Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.
Lord, we thank you for your Holy Spirit. Lord, we thank you for the Spirit of truth. And Lord, we just ask you to bless today, Lord, your people that are here, those who are watching and listening, Lord, I ask you to touch people, Lord, all over this country and in different countries across the world. We thank you for each and everyone. We ask you to touch them, speak to their heart. Lord, even the skeptic this morning, even the unbeliever, even the Christian who doesn't really believe the Bible, Lord, we ask you to touch every heart, change hearts, change lives and move each and everyone into faith, true faith in your word. We thank you for the truth and we pray it all in Jesus name. Well, all right, well, we're gonna get started this morning. Of course, we've been doing a series on biblical creation and why that's important, calling it the sevenfold doctrine of creation from a prophecy in the book of Enoch. And also, I believe from the scriptures and Daniel and Psalm 33, we covered that a few weeks ago. But this week we've entitled this, the firmament and clueless pastors. Now, I did this not to pick on pastors. There's some pastors out there that are good. They just haven't really studied this information. They don't have a revelation on it. They don't see the importance of it. And they've been so brainwashed by so many years of public education and government propaganda that they've tried to interpret the Bible through modern science and modern cosmology. But there's a difference. There are many pastors out there who have heard the truth about this and yet still reject it or act ignorant or try to come up with other explanations. One of the most sad explanations that you're gonna hear in a minute is that basically the writers of the Bible, particularly the book of Genesis, which would be Moses, who was on the mountain with God, he didn't know what he was writing. He was just writing from his perspective. And so the Bible is wrong when it comes to the description of creation, the heavens and the earth and the sun and the moon and the stars. And it's a really sad state of affairs if that is what you believe because I'm gonna tell you right now, you don't believe the Bible. Now we're gonna cover some scriptures before we get into this. Let's read this passage here, very important. We try to just beat this into my ministry school students, this particular passage here because it really is the basis of everything. And to me, I just don't get it. I thought when I got saved,
when I really was repented of my sin and knew Jesus came into my heart and I started reading the Bible, I just thought believing the Bible is the inspired infallible word of God was part of the package. And so I read scriptures, passages like this, and I believe them. And over now, 32 plus years of study in the Bible and studying history and studying archeology and studying Hebrew and Greek language and everything else, I've come to more believe that the Bible from Genesis to Malachi, the Old Testament, Matthew to Revelation, the New Testament, I believe they are the inspired, God-breathed, infallible words of God, the truth that they are correct, inerrant. There's not error in the Bible. If you find an apparent contradiction, then it's something you don't understand either in the language or the context or of the whole thing. And every time you reconcile those things, guess what? No contradiction. But this is 2 Timothy 3. I didn't put the first few verses, but this is in context of Paul saying that in the last days, perilous time shall come. Now this is very important context. In the last days, which I believe we're living in the last of the last days, Bible prophecy, the ones that have come to pass and the ones that are in the process of coming to pass, clearly bear that out that we are in the time period of the second coming of Jesus and the great tribulation and the antichrist and all of that stuff. But he said here that in the last days, perilous times will come and then we're gonna start reading at verse 12. And he said, yay, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. But evil meant, and you need to remember this verse. I know I highlighted one verse, but this verse is important. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. Boy, let that one sink in for a moment. He said evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving others, but being deceived themselves. All right? And he goes on to say to Timothy, the young pastor, but continue thou in the things which thou has learned and has been assured of knowing of whom thou has learned them and that from a child, thou has known the holy scriptures which are able to make thee wise into salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. So the primary scriptures that Timothy would have known as a child, that his mother and grandmother would have taught him would have been the Old Testament. There may have been a few of Paul's early letters written already that Timothy may have read before he met Paul. But clearly, Paul saying evil men and seducers are gonna wax worse and worse, but the way that you keep from being deceived by them
is that you must continue in the scriptures, continue in what you have learned from the holy scriptures. And then he adds this. He says, verse 16, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine. Now, let me stop right there real quick. First of all, when it says all scripture is given by inspiration of God, means that it is God breathed, that God breathed upon a man and moved him what to write down. We have another verse we'll look at, but the Holy Spirit, God's power, God's anointing, God's spirit moved upon these men that he, these different men, he had write the Bible like Moses, like Daniel, like Jeremiah, like Joshua, on down the list, Ezra, Nehemiah. I mean, we could go on down. James, John, right? Peter, the apostle Paul. God breathed upon them. The Holy Spirit moved upon them and had them to write down exactly what he wanted them to write down, he says, because it's all profitable for doctrine. What is doctrine? Teaching, instruction. In fact, the word doctrine means systematic study of a truth through the whole scripture, all right? So he says all scripture is given by God, by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine. Now, we have to ask ourself a question a minute. Would there be any scripture in the Bible then that would not be profitable, that would not be truthful, that would not be correct? You see, this is where the problem is. And this is why I'm gonna say that. I had some pastor in Australia, he's upset with me, because he's like, you're making it, you're making it us and them. Yeah, because he said, you're saying there are Christians that believe the Bible and there's Christians who don't. Exactly, exactly. And a Christian who doesn't believe the Bible is like a fish who doesn't believe in water. You understand? That's how important it is. Let's keep reading this verse. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, for reproof. Meaning, if you believe something's wrong, I can take scripture and say, you're wrong. I can take scripture and say, you're in error. You're deceived. You need to quit believing the lies of men or the doctrines of men and believe God's word, believe what God said, believe the inspired, infallible word of God, the Bible, okay?
And today, mainly, I'm talking to Christians. I wanna talk to Christians because most Christians do not believe God's account of creation. They don't believe it because they've chosen to believe evil men who are deceived and deceiving people. Now, I wanna show you one of them. My old buddy, Neil deGrasse Tyson. People who make this case that that was the beginning and that there had to be something that provoked the beginning, do you give them an A, at least for trying to reconcile faith and reason? I don't think they're reconcilable. What do you mean? Well, let me say that differently. All efforts that have been invested by brilliant people of the past have failed at that exercise. They just failed. And so I don't, the track record is so poor that going forward, I have essentially zero confidence, near zero confidence that there will be fruitful things to emerge from the effort to reconcile it. So for example, if you knew nothing about science and you read, say, the Bible, the Old Testament, which in Genesis is an account of nature, that's what that is. And I said to you, give me your description of the natural world based only on this. You would say the world was created in six days and that stars are just little points of light, much lesser than the sun. And in fact, they can fall out of the sky, right? Because that's what happens during the revelation. You're one of the signs that the second coming is that the stars will fall out of the sky and land on earth. So to even write that means you don't know what those things are. You have no concept of what the actual universe is. So everybody who tried to make proclamations about the physical universe based on Bible passages got the wrong answer. So what happened was when science discovers things and you wanna stay religious, or you wanna continue to believe that the Bible is unerring, what you would do is you would say, well, let me go back to the Bible and reinterpret it. Then you'd say things like, oh, they didn't really mean that literally, they meant that figuratively. So this whole sort of reinterpretation of how figurative the poetic passages of the Bible are came after science showed that this is not how things unfolded. And so the educated religious people are perfectly fine with that. It's the fundamentalists who want to say that the Bible is the literally, literal truth of God that, and want to see the Bible as a science textbook who are knocking on the science doors of the schools, trying to put that content in the science room.
Enlightened religious people are not behaving that way. They're saying, yeah, science is cool, we're good with that. And use the Bible to get your spiritual enlightenment and your emotional fulfillment. I have known serious religious people, not fundamentalists, who were scared when Carl Sagan opened his series with the words. The cosmos is all it is, or ever will be. That scared them, because they interpret that to mean, then if this is it, there's nothing else, no God and no life after. For religious people, many people say, well, God is within you. There are ways that people have shaped this rather than God is an old gray bearded man in the clouds. So if God is within you, what I'm sure Carl would say, in you in your mind, in your mind, and we can measure the neurosynaptic firings when you have a religious experience, we can tell you where that's happening, when it's happening, what you're feeling like at the time. So your mind, of course, is still within the cosmos. But do you have any sympathy for people who seem to only feel safe in the vastness of the universe you describe in your show, if they can infer a personal God who makes it more hospitable to them, who cares for them? In this, what we tell ourselves is a free country, which means you should have freedom of thought. I don't care what you think, I just don't. Think whatever you want, go ahead. Think that there's one God, two gods, 10 gods, or no gods. That is what it means to live in a free country. The problem arises is if you have a religious philosophy that is not based in objective realities, that you then wanna put in the science classroom. Then I'm gonna stand there and say, no, I'm not gonna allow you in the science classroom. I'm not telling you what to think, I'm just telling you in the science class, you're not doing science, this is not science, keep it out. That's where I, that's when I stand up. Otherwise, go ahead, I'm not telling you how to think. Here's another one of them. The first one was, of course, Neil deGrasse Tyson. This is Lawrence Krauss. He's a professor of astronomy, theoretical physicists, something of that nature at the Arizona State University. Of course, he had so many sexual harassment suits, they finally had to get rid of him. He's quite the pervert and assaulter of women, but he, this is what he said. Here's another one, let's look at what he said. But the amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics. You are all stardust. You couldn't be here if stars hadn't exploded because the elements, the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron,
all the things that matter for evolution weren't created at the beginning of time. They created the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way they can get into your body is if the stars were kind enough to explode. So forget Jesus, the stars died so that you could be here today, okay? I imagine that Jesus is gonna have something to say about that to Mr. Krauss when he gets here. Let's look at another passage here real quick. This is 2 Peter 1, 19 through 21. And again, I'm speaking to the choir today, a little bit, the Christians. But 2 Peter 1, 19 through 21 says, we have also a more sure word of prophecy, where until you do well that you take heed as unto a light that shineth in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts. Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scriptures of any private interpretation, for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Now, this is what this says, all right? And John, this is the prayer of Jesus. Let's look at what the apostle John said, that Jesus prayed. And I'm not gonna read the entire prayer. We're just gonna read verses 15 through 20. Jesus prayed here, say, I prayed not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth. Now, here's Jesus praying to the Father, and he's saying very clearly here, sanctify them or make them holy, make them strong, make them righteous through your word. What word's he talking about? The Bible, the words that God moved men of God to write down, he says, sanctify them through thy word, thy word is truth. So several things we see here. We see that the word of God is declared to be inspired by him. It's declared to be all of it. All scripture is inspired by him, and all scripture is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. And here we see it again, Jesus praying this, sanctify them, make them holy, make them righteous, make them strong, through thy word, thy word is truth. So if what we have here, the testimony of the scriptures saying the scriptures are the truth, not a suggestion, not what somebody thought, not by the will of man, but by God himself. Now, this is what I am going to make clear today.
Neil is right that modern science, much of it is not and cannot be reconciled with what God says about it. Notice that Lawrence Krauss there said that everything was created when stars exploded. Well, where did the stars come from, right? And then of course, there's the big, their whole big bang there, there that basically somehow nothing exploded into all the matter that is in their alleged universe. It's ridiculous. It is a religion, because no one was there to witness that. So it is a belief. It is simply a belief. So what we're talking about is much of science has become a religion. It is simply a religion, because they have a desire to not want to deal with the God of the Bible, because he demands morality. And a pervert like Krauss doesn't want morality. And of course, he lives his life by what he believes, that there are really no, there's no moral accountability to any God that he has to answer to. So he can assault, you know, little co-eds all he wants, I guess. But let's keep going here. Now, let's see, this is Jesus again, Matthew four. And this is when Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. We're just gonna read this. Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he was afterward hungry. And when the tempter came, he said, if thou be the son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Now here, he's quoting from Deuteronomy. Now Jesus is speaking. So obviously here, let me just pass this on to some of these theologian friends of mine. Jesus believed that the writings of Moses were the inspired and followable word of God. The writings of Moses, the first five books of the Bible, right? Which would include the book of Genesis. All right, let's keep going here. Several decades ago, we found a problem. So great that it was brushed under the carpet for many a decade. And this is the fact that galaxies spin too fast. We believe in the work of Isaac Newton, at least on planetary scales. But when you apply Newton's laws of motion to the galaxy, the galaxy spins too fast. In fact, 10 times too fast. By rights, the galaxy should fly apart. Therefore, scientists said that we have to have dark matter, a halo of matter that surrounds the galaxy and holds the galaxy together. Between one and 3% of the universe is all the stuff we can see. And somewhere between 99 and 97% of the universe
is stuff we can't see. This dark matter that dominates our galaxy, we think, we're virtually certain now, is made of some new type of elementary particle different than the stuff that makes you and I out. And what have they discovered? Absolutely nothing, zilch. What is a little bit perturbing is that after 50 years, we still haven't found what the dark matter is. But on the other hand, that doesn't mean they're not there. It just means they're harder to find than we thought. We look out in the universe, and 85% of all the gravity that's out there has some mysterious unknown source. We add up all the stars, the galaxies, the planets, the comets, the black holes, the dark clouds, everything out there that we can see, touch, smell, or taste. And it doesn't add up to give us the gravity that we see operating in this universe. So really, we should be calling it the dark force, because we don't know if it's made of matter. It could be a profound misnomer, sending people off in thought directions that might not really be the right path. So dark matter is just simply what we call this thing about which we know nothing, responsible for 85% of the gravity of the cosmos. We've known about dark matter since the 1930s. Back then, it was called missing mass. That's what it was called, because yeah, there's gotta be some mass. Where is it? We can't find it. It's gotta be here somewhere, because we got the gravity. If you have the gravity, you gotta have the mass. Mass and gravity go together. It's really dark gravity. Actually, we shouldn't call it anything. We should call it Fred. Something that has no meaning, because we don't know what it is to call it, but it is the longest standing unsolved problem in modern astrophysics. Dark matter, dark energy. Everything we know about the universe, what we're made of, galaxies, stars, planets, that's all right here. So according to this chart, we are 96% stupid. So the problem with cosmology is that we keep inventing theories, ad hoc theories, to try to explain the data, such as inflation, dark matter, dark energy, and so on, just to keep patching the theory up. There is a crisis in cosmology. Usually in science, if we're off by a factor of two or a factor of 10, we call that horrible. We say something's wrong with the theory. We're off by a factor of 10. However, in cosmology, we're off by a factor of 10 to the 120. That is one with 120 zeros after it. This is the largest mismatch between theory and experiment in the history of science. This right here is mind-blowing when you really consider what they're saying. These are astrophysicists. These are award-winning astronomers and cosmologists,
Krauss and Tyson and Michio Kaku here. And they say in the area of cosmology, we are off by a factor of 10 with 120 zeros beside it. And then they tell us that they only understand about 4% of what's going on in the whole universe. So they say, according to Quoting Neal, they're 96% stupid, right? I'm just gonna put it to you today. I think they're 99.9999% stupid. But how can, you think about these statements that they made a minute ago, like Krauss and Tyson did about stars exploding and that you came from Stardust or the Bible doesn't know what it's talking about. They don't know what those things are yet. They're gonna sit here and tell us that they're 96% stupid, that they don't know what, they don't even know what dark matter is, that their system of gravity and mass and Newton's universal laws of gravitation don't work. I mean, do you understand? That's what they just said. This stuff doesn't add up, doesn't work. Our system that we came up with over the last 500 years doesn't work. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't equal what we see. Now granted, let me just tell you this. What they're seeing is they are seeing stars and clusters of stars and clouds and things like that that are out there. But I'm gonna get into that probably more when I get into the sun, moon and stars part of this and talk about what they're actually seeing because they're the ones blowing it all out of proportion. Those things, they are seeing stars and clusters of stars and even nebula, which are cloudy areas. And the Bible speaks of these things. It speaks of the dark clouds. It speaks of star clusters, Orion and the Pleiades and all these different ones. It speaks of these things, but the point is, it's just they're the ones magnifying it to this massive, vast universe. You know, if you think about Genesis 1, just real quick, something about the sun and the moon. God said he made the sun, moon and stars. He said he made two great lights, the sun and the moon. And he made the stars also, right? We're gonna read that in a minute. Well, then these guys come along and tell us, oh, there's stars out there that are just, they're like our sun, but they're huge, they're massive. They're way bigger than our sun. Wait a minute. God said he made two great lights, sun and moon. Yet they come up and say, no, some of the stars are suns and they're bigger than our sun. They just make up stuff and they make up stuff because of what these little twinkles of light they see out there and they make this stuff up. And I'm gonna show you that. I'm gonna show you where all this stuff originated from. And in the next few weeks, we'll be getting into that.
But I just wanted you to hear that. But the missing mass thing is interesting. And the thing that they talk about, it's like there's gotta be a halo of matter and holding the stars and the sun and the moon. Well, guess what? It's called the firmament, folks. And it is mass, it is solid. And they don't understand that that's what they're seeing. And that's what they're having to see through. And they're trying to figure it out with these telescopes. But let's get to, I'm gonna get to them in the weeks ahead with the sun moving stars. We're gonna really break down some stuff going on. We're gonna break down Einstein and Hubble and all of that fun stuff, dark energy, dark matter. We're gonna break it down. But let's listen to this. This fellow, I mentioned this a couple of times. And that's the reason I entitled today's message The Firmament and Clueless Pastors. You're gonna hear here, this is gonna be quite disturbing because this guy just kind of randomly calls pastors in different parts of the country and asks them a simple question, what is the firmament? And the answers that he got, and I won't even have time to play them all. There's so many. But the answers he got blows my mind. He got everything from the firmament was the earth to the firmament is outer space, to the firmament is just something that they conjured up in their heads because they didn't know any better. I mean, that's some of it. But let's listen to this. Let's listen to this right here. Good afternoon with Fulberry Church. Hi, can I speak to the pastor, please? May I ask his calling? Yeah, this is Nathaniel. Nathaniel? Yes, ma'am, I'm actually calling out of state. I've just got a question. In regards to the book of Genesis, I'm a follower of Christ and I have been reading Genesis and I figured a pastor would be the most qualified to help me out. I've just got one question about a particular verse. I definitely don't want to waste anyone's time. Okay, all right. Hold on just a minute, please. Thank you. Hello. Hey, sir. Hello. Hey, my name is Nathaniel. How you doing? I'm doing well. Hope you are. I'm doing great, sir. I'm doing great. I was telling the receptionist, I definitely don't want to take up too much of your time. I've just got a particular question about the biblical definition of a word that I'm seeing in the book of Genesis.
So if you've got just a moment, I read the King James version and while reading Genesis chapter one, verse six, it states that God placed a firmament in the midst of the waters. Now I'm just curious on the biblical definition of that term. And I felt that a pastor would be the most qualified to help me out. Okay, read it again. So Genesis chapter one, verse six, it says that God put a firmament in the midst of the waters to divide the waters from the waters. Right. The word firmament literally just means the dome shape of the sky. Okay. So it's a division between the heavens and the earth. Yeah, water's in the waters. Water's in the water. So when it says that there's water above the firmament, what does that mean exactly? Because I know there's water in the sky, but I don't think there's water above the sky. And I'm just really curious as to what that means. Well, it's a good question. One I've never really thought about a whole lot. Why are you asking? What is the purpose of your inquiry? Well, I'm actually just really interested in capturing the visualization of that depiction because I am aware that Genesis is the story of creation. And I'm just trying to wrap my head around, like I said, that visualization of that portion of scripture. I'm a follower of Christ. I've been reading the Bible for about three years now. But man, well, I appreciate all your time, Pastor. Well, I wish I could be more help. Let me say you're Genesis chapter one, verse six. Right, that's what you said. Yes, sir. Okay. Yeah, that's a good question as far as exactly what it means dividing the waters from the waters. It goes on to say that he called the firmament heaven in verse eight. Right. It's really a stumbling block that I've encountered within the past couple of days. Like I said, man, I really appreciate it. The literal definition of firmament
is the dome shape of the sky. The word that's translated firmament literally means like the dome shape of the sky. You go out at night and you look up and you can see the dome shape of the sky. That's the literal definition of that word in the Hebrew. But as far as exactly what he meant by the division of the waters and the waters, I'll be honest with you, I'm not sure. Okay, Pastor. Well, man, like I said, I appreciate you taking my call and spending the time to at least try to help. So that means a lot to me. Well, you're welcome. All right, brother, you have a great day. You too. Bye-bye. Hello. Can I speak to Pastor Booth? Yes, this is the Pastor. Hey, how's it going? Hey, I'm good. Who's this? This is Nathaniel. We haven't spoken before, everyone. No, I don't think, which church are you calling for? Because my phone number's on my old church too, I think. Still. I was actually just calling to speak to a pastor. It's remarkable that a pastor answered the phone. Oh, well, yeah, no, no, no. I got time. What can I do for you? I don't think we've ever talked before. Okay, great, great. Well, I definitely don't want to take up too much of your time. I've just got a question. Yeah. So, you know, I'm a follower of Christ and, you know, I've been reading Genesis a lot lately and there's a word that's kind of sticking out to me, Pastor, and that is the firmament. Now, do you happen to know the biblical definition of the firmament because it's kind of giving me a stumbling block? Yeah, no, that's an entry because that's one of those older words we don't really use anymore. It basically just means earth, you know, the ground we walk upon. Firmament just is a, I'm sorry, I don't have a definition in front of me, so that's why I'm stumbling. But my understanding of it is it just means earth itself was known as the firmament. So, you know, nature all around us. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. It definitely does. Especially considering it says that, you know, there's water above and below the firmament. So if the firmament is the earth, that definitely makes sense. Yeah, and you'll, and a few of the older hymns and some of our hymns, you'll see that word occasionally. That's what that means. But I'm just curious, how'd you find my phone number? Because I don't know you, do I? No, actually, I literally googled it. Well, I'm glad to be of help.
And if, do you have any other questions I can help with? Yeah, man. So, yes, piggybacking off of the firmament being the earth, how would you explain the two great lights being in the firmament? Because it does state that the sun and the moon are in the firmament. Now that's interesting, because it's been a, do you know what verse that is in front of you? Yeah, it's actually right in the first couple of verses in chapter one, starting at verse six, and then down it starts at verse 14, when it states that there's lights in the firmament. Here, let me look, because I actually had a, so are you using the King James version? Yes, sir, that's the one that I subscribe to. Okay, good, that's fine. I have a different translation. So mine actually, and I guess this is just a modern interpretation of the firmament. So you take what this is, or take it for what it is, but mine says dome, that we're under the dome from the waters that were above. That's a, huh, let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and seasons for days and years. Huh, lights, and that's an interesting one. Now I wonder, and this is just me thinking, I've never actually had anyone ask me this part before. Do you think, or, well, I gotta imagine, they didn't, you know, the writers didn't really understand space, right, at that time? You know what I'm saying? So maybe they took it as the lights were up in the sky when really they're outside the earth. Does that make any sense at all? Definitely, if they're saying that the sun and the moon are in the sky, so yours says dome. Yeah, and I don't really know why it says, I guess dome is in a sense the shape, well, half the earth at least, you know? Yeah, that still doesn't narrow it down as to why the sun and the moon would be. No, no, no, no, no, not at all. Here, let me, because I have a steady Bible in front of me, I can, yeah, I mean, if you've got a second, I'll check to see if it speaks to that. All right, so I'm just gonna read it for what it says. And this is for verses six to eight, the little commentary says, a pre-scientific understanding of the universe pictured a dome canopy, so that's where the dome comes from, I guess, or a multilayered sky supported by mountains and so on. The sun, moon, and stars were thought to cross this dome in regular patterns, and the waters were, the water was held in chambers above the dome from which it occasionally fell in rainfall. That's interesting. I guess it's talking about, before we really understood what the earth looked like,
the fact that it was a huge ball, right? I think it's saying the ancient biblical writers, they described it to the best of their possible ability. So the dome, their understanding of it was, it was just kind of a dome that lights flashed through. Does that make sense? To an extent, so the writers, excuse me, so the writers, they were basically writing on their own interpretations rather than God's. Well, I wouldn't say that, I would say, okay, were you ever studied the book of Revelation? You know, I've never really studied the book of Revelation. Well, and this may not make a whole lot of sense, but there's a lot of weird sounding stuff in that book, right? And the way I've had it explained to me before, I'm a Methodist, but one of my mentors was a Southern Baptist pastor, and the way he explained it to me was that a lot of the stuff in the book of Revelation doesn't make sense to us because it's how the biblical writers were describing things. So like a lot of what John saw when he wrote the book of Revelation, he didn't know how to explain because it was, he was looking into the future in a sense. God was taking him to the future. And the book of Revelation, John wrote down the best, or wrote down descriptions to the best of his ability. So there's references, I think, to dragons spitting out fire, right, in the book of Revelation. Well, some people believe that John tried to interpret what he saw, meaning like a tank shooting out fire, you know, at the end times. And you took that from what you will. But what I'm trying to say is that the biblical writers, they were obviously inspired by God, and these are his words to them. So it's all in terms of when this was written. Do you get a little bit of what I'm saying, at least? Slightly, yeah. You know, I guess what I take from what you've said thus far is be weary of how you interpret the writers, particularly creation, Genesis, because they didn't know. So they were just, I don't want to say wrong, but incorrect, which is interesting, because obviously we know that there's no dome over the years. Right. And it's not even, and I get what you're saying, it's not even necessary that they were incorrect, but that's, well, in a sentence, they're incorrect, but that's what they knew is truth at that time. And that's not, you know, that doesn't take away from the fundamental truth of God's word or anything. It's just at that time, you know, how could they know what the world looks like? Because you look up in the sky, it looks like, you know, from first glance, if we didn't know what it was, it looks like a dome, right? So, and it's not that they can't be trusted, it's more we just have to understand when they were writing.
So once we understand their depictions, I guess, of the earth and the depiction of the firmament, how does that then, I guess, transform or change the way we read and interpret it? And it really, you know, when it comes down to it, it really shouldn't change it. It's just, you know, making things a little clearer in terms of, because fundamentally the fact that it's not a dome, you know, that doesn't change the message of what creation was all about, or in the end doesn't change the message of what the Bible is for us. I could give you many more. I know that was a little long, but I wanted you to hear two pastors, different parts of the country. The last fellow says he was a Methodist, but trained by, mentored by a Southern Baptist pastor. And I know the other one was a Baptist church, but you hear, got complete either, I have no clue what this is, the firmament, or the writers weren't really inspired by God. They didn't have, it wasn't revelation from God about creation. It was just them giving their own interpretation with what little knowledge that they had. And he gets the guy, the pastor to say, well, the Bible must be incorrect because now we know the earth's a ball and there's outer space and all this stuff. So the Bible's incorrect. Now, this right here is an absolute disgrace to anyone that calls themselves a Bible-believing Christian. Because first of all, comparing the symbolic prophetic language in Revelation that actually has very specific things it's referring to, to creation is, first of all, a terrible error because number one, we have to ask, well, if the firmament is some kind of symbol, if it's some kind of symbolic language or poetic language or figurative language that we don't understand in the context of Genesis one, well then is the, verse one, it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Well, is the earth figurative? Is the earth figurative? How about the sun and the moon? Are they just figurative poetic language? Are they not literal things? So what I'm getting at is if the earth is literal in Genesis one and the heaven is literal and we see that the creation of the sun, moon and stars and the grass and the trees and the animals and then man, you know, then Adam and Eve, if those things are literal, why would the firmament be figurative
or why would it be wrong? Why would the firmament itself be wrong? The reason is is because they have chosen to believe the liars and the deceivers and the deception that Satan has pulled off with his accomplices in this world is pretty sophisticated and pretty, he's put on a good show. I mean, it's the Wizard of Oz. He's fooled everybody, right? But recently, in recent years, Toto has pulled back the curtain, right? And that's what's happening. The Nikon P900 is starting to pull back the curtain even further. Let's go to Genesis and let's see if we can define the word firmament biblically, but let's read it. And so this is what I'm talking about. The way we interpret scripture is first of all context. We look at the context and just like I said, the context of this entire chapter are literal things. In fact, if you go down to, you know, when it talks about on the sixth day and God creating Adam and Eve, creating mankind there, Jesus referred to this in Matthew five when he was talking about divorce and remarriage. He said, in the beginning, it was not so. God created a male and female. And so Jesus referred to this as a literal event, as real, Jesus, right? In Matthew five referred to Genesis one is real. I remember one of my pastors back in the day, Dr. Larry Lee, this is a sad commentary and I've shared this before, but I have to because it comes up with Genesis one. He said he was in one of the leading Baptist seminaries in the country, Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. I mean, it's like the Mecca for the Baptist, right? It is their flagship school. And he said, he was in, I guess he was in graduate, you know, PhD classes, probably either, somewhere in the seventies, mid to, you know, mid seventies. And he said that in one of his classes, the professor said this, the first 11 chapters of Genesis is a true myth. He said the theological implications are true, but there probably wasn't ever a man named Adam. There probably wasn't ever a man named Noah. And Larry Lee said, he raised his hand. He said, well, Jesus thought they were real and Paul said they were real. And the professor said, they just didn't have the information that we have today. Now that right there is demonic. That right there is demonic deception. That right there is a rejection of the Bible. And that guy, you know, that professor, he could have been a Jesuit infant, or just a deceived individual. But let's read this. Let's just read Genesis a little bit here.
All right. Says here, Genesis one, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the spirit of God moved upon the waters. Now did that happen or did it not happen, Christian? Did it happen that way or did it not happen that way? Is this just a poem? Is this just figurative language? Is this just a man's idea of how it happened? Or was Moses on the mountain with God and God told him how it happened? Folks, you need to, if you're a Christian, you better snap out of this, believe in the world over God. All right, let's keep reading. God said, let there be light and there was light. Well, I guess because there's light now, we can believe that's literal. All right, God saw the light that it was good and divided the light from the darkness and God called the light day and the darkness he called night and the evening and the morning were the first day. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. We have light, but we don't have any sun, moon or stars. Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Isn't that, wait, wait, wait, wait. Didn't Lawrence Krauss tell us everything came from the stars first? We, you know, it's ridiculous. Here we go though. So we've got a literal creation in Genesis one coming down, literal heaven and earth, literal water, literal light. And then we have this pesky little thing here in verse six. It's pesky little problem. And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven and the evening and the morning were the second day. Now, remember the Bible over and over uses the term heavens, plural heavens and the earth. In fact, the word shama'im means it's plural. It's a plural Hebrew word meaning basically shama' the sky and maim the water, sky water, all right? So basically God created the heavens and the earth by dividing this water and by dividing these waters with this thing called the firmament, he created something above, waters above. And then he created an atmosphere, the open aspect of heaven, one heaven. Our atmosphere is the first heaven. As you're gonna see, the firmament is also called heaven. So it's the second heaven. And then above that, the waters, the dark waters that says that God rides upon, sits upon, the Bible says, those waters and then you have would be the third heaven where God's throne is. So, I remember when I first started preaching this, I said, you know, if there's waters above our atmosphere,
there's an ocean of water above our atmosphere, then has anything ever left our atmosphere? No, not Apollo anything, not Mercury anything, not Gemini anything, not Sputnik anything, not Cosmonaut anything. And right now, somebody sent me, a paint tank sent me a video of a Russian cosmonaut saying that they did not go to space. I'm having the Lieutenant Colonel's Fluid and Russian check that for me before I talk about it and confirm it. But there's a lot of people out there that can speak Russian so I don't think they'd be trying to fake it. But we'll find out for sure here shortly. But they didn't, there's no space out there. There's our atmosphere, all right? There's a level and I'm gonna talk about it, about the ether, about a denser area of gas, fluid like gas that we're gonna talk about that gets up there pretty high. But going outside, going 240,000 miles away to the moon, the alleged moon that's that far outside of our atmosphere, or going to Mars with a rover or sending out, you know, all this stuff, no, they don't do any of that. And of course, I can prove that by their own declassified documents. But let's keep looking at this thing, the firmament. I've heard everybody say this now, this is one of the things that gets on my nerves the worst is when somebody says, well, this is outer space, okay? Well, okay, if it's outer space where they say the stars and the sun and the moon are, where's the water above that? I mean, Dr. Danny Faulkner of Answers in Genesis tries to say there must be water outside of our universe. I mean, that's where he goes with it. Because they try to define this word as an expanse, just an empty expanse, but that's not what it is. So we're gonna look at it. Let's look at the next few verses here before we move on. So God said, let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear, and it was so. So the dry land appeared, God called the dry land earth and the gathering together the waters, and God saw that it was good, and God said, let the earth bring forth grass and herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind whose seed is in itself upon the earth and it was so, and the earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit whose seed was in itself after his kind, and God saw that it was good. Now again, are these literal things? Dry land, grass, trees, fruit trees with seeds in them. Pretty specific. I don't think it's poetic or figurative. And then he says here, that was the evening morning
where the third day, and God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years, and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth and it was so. So let there be lights in the firmament. Let's keep reading here. God made two great lights and the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night and he made the stars also. So he made two great lights, not a bunch of massive suns spread out over an ever expanding universe. That's not what he's teaching here. And God set them, and this is important, God set them, we're gonna talk about this more in the days ahead, but just remember this, God set them, he established them, he placed them in the firmament of heaven, of the heaven to give light upon the earth and to rule over the day and over the night and to divide the light from the darkness and God saw that it was good and the evening and the morning were the fourth day. Then he adds something here and he says this, and God said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath light and the fowl that fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. So he talks about the firmament that divides the waters above from the waters below, but the open firmament was created by that dividing wall. So he's saying this is open. So it's very important to understand that. So he's calling our atmosphere a heaven, he's calling the firmament itself that created that atmosphere by dividing the waters and the waters a heaven. And then there's what Paul said when he went to the throne of God, he calls it the third heaven. That's what the Bible teaches. Now let's keep going. Now this is Dr. Michael Heiser, this is a short clip from him. Dr. Heiser with Logos Bible Software, he's a PhD, Hebrew, he's a professor, he teaches. Here's what's sad. He actually teaches what the Bible teaches about biblical cosmology, biblical creation. He actually teaches it correctly, but he doesn't believe it. He believes that they were just using terms that they knew, that these truths, that these words about the firmament, about the earth and how God describes it in Genesis 1, he believes that to all just be the how Moses saw it with his own eyes, not a revelation of God's truth about it. So let's listen here to Dr. Heiser. Israelite cosmology has three tiers. This is the Ten Commandments passage. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. Three levels.
New Testament is the same, Philippians 2.8 verse 10. So that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. What, like the worms? No, we're gonna see what they were thinking here. Revelation five, heaven, earth, under the earth. It's a three-tiered cosmology. This is what it would look like. I didn't make this graphic, which is why it looks cool. Somebody gave this to me because they hated, honestly, at Western, they hated the one I used and so they gave me this. This is a three-tiered cosmology. There's God. We're gonna see it in the verses. I'll show you that God lives above the vault of heaven, the firmament, and in the firmament you have windows and doors, and you have the earth. We're gonna see verses that talk about the ends of the round, flat earth here. Underneath is Sheol. Sheol can be both the grave and it can also be the underworld, okay? It's not quite hell, but it's sort of like hell. We can talk a little bit about it. And then underneath that, we have the great deep. These are all scriptural terms that are on this map. This is what an Israelite, an Egyptian would have had different terms, but the same three-tiered level, same with the Mesopotamians. Now they have, theologically, they have dramatically different views of what's going on here. Not just who made it, but what's going on. Views of afterlife, the value of humanity. I mean, it's dramatically different. And I've made the comment before, Genesis is about theological messaging, and there are some dramatic differences in what Israel is saying, the Bible is saying, and anything else. I just wanted you to see that this is what Dr. Heizer teaches. Just typed it in. And actually, I typed this firmament in there to get a picture for today. And this popped up immediately right here. I've typed in firmament. It said, in biblical cosmology, the firmament is a vast, solid dome created by God on the second day to divide the primal sea, called Tihon, into upper and lower portions so that the dry land could appear. Now, how is it that everything, everybody gets this right, but they just don't wanna accept it, right? Let's read these verses again. I brought these up the other day. This is Proverbs 8, 26 through 29, Amplified Bible. When he established the heavens, eye wisdom was there. When he drew a circle upon the face of the deep, that's when he gathered the waters. He created the boundary to gather the waters into one place, right? That's what we read in Genesis a minute ago. So that was when he drew the circle upon the deep. When he made firm, the skies above. When he made firm.
Is there anything firm about air? Anything firm about air, people? Now, air's not very firm, right? And we're gonna find out firm, firmament. It's why they use such words. But when he made firm the skies above, when the fountains and springs of the deep, became fixed and strong, when he set for the sea its boundary, so that the waters would not tread its grass, the boundary set by his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, which go down, foundations go down under, they go down deep. You don't usually see any of the foundation of a house or a building, because they're under. But let's keep going. So there's your ends of the earth, but we'll get to that too in the days ahead. Just to show you, this was the same thing from Genesis. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. What did Proverbs say? He drew a circle on the face of the deep, right? And he said, let there be a firmament. And so that's when he made the sky, a firm, solid sky to divide the waters from the waters. And then he gathered together the sea in one place, said, let there be dry land. All right, there you have it. Now let's keep going. Boom. All right, we've already read that. Let's keep going. Now, the theory that many pastors have believed in one of the calls that Nathaniel did, I don't know who Nathaniel is, but I love his telephone calls. One of them brought up the canopy theory, and that's what I heard when I was a young preacher in my 20s from Dr. Karl Baugh and Creation Museum, I think he had. But their idea was that the waters above, that the firmament was basically a vapor water canopy over the earth, and that Noah's flood that God condensed that vapor canopy and made all that water come down upon the earth, and that's what caused or helped cause the flood of Noah, but that it doesn't exist anymore. All right, so basically, they made the firmament water, and then after the flood, they made it disappear. But when I started studying this and delving into this, we see here that, this is from Genesis 7.11, that the windows of heaven were opened to let this water in, and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained. So it talks about the windows of heaven were bringing in water, and there was rain from heaven. It's two different things. Rain comes from clouds, but there was water from above the firmament, the water's from above. That's why the doors and windows were opened. Now, the canopy theory people, like Dr. Karl Baugh, they would say that that's why we had the flood. Well, you got a little problem biblically speaking, because the Holy Spirit inspired King David
to write 1,500 years later after the flood, King David wrote in around 1,000 B.C., Psalm 148, praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heaven. So it's really clear here that David, by Holy Spirit revelation, understood there was waters above the heavens still. So the canopy theory goes out the window with this passage, and of course, David in Psalm 18, it's also, this is a verse, it's also in Samuel, says he, speaking of God, made darkness his secret place. His pavilion round about him were dark waters. I didn't write that, and thick clouds of the skies. All right, so the Bible talks about these waters being above, all right? Now, again, this is what Dr. Heiser was showing, but this is what the Bible teaches. You go ahead and accept it. You can throw the Bible out and say, I don't believe it, I believe NASA worshipers, and the Church of NASA, and the Church of the Eastern, I mean, the European Space Agency, you can worship at their altar, but this is what your Bible teaches, whether you like it or not. It does not teach the earth is a ball, a sphere. It doesn't teach that there's outer space, as you've been taught to believe. It doesn't teach any of that. It doesn't teach that the sun and the moon are far away, they are close and smaller, the stars are closer and smaller, and we're gonna, like I said, we're gonna get to all that. But the firmament is there, it is a solid structure. Now, let's look at this. The word for firmament and the Hebrew. So, if we're gonna define a word, one of the first things we do, we look at its context, we've looked at Genesis 1. Of course, that's not the only place firmament is used. We'll see that in a minute. But, rakia is the word firmament, the root word is raka, okay? Basically, rakia is the noun, raka is the verb, kinda like where we have command and commandment. Commandment is a noun, command is the verb, right? I command you, that would be a verb. But notice it's the same, pretty much the same letters. Reshkufayin is raka, and then rakia is reshkufayin, all right? So, basically just one letter difference, but pretty much most Hebrew words anyway have the same, have all have like a three-letter root word, almost all of them. What's interesting is the word resh here, just to give you what the letters mean, the pictorial, paleo-Hebrew letters mean, that means the highest, resh means the highest,
kuf means the dome, and ayin means to behold with the eye, basically behold the high dome is what that breaks down there. And then rakia would be the high dome by the hand of God behold, so that's the only difference in the actual letters and what they mean, but that's the root word. Now here, I'm going to say this as clearly as I can, I've said it in our last two conferences, Skyfall 2018, Skyfall 2019, I've repeated it because people just can't seem to get it and we have creation ministries and people like Dr. Danny Faulkner who keep saying, all firmament means is an expanse, it means an expanse, an empty expanse. I have heard this and I heard this and in the bad translations of the Bible taken from the Alexandrian texts, like the New American Standard, the Revised Standard, the NIV, and a lot of them, they will use the term expanse. I'm gonna tell you right now that is incorrect translation of the word rakia and raka as to what they mean, it is not an expanse, it means something solid that has been expanded by force, by pounding or beating it out. Let's look at this, rakia, now this, this will tell you, see the New American Standard renders this thing says correctly as expanse, it's incorrect, then it contradicts itself and says literally an expansion of plates, broad plates beaten out. So this word rakia or raka literally interpret means to beat out something that's solid and in fact, it's used that way in every verse that it's used in, all right? It's used in beating something, I had Mr. Faulkner, me and him go back and forth sometimes out there in the world, but I had him point out, well, not every verse, one of them is him beating the earth, still beating out something solid, right? It's almost like, come on, dude, is that all you got? You know, get rid of your little teddy bear and your little Freemason pins and stop playing games. The word raka, the verb raka acquires the sense of beating out precious metals and of spreading that, spreading that results to spread over, overlay. So again, rakia literally means the expansion of plates, broad plates. So rakia would mean something, if it's a noun, it means something that has been beaten out and expanded, right? Raka is the verb to beat out precious metals.
So this is what the word means, it does not mean expanse. Now you have the Browns driver, Briggs, they start out saying extended surface, solid expanse as if beaten out. Again, they tell you that it's an expanse because it's something solid that's been expanded. It's been beaten out, but it tells you something solid. If you go down to the second thing there, it says the vault of heaven or firmament regarded by the Hebrews as solid and supporting the waters above. And you have a little picture here of somebody taking a sheet of metal, something solid, beating it or thinning it out to expand it and to curve it into a dome shape. All right, this is what you have here. All right, Job 37, 18. Now this is where we're gonna start. He says, Hast thou with him, just remember these phrases, spread out the sky, which is strong and as a molten looking glass. Now, remember he said he made the skies firm. It's a firmament, it's solid, it has windows and doors to let in water. It supports water, water's heavy, eight pounds a gallon. All right, water's very heavy. But he says here, Hast thou with him, spread out the sky, which is strong as a molten looking glass. All right, now some people say, well, that's just Job's friend talking. He didn't know what he's talking about. Well, but see, here's the thing. They say the same thing about Moses. He didn't know what he's talking about. I believe that they knew what they were talking about, but let's look at this right here. Spread out is, guess what? It's the word, raka, the verb, meaning what? To beat, stamp, beat out, spread out, stretch, to stamp, beat out. And then he tells you right here in the Strong's definition, to pound the earth by analogy, to expand by hammering, to overlay with thin sheets of metal, to make broad, to spread abroad, to spread forth, to spread over, to spread out, to spread into plates. This is the picture. Now again, if we can't let words be defined as they really are, then we have a problem. We will never know the truth. Let's keep going. This right here, he goes on. This is the Gensenius Hebrew Calvary dictionary to this, he spread out by beating, to spread out like God did the earth, to tread down, to spread out by beating as a thin plate. Hence, to overlay with a thin plate, to spread out with a hammer, to spread out. So over and over again, to spread out, to expand something that's solid. That's the definition of rockia and rocka. Now, you get this verse is very interesting here.
Let's read this, Isaiah 25, six through nine. Now this is an end time prophecy and it's in the context of end time prophecy because you're gonna see it says when God's gonna wipe away all tears. This is the same verse used in the book of Revelation at the very end when it says God wipes away all tears from our eyes. So Isaiah 26, nine, and in this mountain, shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the leaves and a fat things full of morrow and of wines and leaves well refined. And of course, this is, I believe this is referring to the marriage supper and its second coming. Why? Because he says right here, verse seven, now pay attention, he says he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering, the covering cast over all people and the veil that is spread over all nations. But I see that. And then he says, and he will swallow up death and victory and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces and the rebuke of his people, shall he take away from off all the earth for the Lord hath spoken it. Now, this is clearly end times. He's saying here though, pay attention right there. He's gonna remove or destroy the covering that's cast over all people and the veil that is spread over all the nations. So let's look up these words real quick. So the word veil here, it says a pouring, a libation, molten metal, a cast image. You see that? Molten metal. Wait a minute, didn't we read something about molten glass? Molten, you know, there's, what is it? Crystals like is made out of, there's metal and there's glass, lead glass. I know you've heard of that, lead crystal. And so he's talking about molten and even here it says the word, it's masaka and it's a pouring over, a fusion of metal, especially a cast image poured out, molten image. So he's saying, again, the picture we get of this veil that's over all the nations is what? Molten metal, right? Solid. The term spread out here is interesting because it just means to interweave, to overspread through the idea of fusion. What is fusion? Something you do with what? Metals, right? To cover or protect a covering. So you see, let's go back to our verse. He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all the people and the veil that is spread over all nations. This is referring to the firmament that's over all the earth, all the people, all the nations. And here in Revelation 6, at the sixth seal,
at the second coming of Jesus, here's what it said. And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal and lo, there was a great earthquake and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair and the moon became his blood and the stars of heaven fell into the earth. Yes, they're gonna fall, Neil. Why are they gonna fall? I believe the stars are set inside the solid firmament. We're gonna talk about that. But when the firmament begins to be broken up, rolled back, destroyed, like he said, God's gonna open it up, destroyed, let it fall to the earth. In fact, it's going to be the firmament that actually destroys all the cities of the nations. That's those hailstones that are gonna come down and destroy everything. Because he says here, and the stars of heaven fell into the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken of a mighty wind. Well, figs are, last time I checked, they're attached to fig trees, okay? And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together and every mountain and island were moved out of their places and the kings of the earth and the great men and the rich men and the chief captains and the mighty men and every bond man, every free man hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks and said to the mountains and rocks, fallen has hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb, for the great day of his wrath has come. Well, what's happening? God's removing the veil that's over all the nations. It's gonna crumble and fall. And when it does, and if you look at the word depart here, the word depart means he's gonna separate it. He's gonna sever it. He's gonna part it asunder. He's gonna rend it. That means to rip it open. God himself is gonna rip open the firmament and it is gonna begin to crumble and fall upon the cities of the nations. And then when that veil is removed from over all the nations and all the peoples, when they see him, they're gonna see the throne of God. They're gonna see the Lord Jesus sitting on the throne. And people say, if his throne's sitting on the firmament now, how's it gonna sit? Where's it gonna sit when he destroys it? Hey, he can just make it hover. I don't know how he's gonna do it or why he's gonna do it. I just know this is what it says. He's gonna destroy the veil. He's gonna destroy this molten metal cast firmament, this solid firmament. And folks, how do you do that? How do you roll back a scroll if it's just some kind of an atmosphere? Where's he coming from? Where is he gonna be sitting that people are gonna see? Is his throne just outside our atmosphere and satellites have failed to pick it up? Nothing in your Bible from Genesis to Revelation teaches the nonsense that you are taught in government public schools and by space programs operated by Freemasons and Nazis, occultist.
Satanic people have brought you this whole belief system about space and galaxies far, far away. There's nothing far, far away. Folks, God's not even far away. And he said it in the book of Acts. He is not far from any one of us. He says he sits there and beholds us like grasshoppers. He watches us from his seat on the firmament. Y'all don't mind me preaching a little bit here. Now, Danny Faulkner and people like him, dishonest creationists, dishonest Christians, basically liars, because that's what dishonest means and liars go to hell, so you better stop lying. Say there's no history, that this is not what they taught. He actually, answers in Genesis actually goes to the place and creation ministries will go to the place to say that this is not what the ancient Hebrews believe. This blows my mind. They are so dishonest because they've got to cling to their books and to their videos and to their seminars and conventions and their credentials instead of going by what the book says. What the Bible says. But here I pointed this out many times. Josephus, first century Jewish historian, the most respected first century and early second century Jewish historian. The one who testified about Jesus is well known that he was probably more than likely a Pharisee but definitely friends with the Pharisee. So he had a good understanding of both the political and the religious scene at that time. And this is history. Josephus has, there's more in Josephus than we could go back into the wars of Caesar or any of those other recorded history. But anyway, Josephus says here, and this is in book one, chapter one. This is actually my copy of this book. I have the actual book and I've had it for over 30 years. I bought it right after I came back to the Lord. In book one, chapter one entitled The Constitution of the World and the Disposition of the Elements, Josephus wrote. And this, on the second day, he got placed heaven over the whole world. Didn't we just read that in Isaiah? Heaven, one heaven was one of the heavens. The firmament's called heaven. He placed one of those heavens over the whole world and separated it from other parts. And he determined that it should stand by itself. On what? Foundations of the earth. It's our roof. Come on, folks, right?
He also placed a crystalline firmament round it and put it together in a manner agreeable to the earth and fitted it for giving moisture and rain and for affording the advantage of dues. And on the fourth day, he got adorned to heaven with the sun and the moon and the other stars and appointed them their courses. I just want to start with that, their courses. The sun, moon, stars, they move. So here is real clear just from Josephus, this was the understanding of the ancient Israelites. This was the understanding at the time of Jesus. You understand how important this historical, this record of history from Josephus is. He tells you, this is what we Jews believe. Why did they believe that? It's in the Bible. It's in Genesis. It's in Isaiah, right? So Danny Faulkner saying, there's no history of this. It's just dishonest. It's a lie. Gets me fired up. On top of that, Mr. Faulkner should know in the Septuagint version. My students know when was the Septuagint version written, put together, 250 to 248 BC, exactly. All right, so that is, think about that. The Septuagint version was just basically King told me of Egypt, Philadelphia's, King told me the second Philadelphia's of Egypt, ordered about 70 Jewish scholars to put together for him to take the Hebrew scriptures, the Hebrew Old Testament, and to translate it into Greek, to put it into the library of Alexandria. And so when those Jewish scholars, those Hebrew Israelite scholars, translated the word firmament, rachia, raka, Hebrew, into Greek, in 250 BC, they chose the word stereoma. There's Greek lexicon define stereoma as, quote, that which has been made firm. The firmament, the arch of the sky, which in early times was thought to be solid, a fortified place in early, well, why was it thought that in early times? Because folks hadn't had to believe the lies and the CGI and the movies of NASA, all right? The Strong's Concordance Greek dictionary states that the root words of stereoma are,
stare-oo, or stare-oo, or however you say it. And it means to solidify. And stereos, which means stiff, solid, stable, steadfast, strong, sure. Does any of that sound like a thin vapor? And since when, if our atmosphere is this thin vapor of air, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, how do you put that kind of atmosphere up against an empty vacuum of space? What is it, 10 to the negative 17 torr? I mean, it doesn't even make any sense. A gas, something that has gas and has pressure has to have a container. That's just basic. What's that? And water. Yeah, and water, exactly. So all of this is evidence. Now, let's go back to the scriptures. I know I gotta hurry. I told y'all I was gonna take a bit to get through this. But Ezekiel, if we go to the script, what have we done? We've gone to Genesis, right? We've been in Genesis. We've gone to Isaiah, right? We've defined the word in multiple lexicons. We've looked at historical references, all right? From what the ancient Hebrews believed. Here we have another passage talking about the firmament and tells you the same thing you heard from Josephus and some of these others that it is solid. So let's read this. This is Ezekiel chapter one. He's talking about the living creatures that he saw. And he said, when those went, these went, when those stood, these stood. And when those were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up over against them for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels. Of course, this is where they try to talk about aliens, but it's not. But here's what he says about the firmament. He says, and the likeness of the firmament upon their heads of the living creatures was as the color or the word color was means the appearance of the terrible crystal stretched forth over their heads above. So he says the living creatures were where? They were on the earth and they were being lifted up from the earth. And as they were being lifted up from the earth, he saw what was over their heads and he called it what? The firmament. And he said the firmament, and if you do look, in the King James, if you look up the word color, it just means it has the appearance of, the outward appearance. He says of the terrible crystal that is stretched forth over their heads above. And then he talks about what's under the firmament. Now notice this. And he said, let's go down to verse 24. And when they went, he said, I heard the noise of their wings like the noise of great waters as the voice of the Almighty and the voice of speech
as the noise of a host. And when they stood, they let down their wings. And there was a voice from the firmament that was over their heads. And when they stood, and they had let down their wings. And then of course he says he saw the likeness of a man and a sapphire throne. Now you get the same thing here in the Revelation. Let's look at Revelation 4. So Revelation 4, John sees the throne and what does he see? After this, I looked and behold, a door was opened in heaven. And the first voice, which I heard, as it were the trumpet talking with me. So here's the voice of the Almighty, just like Ezekiel did, right? Saying, come up here, I will show you things which must be hereafter. And immediately I was in the spirit and behold, a throne was set in heaven. And one set on the throne and he that set upon it was to look upon like Jasper and Sardine stone. And there was a rainbow round about the throne in the sight like unto an emerald. And around about the throne were the four and 20 seats. And upon the seats, I saw the four and 20 elders sitting clothed with white raiment and they had on their heads crowns of gold. Now, first of all, remember our Methodist Baptist pastor earlier said, there's a lot of weird things, Revelation. This is not weird. Heaven's a real place with real people that have gone on before us. There's 24 elders. What's weird about them 24 guys sitting there around the Lord with crowns on? I don't think that's weird. And again, he thinks it's weird. But anyway, these elders had on white clothing and crowns of gold on their heads and out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices. There were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne which are the seven spirits of God. And before the throne was a sea of glass like unto crystal. Oh, Ezekiel said God was sitting upon the firmament which is like molten glass. Now Revelation, John goes to heaven and sees the throne of God. And he sees what? Before him, before the throne, he sees what? Before the throne, there was a sea of glass like unto crystal. Pretty clear. See, this is why I believe you see this. Anybody ever see this? And immediately I was in the spirit, behold, there was a throne set in heaven and one that sat on the throne and he that sat there was like in the Jasper and Sardine stone. And there was a rainbow round about the throne in sight like unto an emerald green. I do believe that the aurora borealis because I believe the throne of God is right above Polaris, the North Star, the center of the flat circle of earth.
And that we are seeing, we are literally witnessing the glory of God around his throne when we see it. But the poo poo heads come along and say, no, no, no, it's not. What makes more sense to you? Not the sun 93 million miles away with gamma radiation. Oh, it's nonsense. Why, I guess that's why they made the hulk green, right? Let's look at this. And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne as the appearance of what? Sapphire stone. So the throne itself, the molten glass, the throne has the appearance of sapphire. Sapphire stone. Well, what does sapphire looks like? Blue. Wait a minute. What do you mean the sky's blue? Oh, okay. And in Exodus 24, nine through 10, says then went up Moses and Aaron and Nadab and Abihu and 70 of the elders of Israel and they saw the God of Israel. They saw God. So they go up and they have this open vision. They are allowed to see God into heaven. But now only part of him, just like Moses only got to see part because they couldn't see him fully. All right, at that time. And it says, and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone. So be where God's sitting and where his feet are under his feet, this pavement of sapphire stone. Where did Ezekiel say his throne was sitting? On the firmament. That was like what? Crystal glass. God said, heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool because really the second heaven or the firmament is connected to the earth. It's part of the earth system. All right. So he says his sapphire stone and he says, as it were, the body of heaven in his clearness. I talk about this in my book that the word body means basically it was the solid structure like your bones are the solid structure for your body, okay? So he sees this. Now here's the color of sapphire stones, right? I wanna show you this little thing. Somebody sent this to me. This is when they detonated during Operation Dominick and part of Operation Dominick was Operation Fishbowl, which means Fishbowl of the Lord when they decided to try to blow a hole in the firmament and they realized that it was there with a nuclear Thor nuclear missile. What somebody said to me was they sent me this video, which I've seen of the detonation,
the high altitude detonation and they said, slow it down and look and you'll see the blue firmament, the pavement. And I was like, huh? And I slowed it down and watched it, watch this. And they happened to be kind of blue. Do you think that's an accident? Because if you detonated a nuke that high, what's the first, the flash of light? What does light do? It illuminates what you can't see. And look at there, I slowed it way down. Now somebody could say, well, those are just clouds. Well, why aren't they moving? The explosion, you can see the particles and it disturbing around it, but it's like those center stones. And remember he said it looked like pavement. And so if you've seen stone pavement or concrete block pavement, you would get that where you had like in between there would be like where there would be mortar or different kinds of filling there. But anyway, I thought that was very interesting. I think we're getting a little glimpse of the firmament by them trying to blow a hole in it. Thank God that they didn't. Idiots, if God would let that happen, I guess we'd have had another flood of Noah. But it's good that the firmament is strong, right? And God said it's a demonstration of his power and they realized they couldn't defeat it with a nuke. And isn't it interesting, here they're gonna nuke, they're gonna send up the high altitude nuclear weapon and they call the operation Dominic and fishbowl, which means dominant means of the Lord, fishbowl of the Lord. And a Thor missile, Thor being one of their demon gods with a hammer to try to break it. Didn't work, Thor failed. God's stronger than Thor. We don't need Odin, Thor, we have Jesus.
All right, and there's a little look at pavement. I just typed in blue pavement. Interesting, remember when I did the dome, the throne in Skyfall and I played the coming undone by corn. They had blue chunks coming down like this, the sky falling, yeah. All right, here the gensinius Hebrew Calvary lexicon defines Rocky as this. Oh, look at this, I love this. The firmament of heaven spread out like a hemisphere above the earth, like a splendid, hallucid, translucently clear, transparent, crystalline, glassy, allowing the maximum passage of light as glass translucent, sapphire stone to which the stars were supposed to be fixed and over which the Hebrews believed there was a heavenly ocean. So here's the definition from again another lexicon and it talks about it being blue stone that's translucent, that allows light to pass through it. All right, just interesting stuff here. All right, and of course I shared this at Skyfall but they've had mysterious pieces of stone have been discovered in different parts of the world that just happens to be made up of what was it, 70 something percent oxygen, let me see here. Yeah, an Italian geologist discovered one in one place, another lady discovered one in another place but anyway, it's very interesting. And what's interesting is that the legends behind this, the old ancient legends say that the angels were expelled to earth and became statues but these did not arrive at earth alone according to legend, a great portion of the sky and stars fell with the angels on earth and the eyes of the natives, this explains why the region is so rich in minerals and diamonds. But we know around the fall of Satan but that goes back a little bit. But again, you can look all this up. I don't wanna spend too much time on that. What's interesting and it does say this about it, so is this blue sky stone a piece of the firmament? I said the Bible reveals the firmament is a solid crystalline structure, the terrible crystal. Ezekiel says God's sapphire throne is above the firmament. Isaiah 40.22 makes it clear that God sits upon that strong structure looking down at us. When Moses and the elders of Israel saw the God of Israel, they saw that there was under his feet as it were paved work of sapphire, blue stone and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. Now when a piece of this blue sky stone
was heated to 3,000 degrees Celsius, which is 5,432 degrees Fahrenheit, its composition did not change. Now that's some kind of freaky substance right there. Scientists could not figure out why the stone is blue and when a small piece was crushed and put under a microscope, the pieces had no color. The stone is created so that light can pass through it and they say that it's not earthly. Interestingly, the word terrible written by the prophet Ezekiel in the original Hebrew is Yahreh, which it means to fear or to inspire, to create reverence, godly fear at all. I believe the blue sky stone is indeed a piece of the firmament. It might describe the terrible or awe-inspiring. Of course, the Russians talked about studying the brightness of the firmament back in the 1940s. Actually, this is 1957. Moses says they're doing a study on the brightness of the firmament with an electric halo photometer for determining the brightness from the near sun. And then it says on the surface perpendicular to these rays, taking into consideration only the brightness of the first order derived from the assumption of a flat earth and giving some conclusions. And he talks about that five or six points on the firmament are located at various distances. How do you locate points on a firmament in distances? It's not something solid that exists in that stationery. We could spend a lot of time on this. I'm gonna address some of this when we get into it. Anyway, I was gonna put it a little clip, I guess I forgot to put it in there or it didn't save or something. But anyway, in the latest Chicken Little cartoon, the, you know, of course, it's a famous story for him saying, this guy is falling, this guy is falling, right? And what's interesting is two different times a piece of the sky falls and one of them falls and it hits him and he, when he wakes up, he looks down and he goes, a blue piece of the sky in the shape of a stop sign again. So in the movie, they're shown where like pieces of the blue sky have what fallen to earth because these Hollywood occultists have to what disclose truth in plain sight, which is what they do. Now, let me close with this and I know this has been long, but I wanna close with this. If you guys can, since we're at the end of the slide, go to first 17 and this is for my Christian brothers and sisters out there, all right? First of all, it's time to stop being chicken because this story came to my mind before service this morning as we were in praise of worship and I was just thinking about, but this is David and Goliath. So go to first Samuel 17.1 and we're gonna close with this
just so you get it. Now, everybody knows the story of David and Goliath, but they don't pay attention. There's one little thing I think most people miss here, but notice we're gonna read it. Now, the Philistines gathered together, their armies to battle and we're gathered together at Shoko, which belonged with unto Judah and pitched in Shoko and Ezekiel and Ephesdimim and Saul and the men of Israel were gathered together and pitched by the Valley of Elah and set the battle in array against the Philistines. So they were fighting. The armies of Israel with Saul were fighting with the Philistines and the Philistines stood on a mountain on one side and Israel stood on a mountain on the other side and there was a valley between them and there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines named Goliath of Gath whose height was six cubits in a span. So somewhere between nine and a half, 11 feet tall, he had a helmet of brass upon his head and he was armed with a coat of mail. Weight of the coat was 5,000 shekels of brass, blah, blah, blah. Let's go on down. And I don't care about reading all his weaponry. Verse eight, and he stood and cried unto the armies of Israel and said unto them, why do you come out to set your battle in array? Am I not a Philistine and ye servants to Saul? Choose you a man for you. Let him come down to me. And if he be able to fight with me and kill me, then will we be your servants? But if I prevail against him and kill him, then shall you be our servants and serve us. And the Philistines said, I defy the armies of Israel this day, give me a man that we may fight together. And when Saul and all Israel heard those words of the Philistines, they were dismayed or discouraged, terrified, greatly afraid. David was the son of the Ephrathite and the Bethlehem Judah, whose name was Jesse. And he had eight sons. And so, of course, David runs to the battle. His father sends him there to take food and supplies to his brothers. And he gets there, and I wanted to go to verse 19. Says, now Saul and they and all the men of Israel were in the Valley of Eloth, fighting with the Philistines. So let me just break it down. Here's how it went. For 40 days, morning and evening, Goliath would come out. And when Goliath would come out and make his threat and his challenge, Israel would flee in terror and fear. But the moment he went back in, nobody accepted his challenge. The armies went back to fight each other. This is puzzling to me, right? It's almost like they just ignore him, we'll fight it out the same way. Just, we don't wanna deal with that, right? That was the attitude of the armies of Israel and Saul. We don't wanna deal with that, okay? But here comes little David, and David's there, and he hears one of these challenges when Goliath comes out.
He goes, whoa, whoa, whoa. Who does this uncircumcised Philistine think he is? Doesn't he know? He's the armies of the living God. Well, the moment David says, hey, I'll go fight this guy. His brothers go, oh, you're in pride, you snotty little punk. You're just in pride. You just came here to see the battle. And David goes, what have I done? Isn't there a cause? You know why they were upset? It's because they wouldn't confront the giant. They were scared, David wasn't scared. This is really what it comes down to for all Christians about any truth that's in the Bible. Scared, say scared. Don't holler pride at people who ain't scared. You hear me? It's not about pride. It's about right and wrong, it's about truth. It's about deception, error, and the truth. And see, let me just go on and tell you right now. I know a bunch of you Christians out there say, oh, this doesn't matter. The truth of creation versus science. We can make it all work together. We can all live together. No, you can't. The giant that's in the room that you wanna ignore is Neil deGrasse Tyson and Krauss and all these guys who wanna get up and say, your Bible is wrong. We got it right, because we saw a star twinkle and we figured it out. Even though that star twinkling, we only figured out 4% of it, so we're 96% stupid. We're still smarter than your Bible, because we know it's a ball. Your earth is a ball and there's outer space and we got galaxies, gazillions of light years away, and they don't know squat. I can prove they don't know squat about it. They can't measure these distances. And Christians, the moment this stuff comes up, like those pastors, those sniveling little weasels, well, the writers of the Bible, they were incorrect, but that doesn't mean that other things aren't true in the Bible. What a sniveling little weasel you are. Now, I understand if you've been ignorant of this and blinded this, I was too at one point. Though I was never really confronted with or presented with the truth of what the firmament meant or anything, I never heard anybody teach on it. I'd never heard anything about it. And I remember reading passages like Joshua about the sun standing still on the moon, and I was like, I would say, God, I know your word is true. I can't understand how this works. I would say that to him. So you know what I would do? Avoid it.
Now, if somebody asked me, do you believe that Joshua made the sun and the moon stand still? That God did that for him, that mirror? Yeah, I'd say, yeah, absolutely. Do I understand it at that time back then when I was in my 20s and 30s? I was like, no, I didn't understand it. Why? The only reason I didn't understand it and just accept it as it was written was because I had been brainwashed from a child to believe in outer space and gazillions of light years and galaxies far, far away and that we were a spinning sticky water ball and that we float, we fly 66,000 miles an hour around the sun and all this stuff we're told that we can now prove is not true. And we can prove now it's not true with real scientific experiments. I'm gonna talk about the real experiments then done to prove the earth does not move. Earth doesn't move. Oh, what about the Coriolis effect? Let me tell you something. There's no such thing. The Coriolis effect because if it was so, a bullet's traveling fast. Oh, snipers have to calculate for the curvature of the earth. No, they don't. Let me tell you what they're calculating. Every rifle is rifled. You know what that means? Is a cut through that rifle barrel that makes the bullets spin, all right? To actually help make it more accurate. But anything, any projectile, I know this from playing golf and shooting guns and playing baseball, any projectile I used to pitch, any projectile that you make spin is going to curve. If you hit a golf ball and you don't hit it flush straight and make it spin perfectly backwards, so it will go up and straight. If you hit it with any side spin whatsoever, it's going to curve this way or that way. Bullets come out of barrels with a spin on them and you have to calculate for that movement. You have to calculate for drop as it begins to lose power through the medium of the air, if the air's blowing a certain direction. So windage, spin, not of the earth, spin of the bullet. But think about it, a bullet is flying, I think some of my rifles, what is it, three? 3,000 feet per second or something like that. Different velocities on different rounds. But they're still flying fast, faster than aircraft. And if the Coriolis effect had to be accounted for
with a bullet, it would have to be accounted for with an airplane, especially in the airplane landing on a north-south runway. Because if the earth's moving by the timeline, bullet gets a mile away, how far is a runway going to move by the time a plane is trying to land over a few minutes? Flying much, much slower, it's just ridiculous. There's so many ridiculous things. But the issue is, see, let me tell you why there's a revival, why there's an awakening, why atheists are getting saved in agnostics like nobody's business. Because there's some of us Christians and some people out here that said the heck with, you know, Mr. Goliath, I will boldly say that we've been lied to. We've been, isn't it something, why do people, Christians, have problems saying that the governments of the world might have lied to you? They lied to you, the Gulf of Tonka, they lied about the incident that led us into Vietnam. They lied to you about 9-11. They lied to you about the Federal Reserve, it's not federal, Epstein didn't hang himself. They lie about everything, and yet for some reason, we think they're gonna tell us the truth about where we live, and they don't. That's why last week I played the clip of them faking the shot in the Apollo 11. They're so busted, they're so busted. Listen, it's over, it's over. The smoking guns of NASA deception, they're everywhere, they're lying around everywhere. It's obvious, let me just say this, I didn't even go through all the verses about the firmament, about the glass, I mean, Revelation 15, I mean, we could've went there. There's so many about God stretching the heavens. Actually, it means he bending them down, bowing them down like bending them to the ground. But if you're gonna believe God created the heavens and the earth, the dry land, the trees, the grass, and you gotta believe he made the firmament, and you gotta believe what it is. And you know, we think about the Tower of Babel, they were trying to make what? They were trying to make them a building that would reach the heavens. They wanted to overthrow God, and they actually believed they could get there. And what did God say in Genesis? God said that if I leave them alone, that they will succeed in reaching the heaven.
Now think about that for a minute. So God stopped them, divided their language. It all came crashing down upon them, right? Yet, God's gonna let man escape the firmament and travel to the moon and to Mars and to the stars. No, do you know what, and I can't remember the verse now, but it says, the heaven for height and the earth for depth is unsearchable, meaning God will never let you reach the top, and he's never gonna let you reach the bottom. Not going to happen. The deepest hole ever dug by the Russians, eight miles. Proverbs 25, three. The height, heaven, and the earth for depth, unsearchable. So do you really think God has allowed them to send a voyager with their little message to the aliens out beyond the Milky Way and galaxy? No, there it is. The heaven for height and the earth for depth and the heart of kings is unsearchable. Now let me say that we're gonna get into this in the days ahead. Do they send up rockets? Yes. Do they send up satellites? Yes. The question is where, where do they go? How high do they go? What holds them in their place where they go over the flat earth? Like I said, their own documents declassified now, make all that clear. So anyway, love y'all. See you next week.