Six Plus One Equals Seven

By Forrest R. Fichthorn

Six Plus One Equals Seven turns its attention to precisely the parts of the Bible that many people, especially all who desire to explore the foundations of their faith, find their pastors glossing over. By asking the straightforward questions that come to mind when one reads the Bible, Forrest R. Fichthorn gives voice to the curiosity that people often find they are discouraged from cultivating.

For instance, one might ask, Why did God take six days to create everything that He could have chosen to make in a single moment, and then why did He feel the need to rest? Thats exactly the kind of question that Six Plus One Equals Seven embraces. A quick review shows that its seven chapters look at a variety of topics: Is God Real and the Bible True?, Creation as a Prophetic Picture, The Absolute Preciseness of God, What Do All the Bible Sevens Mean?, Holy Convocations, What Are They?, Pictures of the Seven Thousand-Year Plan, and The Glorious Kingdom.

If you are the sort of person who naturally asks, Why? and What about ?, then you will find Six Plus One Equals Seven a helpful companion on your journey to discover the answers to your numerous questions about the Bible and about the ways of God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jun 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490883069

Forrest R. Fichthorn

Forrest R. Fichthorn is a businessman, gospel music concert promoter, and fervent student of Bible teachers like J. Vernon McGee and Chuck Swindoll. Now eighty-eight, he surrendered his life to Christ thirty-one years ago in the midst of a profound personal crisis. He has written Poems that Edify the Church.

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Copyright © 2015 Forrest R. Fichthorn.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-8307-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-8308-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-8306-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015909077

WestBow Press rev. date: 06/04/2015

Contents

Chapter 1   Is God Real and the Bible True?

Chapter 2   Creation as a Prophetic Picture

Chapter 3   The Absolute Preciseness of God

Chapter 4   What Do All the Bible Sevens Mean?

Chapter 5   Holy Convocations, What Are They?

Chapter 6   Pictures of the Seven Thousand–Year Plan

Chapter 7   The Glorious Kingdom

CHAPTER 1

Is God Real and the Bible True?

To fully appreciate the depth of this book, you must put aside many of the traditions and teachings of Bible scholars. Throughout the centuries, they have taught truths we have accepted, and as a result we have looked no further. The entire Bible, however, is a continuous work of unfolding revelations to those who diligently seek them. I ask you to use a common-sense approach to what you read here. Common sense seems to be a lost art in this generation of accepting blindly what is presented. For instance, I bought a box of TastyKake donuts the other day, and on top of the box was printed Baked Fresh. I wondered how you could possibly bake them any other way or even how you bake donuts. Are they not fried in oil?

A long time ago, a fellow named Will Rogers brought folks back to reality with his common-sense comments on current issues, but today we have no one. About twenty years ago, a prominent official in Olympia, Washington, said with a straight face, The state should not sell the old school busses that are being replaced with new ones because they were no longer safe and churches will buy them and haul their Sunday school kids around in them. It just amazed me that the day before they were taken out of service they were safe enough for the state to use, but in just one day they went from safe to unsafe. The truth is most churches that would buy a used bus would give it a thorough safety check and make any needed repairs before using it to transport children. But then again, when it’s not your money, it gets very easy to say, Let’s scrap these busses and not sell them. Wait a minute; wasn’t it my money that bought them?

There is much to cover, so let’s start at the very beginning. The Word of God tells us that God created everything we can see, feel, and touch in just six days. Later in this book I will address why the Bible is the unerring truth, written by God through His chosen prophets, but for now just bear with me and accept temporarily that the Bible is true. That means that the physical world was not here before the creation, so there must have been only a spiritual world before. The spiritual and physical phenomena do not exclude the possibility of even another, or more for that matter, phenomenon’s existence. Then the Word tells us that God rested on the seventh day.

Before we go forward, we have to realize that God has three unique qualities. That’s why He is God. First, God is omniscient. That means God knows everything that can be known, that is presently known, and that could be known in the future. Humans learn as time goes on, but God already knew it all. Time only exists in our physical world, and although we are not able to understand it, after the physical world is done away with, time will be no more. Einstein theorized that if it were possible to travel in space at the speed of light, time would stand still. Maybe that’s why it is not possible to go that fast. Once an object being pushed in space by rockets approaches the time barrier, the extra push is cancelled out by the weight of the added fuel so that no increase past a certain point is possible. Do you suppose God wanted to keep us from being able to make our own eternal life and so set these limitations? If we could get to the place where time would stand still, we would not get older, and that sounds like eternal life to me.

The second characteristic of God is that He is omnipresent. That means God is everywhere at once. No mortal can understand how that is possible. It is possible to have many thoughts about this concept, like maybe He can go back and forth in time, visiting as He desires. Or maybe He started at the end of the world and worked back to the beginning and by doing that knows our future choices even when we don’t and can appear whenever we call on Him. However, dwelling on what we don’t understand will not make us able to understand. Remember that the Word tells us, God is Spirit and we must worship Him in spirit. We are physical, but we also have a spirit embodied in us.

The third characteristic God enjoys is that He is omnipotent. That means He is all powerful. Be careful here to observe that all powerful means no one else has any power of his or her own except what God allows. Remember when Jesus stood before Pilate and said, Thou couldest have no power at all against me except it were given thee from above. The best example of this power is when Satan will be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone. God won’t dispatch a host of angels to subdue Satan, but almost to the embarrassment of Satan, he will send only one angel with a single chain to bind him. This is because God will no longer allow Satan to have any power of his own. Besides having these three qualities, God also exemplifies love, truth, justice, mercy, faithfulness, and forgiveness. There are no better examples of these traits than are found in God’s characteristics.

There seems to be only two possible theories on how humans came into being. One is the creation theory, and the other the evolution theory. The creation theory stands alone, with no additions or subtractions. You either believe it or you don’t. It doesn’t depend on whether or not something else happened before or after. The evolution theory has many ifs, ands, and buts one must deal with to be able to accept it as truth. First, you have to have something to start off with in order to evolve into something else. Where did this primordial ooze come from? And even if, as some say, it was always here, then why bother with any evolving? We could just say that man was always here along with the ooze. Again, if we really did come from the ooze (inorganic) or from a lifeless sea (still inorganic), then how did any organic creature, no matter how microscopically small, ever come into existence (evolve) from any inorganic substance? What inorganic chemical reaction could cause lifelessness to have life suddenly?

We sure cannot do this on purpose in the lab and have never seen it happen accidentally in all of our recorded history. There also is no fossil record showing a gradual change from one species to another, and there should be if that indeed happened. There are genetic changes we could call evolution within a species, such as humans getting taller, but never have we seen any evidence that a monkey could evolve into a man. Too many links are missing. The truth is that all canines remain canines, and all felines remain felines. Whales cannot morph into cows, not even in an eternity of time, and neither can they mate or even produce offspring by artificial insemination. It just can’t happen. I think this would be an ideal place to insert a poem I wrote about evolution way back in 1989. I guess I thought it was worth my humor.

The Mythtery of Evolution

Today, my friends, let’s think about

And come to some conclusion.

Did God create the plants and us,

Or was it evolution?

It’s taught as fact in schools today

That once there was just mud,

And when a million years had passed

There was this mighty thud.

Now no one knows from whence it came,

But when this thud had passed,

Behold! A strange and wondrous thing,

A single cell at last.

But don’t be fooled, a single call

May not have eyes or hearts

Or arms or legs, but still it has

A bunch of different parts.

Instinctively and just by chance,

This cell looked for a mate

For if it were to save its race,

It had to procreate.

But since it was the only cell,

’Twas forced to just decide

That since it could not multiply,

It best learn to divide.

And so it did, and soon there were

A lot of cells dividing,

All carbon copies of the first,

All in the mud residing.

And when there was a multitude,

When mud could hold no more,

Another awful thud took place

Just like took place before.

This time it fused a lot of cells

Together in a heap,

And evolution took another

Giant quantum leap.

They knew not who they were at first,

But after much soul searchin’

They realized that they’d become

A slimy green sea urchin.

Don’t ask me how some simple cells

Could suddenly now feature

Some teeth and eyes and nerves and brains

Combined in one small creature,

’Cause all its parts have special cells

All different and unique

That work in perfect harmony;

This urchin’s not some freak.

But if you think the odds are small

One urchin came by chance,

Then think how small the odds were

That he’d find his true romance.

For if the mighty thud had just

Produced one male green urchin

And never made a female, there’d

Have been no urchin smirchin’.

And without that there would have been

No little urchinettes,

And Mr. Urchin would have died

With sadness and regrets.

But just as luck would have it,

As the thuds came down like rain,

New animals evolved in pairs.

Now don’t that blow your brain?

Now there is still another strange

And wondrous thing in store.

This urchin with no feet evolved

To something that had four.

From that time on the changes came

In rapid-fire succession,

And evolution says they did it

At their own discretion.

To make a long, long story short,

Two million years flew by

And evolution thudded bugs

And beasts and bats that fly

And fish and birds and all in pairs,

But now it gets quite funky

’Cause suddenly it thuds a man

Right out of this old monkey.

And wouldn’t you know, it thuds a woman

Out of this baboon

So man said, Let’s get married but

She said, It’s much too soon.

He said, "We’ll die if we don’t mate.

Besides, I think you’re cute."

She said, "I’ve heard great lines before,

But that one’s sure a beaut."

Now we won’t even mention how

The trees evolved from grass,

And why the lovely rosebush would

Evolve its thorns en masse,

Or how the cows evolved from whales—

Now that should cause some grins,

’Cause no one’s seen a whale with horns

Or seen a cow with fins.

Well now it’s time for you to choose.

I’ll say this, then I’m through.

Will evolution make a monkey’s

Uncle out of you?

Do you believe that this is how

Man came into existion?

If you’ve got faith like that, my friend,

You should have been a Christian.

From my book Poems That Edify