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| 1 ¶ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. | When
did God's work of forming this world begin?
Some see a separation between the action of verse 1 and that of verse 2 and onward. They feel that the formless earth was here before creation week. We may see support for this idea in a statement of Jesus who spoke of a time "before the world was jn1705. In any case, He created everything simply by His word and from nothing. I understand that the Hebrew form of the phrase, "heaven and earth" implies an all-inclusive unit. This would mean that "heaven" means more than the sky. Heaven and earth are the universe. From this we may understand that, although verses 1 and 2 could have been separated by time, they are part of the same unified action. In verse 1, He created the materials. From verse 2 and on, we see His creative work of developing or augmenting them. In the beginning the earth was "without form and void." In six days he gave it form and filled it. |
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| 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. | Could
a day in this chapter be thousands or millions of years?
Many people today, even theologians, perhaps in an effort to be scholarly and accept the popular theories of origins, consider the first eleven chapters of Genesis as ancient mythology or traditions. In an effort to harmonize evolution and biblical religion, they say that a "day" in Genesis 1 was a long period of time – millions of years. This effort for harmony is called "theistic evolution." Any such attempt to assume the Genesis "day" as not literal, however, pulls a fundamental pin out of the credibility of the Bible causing the whole structure to crash. Obviously Satan takes fiendish pleasure in this. Consider the following reasons to believe the Bible as it reads: As
noted with v5 above, the fourth commandment of the ten God gave at Sinai
refers to creation week assuming literal days ex2008.
If
the Genesis 1 day were a million years, the plants created on day three
would all die during the 500,000 years of darkness before the next daytime.
The idea doesn't fit well into evolution either.
Over
the years, evolutionists have lengthened their opinion of the time since
life began in order to allow for evolutionary changes so a thousand years
or a million are still too short. And now it may clearly be shown that
some of the molecular life form structures could not have evolved since
their component parts do not exist independently.
Evolution
assumes a beginning, with lightning causing mutations or combining of elements
to get the first simple life form going, but there is simply no explanation
of where the sea and the lightning came from. Only God could create from
nothing he1103. We
cannot prove that but have evidence of His working in our naturally evil
hearts. We may trust His word, too.
Peter
wrote of scoffers who feel that the world hasn't changed and are "willingly
ignorant" of the flood of Genesis 2pe0303ff.
He wrote after the time of Christ, so if we doubt him, we doubt everything!
In fact his warning is about this very thing. In verse 8 of the same chapter,
Peter said that a day with the Lord is as a thousand years. This doesn't
help because he also says that a thousand years is as a day. It's not a
mathematical formula.
l
believe that the God who sent Jesus and the Jesus who, with the Holy Spirit
draws us to the divine way of peace and love, are also well able to preserve
the truth of the Scriptures.
What is a "day"?
Meaning of the Hebrew yom.
(The word should be written with an accent mark: yôm. This
commentary generally omits the accents since many accented letters for
Hebrew transliterations are not in the common character set.)
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| And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. | What
is the meaning of "after his kind"?
The Hebrew word for "kind" is min. Phrases like "after their kind" occur a number of times in Genesis, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy and are often quoted when refuting the idea of evolution. This is appropriate particularly for macroevolution (major changes of life forms) but we must avoid leaning too heavily on it. First note two passages where the animals themselves are not bringing forth. In verse 24 that the "earth" is to bring forth and in verse 25, "God" made the animals "after their kind." Min designates a group or multiplicity of animals and implies boundaries between the groups. It is never associated with the command to reproduce. (Rahel Schafer, JATS 14:1, p.97.) |
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| Pattern |
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| Problem | Gen. 1:2: And the earth was without form, and void [empty]; |
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| Creation week* | Gen. 1:3 to 2:3: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: Continuing through the six days.... "God ... rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it." |
water & sky, and so on |
and so on |
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| Confirmation | Ex. 20:8, 11: Remember the sabbath day.... 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. |
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