Let There Be Light: And There Was Light

By Dr. H. Lawrence Zillmer

Thanks to research by Albright, Jung, May, and others, we now know why God chose to begin his revelations in the Bible with ten great teaching stories! Every ancient culture used this art form to teach new generations the truths they needed for living. We have it in those first eleven chapters of Genesis, which are Gods answers to the ten great questions in life, such as Who made it all and why? and What is the role of humans in his vast plan? A better understanding of this art form will fill our souls with the beauty and order of Gods revelations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524523695

Dr. H. Lawrence Zillmer

Dr. Zillmer has spent more than eight decades studying God’s blessed revelations in the Bible. Part of his PhD research introduced him to the great truths of cultural myths, none more powerful than the ten which begin the Bible. Modern mankind has lost the ability to understand the purpose and relevance of myths. As we recover our understandings of this art form, the great truths that begin the Bible will open up. We will understand more fully why God chose this art form to begin to answer the ten great human questions, which are ultimately the message of the messenger from heaven—Jesus.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Dr. H. Lawrence Zillmer

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016911133

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5245-2371-8

                Softcover        978-1-5245-2370-1

                eBook             978-1-5245-2369-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 07/18/2016

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

745501

CONTENTS

Foreword

Stories, Myths and the Work of the Holy Spirit

Question 1: How Did It All Begin?

Question 2: What is mankind that You are mindful of us?" (Psalm 8:4)

Question 3: How and why did we become sinners?

Question 4: What happens to unrepentant sinners!

Question 5: How are we to relate to God?

Question 6: How are we to relate with those who don’t choose to walk with God?

Question 7: What must we do to be saved?

Question 8: How should we begin our new life cycles?

An Overview of Genesis Chapters Ten and Eleven

Question 9: Where are we to find God’s Truth?

Question 10: What attitude must we have in order to walk with God?

Summary of the Ten great questions which begin the Bible

A Meditation on the Great Questions of life

Appendix

FOREWORD

If we want to understand Christianity, we are told to read the Bible. Many translations are available. Commentaries and interpretations abound. Copies of the New Testament can be obtained free and of the entire Bible for little cash outlay. The Bible has been translated from its original Hebrew and Greek into practically every language of the world. Most libraries in the world contain a copy. Availability is not the problem.

Jesus’ question to various listeners was not, Do you read the Bible? It was, How do you read the Bible. (Luke 8:18, 10:26, John 5:39, 40) Why is this question so critical?

We learned to read early in life, very simply, one meaning per word, sometimes more, but every word has a literal meaning. To check the meaning use the dictionary! This is the method by which we read newspapers, novels, signs and listen to TV and commentators. It is called denotative language – each word has a specific meaning.

This works fine for newspapers and most usage of written words for general communication. But is that the only way we can use language? Emphatically not! Early on the human race discovered story telling. They discovered that stories were an excellent means of conveying ideas and points of view. A good survey of the role of language in human communication is contained in Hiyakawa’s Language in Thought and action.

The Bible is a writing of ancient Semitic literature coming out of the Middle East. Those cultures have a style of writing all their own. Their expressions are fond of symbols, images, metaphors and figurative language in general—the furthest thing from newspaper denotative use of words. The Bible is a magnificent composition, but it is expressed in visions, songs, poetry, stories, allegories, figurative language, a forensic brief and the most ancient means of conveying cultural truths—myths. To read the Bible like the Wall Street Journal is to miss most of its message.

We need to keep in mind that the truths in the Bible are spiritual truths, ideas that reach beyond the physical into a spiritual world of incredible dimensions. These truths are the greatest concepts with which the human race has struggled: What is the meaning of life, my life. What is the teleological purpose of our/my personal existence? Why do the innocent suffer? What kind of deity is that which we call God? What is the Creator’s attitude toward the human race, toward me? We seek answers to these colossal questions and many more like it! Why? We have an inner drive which compels us. We have the enlarged frontal lobe of our brains which can be used for such quests! We are humans; we must make sense of our very existence!

If we are going to understand the Bible we must humbly seek to discover why the great truths of the Bible are expressed in the manner they are. Why does the Bible begin its revelations with ten myths and end in the visions of Revelation? Why did Jesus turn to parables when He wanted to express the deepest truths of His ministry? Why are the numbers in the Bible usually connotative rather than denotative? When one reads forty, why does it usually mean as long as it took, rather than the number between thirty-nine and forty-one? In second grade arithmetic one number equals one quantity. In the Bible it is seldom so, for larger spiritual realities are at stake, realities that cannot be contained if three means three separate entities which cannot be extended to the mystical realities of the Holy Trinity!

The Bible is God’s attempt to reveal eternal truths to us. Such great truths and such momentous ideas must not be trapped in simple literal words. We must use connotative words, words that suggest more than their simple dictionary meaning. The image of the dove suggests so much more than the literal bird. Ditto words such as sword, staff, shepherd, light, and whatever name we give God. Profound truths require flexible words whose meaning can be stretched to cover enormous concepts. Our hearing and reading mind must be able to receive such language usage. Yet every human concept somehow relates to the Eternal One, the Central Truth, the Eternal I Am, the One Who Provides, the Ultimate End of all Inquiry and the Prime Intelligence.

How are we finite beings going to relate to this Ultimate Infinity? We have been told in the writings of the Bible. Blessed are the humble, the teachable, for theirs is the Kingdom of God. (Matthew 5:3) How could it be otherwise?

Our Creator, the I Am, the Intelligence and Love that formed this magnificent creation, recognized our human need and equipped us with a special portion of the brain capable of dealing with such information, the frontal lobe. In addition we have a built in need for love, a need to find and walk the way of truth and a desire to grow in love commitments; all part of our quest for truth throughout the cycles of our existence.

The rules by which every human needs to live are contained in the Natural Law which binds this creation into one harmonious and unified whole, everywhere and effective for all times. It is a colossal irony that in our day, through scientific inquiry and processes, we know more about this creation than ever before and understand it less. To facilitate that understanding, God saw fit to give us ten moral commandments, which are but simplified versions of Natural Law. We didn’t and too often still don’t get it. Some are so foolish as to believe that if they don’t see or read the Ten Commandments, then the commandments don’t exist!

The Deity saw fit to send a person, born in the natural processes of every human but who also contained the spiritual Message of Reality from Heaven—born that night in Bethlehem. All the great religions of the world recognize the need of someone to come from Heaven to Earth if we are to ever truly understand Ultimate Reality.

Such a person came, lived and taught and died for that Truth. We have a record of what He did and said. It agrees in every point with Natural Law and the Ten Expressions of that law. Upon His return to Heaven the Holy Spirit changed from a presence in this world to a presence in the unconscious of every human on that first Pentecost. We experience that voice often through our conscience. People who will open to it can draw guidance and empowerment for spiritual living from this Holy Spirit. In every case, what the Holy Spirit is perceived as saying, must agree with what Jesus actually taught and also be in complete harmony with the Natural Law of this creation.

Modern human kind is so removed from the harmony and spirit of Natural Law, as expressed in the creation about us, that they cannot realize that not recognizing the music and symphony of the natural order is the basis of much of our current disasters.

Sufficient to say that Natural Law, the Message and life of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit are one unity, one harmony, one entity, expressions of the Holy Trinity. That humans choose to not be a part of that unity and harmony is not the fault of God, who has gone to great lengths to reveal what we must do to live well in this creation.

So we take up the Bible to read humbly and carefully the Way of Life through love that is taught in creation, in Jesus and is the witness of the Spirit which is Holy within us. But this great truth is so much more than simple newspaper language—it will require the best of the arts of language to begin to communicate its incredible dimensions.

The Bible contains the best of the many forms of language arts in its attempt to express its grand purpose—the revelation of the Plan of God and the means whereby the Will of God can be made available and utilized for human salvation. Poetry, drama, forensic argument, lyric drama, hymns, allegory, letters, philosophy, proverbs, history, and the form upon which we shall focus for this writing, myths, are all employed, to the uttermost limits of their capacity, in order to be capable of attempting to impart to us the truth of the Infinite and make it available for our finite minds.

Moses heard the voice from the Burning Bush telling him to take off his sandals because he was standing on holy ground. We need to encounter this grand revelation with a humble and receptive mind, trained in the best of our understandings of the various genre’s of the language arts, if we are to be capable of receiving something of the fullness we need from the guidance and empowerment of our indwelling Holy Spirit.

Herein lies a blessed miracle. The humblest of readers or hearers, in need of spiritual enlightenment, who gently and expectantly take up this revelation of God, can find blessed spiritual truths needed for each moment of their living. God’s holy scriptures exist to lead us to Jesus and thereby feed us spiritually for the growth of our spiritual essence. The wisest will never plumb its total depths and the humblest will find food for their living through the loving grace of our indwelling Holy Spirit!

The more one opens to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the more the incredible unity of the Bible dawns upon us. Somehow the various genres of the language arts are used in the Bible to meld into a unity of mystic and of the grandest proportions.

A word of caution, a caution advanced by Jesus Himself. All the mighty focus of the Bible in all its forms has but one purpose, to lead us into personal love bond with Jesus. (John 20:30, 31) He warned the learned scribes that they were looking for salvation in the scriptures, but they were missing the point of the scriptures—being led to the Messenger from God with the salvation of God: Jesus. (John 5:39, 40)

To begin to understand the Messenger of God with His Holy Message of Salvation we must humbly look at each of the language art forms for their intent and ability to convey truth. Let us begin as the Bible begins, with the great ten teaching myths which begin the Bible. The themes expressed in these teaching stories are God’s answers to the great questions of living. They will build and develop through the Old Testament, be climaxed in the life and teachings of Jesus, discussed in the Epistles and summarized in the visions of Revelation.

STORIES, MYTHS AND THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

Stories:

Stories! Our human world is obsessed with stories. Think of the amount of time people spend watching TV drama or going to the movies! What a role the cinema and the theater play in our lives! What a world of glamour exists for the Hollywood and Broadway purveyors of those stories. Go to any library and one will find that many of the books there are stories, some historical novels, but mostly just stories which people check out, read and return.

I was blessed with a father who was a story teller. As I developed during my childhood years I began to realize that there was something behind his stories. There was a point to the story as told and it pertained to a certain situation or problem which concerned me! One day I discovered that a story previously told one way had been slightly changed to fit a new situation. When I asked him why he changed the story he gave me that fatherly, You’ll figure it out someday, hopefully!

Dr. Bruno Bettelheim, in his book, Uses of Enchantment, delves into the psychological basis of the stories which have been handed down to us through generations. A Cinderella type story has been traced back to the Persian Empire five hundred years before Christ. Is there a girl that hasn’t needed help from a fairy godmother in trying to deal with the problems of coming of age? Is there a girl that hasn’t been told of the danger of going into strange houses, such as the three bears? The three pigs illustrate the work ethic; strong houses keep out the wolf! Sadly, Walt Disney blunted the message by having the first two lazy pigs cared for by their older brother—the wolf didn’t eat them! They had the lazy life style and were spared the consequences! Does that tell us something about the ethics of too many children today?

But there is a psychological reason for this interest in stories. It is related to our human gift of imagination. We put ourselves in the place of the main characters of a story. Why have we been given this gift?

Stories relate human situations

We have a frontal lobe in our brains which allows us to imagine alternative situations, other possibilities, virtual realities, how things might be done differently. We are moral creatures in that what we choose has consequences. We can imagine other, better or other worse, possibilities in the choices we, of necessity, make every moment of our living.

How do we learn how to best handle the situations of life? Much of it through imaginative situationss! Og, the caveman, had just escaped a saber-toothed tiger. He has to tell about it. We have to tell about the big wish fulfilled, the hole-in-one on a gulf course, achievements and disasters, both what actually happened but also what might happen, not only in our daily lives but in the fantasy land of other planets, of super heroes and cosmic invasions! Every story has certain elements, the parts that make up a drama. Every story feeds our moral hunger for entertainment, for doing it right, living well, making the most of our time in our physical bodies.

Stories as drama

Every story begins with a problem, a situation. Somebody wants something and someone else opposes it. Conflict! The problems may be social, as in the Jewish persecutions in Fiddler on the Roof, personal as in Death of a Salesman, a desire to accomplish something as in Lonesome Dove, romantic as in Romeo and Juliet, or military as in All Quiet on the Western Front. The problems must be universal in appeal or they will not be interesting to the audience.

Every drama has a protagonist, someone who wants or is doing something, either good or bad, who initiates the action in the story. Opposing the protagonist is an antagonist, who also wants something, but that something is in conflict with what the protagonist wants, so there is conflict. Stories are built around conflict. Our lives have various levels of conflict in them: physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. There is the obligatory scene where the two forces must meet in conflict to decide who wins. There is the denouement, the conclusion, the resolution, the ending of the story—Og escapes to tell his story! How he managed his danger, his escape, is the drama!

If the struggle is not compelling enough the audience gets bored. If the protagonist(s) and the antagonist(s) are not recognizable, not part of the audience’s life, they will not listen. Expert story tellers will add a little music, a little dance and even a little scenery to make the story more vivid.

If the story is told well it will be interesting. Some people can make a recitation of the Irish alphabet amusing! Over the centuries many different types of stories have developed.

Fairy tales

We are all familiar with fairy tales for children. Most contain no fairies! All stories contain a spine, a moral, which is told in such a way that the listener unconsciously retains some meaning from the story. Some story tellers, not trusting the child to get the message, will tell the child the moral. A good story teller doesn’t need to resort to preaching! Goldilocks (little girls) get the message without preaching— they should not go into strange houses! (The Three Bears) The best of the fairy tales deal with real problems and real solutions placed in a romantic and therefore interesting form. (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk)

Proverbs

Proverbs are a simple story told in a few lines. A penny saved is a penny earned. A rolling stone gathers no moss. The path of the righteous is as the dawning light, which shines more and more unto the perfect day. (Proverbs 4:18) Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the springs of life. (Proverbs 4:23) Short, pithy, tantalizing the imagination, waiting to be enlarged into a larger incident or a further developed story, proverbs have been the staff of moral teaching since time out of mind.

Historical Narrative

The history section of the Bible is long, running from Genesis 12 to the book of Esther. As with the myths, these chapters are often misunderstood. The Bible is not a history book. It uses historical events to teach spiritual lessons. One does not prove the accuracy of the Bible by the accuracy of what the archaeologists discover! The Bible is God’s revelation of truth. It uses many literary forms to do this. The historical events which are recorded in the Bible are generally based on something that actually happened but modified to illustrate spiritual truths.

An example is the conquest of Palestine by Joshua. The God who forbids murder could not tell Joshua to kill every man, woman and child! This is a spiritual allegory used to illustrate the fact that if we wish to develop spiritually in the sanctification process, we must eradicate sin. No compromises in dealing with deep set addictions (Jerichos) or our little sins (Ai)! There was a real conquest of Palestine which is documented by Carbon 14 tests of the ashes of burned cities. The author of the book of Joshua, however, cast the historical event into an allegory to teach spiritual truths.

The drama of Job

As mentioned earlier, the Bible contains a play script—the Book of Job. It is built along the lines of the ancient Greek plays. There was a theater in Jerusalem during the time of the Greek and Roman occupation, the three centuries before the birth of Jesus. The old Greek plays begin with an introductory scene between two spiritual forces, in this case God and Satan, the spiritual protagonist and the antagonist. On earth it becomes God and Job, then Job and his friends. The theme is human suffering—why do the innocent suffer? Job suffers disaster after disaster. His three friends tell him that he has sinned and God is punishing him for his sins.