05/08/2008
14Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night. They will serve as signs for festivals and for days and years. 15They will be lights in the expanse of the sky to provide light on the earth.” And it was so. 16God made the two great lights—the greater light to have dominion over the day and the lesser light to have dominion over the night—as well as the stars. 17God placed them in the expanse of the sky to provide light on the earth, 18to dominate the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19Evening came, and then morning: the fourth day.
If I were to say the words “Sagittarius”, “Gemini”, or “Taurus”, most of you would recognize these as astrological constellations. Many ancient people believed that these constellations were actually gods in the heavens circling the skies. The appearance of a particular god in the month of your birth would have bearing on your personality and fate. The ancient Aztecs had different fates for each day of the year, and those born on one particularly unfortunate day of the year, were destined for human sacrifice. Imagine living your life knowing that someday you would be sacrificed alive.
There are times when I look into the night sky, I can easily spot Orion’s belt most of the time; and sometimes the big dipper. But most stars are masked by ground light reflecting into the atmosphere. But in 1993, I took a trip into Mexico. We were at a Mayan pyramid about 10 at night. All of a sudden, the ground lights were shut off and the blanket of stars was utterly amazing. Most of us will never have the opportunity to see the sky like this. When we look into the night sky, we might see dozens, or possibly hundreds of stars; the ancient people looked up and saw thousands.
All of these stars was created for a reason—a very simple reason; to help us determine the seasons and to provide light. A greater light was to dominate the day—the sun. A lesser light was to dominate the night—the moon. The stars give us insight to the seasons (not to mention they are a fantastic display of God’s handiwork).
But notice that we are on “day 4”. How is it that we have had evening and morning for 3 days now without the sun? My point is this: we measure days as the rising and setting of the sun; thus, 24 hours. Since there was not a recognizable earth until the second or third day, and no sun until the fourth day, then what was a “day” until then?
Today, we are creatures bound by the clock. We wear them on our arms and we have them in sight almost everywhere we go. I would wager that right now, you can spot at least two clocks somewhere. But this was not always so. Time measurement was not perfected until the 1500s. And from then on, we have become more and more slaves to our own invention. Before the 1500s, the marking of time was sun-up, sun-down, and noon. Clocks would ring out at noon, because this was the only time of the day that could accurately be ascertained (the sun would cast a shadow straight down a perpendicular stick).
The Hebrew word for “day” is translated as “age” elsewhere in the Old Testament. The word was not specific to one twenty-four hour period. So, I am hesitant to conclude that the “days” of creation were exactly 24 hour periods. I am more inclined to consider the days as “ages” or distinct periods of time.
Now let’s look at another interesting bit of trivia. In the mid 1500s Copernicus published his theories of the heliocentric model. That is, that the earth moved around the sun (presuming the sun was stationary). This came under some scrutiny because to this point it was believed that the earth was the center of the universe, and thus, stationary.
It is fairly easy to understand how early people could come to this conclusion. When we read the order of creation, Earth and plants are created *before* the sun which would suggest that the earth is thus the central point of all creation.
While it has since been demonstrated that the earth is not the physical center of the universe, and neither is the sun for that matter, let me make one further suggestion:
The earth is the theological center of the universe. That is, the earth was created for man and man was created for God. While everything else in the universe is created for the benefit of the earth.
Critics of the Biblical creation will simply state that ignorant humans wrote the Bible from their own egocentric point of view, but I contend that God dictated to Moses the order of creation in order to show just how important we are among all the thousands of stars and planets in the universe.
The first
creation was time
The second creation was truth (not excluding visible light)
The third creation was space (or three dimensions of geometry)
The fourth creation was land and sea
The fifth creation was vegetation
The sixth creation was the Sun, Moon, and stars
The creation chronology is progressing towards a deliberate objective. I am convinced that we are not on one of many populated planets. Rather, I believe we are on *the only* populated planet—and that is by God’s sovereign design.
Jeff Justus
Cleff Publishing
www.cleffpublishing.com
©2008 Cleff Publishing, all rights reserved.
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