“In the Beginning God Created”
Into what insignificance all other theories of origins sink compared with the sublime statement of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” It does not beg for your approval or acceptance as a theory. It does not stop to argue for a supposition or a hypothesis. It does not endeavor to bring forth instances of perverted law, or manifestations of law not understood by man, or seeming paradoxes of nature, as evidences of its truth. It presents the great fact, “God created.” “Create” clearly means to bring into existence that which did not exist before, and which only could be made to exist by the mighty power of God. The earth did not exist before God created it. Man, made tho he was from dust, did not exist as man till God created him. It does not tell us HOW He created. We could not understand it if He did. We can not understand the transmuting process of the growth of various seeds and plants in the same soil under the same sun, yet so widely, marvelously different. We may dissect plant and analyze seed, but we are no wiser. How could we understand God’s modus operandi of creation if He should condescend to tell us? He does not tell us out of what He created. The word “create” in the original does not mean “made or formed out of nothing,” as we are sometimes told. The creation of man, noted in Gen. 1:27 and 2:7, and the creation of the new earth (Isa. 65:17), clearly prove that this is not the meaning of the word. It might mean that, so far as man could comprehend; but that is not its exclusive meaning, as the Scriptures abundantly show. Out of what did God create?—To us it seems that the better, fuller, more easily apprehended answer is, OUT OF HIS OWN INFINITE FULNESS. All the theories of men are vague, unsatisfactory, confusing, and contradictory. Neither do their authors set them forth as facts, but as hypotheses, working bases for the explanation of phenomena which will obliterate a personal God, explain away sin, and exalt the blind, often perverted, laws of nature. The nebular hypothesis is combated by such men as Professor See, who has a new hypothesis of his own, decidedly in opposition. And there are still others. The personal God is rejected, yet none of them can tell us how there can be the manifestation of any energy, light, heat, or power, without a center. God, the great, infinite, mighty, wise, just, living, and loving God, is the Center of all power, all energy, all light, all love. Out of His fulness, by His mighty power and fulness of wisdom, He created. “By the word of Jehovah were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. . . . For He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.” Ps. 33:6, 9. Men have produced forms of trees and ferns and crystals by their breath; but these were but shadows, and dead shadows at that. God, by His power, has produced the living creature, endowed it with intelligence, and placed within it the power of perpetuation of the species. “When did God create?” We do not know above what the record states. We do not know over how long a period that beginning stretched its indefinite wings. “In the beginning was the Word,” “before His works of old,” “before the earth was.” John 1:1; Prov. 8:22, 23. And in that time, covered by that “beginning,” “before the earth was,” myriads of suns and systems and clusters of systems were created, among the last of which perhaps was our own. We are not speaking of the seven days of Genesis; that is another matter. In this talk we are referring only to the great creative work of God “in the beginning.”