When God created everything in the six days of creation, He didn't just go, "Pfwhoof, let's see what happens."

David writes in Psalm 8, "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained. . ."

When you ordain something, you order it and set it up in a very specific way. That's why when people ask, "Well, why am I here?" the obvious answer is, "God ordained some things and you're a part of that."

The answer isn't that we just jumped out of some primordial soup onto the land, shed our tadpole tails and grew legs all because we just happened to happen.

David says God formed creation with His fingers. This is referring to the personal attention given by God.

"When you do something with your fingers, you're doing it with a great deal of skill and carefulness—with purpose," explains my pastor, Richard Jordan (Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill.), in a study I have on tape. "The finger of God is a reference to the Holy Spirit. In Deuteronomy, when God wrote the tables of stone and gave them to Moses, it says He wrote with His finger. In Luke 11, when the Lord Jesus Christ refers back to the finger of God, He calls Him the Holy Spirit."

Talking about the greatness of the Messiah, Isaiah says, "Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counseller hath taught him?" (Isa. 40:12-13)

As Jordan explains, it's like God figured to Himself, "You know that lake over there—I want it to have so many gallons of water."

"It's like He goes over and dips out so much dirt—gets it out of the way so it will hold so much water—and then He fills it up," says Jordan. "Now you know He didn't literally do it that way, but the point is He had a plan. He knew just how big He wanted the Pacific Ocean to be, just how big He wanted the Indian Ocean, the Adriatic. He had a plan minutely designed."

The word "span" in the passage refers to a way of measuring, akin to a measuring stick.

"God measured the distance between the earth and the sun and made it exactly the 93 million miles that it is," says Jordan. "You ever think about the fact that the universe is put together with that kind of care? Ordinances. That's why everything works the way it does."

Isaiah asks pretty much the same question of Israel when he writes in Isaiah 40:21-22, "Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?
"It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in."

"If God sits on 'the circle of the earth,' what shape do you think the earth is?" asks Jordan. "Nobody who was ever a Bible-believer thought the earth was flat. You know who thought the earth was flat? Scientists. The people who were stating the science of their day."

From the same verse, we know God actually created the universe as tent for Him to dwell in.

"He was creating a house in which He intended to live," confirms Jordan. "He created it in a way that honored, pleased and satisfied Him. He set it up the way He wanted it set up."

Most people aren't aware of the fact that the Book of Job has much more information about creation than Genesis. Also, Job was the first book written in the Bible.

When the nation of Israel came out of Egypt with Moses and went across the Red Sea, they carried the Book of Job among their belongings. It was after that that Moses wrote the Book of Genesis.

This is precisely why Isaiah pleads in rhetorical fashion, "Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning?"

"When you read Genesis 1 and 2, you need to remember that the people Moses wrote that for already had the information," says Jordan. "From their beginning, they knew God's purpose in the earth to exalt the headship of Jesus Christ over the government. in the earth. When God gave birth to the nation Israel, He educated them as to why He was creating them. It wasn't just to set them free from Egyptian bondage. He was creating a nation in the earth in which He would accomplish His purpose in man. That's why the Bible says He created a nation that would be a 'kingdom of priests,' a kingdom nation to govern the earth for him."

Israel's the place God plans to dwell through the person of Jesus Christ. This is the message of Exodus 15:17: "Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O LORD, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the Sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established.

David writes in Psalm 8, "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. . . What is man, that thou art mindful of him?"

He's reflecting with awe, "Man, I look at this and I think, 'What is this man that you made to do all of this?! He's nothing. He's a weakling. He's a babe and a suckling.' "

The observation is, "He's not as durable and strong and powerful as an angel and yet this is the creature God has set to rule over all of His creation!"

As Jordan explains, "God set up man as a weaker creature—I mean we can't go out and lick an angel; they're more powerful—so that it was real obvious that for man to have dominion in the earth, it's going to take man trusting God to do it through him. That's what Adam messed up about. Instead of trusting God's wisdom, and educating his wife in it and standing on it, he went on to other things."

The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 5:14 that Adam "is the figure of him that was to come."

The very reason Jesus Christ had to become a man is because—as the one who represents all those who are in Him—He'll be the one to accomplish God's purpose for man.

If Christ wasn't really a human, He couldn't really accomplish God's purpose for mankind, and if He wasn't really God, he'd be limited and still couldn't accomplish it all, so He's the God-man.

"That title, 'Son of Man,' is a title that has a reference to Christ receiving the authority in the earth and having dominion over the earth, like Adam was to have," says Jordan. "When the Bible calls it an 'everlasting dominion,' that means it doesn't end. It has to do with geo-political activity on Planet Earth that Jesus Christ, as the Son of Man, reigns over.

"There's no way you can read these passages and come up with the ammillenialists' idea that, 'These passages aren't real, they're just kind of symbolic, and it's simply talking about Christ reigning in the hearts of men and that kind of spiritual stuff.'

"This is the (false) stuff taught by people like James Kennedy, James Dobson, Hank Henegraff, the Presbyterians, the Lutherans, the Roman Catholics and 99 percent of all the seminaries in America, and 100 percent of all those associated with mainline denominationalism."