The Pre-Adamic Earth, A Perfect Creation

        God's Word plainly reveals that the original creation of the universe, our solar system, and the earth took place countless billions of years ago. God Almighty did not create a world in chaos, a world of stygian blackness, with tossing waves covering all the continents, no light penetrating the thick clouds, no life evident, as we have read earlier.

        God created this earth in perfect harmony, lush beauty; it was virtually a global Garden of Eden. God's inspired Word says, "For God is not the author of confusion..." (I Corinthians 14:33).

        As we have read, God did not create the world "without form and void," or "in chaos and confusion, empty," but He created it in perfect beauty.

        Ezekiel was inspired to write of Lucifer, who is called a "covering cherub," as a type of the king of Tyre.

        "Thus saith the Eternal God: Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle [an emerald-like precious stone], and gold; the workmanship of thy tabrets [timbrels, or drums] and of thy pipes was prepared in thee from the day that thou was created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so; thou was upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.Thou was perfect in thy ways from the day that thou was created, till iniquity [lawlessness] was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness...'"(Ezekiel 28:11-17).

        There is an enormous amount of information in these verses. If one were to research the chemical formulas for the various minerals and metals mentioned, one would discover that the elements of this earth are contained in the various stones mentioned, including oxygen.

        Lucifer was one of the original cherubs that are depicted as "covering"the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant, or testimony. The ark is in turn a type of God's throne. A cherub is a supernatural being, which appears in four different aspects.

        God commanded Moses to decorate the ark with cherubim; yet, Moses was never told any details of their appearance. This leads to the logical conclusion that Moses and the builders of the ark knew what cherubs were; they knew exactly how they looked.

        God said, "And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat. And make one cherub on the one end, and the other cherub on the other end...and the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be"(Exodus 25:17-20).

        This was many hundreds of years before Ezekiel saw cherubim in vision. How did they appear? What did Ezekiel see?

        After describing a bright, fiery cloud, like a tornado, Ezekiel wrote, "Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings. And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot: and they sparkled like the color of burnished brass...as for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle" (Ezekiel 1:4-10).

        Ezekiel knew he was seeing a vision of the throne of God; that cherubim were, as it were, transporting the Lord God of Israel [who was the "JHVH" or "Jehovah," in covenant relationship with Israel], the divine member of the Godhead who was to come into this world as Jesus Christ (John 1; Hebrews 1).

        Notice that above the "firmament" which the cherubim upheld Ezekiel saw "the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness of a man above upon it. And I saw as the color of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of His loins even upward, and from the appearance of His loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord ["the Eternal," or Jehovah]. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake" (Ezekiel 1:24-28).

        Ezekiel then received a commission from the Eternal, Who spoke to him from above the cherubim; from the blazing, fiery, brilliant, rainbow-hued "firmament" which the cherubim supported: "Son of man I send thee to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that hath rebelled against me: they and their fathers have transgressed against me even unto this very day. For they are impudent children and stiffhearted. I do send thee unto them: and thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God'" (Ezekiel 2:1-4).

        While Ezekiel saw the "likeness of a man" in the brilliance of the throne, he was not able to see the face of the one Who became Christ, for Christ Himself said no man had seen God at any time, nor heard His voice.

        Once again, God visited Ezekiel from His throne, which was carried about by cherubim. While each cherub had four faces those of a man, a lion, an eagle, and an ox the primary appearance of a cherub was that of an ox, according to the Bible.

        "And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of a cherub, and the second face was the face of a man, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle...This is the living creature that I saw under the God of Israel by the river Chebar; and I knew that they were the cherubims" (Ezekiel 10:14-20).

        The only face that is not described in detail is that of an ox. The faces of man, lion, and eagle are noted, and the "face of a cherub." Compare this with Ezekiel 1, and you see that the reference to a "cherub" means an ox.

        Lucifer, who became Satan, is referred to as a "cherub that covereth," which is unmistakable reference to one of the cherubim who are depicted as "covering" the mercy seat with their wings.

        As one of only three archangels mentioned in the Bible (Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer), Lucifer occupied a place of great power and importance in the pre-Adamic creation.

        Read again the passage above, which describes how Lucifer was corrupted because of his vanity. The expression "by the multitude of thy merchandise" is a very obscure translation in the KJV. It means that Lucifer "went about trafficking,' as a salesman."

        Lucifer became corrupted, filled with vanity at his own beauty, and resentful against God. Lucifer wanted more power! While he was the ruler of all the earth, he wanted more!

        Like so many lustful, despotic rulers of the past, and like many of their ilk today, Lucifer just could not be satisfied with what he had. He coveted God's own throne! He could not stand the idea of being "second best," or in a lesser position than God!

        The Bible shows that Lucifer utterly corrupted the entire one third of the angelic hosts that were under his authority (Revelation 12:3,4), and that they were cast down to the earth following Lucifer's abortive attempt to overthrow God's throne.

        For countless years, Lucifer continued "trafficking" among his angels, influencing, persuading, convincing them that God was somehow "unfair" to only give them control over this earth.

        Notice Isaiah's parallel account: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning [bright shining star of the dawn, or " light bringer"]! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou has said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High'" (Isaiah 14:12-14).

        Lucifer's rebellion was a power struggle! It was not about money or possessions. He was seething with jealousy over God's great power! Lucifer was on this earth when he made his attempt against God. At that remote, prehistoric time, this earth was a beautiful, unspoiled place. It had an atmosphere, similar to our atmosphere today.

        The presence of clouds proves Lucifer's domain was on this earth at the time he attempted his rebellion. The chemical formulae for the various precious and semi-precious stones proves that the minerals and elements of this earth were his habitat, just as the presence of water vapor in the form of clouds proves an atmosphere. That he said he would "ascend" to heaven, and that he was below the heights of the clouds when he said this proves the same thing.

        The "covering cherub" who had as his domain a perfect, beautiful "garden of God," this whole world, long prior to the time of Adam's creation was Lucifer, who became Satan!

        Jesus Christ said, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven" (Luke 10:18). After all, the One Who became Christ, Who was the Logos, or Executive Spokesman of the divine family called Elohim, was there when Lucifer rebelled. He was there when Satan was cast down to this earth, and subsequently destroyed, in his frenzied rage, what had been a beautiful "garden of God."

The Original "Star Wars"

        Lucifer's rebellion was a titanic struggle, unimaginable to a limited human mind. For who knows how many countless years Lucifer had "gone about as a trafficker" in his resentment toward God, his jealousy and vanity. When he had finally completed his "multitude of merchandizing," his self-serving, rebellious arguments he used to pervert the millions of angels God had placed under him, he attempted to mount up against God, to overthrow Him from His throne.

        Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Millions fill their minds with "science fiction" novels; speculate about lost worlds, aliens from outer space, wars in space such as "Star Wars" yet remain ignorant of the logical, obvious truth about how our world, our solar system, and as much of the known universe as we can see became chaotic, empty, devoid of life, waste, and in confusion.

        God's Word says it was created in perfect beauty that it was inhabited. But no man existed as yet. Rather, there was a pre-Adamic creation over which Lucifer, the "cherub that covereth," was placed in charge.

        Then came Lucifer's rebellion! Continents were in upheaval; huge mountains were formed as massive movement of the earth's tectonic plates took place. Plains buckled and heaved; earthquake faults moved hundreds and thousands of feet; massive upthrusts of granite shoved upward through thousands of feet of sedimentary rock; volcanoes spewed lava thousands of feet into the air; meteorites smashed into earth; the moon shook, and was blasted back and forth in its orbit by gigantic meteorites that plunged into it, causing craters a hundred and more miles from rim to rim.

        Perhaps it is significant that the most popular current "scientific" explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs is a gigantic meteorite smashing into the earth, completely changing earth's weather patterns, covering the world with a thick mantle of dust and ash, and killing all life.

        Notwithstanding the evolutionist's fondness for explaining life in terms of very gradual change over aeons of time, current thinking leans toward a gigantic cataclysm when the dinosaurs were rendered extinct.

        We are not told how long the raging battle that destroyed the solar system and ruined the earth took. But when we look at the lifeless face of Mars, or the moon, and the other planets; when we look at the poisonous, gaseous atmosphere of Venus, and study the raging storms that continually ravage the surface of Jupiter, we can get some idea of the chaotic, destructive, titanic forces that were at work.

        Thousands of meteorites penetrate the earth's atmosphere each year, but only a tiny fraction survive their fiery plunge to strike the earth. This "space junk" that is found throughout the universe is the result of cataclysms in space, explosions that sent billions of rocks hurtling in all directions.

        Comets plunge along on their courses, sometimes becoming visible from earth, inspiring awe and wonder. While our solar system may be beautiful to behold on a clear night, the planets are lifeless, some covered by vast, gaseous storms, others, such as Mars, revealing a parched, empty landscape.

        Among all the wreckage, there was only one lifeless, water-covered hulk that God visited.

       From time immemorial, our Creator had prepared this beautiful green, blue, and white planet as the home for man, to be made in the image of God Almighty; the place where God would begin the final stages of His great transcendental purpose for creating the universe, the solar system, and the earth.

        When you and I are allowed a glimpse of the creation of Adam and Eve, and all the "Genesis" kinds of modern life, we see, from the most ancient of documents, that the world was "without form, and empty," and that waters covered the continents. Already, for perhaps billions of years, the luxuriant swamps and forests of an ancient, earlier creation lay buried beneath thousands of feet of clays and sands that had hardened into limestone, claystone, shale, and many other rocks.

        Massive, floating logjams of millions of trees, shrubs, ferns, and leaves were deposited as tides subsided, only to have thick deposits of mud flow over them from another direction within hours. Then, more vegetation was washed atop the new layer of mud, and then more mud atop the new layer of vegetation. All of this was done to provide fuel for mankind in the centuries to come in the form of coal.

        The thick seams of coal in many areas of our earth, such as those in Pennsylvania, are sometimes cross-bedded, interbedded, with layers of rock, then a seam of coal, then more rock, then more coal, and so on. This shows massive tides from different directions carrying huge burdens of flotsam, or vast amounts of mud in solution, to be deposited atop the vegetation. As the years passed, and more rock was added to the region, the vegetation was compressed into coal.

        Vast collections of jumbled bodies of dinosaurs of every description; huge fish and amphibians, quadrupeds, animals of all kinds, were tumbled and tossed, sorted by the powerful forces of massive waves, and buried beneath flowing floods of mud which hardened into rock. These massive burial sites contribute to the "fossil fuels" which are consumed by modern nations.

        Scientists do not agree on how oil was formed. Yet, true to the "uniformitarianism" and evolutionary theory, most prefer to believe that it took millions of years in great oceans for "organic" materials to die, settle on the bottom of muddy ponds, bays, and estuaries, and for bacteria to cause them to decay.

        This preferred explanation flies in the face of the fact that no petroleum is being formed today. Petroleum, like coal, is evidence of gigantic catastrophes in the past.

        Thus, we have seen that our world was subjected to perhaps several world-wide floods, long prior to the time of Adam's creation. By no means could the flood of Noah's time have accounted for all the geological record that is plainly revealed by the rocks of our earth.

        Did God destroy all mankind except Noah and his family with a global flood? The Bible says He did, and geological and paleontological evidence proves it!

The Catastrophe Of the Flood

        After mankind had lived in sin and violence for about one-sixth of all time since Adam's creation until now, God destroyed that ancient world by a massive, world-wide flood!

        Many theologians believe the flood of Noah was merely a local phenomenon, assigning the book of Genesis to myth. But they deny the massive evidence of a world-wide flood, which is right before their eyes.

        God predicted this would occur: "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 creation.' For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men" (II Peter 3:3-7).

        There is a vast amount of material available to any thirsting mind concerning the flood of Noah's time. An important text I have used for decades is The Genesis Flood, by Whitcomb and Morris, published by the Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company of Philadelphia, back in 1961. It is the single most important book of which I know on the subject, dealing with each one of the "scientific" objections to the flood, such as radio-carbon dating, important data concerning the ark, the animals, the population and distribution of man prior to the flood, the geologic consequences of the flood, and the post-flood world when much of the mountain-building of our present world took place.

        I have always looked forward, with a great deal of personal nostalgia, to going back to Colorado in the early winter and overlooking a vast and uninhabited basin from what I named "Fossil Ridge." This is not an official name on any topographical map, but a name I use because of the millions of fossil seashells embedded in the rocks.

        Fossil Ridge is from eight to nine thousand feet above sea level. But this is not unusual, for fossil seashells and creatures of all kinds are found in the highest peaks of the mountains all over the world.

        The book mentioned above deals with dozens of serious questions concerning the flood. One of the most frequently asked is by those who cannot conceive of an atmosphere containing anywhere near enough moisture to rain for forty days and forty nights over the entire earth enough to inundate the tops of all the mountains as the Bible says.

        But when the world was inundated above the tops of the highest mountains during the flood of Noah, there was an accompanying submergence of the continental land masses, as well as a complete alteration of the climate of the earth. There is abundant evidence that the Arctic was once tropical in its climate; that it teemed with vast herds of mammoths, rhinoceroses, many kinds of grazing animals, as well as lions, sabre-toothed tigers, and many other species.

        Was the world at that time actually tilted on its axis in a different relationship to the sun? It could have been, for something has to account for the "quick freeze" that occurred to preserve countless thousands of animals with green vegetation still undigested in their stomachs, and even yet in their mouths.

        For many hundreds of miles across Siberia and Alaska there are countless hundreds of thousands of bodies of mammoths, horses, rhinos, bison, cattle, sheep, and other quadrupeds buried in the alluvial rocks, or "quick frozen" in the permafrost of the tundra.

        The Obi River is one of the largest rivers near European Russia which flows into the Arctic Ocean. The low Ural Mountains have been cut through by this river. Nelson, writing in his fascinating book, The Deluge Story In Stone, points out that "in the strata of these foothills everywhere fossil elephants are found in greatest abundance" (p. 123).

        Explorers who trekked Siberia many years ago discovered incredibly large deposits of many kinds of animals. Nelson wrote, "Summing up his discussion of the wide extent to which elephants and other large species are buried in Siberia, Howorth quoted Pallas as follows: There is not in all of Russia, from the Don as far as the extremity of the Peninsula of the Chukchis, a river or stream, especially those flowing in the plains, on the banks of which or in the beds of which there have not been found bones of elephants or other animals foreign to the climate'" (ibid., p. 124).

        Nelson makes the obvious point that the present seasonal flows of the many rivers in Russia, Siberia, and Alaska, have nothing to do with the burial conditions of the thousands of animals found there.

        Only a few years before the outbreak of World War II, the New York World published the following news item: "Fairbanks, Alaska, May 31 Well preserved skeletons of lions, elephants, mastodons, horse, bear, bison, moose and various rodents have been uncovered here by the two huge gold-dredging machines cutting into the fossil-filled muck which overlays the gold bearing gravel. For more than a hundred years engineers, prospectors and miners in Alaska have encountered tusks, bones and skulls of extinct Pleistocene animals, exposed in the banks of rivers..."

        Obviously the jumbled remains of millions of creatures which were suddenly buried, or "quick frozen" in the Arctic regions of our earth were not the result of a pre-Adamic cataclysm, but most likely the result of the flood during the time of Noah.

        Nelson writes, "The number of animals that are buried in Siberia must be stupendous. Some conception can be gotten from the fact that since the year 900 A.D., men have made it a business of collecting the ivory tusks of that region and selling them in China, Arabia and Europe. In a case where a record could be secured, Howorth said that in one period of twenty years tusks from at least 20,000 elephants were taken from one Siberian mine' to the markets of Europe during the nineteenth century" (ibid., p. 125).

        Countless thousands of such creatures were frozen suddenly. One outstanding proof is the body of a baby mammoth in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., contained in a glass-enclosed refrigerator, which still has green vegetation in its mouth.

        In northern Siberia, the flesh of animals has been preserved so that local inhabitants have actually cut off portions, thawed them out, and cooked and eaten elephant meat! Nelson says that "where the ground is frozen all the year around, not only the bones are discovered, but the flesh also, and often in such a state of preservation that the red meat remains and is suitable for food for dogs and wolves. Whole carcasses have been found with eyes which still retain their glassy stare. When the stomachs of the animals have been examined, the kinds of vegetation which they have eaten before they died can be made out" (ibid., p. 126).

        Nelson proves conclusively that massive numbers of animals were buried suddenly, not only in the northern latitudes, but in every part of the world. From Italy to the Americas, and from New Zealand to Austria, countless numbers of animals, as well as fossil sea life, have been found.

        That such animals were buried suddenly as a result of a global catastrophe is simply without dispute. These millions of animals did not die of disease, or old age. When an animal dies, its body decays, or is completely consumed by carrion eaters and insects. When thousands of animals are jumbled together, legs and tusks intertwined, and when they represent the old and the young, the evidence is obvious.

        They were buried or quick-frozen suddenly, and their fossil remains do not demonstrate a slow process of the preservation of fossils over thousands or millions of years.

        Who does not remember the "ice man" who was recently discovered high in the Alps, who was frozen solid for perhaps thousands of years, or the sensational discovery of the bodies of Arctic explorers, who were incredibly preserved?

        The mixing of the animal remains is very important. Nelson writes, "The fact of the bones occurring in great catches or deposits, in which various species are mixed pell-mell, is very important. If animals die occasionally from natural causes...different species do not come together to do so, nor does the lion come to take his last sleep with the lamb. The fact of finding masses of animal remains of mixed species, all showing the same state of preservation, not only points to a more or less contemporary death, but is quite fatal to the theory that they ended their days peacefully and by purely natural causes" (ibid., p. 130).

        Alaska and Siberia display to the eyes of explorers and paleontologists countless remains of many different species of animals, most of which must have lived in a tropical climate and then died suddenly. Why are there nowhere near so many fossil remains in temperate zones, or in the tropics, of the present world?

        "There are two factors which undoubtedly account for the abundance of well preserved fossil remains in Siberia as against the relative lack of these remains found in the rest of the world. These two factors are the perpetually frozen condition of Siberia's strata and its almost total lack of rainfall or snowfall. Doubtless other regions on the face of the globe would today display fossiliferous conditions comparable to Siberia in respect to the abundance of land animal fossils there if those regions had had Siberian conditions since the flood [of Noah's time]. The reason Siberia stands so far ahead in this respect is that its strata have been solidly frozen since the time of the Deluge, and there have been no forces of erosion capable of wearing away the soft, sandy, upper, frozen strata in which the elephants, rhinoceroses and other creatures are entombed" (ibid., p. 132).

        The flood of Noah's time left irrefutable evidence all over the earth. Evidence of the great universal flood is plainly visible, from the great river deltas to the Grand Canyon of Arizona.

        Too many creationists have assumed the flood of Noah was the only world-wide inundation of the continents, and many have assumed the earth is only about six thousand years old. This is simply not supportable by all the evidence. The earth could easily be four and one half billion years old, or older.

        But more importantly, the billions of tons of evidence in the rocks prove conclusively that the flood of Noah's time occurred! They present mute testimony that the Bible is true, that God did destroy the surface of this earth and all life upon it, except Noah and His family, with a massive, global flood!

Mankind God's Greatest Masterpiece

        This earth was being prepared for man for perhaps billions of years. It teemed with life, and Lucifer and his angels were the caretakers of an original, beautiful creation. When Lucifer rebelled, a titanic struggle ensued, which wrecked the earth, and, so far as we can probe with scientific instruments, the solar system and our galactic neighborhood.

        For countless years, the earth lay desolate under water, covered with a thick mantle of clouds desolate, with no light penetrating to its watery surface, as God reveals in the first chapter of Genesis.

        Finally, the time had come. God would now create man in the very image of God. He would place His great "prototype" in the midst of a beautiful, bountiful, perfect garden, in the autumn of the year, just when every kind of food would be plentifully available.

        "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after ourlikeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.' So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. 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'" (Genesis 1:26-28).

        Believe it or not, the member of the Godhead Who did the creating was the One who was to become Jesus Christ of Nazareth, born of the virgin Mary! We shall shortly see the proof, from your own Bible.

        In the next chapter, we are given a further glimpse of how Elohim, called the Logos, or divine Spokesman of the Godhead, created Adam and Eve: "And the Eternal God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul [Hebrew: nephesh, meaning living creature]" (Genesis 2:7).

        Think back to what you read about the atom and subatomic particles; about matter what it is, and how it acts. You and I are composed of matter. Our fleshly bodies consist of the elements of this earth. Our lives must be sustained by eating those things which come from the ground meats, fruits, vegetables, fish, grains. We literally are what we eat. Our bodies digest and assimilate the vitamins and minerals contained in everything from beef to radishes.

        Mostly, we consist of water. When we die, we return to the ground from whence we came. Our bodies decompose, and quite literally return to the soil. While horrible to contemplate, human bodies are sometimes instantly blasted or torn into tiny fragments by the sudden crash of a jet airplane into a murky swamp, or the thunderous explosion of a bomb.

        The Almighty Elohim, like a Master Potter, formed and shaped Adam of the "red mud" (which is what "Adam" really means) of this earth. God thought out, designed and then executed His plan for making man in the very image of God.

        God placed within mankind a mind, and placed within that mind the human spirit, which many call the "soul," and which they do not understand. (Write or call immediately for your free copy of our book, Do You Have An Immortal Soul?)

        The English word soul comes from the Hebrew word nephesh, which means "creature," and which can have many other meanings. It has nothing whatsoever to do with anything spiritual or immortal.

        Four times, in Genesis the first chapter, the identical word is used of lower life forms, and translated "creature" before it is used of man. It is translated "thing," "life," "the life," "beast," "breath," "person," "any," "man," "men," and in many other ways, including "body." Call for the booklet mentioned above, and prove this vital point from your own Bible. Study Bullinger's Companion Bible, Appendix 13, for a thorough understanding.

        God Almighty created man as a living creature made in the image of God, with a mind, which includes the human spirit, which may have come into the brain of Adam at the moment God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." Whenever or however this occurred ( when and how is not necessary to understand in order to be saved), God's Word says we have a human spirit.

        Notice the proof: "But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding" (Job 32:8). As if anticipating Christ's words as He died on the stake, David wrote, "Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou has redeemed me, O Lord God of truth" (Psalm 31:5).

        Again, David wrote, "I complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed...I commune with mine own heart, and my spirit made diligent search" (Psalm 77:3-6).

        Speaking of the human spirit as the innermost psyche, where our motives and volition reside, Solomon wrote, "The spirit of man is the candle of the Eternal, searching all the inward parts of the belly" (Proverbs 20:27).

        Paul wrote, "For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son..." (Romans 1:9).

        Paul showed how the Holy Spirit of God, in connection with our human spirit, combines to produce a "new creature in Christ," the "new man," which is a child of God: "The Spirit itself [God's Holy Spirit] beareth witness with our spirit [our human spirit, in our minds], that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together" (Romans 8:16,17).

        Paul urged the Corinthians, "For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's" (I Corinthians 6:20).

        Paul spoke of the "new creature" that is produced when God's Holy Spirit begets each human spirit, creating a new child of God within a human prototype: "Wherefore henceforth we know no man after the flesh [carnally]: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (II Corinthians 5:16,17).

        When you were begotten in the womb of your mother, it required the life-giving begettal of your father, together with the fertile egg of your mother. At the instant of conception, you became a new, distinct, unique human being! You did not begin your existence at birth, but at the moment of conception!

        When we are begotten of God, we begin, at that moment, a new existence in Christ, a newly-conceived, growing, developing, spiritual creature, who will ultimately be born of God either by a resurrection, or by an instantaneous change (I Corinthians 15:50-54). For a complete, in-depth understanding of this marvelous truth, write or call for your copy of our book Why You Were Born.