Genesis 1:12
And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
God the Father and the Son worked together to cover the earth with grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit trees yielding fruit, and God saw that it was good. He Himself brought forth that vegetation directly by His spoken word and by His own hand, and this is not to be explained as the result of natural causes. By that same word He created the seed and gave it power to grow and multiply, so that same word still causes every seed to grow today. This work took place within one ordinary, literal day in a creation week of only seven literal days, when everything was made very good and God then rested on the seventh day and blessed and sanctified it. To turn those days into long, indefinite periods makes senseless the fourth commandment and strikes at the foundation of the Sabbath, which commands seven literal days in commemoration of God's six literal days of work and His rest.
Creation Work Portrayed
The Father and the Son worked together to cover the earth with plant life as part of making the world exceedingly beautiful. The newly formed earth was not one extensive plain but was diversified with hills, mountains, and very beautiful plains interspersed with rivers and other bodies of water regularly dispersed. Its hills and mountains were regular and beautiful in shape, not high and ragged as now. Bare rock was never seen upon them but lay beneath the surface answering as bones to the earth.
Those 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. The air was pure and healthful, and the whole earth seemed like a noble palace. Angels beheld the wonderful and beautiful works and rejoiced. The word heaven in the surrounding passage means the region of the sun, moon, and stars, distinct from Paradise, from the air around the earth where birds fly, and from the church of God on earth. That starry region is not the heaven to be shaken and rolled together as a scroll before Christ comes, since that shaking belongs to the air around the earth at the seventh vial.
God Himself directly brought forth vegetation on the earth by His spoken word and by His own hand, and this must not be explained as the result of natural causes. That direct work included the springing grass, the lofty trees, the beautiful flowers, every opening bud and blossoming flower, and orchards and vineyards. God created the seed by His word just as He created the earth, and by that word gave the seed power to grow and multiply. That same word still causes every seed to grow, so that every green blade rising to the sunlight declares the wonder-working power of His spoken word, and God saw that it was good.
The creative energy that called the world and its living growth into existence is in the Word of God. God's creation remains a reservoir of means made ready for Him to employ instantly to do His pleasure. Nothing He made is useless, since tares exist only because the curse caused the enemy to sow them.
Literal Week Affirmed
The verse records one part of God's six-day making of heaven and earth, when the earth brought forth grass and herbs and fruit trees. Everything God had made was very good when the heavens and the earth were finished on the sixth day. God ended His work and rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had created and made, and blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it He had rested. Thus the Lord proclaimed to all the earth that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed, making the Sabbath holy as a sign between Him and His people throughout their generations for a perpetual covenant.
Its work took place within one ordinary, literal day in a creation week of only seven literal days about six thousand years ago. It did not take place across thousands or even millions of years, and not in six vast, indefinite periods with an indefinite rest day. The first week was just like every other week, measured off as the sample for successive weeks to the close of time. At the close of each literal day God gives the productions of His work, and each day is accounted a generation because every day He generated or produced some new portion of His work, including the new portion of grass and herbs and fruit trees on this day. God could have spoken the grass and herbs and fruit trees and the whole world into existence in one day, but He took six days to make the world.
Just how God wrought in bringing forth grass and herb and tree He never revealed to mortals. His creative works are as incomprehensible as His existence. Human science cannot search out the secrets of that work or explain it from natural causes. The grass and herbs and trees belonged to a world of much larger men and animals and trees before the Flood, and the earth has since undergone great changes at the Flood. Relics found in the earth such as petrified wood give evidence of a state of things differing in many respects from the present. But without Bible history geology proves nothing, and the time of their existence is learned only from the inspired record. The world is not tens of thousands of years old, and claims that the earth evolved from chaos over millions of years rest on inferences erroneously drawn from facts observed in nature.
The first six days of each week are given to man for labor because God employed the same period of the first week in the work of creation. On the seventh day man is to refrain from labor in commemoration of the Creator's rest, when God rested and blessed the day and set it apart as a day of rest for man. To turn the creation days into long periods makes senseless the fourth commandment, which commands seven literal days in commemoration of God's six literal days of work and His rest. To make those days indefinite and obscure while professing to believe the record strikes directly at the foundation of the Sabbath. It is infidelity in disguise, for 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.
Scripture Trusted and Lived
Genesis 1:12 belongs to the most comprehensive and most instructive history possessed by men, the plain Mosaic record and plain Scripture fact of what God revealed about creation. It is part of the authentic account found in God's word alone, whose purity was preserved by the divine Mind and Hand through all the ages, whose bright rays shine into the far distant past where human research seeks vainly to penetrate. It beholds the power that laid the foundation of the earth and stretched out the heavens, gives sufficient evidence for faith, reveals God as the maker of the heavens and the earth upheld by the fourth commandment, and gives the history of the human race unsullied by human prejudice or human pride.
Those great facts of creation are pillars of the Christian faith and part of God's holy Word handed down at cost of suffering and blood as the guide of life. They are now but little valued, practically rejected wholly or in part by a large share of the professedly Christian world amid alarming infidelity in the world and in the church. Implicit confidence in what is presented is regarded as weakness, while superior wisdom is claimed in caviling at the Scriptures and spiritualizing and explaining away their most important truths.
Reinterpreting the days as vast, indefinite periods to accommodate science to the Bible undermines and destroys the force of the word of God. Rejecting the plain record for the suppositions of geologists and human reasoning, even by professed Christians, is receiving infidel fables in opposition to plain Scripture, a device to obscure God's law and lead to rebellion that leaves men without excuse. In the last days faith in it will be almost destitute and the word counted unreliable on the merest pretense. What God revealed about creation is clear and can be understood, and it is inconsistent to call what God revealed in the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation too obscure to understand while eagerly accepting mere human suppositions about what God has not revealed concerning how creation was accomplished.
The record is to be the chief study in schools, where students may hold converse with patriarchs and prophets and learn what redemption cost the One who was equal with the Father from the beginning and sacrificed His life that a people might stand before Him redeemed from every common, earthly thing and renewed in the image of God. Education is a failure unless the understanding learns to grasp the truths of divine revelation and eternal life given in it and unless the heart accepts the teachings of the gospel. Heart and mind are to be trained to preserve purity by receiving daily supplies from the fountain of eternal truth, and to be carried higher than is now thought possible.
When the earth came from God's hand it was holy and beautiful, with every flower, every shrub, and every tree answering the purpose of its Creator. Everything was lovely to the eye and filled the mind with thoughts of the love of God, and every sound was music in harmony with the voice of God. This shows the reason for the institution of the Sabbath and should be taught to children on the Sabbath among the fields and groves. Sin marred that perfect work, and thorns and thistles with sorrow and pain and death are the result of disobedience. Though marred with the curse, the green fields and lofty trees still bear witness of the Creator and reveal His goodness, and every gift of nature testifies to His forbearance and love even to an unthankful world.
These things of nature teach lessons about God and are an expression of His love, so that where healing institutions in the country are surrounded by flowers and trees, physicians and nurses should point patients to God through them. Equal taxation of the mental and physical powers was part of God's plan in the beginning, combining exercise of muscles and reason in physical labor such as cultivation of the land with exercise of the mental powers in study. The deliberate six-day pace shows God does not lead to extremes of working day and night without stopping, teaching regular hours for sleep and work, stopping when nature says stop, never turning night into day and day into night except in life and death, and preserving health and strength instead of overworking to exhaustion and breakdown.
The verse states the law that seed bears a harvest after its kind, which is true of human life in that what a person has been and has said is seed sown into the thoughts and actions of others and will reproduce its own kind as an ever-living influence for good or for evil that sways souls and continues to speak even after death. The creative energy that called living growth into existence is in the Word of God, and that Word that begets life imparts power so that every command is a promise that, accepted by the will and received into the soul, brings with it the life of the Infinite One. It transforms the nature and recreates the soul in the image of God, and the life thus imparted is sustained in the same way by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, by which mind and soul are built up by what they feed upon. Rational beings alone should not cause confusion in the world but should live to God and honor Him, since God and Saviour is all-wise and all-sufficient and came to this world that His perfection might be revealed in His people.