Download Mystery of Creation, CFP white cover, by Watchman Nee
Chapter 1 & 2 - (1) Genesis & Geology and (2) Mystery of Creation Chapter 3 - Restoration of the Earth in 6 [Summary] Days
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth. Gen 1:2 And the earth became waste and
void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters
When did God breath His Spirit into the nostrils of the body from dust to create the soul life? About 4000 BC was when man was first made in the image of God with a spirit of God-consciousness. Before then, there were preadamic men from the preendemic period. When we say God breathed His Spirit into the body from dust to create the soul life, we do not mean magically all of a sudden the body was formed.
Rather, what is meant is that God had a day planned (His planning commenced over 13.7 billion years ago) when man would be perfectly made in His image, the first God-conscious man. On that day the body would be fully formed so then at that moment God would breath in the breath of life, and the spirit of man would be directly created by God from that breath of God Almighty. When the spirit made contact with the body from dust, the soul life would be created in God's image. It is a composite of the spirit and body, yet uniquely divisible from the spirit and body. Each part of man's tripartite nature is distinct in its functions and operations. In order to abide in the functions effectively to the glory of God, one must first know the laws by which each are governed by. This is accomplished through a deep study of the dividing of spirit, soul and body in the Word of God.
Preadamic man did not have God-consciousness for not even one preadamic man had the ability to believe and know God (that is what the Bible says), for they still represent part of the forming from dust. They could think and build pyramids 10,000 B.C., for even animals can think (and feel and choose) with their natural soul-like attributes and build with their body, but they could not recognize God in their beings, just like animals that have a soulical characteristics cannot recognize God either.
The creation of animals and man in the 6 days of "restoration" (equivalent Hebrew word used) is a point of reference identified by God in His Word when the soul of man and that of animals had come into existence with no mention of the time it took for the dust to form. The 6 days of restoration are literal "summary" days of the entire time it took to arrive at the preordained completion of the restoration of creation. Then God rested on the 7th day. He made the earth desolate and waste in Gen. 1.2 due to Earth's earliest ages of sin, which stemmed from fallen Lucifer and the 1/3 of the fallen angels who ruled over the beings on Earth. Those beings on Earth became disembodied spirits when God laid waste and desolation to the Earth. (Various evidences in the Scriptures are provided in Mystery for Creation.)
As an example of the influence of sin by interpolation, scientists have proven that around 10,000 B.C., preadamic man dropped about 6 inches by going to a wheat based diet. This is not a sin in preadamic man, but it does shows the potential that the effects of sin would have prior to Gen. 1.2. And during the industrial revolution man actually lost 6 inches because of the bad food and working conditions, due to city living, pollution and overworking.
Adam was given the choice to eat of the tree of life and to remain in the garden by simply obeying God, which he was fully capable of doing. God did not say how long it took for this moment to occur, or how look it took to create in Gen. 1.1. We know Earth was created several billion years ago, scientifically speaking, and man was created about 4000 BC, biblically and scientifically proven.
Out of God's glory man was created. The purpose of creation for God is to walk with His image in which man is created. But in order to do so He must let the man employ the same image to choose just as God is free to do so. God wants nothing less than this perfect choice to be free to choose. He did not premake men as robots by saving them first so they could believe in the coming Messiah (Who already died on the cross). Rather, God predestinates by foreknowing our free-choice.
Troy Brooks
- Nephilim
- How do we explain Pre-adamic man?
Mystery of Creation, CFP, 29-34, Watchman Nee
We have now seen the origin of Satan. What about the angels under him and the demons? How did their fall affect the earth and help to turn it into waste and void?
From the New Testament we can trace two orders of Satan’s subjects: (1) the angels, (2) the demons. Let us look at the angels first. “Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25.41). “And his [the dragon’s] tail draweth the third part of the stars of heaven” (Rev. 12.4). The “stars” here refer to the angels (cf. Rev. 1.20). The passage continues later with these words: “And the great dragon was cast down, the old serpent, he that is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world; he was cast down to the earth, and his angels were cast down with him” (v.9). These angels must be those spirits whom God had set in the beginning to assist the archangel to rule the world. They are “the gods” in Psalm 82.1 (cf. John 10.35). Now at the fall of Lucifer, these probably conspired with him—at least they were in sympathy with him. And so they fell into sin with Satan and have now become the principalities, the powers, the world rulers of this darkness, and the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies (Eph. 6.12). These angels are not disembodied demons. They have instead an ethereal body, for the Lord reveals to us the fact that in resurrection people will be as angels in heaven.
Satan has another order of subjects. These are the evil spirits or the demons. “When even was come, they brought unto him [Christ] many possessed with demons: and he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all that were sick” (Matt. 8.16). Here the Holy Spirit uses these two words “demons” and “spirits” synonymously. Likewise in Luke 10.17,20: “And the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in thy name”; and the Lord answered as follows: “Nevertheless in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Here the Lord Jesus considers “demons” and “spirits” to be the same. Again, Matthew 17.18 records how the Lord cast “the demon” out of a boy. Concerning the same incident, Mark refers to the demon as “the unclean spirit,” a “dumb and deaf spirit” (9.25).
These demons or spirits probably were a preadamic race who inhabited the former world. They either assisted Satan in rebellion or else they followed him afterwards. And thus they were destroyed by God by their being disembodied. These beings have consequently become disembodied spirits. Though there is no plain evidence in the Scriptures, we can still find some hints in the Bible. For instance, in Matthew 12 there is the situation of such a spirit after it had left a human body: it “passeth through waterless places, seeking rest, and findeth it not” (12.43). It became helpless and, wandering far outside the human body, it could find no rest. Finally, it was compelled to re-enter the original place—the human body. If these beings are not in fact disembodied spirits, why must they enter a human body? Furthermore, in Luke 8 we read how unwilling the demon called Legion was to leave the human body. When they (those of the Legion) were pressed, they preferred to enter the bodies of the swine. These demons are different from Satan and his fallen angels because the latter have no desire to enter human bodies since they still retain their own ethereal bodies. The demons, on the other hand, are different. Both their character and desire seem to prove that they are indeed disembodied spirits. If that be true, though, when were they disembodied? We know that the spirits of the dead today are either in Paradise or in Hades. Where, then, came these spirits? They must have come from the former world. When they were living, their dwelling place must have been the world which Satan formerly governed.
That there were inhabitants in the former world can be deduced from another passage in the Scriptures. We have already pointed out from Isaiah 45.18 that the world—that is to say, the former world—was not created a waste but was formed to be inhabited. This seems to imply that there were inhabitants in the earth of old.
As we study the Bible further we discover even more information regarding this matter. There is a place of detention for evil spirits today. The spirits called Legion who were among the Gerasene demoniacs knew about this place. This was why they were so terrified as to entreat the Lord “not [to] command them to depart into the abyss” (Luke 8.31).
Regarding the abyss, Pember wrote: “It is called the abyss; and in some passages, such as the ninth chapter of the Apocalypse, this term is evidently applied to a fiery hollow in the centre of the earth: but it is also used for the depths of the sea, a meaning which accords well with its derivation.”* The book of Revelation informs us that one day Satan will be cast into this abyss (20.3). Evidently some of the demons are now imprisoned there, but some of them are still free, waiting for the appropriate time when they too will be shut in there. This abyss is most likely in the sea, not in the center of the earth. And at the time of the final judgment (see Rev. 20.11-15), all the prisoners will be cast into the lake of fire, and in the New Heaven and the New Earth there will be no more sea (Rev. 21.1). Probably there is only one abyss, but it is scattered in two places—at the center of the earth and in the depth of the sea.
*G. H. Pember, op. cit., p. 60.
We have even more allusion in the Scriptures to this detention center of the demons. According to the Greek Septuagint of the Old Testament the word “deep” in Genesis 1.2 is the same as the word “abyss” here in the Greek New Testament. We have already mentioned how these demons were probably the preadamic race who inhabited the former world. In reading Genesis 1.2 it looks quite reasonable to us that those who originally inhabited the earth had their bodies destroyed by God because of their sins, and the place in which they dwelt was also judged by God by being turned into waste and a void so that the whole earth was covered with water and became a deep sea. How natural it would be for the spirits of those former inhabitants to be shut into the depth of this sea! Later on, when God restored the earth on the third day, He commanded the land to appear out of the waters, and called the gathering together of the waters the Seas. This dry land, the earth, was ready for men of the new world.
Where then did these demons go? Naturally our answer would be, these demons were left with the sea. When we read Revelation 20.13 (“And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them”) we understand how death and Hades will give up the dead, but we are often puzzled at how the sea will give up the dead in it. The common interpretation is that the sea will yield up the bodies of all who were drowned. Yet if that be so, the earth must also yield up its dead since more bodies will have been buried in the earth than in the sea. The earth, however, will not give up the dead. Consequently, what the sea will yield up cannot be the bodies of the dead people but the spirits already shut within it. Human souls are kept in death and Hades. The Bible never suggests that human souls are kept in the sea. Thus who can be the dead given up by the sea except those who belonged to the former world? The order here is quite revealing: “And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them.” Those inhabitants of the former world died first, therefore they shall be delivered up first. People of our present world will follow next since all shall be judged in order of time.
We have briefly touched on the origin of Satan, his angels, and these demons. As to how the preadamic race lived on the former earth, this seems to be beyond our knowledge. Yet we can obtain some understanding through a few intimations in the Scriptures. Many Bible scholars, including C. I. Scofield, believe that Jeremiah 4.23-26 refers to the conditions of the waste and void cited in Genesis 1.2. Although what precedes and what follows speak of the desolations of Judah, these verses appear to take on a broader cast in that it seems that God showed His prophet the desolations of the original earth. If our interpretation is correct, then we know from this passage that there were “fruitful fields” and “cities” (v.26) in the former world. The early settlers dwelt in cities and cultivated the fields. The fierce anger of the Lord came upon them and upon the entire earth because of their rebellion with Satan. And thus the earth became waste and void.