Creation and Evolution - Creation Moments

Author: (This is a condensed version of an essay submitted by Alfred Anderson)

In our time many people believe that the creation account is a myth and they deny what the Bible says regarding the flood of Noah. No wisdom of man or scientific knowledge can solve the mystery of creation; only God can tell us in His book, the Bible.

To understand the tragedy of the Flood, we must answer the question, “Are the masses of water now on earth in the same places as when God created the earth?” Land masses now comprise only 21 percent to 22 percent of the earth’s surface while the remaining 78 or 79 percent is water. According to the Bible it has not always been so.

Creation of Earth
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Gen. 1:1-2) When was the beginning? Christ gave the answer when He said, “Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning, made them male and female?” (Matt. 19:4). In the beginning was when God created Adam and Eve. According to the chronology of Gen. 5:1-32, it was 1656 years after creation that the Flood occurred. From Noah we can reckon to Abraham, to Moses, to Christ, and right up to our time. Today is about 6000 years since “the beginning.”

In Hebrews 11:3 we read, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God…” Which word is that? It is the word “Let there be light…Let there be a firmament.” The psalmist says, “By the word of God were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.” And again, “For he spoke and it was done: He commanded and it stood fast.” This happened in a moment, for “His works were finished from the foundation of the world.” (Heb. 4:3) Is it more difficult to believe these words of Scripture than to believe that the world created itself over a period of 4.6 billion years?

Light and Heat
There was darkness in space when our planet was created, so God created light, and with light followed heat. Light is a visible form of energy. Without light and heat no life can exist. Light functioned then precisely as it does today. A day and a night were a period of 24 hours, for it is written: “And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Gen. 1:5)

Water – Atmosphere
And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament (atmosphere) and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven.” (Gen. 1:6-8) Notice that God created the atmosphere by water.

God began His creation with water, for we read: “And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Gen. 1:2) Speaking of creation the psalmist says, “He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap” (Ps. 33:7). If the water was “an heap” we can understand the meaning of “and the earth was without form.” When was this? It was on the second day of creation when God divided water from water, creating the atmosphere around the planet earth. One part of the water was gathered above the firmament while the other part was placed under the firmament (atmosphere). Peter refers to this when he says: “And the earth standing out of the water and in the water” (II Pet. 3:5).

Creation of Matter
No pre-existing matter was used in the creation. In Hebrews 11:3 we read, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not of things which do appear.” God called matter into being by His mighty power.

On the third day God said, “Let the waters under heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so” (Gen. 1:9). God has founded the earth upon water, meaning there is water within the earth. In Psalm 136:6 we read, “To him that stretched out the earth above the waters” meaning that on the third day God created matter and laid it upon the face of the water heap which had been converted to a ball form by the atmosphere. This also explains Gen. 2:6: “But there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.”

After the creation of matter, God also created grass, trees of all kinds, flowers and other plants (Gen. 1:9-13). To matter we also add the mountains and all minerals found in the earth. The mountains are like the skeleton of a body; they give strength to the earth – to the waterglobe.

On the fourth day God created the sun, moon and stars; on the fifth the fish and fowls; on the sixth day animals of all kinds. Also on the sixth day God created Adam and Eve, the crown of His creation, in a manner different from the rest of creation. “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.” (Gen. 2:7) Here we learn how life came to be – it came from Him who alone can give life. In memory of His creation God finished with a day of rest.

Faith of a Christian
The Bible defines faith in these words: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). In his heart the Christian has faith which he has received as a gift from God, and he has no difficulty in believing the account of God’s creation. God has revealed this truth to us through Moses who twice spent 40 days on Mt. Sinai speaking with God and receiving a solid knowledge of the facts which he was to record. A small part of that knowledge has been reserved for our time, a time in which God is denied by millions throughout the world. Evidences of the Flood are scientifically sensational.

Faith of the Evolutionist
On what does the evolutionist base his faith? In 1859 Charles Darwin published his theories regarding origins. Some of his theories are not accepted today, but his ideas gave others something on which to build. One outcome is that geologists have divided geological time into four periods: time immemorial, ancient time, middle time, and recent time. Total time span is between four and five billion years, they say. Fossils (dated at immense ages) are one foundation upon which evolutionists base their theories.

Adam-Eve and Sin
When God created Adam and Eve, He made a home for them and commanded them to “keep” the garden. After sinning, they lost their lovely home, and sorrow, suffering and death were now part of their lot. As time went on, population increased and it divided into two groups – those who remained children of God and those who became His enemies. By about 1500 years after the creation, sin had enslaved nearly the whole human race, and “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” God preserved Noah and his family while destroying the rest of mankind, and He chose water as the method of destruction.

The Great Catastrophe
Noah was instructed to build an ark, “and Noah was 600 years old when the flood of water was upon the earth.” (In the year 1656 after creation.)

“And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights” (Gen. 7:12), and “the waters prevailed and were increased greatly upon the earth…and all high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered” (Gen. 7:18-20). “Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered” (Gen. 7:20). And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days. (Gen.7:24)

After raining for 40 days and 40 nights, the waters increased for an added 110 days. We read the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up. This was the water which God had shut up in the earth at creation which Peter describes in these words: “…and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” (II Pet. 3:5-6) The Revised Standard Version reads: “…and the earth formed by water by means of the water.” The Swedish Bible translation is “…and an earth that had been created by water and through water and deluged by water from them (heaven and earth) the world that then was, perished.” Here we note the role of water in creation.

Clouds, Bars and Doors
God asked Job, “Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddlingband for it, And brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?” (Job 38:8-11). We ask these three questions: (1) What does the word womb mean here? (2) When did God give clouds to the sea? (3) When did God put bars and doors on the sea? As an infant is born into the world, so the waters of the Flood burst onto the face of the earth as coming out of “the womb.” Before the Flood, there was no rain upon earth. Since the time of the Flood, with 78 to 79 percent of the globe covered with water, mist has been changed to clouds and rain; God gave the earth a garment of clouds after the Flood. The “bars and doors” of the sea are the rocks and mountains which keep the waters in their prescribed places. Water gushing out of the earth increased to “fifteen cubits upward” and all the mountains were covered (Gen. 7:20). Then something remarkable happened; God caused a wind to pass over the earth and the water assuaged. God placed movement in the water, in an unusual way, for we read that “they fled, they hasted away.” The result was that the mountains rose and the valleys sank, explaining how seas, large and small, were formed. The weight of the water depressed the earth’s surface, resulting in deep, large and small valleys. Viewing the landscape from the top of a mountain we see mountaintops with sunken valleys between; many mountains are bare and naked, with their garments removed.

The Earth – A Cemetery
The whole earth became a burial place; trees, plants, animals of all kinds, are still found today. We call them fossils and they are only about 4400 years old. Evolutionists deceive themselves with their ages of millions of years.

Before the Flood there were immense forests, with trees much larger than any trees today. These were buried in the Flood and have become coal; these coal beds have the same age as other fossils. The coal beds show that at some time in the past there was a tropical climate all over the earth. When did a change in climate occur? Science is not sure. The American Peoples Encyclopedia (Vol. 5, p. 655) says: “Various theories have been advanced to account for past climatic changes, including variations in the sun’s radiation, sunspots, changes in the earth’s orbit, changes in the position of the continents, the presence of volcanic dust in the atmosphere, variations in the carbon dioxide content in atmospheric and oceanic circulations.”

The Rainbow
After the Flood, God told Noah: “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease” (Gen. 8:22). A change in seasons came about after the Flood; even in the polar regions (Spitzbergen) fossils of tropical plants have been found. As a token of the covenant that God would not again destroy the earth by a flood, He set His bow in the clouds; a rainbow had not been seen before the Flood.

Fossils
In many places rocks contain several different kinds of fish. How is this possible? At one time the rock was sand, covered with water, further proof of a universal Flood. A deep hole in Yorkshire contained bones of about 60 different kinds of animals. They had fled together and had perished together. An archaeological expedition in the Far-East reported finding grottoes containing bones of many animals, bones buried in sand. They were buried in the walls, the floor and ceiling. They had died in a watery catastrophe.

Conclusion
The theory of evolution does not rest upon Biblical or scientific grounds. It is built on a wrong foundation which leads to wrong conclusions. A correct explanation is found only in the Bible account of creation and a flood in the days of Noah.

Footnotes:
1972 Bible Science Newsletter.