[_ Old Earth _] Gen 1 ?. The "1st light", 3 days before the sun

[Orion]

Most everyone who believes in a literal 6 day Genesis creation talks about how there was no sun (our star) for the first 3 days, which was created on the 4th day, but that God was the source of light.

What exactly was that source of light, and where was it situated? You see, I have a problem with this light actually coming from God since it would be uni-directional, not omni-directional. If the light WAS coming from God, who is said to be omnipresent, then there would be no place where there would be darkness at all. If the light was God, then you could only conclude that where there was darkness, God was not there, thus God couldn't be omnipresent.

So, where did this first light come from, before the sun was set in it's place?

Just so you know, I don't hold to a literal Genesis account of creation.

 

[ÃÂoppleganger]

Well, I for one don't believe the literal 6 day creation, or at least in Man Days. The Lord says it was a re-creation, and to re-plenish the earth. Hence it was already populated at the time and was destroyed. If you view the 1st chapter of Genesis as an account from the persective of someone on earth, its easy to see. God always tells his story from the perspective of Israel, Adam, the disciples, etc ... Some people call this the gap theory I just call it common sense. I could spend 5 more pages on this subject. But just let me say -

Exo 10:21-23 And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt. And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days: They saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days: but all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings.

In this verse, we can assume a few things. Either Light/Fire didn't work in this darkness. Or it only worked for the Israeli's. Yada, yada, yada ... Anyways. Or, this light ( I think it was the Shekina Glory of God, like above the Ark and Temple ) was present. No I can't entirely explain this! This Light and what was behind it, was a real and feelable as the darkness, and the Death Angel who would soon follow later on who killed every 1st born!

I'm busy right now sorry gotta go! Good luck with subject! Peace!

 

[Orion]

Thanks for your reply, sir.

Anyone of the "Young Earth/Literal Genesis Account" persuasion care to chime in on this topic?

 

[ÃÂoppleganger]

This verse is also interesting taken the fact the Cloud and Pillar that went before the Israeli's during the Day and the Night was Light for Israel and Darkness for Egypt.

Exo 14:18-27 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I have gotten me honour upon Pharaoh, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen. And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them: And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night. And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. And the Egyptians pursued, and went in after them to the midst of the sea, even all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. And it came to pass, that in the morning watch the LORD looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians, And took off their chariot wheels, that they drave them heavily: so that the Egyptians said, Let us flee from the face of Israel; for the LORD fighteth for them against the Egyptians. And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand over the sea, that the waters may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen. And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to his strength when the morning appeared; and the Egyptians fled against it; and the LORD overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea.

The Egyptian Chariot wheels didn't actually fall off, this is a poor translation the Egyptians were mired in swamp and mud while the Israeli's passed through the waters on Dry Land. A very interesting Display of God's Power Indeed!

 

[Orion]

I'm still interested in those with Young Earth/ 6 Day Creationism beliefs to reply.

Thanks.

 

[Heidi]

Re: Gen 1 ?. The "1st light", 3 days before the s

Most everyone who believes in a literal 6 day Genesis creation talks about how there was no sun (our star) for the first 3 days, which was created on the 4th day, but that God was the source of light.

What exactly was that source of light, and where was it situated? You see, I have a problem with this light actually coming from God since it would be uni-directional, not omni-directional. If the light WAS coming from God, who is said to be omnipresent, then there would be no place where there would be darkness at all. If the light was God, then you could only conclude that where there was darkness, God was not there, thus God couldn't be omnipresent.

So, where did this first light come from, before the sun was set in it's place?

Just so you know, I don't hold to a literal Genesis account of creation.

Any born again Christian knows what the first light before the sun was; the light of God that Paul described when he got saved. That's a very important verse because it is that light that will sustain Christians in heaven after the sun, moon and earth pass away.

 

[Orion]

Heidi, I will repost a part of the original question:

What exactly was that source of light, and where was it situated? You see, I have a problem with this light actually coming from God since it would be uni-directional, not omni-directional. If the light WAS coming from God, who is said to be omnipresent, then there would be no place where there would be darkness at all. If the light was God, then you could only conclude that where there was darkness, God was not there, thus God couldn't be omnipresent.

For there to be a night and a day (without our solar system's star), that means that God was in a singular location. That isn't a characteristic of something that is "omnipresent".

 

[dancing queen]

I am not good at science type questions but here's my thoughts after reading the above. I'm not sure I fully understand the problem you have with God being the light source, big words always put me off

If you consider God said 'Let there be light' and there was. This implies that God either created a light source, or if the light is from Him, as in revelations etc, He can control it. Therefore, God can allow 'His light' to exist in one place and not another. If God is all powerful, which He must be by definition, then why would this not be a realistic situation?

Incase you wonder my opinion of the six day creation: God is all powerful, therefore it is possible it happen. Time mat have been distorted, changed, not our 24 hour days etc, but this is irrelevant. Or God realised that if He told Moses etc. how it actually happened - 'first I made some atoms.....' or whatever science it is, no-one would have understood. Does it matter how exactly it happened? If Genisis is to be taken 100% literally. No, all that matters is do you belive God created the world, and you, or not.

 

[Orion]

I am not good at science type questions but here's my thoughts after reading the above. I'm not sure I fully understand the problem you have with God being the light source, big words always put me off

If you consider God said 'Let there be light' and there was. This implies that God either created a light source, or if the light is from Him, as in revelations etc, He can control it. Therefore, God can allow 'His light' to exist in one place and not another. If God is all powerful, which He must be by definition, then why would this not be a realistic situation?

Incase you wonder my opinion of the six day creation: God is all powerful, therefore it is possible it happen. Time mat have been distorted, changed, not our 24 hour days etc, but this is irrelevant. Or God realised that if He told Moses etc. how it actually happened - 'first I made some atoms.....' or whatever science it is, no-one would have understood. Does it matter how exactly it happened? If Genisis is to be taken 100% literally. No, all that matters is do you belive God created the world, and you, or not.

If you want my impression of how I believe it could have happened, and recorded, . . . .

The days were given to the writer of Genesis as snippets of "epics in creation." The days WERE probably mixed up, as we view linear time, thinking that they were consecutive, and were creation days, 6 of them, which took place one day after the next. One day perhaps focused on how life was formed in the oceans. Another day, God showed how life formed on land. But it would have been God showing, in a day, each stage in the best way that could be understood by a primitive human such as the early Hebrews were. And, of course, as we humans tend to do, over time we took what was actually portrayed and turned it into some sort of literal 6 day creation that took place 6-10 thousand years ago. This would, of course, be rather ridiculous since the earth and certainly the universe is far older than that.

The light that was created on "day one", I'm not sure why there would be the need for a "God Light" for basically only three days. There would be no purpose for it, since God would not need light to "see", and nothing created would have needed it either (even the vegetation would be fine with one day of darkness). On "day one", this light separated light from darkness, and to form "day and night". On "day four", the sun and moon were given to separate the light from the darkness, and to form day and night. Seems like the first light was the sun all along, but it wasn't shown to the writer until the forth day of revealing creation.

It is understandable that they would see the moon as a light, when it isn't, actually. It only reflects light. It doesn't produce it. And it is interesting that on a cycle, the moon isn't even visible at night.

All that to say that it is my belief that, as you eluded to, dancing queen, if God told the writer the actual way it happened, he would not have understood, and it probably would have taken much longer than 6 days to tell everything.

 

[Vic C.]

Personally, I think believers and possibly man in general, waste too much time mulling over creation. We have a dying planet with dying people and souls that need attending to... read Jesus' two greatest commandments to His people:

Mat 22:36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Mat 22:37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
Mat 22:38 This is the first and great commandment.
Mat 22:39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Now with that said, I have a question;

ÃÂoppleganger, you said:

The Lord says it was a re-creation, and to re-plenish the earth.

Could you provide scripture references for that? The NT especially, teaches "ex nihilo"; that is, "out of nothing". The thought of pre-existance came from Gnosticism and was considered heresy and now it's creeping in again, via liberal theology.

FYI, I'm not exactly YEC either, but I reject the notion of a pre-existant civilization prior to our Genesis account.

dancing queen, you said:

If you consider God said 'Let there be light' and there was. This implies that God either created a light source, or if the light is from Him, as in revelations etc, He can control it. Therefore, God can allow 'His light' to exist in one place and not another. If God is all powerful, which He must be by definition, then why would this not be a realistic situation?

BRAVO! You put the power right back in God's hands and out of man's interpretations and imagination.

Or God realised that if He told Moses etc. how it actually happened - 'first I made some atoms.....' or whatever science it is, no-one would have understood. Does it matter how exactly it happened? If Genisis is to be taken 100% literally. No, all that matters is do you belive God created the world, and you, or not.

Hehehe, I think the same way sometimes. Would early man have understood the method of creation if God had explained it to him verbatim?

 

[ÃÂoppleganger]

The Lord says it was a re-creation, and to re-plenish the earth.
Could you provide scripture references for that? The NT especially, teaches "ex nihilo"; that is, "out of nothing". The thought of pre-existance came from Gnosticism and was considered heresy and now it's creeping in again, via liberal theology. FYI, I'm not exactly YEC either, but I reject the notion of a pre-existant civilization prior to our Genesis account.

Right now, I really don't have time to go into the details, which would take several pages of depth on at least 3 or 4 different, but related subjects.

Well I'm certainly not a Liberal Theologian. Can you explain what YEC means, and while yer at it and IMO too, please?

(This is all off the top of my head so be patient)

Like I said previously, I believe the Genesis creation account is an account of the events viewed from earth. God always writes with the subject a.k.a. Israel, the disciples, his people in mind.

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

HERE THE Earth Is Created, Just Once the Beginning of all (Evolutionary) Time

Gen 1:2 And the earth was (became) without form, and void (waste and a desolation); and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Here The Earth, became a waste and a desolation. What was previously created is no longer, a viable living organism for life in one form or another.

Some people call this the Gap Theory, I just call it common sense.

Upright animals or Man have been around a while. They weren't Adam's son's though. The advent of Neaderthal's, and Cro-Mag's in the last 100 thousand years has led the species to adapt, build tools, etc ... With Neanderthals and Cro-mag's dying out, possible due to man, and the advent of the end of the last ice age some 12-10 thousand years ago modern civilization has developed.

If you take the literal days of creation as God's days not man's. A day to God is as a 1000 years to man, it says in the Bible somewhere. Then you come to roughly this period of the last Ice Age. The Sphinx supposedly has been around some 10,000 years scientists now believe. The fact that they built it on the giza plateau is significant for it and the Great Pyramid of Giza due to its relation to the earth, the bedrock, etc ...

In Plato, Solon is reprimanded by the priests of Egypt that the Greeks, forgot there past when, they defeated the people of Atlantis from beyond the pillars of Heracles. Scholars debated whether the event was in the very ancient past or revatively (a few 1000 years) in there past. They also debate whether it was in the Atlan mountains or in the Atlantic. In any event a memory of a civilzation of great antiquity that existed in the great past was still remembered by them. These same priests tell Solon That two pyramids were built one in Egypt and one in mesopotamia, of which onlyt the one in Egypt survived because it was built of stone not brick. Because the of ancient belief that the earth (or parts of it) were periodically destroyed by water or fire.

Anyways, back on track, if the Word ex-niliho comes from verse 2 The earth had already been created, This is backed up by several scriptures, Jerremiah looking back sees a a time when no man existed. The Kaboe analyge verses in both the New and Old Testaments. The fact God tells Adam and Eve to replenish the earth. In order to re-plenish something it must already be plenished.

Theres also the archeological evidence of precision made, screws, tools, walls of buildings, etc ... resting in layers of sentiment not normally associated with it. In fact you can find ancient scandals making footprints of crushed ancient sea animals, man's footprints residing beside dinosaurs, and vases hidden within lumps of coal. Even ancient Incan, Greek, Etc ... art depicting Dinosaurs that where anotomically coreect in to great a detail to ignore.

To make a longer story short for now. I believe The 1st Great flood was the Genesis 1:1 1/2 Flood and Noah's was a Smaller More Localized Flood that happened to the Meditereanian / Middle East area. I believe the 1st Flood was the The fisrt Overthrow of Satan for his rebellion. Peter States there have been 3 Ages, the One that was, The One that is, and the One that will be.

I gotta stop right here for now. Let me see if I can find a few of me old posts.

 

[Gabbylittleangel]

For those of you who do not believe that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, can you explain the following passages (Particularly the words highlighted in red)
And also, can you tell us when is the sabbath day, if it is not every seventh day, but rather every seventh age, every seventh millenium, or whatever it is that you decided that the word 'day' literally means.

Exd 20:8 ¶ Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Exd 20:9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
Exd 20:10 But the seventh day [is] the sabbath of the LORD thy God: [in it] thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that [is] within thy gates:
Exd 20:11 For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them [is], and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.


Exd 31:17 It [is] a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.

 

[ÃÂoppleganger]

Nechunya ben HaKanah a Hebrew commentator on Genesis wrote more than 2000 years ago that the 42 lettered name of God had within it the answer to the age of the universe. His successor, Rabbi Yitzhak deMin Acco insisted that the 42 lettered name of God alluded to the 42,000 divine years which transpired between the beginning of creation and that of man. If a day is as a 1000 years to God, he concluded that a divine year, is 365 1/4 x 1,000 or 365,250 of our own years. Thus the time between the beginning of creation and the creation of man is 42,000 x 365,250 which equals 15.34 billion years! Pretty amazing HUH! And to think a bunch of dumb Jews had it figured out a long time ago.

Scientists have measured the age of the universe and have concluded that the relationship between time near the beginning of the Big Bang and time today, is one million million. As the universe expands, time and its relationship to it would increase, right? If you viewed the six days of creation in the transmitting of time as we see today, the first day, would have been 8 billion years long. The second 24hr day period, would be experienced by us as 4 billion years. The 3rd as 2 billion. The 4th as 1 billion. The 5th as a 1/2 billion. The 6th as a of a 1/4 billion. So adding 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 equals 15 3/4 billion years! Pretty much the same as cosmologists agree.

There's also a NASA/ scientist/ evolutionist connection here. Humm, I wonder where they got that number from! Well as the story goes, NASA was researching the age of the universe when one scientist recalled that some ancient Hebrew writings might have a clue. This is the document they used to confirm there own anomolies in there research, which then dated the age of the universe to some 13 billion years, after that they dated the age to 15 billion years.

 

[Gabbylittleangel]

Personally, I think believers and possibly man in general, waste too much time mulling over creation. We have a dying planet with dying people and souls that need attending to...

Amen

Yet, the cut and paste version of the Bible that so many people are writing for themselves is troubling also.
satan has them trying to make up a story to put before Gen. 1:1. To do so, one must ignore the words; Gen 1:1 ¶ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. and replace it with their own words.

The so called 'gap' theory is another attempt to write their own story to take up the slack for the parts of God's word that they do not understand. Again, to do so is to ignore God's word; Amo 3:7 Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.

When one begins to toss out verses that they do not understand or do not believe, they will, sooner or later have to toss out every verse that is attached to it. Given time, it will prove to be the entire word of God.

 

[ÃÂoppleganger]

Also the post above and these two links, add another dimension to the debate. Since, any debate would have to deal in numbers and years, time and RELATIVE time or times.

The Bible contains numerical constants and other mathematical and geometric constants!
http://homepage.virgin.net/vernon.jenkins/index.htm
http://members.home.nl/frankcolijn/fran ... ndexEN.htm

The parts on Creation are rather extensive, and presented mathematically. To understand the creation you would have to study the 1st several chapters gemartiacally speaking.

Besides this, some of Velikovsky's Insights into Ancient Myth and Actual Events protrayed in History, also has some relavance, I believe.

And of course an exhaustive, study of Bible verses, terms and colliquial Hebrewisms.

I have no more time. GTG!

 

[ÃÂoppleganger]

I believe the the heavens and earth of Genesis 1:1 were created perfect. I believe Genesis 1:2 and after is an imperfect flesh inhabitated world. Relatively through the 1st several days of (Re-)creation, Nights and Days (by hebrew time, since hebrew days started at sunset) there is only a seperation of elements of dark and light. A seperation of elements, firmaments composed of water below and above. (Some scienctists, as well as myth suggests that there was previously an atmospheric canopy of water, crystalized ice, that broke through and caused the great flood of genesis 1:2 and contributed significantly to the 2nd flood of Noah, since the waters up above and down below caused significant dilusion. Some of these same scientists believe that, supersonic streams of water rose out of the depths pf the earth, probably around the fault lines that seperate the expanding sea continental shelfs, which they take in reference from Job I believe.)

 

[Orion]

It does seem odd that God would create something that needed fixing right away. In other words, creating something that was imperfect, "without form and void with darkness".

Lest we forget that none of the ancient religious texts were written with a pen in God's hand. They were written by the hands of man, and often using poetic imagery. The first part of Genesis reads more like some sort of analogy/story.

 

[Gabbylittleangel]

It does seem odd that God would create something that needed fixing right away. In other words, creating something that was imperfect, "without form and void with darkness". . .

Have you never seen a painting only moments after the artist begain?

 

[Orion]

I don't think that analogy works here. A perfect painter would be like those cartoons where they dip their paintbrush into one color of paint, move it over the surface of the canvas, and the complete picture shows up. :-?

A perfect creation would not be perfect if it had to be added to. It was without form and void, with darkness. That sound pretty bleak to me, far from perfection.

 

[Gabbylittleangel]

Orion,
He took six days.