Footprints of the Divine

By Richard Govier

Footprints have always constituted an interesting study for paleontologists and zoologists who study them in order to determine the type and size of the creature that made them. In some instances the footprints are the only surviving evidence that such a creature ever existed. If there are footprints then reason would tell us that something beyond our own imagination had made them. That is the rationale of this study.

Richard O. Govier (1928-2018) was a Protestant pastor and missionary and travelled the world in that capacity. He planted a number of churches as well as training pastors who served in Brazil, Chile, Argentina and across the United States.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Govier
• Release date: Jul 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463094129

Richard Govier

Richard O. Govier (1928-2018) was a Protestant pastor and missionary and travelled the world in that capacity. He planted a number of churches as well as training pastors who served in Brazil, Chile, Argentina and across the United States.After his marriage to his lifetime sweetheart, Christine Ann Golfis, at the Bethesda Missionary College in Portland, Oregon, he attended extension classes at Pierce College and the Portland State college. Touched by the Latter Rain revival that began in the Northwest, the call of God rested continually on their hearts and they were forever seeking means of preaching the Gospel to their generation. They bought a small trailer and began an evangelistic trek across the United States, preaching in small churches that were open to the work and moving of the Holy Spirit. They criss-crossed the United States from Los Angeles to New York and finally settled down in Los Angeles where they both got jobs and attended a church in Long Beach, California. While serving in that church their son, Jeffrey Lee, was born on November 4, 1963.God had spoken through prophetic words that they would be going to a land whose language they would not understand. Going through a dry period in their lives, Richard loaded up a small tent and made a trip to Mount Palomar, to wait on God. After a week of prayer and fasting, the Holy Spirit spoke to his heart that it was time to fulfill the call to a foreign land. Richard, Christine, and Jeff, set out for Brazil. They had no financial support for this until the night they boarded the ship. God sent a local Christian businessman who committed himself to their support for two years, just enough time to attend language school.It was while attending the Brazilian language school that a missionary visited and introduced Richard to one of Brazil's most notable guitar players, who had recently converted to Christianity. Richard played with him on the banjo and the two began a ministry together that took them to Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Richard taught pastors in afternoon meetings, while accompanying his Brazilian friend in large city-wide evangelistic campaigns in the evenings.After serving for ten years in South America, Richard and Christine returned to the United States, primarily to get Jeff into an English-speaking school. Richard pastored churches in York, Pennsylvania, and later in Brooksville, New Jersey. The family eventually moved to Florida where Richard went to work for Piper Aircraft and Page Avjet.Richard loved studying the word of God and, in his retirement years, wrote over thirty books about the unfolding revelations of God in human history. His son, Jeff, published these books one year after his father passed away.

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FOOTPRINTS OF THE DIVINE

COMPARING THE OLD STORIES SIDE BY SIDE

Richard O. Govier

Copyright © 2019 by Jeff Govier

Bible quotations unless otherwise identified are taken from

the King James Version with emendations by the author.

Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible®,

Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995

by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked RSV are taken from The Holy Bible : Revised Standard Version

Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America.

Nashville : Thomas Nelson Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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After reading this book and finding it of value to you, please consider sending a small donation for the the costs of advertising my father's work. Send all donations either by Paypal account name [e-mail] or by mail to:

Jeff Govier, 5511 Lorraine St., Lakeland, FL 33810.

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Contents

Introduction

The Creation Hymn

An Age Of Wickedness

The Great Flood

The New World After The Flood

The Tree Of Life vs. The Tree Of Good & Evil

About the Author

Introduction

Footprints have always constituted an interesting study for paleontologists and zoologists who study them in order to determine the type and size of the creature that made them. In some instances the footprints are the only surviving evidence that such a creature ever existed. If there are footprints then reason would tell us that something beyond our own imagination had made them. That is the rationale of this present study.

In studying the development of homo sapiens (man) on this planet, we come across evidence that something beyond man himself was responsible for the development of life. It all did not happen just by chance. The very laws that govern the existence of life itself are so fine-tuned that even the slightest fluctuation can destroy all life as we know it. A. Cressy Morrison, past president of the New York Academy of Science says, So many essential conditions are necessary for life to exist on our earth that it is mathematically impossible that all of them could exist in proper relationship by chance on any one earth at one time. Therefore, there must be in nature some form of intelligent direction. If this be true, then there must be a purpose.[1] Paul Davis, in his book The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability to Order the Universe says, There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all… It seems as though something has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the universe…The impression of design is overwhelming.[2] In the introduction to his Principia Sir Isaac Newton argued that our Solar System is so intricate and life-fitting that it had to be directly fine-tuned. He concluded, The most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.[3]

Of course, to see design and purpose embedded in nature, we may have to do what scientists in so many other respects have learned to do, learn to 'read' the relevant patterns, to cultivate the ability to consider the book of nature as a whole, to read through nature to its meaning. We have offered a number of explicit arguments and distinctions to justify our claim that the cosmos gives evidence of design.[4]

This may be said also of the Bible and the development of the spiritual covenants that have been made to man. This planet earth appears to be sort of a laboratory or an incubator to bring forth something that God had in mind from the very beginning. It is evident that this planet Earth was never intended to be just a hybrid farm upon which God had planted a variety of creatures just to satisfy His curiosity. Every strata of life that has emerged had a purpose. When God's creative process reached the stage of planting Homo Sapiens man in the Garden of Eden, he was allowed to partake of every tree in the garden save one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This holds a symbolic meaning and a rule of thumb that we shall hold to throughout these studies. God allows man to eat of other fruit in His Garden other than the Tree of Life. Indeed, the fruit in God's Garden is so vast that it includes the entire spectrum of the natural sciences. That is why truth can be found in the natural sciences as long as these truths do not run counter to the spiritual truths that are found in the Tree of Life. We believe that true science and true religion will agree, but as one can see, we have a long way to go yet. We see this graphically illustrated in the belief of the Medieval Church when Galileo challenged the Church’s belief in an earth centered universe. On the other hand, the natural sciences have been just as slow to accept the revelation that has come through scripture and the part that the Spirit of God plays in the creative process.

We have taken the liberty to quote from scientific sources even though these sources may not always be Christian. What has been discovered through scientific means has sometimes helped to confirm the message in scripture. On the other hand, there are portions of scripture that are very vague about the pre-flood civilization and the Great Flood itself. What little knowledge we have of those times are found in the Book of Genesis or other ancient accounts, such as that of Gilgamesh, the 5th king of the Erech dynasty, sometimes called The Babylonian Noah. Other than that we are forced to rely on ancient traditions such as those found in Apocryphal literature such as the Book of Enoch, the Book of Moses, or the Book of Jasher. The Mormon Church has so exploited these books by their addition to the Mormon Bible that the Evangelical Church has shunned them altogether. But it is also clear that parts of our own Protestant Bible have found their roots in these ancient traditions as they have come down through the Hebrew writers.

We have taken the liberty of quoting from some of these books only insofar as it helps to clarify existing scripture as found in the Bible. It is clear that the authors of the New Testament have done the same. I speak specifically of the Apostles Peter and Jude who mention the words of Enoch in their writing of scripture.

As we follow the footprints of the Divine as they trek their way through Adam, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Shem, and Abraham, we shall also notice other footprints that lead through Cain, Lamech, Ham, and Nimrod. Apparently not all the wicked seed of Satan was cut off by the Flood. Whatever happened in the household of Adam by his disobedience had a lasting effect on his descendants. The principle of evil enacted by the eating from the forbidden tree followed the descendants of Adam right through the destruction of the old world and the initiation of the new.

Notes

1. Man Does Not Stand Alone, A. Cressy Morrison, Fleming H. Revell Company, Westwood, New Jersey

2. The Cosmic Blueprint, Paul Davis, New York: Touchstone Books, 1989, p. 203

3. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Sir Isaac Newton, Berkley, University of California Press, 1960, pp. 542-544

4. The Privileged Planet, Guillermo Gonzalez & Jay W. Richards, Regney Publishers, Inc., 1947, pp. 333-334

I. THE CREATION HYMN

In the first chapter of the Book of Genesis is contained what is called The Creation Hymn. To many it is but a myth propagated by our ancestors, but the more that it is studied, the more is revealed the wisdom of God in the creation of life on this planet. Much of the resistance to its message is owing to the insistence by Bible expositors that the earth came into being over a period of six literal twenty-four hour solar days. Such an interpretation has caused many to reject the creation hymn altogether.

The truth is no man was present when the earth came into being. This kind of knowledge could only have come by revelation from God Himself. Most Bible scholars assert that this creation story was given to Moses while others believe that it was given to Enoch and passed down to Moses. Whatever the case may be, the Creation Hymn was never intended to measure time, which may have totaled millions of years. The only logical interpretation is that it represented days of revelation in which eons of time were compressed into literal twenty-four hour days of time in the mind of the prophet. The Creation Hymn represents a week of days of revelation in which the sequence of the creation occurred. What is more, this sequence has followed the biological order of events as they have developed on this planet e.g. the Vegetable Kingdom preceded the Animal Kingdom. The statement in Genesis: I have given every green herb for meat (Genesis 1:30) is a statement in biology that is most surprising, considering the time it was made. It is correct and in perfect accord with scientific knowledge. The statement about green herbs was not proven true until the synthesis of chlorophyll was discovered and the fact that all life was depended on every green thing was made known by science. So in the order of procedure from chaos to man and his dominion can science pick a flaw in this briefest story ever told? The world's history in a few lines of print? The rest is detail. We must accord our homage to the writer, unknown and unheralded, in complete humility bow to his wisdom and admit his inspiration.[1]

A. The First Day - Light

The appearance of light on the first day has been one of the hardest statements to explain but when science came into an understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum, it no longer remained a mystery. The argument has always been if the sun and the moon did not appear until the fourth day, then how do you account for light on the first day as the story would seem to indicate? This has always presented to the rational mind an insurmountable problem that has caused many to doubt the creation story. In ancient times the problem was resolved by placing the earth at the center of the universe and the sun and the moon revolving around it. But when Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) discovered that the earth and the moon revolved around the sun, it raised questions that could not be answered in conventional terms. It made the sequence of the creation story a complete contradiction. While science pondered this question and threw out the Genesis story as a myth, it suddenly dawned on some Christian theologians that light is a relative term that can be used to express the Logos and that had nothing to do with natural light.

1. Natural Light

Natural light is the result of atomic fusion reactions within the core of a star such as our sun. This light is based on a material substance, the atom, that has a limited lifespan. The sun will not endure forever. When its atomic fuel is expended it will die, and with it everything around it including our earth.

2. Spiritual Light

The revelation that St. John received was about a light that was eternal and existed in the beginning with God. This light is synonymous with pure truth or wisdom in which there is no shadow of turning. John's revelation is a mini-Genesis that helps to explain what happened on the first day of creation. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not" (John 1:1-5).

The first day of the creation story in Genesis is linked to the first chapter of John's gospel and explains how this earth came into being. The material came out of, and a result of, the spiritual action of the Godhead and not the other way around. The prophet Isaiah indicated this truth long before the Apostle John had spoken it. By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host. And again he said: For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast (Isaiah 33: 6, 9). This is why Genesis describes light as being the first day for the creative Word of God is light and truth. This kind of light is absolute and eternal and holds precedence over all that is material, including our natural sun. That is why it can be said that the sun and the moon came into being on the fourth day. The sequence as it appears in Genesis would indicate that the earth was shrouded in thick clouds that blocked the rays of the sun and the light of the moon until the approach of the fourth day, which was a geological period of time that may have covered millions of years. The Bible seems to confirm this possibility for God said to Job: Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth! When I made a cloud its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band…? (Job 38:4)

3. The Dividing of Light From Darkness

And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness (Genesis 1:4).

Of course the dividing of light from darkness is generally explained by the turn of the earth upon its axis producing day and night. But since this occurred at the very first day and not on the fourth day, it is hard to believe that this is what is intended here. There must be some other explanation that is only now being understood by scientists. The scientists describe it as a cosmic tug-of-war between the attractive force of gravity and the repulsive dark or vacuum energy. Often called the cosmological constant, which is theorized to be the result of a nonzero vacuum energy detectable at cosmological scales, it's one of the few cosmological parameters that determine the dynamics of the universe as a whole.¹

This is indeed beyond my comprehension, but so is God. If there was a time in which God divided the attractive force of gravity represented by the mass of huge stars and planets from the vacuum energy of space, then this is what is meant by the dividing of light from darkness. This may have occurred millions of years before the solar system came into being, put this is pure theory. No one really knows. If there exists a tug-of-war between these opposing forces then it would help explain the equilibrium that seems to hold things together. The Bible simply says, God divided the light from the darkness. Science knows very little about the universe