Lesson 9
THE
HISTORY OF THE EARTH
We have seen in the previous lesson that the Bible does
not give a
specific date for the creation of the earth. The Bible does give a
sequence to the earth's history and it identifies a few events which
can be checked by looking into the record we find in the fossils and
rock strata of the earth's crust. A flood of questions, both scientific
and biblical, are unleashed when a discussion of this type is
initiated. (It is not the purpose of this brief lesson to answer every
question, but rather to establish some concepts that may aid the
student in his or her own study of this subject.)
We have seen in our first
lesson that the earth had a beginning and
that the beginning was caused. In subsequent lessons we have seen that
there is an incredible amount of evidence that the cause was a personal
God. Science does not lend itself to an explanation of the creation of
matter. Science assumes matter had certain properties and had achieved
a certain level of complexity and then it provides some possible
explanations as to how it might have gone from that assumed initial
condition to the present condition. Whether science starts at the first
10- 43 second or at some later point (both of which have
been suggested), the procedure is the same.
In a very similar way the Bible starts with a certain set of conditions
without explaining how those conditions were produced. Genesis 1:1 says
there was a beginning
and that God created (bara)
the heaven and the
earth (erets in Hebrew). If we
take the Hebrew literally in this verse,
we are being told that all space, time and matter/energy in the cosmos
were created at that point. We are not told how they were created--just
that they were created. This matter/energy was formed into the heaven
and the earth. The heaven would include all celestial objects: the sun,
the moon, stars, galaxies, black holes, nebulae, comets--everything.
How long it took for this to be accomplished is not stated in the
verse. A person may complain that the sun and the moon and the stars
are described in verses 14-19, but the word used in these verses is
asah not bara. In other words, verses 14-19
are not saying that these
objects were “created” at that time, but that they were “made.” Verse
14 tells us why they were made to be seen from the earth at this point
in the creation history: "Let them be for signs, and for seasons, and
for days, and years."
One might theorize that
heavy cloud cover may have obscured the view of
the heavens from the earth so that one could not establish the signs,
seasons, days, or years. Now the chronometers were established in
preparation for man’s arrival.
Not only does the first verse give us the creation of celestial
objects, but of a functional earth itself. Notice that the verse says
God created the heaven and the earth. The word erets in Hebrew used in
this verse does not mean a blob of molten rock. The normal use of this
word is for a working earth. There are numerous passages where the word
erets clearly means a
functional earth such as Genesis 6:4-11 and
Deuteronomy 28:23-26. By the end of Genesis 1:1 there was a functional,
living, working earth. If you had stood upon the earth at this point in
time, you would have recognized it. Let us once again remind you that
how long God used to accomplish this creation is not revealed in the
passage. Only by making enormous assumptions can we give any
approximation as to when this creation occurred or how much 
time was
involved in its completion.
Another unknown in this verse is the method or methods God used to
accomplish His purposes. Did God create oil in the ground, coal deep
within the earth, canyons like the Grand Canyon, fossils deep inside
the earth and on the tops of high mountains? He could have done all of
this and thus given the impression that the earth was produced over
eons of time if He chose to do so. God also could have created you two
seconds ago with this booklet in your hand, the memory in your head,
and the earth functioning as it is all around you. The question is not
what God could have done, but rather what 
did He do. To suggest
that
God created a full grown earth with fossils in the ground, carbonized
plants in coal seams, the light from distant galaxies in place, all in
an instant, raises some serious questions about God’s nature and the
promises He gives. Consider the following: "Let no man say when he is
tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil,
neither tempteth he any man" (James 1:13). (See also Deuteronomy 32:4;
Psalms 25:8-10; 33:4-5; Romans 3:4; Jeremiah 9:24; Lamentations 3:25;
Numbers 23:19; James 1:17; Titus 1:29; Psalm 111:3; Romans 9:14; and 1
Samuel 15:29.)
The Bible does not present God as a deliberately deceptive God who
purposely produces evidence that would mislead sincere, seeking
individuals. Why would God place a dried out dinosaur in a deposit
thousands of feet underground if the animal in fact never lived? The
answer is that He would not. As Einstein said, "God is subtle, but he's
not malicious."
A more logical and consistent approach to the creation is to realize
that God has made (asah) much
of what is on the earth as well as
creating it! Genesis 2:3 closes the history of the earth of the first
chapter by saying: "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" (emphasis added). Both processes were involved in all
of the
things that God produced.
Not only was the matter created in Genesis 1:1, but that matter was
shaped and molded into a finished "heaven and earth." In order for that
to happen, some making, and forming, and shaping had to take place.
This molding and shaping is a continuous process--still in operation in
various ways today. It is very possible that a living ecosystem
operated in Genesis 1:1 to produce the earth. Bacteria may have swarmed
in the oceans and giant plants may have lived in great swamps.
Dinosaurs may have roamed freely 
accomplishing their purpose in being.
The purpose of all of this would have been to prepare the earth for
man. This living ecosystem would have produced the coal, oil, gas, and
the like, as well as providing the basis of man’s ultimate food supply!
Of the millions of species that have lived upon the earth, the Genesis
account describes a very few. The whole history of this planet is
described in 31 short verses of Genesis 1. The Bible’s purpose is to
say that God created it all--not how or when. It is when man speculates
on the how and when, that error and conflict creep in. We would be
amiss to expect Genesis 1:1 to say "In the beginning God synthesized
deoxyribonucleic acid by the dehydration and the polymerization of
polypeptides ... ." Such an explanation would have been total nonsense
to the people of Moses' day, and to much of the world today.
When the Genesis account does identify things we can understand, the
sequence of the creation agrees with the scientific evidence. Some of
the biblical statements are subtle and require considerable study of
the original language, while others are abundantly clear. The structure
of the water in the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere is implied
in Genesis 1:6--7. Verses 9 and 10 imply that the water was in one
place (or bowl) and the land (erets)
was in another. This suggests that
there was a single land mass and a single body of water early in the
earth’s history.
More clear is the statement that plants were present very early in the
earth’s history (before animals or man), and that three different kinds
of plants were produced (verses 10-11):
deshe--grass
(moss: algae, or lichen)
(not chatsir--which is what
you mow)
eseb--herb (horsetails, ferns,
conifers)
peri--flowering tree (apple,
dogwood, etc.)
The fossil record shows that stromatolites (picture to
the right)
from algae are among the first living things upon the earth.
Gymnosperms appear later stratigraphically and include ferns,
horsetails, and conifers. The most recent plants are the angiosperms,
the flowering plants which produce seed-bearing fruit. This sequence
fits the biblical description perfectly. The kind of accuracy we have
seen here continues through Genesis 1.
The first animals were water creatures (Genesis 1:20-21). The first
warm-blooded creatures were birds (verses 20-21). Later are the mammals
(verse 24), and the last thing to be created is man (verses 27-28).
Much is omitted in these verses. No where do we see duckbill
platypuses, echidnas, kangaroos, insects, bats, walking or swimming
birds, and hundreds of other forms of life we are familiar with today,
but everything that is mentioned is sequentially correct.
There is an important point of biblical interpretation that needs to be
made. The word "hermeneutic" is used by scholars to describe how we go
about 
interpreting the Bible. We
are suggesting a very literal and a
very logical hermeneutic in these lessons. We are suggesting that when
you read a word in the original language of the Bible, that the word in
Hebrew means the same thing every time it is used unless there is some
stated reason why that is not the case. This literalness does have some
doctrinal importance. The word "baptizo" in the Bible, for example,
literally means to immerse and in some biblical cases can be shown to
have been understood that way by the first century Christians. John was
baptizing at the Jordan because there "was much water there" (John
3:23) certainly suggests that he was immersing people. In Acts 8:38
when Philip baptized the Ethiopian Eunuch they went "down into the
water." We would suggest then, that all baptisms in the New Testament
involved immersion. That comes from the hermeneutic we have stated.
Someone may not wish to take the Bible that literally, or may not feel
that it makes any difference, but we use this example to help you
understand the words in Genesis.
In verses 24-25 the word behemah is used to describe an animal God
brings into existence. What was that animal? The word behemah is used
52 times in the Old Testament. Forty-nine of those 52 times it means
cow. The other three times are here in Genesis 1. So what does it mean
here? Does it mean Tyrannosaurus rex?
A cow was something that could be
milked. I would love to see you try to milk a T. rex. In Job 40:15-18 a
"behemoth" is described. This is an enlarged form of behemah. Did the
ancient Israelites know an animal that fits this description? The
answer is that they did--perhaps more than one. One animal that we know
has existed is the glyptodont which was a giant ground sloth. It had a
"tail like a cedar" and a very small brain.
The bottom line here is that what is described in the creation week of
Genesis 1 are the animals that Moses was familiar with--his cattle,
sheep, goats, chickens, etc. What else would you expect? Trying to
explain an animal to Moses that he had never seen would be unnecessary
and incredibly difficult. How would you describe a platypus, an
echidna, a penguin, an amoeba, a virus, a bat, a mole, a moray eel, a
blue whale, or a dinosaur to a man who had never seen one? We do not
see dinosaurs in the biblical record, nor would we expect to see one
there. You can argue that they existed but simply were not described.
You can argue they were elsewhere and Moses never saw one. You can also
argue that they existed in a different time period and that God used
them to prepare the earth and never intended for Moses to be concerned
with such animals.
There are many unanswered questions in the Genesis account because of
its brevity. Questions of time are the most obvious, but there are many
others. The message Genesis gives is that God created everything, and
He created man specially in His image. Much has been left for man to
learn, and science is the tool by which we learn it. The brief biblical
record is accurate in what it says. When we think we have a conflict it
is due to either our misreading and/or misunderstanding of the biblical
record, or our misreading and/or misunderstanding of science. The one
who did the creating will not give us a contradictory record of that
creation in His written account.
Lesson 9 Questions
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for the
Intermediate Correspondence Course.
11/5/2009
