Introduction
In this meditation series on Genesis, we will use the ASV Bible translation, which is in the public domain. We believe in the deity of the Lord Jesus, and we believe that God is One in the Trinity of God (God the Father, God the Son Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit). Therefore, God the Son Jesus was part of the creation. Therefore, the book of Genesis is essential for a believer in the Lord Jesus. The book of Genesis is not an allegory book. The creation story presented in the book of Genesis is accurate, and it is for humans to believe that there is a God who created all things, seen and unseen. We have a five-part meditation blog dealing with the book of Genesis. However, we do not post the entire Bible text of Genesis in these blogs, so we encourage all readers to study and meditate on the entirety of this book using a good literal Bible translation.
There are many beliefs about the creation of the world, and these beliefs come from many sources, including believers and unbelievers. Some common beliefs coming from the non-believers’ side are the Big Bang theory plus the evolution of species theory. These theories are, of course, the result of the selfishness of humans who do not want to acknowledge the existence of God and want to live a life outside of their Creator. We will not debate these false humanistic theories, which have no scientific basis and are only humanistic models developed on computers. Instead, we will present the Bible alternative, which is based on the written Bible text given by God, the Creator of the unseen and the seen world, to His prophets.
Genesis 1, Biblical Comments; ASV Bible Text
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Q. In our comments in the Gospels, we talk about the parallel earth to come (read our article: The Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ). Was the parallel earth that we talked about in our commentary already in existence at the time of this earth creation mentioned here? A. The parallel earth existed before this earth was created, and the parallel earth already had the creatures of heaven in it.
2 And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Comments Genesis 1:2. Void means bare earth, empty, no trees, no water in it, completely void.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Comments Genesis 1:3. Here, the light from the palm of God comes out and shines throughout the earth, but it has no shape, no substance; it is the light that is part of God. We can think about it as the “glory of God,” but there is no substance, just pure light. This light is not the same as the light humans know.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. 6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
Comments Genesis 1:4-8. The parallel earth (earth upon earth) was in effect at the creation time until the flood. The parallel earth effect will come back during the Millennium time when the Lord Jesus returns to the earth. The Lord created all things, and nothing will be gone. Between these two earths, there is the parallel space (firmament) where the Lord created different heavenly bodies. After the flood, when the Lord brought the flood upon the earth, the parallel space between the two earths expanded (shifted), and the parallel earth was moved far away. When the parallel earth was pushed far away (separated), it gave this earth its own time to recover its damage from the flood, and the circle of life started again, until the Millennium time.
… 14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of 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 heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16 And God made the 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 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 there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
Comments Genesis 1:1-19. From verse 1 to verse 19, four days are described as “there was evening, and there was morning.” The evening and the morning mentioned here do not refer to the sunset and sunrise, respectively; instead, they indicate a Lord’s Day. As we read these verses, we can understand that the time happening here is not the same as the time we have now. When the Lord created all things, during day one, day two, day three, and day four of the creation, the time was not twenty-four hours as we have now for a day. The main light the Lord used for these four days to shine is His Glory. As the Lord created each individual thing mentioned, the time separation is a big gap for humans. The gap of time for the Lord and the gap of time for humans are not the same. All of what the Lord tells us in these verses happened before the sun and the moon started to be in effect. However, when the Lord created the sun and the moon, time changed from the Lord’s time to become human time, twenty-four hours a day. Before the sun and the moon were created, the day the Lord worked was, as the Bible mentions, “one day of the Lord is like a thousand years” of humans’ time; imagine that as well and add the time. So, as the Lord works each day during the creation period, the length of time mentioned for the first four days is not the same as the human time of four days. Before the sun was created, as we are told in these verses, the Lord first divided the light from the darkness; therefore, think of what darkness and light verse 4 talks about, and take this into account as well (make a comparison).
Also, when the twenty-four-hour day started when the Lord created the sun and the moon, the atmosphere was not the same. Imagine the separation of the waters above and below. The atmosphere and the pressure were different from what we have today.
… 23 And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. … 26 And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. 27 And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. 29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food: 30 and to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creeps upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food: and it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Comments Genesis 1:26. "And God said, Let Us make ..." First, remember that God is One when it comes to the Father, the Son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. When God of Three created all things, He is One but Three in One, and that is why here it refers to us, meaning “Three of Us.” The Lord of the Trinity created all things. Also, do not forget that the Bible says that all things were created through the Word (the Lord Jesus; see John 1:1). Also, remember that the Bible is one, the Old Testament and the New Testament; we must link them all together.
“Man in Our image, after Our likeness” means that our human likeness (features) is like that of God; this refers not only to the look, but God of Three also has Spirit (see John 14:9). To create humans in His image, a human will have a soul and spirit. And that is why humans are different than animals. Humans created in the image of God have souls, but animals do not have souls. Therefore, we should think about how much the Lord loves humans: He created them in His likeness. Humans have body, soul, and spirit as a unit.
Comments Genesis 1:20-31. After the sun and the moon were created, time changed, and these last two creation days here (days five and six) are twenty-four hours of earthly days.
In chapter 1 of Genesis, the Bible enumerates the creation days. Still, the Bible does not imply that these days were consecutive days with no time gaps between them. For example, we read in verse 5, “… and there was evening and there was morning, one day.” Then, in verse 6, “and God said, Let there be …” Therefore, as we read the creation story given in the Bible, between the creation days, we can notice that there is a gap of time. The Bible does not say that the creation days are consecutive; therefore, we can believe that the Bible just enumerates the creation days, showing what the Lord God did on a particular creation day. Still, between these days, there is a big time gap.
This time gap is a stop time period on earth before the Lord puts everything together. God has a plan for more things, so He paused the time of the earth; everything on earth must stop for the Lord to continue the work after the gap (we can think like a momentary freeze of time). This momentary freeze of time will not impact anything that was created. We can imagine this action as a bent time; the Lord folded the time to come back to the point He wants to continue. The time then and now is not the same. When the Lord bent the time, He did not bend the earth’s time; He bent the heavenly time to return to the point where He stopped the work. The length of the heavenly time the Lord bent was short, but the length of the earth time the Lord worked on the earth was long.
You can think of something similar to a human working on a project, such as building a house, where we have a construction time, which belongs to the house, and a human time, which belongs to the human. On day one of the construction time, the human builds the foundation, then goes home, makes some further preparations and designs, and waits for the cement to settle. He waits for a while until the next construction day when he puts the frame of the house, etc. The construction time from the house’s point of view stops for a while, but when the human comes back to work, the construction time resumes. Therefore, the man’s time has folded back to meet the construction time at the beginning of day two. So, if from the house’s point of view, the construction time was, for example, six days, from the human’s point of view, this time was different; there were time gaps between the construction days, but the house itself is not aware of the human time if it only exists in the construction time expense.
Therefore, we must think about the earth and universe as objects that the Lord designed and created. So, then, there is the time of the Lord and the time of the earth, but the Lord manipulates the objects in His own time, which is outside of the earth’s time. While the objects are created, they are still in the hands of God, but the objects themselves function in a different time expense from the Lord’s time. God exists out of the earth’s time; He is above all things, and all things exist in Him. The Lord’s time is different than our time; that’s why, for the earth time, counting a stoppage of time of the Lord is a matter of who knows how long.
Q: How do we explain the age dating by science versus the Biblical creation account? A: Here, the Bible talks about the creation, and then humans use numbers to calculate what life was like in that period, so this method can’t produce a match. We can think this way: put two bones beside each other, one from now and one old; then, think about bone composition and think about how you could create the earth’s atmosphere to match the atmosphere at that old time. Humans cannot do that. The time frame is not the same, and the environment, the air, and the food that animals eat all play a role in bone composition. Humans then come and use some numbers and equations to say that if the bone looks like this, then the age of that bone must be this. Still, they do not know the environment of the old bone, and they cannot reproduce that environment that existed until that bone became a bone.
In conclusion, the earth is not as old as science predicts it to be, but it is also not as young as some Biblical scholars suggest.
Genesis 2, Biblical Comments; ASV Bible Text
… 7 And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. 8 And Jehovah God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground made Jehovah God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Comments Genesis 2:7-9. The trees of life and the knowledge of good and evil were real trees. The Lord created both trees, but later, the Lord took them away from the earth. Part of the Garden of Eden was taken up to the parallel earth. Today, humans can still find history about the Garden of Eden, but they can’t pinpoint exactly where it was.
10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became four heads. …
Comments Genesis 2:10. We should understand that what the Bible tells us here now is no longer existing on earth as described. In some Bible commentaries, you will see maps indicating some possible places on earth where the Garden of Eden was. Note that none of those maps are correct. Remember, as well, the water was flowing from the garden and then through the land. Some maps may capture the water but cannot capture where it flows from.
In conclusion, do not let yourself be confused by humanistic theories about the creation of the universe. Believe in the Trinity of God! Meditate on the Word of God with the help of the Holy Spirit and understand that we are created beings, God is the creator of all things, and we have a limited mind and understanding; no human can understand God’s mind and His ways beyond the Word of God.
Meditation Tasks:
- Read Genesis Chapters 1 and 2 and meditate on the comments presented in this blog.
- Challenge yourself about the days of creation, the light of God and the sun’s light, and how they impacted the time of creation.
If you have any questions about the topics presented in this blog, please contact us, and we will try to provide our answers in a timely manner.