Creation Story- Lesson #1

Reading

1 In the beginning of God’s preparing the heavens and the earth — 2 the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness [is] on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters, 3 and God saith, `Let light be;’ and light is. 4 And God seeth the light that [it is] good, and God separateth between the light and the darkness, 5 and God calleth to the light `Day,’ and to the darkness He hath called `Night;’ and there is an evening, and there is a morning — day one.

6 And God saith, `Let an expanse be in the midst of the waters, and let it be separating between waters and waters.’ 7 And God maketh the expanse, and it separateth between the waters which [are] under the expanse, and the waters which [are] above the expanse: and it is so. 8 And God calleth to the expanse `Heavens;’ and there is an evening, and there is a morning — day second.

9 And God saith, `Let the waters under the heavens be collected unto one place, and let the dry land be seen:’ and it is so. 10 And God calleth to the dry land `Earth,’ and to the collection of the waters He hath called `Seas;’ and God seeth that [it is] good. (Creation of Man)11 And God saith, `Let the earth yield tender grass, herb sowing seed, fruit-tree (whose seed [is] in itself) making fruit after its kind, on the earth:’ and it is so. 12 And the earth bringeth forth tender grass, herb sowing seed after its kind, and tree making fruit (whose seed [is] in itself) after its kind; and God seeth that [it is] good; 13 and there is an evening, and there is a morning — day third.

14 And God saith, `Let luminaries be in the expanse of the heavens, to make a separation between the day and the night, then they have been for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years,15 and they have been for luminaries in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth:’ and it is so. 16 And God maketh the two great luminaries, the great luminary for the rule of the day, and the small luminary — and the stars — for the rule of the night; 17 and God giveth them in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth, 18 and to rule over day and over night, and to make a separation between the light and the darkness; and God seeth that [it is] good; 19 and there is an evening, and there is a morning — day fourth.

20 And God saith, `Let the waters teem with the teeming living creature, and fowl let fly on the earth on the face of the expanse of the heavens.’ 21 And God prepareth the great monsters, and every living creature that is creeping, which the waters have teemed with, after their kind, and every fowl with wing, after its kind, and God seeth that [it is] good. 22 And God blesseth them, saying, `Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and the fowl let multiply in the earth:’ 23 and there is an evening, and there is a morning — day fifth.

24 And God saith, `Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind:’ and it is so. 25 And God maketh the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, and God seeth that [it is] good.

26 And God saith, `Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, and let them rule over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the heavens, and over cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that is creeping on the earth.’ 27 And God prepareth the man in His image; in the image of God He prepared him, a male and a female He prepared them.

28 And God blesseth them, and God saith to them, `Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the heavens, and over every living thing that is creeping upon the earth.’

29 And God saith, `Lo, I have given to you every herb sowing seed, which [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which [is] the fruit of a tree sowing seed, to you it is for food; 30 and to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the heavens, and to every creeping thing on the earth, in which [is] breath of life, every green herb [is] for food:’ and it is so. 31 And God seeth all that He hath done, and lo, very good; and there is an evening, and there is a morning — day the sixth.

The Message

More than one book can be written about creation, as there are various competing interests between and within science and Christianity. However, what if instead of looking at it as science disproving Christianity, or scientific theories within science to find the correct theory, or science within Christianity to give meaning to scripture, we look to see how science reveals God? It is a quicker journey, I assure you, than reading several books. As Puritans, we take the Bible as the truth, but that also requires us to look realistically at what is being said. So, let’s delve.

Currently, science holds fast to the theory of the “Big Bang.” In essence, an instantaneous explosion of material so condensed that it reached critical mass and blew the universe into existence. Through the aging of the universe, more order brought about the formation of planets as gravity and other forces acted upon the solar system. The phases of the big bang to the present is illustrated on the website, UniverseToday.com, where the age of the earth is estimated to be over 13.8 billion years old.

According to the theory, visual light did not exist until the phase where Neutral Hydrogen Forms, at or around 380,000 years after the bang. The scripture describes God as “hovering” or according to Young’s Literal Translation (YLT), “fluttering” over the face of the waters and the deep void. And then God created light and that was called day and the darkness he called night. What people assume here are two things. First, they assume that there was this perfect round sphere of water hurling through space and God hovered over it while it was in its orbit around the sun; thus the second assumption, that the earth was also spinning and when your side of the earth was in the sunlight it was day and when it was not, it was night. It is true that it says the evening and then the morning, the first day. I will talk more about that soon. From the figure above, the science of the Big Bang Theory says, that this matter would not have coalesced until after 380,000 years, when the first visible light would have been able to be seen by the human eye. And that, the progression thereafter was the formation of the universe, the solar systems, and all the luminaries of the night.

If God created light and nothing was rotating, when you hovered to the darkness that would be night and if you hovered over the side with light, that would be day. More realistically, we know that there is a darkside on any planet at any one time. Let’s say we were on a planet that was formed but not yet rotating. If I took a space buggy for a spin and I could drive from the light side to the darkside, did I go from day to night like the 24 hour cycle we have here on earth? No, absolutely not! Just because God called the light, day, and the darkness He called night does not mean the earth was rotating. To be fair, the Bible does say, the first day, the second day, and so on. But, what if I told you that the spin of the earth, as we know it, may not have happened until the fourth day as described in Genesis 1:14-19? That was the day that God put the solar system in the heavens to give us two separate lights, one of the “day” and the one of the “night”, as a separation between day and night, and for definition of days and years!

What is a Day?

According to NASA, a solar day is different on each and every planet. To limit God, as the creator of the universe, to what a day is on the earth does not give Him the greater authority as the architect of all. Then there is also the issue of, if Moses did not have a word to describe what God had revealed to Him, as a day, except the word “day” as He knew it. Remember He called the light, “day” and the darkness He called, “night.” There is no distinction at that point of what a “day” is on earth by rotation versus being in the light.

But let’s hypothetically illustrate this from a humanistic perspective to show the divine-centered truth. Imagine if you lived on Mercury, your earthly circadian rhythm would be totally off with a 58.7 of our days on earth for one day there or even worse, 243 days for one day or Venus!

Interesting enough, it seems that the closer the planet is to the sun, the slower it rotates. It seems as if the proximity to the sun, density, and mass may influence time. Unfortunately, the earth’s rotation is slowing!

The last thing to say about what a day is, is to read 2 Peter 3:8, “And this one thing let not be unobserved by you, beloved, that one day with the Lord [is] as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day;” Meaning, that whether literal or metaphorical, God is not bound to the time as we see time. Using radiometric dating of rocks, a scientific procedure developed by humans, estimates the earth to be 4.54 billion years old with the oldest fossils being 3.7 billion years old. The biblical dating methods estimates the earth to be around 6000 years old. The gap between these two is “faith.” Science is always improving by disproving or validation. There have been many errors as age-dating has developed over time. In Christianity, we can also evaluate the Hebrew, the Biblical revelation of the nature of God, and conclude that the Bible says exactly as it happened. However human-centered application of terms may be different than the divine-centered reality and atheistic dogma that uses what it says to cause apostasy in believers need not be taken as the more sound of doctrines. We believe because we know God and we also know that we are in an unique place in the solar system that proves God more than disproves God.

The “Goldilocks” Zone

I also refer to people to the habitable zone where life on a planet has the ability to exist. In our solar system, Mars, Venus, and earth are all in this zone, called the Goldilocks zone. Except for earth, neither can support life. I do find it interesting that the Torah was written over 2300 to 3250 years before science identified water as the limiter for life. And, that is what God who was fluttering or hovering over, described over 2300 to 3250 years ago and that he separated the waters from the waters. I once heard a scientist calculated the odds of being in the Goldilocks zone while evolving from a single cell organism to complex beings. If quarters were zeros, it is one in one with the number of zeros, so numerous that if quarters where lined up edge to edge as zeros would reach half way to the sun from the earth!

Apologetics

When asked if I believe if the Biblical account of creation is true, I answer emphatically, “Yes!” When God spoke to Moses and the Torah was written, I can take literally what Moses wrote. However, I can’t apply how the universe is now to what it was then. But, I can say three things of the scriptures however, that do not contradict this literal interpretation:

  1. A day is defined by God not by man. God created the whole universe, and in that universe a “day” or one complete rotation of daylight and darkness is different for each planet and object that God created in that universe. The speed of the rotation of the earth is slowing while the speed of Mars is increasing. If I were on an asteroid that rotated into darkness and light once every ten seconds and called each rotation a day, and I had no comprehension of earth’s rotation period, I would have 360 days in one earth hour. Without the reference of being an earthling, that is what I would have to call a day, every ten seconds.
  2. On day four, God created the lesser lights for the night in order to “be in the expanse of the heavens, to make a separation between the day and the night, then they have been for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years,” This is when God set in motion the rotation of the earth for “days” and years. Why? Because on “day” one, when he created light, he called the light, day and the darkness he called night, separating them (darkness and the light) but a separation between days (as we know days now) then for days and years occurred here. This is when the term “day”, as we know it, was defined and when He actually distinguished the separation in the rotation and the tilting of the earth for the seasons as well.
  3. The Hebrew term for day is יֹ֥ום (yo·vm), which is used for the creation of light and for the rotation period of the earth. Because Moses wrote these books well after the creation, an anachronism may have been used because what existed was not really being a term for a “period” of time like the period of time to create. But what they did have was a description of the separation of light and darkness (without any rotation at all) as day and night. And then when it did start to rotate, a period of time that your part of the planet was in the sun and also in the darkness began to be called one day. The fact that the moon cycle is 29.5 days and one complete rotation of the earth is a day, the division of time for the Hebrews then for a month evenly distributed that period of time into seven days for each week. God made holy, one day each week along this cycle, which can only occur “for days and years” as mentioned in Genesis 1: 14.

The fact is, non-believers use the 7-day creation story to cause doubt in the hearts of believers. But the fact of the matter, each is faith. The person who tries to use science to discredit faith of a believer wants you to believe that science is all truth, or the faith of science. However, we know that God is all truth. I can say, literally God created the earth and everything on it in 7-days. The length of a day is what is open for interpretation. Science proves that planets each have their own solar day with distinct periods that are different than the earth. I would be wary of concepts of the science of man, as clay that has no form is obviously older than the clay that has been finished into an article by the heat of the kiln.

I also do not hold that the creation of the earth validates the faith of my salvation in Christ. I am not using creation scientist apologetics as Jesus never said that you have to profess the Torah to be saved and have eternal life with him in heaven. But with that said, when asked, “do you really believe the earth was created in 7-days,” I answer, “Yes, but God’s definition of a day at the beginning of the universe is a mystery which I cannot wait to ask God about when I am in heaven. All I know, is that when He did set in motion the universe, that we have days that become weeks and weeks that become months, and months that become years, and some years have leap years. And that to give us the account over days is to ensure we keep holy the Sabbath, every week to honor God. And that makes perfect sense to me. Let us read Job 38.”

Job 38

Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said:

“Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?  Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.  Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?

On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone–while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?

“Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, `This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’?

“Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it? The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its features stand out like those of a garment.

The wicked are denied their light, and their upraised arm is broken. “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death?

Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this. “What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings? Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years!

“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle? What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no man lives, a desert with no one in it, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass? Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew? From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens when the waters become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen?

“Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades? Can you loose the cords of Orion? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons  or lead out the Bear with its cubs? Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up [God’s ] dominion over the earth? “Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water? Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, `Here we are’?

Who endowed the heart with wisdom or gave understanding to the mind? Who has the wisdom to count the clouds? Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens when the dust becomes hard and the clods of earth stick together? “Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket? Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?

Yes we can take the Bible literally! The earth’s abundant and diverse of flora and fauna can only point to God as the creator!