The Seventh Day

It took God just 6 days to create everything.  This is a testimony to His omnipotence.

Genesis 2:1-3  Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.  2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

That creation was “finished” means that there was no more creation out of nothing (ex nihilo).  All physical matter had been created.  Of course, the created matter could change through various means (chemical, nuclear, etc.), but from this point, matter could neither be created or destroyed (First Law of Thermodynamics).  Continue reading

Sun, Moon, and Stars

After creating light on day one, God now makes permanent sources of light for the Earth.

Genesis 1:14-19  And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:  15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.  16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.  17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,  18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.  19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

The main purpose of the lights would be to “divide the day from the night” (vs. 14).  This describes what our sun and moon do.  These are the “two great lights” in verse 15—one for the day and the other for the night.  We understand that the moon does not produce its own light but merely reflects the sun.  This does not affect the accuracy of the biblical text.  The moon still provides light at night regardless. Reflected light is still light.  No doubt our ancestors understood that the moon was reflecting light given the observable changes in it over the lunar cycle. Continue reading

He Made the Stars Also

Genesis 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

This one verse may contain the most understated fact in all the Bible.  After stating that God created a greater light to rule the day (the Sun) and a lesser light to rule the night (the Moon), it states that God “made the stars also”.  That is the first and only time stars are mentioned in the creation narrative. When one considers that mankind has attempted to count and catalog the stars down through history and at this point has numbered over 945,000,000 stars1, this statement seems to minimize the incredible magnitude of the accomplishment. Continue reading