Hey Ted, where you wrote: "God speaks in the very first words that before He created anything in this realm, He did create some kind of light. Now, the source of that light He doesn't give us any further detail of, but if He did create light in this realm before anything else was created, then He could have divided that light." -- it's actually including some common assumptions, but if we look carefully at the text (again), we might see some other details people don't always notice (or remember):
Notice first that this light is beginning here on this first 'day', which itself has a morning and an evening -- it's like the rest of the 6 days, and seems just like a day as we know it now: Earth has morning and evening from the point of view of someone on Earth's surface, as it rotates. So we can see the text is telling us something about the first day light and the quality of the day that results: cyclic, with morning and evening and night, just like the remaining days, and our days today. Yes? Do you agree? If not it may be a moment to stop and say so.
As we know today, and people would expect ever since the sun began to shine and Earth was rotating: the combination of sunlight and Earth's rotation causes this cycle. Already a viewpoint that wants the sun not to exist before the 4th day (when it is revealed) has to begin adding extra assumptions not in the text. For instance, one common one is like that of St. Augustine: that the light from day 1 through 3 was unlike the light of day 4-6. But, see, that's an addition. It's a reasonable extra-biblical idea -- an added idea.
What we would think without so many added ideas is that the light in day one is the sun beginning to shine on the already rotating early Earth (still a water world without any dry land, it's surface formless, 'void').
But the sun isn't visible from the point of view, which we would expect is from the surface of the Earth, in the Genesis chapter 1 vision until it is revealed on the 4th day in the vision. Please see post #35 at this point for key things on this.
Hi halbhh,
As I said, I don't see that God has actually given us any real understanding whereby we can know that we know, what the source of that first light is. I'm only willing to go as far as what God's word says with any confirmation of what is true. The rest is thinking and pondering of my own mind and may or may not be correct in its understanding of these things.
Just as you're saying that this 'light' could have been some slow revealing of the solar sun, that's something that you cannot say that you know that you know because God's word says so. It's a conception that your mind has created to explain how it could be possible that there is obviously some source of light, but the sun isn't spoken of being created until day four. Is it the truth or not? I don't know. Could it be true? Yes, it could be the correct explanation, but I can't say that with any real conviction that it is the truth.
All I know that is true. Is what God has caused to be written to me through the prophets and the scribes of Israel. God's word says that there was light of some kind when He first began His work of creating this realm. God's word says that it is He who divided and named the darkness and the light. Those two facts, I know to be true. 'How' God did it, or what the source of the light was on that first day of the earths rotating on its axis through the first day, is not known to me, although personally, I believe that since the Scriptures tell us that God is light, the He somehow walked into or came to exist in the black inkiness of what we know as our universe and His physical being in this new realm of His creating, was the light.
Honestly, I don't think any of us really fully understands what it means, or the mechanics of, God creating a 'realm' of existence. What we might even describe as a new dimension that God created. There has always been God and He has always existed, but His physical existence, just as with the angels, seems to be on some other plane of existence, or the word that I choose to use, 'realm'.
In his books, '
This Present Darkness' and
'Piercing the Darkness', Frank Peretti writes an account where we find that the angels exist among us, just as your neighbor might exist with you. But, we can't see with the eyes that God has created us to have, these creatures that are living all among us but in some other plane or realm of existence. Then, what happens when Mary sees an angel or Joseph sees an angel or the shepherds watching over their flocks see angels, is that God temporarily opens their eyes, gives them the special configuration that they need to see into the angelic realm. Or God, for a brief moment, gives the angel the ability to pierce that cloak that covers them from our eyes.
When the angel spoke to Daniel, he said that he had been sent. Some have this idea that the angel was far off in some distant realm on the other side of the universe or something. Me, I think the angel was at the footstool of God's throne getting his instructions, and then walked over to where Daniel existed in this other realm, pulled back the cloak that hid him from Daniel's view or God gave Daniel those special eyes, momentarily to 'see' the angel as he spoke to Daniel. The point being, that just as it does mention in other places of the Scriptures, there seems to be an angelic realm that lies right along with our physical realm, but we can't see it.
When Jesus drove out the demons. They were right there with the people, but the people couldn't 'see' them until Jesus made them, somehow, visible to the people for a moment. An entire legion of angels went into pigs that rushed headlong over a cliff. They were always there. Living right among us. We just couldn't see them until Jesus made them, momentarily visible to us.
So, I see this created realm in which man lives, as merely some other sort of plane or realm of existence that exists in the same space that the angelic realm exists. When God said let there be light in this realm in which we exist, He may have merely pulled back this cloak that hides Him and the angelic realm from being seen with the physical properties that God gave our eyes, and light came into this realm. Can I give you a full and complete scientific explanation as to how that might have happened? No. But, as with your understanding, it is an understanding that comes from some Scriptural support based on other places that kind of give hints to us as to how the reality of existence might work. Hope all that makes sense to you and others that read it.
Please understand that I don't expect God to condemn us for things that He did not make clear to us. But a lot of things God has made clear to us and when we begin to teach against the reality of those things that He seems to have made pretty clear to us, I have issues. So, not knowing exactly what the light was on day one as to its source, is not clear. That God flooded the whole earth or parted a sea or turned back the sun or created this realm in six pretty regular spans of time that we know of as a day, seems to be fairly clear, to me.
God bless,
In Christ, ted