05/01/2008
Genesis 1:1 - 2 (HCSB)
1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
Most people are familiar with these opening words to the Bible. They hear them as children or occasionally in church. However, these words, like very few other references in the Bible, contain so much depth that any single verse in this first chapter of Genesis could be the basis for its own book. Yet God dictated these words to man in such a way that their meaning could be understood by ancient man in light of his understandings as well as by us in light of our understandings of science and physics.
“In the beginning…”
Beginning of what? Isn’t God eternal?
Yes, God is eternal; there is no beginning to God. The very first thing that God created was *time*. He created time because that was necessary for us. We are time-bound creatures, but He is not. This rule confounds so many because of our inability to think outside of time. Yet, even time is a created thing. When God created time, that was the beginning.
“God created…”
We must always keep this idea central. God created. While some like to believe the big-bang was just something that happened; they are still at a loss to explain where that initial matter or energy came from.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
This is a summary of what is to be explained in the next several verses.
“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths,…”
The English words do not do justice to the Hebrew text. The earth itself was not necessarily formless and void, but rather, all matter. Everything was nothing more than a homogenous blob of nothingness. God created matter and at first, it was nothingness.
“The spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters”
e=mc2
Some of you will recognize this as Einstein’s formula of relativity. Let me explain it in a very concise and simplified statement: all energy and matter are of the same stuff, they vary only in their intensity. If this is true (which I am inclined to agree) then all matter as we know it could easily be created out of nothingness by God “hovering” that is, *energizing* nothingness. The word used for “hovering” in the Hebrew is akin to the wobble a hen makes as she settles over her chicks. So “hovering” does not imply a stationary position, but some movement.
Nevertheless, whether you subscribe to this theory or not, let me state again, that the word of God was given in such a way that it could be understood by ancient peoples and by modern peoples with equal relevance.
Suffice it to say:
God created time. God created all matter and energy. God alone is the source of all.
Jeff Justus
Cleff Publishing
www.cleffpublishing.com
©2008 Cleff Publishing, all rights reserved.
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