In the beginning

The glory of God in creation is underscored by mainstream science.

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Let us unpack that first verse of the Bible. The Bible starts with the story of creation. In the first verse, we see God creating the heavens and the earth. From the very first statement, the Bible shows us what came first. The ‘heavens’, which means the heavenly bodies we observe in the universe, came first, and then the earth followed. This coincides with the sequence of events described by mainstream science. The Big Bang began the expansion of space and time and everything confined within it including the Earth.

Genesis 1:2

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.

Before we proceed further, we must understand that the book of Genesis is an account of events revealed to the author by God. The author describes what was revealed to him from his perspective. Taking this into account, let us try to paint a picture of what was revealed to the author as he narrates these events.

So the author describes the early earth as a formless and empty place covered in darkness where the spirit of God hovered above the ‘waters’. The widely accepted theory of planetary formation describes a protoplanet, which came to become the earth we know today, as a hostile place. volcanic activity spewed out gases and ash into the atmosphere. Impacts from being bombarded by rocks and asteroids together with the fact that the earth was surrounded by dust and debris from space blocked out most light from the sun from reaching the surface. From the author's perspective, the earth would have appeared very dark. There were no mountains, hills or valleys, no vegetation, no oceans just molten magma in the darkness making the place look very desolate and bare. Having not seen this much lava covering the earth before the author could only describe the lava he saw as ‘waters’ since it behaved similarly to waves of oceanic and sea waters.

Genesis 1:3–5

³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴ God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. ⁵God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning — the first day.

The processes that formed the earth we have come to know and love today took millions of years with very slow and gradual changes between any significant differences in the appearance of the earth. Due to this, God in His revelation skipped past the times when there weren’t any major changes to the earth. For example, the millions of years it took for the atmosphere to clear up enough for light to become more prevalent on the surface of the earth and the millions more it took for days and nights to become perceivable. Notice that there were days and nights but due to all the gasses and ash in the atmosphere, they weren't percevable from the surface of the earth. Similar to how you can see some light on a cloudy day even though you can't see the sun or moon, you can still tell whether it is day or night.

Genesis 1:6–8

⁶ And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” ⁷ So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. ⁸ God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning — the second day.

As the temperatures on the earth cooled, water vapour condensed and formed liquid water. More water was also brought in by asteroids and soon large parts of the earth were covered by vast oceans. As the atmosphere became richer in oxygen, the levels of methane and carbon dioxide gradually dropped and as the dust and ash settled, more and more of the sky was becoming clear. The distinction between the surface and the atmosphere became more apparent.

Genesis 1:9–10

⁹ And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. ¹⁰ God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

Water collects together in low-altitude areas gradually forming seas and oceans. Large, stable blocks of the Earth’s crust that are at higher altitudes stick out of the water forming Islands. Pangaea was a supercontinent that existed from the Neoproterozoic to the Jurassic period. It formed by the accretion of multiple cratons (the aforementioned large, stable blocks of the Earth’s crust) and smaller landmasses. The assembly of Gondwana began around 600 million years ago and continued over several hundred million years. Panthalassa, also known as the Panthalassic Ocean, was the vast ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. It existed from approximately 335 to 175 million years ago. The supercontinent began to break apart during the Jurassic period, ultimately leading to the continents we recognize today.

Genesis 1:11–13

¹¹ Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. ¹² The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. ¹³ And there was evening, and there was morning — the third day.

On the supercontinent Pangaea, around 500 million years ago, plants, as we know them today, first appeared and slowly evolved over millions of years through various stages beginning from Green Algae from freshwater which then evolved further to bryophytes the first land-dwelling plants examples of which are mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. This went on and on until the angiosperms(flowering plants) we see today. When the Bible describes the origin of the plants it includes the future events that led to the evolution of all plants to this very day summing it all in the same explanation.

Genesis 1: 14–19

¹⁴ And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years,¹⁵ and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. ¹⁶ God made two great lights — the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. ¹⁷ God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, ¹⁸ to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. ¹⁹ And there was evening, and there was morning — the fourth day.

This is a verse that gives so many scientists their smoking gun in their argument against ‘creation theory’ as they put it. “How could the sun be created after the earth?” they wonder. The simple answer is it wasn’t. So is the Bible wrong? Of course not. The events described in Genesis are described from the author's perspective as he received the revelation. At this time the methane had all but disappeared from the earth’s surface due to plants and stromatolites pumping the atmosphere full of oxygen. Water vapour had also condensed. This allowed for a clear sky with the sun, moon and stars clearly visible in the sky.

Genesis 1:20–25

²⁰ And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” ²¹ So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ²² God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” ²³ And there was evening, and there was morning — the fifth day. ²⁴ And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. ²⁵ God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

The earliest multicellular organisms that we classify as animals lived in marine environments. The Cambrian Explosion was a period of rapid diversification and the sudden appearance of a wide variety of animal forms. Many major animal phyla that still exist today first appeared during this time, including arthropods (like trilobites), molluscs, chordates, and echinoderms. Vertebrates, the group of animals with a backbone, began to emerge the first among them being jawless fish. Fish continued to diversify eventually leading to early tetrapods, which were vertebrates with limbs and digits (fingers and toes). They started to transition from water to land. The first amniotes, the group of vertebrates that includes reptiles, birds, and mammals, also evolved during this time.

Genesis 1:26–28

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” ²⁷ So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female, he created them. ²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Our species emerged around 2 million years ago. Compared to the 4.6 billion years the earth has been around, we are the newcomers to the universe. God created us from the stuff of the universe and within the universe’s parameters so that we may be able to exist within it. We get food and drink from the resources available in the universe. We breathe the air that’s in plenty in the atmosphere. Our bodies function within the confines of the fundamental principles God set up at the beginning of the universe.

The story of creation from Genesis was revealed to Moses thousands of years ago. Moses was not a biochemist, nor was he an astrophysicist. He was not describing the scientific processes that led to the creation of the universe. He was simply sharing what The Lord had revealed to Him. He documented it using the knowledge and experiences which he had acquired at the time. Expecting him to narrate creation events like a 21st-century scientist is unrealistic. If you don’t think so, imagine how a Victorian-era person coming from a world of horse-drawn carriages, gas street lamps and telegraph machines would describe our metropolitan cities today. And that's barely a 200-year age gap.

In conclusion, creation speaks to the glory of God. From the galaxies in outer space to the fishes in the earth's oceans, all things big and small bear testimony to the awesome power of God. Out of His generosity and love, He endeavoured to create a universe and place us in it so that we may get the chance to experience existence. Be grateful.