or better yet, how did we get into a world where so few want to believe in the presence of the spiritual, whether good or bad. The answer to that goes back to man’s discovery in the 18th century that he no longer needed the superstitions of the past to grow crops or in his finding new scientific ways of accomplishing victories over nature previously thought impossible. Humanity’s confidence in itself, and unwillingness to see its failures made it immune to the noumenal realm. However, just like a dog who hides its face behind a telephone pole, merely because Dr. Ph.D. isn’t looking at the transcendent doesn’t mean it’s not there. Our haughtiness just makes us more blind and grants more power to the wicked spirits of this age.
That being said and while chronological snobbery may be the privilege of the age in which we live it is not the fact that we are in some sense smarter than those who came before us. We may have more access to information, but as I have noted before folks in the Bible knew the difference between what was actual and what was not. No one on the planet was more surprised their staffs turned to snakes than the sorcerers of Pharaoh’s house. Our forefathers in the Reformed faith, including the Father of the Puritans William Perkins who wrote the English manual on demonic activities were likewise concerned that we treat the subject with fairness and honesty. Perkins made a distinction between actual witches and those who by reason of whipping themselves up conjured a feeling of demonic activity.
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