The Firmament & Clueless Pastors
About this sermon
In this biblical-creation teaching, Dean Odle argues that Genesis describes a solid firmament separating waters above from waters below and that many pastors reinterpret the text through modern cosmology. He contrasts the Bible’s creation account with statements by prominent scientists, using their acknowledgment of unresolved cosmological problems to challenge the authority often granted to scientific models over Scripture.
Chronological teaching outline
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Odle introduces the firmament as part of a broader doctrine of creation and criticizes pastors who read Genesis through the assumptions of modern cosmology. He distinguishes those who have not studied the issue from leaders who have heard the textual case but dismiss or obscure it.
A discussion featuring scientific voices portrays mainstream cosmology as incompatible with a literal biblical creation and willing to reduce religious experience to brain activity. Odle argues that treating Genesis only as spiritual poetry yields the text’s authority to philosophical materialism.
Statements about dark matter, dark energy, and the cosmological-constant problem are used to emphasize how much current models cannot explain. Odle contends that scientists who acknowledge enormous theoretical gaps should not be treated as certain when they contradict Scripture’s account of origins.
A recorded phone conversation captures a pastor first defining the firmament as the ground, then struggling when asked how waters and the two great lights relate to that definition. Odle presents the exchange as evidence that theological leaders often defend inherited assumptions without closely reading Genesis 1.
Odle recounts a seminary professor calling Genesis 1–11 a “true myth” and claiming Jesus and Paul lacked modern information. He rejects that approach as unbelief, then reads Genesis 1 as a factual sequence in which God creates light, divides waters, forms the firmament, and places lights within it.
A scholarly model associated with Michael Heiser is shown as a three-tiered world with heavens, earth, underworld, waters, and a dome. Odle notes that even scholars who do not accept his conclusion often describe the biblical writers as believing in a solid structure, which he sees as confirmation of the text’s plain meaning.
Proverbs 8 and Job 37 describe the heavens as established, strong, and like a molten looking glass. Hebrew word studies of raqa and raqia emphasize beating, spreading, or hammering material into a broad plate, supporting Odle’s conclusion that the firmament is a tangible structure.
Josephus is cited as saying that God placed the sun, moon, and stars in the crystalline firmament and assigned their courses. The Septuagint’s use of the Greek stereoma, defined as something made firm or a solid arch, is presented as evidence for how Jewish translators understood Genesis centuries before Christ.
High-altitude nuclear-test footage is slowed down and interpreted as briefly illuminating a blue, pavement-like firmament. Odle connects the names Operation Dominic, Fishbowl, and the Thor missile to an alleged effort to penetrate the structure; this remains the speaker’s disputed interpretation of the footage.
The final appeal compares institutional scientific authority to Goliath and Christians who refuse the challenge to Saul’s frightened army. David’s question, “Is there not a cause?” becomes a call to defend Scripture’s creation account even when other believers accuse the challenger of pride.
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Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.
- 0:00:00
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,
- 0:03:00
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
- 0:06:01
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?
- 0:09:02
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.
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