by Tad Lindley
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth (Genesis 1:1) And then it goes on to detail day by day for the first week of time what was made. Here is a brief synopsis of Genesis 1:
•Day 1: Light and Darkness, Day and Night
•Day 2: The atmosphere
•Day 3: Dry ground and plants
•Day 4: Sun, moon and stars
•Day 5: Birds and sea life
•Day 6: Land animals, insects, and finally man
•Day 7 (our Saturday): He rested
All by himself
Almost every detail was accomplished by God alone. How do I know that? It says so in the Bible. Read for yourself.
Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, And He who formed you from the womb: “I am the Lord, who makes all things, Who stretches out the heavens all alone, Who spreads abroad the earth by Myself. (Isaiah 44:24 NKJV)
Indeed My hand has laid the foundation of the earth, And My right hand has stretched out the heavens; When I call to them, They stand up together. (Isaiah 48:13 NKJV)
And from Jeremiah, Indeed My hand has laid the foundation of the earth, And My right hand has stretched out the heavens; When I call to them, They stand up together. (10:12)
Who is he talking to?
Now there is an oddity in the account of creation. There is one thing that God did not create all by himself. It is a strange scripture that makes us stop and say to ourselves, “Who is he talking to?” Here it is right in the thick of Genesis 1: Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (1:26-27 NKJV) Who was he talking to? Who is the “us”?
There’s only one possibility
The Lord had to have been talking to angels when he said this. I know it wasn’t to any of the other living things created that week, because he said quite clearly, “Let us make man in our own image…” I check my image a few times a day in the mirror, and it looks nothing like any other animal, plant, or fungus, but the image I see in the mirror does bear slight resemblance to both the Lord, and the angels.
How do we know what angels look like?
Well it is an obvious fact that the Lord looks like a human. Right? When he was manifest in the flesh, he appeared as the step-son of the carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth. And in the Jewish scriptures, when the Lord visited Abraham, he brought company, and guess what his company looked like, men. Check it out in your Bible in Genesis 18 and 19. Three men show up to visit Abraham. One of them is the Lord. He sticks around and talks about the coming destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The other two “men” leave and show up in the city of Sodom at Lot’s house in Genesis 19.
You may even have seen an angel and missed it
Wait, how could you not see an angel? Because they look like us. Hebrews 13:2 tells us that we may have encountered angels, and completely missed it. Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it!
So as strange as it may seem, at some point near the beginning of time the Lord had made almost everything, mostly by just ordering the elements what to do. Then he stopped. And the angels who had been watching hear him say, “Let us make man in our image,” and so Adam bears the distinction of being the only thing in creation that God got help creating. He did it all by himself, except for man.
Tad Lindley is a minister at the United Pentecostal Church in Bethel, Alaska.
