The Creation Week

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 21, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 24.

The Creation Week

Needless to say we accept the Record. In the first place, it is simpler than the assumed hypotheses of science. In the second place, it is more reasonable to the believer in an infinite personal God. In the third place, it is just what we could expect a Creator to do who is not bound by certain laws and rules and hypotheses guessed at by creatures of a passing breath. In the fourth place, the soul can find in the various steps of God's remolding power mighty encouragement to holy living, of which more hereafter.

For the first day God spoke into the seemingly black abyss, and said, "Let there be light," and LIGHT WAS. The dark mass was illumined, and the earth entered upon her normal career. The revolving earth, in that canopy of light and darkness, brought night and day,—the first day of that first week of time. The second brought an expanse, a breaking of the great cloud mass which enswathed the earth; the upper part forming clouds, the lower part covering the earth with water. The third day, by the fiat of God, witnessed the waters roll off from a portion of the land, leaving it dry, and forming seas and gulfs and lakes, and the earth brought forth vegetation. On the fourth day appeared the glorious panorama of heaven, the sun, moon, and stars. Then the feathered tribes of air and the finny tribes of the sea were created on the fifth day. On the sixth day were created all animal life upon the earth, of which man was the crowning work. Thus God, by His word-creative, formed, shaped, created the earth and its dwellers of beast and man.

The crowning day of that cycle, its completion, the day toward which all the other days tended, was the seventh, on which God ceased His work, took delight in its cosmic beauty, placed within it a blessing for man, and set it apart for man forevermore.

The reason is obvious if we will stop to think. First, man was made a worshiping being, and he will worship something, from the great invisible God to the rabbit foot he carries in his pocket or the beetle which crawls at his feet; and among his gods in general is SELF. Secondly, it is reasonable that man should devote some time to the worship of his Creator; and what could be more reasonable than that his Creator should state the proportion of time? Thirdly, man is normally a social being; he loves companionship; he herds together. Fourthly, being a worshiping being and a social being, it follows that he would worship with his fellows. This would demand not alone a proportion of time, but a definite period of time in the week. It is clear to all that God could not leave this to the choice of finite men, and must appoint the definite day; for He is not the god of confusion. Fifthly, this the Creator did. The proportion of time was one seventh; the definite day was the seventh, the day around which clustered and within which focused the great evidences of His creative Godhead. So much at this time for the origin of the week and the origin of the Sabbath.