THE CREATION OF THIS WORLD—HOW WAS IT ACCOMPLISHED?
By R. C. P.
The Agency That Did the Work—The Sublime Source of Creative Power—The Creative Act of Resting
IT is difficult for the human mind to conceive that the creative power, which is not vested in man, is an attribute of the Deity. The secret of ancient Israel's failure lay in their tendency to make God altogether like themselves. In doing so, they limited the Holy One of Israel, and through unbelief, disconnected themselves from His power. This age is confronted with a like danger. Finite minds can never comprehend the unfathomable wisdom and power of God. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." Isa. 55: 8, 9. The wisest sage must recognize the infinite superiority of God's wisdom, or fail in his research into the origin of the material universe. David, after reviewing the wonderful structure of the human frame, expressed his view of the origin of man in the sublime declaration: "I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well." Ps. 139: 14. David declares that creation is God's act. He did not reach this conclusion by human philosophy alone. He admits that it is beyond the power of human reasoning to fathom the attributes of God. "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I can not attain unto it." Ps. 139: 6. WISDOM TAPPED AT ITS SOURCE
Nevertheless, by divine revelation he tapped the fountain of infinite wisdom at its source, and learned there the secret of creation. He does not philosophize upon it, or draw conclusions from assumed premises. He proclaims it as revealed. His announcement is simple, plain, and positive: "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. . . . He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." Ps. 33: 6, 9. This is God's own revelation of how He performed the work of creation, for David says, "The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and His word was in my tongue." 2 Sam. 23: 2. Hence David's utterance is the voice of authority from the very throne of God. The act of creation is therefore a God-breathed or God-spoken word. When He spoke, that which before was not, was. By that word, worlds and suns and myriads of solar systems have sprung into being, and taken their places in regular order in God's great universe, to proclaim His wisdom and power. Into what insignificance all other theories of origin sink in comparison with the divinely revealed fact that God created by His word! THE LEARNED APOSTLE AFFIRMS IT
Paul was the most learned of the apostles. At his words of wisdom, Felix trembled, and was almost persuaded to be a Christian. Festus, overcome by his masterful reasoning, said, "Much learning doth make thee mad"; to which Paul courteously replied, "I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness." Acts 26: 24, 25. With the same candor, he informed his Hebrew brethren that faith is the key that unlocks all the revealed mysteries of creation. It bids the investigator, whose reason staggers on the threshold of the unfathomable depths of divine wisdom displayed in creation, to know creation's God through His word and be at rest. "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." Heb. 11: 3. Here again it is revealed that creation is by God's word. How God could create a vast universe without material from which to build, is a difficult problem with many to-day. Human reasoning can not solve this mystery. Unbelief reasons, speculates, assumes, doubts, and fails. Faith reads God's record of creation, believes, and understands. CHRIST THE CREATOR OF EVERYTHING
Creation is Christ's act. There are three persons in the Godhead—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God the Father chose to perform the work of creation through His Son. "For by Him [Christ] were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him." Col. 1: 16. Christ is here declared to be the Creator of everything in the universe, God being His counselor (Gen. 1: 26), and the Holy Spirit the agency (Gen. 1: 2) by whose power it was accomplished. Christ is also called God, as we see from Heb. 1: 8, 10: "Unto the Son He saith, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. . . . And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of Thine hands." It is here stated that Christ, who is called God the Son, and who bears the scepter of the kingdom as His badge of authority and power, in the beginning founded the earth and created the heavens. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life." John 1: 1-4. Christ, the living Word, was therefore the Creator by whose word all things were made. The reason it seems impossible that worlds are created by God's word, is that we undertake to measure God's wisdom by our ignorance, His infinity by our finite limitations, His almighty power by our human weakness. It should be remembered that the supernatural is God's sphere of action. THE BIRTHDAY OF THE WORLD
One needs but to read the first chapter of Genesis to confirm the statement of the psalmist and the apostles that the creative act was performed by the word of God. When God the Son entered upon His creative work, there was no earth. "I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was." Prov. 8: 23. Christ spoke, and the earth was. When it issued forth as from the womb, thick darkness was its swaddling-band. "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." We marvel at the power of that creative word. This chapter is practically summed up in six wonderful words: "God said . . . and it was so." But this is what we should expect from a Creator who has informed us that in creating, "He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." No part of the study of the first chapter of Genesis has exercised the mind of students of the Word more than the production of light without the sun. But it should be remembered that the sun itself became the light-bearer by appointment. The astronomer Dimbleby observes that "there is nothing in nature, and still less in science, to show us that the light of the sun is self-derived9by that body. It is altogether phenomenal, unique, and supernatural. Sir Isaac Newton confessed that he was at a loss to explain why the central orb of the solar system should be the light-bearer to all others, beyond the fact that, as the stationary and central body, it is best fitted for the exceptional character of distributing light and heat to the surrounding planets." At the beginning of the second day, there was no distribution of water through the vast expanse of the heavens. "And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. . . . And the evening and the morning were the second day." Gen. 1: 6, 8. Upon this text Dimbleby says: "Our first idea on reading of the formation of the firmament, or expanse, is the introduction of a buoyant atmosphere, the composition of which was adapted to sustain vegetable and animal life, and act as the medium for the transmission of sound. . . . When our 'Handbooks of Science' are further amended, they will come up to the higher platform of the pages of revelation." THE WATERS GATHERED INTO SEAS
When the earth was created, there were no seas and no fountains of water. The land and the water were intermingled. "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so." Verse 9. No wonder that when Christ was here on earth, in the midst of a great tempest He could by a word still the raging of the waves on the stormy sea! At that time, men marveled, saying, "What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him!" Matt. 8: 27. Had they been conversant with His mighty creative act, that by a word He separated the water into seas, and caused the drenched land to stand forth dry, the mystery would have been solved. We here learn of the origin of naming things. God named light and darkness. He named day and night, beginning the day with the dark period, called evening, and closing it with the period of light which He called morning. "And God called the dry land earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He seas: and God saw that it was good." Verse 10. But the third day was not yet complete. The earth had as yet no vegetation, and there were no herbs nor seeds with which to start. "And God said, 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: and it was so." Verse 11. We stand awestruck in the presence of a majestic Creator at whose word grass, flowers, and trees spring into life. With that same word, He sweeps into oblivion hundreds of volumes, written by the wisest philosophers, on the origin of life. And He emphasizes the record by saying, "And God saw that it was good." The order in every blade and leaf and flower and tree, the wonderful correspondence of side to side, the mathematical precision of ratio in their order, the nice balancing of the shadings of color, the regularity of the seasons of budding, fruiting, and seeding, all witness to the wisdom and power of their Creator. THE GREAT LIGHT-BEARERS ARE MADE
Here we reach the period of a great change in the order of distributing light and heat. During the first three days, light was disseminated by direct order from the Creator; but in the regular order of His creative work, sun, moon, and stars are commissioned to perform this glorious work. Science produces no evidence that the sun, moon, and stars developed into light-bearers by a power in themselves. For information upon this subject, we must return to the Creator's word. "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so." Verses 14, 15. All speculative theories of fire-balls coursing through space, an unknown period in process of development into suns and systems, are shattered and fall before the revelations of God's word. "And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day." THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA AND AIR
The mighty sea, shut in as by doors by a perpetual decree, now gracefully recedes when her proud waves have lashed her shores; but in her mighty bosom no fish or whale appeared, adapted to a home in the watery deep, to give her life. The new-born earth, robed in heaven-sent garments of faultless verdure, had as yet no flying fowl to carol the praise of its Creator, or to flit among the branches of the majestic trees, or, thrilled with boundless joy, to soar heavenward through the open firmament on high. "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven." And by that word, "God created great whales, and every living creature that moveeth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day." Verses 20-23. Wonderful day's work! Flying fowl and singing birds on feathery wing, fish and whale, are here, after the lapse of six thousand years, as witnesses of the power of that creative word. LOWING HERBS AND THE MONARCH MAN
But still no lowing herbs or beasts were seen. And man had not yet appeared to claim the dominion of the earth. "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so." Verse 24. "And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Years of scientific research have clustered around this wonderful problem of the creation of man. Musty volumes from the archives of ancient philosophers have been unearthed, and hieroglyphics of ancient tombs have been deciphered in a vain search after information as to man's origin. THE WISE MEN TURNED BACKWARD, AND THE DIVINERS MAD
One word from the archives of the Creator "frustrateeth the tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners mad; . . . turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish." Isa. 44: 25. That word, like its Author, is majestic in its simplicity. It says: "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them." And man is here in the image of God. And male and female, as God made them, they witness to His word. The record provides for no primal sea-mud germ, no wriggling snail, no sea-pen, and no ape, as progenitors of man. God the Son spoke the creative word; and man, "the son of God" (Luke 3: 38), stood forth full grown, named all living things, took to him a wife before the sixth-day sun went down; and God's creative work was done. Gen. 2: 18-23; 1: 31. Man had given to him even the bill of fare best suited to his health and needs. God left nothing incomplete. "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." Gen. 1: 29. Man's bill of fare was adapted to the needs of his entire being; and those who will test it, will find in that God-given menu still the best diet earth produces for mankind. GOD'S CREATIVE REST BEGINS
It should be noted that God's creative day was composed of day and night, the same as ours, the evening, or dark part, coming first. Gen. 1: 5. With the going down of the sun on the sixth creative day, the darkness of the evening of the seventh day began to steal over the earth. God's creative work was ended, and His creative rest began. God's rest created the Sabbath day for man. Gen. 2: 1-3. By this act of rest, the Sabbath and the week were born. It was not Adam's rest, but God's, that made the Sabbath day. And the Creator who worked and rested in the creative act was God the Son. With what feelings of reverence and devotion one reviews the mighty work of God, accomplished during that short creative week! Poor finite man might combine all theories known to the wisest masters of this enlightened age, and he could not in a million years reproduce a single creative act of that first eventful week. Beholding the majesty, wisdom, power, and love of God as displayed in creation, who does not feel inclined to draw nigh and join the band of angelic worshipers who prostrate themselves with deepest10reverence before their Creator's throne, and cry, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory"! "I sing the mighty power of God, that made the mountains rise,
That spread the flowing seas abroad, and built the lofty skies.
I sing the wisdom that ordained the sun to rule the day.
The moon shines full at His command, and all the stars obey.
"I sing the goodness of the Lord, that filled the earth with food.
He formed the creatures with His word, and then pronounced them good.
Lord, how Thy wonders are displayed where'er I turn my eye,
If I survey the ground I tread, or gaze upon the sky!
"There's not a plant or flower below but makes Thy glories known;
And clouds arise, and tempests blow, by order from Thy throne.
Creatures that borrow life from Thee are subject to Thy care;
There's not a place where we can flee but God is present there."
R. C. P.