A Glimpse of the New Genesis

By Richard J. "Dick" Hill

Most people approach the study of prophecy from the aspect of “when.” But what needs to guide our study is what Jesus had to say about His Second Coming.
He gave two signs of His return—“the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel” and “as the days of Noah were so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.”
In this book Richard J. “Dick” Hill, who has spent a lifetime in Christian ministry, explores how regeneration allows someone to be born into God’s kingdom. He observes that the seed of the gospel is absolutely necessary for new life (new genesis).
The author notes that not only are we born into the kingdom, but we are baptized into the King by the Holy Spirit at the same moment. The church is within the kingdom of God, but the church is not the kingdom of God.
God has brought Jew and Gentile together into one new man, the church. This mystery that was revealed by the apostle Paul was never mentioned in the Old Testament. God’s church will be snatched away in the fullness of time, and the dispensation of God’s grace for the Gentiles will be complete.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Apr 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781664296060

Richard J. "Dick" Hill

Dr. Richard J. “Dick” Hill has five decades of experience in Christian ministry. He is the founder and director of Glimpses of Grace Ministries and a retired pastor. Other published books he has authored include A Glimpse of the Christ, A Glimpse of the Christian, A Glimpse of the Chosen, A Glimpse of the Coming King, A Glimpse of Galatians, and A Glimpse of Romans. He received a ThM degree from Dallas Theological Seminary and a ThD from Louisiana Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his wife, Linda, have three children and nine grandchildren. They reside in Kosciusko, Mississippi.

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WestBow Press rev. date: 04/24/2023

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1     From the Days of Noah

Chapter 2     Ham, Nimrod, and the United Way

Chapter 3     God’s Safe Word into God’s Safe Womb

Chapter 4     Seed Is God’s Answer

Chapter 5     Born into God’s Kingdom

Chapter 6     A New Genesis

Chapter 7     Baptized into God’s King

Chapter 8     Peter Unlocks

Chapter 9     Paul Unleashes

Chapter 10   The Mystery of Christ

Chapter 11   Constantine Confusion

Chapter 12   Cognitive Contamination

Chapter 13   The Chiliastic Chaos

Chapter 14   Japheth’s Candles in the Darkness

Chapter 15   As the Days of Noah Were

Endnotes

INTRODUCTION

Thousands of years ago, my favorite songwriter, a shepherd boy named David, maybe lying on a hillside, gazed up into the heavens and was humbled by his own insignificance. He wrote these words to one of my favorite songs:

O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth, who have set Your glory above the heavens! Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger. When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon, and the stars, which you have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, all sheep, and oxen—Even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth. (Psalm 8)

Man was created to rule with Jesus Christ over a kingdom and to live with God forever in a new heaven and upon a new earth. The weaker creature would be crowned with glory and honor. The weaker creature would be placed in rulership over Satan’s fallen world. The glory, honor, and power that Satan had stolen would be regained by the inferior creature living in servanthood, submission, and faith. In this way, pride and power would be rendered null and void. Years later, King Jesus would say, The one who is least among you all, he is the greatest (Luke 9:48).

God intends that man (created lower than the angels and, hence, lower than Satan), would achieve the highest position with all things in subjection under his feet (Hebrews 2:8). Thus, the weaker would achieve, by reliance upon God, a higher position than the far more powerful creature, Satan, had attempted to achieve through pride and power.

Out of the least, God will bring many greats. It was as a man that the Savior defeated the enemies of sin and death. It was as a man that the principalities and powers were silenced. It will be as a man that Christ will reign over the future kingdom of God upon this renewed earth.

This future kingdom is the subject of hundreds of detailed passages in the Old Testament. As Joseph Dillow wrote, It is the glorious reign of the servant kings which extends to all the works of His hands. This may suggest that man will one day rule this universe.¹ There is to be a kingdom where the lion will lie down with the lamb, universal righteousness will reign, and there will be no more war. All disease will come to an end, and the world of Satan will be placed under the rule of the Servant King and his servants (Hebrews 1:9; Romans 8:19–21; Revelation 20:1–6, 21–22).

God will bring back a small, seemingly unimportant Semitic tribe, Israel, and make them a nation and through them rule in His coming kingdom (Matthew 19:28; Luke 22:30). It will not be Greece or mighty Rome, Egypt or Babylon; it will not be Europe or Russia or China or the United States that will rule the earth. That future glory falls to Jews and to the mysterious group known as the church, or the servant kings who, like their Master, live in dependence and obedience.

Some may affirm my view of election but set themselves apart today by teaching that because of spiritual death, regeneration must precede faith. Which comes first: the gospel or life? There is no doubt that a sinner’s salvation must begin with God. But at issue in ordo seludis is which comes first: regeneration or faith in Christ? Dr. R. C. Sproul wrote that at the heart of Reformed theology this axiom resounds, ‘regeneration precedes faith.’² I do not hold this regeneration precedes faith view, but I do understand why this position is held.

Recall the story. Everyone who has a human father is conceived in sin and born dead in sin. Sin and death came through the death seed of our first father, Adam. God planted Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden and told them to freely eat from every tree but one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God told Adam not to eat from that tree. It would bring death—spiritual death (Genesis 2:16). Death is a Bible word meaning separation. God actually said, "Adam if you eat from this tree, dying, you will surely most positively die." It was as though God was saying to Adam that he would die not once but twice. He would immediately begin to grow old and die physically, but he would also die spiritually. His human spirit would be separated from God, no longer able to know Him. He would become lost in a slave market of sin.

We know how this happened. Satan, disguised as a beautiful serpent, slithered into the garden, deceived the woman, and she ate. Then she gave to her husband, and he ate. At that moment, their eyes were opened, and they knew they were naked (Genesis 3:7). They immediately began to die both physically and spiritually. They hid from God because they had been separated from Him (Genesis 3:9).

Adam was not alone when he died. Within Adam was seed—zillions of sperm seed. In fact, the potential for the entire race was in Adam, in his loins, in seed form, in his DNA at the moment he sinned. His seed became corrupt seed, death seed. Shortly afterward, he had relations with Eve, and Adam passed his corrupt sin seed to Cain, and then to Abel, then Seth, then Enosh, then Cainan, then Mahalel—and on and on it went. All became stained with sin because they all died (Genesis 5).

Paul said it:

Therefore, just as through one man [Adam] sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men [through fallen seed] because all sinned. (Romans 5:12)

All sinned within Adam the moment he sinned. Sin eventually passed down to us through our human fathers’ seeds. This line was broken only once when the Lord Jesus Christ was born. He had no human father, so he had no sin. This is the glorious worth of the virgin birth.

Therefore, all people are born dead in trespasses and sins. And dead means dead—not a spark of life at all (Ephesians 2:1–3; Romans 3:10–18). At issue is how God gives life to the dead sinner. God gives life through regeneration (palin genesia, a new genesis), but regeneration must come through seed. Seed must precede regeneration. No seed, no regeneration. No seed, no life.

In the order of salvation, does God make dead sinners alive and then bring them the gospel, or does God guide the seed of the gospel to the mind of the dead sinner and germinate the seed, resulting in faith in Christ, and then regeneration comes? I believe it is the latter. The Word of God teaches this. Read closely Peter’s words.

Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, because All flesh is as grass, And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, but the word of the LORD endures forever. Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you. (1 Peter 1:22–25, italics added)

The gospel is God’s divine seed that brings the new birth (1 John 3:9). Paul wrote, Does not nature itself teach you that long hair is a shame unto a man (1 Corinthians 11:14). Nature also speaks God’s Word through the cycles of the seasons (Acts 14:16–17) and through the stars (Psalm 19:1–6). In His Word, God used nature to teach the weakness of man (Acts 14:15), the sexual deviation of both men and women (Romans 1:26), the natural use of the law (Romans 2:14), the grafting of trees (Romans 11:24), the nature of Jewishness (Galatians 2:15), the character of false gods (Galatians 4:8), the character of sinners (Ephesians 2:3), and the humanity of Elijah (James 5:17). Since this is true, one has to ask, What else does nature teach us?

Every spring, new birth is all around us. This birth begins with seed. So, creation teaches us that there can be no birth, no regeneration, without seed. This makes it an easy jump to the truth that it is the seed of the gospel wielded by the Holy Spirit that makes an ordinarily unwilling sinner, a sinner dead in sins, willing to believe it.

When believers (those who have the Spirit of God living inside) begin to study the truths of the Bible, it is as though they are looking through a dimly lit corridor. They catch glimpses of God’s amazing truth here and there—one amazing glimpse at a time—and they begin to put many of these glimpses together. But there is coming a time when God will draw back the curtain and allow us to clearly see. Our dim mirrors will then become bright and crystal clear. Full knowledge will eventually prevail. This does not mean that anyone will ever have total knowledge of God. If that were true, God would not be God. Nor does it mean that we do not continue to work to understand everything we can from God’s Holy Word.

A principle of Bible truth rests upon the fact that God chooses the nothings and the nobodies to make them somebodies in His sight. Only in this way can the arrogance of man be defeated.³ Human pride and power can be dealt with. Paul’s searching words to the church at Corinth come to mind.

For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption—that, as it is written, He who glories, let him glory in the LORD. (1 Corinthians 1:26–31)

Paul told this local assembly to take a visual inventory of the people around them, their comrades. Not many had apparent earthly wisdom, not many were physically strong and powerful, and not many were from the aristocratic crowd. Paul was the master repeater. He said, Not many, not many, not many. He used easy-to-follow paths for his truth. He did not see many who were wise, mighty, or noble.

What I have read about the Christians in early church history is that they were classed with the world’s nobodies. The majority were lowly slaves, physically weak, needy, poor, broken, the unknowns of history, and there certainly were not many from the ruling class.

Paul continued his assessment on the positive side.

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty, and the base things of the world and the things which are despised, God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption—that, as it is written, He who glories, let him glory in the LORD. (1 Corinthians 1:27–31, italics added)

Paul made three points in an easy, understandable order. Using repetition again, he said God has chosen, God has chosen, God has chosen. I assume he meant—well, God has chosen. All Christians have been chosen by God. My heart was at first deeply honored, and then it plunged to being overwhelmingly humiliated, and then fear gripped my heart. I truly did not know what to think. Does God have the right to do this? After hours and hours of study, I finally hung my shingle on my view of election in the book A Glimpse of the Chosen.⁴ A good friend who was a publisher once said that writing is indeed a blessing. Books will work long after the writer has died, but writing holds a two-edged sword. One can say a word audibly and then deny that it was ever said. It becomes a he-said/she-said issue. But once something is put into print, it can never be denied that it was said.

Quickly zero in on another trilogy in Paul’s passage: the foolish things, the weak things, and the base things. Believers referred to as things kind of fits the flow, does it not? God has chosen the foolish things, God has chosen the weak things, and God has chosen the base things. God chooses from those whom the world classes as foolish, weak, and unimportant.

Next, the apostle gave the reasons for God’s choices. He did so with—you guessed it—another trilogy. God has chosen the base things—the world’s nobodies—to shame the things that are wise in the world’s eyes, to shame the things that are mighty in the world’s eyes, and to shame those who think they are above the rest in the world’s eyes. Again, a trilogy: to shame, to shame, to shame.

As we read this, we get a sense that God has a strong purpose for allowing the world’s nobodies to become His somebodies. God’s purpose is to put all humanity in its proper place so that no flesh should glory in His presence. Glory means to shine light upon.

It becomes easier for the not manys and the world’s nobodies to shine their lights upon God. They all operate from a place of weakness, not strength. They dare not shine light upon themselves. They dare not touch the glory. Attention is not to be directed toward us. We cannot lift haughty heads in the presence of a Holy God (Luke 18:13). This not many and nobodies is our crowd. This is the fraternity with which we run. We cannot touch the glory, for we have none. The reason for this is not complicated. The living God that we worship hates pride.

These six things the Lord hates, yes, seven are an abomination to Him: a proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and one who sows discord among the brethren. (Proverbs 6:16–19)

This is an accurate picture of the world that we live in today. Notice the first characteristic on God’s hate parade is pride.

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud. He who heeds the word wisely will find good, and whoever trusts in the LORD, happy is he. (Proverbs 16:18–19)

Paul explained exactly how the not manys and the nobodies become somebodies in God’s eyes. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus. These words must be read not once but several times to absorb the spiritual wisdom from them. The Greek language comes into play. Of Him is referred to as a genitive of source. It literally means from the source of Him are all believers immersed into Christ Jesus. God chose to place us in His Son, to baptize all believers into His Christ for His purposes alone. Incredibly, God shares a few of His reasons.

Believers become, to all others, the wisdom from God because we are in the One who is wisdom. God shows this wisdom through His lowly children. Our wisdom cannot be ours; it must be His.

And righteousness. God has given His children the righteousness necessary for life because we are placed in Him. Again, we are not in His Son because of our goodness or because we deserve it. No. We receive His righteousness because we are in Christ. As we will see later, this is a supernatural transaction.

And sanctification. God has once and forever set all believers apart for His own purpose.

And redemption. God has bought us out from the slave market of sin with the price of the precious blood of His Son and loosed us from our chains simply because He chose to do so.

And here is the biggie. He who glories is to glory in the Lord only. We owe thanks to God and Him alone. We are to shed light upon God and God only.

Christians may have the necessary right lifestyle before God because God has given the basis for that lifestyle in Christ. We have all been set apart by God for His purpose. Even unbelievers are created for His purpose (2 Peter 2:9). There is not one wasted life on this planet. Every person has a part to play in God’s overall plan.

God has redeemed some to Himself for His reasons. He has purchased some from the slave market of sin for His glory. God has set some apart just because He chose to do so. So, what do we have to glory about? What do we have to take pride in? We are who we are because of our spiritual position in Christ. We are sinners saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as revealed through the Word of God alone. We can touch none of the glory, for we are in every way who God made us to be.

Only the Bible has the prescription for life beyond this life. Only God’s Word has truth in a world overwhelmed with lies. Only the Word of God can bring peace on earth when there will be no real peace on earth. Only God’s Word can set us free when there is no freedom.

As I pen these words, the personal freedoms in our free country are being tested as never before. Freedom and justice for all is being weighed in the balance. Peace is being shaken. Hope for a future for our children and our grandchildren is teetering perilously in the balance.

Christ alone remains our solid hope, steadfast and sure, for a life beyond this life, beyond this time and space world. Our lives here and now and our futures cannot be found from any source this fallen world has to offer. Our lives beyond this world, which is our blessed hope, are given to us by God through the gospel of His magnificent grace.

God cast Adam and Eve from the beautiful garden, and the couple, for the first time, had to work hard, sweating and plowing the soil from which they had been taken. God slammed tight the entrance back into the garden and placed an angelic guard on the east side with a flaming sword that turned every way, preventing the fallen couple from getting back to the tree of life. It would have been a great tragedy to allow them to eat from this tree and live forever in their fallen condition (Genesis 3:23–24).

But remember that God charted the only way back into the garden and to the tree that would give them life by clothing them with animal skins (Genesis 3:21). God did it. He did not ask Adam and Eve if they desired to be clothed in such a way. He just did it. God killed the animals; God took the animal skins; and God covered the couple. It was all His work. The couple had no part in it. This was God’s means of clearly illustrating the way back to a right relationship with Him.

Salvation would not come by covering oneself with fig leaves. The fig leaves represent religion. Religion is man’s attempting to please God by his works. Religion is not the way to God. It is Satan’s way of hiding the truth of God’s grace from the eyes of those who may desire to find it.

A Worldview Change

Writing books was never in my thinking as a young Christian. I had no idea what God had planned for my life, but writing would have been on the bottom shelf. At the beginning of my Christian life, reading was also on the bottom shelf. It was after college that I remember reading a book from start to finish. Though I knew nothing of the meaning of this, God bailed me out. How? God’s Word illustrates God’s Word. Bible illustrations have been referred to as proof texts. God obviously knows how people think, and He knows we are proof thinkers. We desire some proof, and the repetition of truths that we learn provides such proof. We need no other text. If we can read, we are in.

When I was attending a small Bible college in Miami, God brought Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, a Presbyterian pastor of the Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, into my life. He came to me by way