How, Why and When of Creation
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2018 · 22 July 2018
The Bible opens with a statement, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” With that statement the Word of God, Holy Scripture, affirms the existence of the universe and everything in it as the product of God’s creative act. We are shown that evolution, the dominant theory of science, is not true. What exists, exists not because it evolved, but because God created it.
In past weeks we have shown that evolution is impossible and irrational. There has never been one shred of evidence that matter on any level can or will organize itself all by itself. A cell cannot increase its complexity. A cell cannot add information necessary in its DNA or its genetic code to take itself to a higher level. That is impossible; it has never been done; nothing mutates upward.
The truth is that species die out. There are millions of species that have died out in this world, and there are hundreds, according to many scientists, that become extinct every day. There were species in the past that we don’t have today, such as dinosaurs. They may look like links between various species, but maybe nothing other than just an ancient species that went out of existence.
Evolution is a violation of all that modern science knows to be true. On the other hand, we don’t need evolution to explain anything, because we can read how it happened in Genesis 1:1. Inorganic matter cannot organize itself upward to become organic matter. Organic matter cannot organize itself by random features to become more complex and ultimately reach the level of human intelligence and personality.
“God created the heavens and the earth,” and starting in verse 2 we find out how. “The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Verse 3, “Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.” Verse 4, “And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.”
Verse 5-7, “God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. 6 Then God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ 7 God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so.”
Verse 8-10, “And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day. 9 Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good.”
Verse 11-13, “Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, plants yielding seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 So the evening and the morning were the third day.”
Verse 14-16, “Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; 15 and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. 16 Then 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.”
Verse 17-20, “God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on 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 So the evening and the morning were the fourth day. 20 Then God said, “Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.”
Verse 21-23, “So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 So the evening and the morning were the fifth day.”
Verse 24-25, “Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind”; and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.”
Verse 26-27, “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
Verse 28-29, “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.”
Verse 30-31, “Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so. 31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Genesis 2:1, “Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.”
Genesis 2:2-3, “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” Now there is the accurate account of the creation of the universe. The creation account is laid out from Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3.
This is the first part of the creation. The second part is called the generations. Starting in Genesis 2: 4, what follows is the history of man. This says that God created everything in the universe. Everything that exists, galaxies or black holes or solar systems, or whether it is the smallest grain of sand or a bacterial microbe on the earth, everything was created by God. He is the creator of all things visible and invisible.
This include every form of energy, every form of matter, the speed of light, nuclear structure, electromagnetism, gravity, every law by which nature operates was created within the framework of this creation. Behind the creation of everything in the universe stands the living God who eternally existed as God. Starting in Genesis 2: 4, He singles out man and goes back over the creation of man and then tells the story of man.
So this is the only eyewitness account of creation. Genesis 1:1 to 2:3 is not allegory. There’s nothing in the Hebrew text to indicate that this is an allegorical picture or mystical poetry, that this is some kind of literary style that is something other than actual history. This is purely expressed history from God written down by Moses. The Creator himself gave Moses this accurate account of history.
Genesis is the only record of creation; it is the only source of creation information. Now as we look at this first verse let’s ask three questions. How did God create, by what method? We have already suggested that he couldn’t have used evolution for two reasons. We affirm that, number one, the text of Genesis 1 leaves no room for evolution, and two, evolution doesn’t happen.
All creation began and ended in six days. Look at Genesis 2: 2, “By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.” He created the entire universe out of nothing, from no pre-existing material, and He did it in six days. We know that from Genesis 1:5. The first day he created light and it says there was evening and there was morning, one day.
God says it was one day, and then just to make sure you know exactly what He means, it was the kind of day that has an evening and a morning. What kind of day is that? That’s basically what we call a solar day. It’s just a common everyday day. God did all this in six days, verse eight says there was an evening and a morning on day two, and verse 13 says there was an evening and a morning on day three.
Verse 19, there was evening and morning on day 4. Verse 23, there was evening and there was morning on day 5, and verse 31, there was evening and there was morning on day six. He’s just talking about six normal days. The whole of creation, was completed on the sixth day, and the Bible always speaks of creation as a past event. Evolution speaks of creation as continuing.
Hebrews 4:3 says, “His works were finished from the foundation of the world.” Hebrews 4:10 says, “For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.” God finished creation, never adding to that original creation. On the seventh day He rested from creation, and He continues to rest from creation. What is He doing now? Conservation; He upholds all things by the word of His power.
The Millennial kingdom is about restoration; when He restores the earth as we know it and the universe back to its original character. So you have creation, conservation and restoration. Finally, recreation is the new heaven and the new earth. When yom, is modified by a number, without exception in Scripture, it refers to a normal solar day. Why did God take six days for creation? God took six days to establish a pattern.
In Exodus 20 He gives us the pattern, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.
When did this happen? Did it happen millions and billions of years ago? Science used to say two billion years, but now they’ve changed it. They lean toward 20 billion years and about every year it gets longer. What about fossils? It is true, there are billions of fossil fields all over the world. The Bible gives accurate information into what it was. It was the universal, worldwide flood. Genesis 6 and 7.
In Matthew 24:37-39, we read about the flood there, and it uses the Greek word kataklusmos, the word cataclysm. It totally rearranged the surface of the earth and engulfed the entire earth in water, and that massive hydraulic cataclysm is what produced the extinction of many animals instantaneously that produced the fossils. 2 Peter 3 talks about how God destroyed the whole earth by flooding it with water.
Starting in Genesis 5, there is the flood and all the years of people’s life are given. You add up those, from the first man Adam to the flood you have 1,656 years. Verse 10 goes right on down to Abraham, that’s 225 years. So something under 2,000 years, and you are at Abraham. And from Abraham to the return and rebuilding of Jerusalem and the rebuilding of Israel you have about 1,500 or so years.
Following the rebuilding and the restoration you’re at the end now of the Old Testament. You’ve got 400 years of silence. So you have about 2,000 years that we started out from - the creation to Abraham. From Abraham to the New Testament is about 2,000 years, and from the beginning of the New Testament to now is about 2,000 years. Now, the evolutionists just mock that the world, the universe is 6,000 years old.
Scientists come along and say, what about the speed of light? If God created a star out there, and it’s a number of light years away, it would take a million years for it to get here. The light can’t get here and the fact that we can see the light of the star way out there indicates that millions of years must have gone by. But God not only created the star, he created the light in between there and here also.
The speed of light is generally accepted as being 300,000 kilometers a second. A light year is the distance light travels in a year. The first measurement of the speed of light was made by a Danish astronomer, Rømer, in 1675 and then by an English astronomer Bradley in 1728. The speed of light in 1675 was about 2.6 times faster than today, and it continued to decline until 1960 when atomic clocks began to be employed to measure it.”
Barry Setterfield, an Australian scientist, measured a rate of 5.7 kilometers decrease in velocity per second between 1675 and 1728, and 2.5 kilometers per second decrease between 1880 and 1924, and he kept charting the decrease. If the speed of light has indeed decayed along with everything else, then the empirical measurement of the age of the solar system would fit precisely into the genealogical chronologies of Genesis.
Assuming that’s correct, that would explain why the dates derived from various types of radioactive measurements on geological elements such as the half-life of uranium 238 decaying into lead over millions of years would all be skewed. Because the velocity of an electron in its orbit is proportional to the speed of light. Everything changes and what appears to be old isn’t old at all. We’ll get more into the why next time. Let us pray together.