Posted by Elana Janson on May 11, 2007 at 15:41:10:
In Scripture the word ‘firmament’ is used to distinguish the division of heaven from earth.
Heaven that we cannot see.
These verses are of great significance for on the second day the “waters” are separated. I believe that the Heaven that was created is twofold. The ‘heaven’ that was created on the second day constitutes both the ‘heaven’ where God is on his throne and there are angels, as well as the ‘heaven’ with the planets and stars that we see through telescopes and from space craft. The first is the spiritual “heaven” and the other the universe that we can see. We can in 2007 see trees, sea and blue sky on earth. We can also see the planets and the stars of the universe, but we can still not see Heaven, where God and the angels dwell. Nor can we see the presence of the spiritual world on earth. Therefore the separation of the “waters” defines that which man would be able to see above the blue sky and that which he cannot see.
Revelation reveals through the “beasts” of Revelation that man in 2007 has become so austere that he believes that he can denounce the teachings of Scripture and the existence of God because he can only see the visual heaven. He ignores the possibility that as on earth we cannot see “spirits” there is a dimension to heaven that cannot be seen by man.
Gen 1:9-10 “And God said: Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.”
Gen 1:11-12 “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth :and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God said it was good.”
Gen 1:13 “And the evening and the morning were the third day”.
On the third day God separated the waters of the earth. He created the earth, grass, trees and fruit with seed so that vegetation would sustain itself. The third day was before the time that “seasons” came upon the earth. With our knowledge of science we know that this must therefore have been the time of the earliest forms of grass, herbs and germination.
And he saw that it was good.
With the revelation that God has known from the foundation of the world who will be saved, he would know the outcome of that which was created even in its earliest form. Therefore the words “And he saw that it was good” that appear in the verses of Genesis, chapter 1, could apply to any time in the process of that which was created. For God would know the outcome even at the very beginning. Therefore the beginnings of what would be heaven, earth, light in the firmament, the sun, fish, birds, beasts and man were set in motion during a period of six “days”. With the expansion of knowledge in the twenty-first century, I believe the “day” of the development of the specific creations, is a specific time measure that we cannot calculate. We do know that it was over an epoch that spanned millions of years.
The ice ages
I believe that it is of significance that Genesis uses the words “And it was evening and the morning” to indicate the times between the “days” of Creation. In these words lies the clue to the division of time of the seven days relating to Creation. With our knowledge of the ice ages (involving the freezing of water) of the past we know that during those times the light of the sun was blocked by some happening and it was like “evening” on earth. After the evening it was “morning” when that which hampered the sun from shining to the earth was removed. This I believe is the “morning” measure as in “I will give him the morning star” Rev 2:28.
Revelation indicates the time of “three days and a half” for at the time that we can understand Revelation, and this is important, we are also able to measure time from the “formation of the world”, that is the earth. We have knowledge of epochs relating to water (ice ages) under the conditions of changing seasons. The changing of seasons is indicated in the course of the fourth ‘day’ in Genesis.
Because we can in 2007, through our knowledge of geology and science, know there were ice ages since the formation of the earth, we can make divisions of the time in prehistory that spanned millions of years. We are through geology and science capable of measuring four specific times relating to “water” (ice) in the “formation of the world”.
Three days and a half
I believe that it is of significance that the earth was created on the third day for it brings one to the time of “three days” in the measure “three days and a half”.
The foundation of the world
I believe Revelation indicates the “foundation of the world” from about the time of the middle of the fourth “day” of Creation, therefore the time of “three days and a half”.
It is a time that we can calculate in 2007.
Gen 1:14-18 “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth. And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
Gen 1:19 “And the evening and the morning were the forth day”.
There was on the fourth “day” set in motion a movement of the planets that would affect the seasons of the earth.
The light of the sun
Scientists have calculated that the Sun has been active for about 4.6 billion years, this gives some scope of the measures of the first “three days and a half” of Creation.
First major ice age
According to scientists there have been four major ice ages in the Earth's past. The earliest hypothesized ice age is believed to have occurred around 2.7 to 2.3 billion years ago during the early Proterozoic Eon (Pre-Cambrian time). This ice age could constitute the end of the forth “day”.
Primitive life
Proterozoic rocks are on all continents and contain traces of primitive life. From science we know that the Proterozoic Eon was the time that the atmosphere was enriched with oxygen to a level that could sustain plants.
Gen 1:20 And God said let the waters bring forth abundantly, the moving creature that has life, and the fowl that may fly above the earth, in the open firmament of heaven.”
Have we fully understood the meaning of Gen 1:20? “And God said: Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life”. To primitive man these words may seem to refer to only whales and fishes, but to man in the twenty-first century, this also means that “water” was the medium in which life was created in its earliest forms. That creation of life was set in motion by God.
It is interesting that Genesis refers to the “open firmament of heaven”, that is the part of the firmament that can be seen by man.
Gen 1:21-22 “And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind; and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them saying: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
Gen 1:23 “And the evening and the morning were the fifth day”.
The second major ice age is well-documented, and is probably the most severe of the last 1 billion years, occurred from 800 to 600 million years ago (in the Cryogenian period of the Neo-Proterozoic Era) and may have produced a Snowball Earth in which permanent sea ice extended to or very near the equator. This would have been the time of the end of the fifth day. The early forms of fishes and birds could have been present in the waters under the ice sheets.
Gen 1:24-31 “And God said let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after is kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said: Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it is so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”
I believe that the words “let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind” are of significance in 2007. There is a scientific theory that the earliest forms of animal life were formed in water and that these then ventured on to land. It seems that the words of Gen 1:24 substantiate this theory.
The Ediacaran Period is the last geological period of the Neo-Proterozoic Era, just before the Cambrian. It ranges from approximately 635 to 542 million years before the present. The earliest fossils of multicellular life are found in the Ediacaran, including the earliest animals.
A minor ice age occurred from 460 to 430 million years ago, during the Late Ordovician Period. There were extensive polar ice caps at intervals from 350 to 260 million years ago, during the Carboniferous and early Permian Periods, associated with the Karoo Ice Age. Sediment records showing the fluctuating sequences of glacials and interglacials during the last several million years.
Gen 2:1-2 “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had made.”
The epoch that followed the minor ice age would be the beginning of the seventh day.
The present ice age began 40 million years ago with the growth of an ice sheet in Antarctica. It intensified during the Pleistocene (starting around 3 million years ago) with the spread of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere. Since then, the world has seen cycles of glaciations with ice sheets advancing and retreating on 40,000- and 100,000-year time scales. The last glacial period ended about ten thousand years ago.
Genesis does not define the end of the seventh day with the words “and it was evening and morning”. Does the ‘seventh day’ continue till the Return?
Creation in six epochs of millions of years
From what has been shown above I believe that God “created” in six epochs that spanned billions of years. The completion of what was created did not necessarily stop at a specific time. This is revealed through God’s knowledge of Creation and Revelation that he knew even at the time of Creation which of us would ultimately be saved. We cannot calculate the “day” in which the completion of what was created was achieved. As Revelation could be understood through history so can the story of Creation be understood through science and through the knowledge that a “day” in Scripture varies from the time of a day as we know it to be to a time of millions of years.
Three days and a half
I believe that Revelation uses the symbol of “time, times and a half time” and “three days and a half” also in relation to Creation to indicate that we can only measure the last “three days and a half” of Creation. Even the first ice age between the fourth and the fifth “day” is a hypothesized ice age.
The Creations of the first three days and a half can only be a theoretical estimation. The indication in Genesis of the presence of “waters” from the very beginning does not necessarily mean “water” but the presence of the first gases oxygen and hydrogen. Through the knowledge of the big bang theory and the formation of the universe, we know from science that it was possibly from gases that the earliest forms of the universe were formed over billions of years.
After all that was said above we should take a closer look at the two verses in which the words “three days and a half” appear in Revelation.
Rev 11:9 “And they of the peoples and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and a half, and shall not suffer their (the “two witnesses”) dead bodies to be put in graves.”
This verse relates to the time of the spread of the Christian faith (symbolized by the “two witnesses”)
The words: “the peoples and kindreds and tongues and nations” mean the time that the testimony of Jesus Christ has spread to the ends of the earth and to all nations. At that time it will be revealed through Revelation that the time measure of “three days an a half” measures a period of about a thousand years. Because the time measure of “three days and a half” is mentioned twice in Revelation it means that Revelation deals with two periods of about a thousand years. The words “shall see their dead bodies” means that at the end time all the nations of the earth will know about all those who were witnesses of the true testimony of Jesus Christ and who died for their faith. The “two witnesses” of Revelation, chapter 11, symbolically incorporate all who carried the message of Jesus Christ in centuries past; and carry the message Jesus Christ at the present time to all nations and peoples, that is, to the ends of the earth. In other words Revelation is revealing that there will be great communication between the nations at the end time. But it will also be a time that the nations have no respect for the true faith, for the true faith comes in the way of what man believes to be the greatest goal in life that is the ideology of freedom. The nations do not want a religion that claims to be the true faith. That has brought too much bloodshed. For this reason Revelation uses the image of the “dead bodies” Rev 11:8 “And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city”. The end time is the time that the martyrdom of Christians who were prepared to die for their faith are humiliated in the worst degree (“not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves”) by peoples of all nations for their belief. Why does Revelation reveal this? It bears out what has been said concerning the beast of Revelation and what we know those who follow the beast propagate. The ideologies of man that rule the nations (revealed through the beasts of Revelation) have so convinced man in the twenty-first century that freedom is the answer that the nations prefer to put forward a belief in a ‘spirituality’ that includes all faiths. They prefer to discard doctrine that claims the ‘only way’ to everlasting life.
The Spirit of life from God
Rev 11:11 “And after three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.”
This verse relates both to the time of the end of the epoch of the spread of the Christian faith, but also to the end of the second epoch of Creation.
This verse reveals that the end time comes after the measure of “three days and a half”, and that in that time the nations will realize that there is a God who can give life and that those who were witness to the testimony of Jesus Christ or died for their testimony will be resurrected to life after death.
It is through the words “the Spirit of life from God” and particularly through the word “life“ that is also used in Genesis that I believe that Revelation has a message of Creation for the twenty-first century. The words that appear in Genesis concerning God that can bestow animate existence, as distinguished from dead matter come in Genesis, chapter 1.
Waters
The word “water” in the story of Creation essentially has the meaning “water” as it is used in Revelation 22:1 “And he showed me a pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” The symbol of “water” therefore also indicates the unity of the God and Jesus Christ (Lamb).
Revelation and Creation
As Revelation could not be fully understood until the present time, so could Creation not be fully understood until the twenty-first century.
Adam and Eve
In Gen 1:26-27 it is said “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them”. Therefore man (male and female) were created on the sixth day.
We are given more information on the creation of the first man with a living soul in Gen 2:7: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
With the present knowledge of Creation I believe that the words of Gen 2:7 pertain to the sixth day, but Genesis indicates a special divine intervention in the creation of a man called Adam. It was an intervention to bestow on man the first immortal soul, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ‘good and evil’. This understanding gives an explanation why there were other peoples on earth at the time of Adam.
Eve
As Adam was a special person, so was Eve, for God intervened to create her from the rib of Adam. With our knowledge of science in 2007, Eve was created through a different process that relates to our knowledge of cloning. How this happened is a mystery, for it is said in Gen 1:27 that “male and female” were created in the sixth day. She too was given the knowledge of ‘good and evil’ (Gen 3:1-3) and understanding that the will of God was to be obeyed. To them were given the insight of matrimonial unity: Gen 2:23 “flesh of my flesh’. The words of Genesis 2:24 “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” indicates a spread of the knowledge of God to other persons on earth.
After all that has been said in this post one could speculate that the creation of Adam and Eve was also over a long period of time. At a certain point in the course of the sixth “day” (or after?) God intervened to introduce Adam to Eve (Gen 2:22 “and brought her unto the man”) and to make man aware that through the knowledge of God (love and obedience) there would be instilled a special bond between a particular man and a particular woman. As the knowledge and obedience to God spread to others the bond would endure in all the generations to come.
Alpha and Omega
Alpha and omega are the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet. In Revelation I believe these words mean that God is the beginning and the end of the written Word. What is written in the Bible is what God wanted us to know. I believe that in 2007 Revelation gives a greater insight into Creation with the purpose that we can understand the greatness of God. We cannot understand all things, but with the knowledge of Revelation and a greater insight into Creation, we can know that God is the Creator. Unfortunately this acceptance that there is a great God in control only comes through faith in God and belief that the written Word was inspired by God.