The Unquenchable Lamp of the Covenant. Abraham Park

is not by the efforts of this old man alone that these books were published. It was made possible by the wonderful work of God’s hands and the help of many people around me that my age-worn manuscripts could be put into book format and testify of God’s Word.

      I thank my beloved fellow pastors, elders, and all the members of the congregation for their prayers without which I would not have been able to publish my first book, The Genesis Genealogies; my second book, The Covenant of the Torch; and now, The Unquenchable Lamp of the Covenant. Moreover, I earnestly thank President Taek-Joong Kim of Samyoung Printing and his staff and the staff of Huisun Books, giving all the glory to God.

      I sincerely hope and pray that all the godly servants of God who read this book and all the churches around the world that have been purchased with the cost of Jesus Christ’s blood will come to understand God’s redemptive administration through the genealogy of Jesus Christ, share the same inspiration in God’s word, and respond to His call with “Amen.”

       Abraham Park March 7, 2009 Servant of Jesus Christ on the pilgrim’s path to heaven

      PART ONE

      God Who Is Greater Than All

      CHAPTER 1

      God Who Is Greater than All

      We often say that God is great and mighty. The Bible also refers to God as the “great God” or “the LORD who is great” (Ezra 5:8; Neh 4:14; Ps 95:3; Dan 2:45; Titus 2:13).

      How great is our God? To the unbelieving Jews, Jesus described God as “My Father, who is…greater than all” (John 10:29).

      The word all used in this verse includes the universe and all things in it—both seen and unseen. In other words, it includes all tangible and intangible, material and immaterial things (Neh 9:6; Col 1:16–17; Acts 14:15; 17:24–25; Rev 5:13, 10:6).

      God created all things through His mighty Word (Gen 1:7, 15, 24, 30; Ps 33:6–9; Heb 11:3); He created out of nothing (Gen 1:1); He created every creation instantaneously (Gen 1:3, 11–12, 16, 21, 25; 2:7, 19, 22); and He created for six days (Gen 1:3–31). The God who created this immense universe is too great to be compared with anything since nothing is greater than God. He is truly the “great God” (Ps 48:1; 96:4–5; 135:5; 145:3; 147:5). David confessed, “For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; He also is to be feared above all gods” (1 Chr 16:25). The Hebrew word for great in this verse is , which means “great in magnitude and extent” or “big.” In this passage, this word conveys the greatness that cannot be compared with anything or fathomed by the human mind. This God, who is greater than all, is so great that neither the vast land nor the infinite universe can serve as His dwelling place (1 Kgs 8:27).

      1. The Most High Ruler, the Maker of All

      The great and awesome God that we serve and believe in is our Father who is greater than all (John 10:29). He is the head of all (1 Chr 29:11); the Father of all (Eph 4:6); and the Most High Ruler (Gen 1:1; 14:19, 22; Exod 20:11; 2 Chr 2:12; Neh 9:6; Ps 102:25; 124:8; 134:3; 136:6; 146:6; Matt 11:25; Acts 4:24; 17:24).

      The word all refers to all things, inclusive of all kinds of phenomena and everything that exists in the entire universe. In a narrower sense, the expression all things may refer to all things that are physically visible. However, the word comprehensively embraces everything in heaven and on earth. Thus, the word all includes the entire human race and all that exists within God’s special grace and mercy (Ps 145:9).

      The title Lord or Most High describes the sovereign ruler who governs and administers through His providence. The title Ruler of all reveals the absolute inimitability of God who is the Lord of creation, the sovereign ruler who gives breath and life to all creatures and reigns over all creation (Ps 103:19).

      2. The Vast Universe

      The universe that the Most High Ruler created is wondrous and unfathomable. We cannot help but admire its vastness and boundlessness. Even if we combine the strength of the human eye and the most powerful telescope to look at the farthest outreaches, we will still see only a small part of its vast space. We can get a little glimpse of the wonders of God’s greatness and love simply by examining the size of our solar system, though it is only a fraction of the entire universe.

      (1) The sizes of the earth, sun, moon, and stars

      The earth is the third planet from the sun in our solar system. It is about 6,400 km (3,977 mi) in radius, 40,000 km (24,855 mi) in circumference, 514.5 million km2 (198 million mi2) in surface area, 1.0975 trillion km3 (263 billion mi3) in volume, and 6.6 sextillion tons (6×1024 kg) in mass.

      The sun, which appears the largest to the naked eye, is about 700,000 km (435,000 mi) in radius, which is more than 100 times the size and about 330,000 times the mass of the earth. Furthermore, the sun’s volume is about 1.3 million times that of the earth. This means that about 1.3 million earth-size planets can fit inside the sun. Most of the earth’s energy comes from the sun, whose external temperature is about 6,000˚C (11,000˚F) and internal temperature is about 15 million˚C (27 million˚F). Astronomers estimate that this energy is comparable to about 40 million explosions of one-megaton atomic bomb in one second.

      The moon, which lights up the night sky, is about one-fourth the size of the earth. It has a radius of 1,738 km (1,080 mi), and is located about 380,000 km (236,121 mi) from the earth. The moon’s external temperature rises to an average of 107˚C (224.6˚F) during the day and falls to a bitter –153˚C (–243˚F) at night. Because the moon rotates about its axis in about the same amount of time it takes to orbit the earth (synchronous rotation), we only see one side of the moon. To this day, no one, except for those who have explored the moon, has ever seen the far side of the moon.

      In the universe, there are countless numbers of stars that are hundreds of times larger than the sun. About 6,000 stars are visible to the naked eye, and about 124 million are visible through the 100-inch telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory, which was once the largest telescope in the early 1900s. However, there are too many stars that still cannot be observed with our eyes or technology.

      The galactic system that can be seen from the earth through the naked eye is known as our galaxy. Our galaxy is made up of about 200 billion stars, including the sun, and it is classified as a barred spiral galaxy. The entire galaxy is roughly 100,000 light years across in diameter and about 50,000 light years thick.

      Since it is reported that there are about 100 billion galaxies that are like ours in the universe, there must be at least about 2 x 1022 stars (200 billion stars x 100 billion galaxies). Albert Einstein estimated that the actual size of the universe is probably 10 times the size that we can identify. He also estimated that there are probably about 1025 stars in the whole universe, which would take us about 1017 (100 quadrillion) years to count if we were to count 20 stars per second. God said to Abraham, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them” (Gen 15:5), and to Jeremiah, “As the host of heaven cannot be counted” (Jer 33:22). Genesis 1:16 states that God made all the stars, and we cannot help but stand in awe before the immensity of God’s creation.

      Furthermore, not one of these innumerable stars is like another. Each is different in size, color, and brightness. Only the brightest stars (Class 1) have proper names, while most others are classified with letters of the alphabet. The stars that are not classified with a name or an alphabet are numerically labeled. Still, most stars are not named. However great the number of the stars may be,