The World as a Constant Recreation
Elohim created the heavens and the earth and everything in it visible and invisible in six days, and then He rested on the seventh. And since then, the Creator has remained rested in the last 6,000 years? Or the world is in continual recreation.
For lack of an alternative interpretation, the reader is led to apply the same mode of interpretation that the Creator made heaven and earth at the time of creation and does not at present make heaven and earth. Now, if the Creator made heavens and earth once, why can He not be described as “making heaven and earth”? Can we rethink this?
The Pillars of Creation nebula. The Creator created the world but is His creation a finished work or constantly being recreated.
In the following, we would like to posit another way to look at this, as we will address the question in due course and offer the conclusion for the reader’s consideration.
Paradox, anomaly, and phenomenon
In logic, a paradox is a thing having contradictory properties, or a statement that contradicts itself starting with something apparently true that leads to counterintuitive or unacceptable conclusions.
In nature, we observe the natural laws and tend to have the disposition to accept them for granted. But when one of these laws is being suspended, we call it an anomaly: a deviation from a rule or norm, or common order. In astronomy, anomaly is the position of a planet as defined by its nearest distance in the orbit from the sun. Such an observable fact or occurrence known through the senses rather than by intuition or reasoning is a phenomenon.
By witnessing these phenomena, we know that something or someone has caused them according to the cause-and-effect principle. And if there is a causer and that causer is a person, then it is most natural to accept that there is a purpose behind what is being caused. Paradoxes, anomalies, and phenomena are not accidental.
The Creator can be found only in paradoxes, anomalies, and phenomena. When all things look “normal”, the omnipresent Creator is unnoticeable; He is obscured behind His creation, and we tend to see His creation as granted. But once He suspends any law of His creation, we start quickly noticing the Creator through the paradoxes, anomalies, and phenomena. “Global warming” and “climate change” are such anomalies.
Or take for an example the universal law of gravity. The gravity exists everywhere in the universe. If the Creator suspends the law of gravity and therefore the gravity itself, all things around start looking like paradoxes or anomalies.
“Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the consideration of my readers”. Newton, Isaac (1782). Isaaci Newtoni Opera quae exstant omnia.
Another example: one sees a thing that was made and knows that there is a maker of that thing. Likewise, one sees certain laws and knows that there is someone who made these laws: a lawmaker. It is common knowledge. And likewise, when one sees certain laws of nature, he knows that there is Creator of this nature.
The Creator, who created the laws of the universe through which it can be governed, can be known through these laws. Thus, the Creator has made Himself knowable; He is no longer the unknown and invisible “God” of the religion but the Elohim who has revealed Himself through His creation. And when the Creator has become knowable, He also becomes personal Elohim and loveable. This personal and loveable Elohim revealed Himself as YHVH Elohim, Hebrew for the Eternal Absolute.
The Creator needed the universe
The simplest definition of the term “God” is “that which was at the beginning, the original being”. According to this definition of “God”, there is no one that does not believe in “God” for everyone believes in something that was at the beginning. The secular scientists believe in an original matter from which all came to exist, and which caused the beginning: the “Bing Bang”.
According to the science, this matter in the state of singularity existed forever before its beginning. This matter is their “god”, and the science has become the religion of the “enlightened” world, and the “Bing Bang” their phenomenon. The next step for man in this “enlightenment” was to recreate himself according to his religion and then to create a god in his own image.
How perverse of you! Should the potter be reckoned as the clay? Should what is made say of its Maker, “He did not make me”? And what is formed say of Him who formed it, “He did not understand”? (Isa 29:16)
But because the Creator decided to create the world solely by His will and with a purpose, He is not “it” but a person. The created “god” is “it”, and even according to science, “it” (the original matter) is not a person that can take decisions because it is a thing. Only a person can take decisions by will and create a purpose. Therefore, the intelligent being that took the decision to create the universe with a purpose is the Creator whose “In the beginning” has become the most ever recognizable phrase.
He summoned, created out of nothing, reordered, and gave new shapes to the primordial elements. Above all, the Eternal Absolute pre-existed time, an instrument of his own devising, when He constructed the term “one day”.
But why would the Infinite One create a world in which we now live? And what did He desire when He created it? Because if He is perfect and self-sufficient, why would He need to create anything in the first place? He is perfect.
And after He created the world, what is its purpose and what does He still need? And since He created the world according to His will and needs, it must have an original purpose, for who creates a whole universe without a purpose? Take an example from the potter. As the potter does not make a pot and then decides what he would need it for, so did the Creator not create a world and then decided what He needed it for.
But before Elohim created the universe, He created the universal principles by which the universe would be governed. These principles we call the laws of the physics.
So, what is the purpose of the creation, and why would the Omnipotent One need something in the first place? He indeed needs it, but what does He need it for?
The purpose of His creation was to create a dwelling place for Him. From being everywhere in the infinite world, He created a place to be somewhere in the finite world. As we explained in the article The Ten Sefirot of the Creator Part 1 – Time of Reckoning Ministry, this is the emanation (sefirah) malchut, or “kingdom”.
Thus, from being the only exclusive One, Yachid (One and only One), who existed alone to the exclusion of anything and anyone, He became Echad, united with His creation in oneness, as the unifying force in all of creation. The original purpose, therefore, was to elevate the creation to being oneness with the Creator. That was the purpose of the creation, the purpose that preceded life itself.
The laws of nature as arbitraments
Job 37:6 explains that God governs mankind and produces the overall effects He desires by manipulating the underlying laws of nature.
For He says to the snow, ‘Be on the earth,’ also to the gentle rain and the heavy rain of His strength. (Job 37:6)
For example, the basic property that determines whether it rains or snows at a particular location is the variation in the heat content of the air and the water in the atmosphere above it. This single property or law was decreed by Elohim, and it is what causes it to rain in summer when it is warm and to snow in winter when it is cold. This cycle of seasons is unending although anomalies are inherent in nature.
In His Wisdom, He manipulates the natural phenomena to do His will and to execute His decrees in His Governance whether for good or for bad. This is the natural phenomena by preset laws of physics. But the anomalies like “climate change” are too preset laws by His will.
The universal laws through which He governs the world are arbitraments of His choice. He arbitrated how these laws should function in His universe. Suspending [for a limited period of time] of a natural law is called “miracle”. Suspending [temporarily] one of His sefirot (plural for sefirah) is a miracle.
When Elohim split the sea, that was either a miracle being a marvelous event manifesting a supernatural act of an agent, or anomaly (a deviation from the normal or common order, form or rule).
Likewise, “Climate change” is an anomaly, a deviation from the normal weather pattern. But the question is: Who is causing it? We have already pointed out in the article Global Warming or Global Warning? – Time of Reckoning Ministry that “global warming” is not a purely natural event or man-made but a warning from above by way of anomaly. Please, read the source for further explanation.
Hence, we understand that the laws of nature are not real laws; they are arbitraments being the act of deciding of the Arbiter who is YHVH. And this Arbiter is the One with the power to settle matters at will, the One who gives authoritative judgment. The laws of nature being arbitraments can be suspended at will.
And if the laws of nature are not real laws but arbitraments, then which are the real laws?
The real laws are the laws of Torah; they are not arbitraments. The laws of nature were created for the nature, but the laws of the Torah (Hebrew for “direction”) are the principles by which the society would be governed; the laws of the Torah are created and given to us to live by. Through the laws of nature, the Creator is telling what He wants from the nature, but through the laws of the Torah, the Sovereign is telling us what He needs from us.
The constant recreation of the world
The Eternal YHVH Elohim made heaven and earth at the time of creation, and it seems that He does not at present create anything. However, the Scripture explains itself this way. In Hebrew of Psa 121:2, we read thus,
עֶזְרִי מֵעִם יְהֹוָה עֹשֵׂה שָׁמַיִם וָאָרֶץ׃
ezri meiyim Yehovah osei shamayim and va’arets
My help is from within Yehovah who makes* heavens and earth.
*Translated literally, “makes” in present tense. עֹשֵׂה osei (makes) is a po’el, the present form of verbs in the kal (simple form). The Scripture does not make vague statements, when it has used the present form to convey the idea of a continuous recreation of the world.
As this verse seems relatively straightforward, there is a layer of meaning behind it. On a simple level the verse states the fact that YHVH is the Maker of the heavens and the earth. But on the second layer, it is revealed to us that He still makes the heavens and the earth expressed by the present tense employed here: “YHVH who makes”. What does it mean?
According to Ibn Ezra (see Exodus 3:2 with Ibn Ezra), Scripture uses the present tense to describe what Elohim had done in the past. Ibn Ezra makes the argument that “as God is constantly making and causing heaven and earth to exist in the same manner as speech issues from the mouth of man”. Hence the psalm praises YHVH as the one who makes (present tense) heaven and earth.
Thus explained by Ibn Ezra, Psalm 121 seems to favor the idea of constant recreation and maintenance of the universe in the relation of the speech to the speaker, which exists only so long as the speaker speaks. The moment he ceases speaking the sound ceases to exist. Likewise, as long as the Creator sustains the universe, the universe exits.
What does it mean? Can heavens and earth be made again?
In Hebrew, the word olam represents both the physical and the time dimensions—relating, specifically, to their “boundlessness” property. Thus, olam in Hebrew means simply “universe” or “world” (all that exists), but also “eternity” (relating to the boundless cosmos), or the elapsed time from the beginning of time to eternity.
The word olam is derived from the root alam, properly concealed, hidden, that is, the vanishing point on the horizon. Generally, alam means “time out of mind” (past or future), that is, eternity.
The source of the word olam now becomes clear: the whole world is a manifestation of the hidden mystery of the Most High who becomes known through paradoxes, phenomena, and anomalies, for indeed the Creator is not in the world but the world is in the Creator, and the whole world is testimony to the concealed Eternal One.
We will explain the whole matter by way of comparison. As an airplane does not fly, but it is being flown by the laws of aerodynamics, so is the universe being existed by the laws of physics. But these laws do not exist and cannot exist for themselves, on themselves, by themselves, either, for they too were created and are constantly being recreated by the Creator for the purpose of sustaining His creation in existence. The energy propelling the celestial bodies is called ruach (literally, “wind”). It is this force, the Ruach of Elohim, that moves them, sustains them suspended in cosmos, and governs the laws by which they are in existence. This force identified as “wind” as something supernatural is because of all matters in the physical universe wind is the closest to the invisible abstract force called Elohim.
The universe therefore does not and cannot exist by itself, on itself, and for itself. In fact, the universe does not exist, as if it has its own power to sustain itself; the world is being existed. Once created the world still needs the Absolute Power (Hebrew El Eliyon) to stay in existence.
What Scriptural proof do we have to support such statements?
The universe does not exist by itself as a pot does not exist without the potter after it has been created. The potter needs the pot; the pot does not need the potter. We read,
And now, O Yehovah, You are our Father. We are the clay, and You our potter. And we are all the work of Your hand. (Isa 64:8)
The Creator created the world, but His creation is not a finished work, as we may incorrectly conclude. And because the finite world cannot sustain itself even a second without the Creator, it needs to be constantly recreated.
Likewise, humans do not exist and cannot exist by themselves, on themselves, for themselves (as if man could add years to his life); humans are being constantly recreated every second.
Man being reborn every moment
Whose needs brought the world into existence, and whose needs created man?
As marvelous and magnificent the stars, constellations, and nebulas are, they are not living creations. The humans are. Humans have trillions of cells, which are the basic units of life. Seemingly, the cells function on their own by self-replicating themselves. One cell forms two new cells which are copies of the parent cell. Thus, new cells are created from existing cells through a process called “cell cycle”, in which a cell is created, lives, and dies out.
In the “rebirth” of the cell, the cell creates an exact copy of its own DNA. This DNA is the genetic code of the cell and functions like an instruction manual transmitting the genetic information from one cell cycle to the next. The DNA is characterized by the ordering of genes in a set of chromosomes called genome (complete set of genetic material that encodes the hereditary information). The genetic code carries the characteristics of the human cell and determines things like the shape and form of the body organs and of the body itself, complexion, blood type, etc.
For this reason, this process of rebirth of human cells is also called regeneration, which is the process of re-establishment, rehabilitation, and growth of the human cells. In other words, the regeneration of cells is the growth or rebirth of lost genetic information, hence, regrowth of tissue and body organs.
For instance, some tissues like liver are capable of regrowing itself, while other tissues like kidneys and cardiac muscle have no capability to regenerate in case of injury. Below is the average lifespan of certain human cells:
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- Heart muscle cells: 40 years.
- Intestinal cells (excluding lining): close to 16 years.
- Skeletal cells: about 10 years.
- Liver cells: 10-16 months.
- Pancreas cells: 1 year.
- Red blood cells: 4 months.
- Skin cells: every two weeks,
- while cells lining of the stomach last only about 5 days.
How about the most complex organ in the human body? It was believed that the brain cells do not regenerate, once lost they are lost forever. Research in the recent years done by French scientists, however, showed that 700 brain neurons are being born in a day. This means that a braincell is being recreated every 2 minutes. While this phenomenon may be seen as too little to make a difference, the fact is that by the age of 50 the whole brain is reborn anew. The saying that men become wise at 50 seems to be true after all.
But these phenomena of cell regeneration do not exist by themselves and for themselves for they are too being existed and governed by the laws created by YHVH Elohim, for it is said,
The Ruach of El has made me, and the Breath of the Almighty gives me life. (Job 33:4)
When we reflect on what we have written above, we will find that a solid argument is thus established for the conclusion of our study, namely, that the universe and humans are constantly being recreated to the state of being born from above: being born over and over again.
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May we merit seeing the coming of our Mashiach speedily in our days!
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