God is real! This book is a testament to that fact. Uncle Bill’s book doesn’t have all the answers to life that God’s Book does, but make no mistake, God wrote this one too. He not only wrote it; He orchestrated my life so that I would have every experience and piece of knowledge I needed for it to say exactly what He wanted. He also made sure I didn’t finish it until now.
I’ll never forget the day the journey to writing this book started. I was just a young punk kid when God put the desire in my heart to write. I was laying in my bed day-dreaming as usual, when I felt like I just knew what I was supposed to do with my life. I felt like I figured out the reason I was here. I felt like I found my purpose. I felt like I was going to make a difference in this world.
In my mind, at that time, I had no doubt it would happen and happen quickly. I bet EVERYTHING on it.
What God didn’t tell me that day was how it would all go down. He didn’t tell me I’d have to wait this long for it to happen. He didn’t tell me what I would end up writing about. He didn’t give me a “heads up” about all the challenges and trials I would have to go through first. He didn’t tell me about all the sleepless nights, the stress from failure, the countless jobs, or the worries about money. He didn’t tell me I’d have to wait until you all were born.
I can tell you that this is how God usually works. He doesn’t reveal the whole plan right away because He wants you to rely on Him for updates and guidance on your progress….something I didn’t do much of. I didn’t know any of this at the time, but there is no doubt it is true looking back now. Every little piece of my life had to align perfectly for this book to be written. Where I was born, the parents I had, the schools I went to, the people I’ve met, the jobs I lost, the trials I went through, and the joys I experienced were all directed by God.
It’s mind-blowing when I sit back and really think about some of the details. First, I had to be born. That took making sure your grandma and grandpa actually met and got married. (not to mention their parents and their parents and so on over all the centuries…) In fact, you can see God’s divine intervention in the fact that my mom, your mom, and your aunt all said “yes” to men not in their league. 😂
Then, God made sure you guys were all born and that you actually liked hanging out with your Uncle Bill. He gave me plenty of free time to spend with you too. It’s not an over-exaggeration to say God gave me more time with my nieces and nephews than 99% of the uncles on earth. I also find it fascinating that God waited until I was engulfed in the Bible and changing my own life before He allowed me to have a bigger influence in yours.
God lit a fire in me to learn more about Him. He led me to do a Bible study for Zach, and now this book for you.
Nothing was by chance; nothing was a mistake. It all had to happen. You’ll see, just keep reading.
The purpose of Uncle Bill’s book isn’t to give you all the little details on everything that’s in the Bible. That’s for future Bible studies (Lord willing) where we can break it all down verse by verse. For my book, I am just hoping that it gives you some simple Bible truths you can rely on because you trust and love the guy who wrote it. Having said that, trust but verify by reading and studying it for yourselves.
In case you’ve haven’t heard the creation story, here is some basic info about how we all got here. I’ll start off by telling you what the Bible actually says, then I’ll go into what the world thinks happened. I’m hopeful that you will see it takes a lot more “faith” to believe the world’s view than the Biblical account. “Faith: is believing something is real even though you have never seen it. Just like believing in what happened in the distant past is faith, because no human witnessed it.
It doesn’t take faith to know the Bible is real, but it does takes faith to believe the words and promises in it are. Same goes for your science books when it comes to our origins. No matter how many times evolution is promoted and taught biasedly in your classes, no one can “prove” it is true. It will take faith to believe in either creation or evolution.
Let’s get started. The Bible tells us plainly that God created the heavens and the earth in 6 literal-24-hour days. (See Genesis chapter 1)
In days 1-3, God created “spaces”. These spaces would later be “filled” with what God created in days 4-6. Days 1-3: spaces. Days 4-6: filling the spaces. (Check out the chart below)
CREATED
FILLED
Day 1 All matter, energy, light, and time in the universe
Day 4 Sun, moon and stars
Day 2 The atmosphere & water/seas
Day 5 Sea Creatures & birds
Day 3 Land & plant life
Day 6 Land animals and mankind.
There is nothing from the past, present, or future, that ever existed, in all the universe, that God didn’t create. This means everything you can see and don’t see, over all eternity past and future. This includes stuff you don’t even know exists. The Bible is very clear on this, and God alone takes credit for bringing it all into being.
Everything God created in days 1-3 (the spaces) were designed specifically for our benefit. They weren’t random. God made them for our use and daily needs. Just look at what we use the spaces for. We have an atmosphere that allows us to breathe outdoors and protects us from the sun. We have light & dark repeating every day after day, month after month, year after year, giving us a way to count time. We have the land we walk on and the plants we need for oxygen and food. All of it created with purpose and order. Nothing God does is random.
God then filled the spaces with the sun to light the day, and the moon & stars to light the night. Did you know God named all the stars? Astronomers can’t even count them all, yet God created them all and named them in one day. God also made the sea creatures, birds, and land animals that are vital for food and our eco-system. (All the stuff science tells you they are great for.) God knew what He was doing when He created this place. He was making a home for us.
I have found that the majority of Christians agree with all I have told you so far. They know God created everything. Exactly how God did it, and how long it took Him, are what many disagree on. The Bible tells us everything came from nothing and was created in an instant. Trees, plants, fish, birds, and even man all created in a flash, and in a mature state as if they had been there for years. God needed these things to be ready for man when he got there on day 6. He wouldn’t have created a process for life that took billions of years.
Adam didn’t start off as a baby. The fish were swimming; they weren’t eggs sitting on the sea floor. Birds could fly right away, cattle were fully grown so they could help work the ground, and the chicken definitely came before the egg. If God could create it at all, why couldn’t He create it all fully grown? Why would God make Adam wait until all the trees and plants were grown before he could eat from them? Animals were not part of Adam’s food source, so he would have starved if God didn’t make everything ready to eat and use.
Unbelievers, and many Christians, think God used evolution to bring His creation into being. They won’t accept simple Biblical answers and instead believe that life came into existence very, very, slowly through survival of the fittest. They try to marry the Bible and science books together so they don’t have to go against what the world thinks is true.
Remember this for a later study: Evolution tells us that death after death created new stronger and different species over a lot of time, until we reached the pinnacle, man. The Bible tells us death did not exist before man. In fact, death did not exist until Adam and Eve ate the apple God told them not to. Death came as the penalty for Adam’s sin. If death existed before sin, then God is a liar and Jesus died for nothing. You can’t believe the Bible and evolution. It is impossible to reconcile the two.
Wait, what about the dinos? Everyone says the Bible isn’t real because dinosaurs aren’t mentioned. Many Christians freak out when someone asks them to explain what the Bible says about Dinosaurs. It’s the craziest thing! All this doubt about the creation story over something easy to explain.
Dinosaurs were real., we have proof of that. It doesn’t take faith to believe it. Fossils are everywhere; unlike the fossils the evolutionists are still looking for. So, what is all the hysteria about in Christian circles? It all comes down to laziness and fear. Too lazy to go find the answers, and too afraid to go against the world.
For one, the word “dinosaur” is a relatively new word. It wasn’t around back when the Bible was written. Two, there are several mentions in the Bible of large animals that seem to resemble dinosaurs, but called by different names. Three, there are lots of animal species that are not mentioned in the Bible. God, during creation week, lumped all animals into just a few different “kinds”. From these few “kinds” we get all the different variations of birds, fish, and animals that have ever existed. This is opposite of the evolutionist view. They believe we started with millions of species over billions of years and by survival of fittest we are down to a much lower amount than we started with.
Scientists and textbook authors would like you to believe that most dinosaurs were huge like the t-rex, brontosaurus, and pterodactyl. In reality, the fossil record shows us that the vast majority were normal sized or smaller sized animals. They always fail to mention the average size of a dinosaur was around the size of an American bison. That’s not anywhere near t-rex size or the other huge dinosaurs found in the Hollywood movies. Why is this important? Because one of the popular ways people try to disprove the Bible is by saying no dinosaurs could have fit on the ark. The ark is what God had Noah build before He flooded the earth. (More to come on Noah and the flood down the road)
Are you seeing a pattern here? Scientists didn’t just come up with all their theories out of thin air. They took the creation story and then made up their own theory(s) to try and debunk the Bible. Every time the Bible proved true over time and discovery, they tweaked their theory to try and overcome it. Every time one of their theories was later proven wrong, they just pivoted to the next BS theory and the unbelieving world gladly accepted it. That’s not science, that is a blatant attempt to silence Truth. There are many Christian scientists who believe the creation account in the Bible. You just don’t hear from them as they are often silenced or shunned for going against their colleagues.
As to how Noah could have fit dinosaurs on the ark, you know the answer. They were average size or smaller. They could have even been very young and small when they boarded the boat. The next question is where did all the dinosaurs go? Why aren’t they around today? We will save that for a little later.
Now, let’s look at the timing of creation week. Did you know that God had a specific reason why He created everything in 6 days and then rested on the 7th? He didn’t need the rest, he wasn’t tired. Even though the Bible tells us the answer, many Christians still struggle with the fact that such a complex and vast universe could be made in only 6 days. They say it’s just too impossible to believe and they think science backs their beliefs.
Part of the struggle for Christians is that everything we are taught in school, everything we see on tv or socials, even words we hear in some churches, all teach that this place was created billions of years ago. Evolutionists and big bang theorists need these billions of years to be true so that they can explain why there are no signs anywhere of evolution in our world today. Scientists explain it by saying fossils don’t last billions of years and the evolutionary process is really slow. That is why no one has, or ever will, see anyone changing from “the goo, to the zoo, into you”.
So, because of all the outside influence to believe in evolution, many Christians look for ways to fit long periods of time in between days 1-6. They take words and whole paragraphs out of context. They make up stuff and ignore what is written. Many just live with the confusion and contradictions that come with trying to hold both views as true. They then become useless to God for spreading His Word. They do all of this just to support a theory that is harder to believe than the truth the Bible teaches. No one wants to question science, but they are fine with questioning God’s Word. Go figure….
In summary, you have a choice to make. Believe the world, or believe the Bible. Over the centuries, the world has changed its opinion on how the universe and everything in it came into existence, more times than you can count. The Bible has not changed since it was written 2,000+ years ago. I’ll believe the God who created everything over the people trying to study everything He created.
The real question every good Bible student should ask instead of “how could God do all that in 6 days?” is: “Why did He take so long?” If God could do it at all, He could certainly have done it in a split second, all at once. He didn’t need 6 days. He didn’t even need a minute. You’ll have to wait for the answer on this one. It takes a little more detail than I plan to go into in this book. In the meantime, rest assured God had very specific reasons why he created everything in 6 literals days.
There is so much more detail in the Bible about the creation account than I could possibly discuss in this chapter. This is just the milk, remember? I’ll end chapter one with this question:
“If God could create everything, is there anything He can’t do? You should think about that anytime a doubt or question comes into your mind about what God is capable of.
One might think after all the time I spent in church and in private school, I would have been this perfect little angel as a kid. Uh, nope, not even close.
I was just 12 years old when I started dreaming about moving out. Getting out from under the thumb of oppression that was my parents, motivated me, and got me through those dark years. Lol When your grandpa used to wake me up at noon to go mow the yard on a Saturday, I would think about that moment of freedom when I turn 18, and I’d get through it. I was going to be rich; I didn’t need them. My dad was a tightwad, and scared to take risks….not me! I’ll show him.
You have to try and picture this: For 8 years of my life, I was like a guy in a cannon waiting to be shot out. I was stuck in that cannon, and if somehow, I could light the fuse of adulthood, I would blast off into everything I ever wanted. Every argument I had with Bil & Pat, (I called them by their real names a lot ) would end with me reminding them that my move out day was just XX days and 12 hours away. I remember telling them that they would regret the way they treated me, especially when I become rich and famous.
Writing this now, looking back, it all seems pretty stupid. I don’t remember my parents giving me any real reasons to want to escape. Well, maybe a couple…. There was that one-time mom put my bed in the garage after I left to go out with my friends for the night. When I came home at some ridiculous hour, boy was I surprised! It was the peak of summer in AZ, but I wasn’t going to let her win, so I slept in the garage. I can’t imagine what that place smelled like the next day.
There was also the time mom threw all my clothes out the bedroom window, and the times she would try to yell instructions to me while I was mowing the yard. Your grandma was a little psycho back then, mostly for good reason. I was a pain in the butt! My dad always wanted me to do stuff, and do it for free. We had some epic battles on chore days. I’m not sure what my parents thought back then. I was a nightmare teenager. I think maybe they just finally threw up their arms and said: “oh well, let’s focus on the other two kids.” Lol
When I go through my old writing, I get to see what my state of mind I was in back in the day. 50% of what I wrote before 18 was about my parents and how strict they were. The other half was about all the cool things I was going to do when I wrote my book. The stuff I wrote after high school….now that is a different story.
Let’s flash forward to high school. I’ve had about 8 years of dreaming about writing, and a few thousand words hastily scribbled on notebook paper to show for it. So, I took matters into my own hands and decided I needed to live a life worthy of writing about. It sounds pretty good, until I tell you I thought partying and doing stupid funny crazy stuff, was what I needed to make my writing come alive. I started thinking maybe I’ll write a movie instead. I took a few film and screenwriting classes, and I even got an awesome video camera from my parents for Christmas. Although I had a very good imagination that I used often, I could never come up with anything that seemed better to write about than my own life.
I’ve included some pics of things I was working on, or thinking about between ages 17-30. I call this my BS time. “Before Steph”. As I told you before, there was a lot of stress when I was in my twenties. Everything I wrote about was a future scene in my movie or chapter in my book. At least that is what I thought at the time, not knowing God had a different plan. I walked around like my eyes were a video camera, filming the next adventure. There were plenty of adventures, but most of them never made it down on paper. I’d come home, write down some bullet points so that I wouldn’t forget, then never come back to finish it.
If I were to summarize everything that happened during that period it would be this: Even though I was a rebel child, God still protected me through it all. He surrounded me with the best friends in the world, and a 2nd family who all looked out for me. I don’t want to glorify this time in my life, but it did help shape me into the man I am today. I just wish I had 1/10th of the money I wasted back.
Uncle Bill was a great example to follow when you are looking for what “not” to do. I have been to more parties than I can count, and I have a lot of them written down in my pile of old writing. Nothing substantial ever came out of any of it, except a bunch of hangovers. That is how my twenties felt from a success standpoint too. Ugh, what a waste… I tried so hard to fight against the current and get something accomplished, but God wanted me to turn around a go with the flow.
I was 20 when I wrote the letter predicting my future would be full of wealth from sold writing and fame. I was going to be rich in 10 years, and I wouldn’t need the parents anymore. Well, that aged well!
Flash forward 7 years after I sent the letter. I was driving my mom’s mini-van, while working part-time at the Arizona Republic newspaper. Not in a writing job as you might think, but taking classified ads over the phone. I had moved in and out of the parent’s house several times, and if it wasn’t for your Aunt Steph, I would probably still live there. Life sucked! I felt depressed, I felt hopeless, I felt like a failure.
In the decade following that letter, a lot went wrong. I spent several hours in the pokey, and narrowly escaped serving a lot more. I had a car repossessed because I needed the money for beer, and I got kicked out of a couple apartments for partying too much. I had 15 jobs, and I spent very little time working at any of them. I had to sell some of my favorite things to pay off debt, rent, or for buying alcohol. The 69 mustang and the jeep were the hardest to let go. I lived paycheck to paycheck, and always above my means.
As far as the being famous prediction went, the closest I got was being in a few local insurance commercials. I always played the part of the loser without any money, a part I was perfect for. They only picked me because I worked there, and they wanted free talent. I must have been a decent actor, because people used to recognize me and shout my name. Too bad it was just at the mall, and the only people that saw my commercials were the people who were home all day instead of working. There was the one girl who wanted to dance with me because she thought it was cool I was on tv. I might have married her, had your aunt not come into the picture and snatched me away when she saw us dancing. You aunt was the jealous type. lol
The stress was rough. Not only did I have all these financial worries, but major doubt was creeping in. I had a few jobs that helped take away the hole I had not filled yet, but they were always just temporary. I had a mid-life crisis breakdown at 27. I was only 3 years away from the cutoff I told my parents about in the letter. I was nowhere close to having anything written.
Look at the poem I wrote. (Life Lessons) I can’t tell you how much anxiety, fear, stress and tears were behind it. But, if you notice, there is also hope! I wrote this after praying. Although I didn’t have much of a relationship with God during this time period, I always went to Him when I felt everything was unbearable. I went to Him when I was desperate. He always calmed me down and brought me hope.
I was failing, and I had very little time to get it done. The partying helped me forget that I was a loser too. I talked so much crap over the years; on purpose. I figured if I talked a ton of smack about being successful, surely that would help my pride kick in, and I would “get er done”. Again, I was wrong. 15 years after I had vowed to become a writer, I felt further away than ever.
God kept the spark there though, and occasionally, especially during very high stress times in my life, He allowed me to write some of the best stuff I ever put down on paper. I never let anyone see how disappointed I was in my life. I kept up the charade. I drove fancy cars, I dressed like a 50-year-old poser rich guy, and I still bragged about the writing, but only when I was drinking.
I was really scared. I didn’t know what life would be like living with the disappointment I set myself up for. I didn’t know if I could handle that type of pain, so I couldn’t let the dream die, or I’d risk dying inside.
So, here we have an example of 2 things: 1. I wanted to write with every ounce of my being for more than 40 years, but never got anything completed. 2. I wanted to be a good Christian, but I wasn’t anywhere close to good. I was very thankful for all the times God helped me out of a mess, but it didn’t lead to me to obey Him more. After God saved me that one time in the desert, I told Him that I’d never drink again. The next day I was right back to the hair of the dog that bit me.
It was one of the most frustrating periods in my life, and it lasted a long time. Everything I wanted to do, I didn’t. Everything I didn’t want to see happen, did. UGH!
Then, God sent me a life preserver; your aunt. God sent her in to help clean up all the messes, and make me smile at her dresses. Lol The friends and family God provided for me during my party days, were being replaced with my own family. I got married when I was 30, and we had Zach at 32. I needed motivation and my hopes lifted up, and that is just what marrying the love of my life did! I was down in the dumps about my writing, but now I had a wife and a son to think about. I would do it for them! The timing must have been all wrong before.
Nope! Wrong again. God was just planting seeds at this time. He knew what would happen over the next decade, I didn’t.
How can you believe something will happen with your whole heart, but never see it come to fruition? How can you know how you should act, but still don’t? Why did I have to go through all this stress and anxiety?
I have the answers now, but I’ll tell you later. Keep reading.
God gave us the solution right in the middle of passing judgement. Yes, God had to punish Adam and Eve, but He also showed them mercy by sharing the “good news” at the same time. The good news, is that God has a plan to save us from the mess created by sin and the fall. The word “gospel” means: good news! This is the first place in the Bible the gospel was given.
Genesis 3:15: And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.
There is so much behind this one verse. Without going too deep, and taking up a couple chapters of my book, I’ll give you this: When God told Adam and Eve that He has a plan to bring them a Savior, He purposely left out most of the detail that we all have now. God didn’t tell them who the Savior would be, and He didn’t tell them when He would come. He didn’t tell them the Savior would have to die, or that He would rise again. All God said is that the seed of woman, (seed is singular) would bring down the enemy (Satan) and restore all things back to perfect.
Adam and Eve could choose to believe in this promise from God, or they could follow Satan and look to create their own paradise on earth. The word “seed,” is the reproductive material men carry, so there has to be a reason God said “her” seed. Women don’t have seed, only men do. How could a woman have a child without a man involved in the conception process? It would take a virgin birth. There is only one human ever born who did not get Adam’s corrupt, sinful, and fallen nature passed down through the normal human conception process. That was Jesus!
The snake was also there when God gave the good news to Adam and Eve. The promised Messiah was anything but good news to Satan though. He took this Word from God and started working to stop it. Since Satan is a created being, he is no match for the God who created him. So, Satan uses man to try and stop the seed from ever being born, or by corrupting the seed line, so none were worthy to be a savior. Eve thought her first born son Cain was going to be the Messiah, so Satan turned Cain into a murderer and he killed his brother Abel. That shows you how fast sin moved, when the 1st kid born on earth, kills his only brother because he was jealous.
This pattern of God keeping the seed promise alive, while Satan does all he can to stop it, happens over and over again throughout all of history. Every God-fearing Jewish mother from the time of Eve to the time of Mary, prayed and hoped their child would be the promised Messiah. This made the Jewish people Satan’s #1 target. If he could corrupt the seed line, or kill any who might be in it, Satan figured he could disrupt God’s plan.
The verse also tells us that Satan would bruise the future Savior on the heel. In human terms, you can strike a fatal blow to the head, but no life-threatening damage comes from a strike on the heel. This was God’s point in bringing up this comparison. The deeper meaning behind it was revealed when Satan thought he won by helping get Jesus killed, only to later realize it was just a strike on the heel, because Jesus arose from the dead and is alive now.
On the other hand, Jesus dealt a death blow to Satan’s head. Satan could no longer hold the fear of death over us, because Jesus rising from the dead would give us life after death. Even though the true end of Satan is not yet here, God is still in control, and Jesus is ruling from His throne in heaven. Make no mistake about it though, Satan is here on earth with a multitude of fallen angels, always looking to stop God’s next step. The problem is, Satan is not all knowing like God is, and so He is always a step behind and too late. In fact, God utilizes Satan and his minions to bring about Jesus’ return, so there is no doubt Satan can only go as far as God lets him.
It was impossible for anyone born before Jesus to know all that verse 15 meant. It didn’t become truly clear until Jesus came, died, and rose again. God slowly revealed the full plan over time, until the day Jesus was born. He did this to keep the plan secret enough that Satan would not know how it would play out. God did give the nation of Israel plenty of clues that would help them recognize when the real Savior came, but as you may know, most still rejected Him when He showed up.
The Bible tells us that until Jesus comes back again, this place will only get worse. Almost every scientist in the world thinks the earth is falling apart. They believe mankind is causing it, and if we would just stop eating cows, stop having kids, and build more wind farms, we can stop the damage. Others are drastically searching for life on other planets, trying to find a place to move to when this earth goes away. It is no coincidence that most of humankind has a feeling that the earth is wearing out. Before anyone ever thought about it, the Bible declared it over 2,000 years ago. What are the odds?
In Genesis 8:22 God says that all will remain predictable on the earth from the time after the flood, until the end. Seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night, will never stop happening. Climate change scientists say nothing will be predictable, because we are seeing weather events and ice melts, that are unparalleled in history. They argue for the opposite of what the Bible says. Climate change predictions see chaos, where summer becomes winter, or the opposite. They are always looking for “never happened before” events to support their predictions. God says everything in our environment will work as usual until the end of the earth. It’s part of a cycle that God created, and it won’t change or go away until the earth goes away.
So, the nightmare scenarios that climatologists have thrown at us for years, is all just part of God’s plan. Man isn’t speeding up or slowing down any of it. God set the timing of it when He cursed the earth after Adam and Eve’s sin. From that day forward, earth was like a ticking timebomb, waiting to be destroyed. For those of us that know this place is not home, there is no need for doom and gloom, because God replaces His creation with a new heavens and earth. It’s the same place we read about in Revelation chapter 21. If you know your Bible, then you will know when we are getting close to the end of earth. I’ll save that discussion for later.
God wants us to be good stewards of this planet and respect His creation, but holding on to a lie that we can stop God’s plan by driving electric cars is willfully ignoring Bible truth. Letting the fear they are selling you invade your life is wasted stress. The earth is passing away. Everything in this world wears out and eventually stops working, just look around. Your car doesn’t start running better, it always runs down. The same with every single thing on this earth. Can you think of anything that gets better and more efficient the longer it is used? Do you understand now why the world makes climate change such a priority? Why do they want to scare you into believing that you are responsible for the earth’s decay, and not Genesis 3?
It’s an attack against God, and Bible truth. If there is no judge, there is no judgement. If there is no fear, they you don’t need them for a solution. The Bible makes clear in many places throughout, that the world is ending because of a judgement against sin. I wrote about this earlier; unbelievers don’t want to believe in a creator God, because that implies that there is someone they need to be accountable to. Of course, they can’t believe the reason why the universe is wearing out, or they would be admitting there is a higher authority.
Almost every fear that the world tries to get you believe is debunked in the Bible. Again, I ask you to think about why they want you to be scared about this place ending? Why do they want you to think that we can do anything about it?
The next major historical event the world does everything they can to discredit, is the flood from Genesis 7. The worldwide flood Noah and everyone alive at that time experienced changed everything. It changed our topography and our ecosystem. For the first time it rained, and millions of people, animals, and birds drown. From this point in time forward, man would eat animals, and animals would eat each other. Most animals were no longer tame, and God put the fear of man in them so they weren’t an easy target.
The flood was brought as judgement on the people of earth because they had become so wicked that every thought of theirs was to do evil. After the fall, and before God brought the flood, Satan was working overtime to stop the seed line from moving forward. He had his fallen angels indwell human men and impregnate the women of earth. This was Satan’s way of trying to corrupt the lineage leading to Jesus.
Now, think for a second about what it took for God to flood this earth and start over with only Noah and his family. The place was nothing but evil, 24×7. Outside of one family, no one was worth saving. That is how bad the world was then. As a teaser for later in the book, Jesus told us in the New Testament that when He comes back again, the earth will be as wicked and evil as it was right before the flood. I can tell you it is bad right now, and getting worse, but I don’t think we are quite as bad as the people who drowned in the flood were….at least not yet. One could easily argue that we are definitely seeing an increase in the presence of spiritual darkness nowadays.
So, the real reason why the world of unbelievers has to target the flood story is this: If we can prove there was a flood, then we prove there was a judgement. If there is proof of judgement, then they have to believe there is a judge. If they believe this, then they have to believe the judge is coming back. Still seeing the pattern? It’s not just the fact that the flood happened, it is the fact that a similar judgement is coming again. That is why they deny it happened, and they tell us the story is just allegory. A righteous God, brought judgment on an evil world. This is exactly what the world doesn’t want to acknowledge. Again, the book of Genesis has so many foundational truths, that Satan is be best served when people cause confusion and doubt about its authenticity or meaning.
Someday, Lord willing, I will show you guys how the geological columns and the fossil records prove the flood, and opens up more questions about what scientists say happened. You have to jump through hoops, make assumptions, and outright try to fool people into believing their eyes are deceiving them, to proclaim our earth supports the evolutionary model. There are millions of animals that all died at the same time from the flood, and were buried instantly, creating fossils groupings that scientists can’t explain. What science tells us happened is more unbelievable than the belief of a worldwide flood. The earth’s crust was opened up and mass amount of water shot out from the earth. This should have left an impression we can see today, and it did. Scientists just won’t show you, because they can’t believe in God. It’s tough to hold onto something as truth, when all the physical evidence of a worldwide flood is everywhere. But who is going to challenge the experts?
One more thing I have to tell you about is in Genesis 10. This is where God documented the beginning of all the nations on earth. This chapter is unparalleled when you compare it to any other ancient writings about the origins of mankind. There is no document in history that comes close to explaining the beginnings of modern nations and cultures like Genesis does. Many of the names of Noah’s grandsons can be directly traced to nations of people still existing today. Other names have lost their meaning and their people groups are a mystery today. From this chapter in Genesis, we know that the world we see today, was settled by a few families moving outward from a place called Babel. All of this took place about 4,500 years ago. I have a map for you of where these descendants of Noah ended up.
Babel is a city that most of the people settled in after the flood. God told the people to be fruitful, multiply, spread out and fill the earth. They didn’t listen, and instead congregated in big cities like Babel, and built a huge tower. God forced their hand by changing their languages, which then caused them all to move away from each other. Mistrust started to build with the people they couldn’t understand, so they spread out into groups and families by language. They refused to listen to God, so He forced their hand. Now you know why your Aunt Steph tells me I am babbling a times, and where that word came from. Read the story of the Tower of Babel and check it out.
I find it interesting that in today’s world, we are moving back to one universal language, English. Hmmm, I wonder if that is a sign of something? I guess to find out, you are going to have to read the end of the book.
After sin came into this world from Adam and Eve disobeying God’s law, death also came. If you notice, before the flood people lived to be several hundreds of years old. The oldest person to ever live was Methuselah, who lived to be 969 years old. There are some interesting theories about why people lived longer before the flood, and what the flood did to change our atmosphere and climate. I’ll save that for a future study.
The rest of the book of Genesis is focused on the nation of Israel. We learn how they were formed, and what they went through as they grew into a nation. Genesis takes us all the way until Jacob (Israel) and his family move into the land of Egypt, where they would later become slaves.
In the background, throughout all Genesis, we have Satan trying to get in the way of God’s promise of a Savior, and God doing what He does to ensure the seed lines moves forward. We know who succeeded because the Savior did in fact come!
It was almost 14 years ago that Uncle Bill lost his mind. I was at my “stressimus maximus”. I was miserable at work, and I knew that my day was coming soon. In fact, over the previous year, I had to lay off half of my team. Many of them were my friends, because we worked together for 7 years. This was the longest I’ve ever kept a job. I got lazy, and comfortable. This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen. I got paid a sick amount of money for the work that I did, and I bet I could have stayed there another 7 years had that darn president not been elected.
It was December of 2011 and our AZ family went up north for our annual family vacation. I really like hanging out with you guys on these vacations. It’s awesome when we are all just chillin out and making fun of your parents together. We didn’t get to spend much time together on this vacation though. You guys were still pretty young, so you probably won’t remember uncle Bill’s breakdown. That darn guy who ran the nation worked his way into our conversation the first night there, and it got me all worked up!
I don’t even remember what your grandpa, your moms, or I said, but things got a little heated. Anyway, I stormed out of the room, flipping of my sister on the way out. (I’m sure you know which sister it was.) Lol I can’t explain it; I wasn’t myself, but I was. I don’t remember a time I was angrier and more upset. I couldn’t understand how they could vote for that guy knowing it was going to cost me my job. Family first, right? Whatever. The next morning, I got your aunt and Zach up super early and we drove home. Well, your aunt drove us home. Uncle Bill would’ve had to stay there until all the snow melted, if he had to drive down those crazy curvy mountain roads.
It took me about 3 months to get past that one. I swore I would never go on a family vacation again, but then they started to get more fun as you guys got older and we could hang. Also, a lot changed in the 3 months after my meltdown.
Flash forward just a few months after “fight night with the family”. I was driving my sad self to work. Even though my job was a long way away, I took the back roads there. I hate sitting on the freeway in traffic, I need to be moving. I also wanted to make sure I was mentally prepared for work, and sometimes that took me a while. Anyway, after I turned a 1-hour trip into a 2-hour cruise, I finally made it to the office. Something seemed different that day, and I still can’t explain why I felt that way.
Less than two months prior, I laid off half of my team. The people that actually made work half-way enjoyable for me, were now out enjoying their new free time, while I was still stuck at work. We got a new boss who was there to figure out what to do with our department. Most of our senior leadership team thought my area would go away with the recent bill passed in DC. They panicked, and they started cutting everything and everyone they could. Eventually, their theory proved wrong, and the department is now staffed back up. But I digress….
Anyway, I walked in to my office and pulled up my emails. There was a calendar invite for that afternoon with my boss and the human resources director, down in his office. This was it, layoff day! It was finally here! Now I have to wait all day??? It’s a little HR trick, to use Friday afternoons as the day to let people go. There is less disruption, the business is closed on the weekend, and you give the employees who still work there a few days to digest the news. I had been on the other side of this many times, but never the person waiting to be let go. It was weird.
Since I had to anxiously wait around all day, I slyly packed up everything I wanted to keep, and took several trips out to my car throughout the day. I was sneaky, so no one thought anything was up. I wasn’t supposed to know it was coming, but your Uncle Bill ain’t no fool. I went to lunch a few times that day, then I just sat around deleting emails and clearing out my desk.
Well, 4:00 finally came, and the news I was waiting a year for came with it. I was getting laid off! They offered me a severance package, which you never get when you quit a job. I was going to get paid for a few months while I look for another opportunity. This is crazy! I drove out of that place faster than the cookie dough disappeared after my sister found it! I went over to the K-mart down the road and called your aunt Steph from the nasty old payphone. (I had to give up my company cellphone)
Your aunt Steph knew this day was coming. She has had lots of days like this since she met me, and I would bet she expected it to happen a lot sooner than it did. On the way over to the payphone I was practicing how I would tell her. I started working on my voice inflections: ”Hey babe, (sounding down & out) I just got laid off”. I tried it a few more times before I got out of the car and put the quarter in the phone. I had to call her a couple times because she didn’t recognize the payphone number, so I had to keep that sticky, gross, nasty phone on my ear longer than I wanted to. Plus there were about 20 homeless guys in line behind me waiting impatiently.
My heart was racing. I had plenty of these conversations with your Aunt Steph before, but this one felt different. This one felt a little less my fault than usual. Still, it is hard to tell your wife you lost your job. Trust me, it doesn’t matter how many times you do it, that call home never gets easier. “Hey babe, I just got laid off”, I told her as I struggled to keep the joy in my voice contained. “They gave me a severance package, so I’ve got some time”. Your aunt Steph didn’t like the sound of “I’ve got time”, so she was quick to tell me I better start looking for a job now, because it can take a while. I mumbled “I’ll see you at home”, she told me she loved me, and I disinfected my face hand and ear, and got ready for the long drive home. I remember thinking: “she said she loves me, so she must not be that mad at me”. What a nutjob your uncle Bill is.
I got back in the car and started screaming with joy at the top of my lungs! Woooooooohoooooo! A few of the homeless guys thought I was crazy, but I didn’t care. It was OVAH!!!!!!!!! I felt all that stress just melt right off of me. I still can’t believe they keep paying you after they let you go. What a world! I stopped by my cousin’s house to celebrate and give him the good news. I called your grandma to break it to her as well. If there is anyone who has lived through more of my jobs than Steph it’s my mom. She worries about her boy. I am a momma’s boy; I’ll never be ashamed to admit it. My mom rocks. You know guys know it. Well, she wasn’t too happy about the job going away, but what’s a mother to do? Life got a little less hectic for my her when your aunt Steph came in the picture. It’s like now Steph could take over, and my mom could worry more about you guys. lol
I stayed at this job until God made me leave. I had never done that before. I didn’t handle the year I was waiting for layoff day very well, but I made it. I just kept thinking maybe now is the time to finish the book! This has to be why I got laid off. It’s frickin time!!!!!! Or maybe not….that was 13 years ago….
I spent the next few months before the severance money ran out, trying my hardest to get something written. It had to be the time now. Getting laid off work was the event that would catapult me in to being a successful author, right? Uh….Nope.
I tried starting my own business, and I shacked up in my sister’s office space. That lasted a couple months at best, because that darn president didn’t give me the free money I was hoping for. Still, it was way fire to spend some time with my sister! I even got to see Riley and Kali a lot because they weren’t in school yet, and the office became their daycare center some days. The conference room was their playroom/prison cell. Lol
Even with 4 months of total free time, I couldn’t get a thing done. Instead I went golfing, hung out with cousin Kenny, and spent money like I still had a job. I admit, the whole “getting paid for not working” thing was really not good for me. Your poor Aunt Steph, she saw the same pattern over and over during our time together. Make money, spend money, quit job, run out of money, find new job, make money, and on and on… It was a pattern that I’m sure she still has concerns might happen again in the future. After 4 months of pretty much stress-free fun, I started to get worried. It was obvious I wasn’t going to sell my book before the mortgage payment was due on our house next month.
I hope you learn a lot quicker than Uncle Bill, so you won’t have to go through so much of your life feeling the kind of stress I went through. Make no mistake, I brought all the stress on myself, and I had zero options left. I needed someone to save me from feeling so horrible.
I am literally bawling right now after typing out how stressed I used to be. I remember that sick stressful feeling so well, that it’s bringing me to tears because I haven’t felt that way in a long time. Wow. That is how God works kids! It’s like a total relief I can’t even begin to explain. It’s like I can finally breathe now…
Anywho, back to the story. The party was over, and I gave up. I brought in the big guns to help me. I had to do something drastic.
I need to get up and take a break. I can’t stop crying thinking about this stuff. Holy cow, things have changed a lot since those high stress times. I keep having these flashbacks in my head about what I was thinking back then. There were a lot of happy times sprinkled in there, but how could you ever really be happy, when your lifelong dreams are being shattered? It was a tough pill to swallow at the time, and that is why I am getting so emotional about it right now.
So where were we? Oh yeah, I started reading the Bible. I started praying those “please Lord, help me!” prayers with tears and sometimes fist pounding into the pillow or steering wheel of my car. I needed help getting rid of this pain and disappointment! So I went to the only option I had left: God.
It stinks that sometimes God has to bring people down so low, that they have to look up to Him for help. I am sure glad He brought me low, because it changed me forever.
Today was the first time in a long time that I looked at my life right now and said “it doesn’t get any better than this!” I try to imagine what it would be like had God decided to keep me at that job another 7 years. I can feel the stress just thinking about it. No joke, my heart rate went up and I started getting that feeling in the pit of my stomach again. At the time, I was so pissed off at the darn president, my family, the company I worked for, and anyone else I could blame. Now, I can’t imagine it all going down any other way. I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to, but with God’s twist on it.
This is how I usually notice God’s work in my life. It’s almost always when I take the time to reflect back on key events like losing my job and family fight night. Usually, when you are going through these big life changes, you’re not seeing things clearly. It is really hard to step back in the moment and ask God what He is doing, and what His purpose for it is. It takes a lot of practice, but Uncle Bill is much better at it now.
The moral of the story is that Uncle Bill couldn’t see that God had a plan that was different than his own. I never could have pictured that I would end up where I am right now. When God got the guy in the White House elected, I highly doubt He did it just so I would lose my job. There are a lot of easier ways to get me to leave a place. But He used the bill that was passed to get what He wanted done: me out of the job, and secure financially for the time being.
I should have never been stressed about a job enough to act the way I did on family fight night. I never should have let myself get so down when things didn’t turn around right after I was let go. I should have had more patience. Nothing ever moves fast enough for me, but God isn’t confined by time like we are. God is eternal, and outside of time. His timing in the events of my life was always perfect, because the things I went through and those moments in time, shaped me into who I am today. Little did I know He had quite a bit more teaching to go… Stay tuned. Next chapter I get schooled.
THERE IS HOPE MY SON 