Some people believe that we are predestined to be believers.  That we were chosen or "Predestined" to believe from our beginning.  I don't.  Some people like John the Baptist, etc. may have been born with a special purpose and destination, but generally, God creates life and gives us free will.  I don't think there is a special class of people preordained to be Christians--which would mean that there is another special class of people preordained to go to hell. 

I believe because of giving us free will, there are some things God either has chosen not to do, won't do, or can't do.  He can't save you if you don't want to be saved.  He can't make you obey his laws, etc., etc. The list is long.

But, since God can do whatever He chooses, I believe he can make a choice "Not to Know" something.  If God allows a sperm and egg to connect and knows what that life will choose before He creates it, then God is choosing whether you are damned, or you aren't--at the moment you are created.  That isn't a God quality.  He would be classifying people before they are conceived, or born!! 

He offered Jesus for everyone.  We choose.  I believe God hopes to the very end of your life that you will accept the sacrifice of his Son for your sin. And because he chooses not to know what you are going to do, He has hope for you.  Faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen.  I think God hopes.  "For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him might be saved."  Whosoever does not differentiate between chosen and not chosen.  Predestinated or not predestinated.  He has told us to spread the Gospel.  What's the point if you are doomed anyway.  Why tell us, "Go ye therefore and teach all nations..." if it doesn't make a difference. 

I think God has chosen to offer salvation to every person, and that God can make a choice not to know what they will do--so that he isn't creating pre--damned person.  

And no...I can't back what I think up with a distinct scripture.  I infer it from the Biblical descriptions of what the characteristics of God are.  All scripture.

Why--and how--was Adam different?  God said, "...let us make man in our image, after our likeness..." This was an entirely different kind of creation.  We don't know much about what was here before Adam, but we have a historical record of the descendants of Adam.  Those of us who came from Adam have a unique capacity. What does it mean to be made in the image of God?

I can give you my opinion.  I think that God created an entirely new creature.  One that could hold his Holy Spirit. Genesis 2:7, "And the Lord God...breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Adam's uniqueness was that there was a space that held a soul.  A place within him to hold the Spirit of God.

All people groups make idols: worship the sun, trees, animals, etc...They all look for something greater than themselves.  They look for something to fill an emptiness inside themselves.  The empty place God created in man to hold "the breath of life"--to hold His Spirit.  Man searches for God.  The Bible says, "...if you seek me you will find me..."  Problem is, men would rather substitute something--that doesn't require obedience.

Man searches, because he was created to hold the Spirit of God and he is lost without it.  God gave this creation a will of their own.  To obey God, or not obey God.  When Adam chose to disobey, he was cast out of Eden--the perfect place God had prepared for him to live.  The Bible says his descendants are born dead in sin.  They no longer have the Spirit of God within.
  
The entire Old Testament is a story of man's search to restore God's Spirit. And when Christ died for this human race God created, He died to cleanse us, restore us, and put the Spirit of God back into the empty place within us.

1 Corinthians 15:45,47  "...the first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit...The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven..."

One of the universal questions for a scientist who is a Christian is:  Was Adam the first man?

Of course not. (My opinion)  He was the first man created in the image of God.  We can date Adam to about 6000 years or so ago from the genealogies in the first books of the Bible.  Some religious people want to say that was the beginning of all life. But strata shows us bones of humanoids that date much further back than that--as well as the fish, birds and dinosauric species.  Earth is very old.  The Bible doesn't discuss that.

One of the few verses that tell us what happened on earth after sin entered the garden where Adam and Eve were, is when Cain begged God to put a mark on him so that the people "Out There" wouldn't kill him.  Who were those people?  They weren't in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.   Cain took a wife from the land of Nod.  Who was she?  Who lived in the land of Nod.  Cain knew about them and was afraid of them.   God doesn't say.

My son Scott suggested that we do know that Lucifer was removed from heaven because he tried to overthrow God.  He was damned to earth--where the Bible calls him the "Prince of the power of the air."  Many angels who supported Lucifer were kicked out along with him.  Could they reproduce?  That is a wild speculation.  We have no knowledge of that.  I'm not going to speculate, but will say that a few years later, "...the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair and they took them wives..."  It sounds like two groups of people.  1. Sons of God, 2. Daughters of men.  "...and it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart..."

But if you adopt the alien theory, you would have to answer the question: where did aliens come from?  When you go back to the very first question that I proposed in Chapter One, you can make all of this simple.  Do you believe in God?  A supreme Creator.  Or not? 

Of course, when you believe in God, you become accountable to Him, and the world in general doesn’t seem to want to be accountable—not only to God, but to anyone else.  People rebel at rules.  And if there is a God, he is ultimately in charge of His universe.  Including you.

If you believe that there is a Something, a First Source, a Creator of our universe, someone who created space—space in which to put everything —you might enjoy reading the Bible.  It is a fascinating account—if you get the words correct and in the right order.   And more importantly, if you start with the very first verse: “In the beginning…God.”

I hope you have found what I've written informative.  I haven't finished the book on Genesis.  I'm still working on it.  I will post  information on the sixth day sometime in the future.  I just made a decision to share it on line rather than wait until I finish.  Maybe someone needs it now-----instead of later.

It is interesting that the Bible didn’t say that God created moving creatures in the water (fish or crab kinds of things).  He just “Let” them emerge. Once again science validates the Biblical account.  Those creatures existed in the water from the beginning.  Back when God created the heavens and the earth.  Before the earth was dark.  They exist in strata.

I find it absolutely amazing that thousands of years ago, the Biblical account got it exactly right--and in the order that it actually occurred.  Biblical historians say that Moses probably wrote Genesis.  How in the world did Moses get it right without a PHD in science?     

        Maybe he had inspiration from an alien?  That seems to be the new theory being proposed by the non-believing world--since science can’t answer the questions found in strata with evolution theory. 
        Some people are proposing that we came from another planet.  The idea is that perhaps, maybe, we were inhabited by aliens from somewhere in space.  That idea seems more reasonable to some people than accepting a creator.  They don't say where the aliens came from!
       I think the belief that something, or someone, is “Out There” is a reasonable belief.  I call that someone God.  Not an alien.   I can’t buy alien theory in addition to evolution theory.  It just seems like another proposal to circumvent a creator and substitute something else in its place.  But for some people--God is unacceptable.  He would expect something from them.  An alien doesn't.

If you don’t want to believe in the Organic chemistry of carbon decay, which allows science to date things that were once alive, well, okay.  (Living things are constructed with carbon which decays at a certain rate.)  But you can’t disregard the layers and layers of strata in ice cores that mark the millions of years of time.  The years exist. You can count the layers in the ice.

A THING CALLED A DAY

 Here’s where things finally get interesting.  At this point, we have the sun, water, plants and rotation. (No indication of how long a rotation takes?)  The earth is orbiting around the sun, (no indication how long an orbit takes?) but we have signs and seasons.  And a moon which has an effect on the waters--the tides--on earth.  

Some of those creatures that lived in the water (crabs, turtles, etc.) can also live on land; the tides have an effect what they do; they start moving around in an environment which is no longer dark all the time.  Orbits cause seasons, which affect migration as well.  Birds probably begin to travel with the “seasons” the Bible mentioned.

I wonder about alligators and crocodiles, armadillos and other “plated” creatures. Do they qualify as dinosaurs?  Some animals existed on the fringe of water, and had a food source in the water— animals who could live in darkness.  Strata indicates that is probably true.  Komodo dragons perhaps? And other such lizard like creatures?  That's an entire other book...

CREATING AGAIN

The account continues in verse 24-25 with, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, (species) cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind, (species)…”  That would be the things that were here and had been here millions of years ago and had been able to live through the darkened earth period.  God didn’t recreate them, or make them, he just let them multiply now that the atmosphere was more hospitable.  “…and God created the beast of the earth after his kind, (species)…” Note that He doesn’t say they came from the water.  (Evolution theory.)  These animals are all a new creation—which is supported by strata.  After the destruction of the dinosaurs, these new animals don’t show up for millions of years.  They aren’t in the strata.  You have dinosaurs, then nothing, then new kinds of animals after a long (millions of years) gap.  It is the second creative act in the book of Genesis.  He created the heavens and the earth, and now, new creatures.

There are some religious groups that teach that the world is around six thousand years old because the history of the Bible puts Adam and Eve as being on earth around that time.  That event probably was around six thousand years ago.  But God’s laws that govern the earth are consistent over time as we know it, and we know for a fact, using God’s laws that govern his universe, that dinosaurs existed long before six thousand years ago at the time of Adam.  Millions of years ago.

Archeologists say that birds have been found extensively in strata.  They were here in the dinosauric ages before the destruction that caused the  earth to be dark, formless, and void—birds didn’t come out of the water millions of years later during the period we are calling the Gap.  
And we know that most fish species never went extinct. They date back before the dinosauric destruction by millions of years.  Fish never vanished.  They never changed much within the species.  Some species that are still here and look almost exactly like they always did.  They didn't evolve. 

Which means that birds and fish aren’t connected, because they were both independent of each other; both were living on earth before the end of the dinosaurs. They weren’t connected then.  They aren’t connected now. They are different species.  The Bible isn’t saying they are connected.

I believe the verse is actually saying two different things.  “Let the fish…” multiply (bring forth) abundantly. And “…let the fowl…fly above the earth.”  And reproduce and diversify.
A shark from millions of years ago is easily identified as a shark.  Fish remained in the oceans and seas and reproduced in like kind through the ages.  Evolution theorists say that some worm had to evolve (and get a spine so creatures could stand up) so they eventually developed a "notochord."  They point to a creature called the amphioxus as the transitional stage.  However, the amphioxus exists today.  It hasn't changed or evolved.

If we ever go back to a primitive world in which we need wisdom teeth to survive, those with the gene for four wisdom teeth will have a better chance to live and reproduce--because they can eat difficult food--and those without that gene may die off because they can’t gnaw as well.

Every species has a genetic code with many varying options.  You can see it everywhere around the globe in the human race. Tall, short.  Round eyes, slanted eyes.  Pale skin, dark skin.  Skinny, fat. And the list of variance goes on and on. But whatever the variance, no matter what the differences, we are all human.  (I'll discuss pre-Adam people and the Land of Nod later.)

FISH AND BIRDS 

Genesis 1:20. “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.”  

You may think that the Bible is saying that God is telling both fish and birds to come out of the water--to evolve and move out onto land.

You may want to stretch the meaning of this verse to say birds and fish came out of the water since it can be noted that fish fins and bird wings have a similar structure.  Also, fish tails can be compared to bird tails.  They too, are similar.  The verse might Biblically sound like God let them both come forth and evolve from the water.  But that can’t be so, because birds were here before the earth was darkened when its was hit by a meteor.  

I read somewhere about a type of moth that is colored either white, or brown.  It all depends on the trees in the area where they live.  If the trees are birch trees, with white trunks, the brown moths land on the tree trunks and are picked off by birds because the birds can see them.  The white moths don’t show up on white tree trunks, don’t get picked off and they survive to reproduce.   And in a few generations, white moths become predominant because that “white” gene is the one that gets passed on to the next generation.  

In the same way, if the area has trees with brown trunks, the birds can see the white members of the moth species, swoop in and eat them and the white moths don’t live to reproduce.  After a few generations, only brown moths are present.  All because of the color of the tree trunks.  And birds that eat moths.

This process has a name.  Natural selection.

Another example of natural selection is seen in a human’s wisdom teeth. Years and years ago, in our primitive past, if you didn’t have wisdom teeth, you couldn’t survive very well without them. You needed those extra teeth to gnaw meat from bones.  As our living conditions and nutrition improved, the lack of the “wisdom tooth gene” no longer led to your death from hunger.  Today, there are people who never grow wisdom teeth at all.  There are also people who grow only two, and there are still people who have all four.  We actually don’t need them anymore and the gene for four wisdom teeth is not as predominate.  That’s Natural Selection in action.  

Synonyms of the definition of the word Entropy are: disarray, disorganization, disorderliness, untidiness, chaos, mayhem, bedlam, pandemonium, madness...I've made my point.

Needless to say, one of the laws of Physics tells us that “matter” doesn’t get better and better, smarter and smarter, and more and more functional. It falls apart over time. Evolution Theory says things get better and better over time, and eventually things get so much better, you have a human being.

Evolving (changing), on the other hand, actually does happen.  It occurs by natural selection from the informational code every animal and plant—every living thing—carries in its DNA.   

Think about it this way.  There are many, many breeds of dogs.  You can breed two canines, and according to the genes they carry, the result can be genetically engineered to become a dog that looks very different from its parents.  That’s how man has selectively included and excluded certain genetic characteristics to manipulate what dogs look and act like.  There is a lot of variance in dogs.  Big, small. Black, white and every spot and color in between.  Long hair, short hair.   But even though they look different, they are still dogs.

And if man gets out of the selective breeding business--if you turn all the dogs loose, after a few generations they will revert, amalgamize, back into dogs that all look alike.  They will look sort of like a wolf.  But they won’t turn into hippos, or giraffes. 

If you could survive in water or dampness during the period of a dark earth in which the sun was blotted out, you didn’t go extinct.  Land animals were what died out and went extinct.  Animals in the water were for the most part unaffected.  Because of that, the evolution theorist--who believes in successive change over time to make the creatures we have today--has to prove that we evolved from the water.  Because almost all land life was dead.  Which presents a problem.  Where is the evidence in strata?  It isn't there.  We have dinosaurs in strata...then we have millions of years of nothing.  No successive life forms showing change over time.  They just aren't there.

Evolution is just a word for change.  Evolution Theory, however, is an entirely different ball game.  Evolution theory (simplified) says that one atom connected to another and began to divide.  (Where did those two atoms come from?) And somewhere along the way their connections became “alive.” And "evolved" and became more and more functional and branched off--and every single living thing on earth comes from those two original dead atoms that became alive by magic. 

One of the laws of Physics refutes the idea that things get better and better--and more functional over time.  Physics tells us that things get worse over time.  It's called Entropy.  Described as "A lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder."  To evolve into a better creature from almost nothing at all means that you must refute this law billions upon billions  of times.  Which is "Physically" impossible.  We didn't evolve.

 There we are.  Rotating on some unseen axis. Floating in this thing we call space that came from nothing and out of nowhere. Space that was created--with the stars, moon, sun and our earth and everything else that is out there which was placed into that space.  Space. Who, or what, caused space to happen? Not to mention the stuff that is floating around in it.  It is a miracle.  There is a creator!

When you study strata, you find that there is something very interesting about water life. About things that lived in wet enviornments.  A cricket from millions (zilliondy-dilliondy) of years ago, looks almost exactly like a cricket does today.  (They were preserved in sap that turned into amber trapping and preserving the cricket.) You can easily identify that it is a cricket.  It is basically unchanged over time.  That is also true of the fossils of sharks, and other fish forms. Actually, if something back there over sixty-six million years ago could live in a wet environment, it survived the darkened earth that killed the plants and dinosaurs, and you can easily identify those animals as being the same ones we have today.  They have barely changed at all.  They didn’t evolve.  They are the same as they always were.  In the water. 

They certainly didn’t evolve into mammals or we would have their evolving evidence of fossils in strata. We don't. There is no evidence of  evolution. They remained throughout the millennial, reproducing with very little adaptation. They look fairly identical to what they have looked like forever.  

 My son Scott suggested that God is pulling the dust, gases, and other materials from the atmosphere to make stars since the word made is used.  Remember, made means take something already there and design something else that is useful.  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.  
I don’t know much about astronomy.  Just what I see when I look up and into the heavens on a dark night.  Some things seem to stay put.  Other things up there seem to move--other planets, shooting stars. But for the most part, it’s our own planet that is moving and causing change to the position of other heavenly bodies.  We are moving--rotating and orbiting the sun.  Held there by gravitational forces.

 Scott also said to think of the earth as a spinning top.  It stays balanced on its axis if it is going fast enough--or correct speed.  But if you bump it, it wobbles on its axis.  Think of the earth spinning at some rate that keeps it balanced and rotating on its axis--then an asteroid hits it.  Things will change.  Polar magnetism has also changed before--which changes the axis.  We know that from rocks.  

We are given nothing in Scripture at this point to indicate how long a rotation or one day is.  Nor do we know how long a year is—one orbit around the sun. Do you remember when man landed on the moon, and we saw the picture taken from space of our earth.  It was truly an awesome thing to see.  

God had said back in verse 3, “…Let there be light…” without talking about different kinds of light.  The verse simply says He divided the light from the darkness. 

In these next verses, God is talking about: 1.Signs, 2.Seasons, 3.Days, and 4.Years.  All of those involve some sort of light phenomenon, change, or occurrence.  Verses 14-18.  God says "...let there be lights...let them be for signs, seasons, days and years.  And let them...give light upon the earth..and God made two great lights..."  One to rule the day and one to rule the night.  We begin to have tides.  The moon begins to pull the oceans back and forth.

Perhaps the signs could be talking about the North star.  Or stars that come into view of earth at different times in the orbit of earth around the sun.  Or heavenly bodies that would be seen as a result of rotation.  Or explosions of novas.  Shooting stars?  When you talk about signs, seasons, days, and years, you are talking about systems for people to determine and organize their time.  When you are talking about dividing the day from the night--you are talking about rotation.  When you are talking about seasons and years, you are talking about the earth’s orbit around the sun.   All of those things are concerned with the passing of time.  

The word “Signs” might be about fixing navigational guides, or eclipses, or comets.  It sounds like God is organizing how the stars, sun, moon and other heavenly objects reflect light--to affect and guide life on earth. 

In verse twelve we see many kinds of plants growing.  “And the earth brought forth grass, (genetically specific) and herb yielding seed after his kind, (genetically specific) and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind…” (genetically specific). 

Three days have passed.  That is…three rotations of the earth have occurred.  Who knows how long a rotation took?  If you believe the earth has always had days that were twenty-four hours long, you are misled.  Rotation speed sometimes changes when there is a large earthquake, an asteroid impact, etc.  Rotation speed can change.   It has in my lifetime.

The next verses, on Day Four, are not very clear.  Genesis 1:13-19 says, “…Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years…let them be for lights in…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…to divide the light from the darkness…”

These verses in some ways seem to be partly repetitive, perhaps an explanation of the arranging, or giving purpose to different lights--since the sun was already shining; the sun had already been busy growing seeds into plants back on day three.  God had already created the "heavens" back in verse one. 

The restoration sequence:  Sun, water, dry land, grass and plants.
The food chain had to be restored first—so animals would have something to eat.  I think it is interesting that the seeds were already on the earth.  Left over from when they were created way back in verse one.  They were there.  They hadn’t sprouted because of the darkness that was upon the face of the earth.  The lack of sunlight had kept the seeds from sprouting, growing and reproducing.  The sun was blotted out--science shows us that--from ice cores.  And that the darkness on earth lasted for sixteen years. 

I read somewhere that in excavating the pyramids, archeologists found kernels of corn.  They planted the corn, and some of it sprouted—after thousands of years.  The Bible says, “Let the earth bring forth grass...whose seed is in itself, upon the earth.”

Seed may be dark, and dry looking.  But inside, there is something that man hasn’t been able to reproduce.  Life.  Rocks are also dark and dry looking.  But rocks don’t sprout.  They don’t have life inside.  Seeds have the power to “…bring forth…”  Life!  Something man can't duplicate.  

I watched a Science documentary the other night, (I am hooked on Discover, Nova, Drain the Oceans, and National Geographic) that said that grass is the most important life sustaining plant on the earth.”  Interesting, that the exact plant, grass—is the plant that is written about in Scripture.  In verse 11 it says, “Let the earth bring forth grass…”  Food for the animals.

It sounds like water was not only already on the earth, but it was also in the atmosphere. “Waters which were above…” 

Once the sun broke through, the Bible says that on the third day, in verse 9, God said, “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and Let the dry land appear…”  Dirt.  Soil. Dry land.  The medium for growing things.  You now have waters below the heavens gathered into organized oceans, lakes, rivers and ponds. You have waters above the earth organized as water clouds that can mist the plants. (There was no rain until after the flood?  When we got a rainbow.)  Everything is ready for the plants to appear again so that the food chain can restored.

God was ready to Let plant life appear on earth once again.  He says, “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…” (!) The seed was already there upon the earth.  Seed left from previous plants?  That’s how that passage reads.  It certainly doesn’t say he created plants in this passage.  It says the seed was already there...waiting on the sun to clear.

I love the way God took His steps.  First the sun, water, land.  Then plants…you can’t have plants without those three elements being restored into a working climate.  First things first.  You have to have plants, because new animals are about to appear next in the order of the steps God took.  

SUNSHINE 

Genesis 1:3 says, “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light…”  He didn’t create it.  He had already done that in verse one when "In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."  

He most probably just rolled back the dense smoke left by burning sulfuric compounds in the atmosphere that had been blotting out the sun.  He let it disperse--that thick dark atmospheric mess that had caused all of the plants to die, the event that probably happened (Biblically) between verse one and two in Genesis--which ultimately killed all plants and the dinosaurs.

We have records that were left in the strata of earth that tell us what happened, and when it happened. (Dated by carbon decay rates and ice core sediments.)  Our entire earth contains a treasure trove of history in sediment, just waiting to be discovered and scientifically dated.  God’s rules of Physics and Chemistry are miracles.  Part of His creation.  He is the ultimate, creative scientist.  We, on the other hand, only discover what is already there that He created.  Someone may get a Nobel Prize in Chemistry or Physics for their discovery, but they didn’t create what they discovered.  God did.

The second day, in Genesis 1: 6-8, God said, “…Let there be a sky in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters…under the sky from the waters which “were” above the sky…and the evening and the morning were the second day.”   Everything in Genesis is becoming clear.  And accurate. 

            1. Create: "Take absolutely nothing and design a perfect thing that has never before existed."

             2. The word made  means to take something that already exists and design something else, something different that is useful.  In other words, you have to have preexisting stuff to start with. God uses this word made over and over again after the first verse in Genesis.

I’m reminded of the of the little dresses I “made” for my daughters when they were young. I took fabric, thread, a pattern, buttons, and scissors and used those things to make something that didn’t look like any of those things I had used to do it.  I made something.  I made a dress.  The dress was unique, but it wasn’t created.  I had to use things that "already existed" to end up with something else—a dress.  I made it.

            3. The third word, Let, means to allow something to happen.  Such as: I’m going to let the dog out.  Or:  I’m going to let you borrow my car.  

You  don’t create anything, you don’t make anything, you just allow something to occur.  And again, God uses this word “let” over and over again in the first chapter of Genesis.  

Genesis 1:3 says, “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light…”  He didn’t create it.  He had already done that in verse one.  

As we continue to read, the word I’ve been talking about, the word create,doesn’t occur but two other times in the Genesis story.   It occurs in verse 26, when God creates new kinds of animal forms. And it occurs when he creates man. Other than that, from this point on in the Biblical account in Genesis, the Bible uses words that have very different meanings from the word create.  They are words of restoration.   God begins something new.  The last part of verse two says: “…And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”  Now, God is going to reconstruct.  God is now going to make things, and let things happen.

 TWO OTHER WORDS:

 After the first verse in Genesis, in which the word create describes what God originally did, different words are used. They are the words, Made, and Let.

Again, remember that when you are reading something, it requires a definition of the words that are being used.

The word made means to take something that already exists and design something else, something different that is useful.  In other words, you have to have preexisting stuff to start with. God uses this word made over and over again after the first verse in Genesis.

THE CONDITION ON EARTH

 1.  Void, empty

2.   Without form, a shapeless mass

3.  Dark, devoid of sunlight

 This is not the description of a creative work. So, for a moment, consider those two verses:

1.    “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” 

2.    “And the earth was void, without form, and darkness was on the face of the deep.”  (There was water left over from verse one.)

Obviously, something happened between those two verses; a span of time occurred that we are not told about.   I wish God had told us about it, but He didn’t.  He did, however, leave us evidence trapped in the earth’s sediment that tells us about the kind of world that previously existed over sixty-six million years ago.  The book of Genesis is not about that world and what was in it.  The book of Genesis is about restoration.  It is about the world we live in now.  It is the story of man--man created in the image of God. 

As we continue to read, the word I’ve been talking about, the word create,doesn’t occur but two other times in the Genesis story.  

Genesis 1:4-5, “And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.  And the evening and the morning were the first day.”  The atmosphere was now clear.  God divided it.  Wiped away the atmospheric smog, ash, soot, burning sulfur—whatever it was--that blotted out the sun.

And then…

In order to have night and day, you have to have rotation.  Was rotation there before, or was this “without form” mass we call earth just wobbling around in space?  When you have an impact with an asteroid like the one that hit the Gulf of Mexico it will surely have some sort of effect on the earth’s balance and rotation.

Whatever it was doing, God called it the first day--rotation.  The Bible says there was an evening and a morning: “…the evening and the morning were the first day.”  The sun came up; the sun went down. How long was a day?  I don’t know.  Every time there is a volcanic eruption, a tsunami, asteroid impact, or a major earthquake on earth, the rotational speed of the earth is affected. All we know from the Biblical account is that there was one rotation of the earth and God called it a day.