into being, when it tells us that God created them in the beginning.

We read next, "And the earth was without form and void." We are not told in
the verse which follows anything more about the "heaven"; that means the
vast universe of which our earth is but a tiny part; but of the earth we
read two things which are very surprising, when we think of what it is like
now:

"Without form and void"--what does that mean?

After I had explained to the elder children that these words, which are
used to describe the earth, mean that it was waste and desolate and without
order, we looked for a verse in the New Testament which tells us that "God
is not the author of confusion" (1 Cor. xiv. 33); and then we spoke about
how we can be quite sure that the earth, which is part of God's creation,
was not in disorder, not a waste and desolate place in the beginning; and
we found in the Old Testament this other verse:

"For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God Himself that formed
the earth and made it; He hath established it, He created it not in vain,
He formed it to be inhabited; I am the Lord; and there is none else"
(Isaiah xlv. 18).

The reason why we found this verse was because I wanted to show Sharley and
Chris and Ernest that there the same word is used about the earth as in the
verse in Genesis of which we had just been speaking. The words "in vain"
are the same which were there translated "without form" by the people who
turned the Hebrew, in which most of the Old Testament was first written,
into English, that we might be able to read it. So you see how very
important words are, and learn that when God tells us in one part of His