Creation
Read: Genesis chapters 1&2 John 9:3-5 John 1:1-5 (KJV)
When God's Spirit moved upon the face of the waters, He found the earth to be in a "void" and a "deep darkness." This condition indicates that before God became conscious of the earth, it non-existed as an absolute nothingness. It non-existed in a chaos which was nowhere and at no time. This reveals the condition of anything which happens to be completely unknown to consciousness. When God created the heaven and the earth, the universe obtained real being because it became known to the consciousness of God. God has an Infinite Consciousness, and therefore knows absolutely everything; but whatever lies outside God's Infinity cannot limit His Infinite Consciousness because it is equal to absolute nothingness; that is, it does not exist. Non-existence causes any potential something within it to be absolutely useless in any creative way, and therefore, cannot limit God's Infinity.
If any object exists in the universe which is known to God but unknown to humans, then we would be completely in the dark as to what it is or where it is. As far as our limited consciousness is concerned, this object would be in a void and a deep darkness. This object would be real to God's Consciousness, but would never emerge from chaos to become real to human consciousness until such a time as it came into the purview of man's consciousness. Many galaxies, which were known to God, remained in a void and deep darkness as far as human consciousness was concerned until man invented telescopes which enabled us to see them.
Some believe that Jeremiah 4:23-26 and Isaiah 24;1 teach that God had formerly created the earth with life and mankind on it, but that He had completely destroyed it, covered it with water, and had cast it into "outer darkness" beyond His Consciousness. Jesus, in Matthew 8:12, 22:13 and 25:30, referred to God casting sinful persons into "outer darkness." When God cast Satan to earth, he may have so completely corrupted it that God simply destroyed it and cast it into "outer darkness." In other words, God put the former earth completely beyond His Consciousness, and therefore, beyond reality itself. This does not mean that God's Infinite Ideas and Plans which He had used as patterns for His creation of the former earth were put beyond His Consciousness, but only that the material earth was cast into "outer darkness."
Whatever lies beyond God's Consciousness cannot diminish God's Omniscience in the least because God's Consciousness is of an infinite reality. Within "outer darkness" or the "void," any potential something always equals absolute nothingness, just as within a black hole in space light cannot be separated from darkness. Absolute nothingness cannot diminish God's Omniscience because chaos, and everything that may or may not be within it, simply non-exists. Therefore, if God destroyed a former earth and cast it into "outer darkness," then it became completely unknown to God, and therefore, not real and non-existent.
If all this is true, then Genesis 1:1 refers to God's creation of the former earth, and Genesis 1:2 refers to God's recreation of the destroyed earth. The statement in verse 2 that "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," means that God began to feel the earth in the dark. Then in verse 3, God turned on the "light," so to speak, so He could see the earth. Only when God began to feel and to see the earth did it once again become real. Before this recreation, it non-existed nowhere and at no time.
There can be no reality without consciousness. Reality is absolutely dependent on consciousness, and consciousness is absolutely dependent on reality. This is the meaning of John 1:1: "In the beginning" connects to an Infinity of beginnings and endings as revealed in Revelation 1:8; "was the Word" means an Infinite Reality; "and the Word was with God," means an Infinite Consciousness of an Infinite Reality; "and the Word was God" means an absolute unity and interdependence of Infinite Reality and Consciousness."
It is quite significant that the Word of God states that God saw that His earthly creations were "good" and not perfect. That they were "good" means that even though they were limited physical creations, God had created them to be effective systems that would accomplish God's purposes. All of these good but limited creations were based on some of God's Infinite and Perfect Ideas and Plans. But the fact that these creations were good and not perfect left them open to possible corruption by Satan who had invented a method for turning good systems into bad systems by combining God's Ideas into false systems that produced ineffective and destructive effects. God had deliberately created His systems to be good but vulnerable to evil because He had decided to enter into an historical conflict with Satan in order to prove that Love, which is his Being, can never be destroyed or even diminished. This historical conflict would be centered on earth and God's creation of mankind to whom He would give free will just as He had given it to Lucifer. God would prove the omnipotent value of Love by His own self-sacrifice, death and resurrection as a human for the salvation of mankind from the destructive effects of evil. Those who chose to believe in Christ and love God would prove that Love is the most powerful and valuable Being that is possible. At the end of this historical process, after God had vanquished Satan's evil plans by His own intervention in it, then God will cleanse the world of Satan and all evil. God will then recreate a new heaven and earth that contains only eternal righteous systems.
Another significance of the Bible's account of creation centers on the phrase: "And the evening and the morning were the first day," continuing on to the sixth day. The meaning of the Hebrew word for "evening" is "dusk," and the meaning for "morning" is "dawn." Clearly, these words do not delineate a "day" but a "night." In verse five, God had already divided the "Day" from the "Night." Therefore, how could a night be called a day? The answer lies in the fact that one of the meanings of the Hebrew word for "were" is "to become." This makes the phrase mean that after each night a new day began. Each night was limited to a dusk to dawn bracket which probably meant that each night was only twelve hours long. But each day was not so limited which meant that each day of creation was of an unspecified length. Genesis 2:4 refers to a "day" as being of an unspecified length. In addition, in John 9:4-5 Jesus refers to His "day" as being equal to His time on earth. Thus, each "day" of creation could well refer to any length of time instead of exactly twelve hour periods.
However, the fact that each "day" of creation could have been millions of years does not lend credence to the theory of evolution. The Bible clearly teaches that God created every creature "after their kind," which is true to this very day. In addition, the fossil record demonstrates that every creature came into being and has always reproduced "after their kind" for the entire length of the "day" of creation no matter how long that may have been. No fossils exist which show any crossovers from one kind to another.
God rested on the seventh "day;" a day that continues to this day. As the Bible relates, God only rested from His finished work of creation. The finish of creation began God's new work of intervening in the history of mankind; first to prevent the annihilation of His people by Satan's evil minions, and second to intervene Himself in the form of His Son to save a fallen race from sin and evil. God sanctified the seventh day which shows that He meant to use it in His efforts to save mankind from sin and the Devil. Jesus taught in John 9:4, and in several other scriptures, that He came to do the work of His Father.
God's work on the seventh day consists of His efforts to save the human race from ruin. God's efforts continue to this day in the work of the Holy Spirit to convict those who hear or read the gospel that they are lost sinners who need to repent of their sins and believe that the Lord Jesus Christ has already done everything they need for their salvation. God saves and preserves those who believe in Jesus forever. In the future, after the final judgment called the Great White Throne Judgment, God will cleanse His universe of all sin and evil, and then He will recreate "new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." Read II Peter 3:12-13.
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