So, God 'let' the lights appear.  You recall that I said that the word 'let' means to allow something to happen.  I 'let' you out of the car.  I 'let' the dog out.

From Genesis 1:2 "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep."  It was the earth that was void, dark, and without form--not the heavens.  There was water, and creatures in the water--we know this because of verse 20--which I will discuss later.

So when God said, "Let the lights appear," the heavens were now visible.  All the atmospheric junk around the earth that interfered with a clear view of the heavens was swept away.

When I began this blog, I said there were three words that I found interesting.  One was "Create".  One was "Let".   And the third was "Made," which can be best described as meaning to take something and do something else with it.   In Gen. 1:7,  God 'made' the firmament.  (Science says the firmament is still expanding.)

 Now we come to the second time that the word 'made' is used.  Verse 16-18. "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."  How long did this take?  Who knows.  It doesn't tell us.

This is the first time the moon is mentioned.  And when the moon began rotation around the earth, something strange took place.  Tides.  Tides change everything.  Life from the oceans--that was already there from when God created the heavens and the earth back in the first verse--can adapt to the changing tides.  Critters crawl onto the land more easily.

Remember, it was land-life that was destroyed.  Not sea-life.  Animals in the water have remained as they always were.  A million year old shark fossil looks like a shark today.  So do crickets.  Roaches. Crocodiles, etc.  Animals that could live in a dark wet place survived the end of the dinosaurs.