UNDERSTANDING THE CREATION The First Day Creation of the Heavens and the Earth – the Foundation of it All

Genesis 1:1-5 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he 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.

CREATION is a Big Word! The Hebrew word for “create” is “bara.” “bara”, used eleven times in the Book of Genesis, always refers to divine, never human, activity It is “ex-nihilo” meaning “out of nothing.”

The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters Creator, God, was 100% involved in the developing creation. “Hovering” in Hebrew brings an image of a hen brooding over her chicks. God started the light and dispelled the void of darkness.

The Big Bang is looking more supernatural all the time. About 20 years ago, the late Carl Sagan famously said that Big bang science would eventually show that the universe was created without any creator. Since then, the picture has changed quite a bit, one reason why, in the years before his 1996 death, Sagan himself began to advocate science-and-religion studies. The leading contemporary development in Big Bang thinking is a theory called “cosmic inflation”, which holds that the universe popped out of a point with no content and no dimensions, essentially expanding instantaneously to cosmological size. Now being taught at Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other top schools, this explanation of the beginning of the universe bears haunting similarity to the traditional theological notion of creation ex nihilo, “out of nothing.” “Science and Religion: Academics Ponder the Ties Between Faith and Fact,” Los Angeles Times, 14 March 1999

The Earth is Round Floats in Space Isaiah 40:22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, its people are like grasshoppers. Job 26:7 – He suspends the earth over nothing. “But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom –” Jeremiah 10:12

What Keeps Things Going? The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that energy for useful work is always decreasing with time. What keeps the earth, planets & moon moving year after year at the same constant speed and velocity?

Our One of a Kind Earth Earth’s radius = 4,025 miles 0-25 mi. = solid crust 26-1,825 mi.= solid mantle with some fluid regions 1,826-3,225 mi. = liquid outer core 3, mi. = solid inner core (12,600 F.)

The First Day Summary 1. He created energy & time – in the beginning 2. He created space, extended to the heavens 3. He created matter, his prime accomplishment being the creation of the Earth

“And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day” Genesis 1:5 And thus the Bible implies the length of day we are now familiar with – twenty four hours.