Living Veneer

The terrible waste of a Christless life actually goes on for all eternity. The unrepented soul purposely lives his life without Christ. The Scriptures announce a soon-coming event, when all the world from Adam forward, will stand before God individually at a place called the Great White Throne Judgment. Those who refused to live a Christ-centered life, which is only made possible through the born-again experience, are cast into the Christless Lake of Fire. Their punishment and the Christlessness of their condition lasts forever. Those of you listening or reading this message who have yet to surrender to Jesus Christ as the Lord of your life, can change this situation today. Click on to “Further With Jesus” now, for instruction for immediate entrance into the Kingdom of God. Stop the terrible waste. NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Genesis 3:19:

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

GOD SAID, Ecclesiastes 3:19-20:

19 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.

20 All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

GOD SAID, Isaiah 40:12:

Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?

MAN SAID: Life revolves around me: how it benefits me; how it satisfies my desires; how it fulfills my dreams. I am important—not God, not others—just me.

Now THE RECORD. Dirt is a marvel of God’s handiwork. It is beautiful and so utterly essential, but given small consideration by most.

Basically, all things natural man deals with have dirt as the principle part of their structure. Dirt is central to their function. Dirt dominates. I’m reminded of the story of a man challenging God. He said to God, “Creation is not such a great feat. I could do it easily.”

God replied to the man, “Go ahead.”

The man said, “All I have to do is take a little dirt and a little—”

God interrupted His challenger and said, “Just a minute. Get your own dirt.”

God created Adam out of the dust of the ground. Genesis 2:7:

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Concerning this marvelous truth, the following excerpts are found in the feature article “Man From Dirt” on this website:

The idea of God making man out of dirt, as far as the unbelievers are concerned, is absurd. In a recent Newsweek magazine article titled, “Life From Clay?,” the following story was printed:

As if the Biblical tale of man’s creation from ”the dust of the ground” were haunting their unconscious minds, NASA chemists have presented evidence that life on earth may have gotten its start in clay. They have shown that clays attract the organic molecules that make up protein and DNA, the ingredients of life, possibly from the sea during high tides. The clays might then trigger chemical reactions that string the building blocks into proteins and DNA.

The latest experiments show how, according to NASA’s Lelia Coyne, clays scavenge energy released by such natural processes as radioactive decay. They store the energy in the form of trapped electrons and then release it when subjected to stress—an earthquake, for example, or from wetting and drying as the tides rise and recede. Says Coyne, the ability of clays to store energy, catalyze reactions and perhaps self-replicate—all attributes of living systems—“is forcing us to re-examine at a very fundamental level the definition of life.” 

It is common knowledge that the chemical and mineral content of your body is identical to the Earth’s. Every schoolboy and girl knows that when you die you turn back to dust—TO DUST!!!

The very ancient Miautso people of China have chronicled their lineage back to Japheth, the son of Noah, and from there all the way back to the world’s first man, whom their genealogical record calls “Dirt.” Author, E. Traux, in an article titled “Genesis According to the Miao People,” renders the original Miautsu name in the following quote, ”It is clearly meant to portray Adam, the version of whose name in the Miautsi language (as in Hebrew, Akkadian and so on), means earth or clay, the substance from which he was created.”

They called the first man’s name Dirt, which is exactly what the name Adam means—red dirt. The Miautsu genealogical record was handed down from the beginning and was firmly entrenched long before Christian missionaries encountered them, long before they had the Biblical record from which to compare. [End of quotes]

It’s humbling, but true: we are accurately defined as recycled mud. Job 10:9:

Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the clay; and wilt thou bring me into dust again?

In a conversation with two businessmen, the subject of death arose. I mentioned that as men we are born; we eat a hole in the earth, and fill it back up again when we die. Ecclesiastes 3:19-20:

19 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.

20 All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

Without dirt, we cannot exist.

Dirt is magnificent. A mere shovelful is filled with wondrous life-building and life-sustaining substances such as minerals, nutrients, and metals, and is teeming with living organisms that are essential to life’s cycle. Imagine that even death is absorbed in its bosom and is recycled into life again.

“No technology available can keep the planet alive like its current living veneer,” is a quote taken from Discover magazine, April 2005. The dominant focus of that issue was what leaders in the field of science esteemed as the most important developments in the past 25 years. Another excerpt from that issue, a quote from the director of the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University, Diana H. Wall, follows:

The most important advance in the last 25 years is recognition that soil biodiversity is greater than aboveground diversity, that soil species help regulate nutrient cycling, decomposition, carbon flux, and the hydrologic cycle on a global scale and provide us with key benefits: soil fertility, stabilization, aeration, and decay of dead matter. Given that global changes, including land-use change, will occur rapidly in the next 25 years, we have an urgent task ahead of us. We need to unravel how the species in soils interact to provide fertile and productive soils for our food supply and for the ecosystem processes that we depend on. [End of quote]

Dirt dominates. Dirt is the glorious handiwork of God and is essential to natural life and structure. Even vaunted man is simply recycled mud. The Word of God teaches the centricity of the dust long before—thousands and thousands of years before—man and his science begin to understand the reasons why. This is just another proof that God is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

GOD SAID, Genesis 3:19:

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

GOD SAID, Ecclesiastes 3:19-20:

19 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.

20 All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

GOD SAID, Isaiah 40:12:

Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?

MAN SAID: Life revolves around me: how it benefits me; how it satisfies my desires; how it fulfills my dreams. I am important—not God, not others—just me.

Now you have THE RECORD.




References:

King James Bible

“Think Tank,” Discover magazine, 4/05, p73

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