Relativity Einstein’s theories of relativity are no longer just theories but tested

hypotheses verified through experimentation (unlike evolution). Relativity and quantum mechanics teach us that we should not take space and time so seriously, for they are relative to things like light and even word. It’s something Scripture told us all along. We just didn’t believe it.

Gerald Schroeder is a Jewish physicist from MIT who now teaches in Jerusalem. In his books, he reminds us that time is relative to differences in velocity and gravity, and that time is dilated by the expansion of the universe. Therefore, the universe is different ages in different places. To answer the question “How old is the universe?” you must determine the frame of reference -- that is, where the observer is standing.

We always assume our own frame of reference, (As if we were God our something). We always assume planet Earth, now and me. But in the beginning, there was no planet Earth. Where would The Author be standing?

Schroeder argues that if we, (here and now, on earth), measure the age of the universe at fifteen billion years, but then ask how long fifteen billion years would be from the standpoint of Creation, (that is, from the moment matter formed, from the perspective of the entire universe tuned to the cosmic background radiation from the Big Bang; that is as close as we can get to the standpoint of the Big Bang)… if the universe is fifteen billion years old from earth’s perspective, it’s about six days old from Creation’s perspective.3 Fifteen billion years or so, is literally six days. That’s just physics. I suppose you could argue the details (estimates regarding the mass of the Universe etc.), but it’s very clear that time is relative. It’s relative to the speed of light, and God is light.

15 billion years is literally (physically, actually, really) six days.

“And these are the generations of the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 2:4). “A day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day” (2 Peter 3:8). It’s what the Bible said all along. We just didn’t believe it.

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So, I’m Old Earth and Young Earth. I’m even younger than the young-earthers. When I read Schroeder's book, a ton of scientific problems dissolved away, but even better tens ton of theological problems did the same. Because what does this mean? It means the seventh day is not over; the story isn’t over. We’re still being made in God’s image. Actually, according to Schroeder’s calculations, it appears that we are at the end of the sixth day, the edge of the seventh day. Perhaps God will still say, “Behold, it’s all very good” or perhaps even, “It is finished.” Whatever the case, time is relative to Him.

The Deepest Story

Now, if that’s just science, I should drop it. But it’s not. It’s what the Bible said all along. We just didn’t believe it. After day seven, the next verse in Genesis says, “When no plant of the field was yet in the earth . . . then the Lord God formed man of dust” (Genesis 2:5-7). By Genesis, Chapter 2, we’re back in day six, and God is still making mankind in His image. He doesn’t stop at The Fall. In fact, Jesus in John 5 literally says, “My Father has been working until now and I am working” (5:17). That means His Father had not yet rested in space and time since the beginning of space and time.

After the description of the seventh day in Genesis 2:1-3, God never says that He is finished with His work until John 19:30 when Jesus,

The Word made flesh, The Plot made flesh,

The Ultimate, Eschatos, Adam, Firstborn of All Creation,

The Perfect Image of the Invisible Creator, at the end of the sixth day, a Friday,

lifts His head as He hangs on the tree of law and cries: “It is finished.”

He is the edge of the seventh day.

He is the point at which eternity touches time and gives meaning to all things. He is the plot to the deepest story and to your story.

He is the Beginning and the End.

The deepest story is not dependent on your story. Your story is dependent on the deepest story. The deepest story is not The Fall. The deepest story is not your sin. The deepest story is that God is making you in His image. Jesus is His image, and you are His Temple, Body and Bride. The deepest story is that God is making you in His Image and will not fail.

So even though we wrote ourselves out of the story; even though we cursed the voice; even though we crucified the Plot on the tree; even though we tried to make Him just a fact in our story, even that is a story within The Story - The Father’s Story.

The Father is still telling our story in space and time. He never stopped. Actually, when we crucified the Plot, we revealed the Plot and that was the Plot. It’s there that we

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get the Plot, fall in love with the Plot and ingest the Plot. It’s there that we surrender our story to His Story. There, we are created in His Image.

“Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” That’s the plot. We die with Him, then, live with Him in the seventh day.

He died and rose from the dead saying, “My Father is your Father” (John 15:21). You are not an orphan. You are not an extra. You have His name. At His table, you ingest the Plot: body broken and blood shed. You ingest Mercy. You ingest the Plot and become the Body of the Plot. What kind of story is it? The genre is Gospel. Although you wrote yourself out, He wrote you in with His Blood. That’s Gospel. It’s the deepest Story. That means it’s eternal.

I have an amazing friend named Elaine. She had a horrid childhood. Her Father Worshipped Satan and her mother seemed powerless to help. Over the years God has allowed me and my wife to be used by Him in delivering Elaine from some very dark memories and horrific bondage. Late one night, Susan and I prayed with her over one of her first memories as a little child. The way Jesus heals her is that He reveals His presence in these old memories through visions, and then His presence reveals the deepest story: His relentless love. My wife often sees the visions along with Elaine.

On this night, because of this memory, Elaine had come to believe she was an orphan, only worse than an orphan… a child of evil. Jesus appeared in a vision and gave new meaning to all the old facts in Elaine’s story. My wife Susan saw Him do this along with Elaine. At one point, she leaned over to me and whispered, “Peter, Jesus has something to give Elaine. It’s a birth record.”

I said, “Elaine, Jesus has a present for you. Will you let Him give it to you?” She was terrified that it would be some form of condemnation, but finally, she held out her hand. I asked, “What did He give you, Elaine?” She said, “Oh, it’s only a piece of paper.” I said, “Read it.”

In this vision, as we held her and prayed, Elaine looked at the piece of paper. All at once she gasped saying, “It’s a birth certificate… and it’s, like, glowing with light! It’s written in blood!” On the birth certificate was her name. I asked, “Elaine, what’s the date on the birth certificate?” She paused and then exclaimed, “Oh, there isn’t a date . . . It’s eternal!”

You see, that means it’s the deepest story—a gift from the seventh day. With her birthright, her birth certificate, in one hand and a flaming sword in the other, Elaine battles the ancient Serpent refusing to believe his lies. She undoes the powers of chaos and the void with the Deepest Story, Our Lord Jesus.

I believe you have a birth certificate. And it’s eternal. It’s the deepest story about you. It’s…

The Deepest Story in You *****

Sorry: one more movie – none more profound. There is a great little episode of Winnie the Pooh on one of the videos I used to watch with my kids. In the video,

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Tigger’s “bouncing” gets him in a heap of trouble. He bounces himself right out of the story and into the branch of an enormous tree. He’s terrified. The tree is an illustration that appears next to the words in the book that the narrator is reading on the video. Tigger hears the narrators voice and cries, “For goodness sakes, narrate me down from here.” At that, the narrator laughs, turns the world upside down (the book, on it’s side) and tells Tigger to “let go.” Tigger believes the word on the tree. And so he drops from the tree and stands on the word (the print on the page). The narrator then turns the book and Tigger bounces down the words onto the ground. Through the word the narrator delivers him from peril on the tree and back to earth -- a new heaven and new earth.

If you watched that video when you were a little kid and thought, “That’s so cool; I wish it was real,” it is! It is real! We’ve bounced ourselves out of the story and into a

tree. The Father tells us to “let go” – surrender control. His Word comes to us on that tree

and He delivers us from nowhere to somewhere – His Story. And that’s the new and eternal plot; that’s the story. We bounce ourselves out and He narrates us back in. It’s called the Gospel, and you need to believe it. Why? Because when you believe it, it changes the meaning of every fact in your story, even the meaning of that tree. It changes you… It’s the Word in you. The Deepest Story in you - The image of God.

We can write ourselves out of our own story, but not out of God’s Story, The Deepest Story.

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Endnotes and Pertinent Quotes

2. For more on this perspective: Hugh Ross, Creation and Time ((CO Springs: NavPress, 1994)

3. Gerald L. Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and biblical

Wisdom, (New York: Broadway, 1997).

One thought in this book revolutionized my understanding of the “old earth, young earth” debate… and then revolutionized my understanding of Genesis One… and then, most importantly, revolutionized my understanding of the Love and Sovereignty of God. It’s this rather shockingly simple and obvious scientific thought—that, since time is relative and the universe was created before the earth started spinning on it’s axis, we ought to ask this question, “From what perspective is God speaking in Genesis One?”

Schroeder calculates that six 24hr. days, from the earth’s perspective is actually 15 ¾ billion years from the “Bible’s perspective,” at the start of day one (p.60). Schroeder then calculates that we now exist close to the boundary between the end of the 6th day and the beginning of the 7th of creation. Scientists continually debate the age of the universe and cosmologists have made all sorts of fascinating discoveries since Schroeder’s book was first written. Yet, I hope you see that Schroeder’s figures don’t need to be accurate for these ideas to be revolutionary. No matter what data is used, we live in a universe where six days from one standpoint is several billion years from another standpoint. And indeed all of time is an instant from the standpoint of light and “God is Light.”

This means that we can take the Bible more “literally,” rather than less “literally.” By that, I mean that we can and should “take it” according to the author’s literal intent. We have butchered the Biblical text over the last one hundred years trying to fit Scripture into a modernistic view of space and time. Ironically, that view of space and time was proven to be an illusion just about one hundred years ago. Men like Albert Einstein, Max Plank and Werner Heisenberg, revealed that space and time are relative and realities like light and meaning (logos) are far more substantial-- even eternal, that is “immortal.” We can take the Bible at it’s Word (Logos), remembering that “with the Lord, a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day.” Yet, God’s Word cannot be broken and “will not return void.”

~

The master gave his teaching in parables and stories, which his disciples listened to with pleasure—and occasional frustration, for they longed for something deeper. ~ The master was unmoved. To all their objections he would say, “You have yet to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story.”

~ Anthony DeMello

Whenever you read a good book, it’s like the AUTHOR is right there, in the room talking to you, which is why I don’t like to read good books.

~ Jack Handy, Deep Thoughts

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believe that a story is a lie…

~ Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water

It will help much towards our understanding of the imagination and its functions in man if we first succeed in regarding aright the imagination of God, in which the imagination of man lives and moves and has its being. ~ [With this in mind] we discover...that where a man would make a machine, or a picture, or a book, God makes the man that makes the book, or the picture, or the machine. Would God give us a drama? He makes a Shakespeare. Or would He construct a drama more immediately His Own? He begins with the building of the stage itself, and that stage is the world....He makes the actors, and they do not act—they are their part. He utters them into the visible to work out their life—His drama....All the processes of the ages are God’s science; all the flow of history is His poetry....Man is but a thought of God.

~ George McDonald

She was living in the story as if it were real, and all the pictures were real too. When she had got to the third page and come to the end, she said, “That is the loveliest story I’ve ever read or ever shall read in my whole life. Oh, I wish I could have gone on reading it for ten years. At least I'll read it over again.” ~ But here part of the magic of the Book came into play. You couldn’t turn back. The right-hand pages, the ones ahead, could be turned; the left hand pages could not. ~ “Oh, what a shame!” said Lucy. “I did so want to read it again. Well, at least, I must remember it. Let's see . . . it was about . . . about . . . oh dear, it's all fading away again. And even this last page is going blank. This is a very queer book. How can I have forgotten? It was about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill, I know that much. But I can’t remember and what shall I do?” ~ And she never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician’s book. . . . ~ “Shall I ever be able to read that story again; the one I couldn't remember? Will you tell it to me, Aslan? Oh do, do, do.” ~ “Indeed, yes, I will tell it to you for years and years.”

~ C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

“We cannot walk out of Maleldil’s (God’s) will: but He has given us a way to walk out of our will.”

~ C.S. Lewis Perelandra

The text said that “there was evening and there was morning,” it did not say: “the first day,” but said, “one day.” It is because there was not yet time before the world existed. But time begins to exist with the following day. Now what man of intelligence will believe that the first, and the second, and the third day, and the evening and the morning existed without the sun, moon, and stars?

~ Origen, 250 A..D.

The beginning of time is called “one day” rather than the “first day”…It follows that we are hereby shown not so much limits, ends, and succession of ages, as distinctions between various states and modes of action.

~ Basil, 370 A.D.

The world was created “Oct. 3rd, 4004 B.C.” ~ Bishop Usher, 1650 A.D.

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Chapter 4

The Deepest Story

Darwinism and the 7th Day