rainless. To provide for the coming plant life, Jehovah God duly provided an irrigation system, not by rain but by a vapor for all the earth, aside from such rivers as Genesis 2:10-14 indicates there were. So when God caused vegetation to cover the dry land, that did not alter the general conditions with reference to the great water canopy revolving away out in space far above the earth.

Rain was not necessary to cause the vegetation to grow or to keep growing, any more than man was needed to cultivate the earth and make the vegetation grow or keep growing. Genesis 2:5 does not say that the vegetation could not grow because God had not made it rain and had not created man to cultivate the ground. God started off the vegetation without rain and without man, because God produced the necessary moisture that made rain and man unnecessary. Hence the very next Ge 2 verse (6) starts off with the conjunction “But,” and goes on to say that a vapor regularly went up from the earth and irrigated the entire surface of the ground all around the globe. This, of course, was under the great water canopy far out in space that was to fall much later on in Noah’s day and be followed by rains and the rainbow. How dense the rising vapor or mist was we are not informed, but it provided more than a mere dew. It was still enough to water the surface of the ground inside and outside the garden of Eden when man was created and put there toward the close of the sixth creative day; and the vapor did not make the general atmosphere uncomfortable for man.

So this vapor aside from what rivers there were was able to keep the plants in a continually flourishing condition until the flood and to do so without rain. The issue of The Watchtower of September 15, 1954, pointed out, on page 573, paragraph 38, how even a mere dew was more potent in reviving certain plants than when the ground itself was watered and how from dew such plants were able to store up water around their roots even to the weight of the plant or more. How much more would this be true from the third creative day forward in the case of a vapor that regularly ascended over all the earth and which indicated that the earth’s surface held moisture. Instead of the water’s coming down from clouds in the sky to irrigate the earth, God’s Word says the vapor went up, and this state of affairs continued on until after sinner Adam was driven out of the garden of Eden to cultivate the ground as a farmer, yes, even until the flood of Noah’s day and the first rainbow.

The next verse, Genesis 2:7, skips all the in-between history of Genesis 1:14-25 concerning the breaking through of light upon the earth’s surface and the producing of creature life in the sea, bird life in the air and the subhuman creature life on earth. It goes into detail about the creation of man, more so than Genesis 1:27 does. But with man’s creation and being put in the garden of Eden it is not to be reasoned from Genesis 2:5 that now it began to rain upon the earth and man began working like a farmer, plowing the ground and scattering seed and harvesting the yield. His cultivating of the earth like that came after he was run out of the garden of Eden, and Cain imitated Adam and “became a cultivator of the ground.” (Gen. 4:1-3, NW) Thus man and rain did not precede God’s creation of the vegetation on earth, and Genesis 1:9-13 and Genesis 2:5, 6 are found to be in agreement.

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There are many who claim to be the ministers of God who do not serve as right kind of ministers. How could they be preaching philosophy and psychology rather than the good news of God’s kingdom! Jehovah’s witnesses are interested in the Kingdom above all else and strive to advance the work of the Kingdom in every possible way. They know ‘this good news of the Kingdom must and will be preached in all the inhabited earth for the purpose of a witness’ and delight to prove themselves to be real