The Creation
2023-11-06
The Creation narrative tells us how everything began: Time, space, and matter. Heaven, earth, sea, sky, land, heavenly bodies, sea creatures, birds, animals, and people. Most importantly, it tells us much about God, and that God created all those things. Let us look at each of the days of creation, what they tell us about God and His creation, and also what they do not tell us.
In the Beginning
The most significant information is found in these first verses. The phrase “In the beginning God” implies many things. In Everlasting Life, Chapter 1, I state some of these implications. To summarize from there, we know that God created all things, creation had a beginning, and that God existed before the beginning. God is eternal; He always was and always will be. God did not have a beginning. “Blessed be the LORD God of Israel from everlasting, and to everlasting. Amen, and Amen” (Psalm 41:13). Creation is finite; it has a beginning. This phrase “In the beginning” means the beginning of everything; this implies the creation of time.
Moreover, we see some other implications. God is self-sufficient because He existed before anything in creation. He is all powerful and is a super-intellect. He created all things without any prior model and without any tools or assistance, and He had the power to create everything. If you consider the complexity and immensity of the universe, you know that He who created it had the power and a mind superior to anything found in the universe.
God is the King of this world. He has authority over and ownership of the universe. Because He made it for His purpose, only He can say what its purpose is, and He shall use it the way that He wants.
God is alive. Because He brought forth life, He also must be a conscious living Being who acts purposefully. As a living, conscious Being who created all things, He witnessed all the process of creation, and He alone can tell us how it was done, because He was there.
The First Day (Genesis 1:1-5)
The first verse reads, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). The phrase “the heaven and the earth” means He created everything from the most remote and highest point away, heaven, and the nearest place to us, earth, and everything in between. He created both immensity and minutia, including the most subtle details of the creation.
The first part of creation was dark and chaotic, but the Spirit of God began to bring it into order. From there, we see that specific parts of creation were spoken by God: “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). He speaks and even inanimate objects obey. Even things that do not exist begin to exist at His command.
When He created the light, God called it good. This is the first time God called something good in His creation. Light exposes what cannot be seen in the darkness.
God made a distinction between light and darkness. That which was good was separated from the rest. Here we see a subtlety: God decides what is good and that which is not. Morality is defined by Him. He tells us what is right and what is wrong; we do not just decide for ourselves. That which is good should be separated from the ordinary; there is division. This reflects God’s character, where He is good and holy and just, and that which is not these things do not stand before Him.
Now this is only a picture of what is to come. Nothing in what God created was sinful, evil, or cursed. If He created it, it is good, because God is good and can only create good things. However, something will come to change that.
He divided light from the darkness, with light being called Day and darkness being called Night. “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1:5).
What is significant here is that light, day, darkness, and night are all created, ordained, and defined without any sun or moon. Light and day are connected, while darkness and night are connected. While literal light was created, the concepts were also created here. They were created here because this first day will set the pace for every day since: evening, then morning, and the day is complete. Darkness, light, and the day is complete, as it is written here, “And the evening and the morning were the first day.”
Here, with day and night defined and the usage of evening and morning, this first day would be a real day as far as length is concerned. This is not millions and billions of years. Nobody reading this would ever conceive this is speaking of some endless epoch. God goes out of His way to say everything that was created so far was created in a single day. God is all powerful; He does not need ages and eons to create something. He spoke for the light to shine, and it was immediately there.
One may ask, first day of what? It was the first day ever. There were no former days or epochs, as some like to insert between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. The Bible says, “In the beginning,” and then it says, “the first day.” From the beginning until the end of the first day was a single day. The only way to get more than a single 24-hour time period out of this is to take our cultural assumptions and modern humanist mythology and read it into the text.
The Second Day (Genesis 1:6-8)
At this point, the world is a bunch of water everywhere. God continued His creation in preparation for all His creatures, which includes creatures that dwell in the sea and creatures that do not. Therefore, God created an expanse that separated the water. There was water below and above this expanse, which He called heaven.
Here is another case of God dividing, just as He did with the light and darkness. He was making room for the life He would create later in the creation week.
As with the light, God gave the command, and the expanse appeared between the waters. He spoke, and the creation “listened.”
Again, this happened in a 24-hour period. Evening, morning, and the numbering demand that this is a 24-hour period.
The Third Day (Genesis 1:9-13)
At this stage, there was an expanse between waters and waters. God then gathered the water under the heaven to make for dry land, called Earth. The gathered waters were Seas. He declared this good, just as He did the light.
Then God created grass, herbs, and fruit trees. These plants were in place for when He would create land and air animals. This is important because it shows us more about God’s nature. He was preparing the world so that living creatures would be able to survive. God takes care of His creation.
Consider also that these plants yield seed and produce after their kinds. An orange tree will not produce apples, but oranges. They produce after their kinds. These plants were good.
The refrain continues. There was an evening, there was a morning, the third day. Another literal day went by.
The Fourth Day (Genesis 1:14-19)
Previously, God created light; on this fourth day, He created specific lights: the sun and the moon. These further divide day from night, like the first day. They are also “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years” (Genesis 1:14). Each sun appearance marks a day. The moon cycle is about a month. These sorts of things are included here. They are there for us to tell time.
These give light to the earth. This is further caretaking for God’s creation. The plants need light to grow, and God’s creatures will need to be able to see. The purpose of these lights is specifically said to be for the earth: “...to give light upon the earth” (Genesis 1:15, 17). Note that these were designed with a specific purpose in mind. The earth needed light, so the sun and the moon were given for that purpose.
God saw that these were good. And a fourth literal day of creation was completed.
The Fifth Day (Genesis 1:20-23)
God began creating animals on this day, including marine life and birds. The waters were filled with fish and great whales. The bird filled the air “after his kind.” Once again, the word “kind” shows up. The parakeet does not give birth to the vulture, but other parakeets. He saw these water and air creatures as good.
Moreover, in the animal kingdom, he says more than that they are just good. He blessed them. He commanded them and enabled them to multiply to the nth degree. He not only cares for His creatures, but He also enables them to thrive. He blesses so that His blessing will spread throughout the entire world.
Indeed, this fifth day was another literal day.
The Sixth Day (Genesis 1:24-31)
God created land animals on this new day. Again, they are all after their kinds. The dog does not turn into the orangutan. And no matter what absurdity people tell you, dinosaurs do not turn into birds.
Dinosaurs were created on this day. They were land animals. They were not millions of years before humans; we see here they were created the same day as humans.
God declared all these land animals good.
Then God created human beings. These were differentiated from animals. The Word starts a new section after saying the animals were good. The principal difference is that human beings were made “in our image, after our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26). The man is like God in many ways in that we are rational, volitional, emotional creatures above the animals.
As God is the ruler of all, He delegated some of His authority to man to “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:26). The world exists for God’s pleasure, and people who are in the image of God are to rule it as a stewardship from God.
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:4-9)
These human beings were created directly by God. We did not come from a common ancestor with apes and monkeys; there is a distinction between animals and people. People were created in the image of God and apes and monkeys were not. People have dominion over apes in the Scriptures. The only time apes show up in the Bible is when they are captured and brought to Solomon’s kingdom: “For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks” (1 Kings 10:22).
God blessed human beings to multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. He empowered humans to carry out His delegated responsibility to rule over the world, which would partially be fulfilled by their multiplying.
Moreover, we see that the plants of the land were given to birds, land animals, and human beings for food. There is no provision for eating flesh here. There was no killing or dying. Plants were given to feed animals and people. The people and every animal were all herbivores, including every lion and tyrannosaurus rex.
When God had completed the work, unlike the previous six times, He called it very good. He finished everything He had made, including the people made after His likeness.
Our refrain appears a final time: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day” (Genesis 1:31). All this happened in six days; God does not need millions and billions of years to make the world. This exhibits God’s power.
This day is expanded upon in the next section. A discussion about humankind in Eden is here.
The Seventh Day (Genesis 2:1-3)
God had finished His creative work in six days. He set aside a seventh day to rest from His work. Being God, He was not tired. He rested from His work because there was no more work to be done. This seventh day was blessed and set apart for God’s glory since His perfect work was complete.
Our seven-day week came from seven days of creation. The number seven, as a result, is the number of completion throughout the Bible.
There is no evening and morning and seventh day listed like the previous six days. There is no reason that long days can be inserted here because the narrative continues next by reviewing the creation of humankind. The text does not warrant additional time anywhere here.
Reviewing the Major Themes
We see God’s character in this narrative is good. He is good and He declared His creation good seven times. He is the standard of goodness. We see His goodness as He prepared the planet to be lush with plants for His animals and His people. He didn’t leave His creatures without provision.
God is all powerful. The phrase “God said” appears 10 times in the passage. He created everything by His Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). He used His power to give His creatures all that they needed.
God blessed His creation three times. The marine animals and the birds, the human beings, and the seventh day were all blessed. He empowered and enabled the creatures to do their God-given tasks.
As you read this passage, it does not read like the poetic books of the Bible. You do not see metaphor or figurative language. It is a narrative that explains how a very good God created a very good universe. He holds nothing good back anywhere in the passage. There is no mention of disease, death, carnage, or violence. There is no creature eating another; rather we see a creation of herbivores.
A sixfold refrain clearly shows that for each of the creation days, they are each a literal day’s length of time. The mention of evening and morning with a numeral emphasizes the literal days. The text also explicitly says that from the “beginning” to the end of the first day was a 24-hour period. This first day was the first day ever. There is no gap in there as some purport. Moreover, when referencing the creation week, it becomes clearer that 24-hour days were intended by the passage:
Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:9-11)
The heaven and the earth and all things were created in six days according to this passage, while this same heaven and earth were created “In the beginning” (Genesis 1:1). From the beginning until the completed creation was six days. The original audience understood these to be six literal days.
This passage is very intentionally written. The Lord knew ahead of time that there would be teaching of millions of years, that death was always a part of life, and kinds of plants and animals could evolve into other kinds. If God created the world with millions of years of death and suffering, could that world be very good? God did not create the world like that. Death and suffering came later, and we will look at that separately.
Evolution is an evil doctrine designed to question God’s goodness and existence. It is completely incompatible with Biblical Christianity. Mixing the two has caused confusion to multitudes. It involves the deaths of trillions of creatures over millions of years. Would that world, knowing God’s provisional care of His very good creation, be called “very good”? Evolution is not consistent with God’s character.
We must make a choice here. To reject evolution is to be laughed at and dismissed by the world. It is to be called stupid. I am not going to compromise here. The text does not allow for interpolations of millions of years, animals changing kinds, or death anywhere in the creation narrative.