Questions about Bible Issues Part 3
We update studies as the Lord Jesus leads us. You can find the latest update of this study at ChurchAges.net
Rich ministers. We question God. Polygamy. Pastor is head. God repents. Biden a Sign of the time. Water above firmament
- Rich evangelical ministers and Woe to you rich
- We humans question God when we suffer
- Polygamy is wrong
- Pastor claims to be supreme
- It sounds strange that God should repent
- Biden and the Pope are a Sign of the Times
- Water above the firmament
Rich evangelical ministers and Woe to you rich
MATTHEW 19:24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
How do we reconcile this Scripture with wealthy modern-day pastors and megachurches?
There is no reconciliation. Church leaders have fallen into the material snare of self-deceit.
Churches have become a father-to-son family business.
If the father is an important preacher then the son must also be an important preacher in order to keep all that lovely money in the family.
The apostle Peter said, “Silver and gold have I none”. Very few modern-day pastors can say that.
Jesus chased the money-makers out of the Temple three times. This repetition was trying to emphasize a point.
The first time was at the first Passover in the first year of His ministry.
Then on Palm Sunday. Then again on the next day, Monday.
But that was going too far. They killed Him on Thursday so that He could spend three nights in the tomb before rising on Sunday morning. Thursday night. Friday night. Saturday night.
(Never get between a pastor and his money if you desire a long life).
Those Temple money-makers were successful materially, and very important in the Temple but irrelevant to God’s plan and were actually God's enemies.
Interestingly enough, this is the only time that Jesus became angry.
Watch out for religious money-makers in our rich but rotten last church age of the Laodiceans. God has a big score to settle with them. They make Him angry.
Jesus said, “Woe to you rich” but “blessed are the poor”.
In our materialistic world the church made the fatal mistake of calling wealth a blessing. As if wealth is something to aspire to. That is an extreme focus on self. Yet we are meant to die to self. The world’s wealthiest man cannot keep his wife.
A billionaire has just committed suicide in prison. So, does money really make people happy?
We buy more but enjoy it less.
People today buy things they do not really want to impress people they do not like with money they do not have.
Hence the endless empty chase after material wealth. As their worldly horizon grows, so their spiritual horizon shrinks.
We are humbled by loss, not by success.
John was put into a horrible prison colony on the island of Patmos before he could receive his incredible Revelation visions to close off the Bible.
The more our physical situation shrinks, the more our spiritual awareness opens up.
The opposite also happens. The richer you get materially, the poorer you become spiritually.
Venezuela has the most oil but is the least productive. So having a lot does not make us better or more effective.
A minister is a servant.
Wealthy church leaders give the orders, they are not servants. After all, they have a business to maintain which requires years of targeted self-promotion.
A half-hour of a Televangelist broadcast has a pull for money. A brief appearance of a pretty face to attract attention. A coffee cup, usually untouched, to create a homely feeling. Cameras that come in from different angles to create change and thus hold our attention. Distant cameras to include the big audience as well. An upstairs camera to show that the huge hall has an upstairs balcony as well. All designed to impress. Because they know that deep down church-goers today do not seek truth, they seek to belong. And they want to belong to the biggest and the best church.
Then disco music to entertain. Drums are never mentioned in the Bible.
All of these gimmicks come from worldly TV programs. But it is effective to pull in the crowds and more importantly, the money.
Style and show, but lacking substance.
Much in the show room but little of value in the stockroom.
We have multiplied our possessions but reduced our values.
Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor but because we cannot satisfy the rich. They keep demanding a larger piece of the pie.
We humans question God when we suffer
Is it right to ask God the question, “Why me?”.
Everyone asks this question because things are invariably happening that cause us distress.
But that should not be the case.
MATTHEW 6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
The ideal approach is to focus on God's Plan for our age and then leave God to sort out our personal needs His way.
Our problem is that we make a list of what we think we need and are then upset if that list does not materialize. Then we feel that God has abandoned us and we feel very sorry for ourselves.
We should not have made that list. We should have focused on serving God.
The secret is that God’s blessings must overtake us.
That way, we never saw them coming.
They were something that we were not anticipating as we did not have our eyes on them, since they came from behind.
DEUTERONOMY 28:2 And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God.
People who are spiritually tough have a motto: Expect nothing and be grateful for anything.
The alternative is to expect something and then be grateful for nothing. Not such a good idea.
ROMANS 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
If I think that things are going badly, because I wanted or expected something different, then it is a sign that I do not love God and that I am not fulfilling His purpose in my life.
This is the crunch.
God wants my life to fulfill His purpose and not my purpose.
So, it takes a change of mindset. What God is putting me through is for my good.
He is trying to get me to change direction.
I fear a dentist's chair and the pain. But when it all subsides, I am better off.
REVELATION 3:19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
In this last church age Jesus stands outside the church door.
Thus, we are so far out of tune with God’s end-time Plan that He has to continually correct us and chastise us.
The important part is that we must be keen to accept correction.
It is not enough that we must repent. We must be zealous to repent. In other words we must know that we are in a mess and that God is going to have to knock us around to get us onto the right track.
LUKE 17:10 So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.
Unprofitable. That means we have made more mistakes than what we got right.
So even when we managed to do what God wanted us to do, we still managed to mess up and do harm to a greater extent than what we did right.
JOB 15:15 Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight.
We are not nearly as wonderful as what we think we are.
Look at Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.
All of our filthy sins were about to be poured on Him.
Any one person's sins alone would disgust Him totally. Plus all the other awful sins of everybody else.
One holy Man had to accept that slimy cesspool of iniquity and corruption.
It must have been the most horrific and fearsome moment in history. Disgust. Repugnance. Revolting. Obscene.
He begged for a way out.
LUKE 22:42 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
The Father was the fullness of the supernatural Spirit within Him.
COLOSSIANS 2:9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
The Son was the human Man that God dwelled within.
Jesus also asked, "Does this have to be?" "Couldn't this be done differently?"
But then He stopped questioning and accepted God's will in His life and won His greatest victory at the time when He seemed to be totally defeated and destroyed.
God bless you and keep believing and never give up.
Remember, when the going gets tough then the tough get going.
We are not allowed to question God.
He always has a bigger plan in mind.
Six million Jews perished in the Holocaust during World War 2 in Hitler’s death camps that ended in 1945.
They were convinced that God had abandoned them. All the demonically evil Nazi evidence pointed that way.
Two years later, in 1947, enough of the Jew-hating nations felt a pang of conscience over that brutal massacre and allowed the United Nations to give them a small piece of the Promised Land.
They fought a vicious war in 1948 to survive as a nation. They won in the Sinai desert in 1952. They won a stunning victory in 1967 but took over the Sinai desert that was not part of the Promised Land. In 1973 they took a hammering but got up off the floor to win again and then decided to hand back Sinai to Egypt in 1982. So that is when they were finally back in the Promised Land southern boundary. But many Jews had died in the Holocaust and all this fighting. That seemed like a loss, despite them re-gaining their Promised Land.
Then the Fifth Seal was revealed by brother Branham to show that Jews who were killed just for being Jews were given white martyr’s robes in Heaven.
So that total Holocaust disaster turned out to be a win-win for the Jews. The murdered Jews went to Heaven and the surviving Jews got a Promised Land back for the first time in 2000 years. No nation had ever done that before.
Never question God. He knows what He is doing.
Polygamy is wrong
61-0806 THE SEVENTIETH WEEK OF DANIEL
In the nations where they have polygamy, it's a thousand times better. And yet, polygamy's wrong; we know.
65-0218 THE SEED IS NOT HEIR WITH THE SHUCK
The three women, three women that this Seed was carried through.
One of them was actually an adultery, under polygamy;
the second was a freewoman; and the third one had no sex affair at all, but by faith she believed the Word of God. Hagar, Sarah, both Sarah and Hagar, was sex; but Mary was virgin, by the power of the promised Word of God. That's right.
Brother Branham says that polygamy is actually adultery.
People get marriage and divorce all wrong.
A man is allowed to divorce and remarry if he finds out that his wife was not a virgin when she married him. She was guilty of fornication in her single state. God requires a woman to be a virgin when she marries. If she is not, her wedding vow is false. The false vow is not binding on her husband so he can remarry but only to a virgin.
Because of that one loophole, God cannot say that a man cannot remarry. But that is the only time he can divorce and remarry because his first marriage never was genuine.
But if a man marries a virgin and then divorces her, then he commits adultery if he marries again.
If a woman tells him that she is not a virgin and he agrees to marry her, then the marriage vow lasts until death, because no deception is involved.
Polygamy was legal under the law. But the law had no Saviour so you had to live a perfect life. So, a man who marries two or more times and then claims polygamy is no longer under grace but under the law. Then if he makes a single mistake, commits a single sin, then he is doomed because the law has no saviour.
Jesus kept the law perfectly. So He does not need a Saviour as He was sinless.
Under the law, He is allowed polygamy and can thus have as many members of His Bride as he wishes.
Pastor claims to be supreme
Message people claim that brother Branham said
“The Pastor has the supreme authority over the church” and also he stated that
“You cannot follow God unless you follow his servant”?
Neither statement is Scriptural.
Both of these statements are fake news as brother Branham never said that.
65-0725 THE ANOINTED ONES AT THE END TIME
I don't care who he is; any other man, myself or anybody else,
"If he speaks not according to the law and the prophets, there is no Light in him."
See? That's what the Bible said. "Let every man's word be a lie, and Mine be true," regardless who it is.
Everyone, including brother Branham, has to be Scriptural.
58-0209 THE DOOR INSIDE THE DOOR
"I'll listen to what the pastor says." That's good. But if it's contrary to what Jesus said, then it's wrong.
"I'll do what the church says if..." That's good, but if it's contrary to what the Bible says, then it's wrong. You must let Him be the supreme Ruler.
To be different to the Bible is wrong.
55-1006 THE POWER OF GOD
… how the devil has to recognize the supreme authority of Jesus Christ. Not me, he hates me. He don't have to mind me, but he has to mind Who I represent. He has to mind Who sent me here.
Brother Branham is not important. The Scriptures that he revealed are important.
Different pastors disagree with each other.
An American pastor had to resign over a disagreement about the 1963 cloud. A dismal state of affairs.
That means your belief is going to depend on geography. If you live here then this guy is the pastor and you believe what he says. If you live there then that guy is your pastor and you believe something different.
The enemy said to Israel, "Your God is the God of the hills, but our god is the god of the valleys".
They thought that you had to change your belief as you moved around to different places.
I KINGS 20:28 Because the Syrians have said, The LORD is God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys,
When you move and find the new assembly has different beliefs then you are then making the same mistake that the Syrians made. And Syria is still a mess today.
Here brother Branham places the supreme authority on all the members of the local church.
57-0908 HEBREWS CHAPTER FIVE AND SIX.1
But I believe in the supreme authority of the local assembly. Yes. Let each church be its own, choose its pastors, its deacons, its, whatever it is. And then, that way, the man in there has no bishop over him. The Holy Spirit wants to speak something to that church, they don't have to ask anybody about whether they could do this or do that. It's the individual in contact with the Holy Spirit. Show me by the Bible what's greater, in the Bible, than a local elder to a local church? That's right, yes, sir, the sovereignty of the local church, each church in itself.
The supreme authority is the whole local assembly. Not one man.
The greatest authority in an assembly is any of the local elders. There is nobody above a local elder.
Nobody has a greater authority than any of the local elders in the church.
56 04 19 EARNESTLY CONTENDING FOR THE FAITH THAT WAS ONCE DELIVERED UNTO THE SAINTS
… there's only One who has the supreme authority and that's God
Here is a quote about supreme authority that takes preference to any other quote.
And obviously, the Bible (which is God) has supreme authority.
56-0224 JEHOVAH JIREH
He has all the authority, of everything God has the supreme authority.
54-0303 WITNESSES
And the supreme authority that Jesus Christ has given to every believer.
Anything you have desire of, need of, only thing you have to do is ask and receive it. "Whatsoever things you desire, when you pray, believe you receive it, it'll be given unto you," St. Mark 11:24.
Each person has been given supreme authority over their own lives. Nobody can tell you what you have to do.
You can be advised but not forced.
57-1006 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON HEBREWS.3
We believe that the Bible speaks with the supreme authority. Absolutely, it's God's Word.
… For when Light takes its supreme authority, there's no place for darkness.
Only Scripture has the light to banish the darkness of error.
65-0718 SPIRITUAL FOOD IN DUE SEASON
And then when I seen Jesus with the white wig, I said it only vindicates the truth that we know, that He is the Supreme Authority. God witnessed the same thing on Mount Transfiguration, said,
"This is My beloved Son, hear Him, the Supreme Authority!"
Supreme authority is in Jesus and thus we must only say what the Scripture says.
65-1126 WORKS IS FAITH EXPRESSED
That’s supreme authority, he wears a wig. And that showed Him standing there, wigged by Angels' wings, He is the Alpha and Omega.
He is the Supreme Judge, and none other but Him. He is to look upon as Alpha and Omega. And there He was a young Man, no, or more, thirty years old, wearing a wig of white. Showing that He was Supreme, God, "The Father hath committed all judgment unto the hands of the Son."
JOHN 5:22 For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son:
JOHN 12:48 : the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.
A case is judged by what is written in the law of the land.
We can only judge a case by what is written in Scripture and not by what any man says.
65-0718 TRYING TO DO GOD A SERVICE WITHOUT BEING THE WILL OF GOD
You show them right here in the Word of God where it's THUS SAITH THE LORD. "But our pastor..."
I don't care what your pastor says, don't care what I say,
or anybody else says. If it's contrary to God's vindicated Word,
A pastor’s words are irrelevant if they disagree with Scripture.
65-0801 THE GOD OF THIS EVIL AGE
… the peoples that has believed the Message that the Lord Jesus has given me for this hour, might know what's taking place, and placing it in the Scripture.
You get a revelation from the quotes. Then you have to prove that the revelation is written in Scripture. Only then is your revelation true.
DEUTERONOMY 19:15 One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth: at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established.
One witness is not valid to settle an issue. Thus a quote does not prove anything.
As message preachers discovered when they thought America would be destroyed in 1977 and that Donald Trump would lose the 2016 American Presidential election.
There must be at least one other independent witness, the Word of God. Neither of those dates could be proved from Scripture and both turned out to be wrong.
The supreme authority is God and we have His thoughts as the King James Bible, so that is our supreme authority.
You cannot make William Branham as your supreme authority because he has to RESTORE us back to the first church beliefs.
So, our main authority is the New Testament church established by the apostles. We have to agree with them.
Now you want a pastor to be the supreme authority. If he is the supreme authority then he does not need to obey the Scripture as he is above the Bible. He is supreme.
There are at least 100 different versions of the message. Each of those pastors is supreme so you have 100 supreme authorities. That is a contradiction. You can only have one supreme authority.
So, you must choose either the Bible or the pastor.
Look what Jeremiah said about pastors.
JEREMIAH 23:1 Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD.
:2 Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the LORD.
JEREMIAH 10:21 For the pastors are become brutish, and have not sought the LORD: therefore they shall not prosper, and all their flocks shall be scattered.
The pastors do not seek the Lord, the Bible. They spend their time misinterpreting quotes or else preaching the wrong quotes that suit them. (like brother Branham claiming to stand under the Cloud on Sunset Peak on 28 February 1963 when the hunting season only opened on 1 March).
(And believing the Cloud was formed on 8 March when the 7 angels met him).
(And believing that the 7 Thunders have uttered when brother Branham never said that).
So, message people become Bible-illiterate as they chase quotes.
Nowhere does the New Testament tell us to follow a pastor.
I do not see Jeremiah telling me to follow a pastor.
He is warning us how wrong they are.
JEREMIAH 12:10 Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness
Instead of using quotes to understand Scripture they have used the quotes to replace Scripture. That is desolation.
They ended up saying that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 Presidential election just by misinterpreting a quote.
JEREMIAH 22:22 The wind shall eat up all thy pastors,
Unscriptural beliefs are just hot wind. So much hot air.
The churches are supposed to be run by elders. Each preacher is an elder. But some elders are not preachers. But all elders are equal. There is not one elder above another one.
I PETER 2:9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood,
All saved Christians are priests. No priest is above another priest except the High Priest Who is Christ.
So, putting one man, a pastor, above other people opens the door to Nicolaitans, the elevation of a holy man above the church which God hates.
This was the great sin that started in the first church age.
This will be the great sin of the last church age too.
REVELATION 2:6 But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
All elders are equal, whether or not they have a preaching ministry.
If you preach then you have a ministry but that does not mean that you are above anyone. Ministers are servants.
Ministers are below everyone in order to lift people up.
We only have one supreme authority, the Bible.
It sounds strange that God should repent
God is our Kinsman Redeemer. As the Father He is supernatural. As the Son He is human.
God, in the Old Testament, had human attributes as He made man in His own image.
So, every now and then God acts like a Man, to show that He is one of us but always without sin.
But God condemns sin.
So, when the Jews sinned badly, God wanted to destroy them. Which is what He should do with sin. But then God remembered His big Plan and decided to put up with the Jews because only when they would kill Him, then He could turn to the Gentiles.
So, each time He decided not to kill the Jews, God called it repentance which means He changed His thinking.
God's behaviour was not wrong because the Jews deserved wiping out.
The only error would have been the consequences of God's corrective action.
If God wiped out the Jews before they killed Him, then He could never save us Gentiles.
So, because of God's love for the church, He turned away from killing the Jews which is what they richly deserved.
Thus, God shows us that He always thinks in terms of His big Plan, not the local situation of that day.
Thus, God is not too concerned with our local problems. His main priority is His Big Plan which is that we must understand the Bible mysteries at the end time so that we can turn back to the beliefs of the early church.
That is the real mystery of God which is hidden from almost all church-goers including message-believers.
Message believers have been fooled by the propaganda that they must believe a quote rather than Scripture.
The early church was not based on the quotes of brother Branham.
So, building your faith on your interpretations of brother Branham’s quotes will not restore you back to the beliefs of the apostolic fathers.
You will wake up to find that you have been fooled. Part of the foolish virgins.
Biden and the Pope are a Sign of the Times
Kamala Harris wore purple clothes when she became the Vice President of America.
That makes her the second-highest authority in America.
Purple is the colour of Bishops and Archbishops in the Catholic church. They are the second highest authority in the church.
Cardinals, in scarlet, are the highest church authority. That is the equivalent to President Biden.
The Pope is above the church. He is the only dictator in Europe and he makes the rules that the church has to obey.
The Pope is equivalent to the Constitution that everyone has to obey.
Kamala Harris, as a woman, represents the church.
She is a Protestant and wore the Catholic church colours.
This is a sign of the times.
The non-Catholic churches in America are clothed in the beliefs of the Catholic beast as they form the image of the beast which is the confederation of the non-Catholic churches.
Money is the lifeblood of church organizations.
Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, American debt has skyrocketed.
If a natural disaster, like an earthquake sinking Los Angeles, were to hit America their economy would be crippled and their huge debt would leave them unable to cope.
In October 2021 President Biden visited the Pope and gave him a special coin with the American Seal on the one side.
A coin symbolizes money. The American economy.
The Seal represents the authority of the American government.
What Biden symbolically did was to hand over the money and the authority to govern America, to the Pope.
Brother Branham’s prophecy was for the Catholic church to rule America and take her to ruin.
The stage is getting set for this.
If America is crippled financially, only the Catholic church could collect enough money to bail her out. Then the Catholic church would own America.
60-1113 CONDEMNATION BY REPRESENTATION
Then when these women help elect the wrong person, then I seen a great woman rise up in the United States, well-dressed and beautiful, but cruel in heart. She will either guide or lead this nation to ruination. (I've got in parenthesis "perhaps Catholic church.")
63-0317 THE BREACH BETWEEN THE SEVEN CHURCH AGES AND THE SEVEN SEALS
We were founding upon leadership of great men like Washington, Lincoln, but we have moved off of that foundation, and we know that we've got it coming. We know that a atomic bomb's got our name wrote on it. We know that slavery lays ahead of us, no need of fooling yourself.
60-1208 THE THYATIREAN CHURCH AGE
... there'll be a great woman rise up in the United States, she'll be beautifully dressed," and I got in parenthesis: "(perhaps the Catholic church)." See? "That'll take rulership over the power, overpower the others in the United States. She'll be beautiful to look at, but she'll be cruel-hearted as she can be."
61-0312 JEHOVAH JIREH
And I seen a great woman rise up, beautiful to look at, but a cruel wicked heart.
And that will be a church.
And she's on her road now.
Water above the firmament
GENESIS 1:1
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
God created everything before He began specifying the first seven days. Creation means to make out of nothing.
There is no mention of any duration of time in the first verse of the Bible.
You are free to assume any length of time that you feel is appropriate for the creation of the Earth and deep space. It could have taken billions of years to create all the stars as well as our solar system. God was in no rush. After all, He lives in eternity where there is no time. But, applying time to creation events that were done by God who dwells in eternity, is probably a pointless exercise. We can picture eternity as where we escape from time.
God created deep space and the Sun, Moon, and the Earth out of nothing. As there is no mention of time, we do not know how long God took to create the physical Earth. God wanted the Earth to sustain life so he had to cover it in a deep layer of water. Life requires a lot of water. But as long as the Earth was far away from the Sun, it was very cold. Thus the surface layer of water would be frozen and the Earth looked like a snowball, all covered in a deep layer of ice. This was the first ice age.
Then God had to nudge the frozen Earth closer to the Sun and the ice began to melt. The frozen blocks of ice, as they began melting, moved over the surface of the Earth and began shaping the surface of the Earth. God pushed the massive ice blocks and glaciers around until He had shaped and scraped the surface of the Earth to His liking.
Then the ice blocks all melted and the entire Earth was covered in a deep layer of water.
But water evaporates and forms clouds.
So dense clouds formed above the surface of the Earth and these thick cloud banks blotted out the sunlight. Above the clouds, the Sun was shining but below the clouds, all the water was in darkness.
As the clouds began to form they caused darkness below the clouds.
Moses was watching these events in a vision.
As the vision moved over the surface of the Earth, all Moses could see was the flat surface of the water. Water has no shape or form of its own. It always flows to take on the shape of its container. Water on the Earth’s surface cannot form hills and valleys, it just lies flat, as far as Moses could see.
GENESIS 1:2And the earth was without form, and void;
(the surface of the water was just flat and empty, it had no shape whatsoever. Just a huge expanse of emptiness.)
...and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
(Under the clouds it was dark).
(The deep waters from the melted icebergs and glaciers were covered in darkness in the same way that thick clouds caused by evaporating seawater can block the sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface).
GENESIS 1:3
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
The sunlight was already there but it could not penetrate the thick cloud banks to reach the Earth.
When God said “Let there be light”, the spoken Word of God struck the thick cloud banks and broke them up so completely that the water molecules in the clouds were turned back into their basic atoms of oxygen and hydrogen gas. These transparent gases thus formed a high, protective veil around the Earth which allowed the sunlight through.
Thus the sunlight could strike the Earth.
The infrared heat waves from the Sun would disperse through this outer veil of gases and become uniformly distributed by the time it reached the Earth. Thus there was a uniform temperature around the Earth and no rain would form. Rain forms when the hot air and cold air meet. For example, on a cold day, your hot breath hits the cold windscreen of your car and the water vapour condenses and forms a foggy layer on the windscreen.
The comet Linear which broke apart near the Sun in AD 2000 yielded a cloud of hydrogen gas and oxygen gas formed by the breaking up or dissociation of about 3,3 million tonnes of water. This indicates that water can easily break up into its two component gases in space.
GENESIS 1:6
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
The first necessity for life is to have light.
Then living things need an atmosphere to breathe.
So God then filled the space between the waters of the sea down below that covered the Earth and the high-up waters of the clouds that He had broken up into water's component gases of hydrogen and oxygen.
[God would join these high-up gases together to re-form water in Noah’s day, and then cause all this water to rain down on the Earth. Thus the protective veil of gases rained down as water. With no protective veil above the Earth, the harsh components of the sunlight, like ultraviolet, struck the Earth and people began to die at a younger age after the Flood.]
Something similar concerning water breaking up into hydrogen and oxygen has been observed in 2016 AD. Europa, a moon of the planet Jupiter, is covered in ice. The space probe Galileo went to Jupiter, arriving there in 1995, and later discovered evidence of saltwater below the icy surface of Europa, indicating a possible ocean below the icy surface. In 2016 the space telescope Hubble produced photographs of intermittent plumes of oxygen and hydrogen that are ejected upwards from the surface of Europa and go hundreds of kilometers into space. Because Hubble could detect the spectra of hydrogen gas and oxygen gas, scientists believed that the plumes must be water. They now want to fly a space probe through a plume to prove that it is water. In the vacuum of space, they believe that the ultraviolet rays of the sun break up the water molecules into their components of hydrogen gas and oxygen gas. This is evidence that we have detected from space that is similar in some ways to what God did at the beginning when He took water high above the atmosphere and then separated the water molecules into hydrogen gas and oxygen gas in order to form a high-up, transparent veil of protective gases around the earth.
In addition, Saturn's sixth-largest moon Enceladus is covered in clean ice and its orbital path around Saturn has a hollow ring (called a torus) that is mostly made from neutral hydrogen gas and oxygen gas. These gases thus form a high altitude layer that surrounds the moon Enceladus.
Thus if the earth started as a frozen snowball, then like the moons Enceladus and Europa that are still snowballs, it would not be surprising to find the components of water, the gases hydrogen, and oxygen, high up above the Earth's surface, at the beginning.
But the atmosphere on earth had to have a critical combination of gases in order to support land life (us humans and other animals). This space between the upper waters (that were then the gases hydrogen and oxygen) and the lower seas is called the atmosphere and it had to be filled with an exact ratio of gases: 21 % of active oxygen gas to boost the combustion of food in our body cells as we breathe. This burning keeps us warm as our body temperature is about 37◦C. The atmosphere needs 78% of almost inert nitrogen gas to keep everything stable so that the oxygen does not boost burning fires too much which would cause the fires to burn out of control. The Apollo 1 spacecraft in 1967 had 100% oxygen under pressure and an accidental spark caused such a fierce flame that all three astronauts were tragically killed before anyone could open the capsule door to rescue them.
GENESIS 1:7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
An atmosphere of breathable gases was called the firmament.
The percentage of gases in the air needs to be very precise. If there is less than 16% oxygen then fires will not burn and the food will not burn in our cells to give us energy and keep us warm. If the oxygen is more than 21% then fires become difficult to control.