My wife's daily devotions always include reading a portion of the Bible; and it's usually in conjunction with Dr. J.Vernon McGee's daily half-hour radio program: Thru The Bible.
My home-spun devotional, based on the book of Genesis, will give everybody some things to think about for roughly 482 days: every day of the week, Sundays included.
BTW: this is a devotional; not a debate. Please make sure your comments contribute rather than confront. I assure anyone who feels compelled to take issue with me here on the thread that they will get nothing in return but a stony wall of silence. Devotionals are supposed to be reflective, rather than reactive; so keep the peace, and leave your guns at home.
C.L.I.F.F. /
Last edited by Webers_Home; 18th July 2009 at 08:02 AM.
. The author of Genesis is currently unknown; but commonly attributed to Moses. Scholars have estimated the date of its writing at around 1450-1410 BC; which is pretty recent in the grand scheme of Earth's geological history— a mere 3,400 years ago.
Genesis may in fact be the result of several contributors beginning as far back as Adam himself; who would certainly know more about the creation than anybody, and who entertained no doubts whatsoever about the existence of a supreme being since he knew the Creator himself like a next door neighbor. That would explain why the book begins with an in-your-face deistic account of the origin of the cosmos, rather than waste words with an apologetic argument to convince agnostics that a God exists.
As time went by, others like Seth and Noah would add their own experiences to the record, and then Abraham his, Isaac his, Jacob his, and finally Judah or one of his descendants completing the record with Joseph's burial.
Genesis is quoted more than sixty times in the New Testament; and Jesus himself authenticated its Divine inspiration by referring to it in his own discourses (e.g. Mtt 19:4-6, Mtt 24:37-39, Mk 10:4-9, Luk 11:49-51, Luk 17:26-29 and 32, Jn 7:21-23, Jn 8:44 and Jn 8:56).
†. Gen 1:1a . . When God
What was God doing in the dateless infinite past before the current universe came into existence? (I say current because there's another in the works. Isa 65:17, 2Pet 3:10-13, Rev 21:1) Who really knows? But a creative genius like that couldn't possibly have been sitting around for zillions of years staring at the walls with nothing to do.
The word for God is from the Hebrew 'elohiym (el-o-heem'). It's a plural word and means, ordinarily: gods. Its uses are very broad and can even apply to human beings in positions of authority like in Psalm 82 and Psalm 45. 'Elohiym isn't really the Almighty's personal name, but a nondescript deistic label that pertains to all sorts of gods, along with, and including, the supreme one.
†. Gen 1:1b . . began to create heaven and earth
The word for heaven is from the Hebrew word shamayim (shaw-mah'-yim) and means: to be lofty; the sky: as aloft and/or the heavens— perhaps alluding to the visible arch in which the clouds move, as well as to the higher ether where the celestial bodies revolve. So heaven can mean the breathable air in our planet's atmosphere as well as the stratosphere and the vast celestial regions of space.
The word for earth is from 'erets (eh'-rets) and means: to be firm; the earth (at large, or partitively a land) 'Erets is sometimes spelled with a zee; eg: ERETZ Magazine, or in the phrase Eretz Israel— meaning, of course, the land of Israel.
Jesus of Nazareth made this comment about the creation of Man; which has a bearing on the meaning of the phrase "began to create."
†. Mtt 19:4 . . Haven't you read; he replied, that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female
Wasn't the human race actually created on the sixth day? Yes, it was. So apparently Jesus understood the word beginning to be an inclusive term comprising the entire creation endeavor, not a precise instant, because he obviously meant the human race was created during the construction of the cosmos, but not right at the gun.
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. †. Gen 1:2a . . the earth being unformed and void
The Hebrew word for unformed is from tohuw (to'-hoo) and means: to lie waste; a desolation (of surface), i.e. desert; figuratively a worthless thing; adverbially in vain.
The word for void is from bohuw (bo'-hoo) and means: to be empty; a vacuity, i.e. (superficially) an undistinguishable ruin.
The terms tohuw and bohuw don't imply the complete absence of matter; no, they speak of ruin and chaos. The very same wording is used in another part of the Bible regarding the land of Israel in utter ruin because of God's judgments against Yhvh's people.
†. Jer 4:22-28 . . For My people are stupid, they give Me no heed; they are foolish children, they are not intelligent. They are clever at doing wrong, but unable to do right. I look at the earth, it is desolate and empty (tohuw and bohuw); at the skies, and their light is gone. I look at the mountains, they are quaking; and all the hills are rocking.
. . I look: no man is left, and all the birds of the sky have fled. I look: the farm land is desert, and all its towns are in ruin— because of Yhvh, because of His blazing anger. (For thus testified Yhvh: The whole land shall be desolate, but I will not make an end of it.) For this the earth mourns, and skies are dark above— because I have spoken, I have planned, and I will not relent or turn back from it.
(If you've ever wondered why the so-called "land of milk and honey" is anything but; well; there's the answer.)
The construction of planet Earth, was an orderly step by step process. If you were to visit a housing tract under construction out here in the West, you wouldn't see the beautiful homes that people move into. You would first see the neighborhood as unimproved land.
Then the surveyors come and measure and mark the locations for water, sewer, power, and property lines. Then huge earth moving machines come in and scrape off the topsoil. After that, smaller machines cut in streets and storm drains, and mold the land into home sites while the utilities people install sewer lines, electricity, water and gas pipes, and cables for television and telephone.
Then other workers show up and start pouring foundations while yet others are pouring sidewalks. Then carpenters show up and begin framing. Pretty soon, roofers are nailing on shingles, and the structures begin to resemble homes. Before you know it, a real neighborhood appears with parks, paved roads, and street lighting. But at first, everything is confusing and disordered; and all the building materials are laying around in heaps and piles looking more like a refuse disposal site than a habitable neighborhood.
That's the way the Earth began: as a chaotic heap of building materials, which were then utilized to construct a habitat for living organisms.
†. Isa 45:18 . . For thus testified Yhvh, The Creator of heaven who alone is God, who formed the earth and made it, who alone established it— He did not create it a waste, but formed it for habitation:
The big question of course is where did the Earth's building materials come from? Did they always exist, or did God invent them just especially for the Earth that's now in existence? Were those materials left-overs from another Divine project prior to the current universe, or maybe even parallel to it?
Regardless of how, or out of what, they were made, the origin of the materials has to be founded in a Creator. It is both maddening and futile to consider any other possibility. By faith we understand much more about the origin of the cosmos than ever could be understood by the unaided mind of natural reason. Faith doesn't violate reason; on the contrary, faith is both a friend and a help to Man's rational understanding of his own existence.
†. Heb 11:3 . . By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's vocal command, so that what is visible was made from something invisible.
Galileo believed that science and religion are allies rather than enemies— two different languages telling the same story; a story of symmetry and balance . . heaven and hell, positive and negative, right and left, up and down, night and day, hot and cold, God and Satan. Science and religion are not at odds; no, in reality, science is just simply too young to understand.
As an example of science's youth, it was only recently in the 20th century that man discovered plate tectonics and how large-scale movements of the earth's lithosphere buckled the earth's crust and formed great mountain chains like The Rockies. I'm talking about multiplied thousands of years of human existence where nobody knew anything about those plates. Yes, science is but a little child, lost in the big city, trying to find it's way back home without ever having done it before, nor even knowing which direction to go to get there.
C.L.I.F.F. /
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. †. Gen 1:2b . . with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—
At this point, there was no ordered cosmos, nor any planets, nor an Earth, nor anything solid: just a massive chemical matrix, while the wind of God held it all in place like corralled livestock; because as yet, no physical laws were in force to make matter behave the way it does as we know it.
The birth of the cosmos, involving water and wind, provides a striking parallel to regeneration: the second births of John 3.
†. John 3:5 . . Jesus answered; "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit."
†.John 3:8 . .The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.
Ancient Jews understood the wind of Gen 1:2 to be God's spirit.
T~ and darkness was upon the face of the abyss, and the Spirit of mercies from before the Lord breathed upon the face of the waters. (Targum Jonathan)
T~ and the Spirit of mercies from before the Lord breathed upon the face of the waters. (Jerusalem Targum)
Targums are very old Aramaic paraphrases of the Hebrew bible. They were authoritative, and spoken aloud in the synagogues along with the Hebrew of the Torah and Haftarah readings. Public readings of the Scriptures in ancient synagogues were accompanied by a translation into Aramaic because that was the spoken language of most Jews in Israel and Babylonia during the Talmudic era. The normal practice was that after each verse was read from the sacred Torah scroll, an official translator known as the Turgeman, or Meturgeman, would then recite orally an Aramaic rendering.
Targums were utilized in the synagogues before, during, and after the times of Jesus— being necessary because many of the Jewish people of that day could not understand Hebrew. That's still true today. Because of their assimilation and world-wide dispersion, the vast majority of modern Jews cannot read, nor speak, nor understand the Hebrew language. Today, no doubt the most important, and the most influential translations of the Scriptures are no longer in Hebrew or in Aramaic, but in English.
The Targum of Onkelos is commonly included along with a traditional Torah scroll in modern synagogues, but its teachings have pretty much fallen by the wayside and for the most part, ignored.
Anyway; the universe was dark, and undisciplined; and all the cosmos' building materials were a swirling, chaotic mass of matter— but totally lacking the natural energies and forces that would hold things in place and make them react with each other.
†. Gen 1:3 . . God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
Those are the very first recorded words of God spoken during the creation of the universe. The Hebrew word for light in that passage is from 'owr (ore) and means light in every sense of the word; which Webster's defines as: illumination, truth, a set of principles and standards, spiritual illumination, served (as coffee) with extra milk or cream, ignite, guide, animate (give life to), dawn, and others. So that the word Light isn't narrowly defined, but has a very broad application.
The illumination of Gen 1:3 is not said to actually glow, and no glowing celestial bodies were created until the fourth day— so that during the interim, even while Light was in the universe, you still couldn't see anything.
According to the Bible, the light of Gen 1:3 is not a supernatural kind of light, but a created kind of light rather than light introduced into the void from outside. On the contrary, it was from within, and was a kind of light with the potential to forge the universe into a living, active, organized, energetic structure rather than just a heap of debris.
†. 2Cor 4:6 . . 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.
The light shined out of darkness, not into darkness as if it was introduced to dispel the dark and brighten things up. A safe assumption is that at least one of the meanings of the light of Gen 1:3 refers to the natural laws of physics that would regulate how matter in the current cosmos would behave.
Without the laws of physics, the universe would instantly fragment itself and nothing would hold together. There'd be neither natural nor artificial light, no energy, no motion, no gravity, no magnetism, no atomic attraction, no molecules, no liquids and no solids. The laws of physics were created to make matter behave the way it does and to hold the entire creation together in a cohesive, understandable, sensible unity— converting the Earth from a condition of tohuw and bohuw (chaos and waste) to one of order and usefulness.
†. Pro 8:22-31 . .Yhvh created me at the beginning of His course as the first of His works of old. In the distant past I was fashioned, at the beginning, at the origin of earth. There was still no deep when I was brought forth, no springs rich in water; before [the foundation of] the mountains were sunk, before the hills I was born. He had not yet made earth and fields, or the world’s first clumps of clay.
. . I was there when He set the heavens into place; when He fixed the horizon upon the deep; when He made the heavens above firm, and the fountains of the deep gushed forth; when He assigned the sea its limits, so that its waters never transgress His command; when He fixed the foundations of the earth, I was with Him as a confidant, a source of delight every day, rejoicing before Him at all times, rejoicing in His inhabited world, finding delight with mankind.
That passage speaks of intelligent physical laws that were created specifically for the current cosmos— laws that controlled its behavior and substance right from the very first day of its wild and wooly inception.
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Last edited by Webers_Home; 20th July 2009 at 07:29 AM.
Since God Himself in person is somehow untouchable, it's necessary to provide a viable link between the forbidden Being and His earthly creations. One of the important links regarded in ancient rabbinical thought was The Word, called memra' in Aramaic (from the Hebrew and Aramaic root, 'mr which means: to say— the root used throughout Genesis 1 when God "said" and the material world came into reality and existence). The memra' concept— that of a Divine Verbal Mediator between the forbidden Being and the creature Man— occurs hundreds of times in Aramaic Targums.
God's word has been of utmost importance ever since the first day of creation week. It's the primary way that the forbidden Being, implements His will. It's also how He communicates and interacts with human beings, and how He reveals Himself in a way they can understand. On the one hand, God has done this somewhat through human writings. But there is much more to God's speech than just ink and letters. Those materials merely constitute an inert, man-made record. On many occasions, when God's words were actually expressed, they effected far more power and impetus than that of a mere page of historical information.
Why did God even bother to speak during creation? Why didn't our maker just do His work silently without utterance or sound? To whom, or for whom, was He speaking when He said; "Let there be light."
There's a creative, dynamic force in The Almighty's voice, a power and energy in His words, a tangible release of Divine life. His word is an extension of His nature, a movement of His will— alive, powerful, and effective— not just letters, syllables, and sounds. There is vigor and activity in God's words extending far beyond the applications of thought and communication.
According to the Targums, which were at one time accepted as sacred Jewish beliefs, God's word is an entity; actually The God himself. The Memra' is to be worshipped, and served, and obeyed, and prayed to as God. The Jewish apostle John (who's Hebrew name was Johanan), no doubt schooled in the Targums several years before he met Jesus, opened his gospel with these words:
†. John 1:1-3 . . In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made.
Modern Judaism accuses Johanan of fabricating his Christian ideology from Greek philosophy. However, John 1:1-3 was a very Jewish belief back in Johanan's day, and nothing said in that verse would have raised a single objection from any of his peers and contemporaries because that passage reflects 100% Targum teachings that were commonly dispensed in the synagogues of his day.
The Targums taught that God's word— The Memra' —reigns supreme upon The Almighty's throne.
T~ Deut 4:7 . . For what people so great, to whom the Lord is so high in the Name of the Word of the Lord? But the custom of (other) nations is to carry their gods upon their shoulders, that they may seem to be nigh them; but they cannot hear with their ears, (be they nigh or) be they afar off; but the Word of the Lord sits upon His throne high and lifted up, and hears our prayer what time we pray before Him and make our petitions. (Targum Jonathan)
According to the Targums, Jacob, an important progenitor of the people of Israel, worshipped God's word as his own god.
T~ Gen 28:20-21 . . And Jacob vowed a vow, saying: "If the Word of Yhvh will be my support, and will keep me in the way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace; then shall the Word of Yhvh be my God. (Targum Onkelos)
C.L.I.F.F. /
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. †. Gen 1:4-5a . . God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.
The Hebrew word for Day is yowm (yome) which means to be hot: a day (as the warm hours).
The word for Night is layil (lah'-yil) which means, properly, a twist; viz: the flip side of day— dark and cold (or at least darker and cooler than the daytime).
The terms Day and Night identify the two portions of a 24-hour civil day: nighttime and daytime. This may seem like an insignificant detail, but when studying crucifixion week in the New Testament, then terminology becomes crucial in order to arrive at the correct day of the week upon which Jesus was crucified.
It's essential to apply God's literal definitions of Day and Night to Jesus burial and resurrection if one is to have any hope of deducing the correct chronology of Easter week. When people muddy the waters with the aspects of strict 24-hour Hebrew time-keeping, that's when they start coming up with some very unworkable theories. So-called Good Friday— conveniently positioned in Christendom's religious calendar —is the most unworkable theory of all, and has subjected Christianity to decades of perpetual mockery by the disbelieving world because even a 3rd grader can easily deduce that it's impossible to produce three Nights between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning.
Anyplace there's light, there is no true darkness because light always dispels darkness. However, darkness is powerless to dispel light. So then, light is the superior of the two and rules the dark. That is a biblical axiom; and, typically, light is good, and dark is just the opposite.
The creation of Light gave the liquid matrix the potential to become something ordered and useful. The absence of Light locked the creation into a condition of chaos. Light has huge significance in the Bible. Whether in the form of atomic energy, spiritual truth, good times, or all that is noble; true Light (in the biblical sense) always brings with it blessing and order, and Dark always brings just the opposite.
Hell, although a region of continual fire and burning, is a place of perpetual darkness.
†. Mtt 8:11-12 . . I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The region of the dead is also said to be dark, even though light be there.
†. Job 10:20-22 . . My days are few, so desist! Leave me alone, let me be diverted a while before I depart— never to return— for the land of deepest gloom; a land whose light is darkness, all gloom and disarray, whose light is like darkness.
In contrast, the 60th chapter of Isaiah characterizes Messiah's kingdom as a place of perpetual Light.
†. Isa 60:19-20 . . No longer shall you need the sun for light by day, nor the shining of the moon for radiance [by night]; for Yhvh shall be your light everlasting, your God shall be your glory. Your sun shall set no more, your moon no more withdraw; for Yhvh shall be a light to you forever, and your days of mourning shall be ended.
†. Gen 1:5b . . And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.
Some confusion exists because of the Bible's various applications of yowm. In Gen 1:4-5a, it indicates daytime only. But here in Gen 1:5b, it indicates both daytime and nighttime: a full 24 hours.
Technically, the hours between an evening and a morning are only half of a civil day; viz: the Night. In order to have a full 24-hour day, we would need two evenings. However, it's agreeable to construe that evening is the onset of Night, and morning is the onset of Day; so that biblically, a full civil day is correctly marked off by those two terms.
Was there really an evening and a morning? No, of course not. The Sun wasn't in existence yet. So, evening and morning are merely technical terms that mark off periods of time. But, how long was the first day; twenty-four hours, one thousand years, one million years?
What terms could be more suitable for the author to convey to his ancient readers the true length of those first few days other than the terms evening and morning? In other words, there are no other words as those are the perfect ones because everybody in the author's own day knew exactly what he meant. The normal, and the universal, understanding of a period of time marked by an evening and a morning is a civil day of twenty-four hours. Standard days thoroughly disagree with the so-called findings of science, but I'll comment on that later.
The first day of creation began in utter darkness. Then light was created. Thus the evening came first, and the morning came last. Biblical days always begin at sundown so that darkness rules the first half of the day, and light rules the final half. During the early moments of the first day of creation, all was chaos. Then came the Light, and from that point on, things started coming together and making some sense.
C.L.I.F.F. /
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. †. Gen 1:6a . . God said: Let there be an expanse
The word for expanse is from raqiya` (raw-kee'-ah) and means: a great extent of something spread out, a firmament, the visible arch of the sky.
Raqiya` is flexible. We look up at the sky at night and see blackness and stars. We look up at the same sky in the day and we see brightness, birds, clouds, the sun; and sometimes the moon. The Bible uses raqiya` like that too. It can be outer space where Orion and The Pleiades reside, it can be the sky above your head, or the breathable air right in front of your face.
We today have the advantages of modern science to aid our understanding of the book of Genesis. Man has discovered a great deal about the celestial void since Adam's day. Abel, Seth, Noah, and Abraham knew hardly nothing at all. When those guys looked up, they just saw sky; not really understanding exactly how far up, nor how far out, it went. For all they knew, the universe extended no further than the inside surface of a big spherical canopy surrounding their terrestrial home; and which they thought was possible to reach by erecting either a long ladder, or a very high tower, like the Tower Of Babel in Gen 11:4, and like Jacob's staircase in Gen 28:12. Without the benefit of telescopes, there was really not too much they could see for themselves in those days.
The Earth, which began in Gen 1:2 as a formless, unidentifiable, nondescript, sloshy liquid matrix comprising all the essential elements needed to construct it, was thus hung in a void, apparently supported by nothing at all— at least from the ancients' point of view.
†. Job 26:7 . . He it is who stretched out Zaphon over chaos, Who suspended earth over emptiness.
(Zaphon is a mystery word; sometimes translated Heaven, and sometimes translated North.)
†. Gen 1:6b-7 . . in the midst of the water, that it may separate water from water. God made the expanse, and it separated the water which was below the expanse from the water which was above the expanse. And it was so.
The huge liquid matrix, from Gen 1:2 that would soon become planet Earth, was by now spherical in shape. When crew members up in the Space Shuttle let small amounts of fluid loose in a zero gravity environment, the fluids soon shape themselves into shiny liquid spheres floating around the cabin. That would also be the natural response of the matrix to the laws of physics after once God created Light. Prior to Light, the matrix couldn't be spherical because there were no physical laws to cause atomic cohesion and so God's spirit had the job of keeping the matrix corralled in Gen 1:2 until Light took over in Gen 1:3.
Nobody yet really fully understands what Light is. But we do know that wherever there's Light— even the invisible wave lengths —there is energy. The creation of Light, and subsequently the laws of physics, energized the matrix, and made it settle down and behave.
Although the universe is now controlled by well known natural laws, God temporarily overpowered those laws during the cosmos' formation. He had to. How else was He to get matter to do things contrary to its natural behavior? It isn't natural for gases to hover as a layer in a pool of liquid in the presence of gravity. Air wants to form a bubble and rise to the surface. It won't stay suspended in a pool of liquid as a stable, defined layer. Yet here during Earth's formation, air, derived from the chemistry of the matrix, was introduced into the matrix and divided it into two distinct masses of liquid; one below the air, and one above it. That is quite remarkable.
†. Gen 1:8a . . God called the expanse Sky.
From the point of view of a person on the ground, the sky is all one big seamless chunk of air space. Scientists have given the different levels of sky names to differentiate them. Genesis blends all the strata into just one word. But when you look up, it does appear to be all one sky.
We can easily guess what is meant by water that is below the sky. But what about water that's above it? Is there really water above the sky? Not anymore, because the water that was above the sky soon became dissolved in it.
The atmosphere holds roughly 2,900 cubic miles of water in the form of vapor. Suppose you had a tank one mile wide, and one mile high. How long would it have to be to contain 2,900 cubic miles of water. Answer: 2,900 miles long. A tank that length would stretch from San Diego California to the Brooks Range in Alaska.
Now supposing we again make the tank one mile wide, but this time only as tall as the Eiffel Tower. How far would a tank of those dimensions containing 2,900 cubic miles of water go? The Eiffel Tower is 984 feet tall; which is .1863636 miles. So a tank 1 mile wide, and .1863636 miles tall, whose volume is 2,900 cubic miles, would be 15,561 miles long.
If that tank was poked into the Earth, it would go all the way through the planet, out the other side, and keep going for another 7,634 miles into space; which is roughly 31 times further out than a Space Shuttle orbit.
Laid South to North, the tank would stretch from Antarctica past Bangladesh to the North Pole; and keep going over the pole southwards for yet another 3,151 miles to Minneapolis Minnesota. The number of gallons of water in a single cubic mile is 1,100,956,999,000 gallons. That's over 1.1 trillion gallons of water. Multiply those gallons by 2,900 to obtain the number of gallons in the form of vapor dissolved at any given time in Earth's atmosphere; and you get 3.2 quadrillion— which is fourteen zeroes after the 2. A quantity of that volume would look like this:
3,200,000,000,000,000 gallons.
C.L.I.F.F. /
Last edited by Webers_Home; 21st July 2009 at 09:48 AM.
. †. Gen 1:8b . . And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
When the word day is used in Scripture without qualifiers— as in Gen 2:4 where a day encompasses the entire creation week —then there's room for speculation on the meaning of the word. But the terms Evening and Morning leave no room for debate. In the Bible, those terms normally imply solar days consisting of twenty-four hours apiece.
The author wrote Genesis for people living in his own day, not in the 21st century. It's nothing less than rank unbelief to construe a day of creation to mean geological eras in order to appease philosophical musings and modern scientific theories. That is downright cowardly, and reveals a lack of confidence in the Scripture records. If we would but approach Genesis from the author's point of view, and with the understanding of the peoples who lived in his own day, then the creation story becomes a whole lot easier to digest.
The seven days of creation became the basis for the seven days of the Hebrew civil week.
†. Ex 20:8-11 . . Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of Yhvh your God: you shall not do any work —you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, or your cattle, or the stranger who is within your settlements. For in six days Yhvh made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; therefore Yhvh blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.
There in Ex 20:8-11, Yhvh himself defined the precise length of creation days, along with the length of creation week. That should settle it for conscientious Bible students.
†. Gen 1:9 . . God said: Let the water below the sky be gathered into one area, that the dry land may appear. And it was so.
In order for dry land to appear, there must first be land; so this is apparently the day in which it was made. Essentially, the earth consists of three major parts— the gaseous atmosphere, the liquid hydrosphere, and a solid body composed of the lithosphere, mantle, and core. Although the atmosphere has a thickness of more than 700 miles, about half its mass is concentrated in the lower 3.5 miles. The hydrosphere, in the form of the oceans, covers approximately 70.8 percent of the surface of the earth. The lithosphere, consisting mainly of the cold, rigid, rocky crust of the earth, extends to depths as much as 60 miles in some places. The mantle and core plumb a combined depth of approximately 3,900 miles and make up the lion's share of the Earth's mass.
The amount of water indigenous to planet Earth is just amazing. At the ocean's deepest surveyed point, the Challenger Deep— located in the Mariana Islands group, at the southern end of the Mariana Trench —the water's depth is over 11,000 meters; which is about 6.8 miles: 36,000 feet. That depth corresponds to the cruising altitude of a Boeing 747. At that altitude, probably about all you're going to see of the airliner without straining your eyes is its contrail.
If the Earth's crust were to be smoothed out so that there were no mountains nor valleys nor basins for the oceans, and all the ice melted, it would be covered with water to a depth of over 8,000 feet. It was necessary to deform the Earth in order to make huge basins for the water to settle into so there could be some dry land. Just think of the incredible pressure required to manipulate the earth's crust to make room for those hollows. And when you shove in one place, something has to give in another; so when God made low spots in the crust for oceans, it buckled resulting in mountains and highlands.
†. Ps 104:5 . . He established the earth on its foundations, so that it shall never totter. You made the deep cover it as a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. They fled at your blast, rushed away at the sound of your thunder— mountains rising, valleys sinking to the place you established for them. You set bounds they must not pass so that they never again cover the earth.
The Earth is a marvel of chemical, and geological engineering. It has just the correct amount of solid mass, just the right amount of liquid mass, and just the right amount of gaseous mass. Within those three categories I would add that the earth also has just the right amount of molten mass too because without that molten mass, tectonic plate subduction would not be a possibility.
Each phase of Earth's construction was guided by precise step by step recipes and processes that God first figured out in His head; and then implemented with powers that are just far too complex for Man's puny little mortal mind to comprehend.
†. Isa 40:12-14 . .Who measured the waters with the hollow of His hand, and gauged the skies with a span, and meted earth's dust with a measure, and weighed the mountains with a scale and the hills with a balance? Who has plumbed the mind of The Lord, what man could tell Him His plan? Whom did He consult, and who taught Him, guided Him in the way of right? Who guided Him in knowledge and showed Him the path of wisdom?
†. Job 38:4-6 . .Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations? Speak if you have understanding. Do you know who fixed its dimensions or who measured it with a line? Onto what were its bases sunk? Who set its cornerstone . . ?
†. Isa 48:13 . . My own hand founded the earth, My right hand spread out the skies.
†. Gen 1:10 . . God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering of waters He called Seas. And God saw that this was good.
"Good" meaning that the land and the seas were perfectly suitable for the purposes that God intended for them.
. †. Gen 1:11a . . And God said: Let the earth sprout vegetation
The elements God used to create plant life for the Earth, were drawn from the Earth, just as later He will make Man out of the Earth too. So far, the Earth itself, plus everything destined to be a part of the Earth, has come out of the shapeless, liquid matrix of Gen 1:2.
Although God verbally commanded vegetation into existence, it didn't just pop into being without some prior planning. After all, how could God create a maple tree if He didn't have some concept of its biological structure, or even what it would look like? No, God is a highly intelligent master architect, and a skillful engineer. He began with a concept, organized his thoughts into a workable plan, and then set out to make it all a reality. A genius without par: Almighty God at work.
Doesn't vegetation need soil? Yes of course. However, nature's method of eroding rocks to make soil would have taken far too long— perhaps 300 years to a millennium to make just one inch of soil. So it was necessary to furnish the Earth with a starter kit of soil prior to creating the vegetation destined to live in it. Soil needn't have been a direct creation. All God had to do was crumble and blend the lithosphere that He already created on the second day.
The soil requirements of different plants vary widely, and no generalizations can be made concerning an ideal soil for the growth of all plants; e.g. avocado trees; which grow just fine in the relatively dry climate and alkaline soil of San Diego; do poorly in the acidic soil and much wetter climate of Portland Oregon. There are upwards of 30,000 different soils in the USA alone. So it was necessary for God to exercise discretion in preparing the first soils suitable for the varieties of vegetation that He would plant all over the world.
The primary components of soil are; 1) undissolved inorganic components produced by the weathering and breakdown of surface rocks; 2) soluble nutrients used by plants; 3) various forms of organic matter, both living and dead; and 4) gases and water.
One thing that could not possibly have been in soil's beginning was dead organic matter because nothing had lived prior to the third day of Earth's life; so it would be a while yet before nature would begin doing its work to provide soils with a measure of humus. But very soon now, God would create organisms to live in the soils to help keep them healthy and fertile— earthworms, nematodes, bacteria, microbes, moles, gophers, shrews, mites, springtails, fungi, actinomycetes, termites, and ants— and of course all the vegetation that not only grows in the soil, but dies and mixes back into it to help generate humus.
FYI: Jeffery Dukes, a biologist, ecologist, and dabbler in biogeochemistry at the University of Massachusetts, figured out that one(1) gallon of gasoline represents roughly 100 tons of plant matter: equivalent to 40 acres of wheat. The annual consumption of gasoline in the USA— about 131 billion gallons —is equivalent to 25 quadrillion pounds of prehistoric biomass; and that's not even factoring in all the other fossil fuels like coal, natural gas (a quadrillion contains 15 zeroes). Since 1751, roughly the beginning of the industrial revolution; humans have burned an amount of fossil fuel equivalent to all the vegetation, of every variety imaginable, that lived on the Earth for a period of 13,300 years.
. †. Gen 1:11b-12a . . seed-bearing plants, fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: seed-bearing plants of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it.
The structure of seeds is quite remarkable. They carry genetic coding necessary to produce a complete replica of the parent plant from which they came. Some seeds, such as those of the willow, are viable (capable of growing into healthy organisms) for only a few days after falling from the parent tree. Other seeds are viable for years— e.g. seeds of the Oriental lotus have been known to germinate 3,000 years after dispersal.
Many of the original animals, including Man, were vegetarians. Because of that, the need for food would be immediate and they could not tolerate any seasonal delays necessary to grow it.
All plant, animal, and human life were created adult. The old adage; "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" is easily resolved when it's realized that only a fertilized egg can produce an embryo. Fertilization requires contributions from both an adult male, and an adult female. Seeds, whether plant or animal, are produced only by adults; and the seeds must be fertile before they will germinate. Thus, pollination was essential. And pollination is possible only among adult plants.
All plants, those then and those now, were created on the third day. Every plant since then, and all that will ever be, pre-existed in the cell structures, and in the DNA, of the original flora. This principle of living things holds true not just for vegetation, but for animal and human life too. The cosmos was completed in six days. After that; God stopped creating. Nothing has been created since then; no, not even newborn babies. God produced the origin of species, but from then on, the various species reproduced themselves.
†. Gen 1:12b . . And God saw that this was good.
The word for good is from towb (tobe) which not only serves as an adjective, but also as a noun. So when God inspected His handiwork and pronounced it "good" it was not only a job well done; but it was a job done just right. His creation was like Mozart's music— you cannot improve upon what is already perfect: displace a single note, and there would be diminishment; displace a phrase, and the whole structure would fall.
†. Gen 1:13 . . And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.
C.L.I.F.F. /
Last edited by Webers_Home; 18th December 2009 at 04:55 PM.
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