Page 52 - Through New Eyes

The World as Go@s House 45

When men saw the glory-cloud, they were seeing heaven,
or at least a replica of heaven in the world. As Kline has noted,
“The Glory-cloud was indeed the invisible realm of heaven ap-
pearing in a veiled visibility in the midst of earthly creatures.”7
The phenomena of the glory were heavenly phenomena. To see
into the cloud was to see into heaven. Genesis 1 explains that the
hovering Spirit proceeded from heaven to make this glory-light
appear within the world. In this way, the Spirit brought a blue-
print with Him, and began the work of shaping the world after
the heavenly model.a
We pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Gen-
esis 1 gives us the first fulfillment of this principle. As the light
shone from the glory-cloud of God’s heavenly throne environ-
ment, that environment began to be reproduced on the earth.
God spent one week laying the initial foundations and showing
man how to work. Just as man labors to make earth like heaven,
so did God.

The Firmament-Heaven
After making light, God created a “firmament” to separate
waters above from waters below (Genesis 1:6, 7). This firma-
ment He called heaven. We now have two heavens, the one the
dwelling place of God and the angels, made on the first day, and
the second created within the original earth as a reminder of the
original heaven. The fact that the word heauen is used for the
firmament means that the firmament is analogous to the original
heaven, and thus is symbolic of it. On the fourth day, God placed
lights in the firmament-heaven, to be symbols and to act as clocks
(Genesis 1:14-18). This means that the sun, moon, and stars are
not part of the original heaven, but part of the original earth.
The original earth of Genesis 1:1 is now being separated into the
globe on which we live on the one hand, and upper waters and
lights on the other hand. On the fifth day, God created birds to
fly on the face of the firmament-heaven (Genesis 1:20).
What is this firmament-heaven? The related verb in Hebrew
means “to stretch out, beat out, or flatten out.” The idea is of a
shell or surface cast over the earth. g Now as a matter of scientific
fact, there is no hard shell around the earth, nor do birds fly in-