Tag Archives: Light

His Marvelous Light

28 Monday Feb 2022

Posted by in Isaiah 45:7, Studies

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In my study of Isaiah 45:7, and specifically my study of light, I have had two scriptures running through my head.  The first is James 1:17; “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.”  The second is 1 Peter 2:9; “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light”. 

The passage from James was foremost in my mind as I was reading about light in Dr. Ben Still’s Mind Maps: Physics and read about atomic spectra: the range of light emitted by atoms.  Dr. Still writes, “Since the mid-nineteenth century, chemists have noticed that atoms did not emit light of all colors, but instead emitted light of just certain wavelengths.”  Dr. Still does go on to describe how Niels Bohr explains the why of this but I remained stuck on the fact that atoms emit light at all.  I look at my body with new eyes and in wonder knowing that, even though I can’t see it, there is a light show going on at the atomic level. 

I know that what is “born of flesh is flesh” and “what is born of spirit is spirit”.  This body was built from the flesh of my parents (and their parents, and their parents…) and so the lights my atoms give off are a biological mechanism and is likely not what James had in mind when he wrote, “Father of lights.”  And yet; I am not separate from my body.  My spirit is knitted to it and, because I am One Spirit with the Lord Jesus Christ, His Spirit is also knitted to it.  My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and I await the day when this mortality is swallowed up in His immortality and this body is made like His.  Until then, I look at this body with all its imperfections and see it as the dwelling place of God.  The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (John 1:14) and now the living God is perfectly at home living in me.  If that doesn’t wipe out any vestige of feelings of worthlessness, I don’t know what will.

I’ve been thinking about what it means for God to be living inside of us, dwelling in a temple of living stones rather than one made with hands.  There is no denying that while it is the absolute truth that I now am One with God through the unity of the Holy Spirit, this body is still subject to hunger, pain, and death.  There are dimensions to this life in Jesus that are not yet made manifest.  I read the New Testament and find so many scriptures urging me to press in, lay hold of, pursue, run towards the goal, etc.  In his first letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul writes; “Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.  I urge you in the sight of God who gives life to all things, and before Christ Jesus who witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep this commandment without spot, blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ’s appearing, which He will manifest in His own time, He who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power.  Amen” (1 Timothy 6:12-16).k

There is so much in this passage it deserves a dedicated study of its own.  For the sake of this one, one of the questions I asked myself was, what is this unapproachable light?  I can study the aspects of light in my physics books, see attributes of God, and know that I cannot ever study the creation enough to know God.  The light that He is is uncreated and therefore far above and beyond the electromagnetic spectrum capable of being studied.  This light that God is, called the Shekinah in the Old Testament, could not really be known in those days either.  First, most of the tabernacle was off limits to the people of Israel.  Only the tribe of Levi could minister to the Lord and then the number of people who could enter the different sections got smaller and smaller until only the High Priest could enter beyond the veil into the Shekinah of God and he could only do so once a year.  (I’m simplifying for sake of space. Read Leviticus, especially Chapter 16).  Until Jesus.

The Book of Hebrews describes what Jesus fulfilled-what the tabernacle of old pointed to.  The Book of Hebrews describes Him as our High Priest who offered Himself as sacrifice once and for all, by one offering perfected forever those who are being sanctified and SAT DOWN at the right hand of God.  This is so amazing.  Whereas the high priest of old could only enter the presence of God one day a year and then had to do so year after year after year, Jesus, our best and last High Priest, entered into the presence of God and has never left it.  He abides in that unapproachable light and, just as the high priest of old represented all of Israel as he ministered in the Holy of Holies, so did Jesus represent every one of us.

I was listening to a teaching this week on the Feasts of the Lord and I saw this so clearly: Jesus entering into the Shekinah-that uncreated light of God-once and for all.  I hold this picture in mind as I think on what it means to be “in Christ”.  By offering up Himself, Jesus had made a new and living way through the veil “that is, His flesh.  Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest…” (Hebrews 10:10, 9) He opened the way for everyone. He opened the way for me. It is astonishing to know that even as I sit at my desk I am In Him, that at this moment I am seated with Him in heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6) and as He is so am I in this world” (1 John 4:17). 

He has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.  He is the light of the world, the light shining in the darkness which the darkness cannot put out.  Because we are as He is, so are we the light of the world.  Because we are in Him and Him in us, we too dwell in the unapproachable light, the secret place of the Most High, the very life and light and heart of The Father.  This is our present reality because His Spirit lives in us. Jesus Himself is the treasure we have in earthen vessels, the eternal life we lay hold of.  We await the transforming of our mortal bodies to be like His glorious body but that waiting does not change the truth that now, at this moment, we live and move and have our being in the Lord Jesus Christ, the light of life.

Amen.

Unless noted otherwise, all scriptures are quoted from The New King James Version of The Holy Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

Still, Dr. Ben, Mind Maps Physics: How to Navigate the World of Science, 1st Edition, Unipress Books Limited, 2020, Page 98

The Feasts of the Lord

The Nature of Light

21 Monday Feb 2022

Posted by in Studies

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I’m not sure how I took this-my hands might have been shaking-but I thought it was cool.

I am continuing in my study of Isaiah 45:7, specifically the study of light.  The Hebrew word for light in my passage is owr (H216) and has a fairly basic definition: illumination, luminary (in every sense including lightening, happiness, etc.), bright, clear, day + light (ening), morning, sun.  The Hebrew word translated light in my passage is the same word translated light in Genesis 1:3, “And God said, ‘Let there be light’”.  I was curious to see if I could learn anything from this but, as I went through other scriptures where owr is used, I wasn’t getting any light on the matter (ha ha).

In the Genesis Account, plants are created before the sun, moon, and stars.  The Word of God declares, “…let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night: and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth” (Genesis 1:14-15).  The light of Genesis 1:3 cannot be sunlight and I was curious what my science books had to say on the subject.

In John Wiester’s book The Genesis Connection, he writes, “The Universe began at a sharply defined instant in time in a fiery explosion of intense brilliance.  In the beginning, pure energy was transforming itself into matter.  One of the greatest contributions of nineteenth-century physics was the statement of the law of conservation of energy.  In essence this law says that energy can change form, but it is never destroyed.  Thus in the Big Bang, pure energy would alter itself into forms of matter about which we can only theorize.  The first particles to emerge were photons (particles of light) and neutrinos (subatomic particles that travel through solid bodies at the speed of light).  These were almost instantaneously followed by electrons, positrons, protons, and neutrons.  Initial temperatures were beyond comprehension, such as one hundred thousand million degrees.  The Universe was filled with light.” 

I found a similar quote in Mind Maps: Physics by Dr. Ben Still: “It is thought our universe started with a Big Bang.  Before this event, there was nothing, including no space for things to move in, or time to grow old by.  At some point, some quantum fluctuation triggered energy, space, and time to be unleashed.  In the first moments, the universe expanded outward into the nothing faster than the speed of light, a tiny period of time known as inflation.  Space and time unfurled like a carpet as the universe doubled in size many times over until it reached about the size of a golf ball.  This young universe, much less than one second old, was very hot, as huge amounts of energy were confined to a very small space.  In the moments that followed, energy was converted into different forms, including the mass of many fundamental particles.  Strong interactions almost immediately bound quarks into baryons and mesons, while electrons and other leptons stood by as spectators.  At just minutes old, the universe was a plasma of electrically charged particles, each sharing energy through the exchange of light.”

Both of these quotes paint fascinating mental pictures for me.  That beginning must have been glorious and beautiful beyond explanation.  I am awed at the thought but don’t feel I am gaining any insight into what light actually is.  I continued to peruse both books and in Dr. Ben Still’s book, found a section titled “The Strange Behavior of Light.”  In Mr. Wiester’s book, I found: “Light is the key to all life in this world.  It is the form of energy that is necessary for all life on Earth.  It is an imperfectly understood gift that behaves as both a wave and a particle to provide the energy upon which all life ultimately depends.”

In reading both books, I got the sense that scientists don’t fully understand light and my attention was captured by Mr. Wiester’s words, “imperfectly understood.”  I was reminded of 1 John 1:5 which says, “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.”  Like the created light that, while studied and knowledge is growing all the time remains imperfectly understood, so does the God who is light remain imperfectly understood.  Or, He would if He had not chosen to reveal Himself to us.  All through the Old Testament we have God revealing Himself but this revelation is piecemeal.  No one person had a complete picture.  There are promises like this one in Isaiah: “The Sun shall no longer be your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you; But the Lord will be to you an everlasting light, and your God your glory” (60:19).  And then, in the fullness if time, every promise was fulfilled.

The Word became flesh and, in Jesus, we see the final, full, and complete revelation of God.  John’s Gospel says,”No one has seen God at any time.  The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (John 1:18).  Light can now be perfectly understood. 

My study has only touched on the darkness mentioned in Isaiah 45:7 as I have looked up scriptures and seen darkness and light mentioned together.  I have not looked at all at the word “evil” in the passage and I am interested to see where the study goes as I look at the words that carry a negative connotation.  What I can say for certain at this point is that I have often quoted scriptures like, “…that in all things He might have preeminence” (Colossians 1:18) and “God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9) without fully understanding what they mean.  As I study, I am convinced that Jesus is everything.

Jesus Christ is Lord.  Jesus Christ is my Salvation, my Peace, my Rest, my Inheritance, my Promised Land, my Health, my Mind, my Source, my Very Life.  In Jesus is Life.  That life was, is now, and always shall be the light of all mankind.  In Him all the promises of God are Yes!  This day we declare; “Arise!  Shine!  For our light has come!  And the glory of the Lord is risen upon us!” (Isaiah 60:1).

Amen.

Unless noted otherwise, all scriptures are quoted from The New King James Version of The Holy Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

Still, Dr. Ben, Mind Maps Physics: How to Navigate the World of Science, 1st Edition, Unipress Books Limited, 2020

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

Wiester, John, The Genesis Connection, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1983

Discovering the Light

14 Monday Feb 2022

Posted by in Isaiah 45:7, Studies

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This week I am returning to my study of Isaiah 45:7 and am continuing to look at the word “light”.  I have written about seeing a picture of The Word being compressed into the human Jesus.  More than that, a cell in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  One of my Bible teacher’s recently mentioned there is a spark of light when a sperm fertilizes an egg.  This phenomenon was first recorded in mice but has since been recorded in humans as well.  It is sparks of zinc exploding and the effect is like fireworks.  This is an amazing discovery and yet this explosion of light is something that takes place on a biological level.  It’s a mechanism of creation. 

What took place when the Creator became the creation?  I cannot imagine.  All scripture gives me is a taste of the miracle that took place.  Scripture states the Holy Spirit “overshadowed” Mary.  That word in the Greek is episkiazo (G1982) and means “to cast a shade upon, to envelop in a haze of brilliancy, to invest with preternatural influence-overshadow”.  The picture of Mary being enveloped in a haze of brilliancy-light-and the Light of the world bursting into being in her womb is beautiful to me.  Light begat Light.

Fascinating as this thought is, I must put it on a back burner as I am in danger of digressing from my study.  I see the light that is Jesus in Isaiah 45:7 but perhaps I am way off.  Perhaps God is merely declaring Himself as Creator. Reading further in the chapter I find verse 12 where God says; “I have made the earth and created man on it” so the idea of Creator and creation is in the chapter.  I have read commentaries and other blog posts on this passage and, almost to a one, I find the insistence that what is meant here is that God permits darkness and evil but is not responsible for it.  And yet, the English word “create” is the translation of the Hebrew word and is translated the same in other places.  The Hebrew is bara (H1254) and is the same word found in Genesis 1:1: In the beginning, God created (or bara-ed) the heavens and the earth.

I find the same Hebrew words for darkness and light in my Isaiah passage in the verses 2 and 3 of Genesis.  In Genesis 1:1 God baras the heavens and the earth.  In Genesis 1:2 darkness-choshek in the Hebrew-is on the face of the deep.  In Genesis 1:3 God says “Let there be light”-owr in the Hebrew-and there is light.  The words are the same as my passage in Isaiah but the pattern is different.  Darkness is mentioned before light and, in Genesis, the light is brought into being and not formed.  The word yatsar does not appear anywhere in the story of creation.  I think something other than the act of creating is being spoken about in my Isaiah passage but I’d like to be certain.

An integral part of any study I do is to look to other translations of the Bible to see how verses have been rendered.  As I read through, I do have my thought strengthened that Isaiah 45:7 is not referencing creation.  Every translation carries the idea of a way of living.  Consider the New American Standard: “The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these.”  The Young’s Literal Translation is especially interesting because instead of using the word “creating”, Mr. Young says “preparing darkness” and “preparing evil”.

While the translations are helpful, they are not at all helpful.  In fact, I find I am confused.  Whether or not this passage is referencing the act of creation or is speaking of Jesus, how can that same God who the New Testament stresses IS love create darkness and evil?  Some translations have disaster or calamity in the place of evil but the different words don’t soften what feels like a blow.  The Amplified appears to share my confusion because that translation renders this verse as; “I form the light and create darkness; I make peace [national well-being. Moral evil proceeds from the will of men, but physical evil proceeds from the will of God], and I create [physical] evil-calamity; I am the Lord Who does all these things”.  I like the Amplified Bible and use it a great deal but in this passage I do not get the sense the translators are expanding the text to show the nuances of the original language. Rather, this feels like an insistence that God didn’t really mean what He says here.  What He REALLY means is…I move on to other sources.

I look up the meaning of light (Strong’s number H216) in Wilson’s Old Testament Word Studies.  At first, Wilson’s appears to be directing me back to the light created in Genesis 1:2.  The entry begins with, “…light is that subtle fluid, called into existence the first day of creation; as this material element of nature was created before the sun, so it appears to subsist independent of that body (see Job 38: 19, 24) to which it is attracted as a centre, and flows back in powerful agency through the solar system to every planet included in it.”  If the definition stopped here, so would I and yet, I read further: “Light is put for life, natural and spiritual…life signifies prosperity, honour, joy…light in darkness is encouragement, comfort, or good hope in adversity…light, in a spiritual sense, attributed to God, to Christ, hence the saving knowledge of God and of Christ.”  This is helpful for me to gain understanding of the nuances of the meaning of light but I don’t feel as if I yet understand. 

I move on to the Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon and find the first precise attribution of the definition of light to the Messiah.  I read the entry and, under #9, find, “light of instruction so the Messianic servant is light, the advent of Messiah is shining of great light”.  Rabbi Benjamin Blech writes, “What was the original light of Day One in the week of creation?  It could not have been sunlight.  The sun was not created until the Fourth Day.  It was a light of far greater intensity.  It was a light, according to our Sages, set aside for the future of Messianic fulfillment.”

Am I certain that Isaiah 45:7 is speaking of Jesus and thus holds spiritual truths to be discovered? I am certain there are truths to be discovered but am still not certain as to the meaning of the passage, especially considering the fact that the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic the Bible was originally written are all dead languages and thus translations and renderings are subject to debate regarding their preciseness.  I have seen enough to say there’s solid reasoning to believe there is something more than God’s creating light meant here but then I’ve seen enough to wonder if the light mentioned in Genesis 1 doesn’t mean something more than light created.

Chaim Bentorah shares a story of a man who asked a rabbi a certain question.  The rabbi gave his answer and the man excitedly said, “You’re right!”  Then another rabbi, overhearing the answer, joined the conversation and explained why the first rabbi was wrong and gave his own answer, which was the total opposite of the first.  The man who’d’ asked the original question got excited again and declared to the second rabbi, “You’re right!”  A third rabbi entered the conversation and said, “He’s right, and he’s right?  They both can’t be right.”  The man pointed to the third rabbi and announced, “You’re right.”

It’s a story that makes me chuckle but one I think all believers should take to heart.  As I seek to discover the meaning of Isaiah 45:7, I am certain of one thing: there is nothing to fear because this passage makes clear there is no power above God.  Does the fact that this passage states God creates both darkness and evil shake my faith in any way?  No.  This is where relationship is so important.  I know Him.  He is real in my life and has proven Himself trustworthy, faithful, and good in the midst of both well-being and calamity.  Because I know Him, I do not doubt His character or His love for me.  I also know I have a great deal to learn and thus, praying for the Holy Spirit to guide me and interpret for me, I continue my study.

References

Scientists Just Captured The Flash of Light That Sparks When a Sperm Meets an Egg (sciencealert.com)

New American Standard Bible, A.J. Holman Company, La Habra, California, 1960-1977

The Comparative Study Bible, Zondervan Bible Publishers, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1984

Bentorah, Chain, Hebrew Word Study: Revealing the Heart of God, Whitaker House, New Kensington, PA, 2016, Page 317

Blech, Benjamin, The Secrets of Hebrew Words, Jason Aronson, Inc., Northvale, New Jersey, 1991, Page 30.

Brown, Francis, D.D., D. Litt., The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts, Eighteenth Printing-September 2018, 1906

Green, Jay P., The Interlinear Bible Hebrew Greek English Volume One, Authors for Christ, Lafayette, Indiana, 1976-1985

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

Wilson, William, Wilson’s Old Testament Word Studies, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts

Young, Robert, Young’s Literal Translation of the Holy Bible, Revised Edition Old Testament, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1898, Reprinted 1995