THE FIRST DAY OF CREATION defines and delimits what the Bible means by the word day throughout the context of the first chapter of Genesis. Those who believe the days of creation were long ages invariably make much of the fact that the sun was not created until the fourth day, and on this basis they argue that the days could not have been solar, twenty-four-hour days. The word day, they point out, is used elsewhere in Scripture to speak of long or indeterminate periods of time. For example, “the day of the Lord” is an expression used throughout Scripture to signify an eschatalogical era in which God pours out His wrath upon the earth. Moreover, 2 Peter 3:8 says, “With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Thus old-earth creationists argue that the days of creation might well have been long eras that roughly correspond to modern geological theories about the so-called Precambrian, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Tertiary, and Quaternary eras.
The problem with this view is that nothing in the passage itself suggests that the days were long epochs. The days are defined in Genesis 1:5: “God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.” Night and day, evening and morning are demarcated by rhythmic phases of light and darkness from the very beginning. The very same expression, “the evening and the morning were the [nth] day” is employed for each of the six days of creation (vv. 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31), underscoring the fact that the days were the same and that they had clearly defined boundaries.
The only cadence of light and darkness defined anywhere in this context is the day-night cycle that (after day four) is governed by the sun and moon (v. 18). There is no reason to believe the rhythm was greatly altered on day four. That means the duration of “the evening and the morning” on the first day of creation was the same as the evening and morning of any solar day.
Indeed, the word day is sometimes used figuratively in Scripture to speak of an indeterminate period of time (“the day of your gladness”—Numbers 10:10). But throughout Scripture, wherever the word is modified by a number (“He rose again the third day”—1 Corinthians 15:4), the clear reference is to a normal solar day.
Nothing in Scripture itself permits the view that the days of creation were anything other than literal twenty-four-hour days. Only extrabiblical influences—such as the theories of modern science, the views of higher criticism, or other attacks against the historicity of Scripture—would lead anyone to interpret the days of Genesis 1 as long epochs. In effect, old-earth creationists have subjugated Scripture to certain theories currently popular in big bang cosmology. Cosmological theories have been imposed on Scripture as an interpretive grid and allowed to redefine the length of the creation days. Such an approach is not evangelical, and because it compromises the authority of Scripture at the start, it will inevitably move people away from an evangelical understanding of Scripture, no matter how tenaciously the proponents of the view attempt to hold to evangelical doctrine. To accommodate our understanding of Scripture to secular and scientific theory is to undermine biblical authority.
Hugh Ross and other old-earth creationists respond to this argument by pointing out that Augustine and certain other church fathers interpreted the days of creation nonliterally. “Their scriptural views cannot be said to have been shaped to accommodate secular opinion,” Ross claims.1
Indeed, Augustine did take a nonliteral view of the six days of creation. He wrote, “What kind of days these were it is extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible for us to conceive, and how much more to say!”2
But what Ross doesn’t tell his readers is that Augustine and those who shared his views were arguing that God created the entire universe instantly, in a less than a nanosecond—indeed, outside the realm of time completely. Far from agreeing with Ross and modern science that creation was spread over billions of years, Augustine and others who shared his view went the opposite direction and foreshortened the time of creation to a single instant. They did this because they had been influenced by Greek philosophy to believe that a God who transcends time and space could not create in the realm of time. So they collapsed the six days to a single instant. Augustine wrote, “Assuredly the world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time.”3 That was precisely what Augustine’s study of the works of secular philosophers had taught him. In other words, his views on this question were, after all, an accommodation to secular opinion. (And such opinions did eventually erode the early church’s commitment to the authority of Scripture.)
However, Augustine opposed the notion of an ancient earth as vigorously as any modern evangelical critic of old-earthism. He included an entire chapter in The City of God titled, “Of the Falseness of the History Which Allots Many Thousand Years to the World’s Past.” His criticism of those who believed the earth is ancient was straightforward: “They say what they think, not what they know. They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6,000 years have yet passed.”4
Indeed, nothing in Scripture itself would ever lead anyone to think that the world is billions of years old or that the days of creation were long eras. Instead, by defining the days of creation according to the light cycle that separates day from night, Scripture states as explicitly as possible that the days of creation were equal in length to normal solar days. And part of the wonder of creation is the ease and speed with which God formed something so unimaginably vast, complex, intricate, and beautiful. The emphasis is not, as Hugh Ross suggests, on “time and attention to detail.”5 Rather, what the biblical account aims to stress is the infinite majesty and power of the Almighty One who accomplished so much, so perfectly, in so short a time, with nothing more than His Word.
Old-earth creationism diminishes the biblical emphasis on creation by divine fiat, setting up a scenario where God tinkers with creation over long epochs until the world is finally ready to be inhabited by humans made in His image. This is quite contrary to what Genesis teaches.
That is not to suggest, as Augustine did, that everything was created in an instant. According to Scripture, there is a progression to God’s creative work. He did it over six days’ time and rested on the seventh day. This is not because He needed that much time to create, and certainly not because He needed the rest. But He thereby gave a pattern for the cycle of work and rest He deemed right for humanity to live by. This established the measure of a week, which to this day is reflected in the calendar by which the entire world measures time. We’ll examine this more closely when we deal with the seventh day.
And He sovereignly chose to devote each day to a specific aspect of creation. Day one saw the creation of time, matter, and light.
The creation of time is implied by the words “In the beginning.” The beginning of what? Time itself. Before this, there was no measurement of time and no passage of time. God Himself existed in all His perfection, outside of time, in a realm we cannot even imagine. Our thoughts about timelessness are limited, because everything we know is subject to the passage of time.
Much has been written about the timelessness of God. It is a profound and difficult concept, and I do not propose to deal with it in any great depth, except to affirm that Scripture teaches it. It is the very thing Peter spoke of in 2 Peter 3:8 when he wrote, “With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (That verse, by the way, has nothing to do with the length of the creation days. Peter was affirming God’s timelessness; Genesis clearly indicates that creation took place in time.) God is not limited by the ticking of a clock. He can accomplish in a nanosecond as much as He can accomplish in a quadrillion years. And both are alike to Him. He knows the details of the future with as much certainty as He knows the past. Scripture underscores God’s timelessness by referring to Him as “Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come!” (Revelation 4:8). God Himself says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End . . . who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (1:8). Even the eternality, and hence the timelessness, of Christ is suggested by Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
But along with the universe, God created time. That, I believe, is the very thing the words “In the beginning” in Genesis 1:1 mean to teach. With God’s first creative activity, time emerged from eternity.
And matter emerged from that which is immaterial. Out of nothing, in an instant, the universe—with all its space and matter—was made by God’s decree. It is impossible to tell what form the matter took, but notice that the stars and planets were not created until day four. The universe—at least its energy and mass—began to exist in some form, though the light-giving stars and planets had not yet taken shape. What shape everything was in is not spelled out in explicit detail. But I like the paraphrase of Genesis 1:1 that was proposed by Henry Morris: “The transcendent, omnipotent Godhead called into existence the space-mass-time universe.”6 We know from verse 2 that the earth existed in a formless, barren state, shrouded in darkness and water or mist of some sort. A similar barrenness no doubt characterized the whole universe. But in that first instant of creation, the “space-mass-time universe” began to exist.
Other than that, day one is notable for one thing: light. Of all God’s creation, the thing that most clearly reveals and most closely approximates His glory is light. That’s why He Himself is called “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17). In other words, all true spiritual light emanates from Him. No matter how He turns, He casts no shadow, nor is He ever in the shadows, because He is pure light, “and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). Like the sun, but more perfectly than the sun, He broadcasts light with no taint of any shadow. “Light dwells with Him” (Daniel 2:22), and He “[dwells] in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see” (1 Timothy 6:16). Created light represents His glory more nearly than any other aspect of creation. Like Him, it illuminates and makes known all else. Without light, all creation would remain cold and dark. So it is fitting that light was created on day one.
Here is the biblical account of God’s activity on that first day of creation:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day. (Genesis 1:1–5)
Verse 1 is a general statement. The rest of Genesis 1 unfolds the sequence of God’s creative work.
THE BARREN PLANET
As day one emerges from eternity, we find the earth in a dark and barren condition. Three phrases are used in verse 2 to describe the original state of the earth. It was “without form, and void”, “darkness was on the face of the deep”, and “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” Those three expressions describe the condition of the earth at the dawning of day one.
The construction of the Hebrew phrase that opens verse 2 is significant. The subject comes before the verb, as if to emphasize something remarkable about it. It might be translated, “As to the earth, it was formless and void.” Here is a new planet, the very focus of God’s creative purpose, and it was formless and void. The Hebrew expression is tohu wa bohu. Tohu signifies a wasteland, a desolate place. Bohu means “empty.” The earth was an empty place of utter desolation.
The same expression is used in Jeremiah 4:23. There, Jeremiah is lamenting the doom of Israel. He says in verse 19, “O my soul, my soul! I am pained in my very heart! My heart makes a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace.” Why? Because the trumpet signaling God’s judgment of Israel had sounded. “Destruction upon destruction is cried, For the whole land is plundered” (v. 20). And he borrows the very words from Genesis 1:2: “I beheld the earth, and indeed it was without form [tohu], and void [bohu]; And the heavens, they had no light” (v. 23). That is how he describes the condition of Judah under the devastating destruction that was brought upon it by the judgment of God. What was once a fruitful land had become a wilderness (v. 26). It was a wasted, devastated place without any inhabitants. It had lost its former beauty. It didn’t have any form. It didn’t have any beauty. It had reverted to a state of barrenness that reminded Jeremiah of the state of the earth in the beginning, before God’s creative work had formed it into something beautiful.
Isaiah borrows the same expression. Prophesying the destruction that would come in the day of the Lord’s vengeance against the Gentiles, he says their land will be turned into desolation. “He shall stretch out over it the line of confusion [tohu] and the stones of emptiness [bohu]” (Isaiah 34:11). That pictures God as the architect of judgment, using a plumb line of tohu, which is kept taut by weights made of bohu.
So these words speak of waste and desolation. They describe the earth as a place devoid of form or inhabitants—a lifeless, barren place. It suggests that the very shape of the earth was unfinished and empty. The raw material was all there, but it had not yet been given form. The features of earth as we know it were undifferentiated, unseparated, unorganized, and uninhabited.
Some have suggested that an indeterminate interval of many billions of years is hidden between verses 1 and 2. This theory, known as the “gap theory,” was once quite popular, and is featured prominently in the Scofield Reference Bible. According to the gap theory, God created a fully-functional earth in verse 1. That ancient earth ostensibly featured a full spectrum of animal and plant life, including fish and mammals, various species of now-extinct dinosaurs, and other creatures that we know only from the fossil record.
Proponents of the gap theory suggest that verse 2 ought to be translated, “The earth became without form, and void.” They speculate that as a result of Satan’s fall, or for some other reason, the prehistoric earth was laid waste by an untold calamity. (This presupposes, of course, that Satan’s fall or some other evil occurred sometime in the gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2.) Then, according to this view, God created all the life-forms that we now see and thus remade earth into a paradise in six days of recreation.
Like other old-earth theories, the gap theory is supposed to explain the fossil record and harmonize the biblical account with modern scientific theories about a multiple-billion-year-old earth.
Most who hold to the gap theory suggest that the sun was not created on day four; it was merely made visible on that day by the clarifying of earth’s atmosphere or the receding of a vapor cloud that had encircled the earth. Other than that, the gap theory has one advantage over most other old-earth views: It allows for a straightforward literal interpretation of the creation days of Genesis 1.
But the theory is accepted by relatively few today, because the biblical and theological problems it poses are enormous. For example, in Genesis 1:31, after God had completed all His creation, He declared it “very good”—which would not be a fitting description if evil had already entered the universe. Furthermore, if the fossil record is to be explained by an interval in the white space between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, that means death, disease, suffering, and calamity were common many ages before Adam fell. Yet Scripture says Adam’s sin was the event that introduced death and calamity into God’s creation: “By man came death” (2 Corinthians 15:21); “Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin” (Romans 5:12). The gap theory also flatly contradicts Exodus 20:11: “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.”
The plain meaning of the text seems to be that the barrenness described in verse 2 is simply the original state of the universe in the twenty-four hours immediately following its initial creation. It is not a state of desolation into which the earth fell; it is how the universe appeared in situ, before God finished His creative work. The picture it conjures up is reminiscent of a potter wishing to fashion a beautiful vessel and then fill it to be used. He first takes a lump of unformed clay and places it on the wheel to mold and fit it to his purpose. In a similar way, God began with raw material. He first created a basic mass of elements that contained everything necessary to make a habitat for the life He would later create. And then using that mass of elements, He carefully shaped it and formed it into the perfect finished work He had planned from the beginning. So aside from the life-forms He created, His work throughout those first six days is comparable to the potter’s finishing work. It was mostly a process of perfecting what He had already created in the beginning.
According to Scripture, it all began in total darkness. Not only was the universe barren and utterly uninhabited; it was also engulfed in total, absolute darkness. God had not yet created light. Verse 2 says, “darkness was on the face of the deep.”
The word deep in Scripture is an expression used for the sea (cf. Isaiah 51:10). And the phrase in Genesis 1:2 is followed by a parallelism: “The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” This suggests the earth’s surface was water. It was a vast ocean—the deep—a global, primordial ocean that covered the entire planet. And it was all engulfed in the blackness of a universal darkness.
Water, so vital to the nourishment of the life that was to come, was already earth’s most prominent feature. This original watery state of the earth is referred to in Psalm 104:5–6: “You who laid the foundations of the earth, so that it should not be moved forever, You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains.”
Who can fathom what a formless, empty, watery earth, utterly devoid of light, might have been like? It did not remain in such a dark and barren condition very long. God instantly set to work fashioning the material He had created.
THE BROODING SPIRIT
Look again at that closing sentence of verse 2: “And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” Remember, the earth was an undeveloped, unformed, lifeless mass of matter hung in space, covered by water, and engulfed in darkness. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of it. The Spirit of God enveloped it, surrounded it, and guarded over it. He was the creative Agent who would oversee formation out of the formlessness and the filling of the void.
The Hebrew word for “hovering” is an interesting word that evokes the image of a hen brooding over her chicks. The word indicates superintending, divine care, and supervision. The same Hebrew word appears twice more in the Old Testament—once in Deuteronomy 32:11, where the imagery is that of an eagle hovering over its nest (the King James Version translates it as “fluttereth” in that verse); and once in Jeremiah 23:9, where it is translated “shake”—describing the prophet’s bones quaking with shock at the Word of the Lord. The word implies movement, and Henry Morris has therefore suggested that the final phrase in Genesis 1:2 could be translated, “the Spirit of God vibrated over the face of the waters”—signifying the transmission of energy from Creator to creation, and identifying the Holy Spirit as the “Prime Mover” who sets all of creation in motion.7
In his book, Creation and Change, Douglas F. Kelly writes:
This “brooding” of the Spirit of God over the waters is a major detail in the creation account, not a minor one. It demonstrates vividly the biblical worldview of a God whose hand and direct presence are never lifted from the elements and working of the material order. This . . . is the direct antithesis of any sort of philosophical Deism or theological Dualism, both of which assume a vast gap between the living God and the space, time cosmos. Deism pictures a remote deity unable or unwilling to intervene immediately in the natural realm. That assumption explains much of the traditional and contemporary resistance to the biblical teaching of creation, as well as to the reality of miracles, Christ’s incarnation and intercessory prayer. It must be remembered that the deistic gap between God and the world is merely a philosophical assumption; an axiom of naturalistic religion, as it were, not a scientific fact.8
In other words, this underscores God’s direct activity in all aspects of creation. He didn’t create a mechanism for evolution and leave the universe to develop to maturity on its own. He was directly and personally involved in every aspect of creation. Every bit of it—from the tiniest subatomic particle to the grandest galaxy—shows His handiwork. It is the work of His fingers (Psalm 8:3).
And yet notice also that as the Genesis account unfolds, virtually every aspect of creation is the immediate effect of God’s Word. He merely says, “Let there be light”—and there was light (1:3). He says, “‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind . . . ’; and it was so” (v. 24). He accomplishes it all instantly by His sovereign decree. So powerful is His Word that He speaks, and at once it is done. Only in the case of Adam is a creative process described: God “formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (2:7).
All of this speaks of an immediate, instantaneous creation by divine decree. There is no need for epochal time periods to allow nature to shape and mold the face of the earth. Scripture says all the work of giving form to the formless and filling the void is the immediate work of God Himself. He does it merely by issuing a command. Thus His absolute sovereignty is stressed in the very act of creation.
Yet at the same time, the intimacy of His involvement with the formation of the world is pictured by the imagery of the Holy Spirit, who hovers over the face of the waters, incubating the fledgling creation and then superintending its maturing process with the attentive care of a mother hen guarding a nest of hatchlings.
That imagery also denotes a particular focus on this planet. From this point on, the entire creation account is told from the perspective of an observer on earth. It is the Holy Spirit’s own perspective. This planet is the nucleus of God’s creative purpose. It is the paradise He created as a habitat for creatures whom He would make in His own image—the very pinnacle of His creative work.
And the fact that earth alone, of all known planets, seethes with life, is directly owing to the Holy Spirit’s activity described in Genesis 1:2. The entire Bible testifies that the Spirit of God is the source of all life and creation. “By His Spirit He adorned the heavens” (Job 26:13). Job testified, “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life” (Job 33:4). “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth” (Psalm 33:6). The word translated “breath” is the same as the Hebrew word for “spirit.” David the psalmist noted the Holy Spirit’s role in the formation of all creatures: “You send forth Your Spirit, they are created” (Psalm 104:30).
Scripture also teaches that the Spirit of God is essential for the sustaining of life. He still blankets and nurtures His creation. “For in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). “In [His] hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind” (Job 12:10).
THE CLARIFYING LIGHT
After the creation of the original material universe, the most significant feature of day one is the creation of light. “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (v. 3). Science cannot understand light, much less explain how it came about. This verse simply says it was created by an order from God. The One who is uncreated light brought created light into existence. The One who dwells in unapproachable light illuminated His creation with a brilliant object lesson about His glory.
What form this light took is not clear. Whether it was merely an ethereal glow or a light that emanated from a specific place is nowhere stated. Actual lights, such as the sun, moon, and stars, were not created until the fourth day. These were permanent light bearers. But light itself, the reality of light, was created on day one. And instantly it separated day from night.
Douglas F. Kelly writes:
The speaking into existence of the created light is the first of a series of three separations accomplished by the Creator which were essential to make the chaos into a cosmos. On Day One light separates day and night; on Day Two the “firmament” separates the upper waters from the earth, constituting an atmosphere or “breathing space”; on Day Three, the waters below the heavens are collected into seas, and thus separated from the dry land. These three separations show the mighty hand of God shaping and organizing the dark, watery mass in the direction of a beautiful garden; a fit and lovely dwelling place for plants, animals and humankind.9
The picture this suggests is that of someone who comes to arrange items in a dark room, and before he does anything else, he turns on the light.
But this involved more than a separation between light and darkness. The creation of light also inaugurated the measurement of earth’s time by periods of day and night. Regular intervals of light began to be interspersed with intervals of darkness. And in verse 5 we are told, “God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.” Thus the rhythm of days and nights began. Perhaps the earth was already rotating on its axis, with light illuminating one side and darkness veiling the other.
Various suggestions have been made about what this light might have been. Could it have been a mass of glowing matter that was later shaped into the sun? Or (as seems more likely) could it have been a disembodied light, an ethereal temporary brilliance decreed by God to illuminate His creation until permanent lights were set in place? The nature of this light is not described. We are simply told that light existed because God told it to exist. And it should not be difficult for us to believe that One whose glory is described as pure light could command light to appear even before there were any stars or sun to embody that light.
What is light? Even the best physicists struggle to explain it. It has characteristics of both particles and waves. Light photons behave like particles, like tiny specks of dust, except that they have no volume. The energy of a photon is concentrated in a finite space, existing at any given moment in a specific location, yet moving at a definable, measurable velocity. And that is why we speak of the “speed” of light. Yet light also exhibits the characteristics of a wave, which is not a finite entity. A wave, unlike a particle, exists in no finite space; it has a variable frequency; and it may be illustrated mathematically as a sine curve that has no beginning or end. Wave motion, unlike particle motion, involves the transfer of energy from point to point without the transfer of matter. A light wave is essentially a deformation of electric and magnetic fields. To complicate matters further, light waves can behave like particles, and the particle-like photons can behave like waves.
Light is a form of energy. It is essentially electromagnetic radiation, including every frequency from long-wave radiation, radio waves, microwaves, and infrared waves at the high end, to ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma radiation at the low end. In the middle is visible light, including the entire rainbow of colors. The different colors are simply varying wavelengths of light in the spectrum. White light—what we normally think of when we hear the word light—is not a pure color itself; it is a combination of all the colors in the visible spectrum.
The appearance of everything we see is a result of how light waves reflect off objects. But the range of different light waves is infinite and includes far more than is visible to our eyes. When you listen to the radio, for example, you are hearing a signal that is broadcast using technology that takes advantage of the properties of light. Multiple frequencies enable us to tune our radios to multiple stations, ranging from shortwave frequencies that travel vast distances, to long-wave (FM) frequencies that are more localized.
Even some of the spectra of light that are invisible to the human eye have properties that make other types of vision possible. Infrared rays, for example, are not visible to normal human eyesight, but they provide enough illumination to enable detailed photographs to be taken in the dark. Modern science has made night-vision instruments possible by using light that is normally invisible to the human eye.
To describe all the marvels of light would provide ample material for an entire set of books. You have probably experimented with light reflection and light refraction using mirrors and prisms. Prisms separate the colors of light because as the light passes through the prism its direction is bent. Different color waves, moving at different speeds, come out of the prism separated into a visible spectrum. Eyeglass lenses refract light in a precise enough fashion to correct the deficiencies of our failing eyesight. Concave lenses spread light rays apart; convex ones bring light rays closer together. This ability of lenses to manipulate light enables optometrists to prescribe eyeglasses that correct our vision with a high degree of accuracy.
Fine strands of fiberoptic material use the reflective properties of light to carry tiny pulses of light across vast distances at literally the speed of light with pinpoint precision. Those pulses—basically rapidly flashing on–off signals—enable modern undersea cables to carry digitized telephone calls, video images, and other forms of data from continent to continent literally at light speed. All of this is possible because of the marvelous properties of light.
Light waves, unlike sound waves or shock waves, can travel through a vacuum. That is why we can see the stars at night. If you were to take a bell and enclose it in a plexiglass container, then pump all the air out of the container to create a near vacuum, you could still see the bell, of course, but you would not be able to hear it ring—because sound waves cannot travel across a vacuum.
Yet, amazingly, light cannot be seen by the human eye except when it interacts with matter. A beam of light shining up into the sky at night would be invisible if there were not tiny particles in the air that reflect it. A flashlight turned on in outer space will send out a beam that is completely invisible, except where it strikes an object.
Nothing known to us in the universe moves faster than the speed of light. Light in a vacuum travels 186,282 miles per second. But no matter how fast you are moving, the speed of light appears to be the same speed as if you were not moving at all. (In other words, moving toward a light source, even at a very high rate of speed, will not accelerate the speed at which the light appears to travel toward you, and moving away from light will not slow down its apparent motion. Nothing else in the universe has this property.)
According to currently accepted theories of physics, if an object or person were able to travel into space at a velocity approaching light speed, time and distance would be foreshortened for them compared to what a stationary observer on earth would experience. So a traveler making a round-trip journey to a distant star at near light speed would return to find more time had passed on earth than in his spaceship. His watch and even his appearance would reflect this difference. If he had a twin brother, the traveler would be younger than his earthbound twin. The farther and faster he travels, the more pronounced this effect would be. If he traveled the distance of one light-year, the “year” required for him to travel so far is only a year from the perspective of a stationary observer. To the traveler himself, it would be as if far less than a year had passed. So travel approaching the speed of light would play havoc with our perception of time.
Perhaps nothing in all of physics is more fascinating or more mysterious than light. Light is the single most important source of energy and heat on earth. Without light, life on earth would be impossible. Virtually all the earthly mechanisms we depend upon for the transfer of energy are derived, ultimately, from light. Wind, the water cycle, and ocean waves would all cease if the earth were to remain in utter darkness for very long. The earth would quickly turn cold and all life would cease. That’s why light was the vital starting point in the process of creation.
Scripture says, “God saw the light, that it was good” (Genesis 1:4). “It was good” becomes the refrain that runs through the biblical creation account. This statement stresses the divine origin and perfection of all that was created. Creation was good because God is good. All that He created was good. He declared light good because it was a reflection of Himself. He is the standard and definition of all that is good. Douglas F. Kelly sums this point up beautifully with a quotation from Novatian, a third-century theologian:
What could you possibly say then that would be worthy of Him? He is more sublime than all sublimity, higher than all heights, deeper than all depth, clearer than all light, brighter than all brilliance, more splendid than all splendour, stronger than all strength, mightier than all might, more beautiful than all beauty, truer than all truth, more enduring than all endurance, greater than all majesty, more powerful than all power, richer than all riches, wiser than all wisdom, kinder than all kindness, better than all goodness, juster than all justice, more merciful than all mercy. Every kind of virtue must of necessity be less than He who is the God and source of everything.10
And creation itself, in its pristine state, was a reflection of the goodness of God. No aspect of creation sums this up more clearly than the creation of light. It is sheer brilliance, unfathomable energy, the very thing that was most needed for the formless void to begin to take shape as a paradise of pure goodness.
Energy permeates the cosmos. If you took a canister of completely empty space—a total vacuum, with no molecules of matter in it—then froze it to absolute zero so that even the radiation were taken out of it, there would still be something in that space: energy in massive proportions.
This is known as zero-point energy. It fills even the “emptiness” of space. Most scientists now believe that a volume of empty space no larger than a coffee cup contains enough energy to evaporate all the oceans of the world. Where does this energy come from? Science has no explanation for it. Clearly, it is part of God’s creation. Either it was inherent in the original creation of matter and space, or it is an aspect of what occurred the moment God said, “Let there be light.”
But it was never God’s plan as Creator that there be perpetual visible light with no darkness. So He “divided the light from the darkness” (v. 4). Both light and darkness suited His creative plan. He “called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night” (v. 5). So it was, and so it has always been. The same constant cycle of light and darkness, day and night, has defined the character of this earth since day one.
Verse 5 concludes the biblical description of the first day: “So the evening and the morning were the first day.”
It was a spectacular first day. Just in case someone might think this was a long evolutionary process, verse 5 says emphatically, “And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” That’s a literal translation of the Hebrew word order. It doesn’t describe a billion-year-long process; it describes one day—one cycle of light and dark—evening and morning.
And thus the work of creation is underway.