hi Philis,
I'm just adding in some commentary to another's post:
Isa 45:18 say: For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.
Does somebody here think that He made the earth in vain? Why did you post this verse?
I can't tell you why ptom posted the Scripture or how he gets from point A to point B in his triangulation with this verse and verse 28, he'll have to answer that.
However, I can tell you that it is this very verse that caused me to rethink what I had been told and taught to believe in school about billions of years of some evolutionary universe that got us from nothing to here. I think that God is speaking clearly here that He created the earth to be inhabited. If you remember my explanation of God's purpose in creating this realm, well, this is where you find that purpose.
God didn't create this realm of creation - the physical universe in which we live - over millions or billions of years. He had a fully thought out purpose for all that He created in this realm. This realm was created to support the life of flesh. Both of men and animals. This verse says so. If we can really comprehend the power, the wisdom and the glory of God, then we can surely see that He is a Creator God who can create vast universes with just the command of His words.
He isn't a God who needs to create some amorphous ball of gases that will become this star and then that star over there and then some other cluster of stars somewhere else that take billions or years to come together and congeal to be what we see today. No! Not at all! He is a God of such great and perfect wisdom and knowledge and power and glory that all He need do is merely think the design of the whole of this universe and within moments it is! That's the power and glory and majesty of the God who created all things both seen and unseen and that same powerful, mighty, majestic and holy God loves me. He loves you. How humbling is that thought? How so loved we have to feel that the God who merely speaks all things into existence loves you. He knows you! He has provided all that you need to live. He thought in the moments of the creation event to put an atmosphere on this one singular planet among the billions and billions of heavenly bodies that would contain oxygen so that every 3 seconds you could gulp in some air and live!!
He created the necessary elements and earth in which food would grow for both plants and animals that we could eat and live!! That's what God has made and planned for you! He loves you more than anything else that He has made in this realm. There is nothing; no bird, no wild beast, no creature of the sea, no beautiful flowering plant that God loves and created all of this for, but you!! YOU!! That's what God has done. How awesome is that? And what He asks is that you recognize and acknowledge that and bow down in humble submission to His plan for your life so that you may continue to draw breath and eat food and live with Him forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever. That, Philis, is the God who in mere moments created this entire realm of existence so that He could one day send forth His angels and harvest a good crop from the earth.
Jesus tells us that that is what the end will be like. That God will send forth His angels and He will have them go to and fro across the earth harvesting among both the living and dead a crop of good fruit that He will then take into His perfect and plentiful storehouse to live with Him forever. And in that day, that God, will stand before His throne; the place from which He spoke all that is in this realm into existence and before those who have been taken into His loving storehouse He will declare, "Now the dwelling of God is with men and He will be their God and they will be His people."
No, certainly I don't say that God's work in creating was in vain, but I assure you that the 'plan' is not finished yet.
God bless you.
In Christ, Ted