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.