Introducing Evil Into the World

God's work in creation was perfect. He designed the universe so that all the physical and chemical conditions necessary for life on earth would be present according to His design. He created man and gave him work, gave him provisions, and gave him a companion. God gave man authority to rule over all the earth, under God. However, man's status was conditional, not permanent. If he obeyed, then he could eat of the Tree of Life and live forever, untainted by sin. If he disobeyed by breaking the one command, the result would be death and all that it implied. Genesis Chapter 3 reveals how it all unfolded.

The serpent of Genesis Chapter 3 is the devil or Satan (Revelation 12:9). He deceives the woman with cunning, attacking God's word and impugning God's character suggesting to Eve that God was holding out on them. Satan's temptation was laced with the truth. They would know good and evil. It was also a brazen lie in telling them that they would not die.

The introduction of evil had the following immediate and permanent consequences:

1. A disruption of the perfect unity between man and wife, between male and female - a feeling of shame at being naked. Woman and man would try to rule over each other.

2. A disruption of the perfect unity between man and God. - a feeling of unworthiness to be in God's presence.

3. A disruption of the perfect provision of God.- Thorns and thistles instead of abundance; pain in childbearing and childbirth. Labor and sweat at maintaining health and life.

4. A disruption of man's authority. - Man would experience death. There would be a godly line and there would be those who are the seed of the serpent. A promise that the godly line would ultimately defeat the serpent.

Prose and Poetry of Creation

When something is important, we often repeat reading it or saying it to make sure that it is understood. The Bible repeats the creation of man and woman in Genesis chapter two because of its supreme importance to our understanding of who we are and where we came from. The following are my insights from reading Genesis Chapters one and two. Genesis chapter two is prose and poetry while Genesis chapter one is more didactic and like a textbook. Chapters one and two cannot contradict each other because there is one Author and the Bible is inerrant and infallible.

1. Not all plants sprang up on the third day. They must have been created in seed form and were awaiting moisture in order to germinate and grow. Some small plants and bushes were in this category.

2. Rain did not come from clouds in the original creation. The earth was more like a greenhouse, where moisture from the land and the seas would rise like mist and condense as moisture to water the whole earth. Therefore, some plants may not have germinated until after the fourth day when the sun was created and its heat caused evaporation of moisture and condensation to water the earth. It must have started "raining" by the fifth day.

3. The Garden of Eden was planted by God. Its trees and plants grew after the fourth day, and on into the sixth day and beyond. "Rain" occurred after the fourth day, and with underground springs of water, caused rivers to flow, adding to the geographical features of the earth, defining Eden. There were two trees which were one-of-a-kind in their species. One was called the Tree of Life, and the other, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

4. Just as He did with the plants and animals, God assembled man's physical body from the earth. The DNA, molecules and cells, all came from the same elements that make up plants and animals. Only when God breathed into man did he become a living creature. On the sixth day, He created man full grown, with language and intelligence, and accountable to God. After creating man, God placed him in the garden and gave him one command.

5. Woman was also created on the sixth day. Eve must have learned of the command from Adam. It is also possible that God spoke the command again so that both of them could hear it.

6. Genesis chapter one defines man's purpose and authority on the earth. Genesis chapter two defines man's responsibilities to God and his family. God gave man work. God gave man provisions. God gave man companionship.

Everything Was Very Good

And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds — livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds." And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Then 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 livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill 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 on the earth."

And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so.

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.

(Genesis 1:24-31)

God had formed the earth and the plant kingdom, and the universe for the earth, and had created the creatures of the sea and the birds of the air. With the same power, he created the animals that live on the earth. The staggering diversity of animals is such that the estimate of the known number of species is from 3 to 30 million, with 97% of them invertebrates, and 3% vertebrates.

The pinnacle of creation is man, whom the Creator made in His image, after His likeness. The pre-existent Christ who was there at creation as the second person of the Trinity became the pattern for man. Man as male and female, with their attributes of relationship, community, and intimacy is a reflection of the relationship and unity within the Godhead. Maleness and femaleness is mentioned first with reference to man, and not to the rest of the animal or plant kingdoms. With man, sex is not primarily biological as it is with the rest of creation, where the sex of plants and animals is not even mentioned.

Man and animals were to feed on fruit and vegetation. God gave dominion to man over all the earth, as another component of the image of God in man. Everything was very good.

God Fills the Seas and the Air With His Creatures

And God said, "Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens." So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.

And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

(Genesis 1:20-23)

The creation of the sun, moon and the stars came after the creation of the plants and trees. The process of photosynthesis now began in the living plants.

Next God created the birds and sea creatures after their kinds. "Birds, as a group, have been extensively studied. Scientists believe that the estimated number of bird species alive today (between 9,000 to 10,000) is a relatively good approximation of the actual number", writes Laura Klappenbach. Some of the best estimates of the number of species of fish puts it at 32,500. Since the Bible uses the term "great sea creatures," the whales and aquatic and marine mammals were also created then, including sea-dwelling dinosaurs and avian dinosaurs

Each species of fish and bird, marine and aquatic mammal, avian dinosaur, and aquatic dinosaur was created on day 5. The Creator programmed each species to be fruitful and to multiply.

The Creator Lights Up Space

And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth." And it was so.

And God made the two great lights — the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night — and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

(Genesis 1:14-19)

On the second day, God created space. He carved out the earth and fashioned it on the third day. In carving out the earth, there was plenty of "waters" left outside the firmament (space). This is the same "waters" out of which the earth was made. God now turns His attention back to those waters, and turns them into the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars.

The sun and the moon are to implement His definition of time periods which He established on the first day. The orbit of the planets, the distance of the earth from the sun, and of the moon from the earth, and the placement of the earth in the Milky Way galaxy, the rotation of the earth on its axis, everything, is fine-tuned to make the earth just right for life, and implement His design and purpose. In God's grand scheme, the earth is the "center" of the universe.

All this took place on the fourth day.

The Creator Fashions The Earth

And God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

And God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth." And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

(Genesis 1:9-13)

God created space. He now focuses on the earth. "let the dry land appear" implies that the land was already there, and that water covered them. When did that happen?

Before Day 1 there was only matter. It was "void", i.e, it had no energy.

Then on Day 1 God created light. Light is a form of energy and God imparted it into matter. Matter and energy were combined to form the elements, the atomic structure of matter was defined. The periodic table of the elements was defined. Time was defined.

On Day 2 God created space. He created three dimensional space. On a macro scale, the elements combined into molecules, crystals, suspensions, and various solid, liquid, and gaseous forms. The earth took on a spherical shape. The earth is no longer "formless" and "void."

On Day 3 the Creator caused the waters that cover the earth to recede. All this rapid action of water, happening in less than a day, to be stored in the labyrinths of the earth leave the various stratification of rocks and hills and mountains that we see today. The dry land appears. The shape of the land and the seas, caused by the action of water happened by design.

The Designer was not finished yet. He made the dry land appear. He then caused the right atoms to combine into molecules to form amino acids, protein, and plant DNA. He then embedded these DNA into the complex cells and structures that make up a plant. We know of over 300,000 species of plants today but God only knows how many species He made. More species are being discovered everyday. God formed them out of the elements in the earth after he separated the land from the seas. All of these happened on Day 3.

God Creates Outer Space

And God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

(Genesis 1:6-8)

In the language of Genesis formless matter is described as "waters." God first created matter without energy. Then, He created light which energized matter and did so at an atomic level, forming the elements. The mass of the material universe is finite, as implied by the description "face of the waters" or "face of the deep." The energy imparted to matter is also finite. In creating light, God also defined time. The basic unit of time is to be the 24-hour cycle of day and night.

In Genesis 1:6-8, God forms the earth. He does so by creating space. He "carves out" the earth by placing an expanse around it, separating it from the rest of the "waters." The name given to outer space is "heaven." This is not the same "heavens" mentioned in Genesis 1:1. (In the New Testament, Paul speaks of the "third heaven" (2 Corinthians 12:2)).

The special "waters" for which space was created would become the earth. We can understand that the "waters" beyond in space is the same material as the "waters" that would comprise the earth. Those "waters" outside the expanse would later become the sun, moon, and planets, and stars.

With the creation of space, God also created the three dimensions, length, width, and height. We can also understand, that the earth took on its spherical shape, surrounded by space. It was no longer "formless" and "void."

It wasn't until the end of the second day that the most important physical quantities were present in the creation: mass, energy, time, and space.

God Starts The Clock

And God said,"Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

(Genesis 1:3-5)

The second thing that God created was energy in the form of light. God created light/energy and imparted it into the material universe. The atomic structure of matter, with its delicate balance between mass and energy, electrons, photons, and sub-atomic particles began to take shape. Matter combined with energy and formed the elements. We cannot begin to imagine the amount of light/energy that God packed into matter. Nuclear reactions can produce catastrophic amounts of energy.

In creating light/energy, there is to be a cycle, alternating light and darkness. The universe is full of cyclical events. The behavior of mass and energy would follow the basic cycles established by the Creator of mass and energy. It would not be random and unpredictable. There would be order in the universe, and patterns discernible to the intelligent, among the most basic, being the alternating pattern of day and night. With the creation of light/energy, God started the clock. He defined the durations of day and night, from which we derive all other units of time.

Today, the international standard for time, the second, is kept by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The NIST developed a clock which is based on the natural resonance frequency of the cesium atom, (9,192,631,770 Hz) which is used in the definition of 1 second. The cesium clock is so accurate and the uncertainty is so small that it would neither gain nor lose a second in more than 60 million years!

On the first day, the first cesium atoms resonated the equivalent of 86,400 seconds before God spoke again.

The Beginning of the World

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

(Genesis 1:1-2)

The first thing that God created was the universe. The scripture does not say how God did it. He may have spoken it into existence, but the Scriptures show that the first created thing that God spoke into existence was light. (Genesis 1:3). There was no time. It is futile to speculate how long the universe existed before the creation of light because God had not defined time. Time did not exist. We just know that it was a beginning. The universe did not come into being by itself. God, the self-existent Being created it.

The first distinction we notice is the distinction between earth and heaven. They are both created, but they are distinct. The earth is the material world. Heavens is the spiritual world. Heavens is plural. The earth is singular. I believe that heavens includes the angels, and that the angels were created at this "time."

The earth was formless and void. It was undifferentiated matter - matter without energy. There was no solid or liquid or gas, no space, no dimensions. The physical laws did not yet come into being. There were no Laws of Thermodynamics because there was only matter without energy. The formless earth is described as "waters". This does not necessarily imply the "water" (hydrogen and oxygen) we are familiar with. The atomic structure of matter was not formed yet. Light had not been created. There was no energy. The material world was "void" and "dark" without energy.

The material world had a limit. It had a "surface" or "face of the deep," or "face of the waters" as the English Standard Version renders it. That boundary was where the Spirit of God was. This is the second distinction we notice, the distinction between the creation and God. God is transcendent. The earth was not, and is not God, nor is the earth a part of God. God is totally separate from His creation.