We do not have all of the details, but this surely means that the light from the sun, moon, and stars was shining upon the earth no later than the end of day four, since their very purpose was “to give light upon the earth” (Gen. 1:17). As a matter of fact, it is possible that these light-waves traversing space from the heavenly bodies to the earth were energized even before the heavenly bodies themselves in order to provide the light for the first three days.6 It was certainly no more difficult for God to form the light-waves than the “light-bearers” that would be established to serve as future generators of those waves.
Note that this concept does not in any way suggest that fossils were created in the rocks, nor were any other evidences of death or decay so created. That would have involved the creation, not of an appearance of history, but of an appearance of evil, and would be contrary to God’s nature.7
3. The “Very Good” Creation
After each of His activities during creation week, God pronounced His work to be “good” (verses 4, 10, 18, 21, 25). It was perfect, exactly as He desired, fully planned and prepared for His “image” to be reproduced in man. Finally, He pronounced it all “very good” (verse 31).
What state of affairs could the God described in Scripture declare to be “good,” and what could He label “very good”?
God is living, and a giver of life, not a cause of death. Therefore, there must have been no death of “living” things when He declared His completed creation to be very good! Thus, He ordained that all of conscious animal life were to be plant eaters (verse 30), as also were Adam and Eve (verse 29). There could have been no carnivorous activity, no bloodshed, no death. He certainly would not have employed such a sadistic process as survival of the fittest, struggle for existence, and natural selection to create and maintain His “very good” masterpiece.
Even the presence of previous life in the form of fossils could not have been “good” in His eyes, for many of the fossils give evidence of having died a horrible death. Thus, the fossil record must have been emplaced at some time after creation.
4. The World That Then Was
It must also be recognized that this primordial-created world was different from the present world in many significant ways. There were, in that world, “waters which were above the firmament” (Gen. 1:7), and this corresponds to nothing in the present world. The word “firmament” (Hebrew raqia, meaning “stretched-out thinness”) is essentially synonymous with “heaven” (note Gen. 1:8), and thus means simply “space,” referring either to space in general or to a specific space, as the context requires. In this case, the firmament was essentially the atmosphere, where birds fly (Gen. 1:20). The waters above seem to have been in the form of a vast blanket of invisible water vapor, translucent to the light from the stars but productive of a marvelous greenhouse effect which maintained mild temperatures from pole to pole, thus preventing air-mass circulations and the resultant rainfall (Gen. 2:5). Such a layer would have had the further effect of efficiently filtering harmful radiations from space, markedly reducing the rate of somatic mutations in living cells, and, as a consequence, drastically decreasing the rate of aging and death.
Another great difference was in the antediluvian geography. The Edenic river system (Gen. 2:10–14) obviously does not exist in the present earth. The artesian nature of the source of the four rivers, plus the later references to the breaking-up of the fountains of the great deep (Gen. 7:11) indicate that there were great reservoirs of water under pressure below the earth’s crust. These waters, and the waters above the firmament, must now be in the present oceanic systems, and this, in turn, implies that the antediluvian oceans were much less extensive than now. Therefore, the lands were more extensive, and the mild climates and fertile soils would have supported far greater numbers of plants and animals all over the world than is now the case.
In addition to all this, there was in the beginning no death! Death came into the world only when sin came into the world (Rom. 5:12; 8:22). Man would have lived forever had he not sinned, and so, apparently, would have the animals (at least all those possessing the nephesh, the “soul”). Plant life, of course, is not conscious life, but only very complex replicating chemicals. The eating of fruits and herbs was not to be considered “death” of the plant materials since they had no created “life” (in the sense of consciousness) anyhow.
All this has changed now. Decay and death came with the curse, and the antediluvian environment changed to the present environmental economy at the time of the great flood sent by God in the days of Noah. With that event, “The world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished” (2 Pet. 3:6).
1 “Man” is used here and frequently in this book, as in the Bible, in the generic sense, as synonymous with “human beings.”
2 P. J. Wiseman, New Discoveries in Babylonia about Genesis (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1946). The “patriarchal documentary” theory of the writing of Genesis is developed fully and convincingly in this book. Also see the commentary on Genesis by Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Record (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1976), p. 22–30.
3 Sometimes a literary work, an artistic design, or even a new dress, is called a “creation,” but this is not really correct. A new combination of matter or ideas is a formation, or manufacture, not a true creation.
4 The exact boundary line between unconscious replicating chemical systems and creatures that have life in the biblical sense (that is, creatures possessing nephesh) is not yet clear from either science or Scripture. It may be possible that some of the simpler invertebrate animals are in the former category. In the case of plants, at least, the fact that they were designed by God to be used as food by men and animals means that they did not really possess life and, therefore, they could not “die.” Death came into the world only as a result of man’s sin (Rom. 5:12).
5 From our present viewpoint, there is little difference between entities that were “created” by God and those that were “made” by Him. For practical purposes, it seems likely that He made things (e.g., land, water, stars, animal bodies) essentially instantaneously, so that in effect they were specially created. Nevertheless, only one specific act of physical creation is recorded as such, since at that time (Gen. 1:1) God created the basic space/mass/time continuum out of whose elemental structure all other physical systems must be formed. Similarly, only one act of biological Creation is recorded (Gen. 1:21), though the nephesh principle then created would likewise be implanted thereafter in every subsequent animal (or man) either formed directly by God or indirectly through reproduction.
6 The light for the first three days obviously did not come from the sun, moon, and stars, since God did not make them and place them in the heavens until the fourth day (Gen. 1:16–19). Nevertheless, the light source for the first three days had the same function (“to divide the light from the darkness”) as did the heavenly bodies from the fourth day onward (Gen. 1:4,18). This “division” now results from the sun and moon and the earth’s axial rotation. For practical purposes, therefore, the primeval light must essentially have come from the same directions as it would later when the permanent light-sources were set