The Truth About The Creation 
God's Glory, God's Handiwork, God's Word, The Genesis Account
A Dissertation by Pastor Ed Rice January 2017

8: The Six-Days
For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. Exodus 20:11

The fact that God created the whole of our universe in six literal days is irrefutable for the Bible believer. It is important in the proper exegesis of Genesis but essential in the interpretations of the whole Bible.”It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed” ( Exodus 31:17). The fact of our seven day week rests on this creation fact. “Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest” (Exodus 34:21). The six day creation is a kingpin in holding to God's inerrant, infallible, inspired Word.
The president of Creation Truth Foundation, G. Thomas Sharp, clarifies the importance of this argument in the August 2016 CTF newsletter:
The one valuable lesson that I have learned... is that the primary point of conflict between Biblical Creation and naturalistic evolution resides in two salient differences: (1.) the age of the universe, or the literal, historical legitimacy of Genesis 1; and (2.) the historical reality that a worldwide deluge occurred about 4400 years ago, or a divinely sent global judgment against sin. All other aspects of this debate are moot, and are simply an outgrowth from these two main points....
It is not about science (and never has been), but science has been prostituted over the past 150 years to vindicate and qualify a deliberate anti-Biblical worldview for the primary purpose of defeating the intent of the Biblical God. And the most influential and effective method Satan saw at his disposal was to obliterate the authority of the Bible by attacking the Genesis record....
So to remove supernaturalism from the discussion, the devil first attacked Biblical chronology, and this seems so reasonable because evolutionary arguments from starlight and the earth’s stratigraphical record, just to name two of the seemingly irrefutable naturalistic positions, appear to demolish the Biblical position.¹

The importance of carefully examining the Words of God in his account of his six day creation is therefore crucial. Paying careful attention to those inerrant, infallible, inspired Words is what this section is all about.
Sunday The First Day of Creation.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep (Gen 1:1-2a)

The first three sentences of the inerrant, infallible, verbally inspired Bible are written on a fifth grade reading level and need no allegorical interpretation. There is no secret hidden meaning, there is no secret hidden gap of time or information, and there is no plural heaven. The allegorical method was developed by the Roman Empire when it attempted a hostile takeover of Christianity. The gap theory was developed by well meaning students of the Bible who wanted to accommodate science-so-called and their supposed age of rocks. The plural on heaven is contrived by the modernist ecumenical scholars who, in their new improved publication, want their copyright bibles to reveal what they think God meant to say.
In reality the first three sentences of the Holy Bible reveal that the time continuum had a beginning, the three-dimensional space continuum was a creation and the matter continuum had a Creator who carried the title “God.” God says what he means, and means what he says. The matter continuum, called earth, was without form and void. There is no reason to suppose it was a sphere with a molten core; it was without form and it was void. The two created entities are heaven and earth, i.e. space and matter. The earth (matter) is without form and void, and the heaven is described as having darkness upon the face of the deep.
One can take great care in reading God's words, i.e. “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2Tim 2:15). Here one can study to keep it simple, because it is simple. Darkness implies no light and deep implies vast depth. God says what he means and means what he says.
Anyone might check the reading levels of their Bible. The first ten sentences of the Holy Bible are indeed written on a 5^th grade reading level. Below is the analysis of the first five verses of the Holy Bible, Authorized King James English translation. “A grade level (based on the USA education system) is equivalent to the number of years of education a person has had. A score of around 10-12 is roughly the reading level on completion of high school. Text to be read by the general public should aim for a grade level of around 8.”²
Reading Ease
A higher score indicates easier readability; scores usually range between 0 and 100.

Readability Formula Score Flesch-Kincaid Ease 93.3 Readability Formula Grade Flesch-Kincaid Grade Lvl 3.6 Gunning-Fog Score 6.7 Coleman-Liau Index 5.8 SMOG Index 4.2 Auto Readability Index 2.7 Average Grade Level 4.6

Text Statistics Character Count 352 Syllable Count 113 Word Count 96 Sentence Count 7 Characters per Word 3.7 Syllables per Word 1.2 Words per Sentence 13.73

God's next three sentences add form to his created entities. “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Gen 1:2b-3). The earth, that was without form and void, now has a face and some sort of structure; the structure is in all likelihood a massive sphere and consists of, at the least, the H₂O molecule on its surface and possibly other molecular structures in its depth. It is certainly not a planet or solar system structure, they are not created yet. Remember, God says what he means. The face of the deep, that had darkness, now has a face of water and the presence of light. Note that the Creator and author of this Bible, has taken two distinct actions: the spirit of God moved upon, and the voice of God spoke. In turn, there are two results, the face of the deep became the face of the water, and the darkness was pierced by light. Dare we repeat it? When one studies to keep God's revelation simple and plain, it is clear that God means what he says, and says what he means.
In 2012 a big deal was made when physicists discovered the Higgs boson. The Standard Model of particle physics knew of 16 particles, particles found inside of protons and neutrons. The Higgs boson (particle) was supposed the seventeenth. It was thought to be a key to understanding what mass was all about. The connection between matter and mass was theorized as existing in a Higgs field. All this was named after Peter Higgs, the British theorist. The ideas were in the air when Higgs had written a brief two-page paper in 1964.⁴ When God says that matter was without form and void, it might very well have been scattered around in these sixteen, possibly seventeen, particles, and not even crushed into protons and neutrons at this point. The statement, “The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,” could very well be the structuring of protons, neutrons and electrons into atoms, and atoms into H₂O molecules; untold billions of them. Just the same calling the Higgs boson the God-Particle is a significant misnomer.
The third of three sentences describing God's creative process for this universe begins in Genesis 1:4. “And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day (Hebrew ~wy , yome), and the darkness he called Night (Hebrew lyl , layi)” (Gen 1:4-5a).
When God says that this light was good, the physicist who comprehends all that we learned about light in the past hundred years has a special insight as to just how good. I trust that anyone reading this report has gained an appreciable comprehension to that physicist's insight. It behooves the believer to be a student of light. Jesus is the Light of the world. He was likely the source of light before the physical creation of the sun and stars. He will be the sun in the new Jerusalem described in the Revelation of Jesus Christ (Rev 21:23). The physical creation of light which divided the darkness reflects attributes of God's glory, yeah, even his eternal power and Godhead (Rom 1:20)! Creation of physical light most certainly lends itself to understanding the spiritual light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world (John 1:9). Consider the mystery of light.
Sometimes light behaves like an electromagnetic wave propagating through nothing and piercing through some things. Other times light behaves as a photon which has attained a tip top maximum speed, a boundary wherein no higher speed is attainable in all of God's disclosed universe. Consider that, approaching the speed of light, set as some sort of boundary condition for God's created universe, causes time, space, and matter to warp and morph into each other.
Or sometimes that speeding photon might collide with an orbiting electron and dislodge it to produce electron flow that we call electricity. Or that speeding light might be slowed and reflected in a prism to reveal a composition of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, seven bands of individual lights, a spectrum of colors hidden in that white package. Note that God put seven bands of visible color into the light he created on the first of seven days in his creation account. The sevens, twelves and triplets that repeatedly show up in God's creation account are not coincidence. When God says of light, “It was good,” only a few people capture all that he meant.
As an electromagnetic wave, light is rationed out into bands of frequencies. Even as God divides his creation week into seven days, it is amazing to see how many divisions of seven show up in all of his creation. Just as music to our ears has seven distinct notes, the bands of visible light divide into seven distinct and visible colors. God gave rational man an ability to distinguish these seven bands with the eye, but we know that there are light waves longer than red, which we call infrared, and shorter than violet, which we call ultra violet. Micro waves, radio waves, gamma rays, God created it all and it was good. The seven colors can be mixed and blended to create 256 colors, and that number, from our laptop computer is only so limited because the binary two raised to the eighth power stops there. Marvel more to realize that three primary colors of the seven visible bands, can be used to create all other colors. It is just like a triune God to arrange it thus. Also mixing the first and the last of the visible colors is the only way of producing purple, the color found hanging in the Hebrew tabernacle where the First and the Last, the Alpha and Omega dwelt with his people Israel. It is that quality that makes us asscribe purple to royalty.
Kent Hovind has likened God's revelation of the infinite to the finite as one's attempt to describe color to a blind man. Kent is always colorful in his descriptions. Consider how would you describe color to a blind man? And then wonder at God's revelation about the first day of creation. Consider that he wrote it down for us on a fifth grade reading level, and it contains all the foundation stones of an upcoming universe. “And God saw the light, that it was good.”
Did God create darkness? He divided the light from the darkness, but did he create darkness? A student refuted an atheistic university professor who declared that it was your God who created evil. “God did not create evil. Evil is the absence of goodness as much as darkness is the absence of light,” the student spoke up as a statesman. “One cannot measure how dark a place is, only how little light is present. Darkness does not pierce into a lighted room,” the student continued, “but light can pierce into a darkened room.” The elaborate defense of God, godliness, goodness vs evil paralleled to light vs darkness continued for no small speech. It was originally attributed to Albert Einstein, but no credible reference ever connected him to it. Having read hours of Einstein's lectures, and the whole of this argument to the atheistic professor, this author has no trouble imagining it bubbling from a young student named Albert. The point here is that we have no means of measuring darkness, we can only measure an absence of light. Darkness is not a quantifiable commodity in such a sense, and it was thus not commanded into existence. Nor was evil.
The Bible student needs to be careful here, for God says he did create both darkness, the absence of light, and he did create evil, the absence of righteousness. Perhaps that is a better topic for a philosophy seminar than for a creation seminar, but I did not want to mislead anyone. Examine carefully the profound words of God in Isaiah 45:5-9:
I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together; I the LORD have created it. Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker!
We are not over thinking what God said, we are evaluating it intently. “And God divided the light from the darkness.” Darkness cannot exist in the presence of light and darkness, forever divided from light, never pierced anything. Now once again consider the existence of a black-hole. The binding energy in a black-hole is so intense that even light cannot escape its grasp. God's description, wherein he divided the light from the darkness, might be like describing color to a blind man. Yet the fifth grade reading level that captures these sentences is able to capture the essentials of what a black-hole is in principle. God creating light was quite like throwing a black-hole into reverse.
“And God called the light Day (Hebrew ~wy , yome), and the darkness he called Night (Hebrew lyl , layi)” (Gen 1:4-5a). The linguistics of the Hebrew word for Day is related to light and heat. The linguistics of the Hebrew word for Night is related to gloom and shadow. At this point in creation there is light, called Day, but there is no Sun. There is darkness called Night, but we are not given enough information to know what is casting a shadow to cause it.
Consider also that there is not yet a Sun or its solar system, and there is no reason to suppose that there is a planet Earth. In fact the word, planet would be a misnomer because it derives from a wandering star. There are no wandering stars without a solar system. There is a glob of matter called earth (commonly called dirt), and technically it is all water at this point. Any form that earth may have had has been described as a face of water, and nothing more. The first creation of matter, protons, neutrons and electrons, is first given the form of H₂O. It is presently understood that every element know to man can be constructed from the simplest of all atoms, hydrogen. Hydrogen is made of only two particles, a proton and an electron, nothing more. God tells us that he actually started with a little more than that, he included an oxygen atom in his original work. Oxygen has eight protons, eight neutrons, and eight electrons. To rest comfortably oxygen wants two more electrons in its outer electron shell, and two hydrogen atoms fills that void very nicely, thus we have H₂O. It is likely God included oxygen in his initial construction for the fifth grader, who can't see hydrogen but knows for sure what water is. There is no reason to presume at this point that he had assembled any other atoms from his first creation of matter. If he had, he could have told us.
The basic building blocks God used to construct the universe are barely in place when he formally announces, “And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Gen 1:5b). That God would describe an evening and a morning before there was a planet to experience a sunset or a sun to do a sunrise, bothers some people. They imagine that there must be a planet or a ball of mass or some structure to what God has created on the first day. Going from nothing, to without form and void, and then to light shining on the face of water is, in God's explanation, a day's work. Don't let some allegorical interpreter add to what God says. If God says there is light before there is a Sun, he can say there is an evening and a morning before there is a planet. And so he does.
Every day in God's creation account includes an exclamation, “And it was good.” One day gets two of those declarations, but day one has the exclamation attached to light. There is a cause.
Monday The Second Day of Creation
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day (Gen 1:6-8).

If it is true that God says what he means, then there is only one thing made on the second day of creation. It is a firmament and called Heaven. This day's work shall capture our full attention for this section. Few have examined this day with an honest straightforward belief in what God said. Let's be clear, all that is present after the evening and the morning of the first day is water, Day, and Night. There is no planet, no rock, not even dirt. Some have speculated that primordial rocks and minerals, i.e. dirt, must have been somehow present underneath this massive volume of water, speculated that it would rise up and show itself as dry ground on the third day of creation, but God's written account requires no such speculation. There need be no mass other than the water that God mentions. It is his account, let God be God. Man wants to jump ahead of God, it seems to be a part of his fallen nature. If you must jump ahead of God here, there is no need to jump all the way to the third day and speculate about dirt; on the second day God will separate water from water, settle down and don't jump clean over the second day so you can imagine rocks that are not even brought up yet.
Many have tried to add to, or take away from God's simple explanation of how he started the construction of our universe. Some have tried to insert a million year gap between the sentences, and then to add a whole civilization that God, supposedly, destroyed previously. These fiction writers suppose that God wrote an allegorical book, full of secret, hidden meanings. It can be reaffirmed that God says what he means and means what he says. Many of my heroes were/are gaptist, i.e. C.I. Scofield, Clarence Larkin, J. Vernon MacGee, Dr. Peter Ruckman. I want to be clear when I say this, they were wrong, they had compromised and defective exegesis in this instance. They were genius yes, but concerning a gap in God's word they were wrong just the same.
The late Dr. Peter Ruckman vehemently defended the exactness of the King James Bible, but he also vehemently defended this gaptist rhetoric, and caustically defended that outer space visitors came to Earth. There were thus two ugly flies in his otherwise holy ointment. Take care for the gaptist doctrine it carries with it a subtle twisting and general misrepresentations of God's inerrant, infallible, inspire Holy Bible.
Gaptists have speculated some wild imaginations squeezed into an artifical gap they wedge in between God's first couple sentences. They go so far as to imagine a whole civilization that rose up and fell in this tiny gap in God's vocabulary. Shame on C.I. Scofield for propagating such foolishness. My scholarly hero labels Genesis 1:1 as “God's original creation,” and then labels Genesis 1:2 as “Earth made waste and empty by judgment.” He then labels God's forth sentence, “The new beginning – the first day light diffused.” In their over active imagination, “The first creative act (the heaven(s) and the earth) refers to the dateless past, and gives scope to all geological ages.”⁵
This audacious exegesis gets worse when he (they) try to pull Jeremiah 4:23-26 completely out of its context to support their defective hypothesis. Scofield defends this audacious exegesis, “Jer. 4:23-26, Isa. 24:1, and 45:18, clearly indicate that the earth had undergone a cataclysmic change as the result of a divine judgment. The face of the Earth bears everywhere the marks of such a catastrophe. There are not wanting intimations which connect it with a previous testing and fall of angels.”⁶ This author has found no argument that dissuades this type of Gaptist thinking once a person is grounded in the error. For the sake of argument here let me emphasize that there are not “heavens” (plural) and there is no planet in God's first sentence.
For the sake of our small minds and some known science, picture a sphere of water, like a suspended water drop, only gargantuan. Picture the sphere rotating and a point light source causing it to have a night side and a day side. The rotation causes that there is an evening and a morning on the face of the water.
On the opening of all creation God created a time continuum, a space continuum, and a matter continuum. Our gargantuan water drop can have an evening and a morning because of time. It rotates as a sphere because it is in three-dimensional space hung upon nothing. It has mass and gravity because of the matter continuum.
Why would this water be in the shape of a sphere? When the LORD God created the matter continuum, which is called but not formally named “Earth” in his first seven words, it was without form and void. Matter without form and void might be protons, neutrons, and electrons not even formed into atoms and molecules, but these particles⁷ do have mass with gravity. When the Spirit of God moved they were formed into two atoms that God formed into molecules of water. The water molecules that God created would have mass and cling to one another with gravity. Thus the water molecules, barring any other Supernatural involvement, would naturally form into a giant sphere.
In God's description of the second day of creation the huge sphere of water is divided into two. One formed a central sphere of solid water and one was a shell of water like the skin of a basketball. The firmament God created separated these two spheres. Be sure to keep the outer sphere immense. Coming up on day four of the six day creation God is going to set lights in this firmament, those lights include all of our immense solar system, but a sphere big enough to contain our solar system is still not large enough. God says he made the stars also, and he set them in this firmament that he created on the second day. Consequently, all of the stars seen in our universe, billions of them, are set inside of this outer sphere, or gargantuan shell, of water. The Bible says it is so. There is a boundary to our universe. It is finite not infinite. Its boundary is this shell of water, and when a gigantic telescope peers at the face of this reflective spherical boundary of water that the Bible records to be out there, well, just a little imagination can account for a lot of the confusion of man as he speculates about billions and billions of years of light travel.
When we understand that God says what he means and means what he says we see that our universe is contained in a giant sphere of water. It is our boundary in a bounded universe. That is a big deal for the mathematician, which makes it a big deal for the physicist. A big deal that is completely ignored by the atheistic evolutionist.
God's second day of creation starts with a gargantuan sphere of water hung on nothing in God's newly created light beam. It ends with two spheres of water divided by a firmament. Like egg white separates the shell from the yoke, this firmament separates a shell of water, which bounds the whole universe, from a sphere of water the size of our planet. We expect these are spheres because liquids with mass naturally form into spheres. One cannot blow square or pyramid shaped bubbles. We expect that there is nothing but water because God writes to us on a fifth grade reading level and says what he means. We know that this firmament is impressive because it captures a whole day's work for the LORD God. We know that it is immense because when God gets to his fourth day of creation he inserts all the bodies of our present solar system into the firmament. It turns to gargantuan when God inserts all the galaxies with billions of stars into the same firmament. God's description leaves a shell of water around the outside of this universe. Thus God, Albert Einstein, and I believe in a finite bounded universe. Atheistic evolutionists believe in an infinite unbounded one. The differences in these two assumptions are astronomical. One is right, one is wrong, there is no compromise position. Joshua, who lead Israel into the promised land said, “Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in truth... And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve” (Josh 24:14-15). The only type of evolution there is, is atheistic evolution. We did not get here by natural processes, we have a Creator. He tells us what he did, why he did it, and what he is about to do. We can trust him on it.
Tuesday The Third Day of Creation
And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 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 evening and the morning were the third day (Gen 1:9-13).

It has been speculated in this development that there have been no primordial rocks or minerals created up to this point. That aligns well with the Word of God, but not well with many minds. In the finite mind, uncorrected by God's word, we visualize the sky that we see, when God says he created heaven, and we visualize the planet Earth when he says he created earth. When the Bible opens with, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” a careful examination of day one requires no such structure, yeah, it even forbids it. The idea that there were no rocks around until the third day is barely comprehensible. The misgiving is so powerful that some creationists, who should know better, hold to an argument that verse nine says let the dry land appear, not let dry land be created. They thus submerge rocks into God's creation account on day one or two. It is a misgiving.
Indeed day three begins with only water specifically called out as the form of all matter. There is a firmament with water above it and water beneath it when God says “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.” When God modifies his wording about the creation of dry land one should not suppose that it was created days earlier and is only making its appearance on day three. Neither should one suppose that it was created a billion years earlier and God is just misleading us with this creation account. The appearance of dry land and the division of waters into seas is good, God said so. It is also a bigger deal than believers normally make of it. God created mountains and valleys, minerals and metals, rocks and gems, dirt, clay, and sand. Today some metals, like cobalt and nickel are only found in the Earth's crust in their chemically combined forms. In later descriptions God tells of this land divided by four rivers and of a place called Havilah (a Hebrew word, hlywx (khav-ee-law'), for circle, twist and whirl), where there is gold, “And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone” (Gen 2:12). Bdellium is from a Hebrew root, ldb (baw-dal'), meaning separated or divided. Imagine that the dry land which was created on day three had metals laying right on the surface; imagine the complexity of elements, molecules and compounds that was herein created. The profound wonder of all this caused even God to utter that he saw that it was good. Day three is the only day of creating that warranted two such declarations.
One could trust a Bible believing botanist to expound verse eleven and twelve of this Tuesday's work of creation but it is worth pointing out that this is the first creation of things that reproduce and for the sake of those who might think that plants evolve into animals God emphasizes the line “after his kind... after his kind... after his kind.” God makes this emphasis with every reproducing creature that he creates and in passing let me emphasize the utter confusion and folly of any theory of evolution which contends with God's clear declaration. Man has never witnessed an orchid evolve into a rose, nor a peach tree bearing apples and to suppose that it happened naturally, but accidentally back in eons of time is arrogant folly. If God says something man strives to defeat it, that is not science it is depravity.
The 126 words description of the third day creation account is written on a 9^th grade reading level⁸ and a triplet type of poetry and symmetry is already emerging. The creation of grass, herb and fruit tree; the seed in itself, the seed after its kind and the seed in itself and after his kind; and, as mentioned previous, the after his kind... after his kind... after his kind, sort of structure, is not uncommon in this eloquent Hebrew language of God. Those understanding that God is a trinity and man a trichotomy pick these out more readily than the unbeliever. For the second time in the Tuesday it is declared, “And God saw that it was good” (1:12).
“And the evening and the morning were the third day” (1:13), closes the creation account for this Tuesday. Still to come, on the marrow, the Wednesday of God's creation, the sun, moon, and stars which mark out the evenings and mornings will be created.
Wednesday The Fourth Day of Creation
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. Genesis 1:14-19

This development focuses on an assurance that in the Genesis account God said exactly what he meant and meant exactly what he said. God's Wednesday account is central in that emphasis. God's placement of lights in the firmament renews our emphasis on the characteristics of the firmament. It is a space; some have called it “the vault of heaven.” This firmament is contained within an outside border of water. It is a gargantuan sphere of water above the firmament, and now, on his Wednesday, God places lights in the firmament.
Dr. Kent Hovind has promoted an idea of a pre-flood canopy that some how encapsulated the Earth's atmosphere in a protective shield of water. Such a canopy hypothesis tried to make it more conceivable that, “And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died” (Gen 5:27). Such longevity allowed that Methuselah died the week before the forty day and forty nights of rain began. I will not weigh in on this canopy hypothesis but must emphasize that it is disruptive when it detracts from the watery boundary of the universe, i.e. the sphere that encapsulates the whole firmament. Say what you will about a canopy over the atmosphere, but the Bible expounds a canopy over the universe. Genesis' Monday closes with a sphere of water above a firmament and a sphere of water below the firmament; where a canopy hypothesis detracts from that revelation, I am inclined to detract from the canopy idea.
The firmament in the midst of the waters, as created on Monday, is filled with lights on God's Wednesday. These lights divide the day from the night. They are for signs and for seasons, and for days, and years. They are distinctively placed in the firmament under the outer boundary of water.
This day's work seems bigger than Mondays. It includes suns (stars), planets (wandering stars), galaxies, meteors, comets, and even black-holes (anti-lights?). It boggles the mind that God's Wednesday includes ten billion (with a “B”) observable galaxies and thus trillions of stars. We said previously that the firmament created in God's day's work on Monday was gargantuan and just the same surrounded by shell of water. On day four we imagine just how gargantuan that firmament really is. That could make God's day's work on Monday a little more balanced.
Another thing captured in God's first Wednesday is that the Earth is central in God's creation. In the billions of galazies he created, in the trillions of stars, there is only one created that gives seasons, days, and years to the planet in his focus. That planet is now named Earth. Atheistic evolutionists suppose that our planet is just a happenstance of natural processes and this there must be other happenstance occurrences of evolved life. Consequently space exploration is overcome with a drive to dind life in outer space. They are so intent on the necessity of other life forms out there that they lure some Christians into their myth. In God's immense universe, created as described in Genesis, there are only life forms created on one planet, and all the other bodies in the universe are created to support life right here on Earth. It is substantiated on God's Wednesday that his focus in the universe is toward one planet, Earth. However, this earthocentric attention does not result in a geocentric Earth.
There are those who deny the working knowledge of how our solar system operates in order to imagine the sun orbiting the Earth, calling in a geocentric world view. The Earth is central to God's attention in his creation account but is is not physically central to our solar system. Indeed the planet Earth does orbit the sun; it is an observable fact, and those who deny it are text book delusional.⁹
The wonder of reading God's Wednesday account is its simplicity. It is written in just under a nineth grade reading level, but it accounts for God's creation of our whole solar system. Then in a short clause, “He made the stars also,” he tosses in a trillion stars, organized in then billion galaxies that float around in the firmament that he created on Monday. Such an wonder was barely imagined two hundred years ago. Now we have seen it with unimagined telescopes. “The firmament sheweth his handiwork” is indeed an underrated exclamation.
Again the emphasis of this days work is that the lights are set to give light upon the earth, day and night, and to mark out seasons, days and years. The Earth's tilt on its axis of rotation is what produces the four seasons that we know today. This tilt must bave been present in some measure in God's original creation before the world flood judgment which changed the whole environment of the Earth. The rotation of the Earth produces our days, and the orbit around the sun produces the seasons the year.
Turns out that some of the created “lights” are actually planets that, like our moon, do not generate light but reflect it. (Again some groups, claiming to be pure literalists in their hermeneutics, suppose that if God said the moon was a light, then the moon is a light, and not just a reflector. They are indeed delusional.) The word planet derives from the idea of a wandering star, versus a fixed star. Such wandering stars (planets), viewed on the backdrop of the fixed stars also mark out our years and our seasons. God's account also attributes signs as part of these light's job description. The stars do a remarkable job of clocking out time and seasons. Consequently pagan minds consider that their location at birth may predict a persons personality and fate. Even today their horoscopes are printed in our newspapers to entrap pagans in their misconceptions. Woe to the Christian who is engangled in such paganism, but many are. God warns, “And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them,...” (Deut 4:19), and again “Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee” (Isa 47:13).
The Stars Used for Seasons
The Bible makes much ado about the stars that God created on a Wednesday. The heavens, as discerned in the plural in the Bible, are generally divided into three layers: there is a heaven where the birds fly, a heaven where stars fly, and a heaven where angels fly. The ancients knew more about the stars in the middle layer than the common man does today. The inventions of the light bulb decreased our star gazing, and the invention of the TV pretty much annihilated it. The ancients (before the light bulb) knew that the stars separated into a canopy of wandering stars and a canopy of fixed stars. The fixed stars were labeled in constellations which showed the seasons. The Bible references these constellations. “Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name” (Amos 5:8), and again, “Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.... Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?” (Job 9:9, 38:31-32). The constellations were commonly named when Noah got off the Ark, and assuredly even before that. “He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names. Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite” (Psalm 147:4-5).
From the northern hemisphere the appearance of certain constellations aligns with the seasons of the year. It is scary, in our modern time, how many think that the “dog days of summer” has something to do with dogs, not realizing its tie to a constellation. Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, is part of the Canis (dog) Major constellation, and when it rises with the sun during the month of July it has been called the dog days. The Bible says, “And let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years” (Gen 1:14b), and they certainly are.
The Stars Used For Signs
It is obvious that the stars were used for seasons, but where were they used for signs? God used Christ's “star in the East” to show wise men the time and place of birth of his Only Begotten Son (Matt 2:1-2, 9-10). The stars were also cited as a sign to Abraham. “Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them... So shall thy seed be” (Gen 15:5, cf 22:17, 26:4, Exod 32:13, Deut 1:10, 10:22, 28:62, 1Chron 27:23, Neh 9:23). Of course Joseph was given a sign in a dream where “the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance” (Gen 37:9). Also Hezekiah was given a sign from the stars (our sun at least), “This sign shalt thou have of the LORD, that the LORD will do the thing that he hath spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees?” (2King 20:9). Hezekiah chose the latter, and it was observed (2King 20:11, Isa 38:8).
Of course there was no greater sign in the stars than the one shown as the Only Begotten Son of God, the very Creator of those stars, died on a cross set on a skull shaped hill called Calvary, outside the gates of Jerusalem. “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt 27:45-46). and again “And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:33-34). Those who believe in a man made bible, and a natural explanation for everything try to equate this sign to a solar eclipse, but such tom-foolery is not necessary for those who believe that the Creator of the stars died on a cross for the sin of the world on that day.
Then, lastly, the stars created on God's Wednesday are to be for signs in the last days. Before the return of Christ there is to be a seven year tribulation period where signs in the heavens declare his wrath and the pending doom of mankind. Joel is chronologically the first prophet to expound the Word of God on this wise:
Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand; A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.... the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining... for the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. The LORD also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the LORD will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel. (Joel 2:1,2,10,3:14-16).

Solomon ponders this day when stars will darken, “Remember now thy Creator ... While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened” (Eccl 12:1-2). Isaiah warns of this coming day, “ For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine” (Isa 13:10). The prophet Ezekiel warns, “And when I shall put thee out, I will cover the heaven, and make the stars thereof dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light. All the bright lights of heaven will I make dark over thee, and set darkness upon thy land, saith the Lord GOD” (Ezek 32:7-8). Daniel too, takes up the warning and may be referencing angels as stars, “And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them” (Dan 8:10). And of course the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which reveals “things that are to come,” clarifies these falling stars and failing lights (Rev 6:13, 8:12, 12:4). The stars and constellations are used for signs.
The Creation of Angels with the Stars
It is altogether likely that God created the angels on this fourth day of creation. It is always dangerous to read things into God's wording. It is more dangerous to develop a whole theme and interweave it into God's theme by taking several snippets completely out of their context. That is how gaptists are embedded in a false teaching. That is how anti-Semites (Nethinim mongers) imagine a theme about angels breeding with mankind and producing giants. Always be leery of those who would develop, teach, and propagate such artificial themes. Bible believers must keep God's main thing the main thing, and not go off on tangents or conspiracy tirades. Allow me, however to address a reasonable question, when were the angels created, and when did one third of them fall?
When the Bible is silent about something it behooves the Bible believer to be as silent. If one breaks the silence it behooves him to avoid being dogmatic. The Bible is clear that angels are created beings (Psalm 148:2,5, Isa 40:26, 45:12), and that everything was created by Jesus Christ (John 1:1-5, Eph 3:9, Col 1:16, Rev 4:11) in six days and God rested on the seventh day (Exod 20:11, 31:17). It is thus logical that the angels were created in one of the six days, and it is most fitting that it go with the phrase “(God) made the stars also” (Gen 1:16). Angels, i.e. heavenly hosts, are occasionally referred to as stars (Job 38:7, Isa 14:12-13, Luke 10:18, Rev 12:3). For the Bible believer and student everything that was created was created in these six days and it was all good (Gen 1:4,10,12,18,21,25). That would make the fall of an angel called Lucifer (Isa 14:12), who was present in Eden (Ezek 28:13) to occur some time between Genesis 1:25 and Gen 3:1.
Again, since the Bible does not clearly indicate a time for the creation or fall of the angels, it need not overly concern the Bible student. They were created, everything that was created was created in six days, and they did fall. When Satan fell he took “a third part of the stars of heaven” with him (Rev 12:3-4). Reading much more into that is to depart from the theme of the revelation of God. Its purpose is not to teach angelology or demonology, it is to teach man about man and his need. “The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut 29:29).
God saw that it was good
We have proposed that when God calls a day a good day's work, he means what he says. His Wednesday seems, to this author, to be bigger than some other days. He created our whole solar system, planets and all, a million galaxies spiraling throughout the firmament, a billion stars occupying those galaxies, and each galaxy's center piece, a black-hole, sucking matter back into the nothing from which it came. “And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day” (Gen 1:18b-19).

Thursday The Fifth Day of Creation
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. Genesis 1:20-23

Thursday Creation Day 5
A physicist might find little to highlight in the fifth day of creation but a Bible believer holding to the infallible, inerrant, verbally inspired Word of God can find several things that need emphasis. I set out, as an engineer, math teacher, and Bible believer, to clarify that the physical construction of the universe is exactly as God describes it. On God's Thursday of creation God's exactness might be better clarified by a marine biologist who believes the Bible.
Just the same, there are some obvious details which defeat the evolutionist's exotic hypothesis. “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and the fowl.” In accord with the simplest rendering of God's Holy Word one finds that on Wednesday there was no animal life in the sea, but at the closing of Thursday, because of God's creation of life, the waters were teaming with all sorts of life, the airways with fowl. Believing the Bible must disembowel the whole hypothesis that life evolved here by natural means, with no Supernatural involvement. Believing the Bible must also disembowel the compromising theistic evolutionist's hypothesis that a little “g” god used evolution to “evolve life.” Their little “g” god either wrote this account as a liar and deceiver, or allowed man to write it without inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy. Either way, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful” (Pslam 1:1). It behooves the Bible believer to meditate in the law of the LORD, trust God's Word, and mistrust the compromisers.
The gaptists, another group of compromisers, this one led by C.I. Scofield's notes, suppose that thie is God's second creative act. They suppose that God createing the heavens (note again the addition of the plural to God's dictated word which is singular) and the earth was his first creative act, what they call the “original creation.” Then they suppose a gap after God's first sentence and a few billion years of some previous destitute occupiers of God's universe. Then they suppose that verses two through nineteen was God's reformation period, and his second created act only occurred in verse twenty. His third creative act, they suppose, was his creation of humans in verse 26 and 27¹⁰
I greatly respect the genius and fundamental stance of C.I. Scofield, but all this supposition makes his God, in this instance, a misleader in the same category as the theistic evolutionists little “g” god. God said what he meant and meant what he said. Gaptists are a mislead lot, be careful that you do not fall in with them.
It has been emphasized and needs mention briefly that for God's first Thursday, that God's created creatures only reproduce “after their kind.” God is emphatic in their position and the Darwinian evolutionist who insists that amoebas grew legs and crawled out ot the sea, that dogs lost some toes and turned into Clydesdale horses, and egg laying lizzards incorporated eggshells and turned into bald eagles do not have a leg to stand on.
God's six day creation account is superbly documented and divinely inspired. This fifth day of creation, God's first Thursday, is a good days work, God said so. His reation of the billion sea creatures, and a billion fowls might not seem as impressive as a trillion stars, at least not to a physicist, but understanding just a little about the complexity of living thing can more than level the playing field when considering this creative Thursday.

Friday The Sixth Day of Creation
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Genesis 1:24-31

Again, an engineer, physicist, math teacher might have little to expound on when considering the first Friday of this universe, the sixth day of God's creative effort, but the Bible believer in me cries out to highlight a few things. First and foremost is an emphasis that God says what he means and means what he says. Believing in verbal inspiration of all scripture requires one to believe in inerrancy and infallibility of all scripture.
Secondly, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind,” is particularly worded to clarify that dogs do not, in enough time, produce horses. Unregenerate man, wishing to rebel against God's creation account might come up with an idea that all life forms sprang from a single source. They do have similarities and some transformations may seem in the realm of the possible, but the whole scheme of Darwinian evolution is in direct rebellion to God's revealed word.
We had taken a group of teenagers to the Syracuse zoo and as I wandered through an exhibit I came across a young couple admiring a gorilla. The young lady placed her open hand on the glass and the gorilla responded by putting his spread hand on the other side. As a Baptist youth pastor I was astonished to here her say, “Awe, look at him, I cannot believe there are still people in this world who do not believe in evolution.” There are. Mere similarities cannot substantiate such an outlandish hypothesis that apes are our ancestors.
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion....” Atheistic evolutionists spend a remarkable amount of effort trying to explore the “intelligence” of dolphins, whales, or dogs. I have never had any sign up for a college Algebra class. Humans can do complex, abstract, rational, deductive reasoning and nothing in the animal kingdom can come close. Evolutionists might pretend and imagine that opposing thumbs and cranial cavities evolved to a highest order, but they dare not even suppose how deductive reasoning crept in over their billion year time line. God made man in his image, and after his likeness. The details of the sixth day creation account cannot be compromised. The detail fits into the rest of God's revelation and gospel message, unchanged.
Saturday The Seventh Day of Creation
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. Genesis 2:1-3

It was principle, not exhaustion, that caused God to rest on the seventh day. All the extravagant conglomerated explanations derived by the atheistic evolutionists cannot disallow our seven day week. It stands as a hallmark of God's creative act. It reverberates in procreation's in incubation periods. It resonates in procreation's gestation periods. Yet it does not mark out our 365 ¼ day year, nor our 30 5/12 day month, nor our 29 ½ day lunar month. It is replete in the Earth's weather cycles and the Farmers Almanac. It is ingrained in so many cycles of life that animals have been clocking out its cycle for their whole existence. Man's seven day week is still intact and that is a to little heralded testimony of God's creative week.
“And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made.” Another parallel in God's seven day creative week, as called out by many Bible students, is found in the Bible's dispensational teachings. There, seven clearly distinguished dispensations are marked out. In the seventh God ends the testing which he had made. A beautiful parallel for the Bible student is found when a day is as a thousand years, and this world is in the last days of God's sixth dispensation. In the millennial kingdom dispensation (Rev 20, Eph 1:10) Christ rules the world from the Throne David (2Sam 7:16) situated in God's holy hill of Zion (Psalm 2:6). God's seven day creation account resonates with the other truths of his revelation, compromising Genesis compromises God's whole message.

1 CTF E-Newsletter, August 2016, http://www.creationtruth.com/newsletters.html

2 “Readability Score,” Text Statistics Project, https://readability-score.com (accessed 1 Dec 2015).

3 Ibid.

4 Virat Markandeya, “Physicists Detect New Heavy Particle,” Inside Science News Service, Originally published: Jul 4 2012 – 3:30pm, https://www.insidescience.org (accessed 09 Jan 2016)

5 C.I. Scofield, The Scofield Reference Bible,1909, Oxford University Press, Inc.,3.

6 Ibid.

7 It was intimated earlier that these particles may not have even had the form of protons, neutrons, and electrons. They could have been the sixteen particles theorized in the Standard Model, to include the now famous Higgs boson.

8 https://readability-score.com/text/ (accessed 6/23/2016).

9American Heritage Dictionary, s.v. “delusional” adj., Suffering from or characterized by delusions. And “delusion” noun, 1) (psychology) an erroneous belief that is held in the face of evidence to the contrary. 2) A mistaken or unfounded opinion or idea. 3) The act of deluding: deception by creating illusory ideas.

10Scofield's Reference Bible Notes, pg 3 note 2 attached to “created” of Genesis 1:1

To Continue in this series click the link below:
9: The World Flood. . . 180 www.truthaboutthechrist.com/thetruthaboutthecreation/9the_flood.html
. . . Water for the World Flood. . . 188
. . . The Flood Caused Cataclysmic Changes in the Calendar . . . 191
. . . The Changed Calendar's Mathematical Analysis. . . 197

God's Glory, God's Handiwork, God's Word, The Genesis Account
Series Complete Table of Contents