In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
In the beginning God already lived from everlasting, and He framed the heavens and the earth by His word, speaking and it stood fast, which is understood only through faith in Hebrews 11:3. The Father and the Son wrought together in that mighty work, for Christ is the Creator of heaven and earth, equal with the Father from the beginning. He made matter itself and all things out of nothing in six literal days about six thousand years ago, not over vast indefinite periods or by evolution from chaos, then rested on the seventh literal day and blessed and sanctified it. That literal week is the foundation of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, which commands labor on six literal days and rest on the seventh in commemoration of creation. The Mosaic record is the only authentic account of creation, preserved pure by the divine Hand, and with the fall, the atonement and the perpetuity of the law it stands as a pillar of the Christian faith to be received with implicit confidence and made the chief study in schools.
Beginning Before Creation
The beginning of heaven and earth was not the beginning of God. He already lived before He purposed to create the world, for He is from everlasting to everlasting. The Father and the Son were engaged together in the mighty, wondrous work they had contemplated, of creating the world.
Christ created the heaven and the earth and the world. He is the Alpha of creation in Genesis and the Omega of Revelation, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. From the beginning He was equal with the Father.
In the beginning God framed the worlds by His word. He spoke, and it was; He commanded, and it stood fast. This creation of heaven and earth is understood only through faith. God was in the beginning and is the Creator behind all nature, and this truth can be read aright only in the light of revelation, for to unaided reason nature's teaching is contradictory and disappointing, while He is the source of creation and the starting point for understanding nature rightly. It gives rest to the eager, questioning mind, showing that above, beneath and beyond abides Infinite Love, working out all things to accomplish the good pleasure of His goodness.
At the dawn of the first day the heavens and the earth came out of darkness by the call of infinite power. As the light rose, the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy in response to it.
Way God Created
In the beginning God created matter itself, calling the world into being with all that it contains out of nothing by the word of His power. To say that matter already existed and He merely shaped it limits the power of the Holy One of Israel. That same creative energy is in the Word of God still, to impart power and beget life. Every command accepted by the will and received into the soul brings with it the life of the Infinite One, transforms the nature and recreates the soul in the image of God, and the life thus imparted is sustained as it was created, by every word proceeding from God, while mind and soul are built up by what they feed upon.
Just how God wrought in creation He has never revealed to mortals, and it is as incomprehensible as His own existence. It cannot be explained from natural causes or searched out by human science. He had power to speak the world into existence in one day, but He made it in six days, working gradually rather than instantly.
The earth came forth from the Creator's hand exceedingly beautiful and holy, like a noble palace, with pure and healthful air. Its surface was not one extensive plain but was diversified with hills, mountains and very beautiful plains breaking the monotony of the scenery, regular and beautiful in shape and not high and ragged as now, interspersed with rivers and bodies of water regularly dispersed. Bare high rocks were never seen upon them but lay beneath the surface, answering as bones to the earth. Hills, mountains and plains were adorned with plants and flowers and tall, majestic trees of every description, many times larger and much more beautiful than trees now are, every flower, shrub and tree answering the purpose of its Creator. Angels beheld the wonderful and beautiful works of God and rejoiced.
He fitted up the world as a beautiful home for His human family, placing things upon the earth for man's benefit and comfort and providing all that people possess, not only what is necessary but filling heaven and earth with beauty. Without exception all men and women are His tenants, and He deserves to be kept in thought and given grateful thanks and remembrance. He created all things and constantly controls them, yet He has given human beings a power not wholly unlike His own, a degree of control over the forces of nature, so that as He called the earth in its beauty out of chaos, people can bring order and beauty out of confusion, and completed work brings a joy akin to His when, looking on the fair earth, He pronounced it very good. The God who gave being to the world has not lost His power or sovereignty but still presides over the world with right to declare His purposes, which are carried out by His Son as Mediator between God and man and made effective by the Holy Spirit, while the awful confusion in the world comes from not following the Lord's way and setting human judgment against the law of the Creator, with men seeking to please and glorify themselves and putting themselves above truth and above God.
Literal Week and Age
Genesis 1:1 opens the first week of time, which was just like every other week, consisting of seven literal days. In those six literal days God performed the work of creating heaven and earth, generating or producing some new portion of His work each day, giving the productions of His work at the close of each day, so that each day was a generation. On the seventh day of that first week God rested from His work, then blessed the day of His rest and set it apart for the use of man. That first cycle measured off the pattern and sample for successive weeks till the close of time, preserved and brought down through Bible history, giving man the first six days of each week for labor because God labored the same period in creation, and reserving the seventh day for rest in commemoration of God's rest after six days of work. The reason given in the Sabbath law depends on understanding those days as literal, for it commands labor six days and rest the seventh because in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea and all in them, and rested the seventh day and blessed and hallowed it.
That literal week is the foundation of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, which commands work on six literal days and rest on the seventh in commemoration of that same literal period of divine work and rest. To make the days seven vast, indefinite periods covering thousands upon thousands or even millions of years makes indefinite and obscure what God made very plain. It charges God with commanding men to observe a week of seven literal days in commemoration of seven indefinite periods, which is unlike His dealings with mortals and impeaches His wisdom. It makes the fourth commandment senseless and destroys its force, so that men feel freedom from its claims, and some eagerly receive it for that very reason. Even when held by those who profess to believe the record of creation, that view is infidelity in disguise, indeed the worst kind of infidelity in its most insidious and dangerous form.
The literal Mosaic record means the earth did not evolve from chaos over millions of years, and the world was created in definite time about six thousand years ago, not over tens of thousands of years or an indefinite period. The claim that long ages were required rests on inferences erroneously drawn from facts observed in nature, and changing the meaning of the days to accommodate science to the Bible undermines and destroys the force of the word of God. The teaching that the world was created in an indefinite period is one of Satan's falsehoods, for God did not leave the account of creation indefinite so that human beings can shape it according to their own theories, and He gave it in language people can understand as reliable history. Those who profess to believe the Bible record yet adopt the indefinite-period view do so to free themselves from difficulties thrown in their way by geologists over wonderful things found in the earth.
Bones of much larger men and animals, weapons, instruments of warfare, petrified wood and trees found in mountains and valleys do not prove a superior race long before creation or a very old earth. They are remains of the much larger men, animals and trees of the days of Noah, buried in the Flood and preserved as evidence that the antediluvians perished by a flood, reflecting both their larger size before the Flood and the great changes that took place in the earth at the Flood. Geology without Bible history and geology alone proves nothing about age; relics do show a past state different from the present, but their time is learned only from the Inspired Record, whose flood history explains what geology could never fathom. God designed the discovery of these buried things to establish faith in inspired history, and turning them into an argument against it repeats the error of the people before the Flood, turning a given benefit into a curse by wrong use.
God has given sufficient evidence upon which to base faith, including the things buried at the Flood and discovered in the earth to establish faith in inspired history, but men make a wrong use of them by vain reasoning. Human reasoning and the suppositions of geologists must not be accepted in opposition to and in contradiction of the plain facts God revealed about His work of creation, for the work of creation cannot be explained from natural causes and just how God wrought He has never revealed and human science cannot search out. In the last days true faith will be almost destitute as men count the word of God unreliable on the merest pretense, receive human reasoning opposed to plain Scripture facts, and rest faith on the suppositions of geologists that dispute the Mosaic record rather than on what God has revealed. Claiming that the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation are too obscure to understand while eagerly receiving geological suppositions against the creation record is inconsistent, because it rejects what God has revealed as too difficult while accepting mere suppositions about what He has not revealed.
The first and second chapters together show that combined exercise of mind in study and of muscle and reason in physical labor belonged to God's original order for man, especially in tilling the ground and dressing and keeping the garden planted in Eden. At creation God made man able to work cheerfully, so manual labor is not degrading but part of God's purpose for humanity. Although God could have spoken the world into existence in one day, He made it in six days, working gradually rather than instantly. His choice sets the pattern for human labor against rush and hurry and working day and night, teaching regular hours for sleep and work, stopping when nature says stop, and preserving health and strength instead of expending strength that is never recovered.
Record Kept Pure
Moses wrote this history under the guidance of the Spirit as part of God's holy unerring word to be held with settled faith. It was the first written revelation after about twenty-five hundred years in which knowledge taught by God had been handed down orally from father to son, beginning the sixteen-hundred-year work of embodying inspired revelations in an inspired book that runs from Moses the historian of creation and the law to John the recorder of the gospel.
The Bible alone gives the only authentic account of the creation of the world. That record has been preserved in its purity through the ages by the divine Mind and Hand, coming fresh from the fountain of eternal truth. It reveals the power that laid the foundation of the earth and stretched out the heavens.
It shines light into the far-distant past where human research cannot penetrate and seeks in vain to penetrate. It opens past centuries to view and gives the most ancient and most comprehensive history men possess, the most instructive and comprehensive history ever given to the world. It alone gives an authentic account of the origin of nations and the only truthful history of the human race, unsullied by human prejudice, pride, or human philosophy and unmarred by them.
It marks the beginning of the world's history and gives the authentic history of the beginning of the world and the origin of the earth. In it is reliable knowledge of humanity's creation and fall and the introduction of sin, including Lucifer's fall. Without it minds are left to fables and conjectures about the remote past, bewildered by false theories, subjected to the tyranny of superstition and falsehood, and enfeebled in intellect by entertaining error, but with it there is no need to be hampered by human conjectures and unreliable theories.
It opens the Bible's account of God's dealings with man, which runs from creation to the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven and farther into the future to the glories of the city of God and the beauty and perfection of the earth made new as the saints' secure home. Nothing in that account is to be thrown aside and nothing in the plan of redemption is unimportant or to be lightly disregarded. Although the line of events extends through many centuries and new and important truths are developed from time to time, what was truth in the beginning is truth still, and the increased light of the present does not contradict or make of none effect the dimmer light of the past.
It carries readers back through the centuries to the beginning of all things, presenting the history of times and scenes which would otherwise never have been known. As part of the Bible, the most wonderful of all histories, it is the production of God and not of the finite mind. In it God is revealed in nature and God is revealed in His word, as the living God in the creation of the world and in the heavens He has garnered and in the laws of His government. It reveals the glory of God in the working of His providence to save a fallen world, and presents in the simplest language the mighty power of the gospel which, received, cuts the chains that bind men in slavery to Satan's chariot, wisdom which brought into the practical life makes men wise through time and through eternity and the only means of redeeming the world from degrading superstitions that dishonor God and man.
Creation as given by the inspired writers is one of the very pillars of the Christian faith, standing with the fall of man, the atonement, and the perpetuity of the law of God. It is a great fact to be really accepted with implicit confidence as the guide of life. To cavil at its most important truths, to spiritualize them, or to explain them away as evidence of superior wisdom, talent, and learning is infidelity prevailing to an alarming extent not only in the world but in the church. Thousands who pride themselves on wisdom and independence count simple trust in the Bible as weakness and count questioning Scripture as superior talent and learning, while many ministers, professors, and teachers teach that the law of God has been changed or abrogated and ridicule those who acknowledge all its claims, though the Bible containing these truths was handed down at great cost of suffering and blood, is within the reach of all, and is but little valued.
Creator Revealed in Verse
In the beginning God was already there, and He is the Creator standing behind all nature, the source from whom right understanding of nature must start. This truth can be read aright only in the light of revelation and understood only through faith, for to unaided reason the teaching of nature is contradictory and disappointing. It gives rest to the eager questioning mind, showing that above and beneath and beyond abides Infinite Love working out all things to accomplish the good pleasure of His goodness. When heaven and earth were finished with all their host He ended His work and rested on the seventh day from all His work, and blessed and sanctified the seventh day as holy time, setting an example of what to do. This marks Him as above all other gods because He is the Creator of all things, the Owner of the universe and Owner of all heaven, with no power equal to Him or above Him, so it is valuable to cleave to Him. The destruction of San Francisco shows the wrath of the infinite God against disregard of His law, which no other power could prevent.
His perfection and omnipresence are united with almighty power, which man can little comprehend. As first Designer He commands things into being and is not dependent on man, while a human artist receives his intelligence from God and can only fashion his work to perfection from materials already prepared for him. In his finite power he could not create and make his materials to serve his purpose, because the Great Designer was before him giving him the very improvements first in his imagination, yet God graciously invites man's attention and cooperates with him in progressive and higher designs, while man takes all the glory to himself, is extolled by fellow men as a remarkable genius, looks no higher than man, and forgets the one First Cause. He is the great Master Artist who made the world and everything beautiful in it, whose works of creation brought to the senses in nature and the glory of the heavens completely satisfy and rest the mind. They stand so far above human paintings and imitations of the natural that those copies cannot charm the senses or meet the ideal. He is the mighty Jehovah, Maker of heaven and earth, who can do miracles and multiply signs and wonders, who can save or destroy, and who will preserve the lives of His chosen servants even if He must slay a king to do it. Pharaoh in his blindness did not realize that in threatening to kill Moses and Aaron if they appeared before him again he was contending not only against Moses and Aaron but against the Creator Himself.
The living God who made heaven and earth is not the ark, and is distinct from the ark of the covenant, which the Philistines mistook for Israel's god without knowing Him. He is the same God and same Creator who gave His law upon Sinai and placed it in the sacred chest, and He sends prosperity according to obedience of that law and adversity according to transgression of it. Because He created nature, nature is not God and must not be put where God should be. Seeing Him in nature is true in one sense because He gives nature its life, its living properties and its beauty, is the author of all nature's loveliness, and gives in nature evidence of mighty power, yet He remains a personal God distinct from what He made, and Christ is a personal Saviour, and the claim from human science that He has no personality is a lie and a falsehood. By infinite power as Creator He called the earth into existence, and that power makes human resistance against Him vain, for with a word He could depopulate the earth, return it to its original state, and raise up a new race of beings. If all had always obeyed the fourth commandment, all would recognize and honor this creating power, and there would be no infidel or atheist.
Belief in Him as the one Creator of heaven and earth includes revering His authority and seeking His counsel in every part of life. He called the world into being with all that it contains, fitting it up for humanity, and His created works testify to His love and power. He is a lover of the beautiful, and in creating heaven and earth He not only gave everything necessary for comfort but filled them with beauty. His love and care are seen in the rich fields of autumn and His smile in the glad sunshine, His hand made the castle-like rocks and towering mountains, the lofty trees grow at His command, and He spread earth's green velvet carpet dotted with shrubs and flowers, clothing earth and trees with living green instead of dark, somber brown to be more pleasing to the eye, and the wisdom and love seen in the wonders of creation should fill hearts with gratitude. He is infinite, and the first people on the earth received their instructions directly from that infinite Creator, so they were not deficient in knowledge, while true knowledge has decreased with every successive generation.
Sabbath Gospel and Renewal
When the heavens and the earth were finished with all their host, God ended His work, rested on the seventh day from all His work, and blessed and sanctified the seventh day as holy time, setting an example of what to do. This marks Him as above all other gods because He is the Creator of all things, and everything He had made was very good. Resting on the Sabbath honors that creation by looking at the work of His hands and remembering His mighty power and wonderful goodness.
God's great work of creation gives the reason for the institution of the Sabbath, to be told to children on the Sabbath amid the beautiful things of nature. When the earth came from His hand it was holy and beautiful, with every flower, shrub and tree answering the purpose of its Creator, everything lovely and filling the mind with thoughts of the love of God, and every sound music in harmony with the voice of God. Sin marred that perfect work, and thorns and thistles, sorrow and pain and death are all the result of disobedience to God. Though marred with the curse of sin, the earth still reveals His goodness and bears witness to the Creator, with green fields, lofty trees, glad sunshine, clouds, dew, solemn stillness of night, glory of starry heavens, beauty of the moon, falling rain and shed light all testifying to His forbearance and love.
The truth that the Lord God is the Creator of the heavens and the earth belongs together with the truth that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord. This fact is to be pointed out to men in modesty, in the spirit of grace, and in the love of God as part of magnifying and exalting the law of God, making manifest the truth of His holy word, and holding up the Scriptures as the rule of life. Proclaiming the Creator and His word is to be carried forward in His name, unfurling His banner and advocating His word, and when authorities forbid proclaiming the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, obedience to God requires continuing to speak the things seen and heard.
Jesus Christ is the Alpha of creation in Genesis and the Omega of Revelation, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. He is the very same Jesus who gave the Sabbath and directed how to keep it, who carries history step by step through the ages, through His incarnation and His offering of Himself as a living sacrifice for the redemption of a fallen world. What He spoke in the Old Testament is for all the world, and what He said in reference to His commandments is not Yea and Nay but Yea and Amen, with blessing promised to all who keep the commandments of God.
His work in creation is evidence of His power in redemption. Thought upon on the Sabbath, it shows His goodness and great love, fills the heart with thankfulness, and moves to return to Him His own tithe with an offering before the toil of the week begins, declaring that God is the possessor of all property and men are stewards to use it to His glory.
At the dawn of the first day the heavens and the earth came out of darkness by the call of infinite power. As the light rose, the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy in response to it. That light of creation is a symbol of the gospel light to be proclaimed in the earth by Christ's disciples, dispelling superstition, error, and tradition, ushering in truth and righteousness, and bringing those disobedient to God's law back to allegiance through submission to the Father's will.
There converse is held with patriarchs and prophets, and there is learned what redemption cost Him who from the beginning was equal with the Father. He sacrificed His life that a people might stand before Him redeemed from everything earthly and commonplace and renewed in the image of God.
Living Creation Truth
The authentic record of creation was kept pure through the ages by the divine Mind and Hand, and the Word of God alone gives the true and trustworthy account of how the world was made. It is to be the chief study in schools and a chief subject of study, the fountain of eternal truth to be received daily to preserve purity of heart and mind. It carries minds higher than now thought possible and trains heart and understanding to grasp its important truths concerning eternal life. There the reader holds converse with patriarchs and prophets and learns what redemption cost the One who from the beginning was equal with the Father and sacrificed His life that a people might stand before Him redeemed from everything earthly and commonplace and renewed in the image of God. Education is a failure unless the understanding grasps its truths of divine revelation and the heart accepts its gospel, and its daily supplies guard against dwarfing absorption in commonplace trivial matters and common ideas.
God as Creator who made all beautiful things is the first lesson for young children to make them acquainted with Him, lead their minds up to Him, and awaken love for Him in their young hearts. His created works manifest His great love and reveal Him as heavenly Father and Creator to be associated with everything He has made, from beautiful buds and opening flowers in their different colors and variety of forms to nature's beautiful scenery and treasures that attract and delight. This teaching belongs in the open air amid flowers and scenery with nature as textbook until eight or ten years of age.
The God who created the heavens and the earth is the Teacher to choose to be taught by, the certain source of wisdom who Himself can teach so there is no need to go to infidel authors. His creating work included setting the stars in their order in the firmament and appointing the sun and the moon to do their work. The opinions of worldly-wise men destitute of divine enlightenment cannot give correct ideas of His plans and ways and should not be trusted, exalted, praised, or glorified, for they either deny Him and ignore His existence or limit His power by finite conceptions.
Moses wrote this account under the guidance of the Spirit of God, so it is part of God's holy unerring word to be held with settled faith, showing that God created matter itself when He brought the world into existence. The idea that He did not create matter limits the power of the Holy One of Israel. Science is to be brought to the test of this word, not the word to the test of men's ideas of science, for a correct theory of geology will never claim discoveries that cannot be reconciled with Moses' statements, and a correct understanding of nature and revelation will always prove them in harmony. Doubting the reliability of this history leads to doubting the records of the Old and New Testaments and then to doubting the existence of God.
In the beginning God already lived from everlasting, and He framed the heavens and the earth by His word, speaking and it stood fast, which is understood only through faith in Hebrews 11:3. The Father and the Son wrought together in that mighty work, for Christ is the Creator of heaven and earth, equal with the Father from the beginning. He made matter itself and all things out of nothing in six literal days about six thousand years ago, not over vast indefinite periods or by evolution from chaos, then rested on the seventh literal day and blessed and sanctified it. That literal week is the foundation of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, which commands labor on six literal days and rest on the seventh in commemoration of creation. The Mosaic record is the only authentic account of creation, preserved pure by the divine Hand, and with the fall, the atonement and the perpetuity of the law it stands as a pillar of the Christian faith to be received with implicit confidence and made the chief study in schools.
Beginning Before Creation
The beginning of heaven and earth was not the beginning of God. He already lived before He purposed to create the world, for He is from everlasting to everlasting. The Father and the Son were engaged together in the mighty, wondrous work they had contemplated, of creating the world.
Christ created the heaven and the earth and the world. He is the Alpha of creation in Genesis and the Omega of Revelation, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. From the beginning He was equal with the Father.
In the beginning God framed the worlds by His word. He spoke, and it was; He commanded, and it stood fast. This creation of heaven and earth is understood only through faith. God was in the beginning and is the Creator behind all nature, and this truth can be read aright only in the light of revelation, for to unaided reason nature's teaching is contradictory and disappointing, while He is the source of creation and the starting point for understanding nature rightly. It gives rest to the eager, questioning mind, showing that above, beneath and beyond abides Infinite Love, working out all things to accomplish the good pleasure of His goodness.
At the dawn of the first day the heavens and the earth came out of darkness by the call of infinite power. As the light rose, the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy in response to it.
Way God Created
In the beginning God created matter itself, calling the world into being with all that it contains out of nothing by the word of His power. To say that matter already existed and He merely shaped it limits the power of the Holy One of Israel. That same creative energy is in the Word of God still, to impart power and beget life. Every command accepted by the will and received into the soul brings with it the life of the Infinite One, transforms the nature and recreates the soul in the image of God, and the life thus imparted is sustained as it was created, by every word proceeding from God, while mind and soul are built up by what they feed upon.
Just how God wrought in creation He has never revealed to mortals, and it is as incomprehensible as His own existence. It cannot be explained from natural causes or searched out by human science. He had power to speak the world into existence in one day, but He made it in six days, working gradually rather than instantly.
The earth came forth from the Creator's hand exceedingly beautiful and holy, like a noble palace, with pure and healthful air. Its surface was not one extensive plain but was diversified with hills, mountains and very beautiful plains breaking the monotony of the scenery, regular and beautiful in shape and not high and ragged as now, interspersed with rivers and bodies of water regularly dispersed. Bare high rocks were never seen upon them but lay beneath the surface, answering as bones to the earth. Hills, mountains and plains were adorned with plants and flowers and tall, majestic trees of every description, many times larger and much more beautiful than trees now are, every flower, shrub and tree answering the purpose of its Creator. Angels beheld the wonderful and beautiful works of God and rejoiced.
He fitted up the world as a beautiful home for His human family, placing things upon the earth for man's benefit and comfort and providing all that people possess, not only what is necessary but filling heaven and earth with beauty. Without exception all men and women are His tenants, and He deserves to be kept in thought and given grateful thanks and remembrance. He created all things and constantly controls them, yet He has given human beings a power not wholly unlike His own, a degree of control over the forces of nature, so that as He called the earth in its beauty out of chaos, people can bring order and beauty out of confusion, and completed work brings a joy akin to His when, looking on the fair earth, He pronounced it very good. The God who gave being to the world has not lost His power or sovereignty but still presides over the world with right to declare His purposes, which are carried out by His Son as Mediator between God and man and made effective by the Holy Spirit, while the awful confusion in the world comes from not following the Lord's way and setting human judgment against the law of the Creator, with men seeking to please and glorify themselves and putting themselves above truth and above God.
Literal Week and Age
Genesis 1:1 opens the first week of time, which was just like every other week, consisting of seven literal days. In those six literal days God performed the work of creating heaven and earth, generating or producing some new portion of His work each day, giving the productions of His work at the close of each day, so that each day was a generation. On the seventh day of that first week God rested from His work, then blessed the day of His rest and set it apart for the use of man. That first cycle measured off the pattern and sample for successive weeks till the close of time, preserved and brought down through Bible history, giving man the first six days of each week for labor because God labored the same period in creation, and reserving the seventh day for rest in commemoration of God's rest after six days of work. The reason given in the Sabbath law depends on understanding those days as literal, for it commands labor six days and rest the seventh because in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea and all in them, and rested the seventh day and blessed and hallowed it.
That literal week is the foundation of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, which commands work on six literal days and rest on the seventh in commemoration of that same literal period of divine work and rest. To make the days seven vast, indefinite periods covering thousands upon thousands or even millions of years makes indefinite and obscure what God made very plain. It charges God with commanding men to observe a week of seven literal days in commemoration of seven indefinite periods, which is unlike His dealings with mortals and impeaches His wisdom. It makes the fourth commandment senseless and destroys its force, so that men feel freedom from its claims, and some eagerly receive it for that very reason. Even when held by those who profess to believe the record of creation, that view is infidelity in disguise, indeed the worst kind of infidelity in its most insidious and dangerous form.
The literal Mosaic record means the earth did not evolve from chaos over millions of years, and the world was created in definite time about six thousand years ago, not over tens of thousands of years or an indefinite period. The claim that long ages were required rests on inferences erroneously drawn from facts observed in nature, and changing the meaning of the days to accommodate science to the Bible undermines and destroys the force of the word of God. The teaching that the world was created in an indefinite period is one of Satan's falsehoods, for God did not leave the account of creation indefinite so that human beings can shape it according to their own theories, and He gave it in language people can understand as reliable history. Those who profess to believe the Bible record yet adopt the indefinite-period view do so to free themselves from difficulties thrown in their way by geologists over wonderful things found in the earth.
Bones of much larger men and animals, weapons, instruments of warfare, petrified wood and trees found in mountains and valleys do not prove a superior race long before creation or a very old earth. They are remains of the much larger men, animals and trees of the days of Noah, buried in the Flood and preserved as evidence that the antediluvians perished by a flood, reflecting both their larger size before the Flood and the great changes that took place in the earth at the Flood. Geology without Bible history and geology alone proves nothing about age; relics do show a past state different from the present, but their time is learned only from the Inspired Record, whose flood history explains what geology could never fathom. God designed the discovery of these buried things to establish faith in inspired history, and turning them into an argument against it repeats the error of the people before the Flood, turning a given benefit into a curse by wrong use.
God has given sufficient evidence upon which to base faith, including the things buried at the Flood and discovered in the earth to establish faith in inspired history, but men make a wrong use of them by vain reasoning. Human reasoning and the suppositions of geologists must not be accepted in opposition to and in contradiction of the plain facts God revealed about His work of creation, for the work of creation cannot be explained from natural causes and just how God wrought He has never revealed and human science cannot search out. In the last days true faith will be almost destitute as men count the word of God unreliable on the merest pretense, receive human reasoning opposed to plain Scripture facts, and rest faith on the suppositions of geologists that dispute the Mosaic record rather than on what God has revealed. Claiming that the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation are too obscure to understand while eagerly receiving geological suppositions against the creation record is inconsistent, because it rejects what God has revealed as too difficult while accepting mere suppositions about what He has not revealed.
The first and second chapters together show that combined exercise of mind in study and of muscle and reason in physical labor belonged to God's original order for man, especially in tilling the ground and dressing and keeping the garden planted in Eden. At creation God made man able to work cheerfully, so manual labor is not degrading but part of God's purpose for humanity. Although God could have spoken the world into existence in one day, He made it in six days, working gradually rather than instantly. His choice sets the pattern for human labor against rush and hurry and working day and night, teaching regular hours for sleep and work, stopping when nature says stop, and preserving health and strength instead of expending strength that is never recovered.
Record Kept Pure
Moses wrote this history under the guidance of the Spirit as part of God's holy unerring word to be held with settled faith. It was the first written revelation after about twenty-five hundred years in which knowledge taught by God had been handed down orally from father to son, beginning the sixteen-hundred-year work of embodying inspired revelations in an inspired book that runs from Moses the historian of creation and the law to John the recorder of the gospel.
The Bible alone gives the only authentic account of the creation of the world. That record has been preserved in its purity through the ages by the divine Mind and Hand, coming fresh from the fountain of eternal truth. It reveals the power that laid the foundation of the earth and stretched out the heavens.
It shines light into the far-distant past where human research cannot penetrate and seeks in vain to penetrate. It opens past centuries to view and gives the most ancient and most comprehensive history men possess, the most instructive and comprehensive history ever given to the world. It alone gives an authentic account of the origin of nations and the only truthful history of the human race, unsullied by human prejudice, pride, or human philosophy and unmarred by them.
It marks the beginning of the world's history and gives the authentic history of the beginning of the world and the origin of the earth. In it is reliable knowledge of humanity's creation and fall and the introduction of sin, including Lucifer's fall. Without it minds are left to fables and conjectures about the remote past, bewildered by false theories, subjected to the tyranny of superstition and falsehood, and enfeebled in intellect by entertaining error, but with it there is no need to be hampered by human conjectures and unreliable theories.
It opens the Bible's account of God's dealings with man, which runs from creation to the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven and farther into the future to the glories of the city of God and the beauty and perfection of the earth made new as the saints' secure home. Nothing in that account is to be thrown aside and nothing in the plan of redemption is unimportant or to be lightly disregarded. Although the line of events extends through many centuries and new and important truths are developed from time to time, what was truth in the beginning is truth still, and the increased light of the present does not contradict or make of none effect the dimmer light of the past.
It carries readers back through the centuries to the beginning of all things, presenting the history of times and scenes which would otherwise never have been known. As part of the Bible, the most wonderful of all histories, it is the production of God and not of the finite mind. In it God is revealed in nature and God is revealed in His word, as the living God in the creation of the world and in the heavens He has garnered and in the laws of His government. It reveals the glory of God in the working of His providence to save a fallen world, and presents in the simplest language the mighty power of the gospel which, received, cuts the chains that bind men in slavery to Satan's chariot, wisdom which brought into the practical life makes men wise through time and through eternity and the only means of redeeming the world from degrading superstitions that dishonor God and man.
Creation as given by the inspired writers is one of the very pillars of the Christian faith, standing with the fall of man, the atonement, and the perpetuity of the law of God. It is a great fact to be really accepted with implicit confidence as the guide of life. To cavil at its most important truths, to spiritualize them, or to explain them away as evidence of superior wisdom, talent, and learning is infidelity prevailing to an alarming extent not only in the world but in the church. Thousands who pride themselves on wisdom and independence count simple trust in the Bible as weakness and count questioning Scripture as superior talent and learning, while many ministers, professors, and teachers teach that the law of God has been changed or abrogated and ridicule those who acknowledge all its claims, though the Bible containing these truths was handed down at great cost of suffering and blood, is within the reach of all, and is but little valued.
Creator Revealed in Verse
In the beginning God was already there, and He is the Creator standing behind all nature, the source from whom right understanding of nature must start. This truth can be read aright only in the light of revelation and understood only through faith, for to unaided reason the teaching of nature is contradictory and disappointing. It gives rest to the eager questioning mind, showing that above and beneath and beyond abides Infinite Love working out all things to accomplish the good pleasure of His goodness. When heaven and earth were finished with all their host He ended His work and rested on the seventh day from all His work, and blessed and sanctified the seventh day as holy time, setting an example of what to do. This marks Him as above all other gods because He is the Creator of all things, the Owner of the universe and Owner of all heaven, with no power equal to Him or above Him, so it is valuable to cleave to Him. The destruction of San Francisco shows the wrath of the infinite God against disregard of His law, which no other power could prevent.
His perfection and omnipresence are united with almighty power, which man can little comprehend. As first Designer He commands things into being and is not dependent on man, while a human artist receives his intelligence from God and can only fashion his work to perfection from materials already prepared for him. In his finite power he could not create and make his materials to serve his purpose, because the Great Designer was before him giving him the very improvements first in his imagination, yet God graciously invites man's attention and cooperates with him in progressive and higher designs, while man takes all the glory to himself, is extolled by fellow men as a remarkable genius, looks no higher than man, and forgets the one First Cause. He is the great Master Artist who made the world and everything beautiful in it, whose works of creation brought to the senses in nature and the glory of the heavens completely satisfy and rest the mind. They stand so far above human paintings and imitations of the natural that those copies cannot charm the senses or meet the ideal. He is the mighty Jehovah, Maker of heaven and earth, who can do miracles and multiply signs and wonders, who can save or destroy, and who will preserve the lives of His chosen servants even if He must slay a king to do it. Pharaoh in his blindness did not realize that in threatening to kill Moses and Aaron if they appeared before him again he was contending not only against Moses and Aaron but against the Creator Himself.
The living God who made heaven and earth is not the ark, and is distinct from the ark of the covenant, which the Philistines mistook for Israel's god without knowing Him. He is the same God and same Creator who gave His law upon Sinai and placed it in the sacred chest, and He sends prosperity according to obedience of that law and adversity according to transgression of it. Because He created nature, nature is not God and must not be put where God should be. Seeing Him in nature is true in one sense because He gives nature its life, its living properties and its beauty, is the author of all nature's loveliness, and gives in nature evidence of mighty power, yet He remains a personal God distinct from what He made, and Christ is a personal Saviour, and the claim from human science that He has no personality is a lie and a falsehood. By infinite power as Creator He called the earth into existence, and that power makes human resistance against Him vain, for with a word He could depopulate the earth, return it to its original state, and raise up a new race of beings. If all had always obeyed the fourth commandment, all would recognize and honor this creating power, and there would be no infidel or atheist.
Belief in Him as the one Creator of heaven and earth includes revering His authority and seeking His counsel in every part of life. He called the world into being with all that it contains, fitting it up for humanity, and His created works testify to His love and power. He is a lover of the beautiful, and in creating heaven and earth He not only gave everything necessary for comfort but filled them with beauty. His love and care are seen in the rich fields of autumn and His smile in the glad sunshine, His hand made the castle-like rocks and towering mountains, the lofty trees grow at His command, and He spread earth's green velvet carpet dotted with shrubs and flowers, clothing earth and trees with living green instead of dark, somber brown to be more pleasing to the eye, and the wisdom and love seen in the wonders of creation should fill hearts with gratitude. He is infinite, and the first people on the earth received their instructions directly from that infinite Creator, so they were not deficient in knowledge, while true knowledge has decreased with every successive generation.
Sabbath Gospel and Renewal
When the heavens and the earth were finished with all their host, God ended His work, rested on the seventh day from all His work, and blessed and sanctified the seventh day as holy time, setting an example of what to do. This marks Him as above all other gods because He is the Creator of all things, and everything He had made was very good. Resting on the Sabbath honors that creation by looking at the work of His hands and remembering His mighty power and wonderful goodness.
God's great work of creation gives the reason for the institution of the Sabbath, to be told to children on the Sabbath amid the beautiful things of nature. When the earth came from His hand it was holy and beautiful, with every flower, shrub and tree answering the purpose of its Creator, everything lovely and filling the mind with thoughts of the love of God, and every sound music in harmony with the voice of God. Sin marred that perfect work, and thorns and thistles, sorrow and pain and death are all the result of disobedience to God. Though marred with the curse of sin, the earth still reveals His goodness and bears witness to the Creator, with green fields, lofty trees, glad sunshine, clouds, dew, solemn stillness of night, glory of starry heavens, beauty of the moon, falling rain and shed light all testifying to His forbearance and love.
The truth that the Lord God is the Creator of the heavens and the earth belongs together with the truth that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord. This fact is to be pointed out to men in modesty, in the spirit of grace, and in the love of God as part of magnifying and exalting the law of God, making manifest the truth of His holy word, and holding up the Scriptures as the rule of life. Proclaiming the Creator and His word is to be carried forward in His name, unfurling His banner and advocating His word, and when authorities forbid proclaiming the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, obedience to God requires continuing to speak the things seen and heard.
Jesus Christ is the Alpha of creation in Genesis and the Omega of Revelation, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. He is the very same Jesus who gave the Sabbath and directed how to keep it, who carries history step by step through the ages, through His incarnation and His offering of Himself as a living sacrifice for the redemption of a fallen world. What He spoke in the Old Testament is for all the world, and what He said in reference to His commandments is not Yea and Nay but Yea and Amen, with blessing promised to all who keep the commandments of God.
His work in creation is evidence of His power in redemption. Thought upon on the Sabbath, it shows His goodness and great love, fills the heart with thankfulness, and moves to return to Him His own tithe with an offering before the toil of the week begins, declaring that God is the possessor of all property and men are stewards to use it to His glory.
At the dawn of the first day the heavens and the earth came out of darkness by the call of infinite power. As the light rose, the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy in response to it. That light of creation is a symbol of the gospel light to be proclaimed in the earth by Christ's disciples, dispelling superstition, error, and tradition, ushering in truth and righteousness, and bringing those disobedient to God's law back to allegiance through submission to the Father's will.
There converse is held with patriarchs and prophets, and there is learned what redemption cost Him who from the beginning was equal with the Father. He sacrificed His life that a people might stand before Him redeemed from everything earthly and commonplace and renewed in the image of God.
Living Creation Truth
The authentic record of creation was kept pure through the ages by the divine Mind and Hand, and the Word of God alone gives the true and trustworthy account of how the world was made. It is to be the chief study in schools and a chief subject of study, the fountain of eternal truth to be received daily to preserve purity of heart and mind. It carries minds higher than now thought possible and trains heart and understanding to grasp its important truths concerning eternal life. There the reader holds converse with patriarchs and prophets and learns what redemption cost the One who from the beginning was equal with the Father and sacrificed His life that a people might stand before Him redeemed from everything earthly and commonplace and renewed in the image of God. Education is a failure unless the understanding grasps its truths of divine revelation and the heart accepts its gospel, and its daily supplies guard against dwarfing absorption in commonplace trivial matters and common ideas.
God as Creator who made all beautiful things is the first lesson for young children to make them acquainted with Him, lead their minds up to Him, and awaken love for Him in their young hearts. His created works manifest His great love and reveal Him as heavenly Father and Creator to be associated with everything He has made, from beautiful buds and opening flowers in their different colors and variety of forms to nature's beautiful scenery and treasures that attract and delight. This teaching belongs in the open air amid flowers and scenery with nature as textbook until eight or ten years of age.
The God who created the heavens and the earth is the Teacher to choose to be taught by, the certain source of wisdom who Himself can teach so there is no need to go to infidel authors. His creating work included setting the stars in their order in the firmament and appointing the sun and the moon to do their work. The opinions of worldly-wise men destitute of divine enlightenment cannot give correct ideas of His plans and ways and should not be trusted, exalted, praised, or glorified, for they either deny Him and ignore His existence or limit His power by finite conceptions.
Moses wrote this account under the guidance of the Spirit of God, so it is part of God's holy unerring word to be held with settled faith, showing that God created matter itself when He brought the world into existence. The idea that He did not create matter limits the power of the Holy One of Israel. Science is to be brought to the test of this word, not the word to the test of men's ideas of science, for a correct theory of geology will never claim discoveries that cannot be reconciled with Moses' statements, and a correct understanding of nature and revelation will always prove them in harmony. Doubting the reliability of this history leads to doubting the records of the Old and New Testaments and then to doubting the existence of God.