The Great Pearl

By Richard Govier

The Earth was created for man and man for God. Perhaps this will explain the reason why the visions of the prophets were centered on just this planet, and no other. and of all the many billions of human beings that made this planet their home, only one of them became the object of God's attention. That was the man Christ Jesus. It is evident, therefore, that both elements - the chosen Earth, and the chosen Man, are both involved in God's eternal purpose and the object of His search.

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: 9780463626832

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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THE GREAT PEARL

THE PURPOSE OF CREATION

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.

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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 Week

The Great Flood

The Post-Diluvian Civilization

The Giving Of The Law

Conscious Life - The Noosphere

God's Ultimate Purpose

In Conclusion

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

The first astronauts who circled the moon were shocked when they emerged from behind the moon to see their first glimpse of the Earth some 238,860 miles away. With the blackness of space as its backdrop, the Earth appeared more majestic than anything that they could have imagined. Its blue and green appearance with its white tuft of clouds seemed to glow within the envelope of air surrounding the planet. There is something special about this planet, among all the other planets of the solar system, for it is the home of Mankind, the focal point of God's purpose for the universe.

From my point of view, the Earth was created for man and man for God. So many essential conditions are necessary for life to exist on our earth, says Cressay Morrison, that it is mathematically impossible that all of them could exist in proper relationship by chance on any one earth at one time.[1] In his opinion, the odds are overwhelmingly against all of these conditions existing just by chance, so there must have been some guiding power involved in the formation of this planet Earth. Perhaps this will explain the reason why the visions of the prophets were centered on just this planet, and no other. and Of all the many billions of human beings that made this planet their home, only one of them became the object of God's attention. That was the man Christ Jesus. It is evident, therefore, that both elements - the chosen Earth, and the chosen Man, are both involved in God's eternal purpose and the object of His search.

In this modern age when much is being said about life on other planets many are unaware of the fact that nothing is said in scripture about it. If such life does exist in some far off place in the universe, one would suppose that the same Spirit that moved upon the face of the deep in the creation of this planet would give us some clue about it. But the holy prophets, whose vision reached far into the future, are strangely silent about it. The whole Biblical revelation revolves around the fact that this planet Earth is a special planet with a special purpose. Granted that there may be other life forms on other planets, even as there are other life forms on this planet, but the Earth, alone, has the distinction of having brought forth a creature that is made in the image of God, and that makes the Earth a special kind of place.

It will be our object in these studies to show the relationship that exists between the Earth and man, that man is the product of the dust of the earth, and not the product of some seed adrift in the universe. God created this planet specifically for the purpose of bringing forth a creature in His image, in short, Sons of God. The Earth is, therefore, the cradle of God's divine plan that will someday involve the entire universe. To understand man it is necessary to understand the Earth, for it is a closed ecosystem upon which our life in the flesh depends.

We shall be dealing briefly with the past, present, and future of this planet and the biological and spiritual life that has developed upon it. We do not believe, as the materialists do, that life developed on this planet purely by chance. Neither do we believe, as the Creationists do, that life came into existence in a 24 hour day.

Evidently God does not leave all truth in the hands of His prophets. There are occasions when scientists discover truth through observation, experimentation, and discovery.

In his book Human Destiny a famous scientist writes, Two different paths may eventually lead to the comprehension of man. The first, revelation, is a direct road, but is closed to a great many people and independent of rational thought. Those who can make use of it are fortunate. The second, on the contrary, is strictly rational and scientific.[2] Then he says: It is clear, therefore, that expressions such as 'scientific truth' should only be taken in a very limited sense, and not literally, as the public so often does. There is no scientific truth in the absolute sense.[3]

Sir Isaac Newton was one of the world's leading scientists and was deeply involved in studying the physical laws that govern the universe. Yet Newton was an avid Bible scholar who believed in the integrity of scripture - that it was, indeed, the Word of God. He believed that any contradiction between science and the Bible was due to man's own lack of understanding and not the record of scripture.

The real issue is, therefore, not how man got here, but who or what was behind him getting here. To the materialist, it is the forces of nature working by chance. To the spiritualist, it is the power of God working by design.

Notes

1. Man Does Not Stand Alone, Cressay Morrison

2. Human Destiny, Lecomte Du Nouy: B.I., A Mentor Book

3. Ibid. p. 23

PART I The Creation Week

The story of the Creation Week is found in the 1st chapter of Genesis. It consists of six days, from the creation of light on the 1st day until the creation of animals and man on the 6th day. The 7th day God rested from the creative process that He had begun. The seventh day, therefore, began to be acknowledged as a day of rest that entered into the Mosaic system of the Law.

The creation story, however, must have preceded that of the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai, for the tradition of the Sabbath already existed before the children of Israel reached Mt. Sinai (Exodus16:23). If Moses was not the originator of the story as some have affirmed, then he certainly included the story in one of the five books of which he is the author. The story of creation may have been the work of Enoch (though we have no proof) for he was both a prophet and a seer. The Book of Enoch was quoted by the Apostle Jude (Jude 14). The Sabeans, one of the oldest religions in the world, had in their cannon of scripture the Book of Enoch and the Jewish Kabbalah, which is supposed to constitute the hidden wisdom of the Jewish nation. Occasional references are made to the Book of Enoch as a book carefully preserved from generation to generation. Like Daniel the prophet who foretold the future of the nations, Enoch foretold not only the coming of the Great Flood in Noah's day, but the final judgment of mankind on this planet. It was also revealed to Enoch the coming of the Son of Man, or the Elect One, with which much of his prophecy had to do. In Chapter LXXXI of his book Enoch is said to have left his last will and testament: Now, my son Methuselah, all these things I speak unto thee, and write for thee. To thee I have revealed all, and have given thee books of every thing. Preserve, my son Methuselah, the books of the hand of thy father; that thou mayest transmit them to future generations. We believe that the transmission of data may have included the Genesis account of creation. Regardless of who may have been the author, the creation story came by revelation, for neither Enoch nor Moses were present when the earth was created.

If the creation story came in a series of revelations, or visions over a period of six twenty-four days, then are we to assume that the earth, itself, was created in the same period of time? The visions were intended to give to us a window into the past, not a measure of geological time. Each window into the past could have represented a geological period of millions of years. The day to day unfolding of the Creation Week was meant to show the sequence in which God created this planet and the biological life that followed. This sequence of events does not differ radically from the view held by many scientists.

If there be any one point that we differ radically from the scientists, it is in the question of first cause. We do not believe that the Earth and its biological life came into being by chance. The scripture specifically says: "It is He [God] who made the earth by His power, who established the world by His wisdom; and by His understanding He has stretched out the heavens" (Jeremiah 10:12). At the very beginning of the creation story it says: ...the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. In this brief statement is contained the secret behind the creation of the world. The prime mover of all things, including the creation of the world, is the Spirit of God. God's Spirit is a creative force that moves material matter much in the same way that the psyche in man moves the physical body. That is why God is portrayed as the Word for words are a psychic phenomenon. In this case, the Word is the expression of the mind of God. The Apostle John wrote: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being (John 1:1-3 NASB).

From the very beginning the Word, or divine Thought, was involved in the Creative Week. That means that the creative Word of God has been involved from the very beginning in the development of matter and energy in the universe. Whether we are dealing with inorganic or organic matter, both alike are being influenced by the creative power of God. While some call it evolution, we prefer to call it creation.. Unlike certain Creationists, we believe that the creative process has been going on for millions of years. The length of time involved between the 1st, and the 2nd, day of creation could have involved eons of time. The "evening and the morning that constituted the first day was actually a twenty-four hour day of revelation" in which the prophet received the initial sequence of events that formed the Creative Week.

The Genesis account tells us: ...the earth was formless, and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters

(Genesis 1:2). This was the initial view of the planet that the prophet saw concerning the origins of the Earth and he was not the only prophet that was given this revelation. Jeremiah the prophet says: "I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form and void; and the heavens, and they had no light (Jeremiah 4:23). The record in Genesis says: Then God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light" (Genesis 1:3).

A. The First Day - Light

This is probably the most difficult part of the creation story to understand. If the sun was not created until the 4th day, then from whence did the Earth get its light? And if the earth is held by the gravitational field of the sun, then what was holding the earth if the sun had not yet been created? No one really knows how it all happened when our solar system came into being. Most scientists agree that the solar system came into being all at the same time. That the rotating mass of matter making up the solar system all began to contract forming the sun and the planets as they are today and that the mass forming the sun out weighs the entire mass of all the planets in our solar system combined. The sudden appearance of light was due to the atomic changes that began to take place within the mass of the sun through compression. If the sun was the original source of light described here, then the orb of the sun and the moon were not visible until the 4th day of the Creation Week when the dense clouds surrounding the earth began to dissipate. Nor does this theory lack some evidence, 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). This statement would indicate that the earth was once surrounded by thick clouds so dense that not even the light of the sun could shine through. The surface of the earth, in the beginning, was in complete darkness. This agrees with the Genesis account that the earth was formless, and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep." When light came, it must have come gradually as the thick clouds began to thin out.

B. The Second Day - A Firmament

This thinning of the clouds must have occurred during the 2nd day of the Creation Week for God said: "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters. And God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so" (Genesis1:6-7).

When God said to Job "I made a cloud its garment," He was not speaking figuratively for the cloud surrounding the earth must have rested as a heavy fog on the surface of the waters. So thick was this fog that it would have been difficult to discern the surface of the water from the fog that covered it. This condition may have existed for thousands of years, or even eons, but chemical and biological changes began to affect the primordial waters covering the earth. The fog began to rise until there was an expanse between the thick cloud and the waters covering the earth and for the first time there was an atmosphere surrounding the earth. This canopy of air was so saturated with clouds that light could scarcely penetrate its thickness and night and day could hardly be discerned. But the Spirit of the Lord continued to move on the face of the waters.

1. The Age of the Earth

According to the most recent and trustworthy sources, says LeComte Du Nouy, the birth of the earth was almost contemporaneous with that of the sun and other planets of our system. Our globe must be about two thousand million years old, and can in no case be much older.[1] Then he says: The age of the can be calculated fairly accurately through the study of radioactivity. It would seem that this method of measuring time provides a reliable clock that cannot be put our of order by either temperature or pressure and has a duration of life of the order of a million years. It is through them, he says, that we can determine the epoch at which the earth began to solidify. The figures vary between 1,500 and 1,800 years. The age of the fossils is obviously deduced from the age of the rocks and soil in which they are found.[2]

Now we find no fault in this explanation, nor do we believe that the Bible teaches that the earth was created in six solar days. The fact that they were 24 hour days of revelation shows the ability of the mind to compress millions of years into a short period of time. This was literally what happened in the creation story and it has happened at other places in the Bible. The seventy weeks prophecy of Daniel, for instance, was given as though it was speaking of days when, in actuality, it was speaking of years. The four beasts prophecy, which was given to Daniel in a single vision, covered a period of 2,500 years.

The prophet's vision of the 2nd day of creation saw that the thick cloud that sat on the waters rose so that there was an expanse between the two. But the clouds of the upper atmosphere were so saturated with water that the humidity ratio must have been nearly 100%. Interestingly enough, the patriarch Job, by revelation, understood that the earth was suspended on nothing and that the clouds of the upper atmosphere had the ability to hold large amounts of water. He says to Bildad: "He [God] stretches out the north over empty space, and hangs the earth on nothing. He wraps up the waters in His clouds; and the cloud does not burst under them (Job 26:7-8). We must remember that the Book of Job is the oldest book in our Bible whose history was before Abraham. Only revelation could have taught Job what scientists were to learn many hundreds of years later. The surface gravity of a planet, depending on its mass and diameter, determines the amount of atmosphere which it can control at a given temperature."[3] God has so made this earth that its atmosphere is just right for plant and animal life to exist. If its atmosphere were any heavier, then the light of the sun would not reach the surface of the earth. If it were any lighter, then the inhabitants of the earth would be exposed to the devastating rays of the sun.

C. The Third Day - The Oceans

The Bible tells us that the oceans came into being on the third day. "Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so. And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good" (Genesis1:9-10). The scientific view is that this planet was dry in its early beginnings and that the earth came into being afterward. There are many theories about how this came about, but the Bible declares that this planet was covered with water from its very beginning. When we consider that if the whole earth were flat the oceans would cover it to a depth of 1 and one-half miles; but the earth is obviously not flat. In his Book The Surface History of the Earth, Prof. Joly says: "The surface-history of the earth has by no means been uniform and monotonous. Great physical changes have been repeated at intervals. It would appear as if six great cycles of world transforming events are recognizable during the course of geological history. In each of these cycles the succession of events has been the same. The continents sink relative to the ocean. The waters flow in over the lower levels and vast areas become covered by the transgressional

seas… the most striking fact known about the mountains is that they are largely and often mainly composed of sedimentary rocks, that is, of rocks which have been deposited originally in the seas."¹

In his book The Quaternary Era with special reference to its glaciations Prof. Charlesworth says: "The Pleistocene indeed witnessed earth-movements on a considerable, even catastrophic scale. There is evidence that it created mountains and ocean deeps of a size previously unequaled… the Pleistocene indeed represents one of the crescendi in the earth's tectonic history. The movements affected about forty million square kilometers of the oceans floor, i.e., 70 percent of the total surface of the earth. The third day" must have been a catastrophic time in the history of the earth. It was a time when the outer crust of the earth buckled under the irresistible pressures within the earth. It was God's way of letting "the dry land to appear" and the gathering of the water into seas. It would appear that this rise and fall of the ocean floor occurred at least six times in the history of the earth, the great flood being the last and final time that it occurred. While tectonic forces are still at work to a limited degree, the surface of the earth has become stabilized, and this according to the covenant that was made with Noah by the Lord. "Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth (Genesis 9:11). After crowding such a number of violent changes into the Glacial Period and continuing them into the relatively few thousand years between the Ice Age and the rise of the great dynasties and empires, the earth seems almost suddenly to have settled down to a period of comparative stability during what we might call Historical times. Almost all movements since then have been either very slow or restricted to a small area. Such final adjustments, or shudders, like the aftermaths of