The Source of Light

By Jerry D. Ousley

            Walking out onto the beach, I realized how warm the sun actually was.  At first it felt like a refreshing bath of light as it poured over my milky-white body.  It seemed I could feel the vitamins permeating my skin.  I lay in it for a bit, but after awhile it no longer seemed so vitalizing but began to make me itch.  Looking down at my body I could see that the most exposed areas were no longer white but were quickly turning red.  I got a sunburn.  It was sensitive to the touch, but as the summer progressed it turned from red to brown as I tanned.

            Our sun is a powerful creation.  God placed the Earth just at the right distance to make it warm, bring us light and provide the necessary ingredients to make plants grow.  A bit closer and everything would burn up.  A bit father away and our planet would turn to ice.  Our designer certainly knew what He was doing and set the universe in perfect harmony as the planets and heavenly bodies zoom through space in synchronization.

            Science tells us that someday our sun will burn out and our solar system will die when that happens.  You’d probably expect me to say that they are wrong for saying that someday our sun will cease to exist, but actually, the Bible agrees with them, just not in the same way.  You see, we are told near the end of the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ that when God re-creates the heavens and the Earth that there will be no need of the sun, because God and the Lamb (that’s Jesus Christ) will be the light from then on.  The Bible says, “The city [that’s the New Jerusalem] had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it.  The Lamb is its light.”  (Revelation 21:23).  Our finite minds can’t comprehend that.  We are limited by birth and death.  We can’t understand time before our birth, nor can we comprehend life after our death.  That’s because we are limited in our brief lives. And that brevity of life and thought can’t imagine existence without the sun.

            Man wants to tell us that our solar system is millions of years old, and that it happened by a huge cosmic explosion that resulted in all the solar systems and galaxies floating around in outer space.  I guess I’m a simpleton because the way I understand the Bible, our Earth is really only around 6000 years old.  It could have been a cosmic explosion (the big bang) but if it was it was because when God said, “Let there be …” that it blew up and made everything.  We aren’t told if it happened that way or if God hand made each planet and sun one by one, leaving each unique with His personal touch.  I like to think it was that way.

            Genesis 1 tells us that God made everything, from the cosmos to the most intricate of life forms in just 7 days.  Men have tried to say that since God’s time is different than ours that those 7 days were much longer (I’m talking mega-millennium) but the fact of the matter is that the original language means a twenty-four-hour day and so, once again, my simpleton mind believes what the Bible says.  Just think of the awesome power of God who was able to accomplish this in such a short time.  But then, that’s why He’s God and not any of us.

            He made light on the first day, but we aren’t told what its source was.  It wasn’t the sun because it wasn’t made until the fourth day.  That sun which He made has burned brightly ever since and will continue doing so until the time we quoted in Revelation when God and the Lamb are actually the light.

            When God led the people of Israel out of Egypt to the Promised Land, on the way they spent a year at the foot of Mount Sinai, where God gave the Law of Moses, and instructed them in all the sacrifices and the construction of the Tabernacle.  Inside that Tabernacle were several items of furniture, one of which was for light.  It was called the lampstand.  It was made of pure, hammered gold and consisted of a base that supported a tube through which the special oil ran to the tip, where it was lit and kept burning.  On either side of the lamp were three branches, each being fed from the main tube.  So, there was a total of seven tubes, each burning brightly from the oil God had instructed them to make.  This was to be kept burning perpetually.

            There is a lesson in that for us.  You see, God is the light in our lives as believers and Christians.  When we come to Him, He illuminates us.  Then we become the branches stemming out from Him and we extend spiritual light to all around us.  Just like the branches of the lampstand in the Tabernacle, and later on in the Temple, depended on the oil as the source of their lights coming from that main tube, so the illumination in our lives depends on the spiritual oil of Christ in our lives.  Without it our light dims, and dies out.  That means that it is very important to keep the oil flowing.  We do that by depending on God.  We depend on Him through prayer, reading His word and meditating on Him.

            Because of His light making us lights, then we bring spiritual illumination to all around us.  We spread the Good News of salvation through Jesus Christ and that light has the ability to bring light and warmth to everyone who will hear and head His call.  Then they too become lights.

            So, in essence, even now, spiritually, God and the Lamb are our true light.  Of course, our finite bodies can’t live right now without the sun.  But someday we will be made new and then, “Goodbye sun!”

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.?  Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.