Taking CREATION Literally - The First Day

I would like to show Creation as I understand it using scripture and common sense. I understand Creation to be a literal six day event where all three persons of the one true God created all things. That is to say, the FATHER spoke, the WORD created, and the SPIRIT hovered over creation. Then on the seventh day He rested. Let me show you how I see each verse unfolding in a logical sense, without imposing modern theories of Evolution or the Big bang.

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

IN THE BEGINNING: Notice that a time marker has been set here. Without this statement, we could believe anything existed before Gen 1:1. But instead, scripture points out that God created TIME. Without time there is no beginning or ending. To us, we view time as linear and unchanging.

GOD: God is outside of time, having no beginning or ending. (Rev 1:8, 11; Rev 21:6; Rev 22:13) He sees it complete, from the beginning to eternity. But yet He interacts with it to make it what it is.

GOD CREATED: Without His expressed interaction with the matter He created, there would be nothing. It is HIS creation. (Is 42:5; Is 45:18; Mal 2:10; Eph 3:9) Notice that within the creation process there is a "speaking into existence" and a "making". The Father speaks a Word and the matter is created from nothing. Then the general idea would be that the WORD forms that matter into what it is. (Jn 1:1-3)

THE HEAVEN: There may be two parts to this. First, we know that God dwells in a place called heaven which we have come to understand as a realm that we usually can't enter without dying first and/or taking on a Spiritual body. This place is detailed some in Revelation where we can see God on a sea of glass mingled with fire, on a throne. (Rev 4-5) So we can deduce here that God created a realm for Himself. We will call it the SPIRITUAL realm.

Secondly, God may have also in the same word created what we call the [empty] universe. That is to say a PHYSICAL realm. A place where physical matter can exist, SPACE. There would not be anything in it at all at this point, but rather just an empty canvas to create upon. Isaiah 42:5a Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; Here we can see that when God created the heavens they were stretched out like a canvas.

AND THE EARTH: God also created MATTER. He created a mass of liquid which we will go into further in the next verse. By looking forward a bit and tapping our observational science knowledge, we know that God then created Hydrogen, and Oxygen atoms. We can also deduce that many other types of molecules were within that blob of liquid. But there is no "land", no creatures, no life.

Genesis 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

AND THE EARTH WAS WITHOUT FORM: Isaiah 40:22 tells us that the earth was created as a circle. By observation, we have come to realize it is indeed a circle, but also a sphere. Yet when it was first created, it was NOT a circle or sphere. It was without form which probably means it was a blob of liquid (looking ahead a few words). It did not hold any specific shape but rather looked like a enormous droplet of water pulsating in no gravity. (NASA has some cool images of water in Zero-G on YouTube if you want a visual.)

AND VOID: This simply means it was empty. Clearly in the next few parts we will see it is a glob of water, so to be void means there was nothing in that water. It was just a blob of liquid.

AND DARKNESS WAS UPON THE FACE OF THE DEEP: First, it was dark. That means no masses existed that produce energy or light. God had not created the stars yet, nor the sun. To our eyes we would see nothing but BLACK all around. Scientifically, you could state that there was not one photon anywhere in existence.

"The Deep" represents Liquid. This glob of water without form was "deep". It had a center of sorts, and to reach it one would have to plunge themselves into the liquid and swim a great distance.

"Upon the Face" allows us to grasp it was a form, and not a haze or gas. A droplet of water in zero gravity has a "face". It has surface tension that holds it together into one object instead of separating into particles and floating apart. This becomes important when the Holy Spirit is mentioned.

AND THE SPIRIT OF GOD MOVED UPON THE FACE OF THE WATERS: Here we see one of the Persons of God in the form of His Spirit interacting with what He just created. Notice He is hovering UPON (or OVER) the "FACE" of the Water. Again, the Face represents a semi-flat surface of a formless object where one could move over. If it were a gas, one would move through, not upon. Interestingly, Jesus also moved upon the face of the water in Matthew 14:25-26.

Genesis 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

AND GOD SAID: Notice again how the creation process begins with God's spoken Word. There was only darkness before this moment.

LET THERE BE LIGHT: AND THERE WAS LIGHT: Instantaneously when God spoke, light was omnipresent. Light was emitted from every direction. To our eyes at this point we would see only white. We would still be unable to distinguish any shapes or forms. Everything was enveloped in pure light. That is to say there was not one shadow anywhere. Scientifically speaking, Light particles were bouncing off of every solid object from every direction, and/or every particle was emitting light.

Genesis 1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

AND GOD SAW THE LIGHT, THAT IT WAS GOOD: God saw the light, which indicates God inspected His creation once it was created, just as the Holy Spirit inspected the face of the deep. God called the light good. Notice he never called the darkness good.

It is important here to notice that God is LIGHT. 1 John 1:5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. Looking into our future, in Isaiah 60:19 we see that God will be the literal LIGHT of the New Earth. There will be no need for a Sun to light it. God will emit a glorious light upon the earth. This scripture clearly ties a physical manifestation of light coming from the sun to our God as an entity.

AND GOD DIVIDED THE LIGHT FROM THE DARKNESS: Literally, to us as humans, what is darkness? Well, its the absence of light, right? Light is emitted from a reaction of particles. This is complicated, so let's use examples: If we could look though solid walls into a small room with a bright light bulb hanging from the ceiling, when it was activated, the room would fill entirely with light, right? With the light on, how is darkness created? By a process we call SHADOWS. Now place a block on the right side of the room. It will cast a shadow behind it onto the floor and wall in relation to the bulb. THAT SHADOW is darkness. In this demonstration, I just "divided the light from the darkness". The process needs two important things. A point of light which is the source, and a physical object to cast a shadow.

Knowing all this, I now need to understand that light was all around, essentially emitting from every particle. There was no darkness, and thus no SHADOW. God hovered over the earth and took the light upon Himself. He became the point of light like a giant sun shining in an empty sky. Because nothing else that emits light had been created yet, God was the sun. It certainly would make for a well lit working environment. He didn't need a flashlight, as HE WAS THE LIGHT Himself as He stood way above the earth to observe His creation as it was created.

Once God took the light upon Himself, the Earth as a giant glob of water would cast a shadow behind it. This process would divide light from darkness.

Genesis 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

AND GOD CALLED THE LIGHT DAY, AND THE DARKNESS HE CALLED NIGHT; Looking back at the last verse, and understanding Light and shadow, helps to understand Day and Night. Is it not so that NIGHT is simply to be in the shadow of the globe shaped earth in relation to the Sun? And to be in the DAY is to be in the front of the globe shaped earth facing the Sun? God named the shadowed part NIGHT, and the lit part, DAY.

AND THE EVENING AND THE MORNING WERE THE FIRST DAY: Let's first acknowledge that the word DAY can have multiple meanings. It can represent a full rotation of the earth in relation to the Sun. We call that a 24-hour day. It can also represent the lit part of the earth at any point in its rotation. We call that DAYTIME. In this verse DAY will represent the first example. Knowing what we do from observational science, we acknowledge that the earth must make a full rotation to make a full day. This creates Morning, Afternoon, evening, and night.

This means that the blob of water has begun to spin on its axis. As time began to pass and as it spins it would begin to take shape into a watery globe in front of God who is standing still in the sky above it. This rotation would then complete one full rotation making "THE FIRST DAY".

To conclude the first day, we now have a circular globe of water rotating at a constant speed in an empty universe with God standing in the heavens shining light upon the earth. This allows for Days to be observed, and time to be reckoned.