Welcome to the Believer's Voice of Victory from Kenneth Copeland Ministries. Download the notes at kcm.org/notes.

Hello everybody, I'm Gloria Copeland, and welcome to the Believer's Voice of Victory. Billy's back! Billy Brim from Prayer Mountain in the Ozarks. Welcome, Billy!

Well, thank you much! We want to hear some more good stuff.

All right! I do hope they've been listening all week. This is a great subject. I'm hoping they've been listening all week, and that we're talking about who we are—the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ—and where we sit, only at the right hand of the Father. Our positioning! You have to keep that in mind because now we're going to expose Satan and who he is.

Okay, and we're going to talk about the demons and devils, and demon possession, and what to do about them because it's increasing at the end of the age. You need to be knowledgeable about how to keep rule and victory in your own life and to help others if they need help.

The name of this series is "Living the Overcoming Life in the Last Days." That's it! Glory to God! Thank God! You know what, Gloria? He didn't say, "Now don't worry or fret about anything except in the last days."

Yeah, right! Then it'll be so bad you've got the right to worry.

No, He didn't! He didn't say, "Take no thought, saying, 'What shall I wear? What shall I eat?' until the last days." You know, and then there be a little time when this scripture here won't work. No, no, no, no! They are working all the time! Bless the Lord!

Yes! So, praise the Lord! That's right. Now we're going to talk about Satan, and we're going to talk about this. He's the enemy of God, and he's the enemy of God's plans. In his last-ditch effort to stay here, he's going to fight till the last moment. He's already defeated; he just enforces the victory.

Yep! But you know, it says he sees and he knows his time is short. So he knows when it's getting to the end of Adam's lease. He only has authority till Adam's lease runs out because authority was given to Adam. But we're going to be talking about that later.

Now, I'm reading to you from one of my favorite authors, Billy Brim. I agree with almost everything she says, you know, but I have learned a little bit since I wrote the book. But this book is still one that I read, and it's still a bestseller—great people because it's still applicable to today: "The Blood and the Glory."

Yes! So I put in here why I—these are questions I used to have—why did God make the devil anyway? Didn't He know he was going to cause me all this trouble? How old is Earth? How long has man lived on it? Is science right? Are the preachers right?

You're going to answer all those questions—all those questions we're going to answer today. Now, we're not dogmatic about some of the things we're teaching, but it's pretty evident, you know.

So, we're going to begin with a beginning. That's a good place!

That's good! Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning, God created the heavens." It's plural in the Hebrew—the heavens. Every time you see the word "heaven" in the Old Testament, it's plural.

Okay, and we're going to find out in the New Testament that there's more than one heaven. Yes, there are heavens! And we're going to see who's in what heavens and where we go from there.

But in the beginning, God created all the heavens and all the Earth. Only God could sum up so much in so few words! Praise God! For everything the Bible's opening verse includes would fill volumes that the world cannot contain.

When God created the heavens and the Earth, what verse one does not include is Genesis 1:2. Genesis 1:2 is another time: "And the Earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep."

God did not create the Earth without form and void. That state of things upon the Earth came later, and it came as a result of something.

Now, why am I—what makes me so sure about this? And like we say, we're not dogmatic, but it's the meaning of the words "without form and void."

"Without form and void" in the Hebrew are "tohu va bohu." Yeah, sounds like it rhymes, huh? "Tohu" is a word, and it tells you the state of things. "Va" is just "and" in Hebrew.

So the Hebrew words "tohu va bohu" here is what they mean. You can find it in a Hebrew-English lexicon that I like to use.

Um, is this what we are? No, no! I'm bringing to you from "The Blood and the Glory," and I don't think you have a copy of it. A Hebrew-English lexicon defines "tohu" as: formlessness, confusion, unreality, emptiness, chaos, waste.

And "bohu" means emptiness. Do you think that God created the Earth formless, confused, unreal, empty, chaotic, wasteland? No, He did not! Impossible for God to do so!

I was teaching this once in Munich, Germany, in a Bible school, and there's a German lady there—this has been many years ago—and she said, "I know what 'tohu va bohu' means! We used to have a lot of Jews among us when I was growing up, and here's what 'tohu va bohu' means."

She said, "As you clean all your house—you know how those Germans clean the house? Yeah, you clean all your house in the springtime, you do spring cleaning, and then you got all the house spick and span. And you remember your teenager's room? You go and open the door, and it is a chaotic mess!"

And you say—she said they said it a lot, and we said it among them—"This place is 'tohu va bohu!' Get in here and clean it up!"

So that's the meaning of "tohu va bohu." It is a mess! It is a chaotic wasteland! So when we see in Genesis 1:2, "And the Earth was 'tohu va bohu,'" we know that cannot be how God created it because God's work is perfect.

The Bible tells us in Deuteronomy 32:4—this is at the bottom of page two right here, Gloria—"He is the Rock; His work is perfect." So how in the world could He make a chaotic wasteland? Couldn't! His work is perfect!

Then Psalm 111:3: "His work is honorable and glorious." Praise God! Hallelujah!

So if His work is perfect and His work is glorious, and the Earth is a chaotic wasteland with dark, ugly, murky waters on it, you know that He isn't the one that made it to be like that.

That's a good point! Hallelujah!

How did it get that way? Well, there's another scripture that tells us absolutely for sure God didn't do this, and that's Isaiah 45:18.

Isaiah 45:18—we're going to find that word "tohu" again here. If you have a Hebrew lexicon, you can look up the Hebrew word, and it tells you wherever it is in all the Bible, even though it might be translated something else in English.

Isaiah 45:18 has that word "tohu" in it: "For thus saith Jehovah that created the heavens, God Himself that formed the Earth and made it; He hath established it; He created it not in vain."

That word "vain" is "tohu." He created it not "tohu." That tells you right now that Genesis 1:2 is not the state He created it in. He created it not "tohu." He formed it to be inhabited. "I am Jehovah, and there is none else."

So we see in Genesis 1:2, we see a place that's "tohu." It's a chaotic wasteland, and it's inhabitable. Nobody can live in it, covered under dark waters.

Now, if you have a center reference column in your Bible—not many people do anymore; it won't be in your electronic Bible, it won't be in your phone, and it won't be in a lot of the Bibles you buy in the bookstores—but I always get, you know, I get me a Cambridge Bible, and Gloria's got one over there too, and it's got a center reference column.

And those center reference columns are really quite helpful. They just tell you where those words are used in another time in the Bible.

And in a good reference Bible, it will say right there by Genesis 1:2, it will give you Jeremiah 4:23.

And Jeremiah 4:23—I typed it out for us, Gloria, right here. I see it! It's in my margin! Is it in yours?

See, here's a witness—"A voice of two witnesses; everything be established." So they're going to show you where those words are used again, and it's in Jeremiah.

She's checking me out, and by the way, that's well—I have to be careful! That's exactly what you should do! You should check out the preachers! You don't just believe everything they say and swallow it. You can't believe a lot of things!

So far, you're okay! So she checked me out there, and it came—it was true! Here is a reference to where "tohu va bohu" is used again in the Bible, and it's Jeremiah 4:23.

Now, Jeremiah is the prophet, and God takes the prophet Jeremiah and He lets him look back in time. God sits at the middle of eternity like a wagon wheel, and He can look down any spoke of time. He dwells in eternity, so He lets the prophet look back.

I think when we get to heaven, we'll get to look back, and I'd like to see creation! I'd like to see some of those wonderful things!

So here He is letting Jeremiah the prophet watch when Earth became "tohu va bohu." And incidentally, in Genesis 1:2, "And the Earth was without form and void," that word "was" is also translated "became."

So the Earth became without form and void. It was not created without form and void, but it became!

Okay, without form and void. So Jeremiah 4:23: "I beheld the Earth," the prophet Jeremiah telling you what he saw, "and lo, it was without form and void—'tohu va bohu.'"

Jeremiah the prophet is getting to watch the day it became "tohu va bohu." God created it beautifully; He created a wonderful creation.

And then there came a day when it became this chaotic waste. What happened that day? Let's listen, and let's just kind of dissect what the prophet Jeremiah saw.

"I watched the Earth. I beheld it as it became 'tohu va bohu,' and the heavens—they had no light." No light! Light went out of there!

Who is light? God is light! Yeah! God removed Himself from that!

Now we're going to find out that when He began to move upon the Earth again, the Holy Spirit began to move, the first thing God put back was, "Let there be light!"

Yes! Amen!

Now, He's talking about—not about the sun, moon, and the stars, but Himself! God is light! And on the day when He judged this Earth, He removed Himself, and He didn't have anything to do with it, and it lay there in that wasteful, chaotic state under dark, ugly waters.

Isn't that awesome? The light left!

And as Jeremiah's watching this, the mountains start to shake; they start to move. The hills—you've ever been to Missouri or someplace else, and you can see the strata of the Earth, you know, which used to be parallel to Earth's surface, now it's tilted up in the air.

And then you see like there are giant cracks in the Earth. There are fault lines in California—quite a few—even under the New Madrid fault line. One of the worst earthquakes that ever happened happened in Missouri along the New Madrid fault line.

And then along the Mississippi River, and then there are other fault lines. I know in Oklahoma and other places, there are tremors that come. And of course, right down through the very center of Israel is the Assyrian-African Rift.

There's a fault line right here near us. There's a fault line here in—what's that little town out there? Somebody help me out!

But under Texas, too! Is there a fault line in New York?

Yeah! So there you have it! Now, did God make a fault line next to your house? No, no, He didn't!

Did He make the San Andreas fault? Did He make Earth? His work is perfect! A perfect Earth doesn't have fault lines! Huh? It doesn't have fault lines! A perfect Earth!

But they came, and they came that day! That's the day that it happened! And Jeremiah is a witness to it! He saw all these hills shaking!

"I beheld, and there was no being, no man left! All the birds were gone! Every bird!"

Now, you know in this pre-Adamic civilization, you're going to find all the prehistoric things—dinosaurs, dinosaur bones, those great big birds they had, you know, and other ones, maybe not so big—they're all gone! Not a one of them is left!

Why? The light left! When the light leaves—if the light leaves right this second, Gloria, if there's no light on Earth, no God's light, no sunlight, no light—He said no light—then all of us will be frozen dead!

And dinosaurs—they all died on the same day! The dinosaur watchers—I’ve watched them for years; they’re rare birds, those dinosaur watchers, and they wear funny hats and funny guys!

But anyway, they were finding—really, the dinosaurs were heads—no, the dinosaur watchers! The ones who watch them!

Okay, the dinosaur watchers—where what happened to the dinosaurs? That's a great big question they had for years, years, years, years!

Now they decided that all the dinosaurs died on the same day, and all Earth—all the animal life of the prehistoric died on the same day! They admit that! They think a meteor hit it!

I don't know what God had to do, but something happened here! Have you ever been in an earthquake? Little ones? I've been in one in Hawaii, and I had made Ken a cup of tea, and I was handing him the tea, and I spilled the tea!

Yeah, I guess I don't remember that part! I guess I got my mind off of it! But it was just like that, you know? It just jars you!

And why did it happen? 'Cause there's a crack in the Earth!

Yeah! And did God do it? No! It happened on the day of that!

Let me just say, we got our stuff together, and we left Hawaii, and I think you were one of the last ones to get out, as I remember!

He said, "I beheld, and the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence—wow!—of Jehovah by His fierce anger."

For thus saith Jehovah, "The whole land shall be desolate, yet I will not make a full end."

So He created a wonderful, beautiful creation, which we call—and many Bible scholars call—the pre-Adamic civilization. This was a civilization that was before that God made. He made Earth a perfect, beautiful, glorious place, and it went on for I don't know how long—as ever long as true science requires.

And there came a day, then it fell into this chaotic waste. What happened that day?

Let's listen, and let's just kind of dissect what the prophet Jeremiah saw. "I watched the Earth. I beheld it as it became 'tohu va bohu,' and the heavens—they had no light! No light! Light went out of there!"