The Creation

by

J.W.Weeda

   Dear reader. There are some questions for you. How came everything  into existence: the earth, stars, Sun, Moon, planets? When came it into existence? Are the days of Genesis Chapter 1 literal days or are the days years? To answer these questions let’s start first in Genesis 1 the first verse. What does this verse say? Let’s read it: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” This first verse of the Bible, God’s Word, begins with: in the beginning God created.  It means first God created. We understand from this that God existed before the beginning, before He created the heaven and the earth!  God or Elohim is He. He is the Creator. Elohim is in the plural form and He is one. Deuteronomy 6:4 tells us: “Hear O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” God is Spirit and that means that God is immaterial. He is invisible. We cannot see Him, we cannot touch Him.

      As pure Spirit He  exists wholly apart from creation. In John 4:24 we read: “God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth”   If we look around us in the nature of the earth we see His mighty work.  God is Spirit than He must be a Person possessing self- consciousness, intelligence, and will. God is also a moral Being. He is Spirit, eternal, unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. So He exists from eternity to eternity. In Hebrews 11:3 we can read the following verse: ”Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear”  We see things from the creation and it came into being not from the things we see. And in Romans 4:17 we read the following: “As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations) before him, whom he believed, even God. Who quickened the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were” We have to believe, trust that God spoke and it was there! He can do that! He is infinite and He is omnipotent so it was for Him possible to call the whole universe into being. Man can form or make things but he can never create things! God only can create things. He is the Creator!

     First He created the heaven. This is in the plural form. We have at least 3 heavens.  Everything which is above the earth is heaven!

     The first heaven is what we see, the sky, where we see the birds, insects, airplanes etc. In Jeremiah 4:25 we read: “I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled”. The second heaven is the place where the stars and the other planets are, the universe. The third heaven is the heaven above. In the third heaven God existed, He dwells there with His angelic host.  We read in 2 Corinthians 12:2: “I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such a one caught up to the third heaven” The apostle Paul here speaks about himself caught up to the third heaven!

      So God created all things. First the heaven. He created all things through the Lord Jesus Christ. Colossians 1:16,17 tells us: “For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him: And He is before all things, and By Him all things consist.” And Ephesians 3 verse 9: “And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, Who created all things by Jesus Christ”

 

   Second God created the earth. We don’t find a verse that we can see that God created in the same time other planets, stars, Sun, moon etc. This came into being the fourth day. We read in the second verse of Genesis 1 the following text: “the earth was without form” What does this mean the earth was without form? That means there was no form and it was void. Tohu wavohu or tohu waw bohu. People who hold the Gap theory gave us the interpretation that without form is ruined and desolate.  They based their theory that God already before the 6 days of creation had judged the earth because of sin,  maybe of the fall of satan, before the six days of creation. The question comes now when was the fall of satan? Was this before the six days of creation or later?

   Satan was not created as the Devil. In Isaiah 14: 12-14 we read the following: “How art thou fallen from heaven O Lucifer, son of the morning: how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation (place of meeting), in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.” This are the 7 I will from satan and this is pride and the final I will be like the most High.  From Ezekiel 28 we read the following in verse 13: ”Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold,: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou was created” And the Scripture goes further on: “Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so; thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee” (verses 14-15)   We see from those Scriptures above that the devil or satan was in Eden and was a cherub, he was called Lucifer that means light bearer, till the day that there was iniquity was in him because of the 7 I will’s. For sure we know that the devil was fallen before the fall of man. Nowhere we can find in the Scriptures that this was fall of the devil was before the six days of creation. Personally I believe that the devil his fall was during the time that he was in Eden, the garden of God or Paradise. He is the man-slayer, murderer or anthropoktonos from the beginning John 8:44: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is liar, and the father of it.  Satan could not have been a man-slayer before there was a man to slay; therefore the beginning was not the moment of the creation of this angelic being, but the beginning of human sin.  So this is the answer against the Gap theory which let us believe that God before the six days of already judged the world because of the fall of satan.

The Word of God says the following in Isaiah 45:18: “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” We know that God is a God of order, not of disorder. His creation was and is good, He created not things bad.  The earth was empty what we have seen, bohu. We can only see that the earth was a waste before the work of the six days began. That means that the earth had no inhabitants. He created the earth and the matter was there. The elements (dust): were as a basic in the earth and is was not yet formed. And the darkness was upon the face of the deep! There was total darkness on the earth. It was not yet energized. What could energize the earth? Answer is light. Light is a form of energy! The faces of the deep are the waters.  The earth was formless. Elements of matter and elements of water like the molecules were present but were not energized. We read here that the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, moved upon the face of the waters. It was like a wind, breath. God is Spirit and He Himself was there! It was the movement or rachaph (=motion) of the Spirit of God.

Now we come to the creation week. In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day. Exodus 20:11. On day one God created the light! And God said let there be light and it was so, there was light! He, God made the light visible! God is light. In 2 Corinthians 4:6 we read the beautiful verse: “For God, Who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”.  In Psalm 74:16 we read “The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun” From I John1:5 we can learn: "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” God created the light and divided light from darkness. The light was called day and the darkness night.  One day is 24 hours we know and on one day the earth is rotating on his own axis. On one side you have light or day and on the other side you have darkness or night.

On the second day God created a firmament, literal it is an expanse, a space stretched out. He made an atmosphere and He divided the waters below and above this firmament from each other. At that time there was no rain, nor any bow in the cloud. It was water vapor. God called the firmament heaven.  On the third day God made the dry land and gathered together the waters under the heaven in one place. The dry land is called earth by God and the waters sea. He spoke it and it was there! It was made perfect, good! On the same day He created the grass, trees, herb yielding seed, fruit trees after their kind! The seed plants, trees, grass has it in themselves to multiply.  On the fourth day God made the stars and planets that surround us. As we know the other planets and stars have no life on it, they are from a different substance than the earth. Also the temperatures on other planets are different from that of the earth.  And God created also the great lights. One for the day, the sun and one for the night the moon and stars. We know that God already created light on the first day!  On the fifth day He created the living creatures in the sea and the birds flying above the earth!  There is mentioned that He created the whales and all kind of living creatures (fish and other animals) in the sea. Suddenly it swarmed abundantly with swarming creatures. On the sixth day the living creatures on the earth were made by God after their kind, cattle, creeping animals and all the beasts of the earth after their kind.  And at least we read in Genesis 1:26: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them 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” Let us is plural. God Elohim created man in His own image, after His own likeness. Man was not made after his own likeness or image. God is speaking here to Himself and not to angels here. Man is the most highest creature what was made by God. God gave man a task to reign over all God had made as a steward. Man was formed from the dust; man has also the breath of life like animals and is a living soul. Man is greater than animals because he was made in the image of God Himself, after Gods likeness. Both man and woman were made like this. So the first command was be fruitful and multiply the earth and have dominion over the earth, over all the birds, fish, creeping animals, cattle etc. And God gave man to eat every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, fruit from the fruit tree for meat. Genesis 1:29. Also every beast on the earth was given every green herb for meat.  So the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them Genesis 2:1. 

On the seventh day God ended His work which He had made and rested on the seventh day. Genesis 2:2. Everything God made was good; there was no disorder, no sin and no death. Even satan was still good at this point; his fall must have come later what we already earlier learned in this study.