On Creation Day One, God said, "Let there be light." Where did the light come from? Answer: it came from new matter, and it's still here.
The Literal Creation Day Problem
Every creation day is a literal day, not much longer than a modern day. (At creation, a year was probably as long as the current year and had 360 days exactly.) The Hebrew word yowm (ืืื), from a root meaning "hot," always means a regular day wherever it appears, or else day as opposed to night, or how far one can travel in a day. (A sabbath day's journey is how far a man can walk.)
Evolution advocates sometimes inflate a creation day to millions, or hundreds of millions, of years. For an atheistic evolutionist, this poses no problem. As an atheist, he rejects the Bible out-of-hand. But a theistic evoloutionist must explain how and why God created plants (Creation Day Three) a full two "ages" before He created sea life and birds (Creation Day Five).
But creation advocates have a problem, too. God did not form the Sun and Moon until Creation Day Four. So when God said, "Let there be light," and there was light (Genesis 1:3), where did it come from? How and when did God separate light from darkness? How did He set up a day-night cycle from the beginning, three days before He made the Sun?
Details to explain
To explain Creation Day One, one must explain these events, that took place in this order:
- God created light.
- God separated light from darkness.
- An evening and a morning occurred to mark the first day.
And furthermore, this day-night cycle continued for two more Creation Days until God made the Sun and Moon.
This sequence needs a concentrated, on-one-side light source, or lamp, to appear at Step 2 above and continue to Creation Day Four. The Sun is, of course, the permanent lamp that gives light to one side of the spinning earth today.
Conventional explanations
Most creation apologists (as distinct from creation investigators) ignore the problem. God did not need a single lamp on Creation Days One through Three, because God was that Lamp. (See four typical examples of such apologies.) Any evolution advocate will say at once, and correctly, that this begs the question. Why did God bother with the Sun, if He already had a good lamp (or was the Lamp) for the earth? Furthermore, this multiples miracles. If the Bible directly attests to a miracle, one may invoke it. If not, not.
Jonathan Sarfati of Creation Ministries International showed the problem that theistic evolutionists, or "progressive creationists," have. They explain Creation Day Four by saying that a very dense overcast suddenly resolved on that day and revealed the Sun. Sarfati thus firmly holds that God created the Sun on Creation Day Four and not before then. But he still does not say what sort of lamp God made on Creation Day One.
In the next article, you will see a more plausible explanation, and one that does not invoke an undocumented miracle.
Comments