God Rest You
God Said, “remember” Why?
Into the Matrix
In 1999, two brothers, Larry and Andy Wachowski, released a science-fiction thriller called The Matrix. The blockbuster earned about $456 million worldwide and spawned two successful sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. All three films were a strange mixture of philosophy, science fiction, and Kung Fu.
The most fascinating aspect of The Matrix Trilogy, however, was the idea that the world we live in, the world as we know it—cities, towns, work, shopping, life in general—is all a fake, a very powerful computer program to make us all think that we’re real when we’re all just digital images being played on super-Macs somewhere in the cosmos!
Now, though, some scientists have taken this idea from the realm of fiction and argue that it’s real, that we don’t really exist, and that we are nothing but computer images. Called the “simulation argument,” it states that our universe is both a fake and a computer simulation created by a race of super-intelligent beings from another universe. Oxford professor Nick Bostrum says, “There is a significant probability that you are living in [a] computer simulation. I mean this literally: if the simulation argument is true, you exist in a virtual reality simulated in a computer built by some advanced civilization.”
The “simulation argument” isn’t the only theory trying to explain our existence. One recent idea asserts that “our universe might have been manufactured by a race of super-intelligent, extraterrestrial beings.” Francis Crick, one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, and a Nobel Prize winner, argued that space aliens from another galaxy sent rocket ships to seed the earth with life. Some argue that bacteria lodged in the tail of a comet might have landed on earth and started the process that eventually led to human life. Some say that our universe is one of many, perhaps an infinite number of universes, and that ours just happens to be one able to create and sustain human life. And finally, some scientists have argued, and in all seriousness, that the universe—us included—arose from literally “nothing.”
In spite of how farfetched and speculative these theories are, all of them have one thing in common: they attempt to explain our existence without what would seem to be the most obvious explanation—we were made by God.
In the Beginning
While these scientists speculate about bacteria in the tails of comets being the explanation for our existence, the Bible gives a very clear and rational explanation for how we got here:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
After this opening line, the first chapters of Genesis systematically explain the sequence and process by which God created the earth and life on it. Day one He did this, day two He did that, day three this, until day six when the Lord then created human beings.
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:26-27).
The Creation account then ends with some of the most fascinating and discussed verses in the entire Bible because they tell about what God did on the seventh day, the last day depicted in the Creation account.
“And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made” (Genesis 2: 2-3).
The Seventh Day
After six days of Creation, God could have just ended the process and done nothing else. Instead, He distinguished the seventh-day, the day on which God Himself not only rested, but He also blessed and sanctified it. That is, He purposely and distinctly made the seventh day special, unique—something conspicuous from all the other days of the week, a day that capped the process of Creation, which had occurred during the six days prior to the seventh day. He made that day, the seventh day, the Sabbath day. In fact, the Hebrew word for “rested” (“and he rested on the seventh day”) comes from the same Hebrew word that means “Sabbath.”
Centuries later at Mount Sinai, God reiterated the seventh-day Sabbath’s inseparable link to Creation, “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it” (Exodus 20: 8-11, emphasis supplied). The words for “blessed” and “hallowed” here are the same root words used in Genesis 2 for “blessed” and “sanctified.”
No question, the seventh-day Sabbath goes back to Creation itself. It’s so basic, in fact, that Adam’s first full day of life (because he had been created on the sixth day), his first full day of communion and interaction with His Maker, was on the Sabbath, the day that God blessed, sanctified, and on which He rested. If God rested on the Sabbath day, Adam surely did as well.
About the Author
At one time in his life, Dwight Hall lived what many would consider to be the “American Dream”. Dwight started his first business, an automotive parts manufacturer he called Trailmaster, while in his early twenties. By the time Dwight was 30, Trailmaster had sales of $12 million per year and he was living what many could call the “good life”.
family, Dwight moved to the Montana wilderness to get away from the hectic world that was eating at his soul and threatening his family.
In the next few years, surrounded by the quiet beauty of nature, close with his family once again, Dwight finally found peace and meaning in life. Today, Dwight shares his faith through the ministry of Remnant Publications. Since 1985, Remnant has printed and distributed millions of books and literature with the sole purpose of leading people closer to Christ. Dwight has shared his testimony along with seminars across the United States, as well as South America, Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Europe.
Kings College Cambridge 2008 #9 God rest ye Merry, Gentlemen arr David Willcocks