[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 17/Apr/2017]
I hope that Neil Robinson doesn’t mind me carrying on from his article last week as I didn’t get any inspiration for this week’s article until I read his words about the “hows” of creation. I know that many Christians believe that God made the universe and the earth in seven literal days, which is fine. But that for me raises problems that I can’t go into now. Like Neil, I concentrate on “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”.
Those words at the beginning of Genesis, I believe describe the whole of God’s creative acts from, dare I say it, the Big Bang and His creation of the universe “out of nothing”, to His later formation of the earth. He then focuses His attention on the earth which at that stage was formless, empty and covered in darkness, so that the following six “days” plus one symbolical day of rest was not a description of the whole of the creation by God but the preparation of the earth for the ultimate creation of us in God’s image. There are a number of suggestions put forward for the “days”. I prefer the suggestion by Professor Wiseman that the “days” were a series of dreams or visions received by the writer of Genesis between the “evening and the morning” of each day.
I can only consider two of the days or dreams which are the first and fourth days. Scientists have suggested that the earth was originally covered by a dense atmosphere, which for us may account for the darkness over the earth. Then over the ages, the first day, the atmosphere thinned in response to God’s command “Let there be light”. The light filtered through the thinning atmosphere so that day and night became apparent although the source of the light was not seen. If we skip to the fourth day we find that source. “Let there be lights”. The atmosphere thinned even more so that the sun, and ultimately the moon and stars became visible. They were not created on the fourth day but had been there all the time as part of God’s creation in Genesis 1:1. It’s just that they now came into view. If so, that explains why there was light on the first day as the light of the sun, otherwise unseen, shone through the darkness.
Then following the creation of man on the sixth day He prepared a paradise in Genesis 2, the Garden of Eden, for us to live in. It’s sad that we lost our home there by our disobedience to the One who created it for us. Praise Him that through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and as we have faith in His forgiveness, we shall have a new home in paradise in the new heaven and earth of Revelation 21 and 22. The creations of Genesis and Revelation are for us the beginning and the end.
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Contributed by Michael Goble; © the Author
