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Let no one doubt the truth of the resurrection. If anyone does not believe, then let him think how many [creatures God] created out of nothing, and take this as proof of the truth of the resurrection: after all, what has already happened is much more amazing and represents an incomprehensible miracle. Look: God took the earth, mixed it and formed man - an earth that did not exist before. How did the earth become man? How is it brought into existence from non-existence? How did everything come from it: countless genera of animals, seeds, plants, while there were no birth diseases, no rain fell, there was no agriculture, no oxen, no plow, and nothing else that would contribute to their appearance? This is why God created in the beginning from inanimate and senseless matter so many kinds of plants and dumb animals, so that he could then instill in you the truth of the resurrection. Creation is more incomprehensible than resurrection; It is not the same thing to light a candle that has gone out or to produce a fire that never existed; It is not the same thing to restore a destroyed house or to create one that did not exist at all. Here there is, at least, a ready-made substance, but there was no substance there. That’s why He made the most difficult things happen in advance, so that you would allow the easiest things to happen—the most difficult things, I say, not for God, but for our imagination. Nothing is difficult for God, but just as a painter who painted one picture can easily paint many, so God can create countless worlds even more easily; or better, just as it is easy for you to imagine a city and many worlds, so it is easy for God to create them, or even much easier. You, at least, spend some time on the idea, but God doesn’t even that, but as much as stones are heavier than the lightest things, or, better, our mind, so much is our mind inferior in speed to the creative power of God. Are you surprised at His power on earth? Think again, how did the sky come into being, which did not exist before, like the countless stars, like the sun, like the moon, which all did not exist before? Also, tell me, how after creation they are supported and on what? What foundation do they have, as well as the earth? What's behind the earth? What is behind the earth again? Do you see how bewildered your mental gaze falls, how quickly you do not resort to faith and the incomprehensible power of the Creator? If you want to explain this by human deeds, then you can in this way give some inspiration to your mind. What kind of human deeds would you say? Do you not see how potters make a vessel from a mixed and formless substance, how miners extract gold, iron and copper from metal-bearing earth, how glass makers turn sand into a solid and transparent body? Shall we speak of the rawhide workers and the dyers of purple garments, how they give them one color instead of another? Should we talk about our birth? Is it not a small seed, which at first has no form or shape, that is communicated into the womb that receives it? How does a living being appear? What about wheat? Is it not bare grain that is thrown into the ground? Doesn't it rot when sown? Where does the ear, stems and everything else come from? How is it that a small fig seed, falling to the ground, often produces roots, branches and fruit? Do you allow all this and do not question it, but do you demand from God an account only of how he transforms our body? Can this be forgiven (12)? You might be interested in: