This sermon will be hated by some and praised by others. It is a description and discussion of scientific theory and understanding compared to Biblical doctrine.

Mr. Herbert Armstrong used to start many of his sermons by reading Genesis 1:1.

Gen 1:1 (KJV) In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

He felt that the rest of Genesis 1 was a story of the six-day re-creation of the Earth after Satan's rebellion as described in Ezek 28:11-19.

I think there is no doubt this is describing Satan. He was in the garden of Eden before Adam was made. The last part of verse 17 through verse19 seems to describe Satan's future destiny, that God will destroy him. But does Ezek 28 actually state that Satan destroyed the first world God created, or is that speculation?

Let's turn to Isaiah 14 for another description of Satan's fall.

We certainly see Satan's rebellion here. Verses 15-17 describe Satan's future destiny. But, again, do any of these scriptures describe Satan destroying God's first creation? Verse 17 might be construed as the destruction of the world but I think it is prophetic of the end times, not the time before man was created. If not, who made the cities, and where did the nations and kingdoms come from?

The latest belief of cosmologists, those who study the form and content of the universe, is that the universe began with a gigantic explosion. Many call it the "big bang." Cosmologists claim, can even give proof, that the big bang occurred about 15 billion years ago.

The Bible claims it was all done in six days; six literal, 24-hour days.

So, today we will analyze the big bang theory and compare it with the Bible's six days of creation. Our sources are the Bible, of course, and a couple of books written by a Jewish PHD from MIT, named Gerald Schroeder. The scientific perspectives are from his books. This sermon will be more technical than sermons should be, but science can only be simplified so far. Squeezing 15 billion years into six days is a big job, so we better get started.

Is the Old Testament to be trusted? Has someone been fiddling with it? Some say that Ezra or someone changed scripture. Can that be proved, or disproved?

The original Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, Judaism calls it the Torah, was dictated to Moses by God 3500 years ago. Moses wrote the Torah. "Torah", incidentally, means "a showing of the way," not "the law," as many believe.

The quality control of the hand-copying of the Torah by the sofreim is phenomenal. Not one jot or tittle, not one superfluous mark, is allowed to be changed. If the slightest mistake is made, the scroll must be started over.

The first temple, Solomon's temple, which was built in the 480th year after Israel left Egypt according to 1 Kings 1:1, was destroyed in 586 BC. That's 2593 years ago, 800 years after Moses received the Torah. Following the destruction of the first Temple, a group of Jews moved to Yemen, taking their scrolls of the Torah with them.

When the modern state of Israel was established in 1948, the Jewish community of Yemen returned. The scrolls they brought with them were compared with the scrolls brought back from Europe after the holocaust. They compared exactly, except that the covers were mounted differently. No changes appear to have been made to the Torah by anyone since the destruction of the first temple and by projection, since Moses first wrote it.

My point is: I think we can depend upon the first chapter of Genesis being true to the words spoken by the Creator to Moses, except for possible errors when translating the Hebrew to English, of course.

Now let's look at the big bang theory. The big bang theory says that the universe began with a super-compressed bit of energy perhaps even as small as the size of a mustard seed. I say mustard seed because about 1200 AD a Jewish sage named Nahmanides, also known as Ramban, wrote something like "At the briefest instant following creation all the matter of the universe was concentrated in a very small place, no larger than a grain of mustard." What was to become the whole universe had been squeezed into something possibly as small as this tiny seed. The compression was so high that all its matter was in the form of pure energy. You might think of it as pure heat.

The relationship of matter and energy was discovered by Albert Einstein and provided the opening chapter to the whole science of atomic energy. It was first known as Einstein's theory of relativity. It has now been proven to be true and so it is called "the law of relativity." It is expressed by the formula E=mc², where E is energy, m is mass, and c is the speed of light.

Then "something" caused this tiny seed of energy to explode. Is that "something" explained in Genesis 1:1?

In the beginning.....In the beginning of what? Nahmanides concludes, "In the beginning of time." This is an important concept. Time started at creation.

That first event was followed by what science calls the inflationary epoch of the universe, a period lasting, by current estimates, from 10^-35 (that's a 1 preceded by 34 zeroes) to 10^-32 seconds after the beginning. Science cannot deal with times smaller than that. You might even think of it as time after the creation. This extremely brief and incredibly rapid expansion moved what was to become the universe from a size possibly smaller than a mustard seed to the size of a grapefruit. What was too small to have been seen by man's telescopes today has expanded, and is expanding, to a size where man's telescopes today cannot see the end of it. The beginning of the universe marked the beginning of space, matter, and time. As the universe expanded, the ethereal substance created at the beginning congealed into nuclear particles such as neutrons and protons and finally into the tangible matter we know today. The creation produced all that was, is, or will ever be extant in the universe.

How does this compare with the Biblical account?

Verse 2 requires a few definitions. The "face of the deep" in verse 2 indicates an abyss or a very deep, measureless space. The "waters" indicate a thick, liquid-like substance which we might describe as a confused soup.

"Without form" is from the Hebrew word "Tohu", H8414 ("H" numbers refer to the Hebrew portion of Strong's Concordance), and means something empty, formless, unformed. "Void" is from the Hebrew word "Bohu", H922, and means emptiness or void. "And the earth was tohu and bohu....", unformed and void. Unformed or chaotic is a fair translation of tohu. But bohu does not only mean void. Both the Talmud and Nahmanides state that bohu means filled with the building blocks of matter. A more accurate, though cumbersome, translation of Genesis 1:2 might be: "And the earth was in a state of chaos but filled with the building blocks of matter."

"And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." This describes God hovering over the very young universe. It is the only place in the Bible that this description is made. Biblically, this was required to start the making of the universe following its creation. It is comparable to the one-time, science defined, inflation phenomenon we just talked about.

Verse 2 described darkness on the face of the deep. Verses 3-5 continue that thought.

But, the Bible says the sun was not visible until the 4th day. We'll read about that in verse 16. So where did the light come from?

To answer the light question, let's go back to the instant of the big bang. We said that ingredients to build the whole universe were compressed into that tiny seed of energy. What happens when you suddenly release some gas held under pressure? It expands. And so did the energy in the mustard seed. It expanded and it cooled - by the second law of thermodynamics, the same law that operates your refrigerator.

Although photons (the stuff of which light is composed) were and are the main components of the universe, the very young universe was dark. The photons were held in a confused soup of random collision with the masses of free electrons. Only after some hundreds of thousands of years did cosmic temperatures fall to a level that permitted electrons to bind in orbit about atomic nuclei. With this binding of electrons into atomic orbits, the ubiquitous photon-electron collisions ceased. (Ubiquitous means a simultaneous presence everywhere.) Photons were finally free to travel. They burst forth bathing the universe in a blaze of light.

Cosmologists tell us the universe has expanded by a ratio of a million squared since it began. That's 10⁶ x 10⁶. They also tell us it was a million million times hotter when it started than it is today and that it is presently about 15 billion years old. As the universe expanded, you can see that it expanded a huge amount the first year but, because its volume was bigger each year, the distance of its extremities from the center grew at a smaller rate each year. To clarify: Picture a huge ball or sphere expanding its volume at a constant rate. As its volume expands, the distance from its center to the outside (its radius) expands too, but at a much lesser amount than its change in volume.

Now, let's take the two numbers we have just quoted from cosmology and see what we can do with them. If the universe is 15 billion years old and it has expanded by a ratio of a million squared since it began, we should be able to determine the average time per expansion. Dividing the estimated 15 billion years by a million squared gives us a period of 0.015 of a year. Now for the eye-opener: If you multiply the average time of expansion of 0.015 of a year by 365 days a year, you will obtain (guess what) about 6 days, the length of time the Bible says it took God to make everything up to and including Adam.

What does this tell us? The universe, expanding at what science thinks is a ratio of a million millions for 15 billion years, amounts to only about six days from God's perspective. How can this be? We mentioned earlier that the big bang marked the beginning of space, matter and time. It was the creation of Genesis 1:1. The 15 billion years is time and the million squared is space, so let's look at time and space.

If you sound a tone at second one and send a message that you will sound another tone every second, how long will it take someone to hear the second tone? A second later? Not if time is changing. And, following the big bang, time is changing...at the rate of expansion from the center. Time is stretching out with the stretching of the universe. It might take years, centuries, millennia for the next second's tone to reach the listener. That's because the listener is on the receiving end, and the receiving end is moving, moving away at the rate of the expansion of the universe; very fast at first, not so fast later on. On the other hand, the sending end is static. One second after the first tone, the second tone is sent. But God is essentially sending out a tone every 24 hours for six days. Science and mankind, the receiver, is moving away at the speed of expansion and detecting the 24 hour tones after lapses of billions or hundreds of millions of years.

Let me repeat what I just said to help you digest that.

God and the Bible are looking forward from the date of creation to Adam, at the end of the six-day creation period. The creation of man was the goal, the whole purpose of God's creation. Without the goal of creating Adam, there was no reason for creating the universe. Science and all mankind looks backward at all history. Only God could look forward at what was to happen. It all began with God. That is the key.

To help you visualize the difference, consider a square panel held in front of you. It looks square. If it is turned 45 degrees, it looks like a trapezoid. If it is taken two miles away, it looks like a dot. It is all in the eyes of the beholder. But to the person holding the panel, it still looks like a square. The distance it was moved is not a factor to the holder of the panel. As the universe expanded, both space and time were stretched.

Now let's look at day 1:

In verse 3, "light", H216, signifies, not only light, but fire. The same word is used for lightning in Job 37:3. It possesses caloric or latent heat.

In verse 5, "day" is translated from the Hebrew word "boqer", H1242. Boqer comes from the root word Baqar, meaning an end of night.

"Darkness", H2822, is defined as thick darkness, complete blackness. Some define it as chaos or complete disorder.

In verse 5, "night" is translated from the Hebrew word "'ereb", H6143. Night implies a period without direction or of chaos.

Many feel these words describe the change from chaos to order during this day. Could it go the other way? Statisticians will tell you that conditions go from order to disorder, not the other way around. A look at your desk my help you understand that. But given enough time, it is statistically possible for random conditions to come together into order again. However, that time far exceeds 15 billion years. How many years would it take for all the parts of a 747 airplane to join together in a junk yard? How, then, could conditions on day one go from total disorder to order? They had to have "something" directing them. That "something" is the same "something" that designed and created the whole thing, the exploding mustard seed, in the first place. That "something" is the Creator, our God. Order was imposed by God on the disorder that had existed. And, as we shall see, order was imposed on each of the six days; actually, in this case, on each of the seven days.

In a brilliant insight into the quality of the world present at the close of the six days of Genesis, Onkelos, the ancient translator of Hebrew into Aramaic, translated the "and it was very good" of Genesis 1:31 as "and it was a unified order."

Genesis 1:5 in the New American Standard Bible describes Creation day as "Day 1" because it is the beginning of time. "Day 1" shows absolute time. "First day", as used by many translations, shows comparison. Day 1 is correct. It is absolute.

However, the light mentioned in verses 3-5 does not refer to sunlight. The sun was not "turned on" until the fourth day. Scientifically, the light was from the photons being released as we already discussed. It had to be a kind of translucent light because the air could not be purified until the plants began releasing oxygen and plants didn't exist yet.

So the night and day reference in verse 5 is saying, "from chaos in light to order in light" was day 1.

How long was day 1 from the receiver's viewpoint? Approximately 8 billion years. Remember, the initial velocity was stupendous, almost beyond imagination. Time was stretching at an enormous rate. As Einstein and the law of relativity taught us, time is a relative thing. How long from the sender's viewpoint? One 24-hour day.

Each day marked an epoch, so let's move to day two.

Day two was for the creation of the heavens. From a receiver's viewpoint it lasted about four billion years. Science believes this period was used to create the milky way, which includes, of course, our solar system and Earth. Again, the "waters" were the thick, liquid-like substance of space; as we just described it: a confused soup. Notice that in day 2 there was no statement made, "that it was very good", or in Onkelos' translation, "it was a unified order." God seems to reserve this statement to what affected Earth.

Day three was for the creation of water (H₂O) and the first life on Earth.

Science agrees. What science does not agree on, of course, is the time frame. Science thinks it took about two billion years for water to appear on Earth and for the first life to appear in the water and on the Earth. With the abundance of liquid water and carbon on the Earth, the appearance of life on Earth occurred almost immediately after the Earth solidified. In fact, it appeared so quickly that statistically, life's formation from inanimate matter cannot be attributed to random chemical reactions. Paleontologists, archaeologists, and mathematicians alike find no adequate theory based on phenomena known in nature to account for the immediate appearance of life on Earth. The will of the Creator was and is imposed from time to time on the otherwise natural flow of events. Biblically, Divine punctuation in the development of the world is most evident from the tenfold repetition "and God said..." in the 31 verses of the first chapter of Genesis. We'll talk more about divine intervention later.

I think it is interesting that, after the original creation statement in verse 1, the word "create", H1254, is not used on days one through four.

Earth seemed to have been designed with the ability to produce grass and trees. All that had to be done on day three, was for the Creator to order the Earth to produce it.

Day four was for the "turning on" of the sun, moon, and stars.

They had been there since day two, but could not be seen due to the translucent atmosphere on Earth. But the appearance of plant life in the waters and land of Earth allowed oxygen to move into the atmosphere, through the process of photosynthesis, which in turn, removed carbon and nitrogen compounds from the atmosphere and incorporated them into cellular material. As these biologically driven reactions proceeded, they cleaned the atmosphere and made it transparent. Science estimates this took about one billion years. God, the sender, gave it 24 hours.

During day five, the first birds and aquatic creatures caused an explosion of life on the Earth.

Science agrees that this period of 1/2 billion (500 million) years was marked by the first animal life swarming abundantly in waters, followed by reptiles and winged animals. This first multicellular animal life had the basic body plans of all future animals. Science also finds fossils of winged insects from this period. But let's look at verses 20-23 a little closer. First there were living creatures in the waters, the oceans, lakes, rivers. Then we read of birds. These are the creatures which ruled the Earth during this period.

This is probably a good place to point out that science is baffled by the apparent tendency of species to change in steps with no apparent transitional species between the species. There may have been changes within the form, but its basic structure remained until it disappeared and a new, different structure arose in its place, suddenly. A slow, gradual, evolution of a new species from one that predates it, is never seen in the fossil record. So the classic perception of evolution being one of gradual change is in error. Fossils show a kind of stepping-stone evolution where one species ended and another began.

What about the "great sea creatures" of verse 21? Almost every translation of the Bible uses a different word for these creatures: whales, alligators, sea monsters, even dragons. The Hebrew word is "taninim", and from other uses of the word in the Bible, we can know its meaning.

In Ex 4:3, Moses' staff became a nahash. Nahash is the Hebrew word for snake. After Moses returned to Egypt, in Ex 7:10, his staff became a taninin. Later, in Ex 7:15, it became a nahash again. But it was the same staff. It would appear that a taninin is in the same family as a nahash. A snake is in the reptile family, so it would appear that these creatures were giant reptiles. Strong's Concordance says they were marine or land monsters. More about them later.

Verse 21 also says that God created these creatures. This implies to me that He had to interfere with the normal process the earth was going through to cause something exceptional to happen. Science can not explain how animal life began, and how it began immediately after the Earth had cooled, when water had formed, and grasses became available for food. They only agree that it did. Life was almost spontaneous once the Earth was ready. Now some may say that life was implanted into the basic plan when the big bang occurred. But whenever it was done, God had to intervene to start animal life. It did not happen by itself. God did not make it out of what was already there. He created ,H1254, it. This can also explain why the animal world operates on instinct.

During day six, land animals, mammals and humans were made.

In verse 24, God says, "Let the Earth bring forth...." these land animals. What happened to the giant creatures that had dominated the Earth up to this time? How were such animals as squirrels able to replace the giant creatures that were here from the fifth day - for 150 million years, according to science? Is the old Chevron commercial, about dinosaurs becoming petroleum, correct? They had 150 million years to do it according to science.

Sixty five million years ago a catastrophe hit the Earth. A meteor approximately six miles in diameter hit the Earth in the region of the Gulf of Mexico. Quadrillions of tons of dust were blasted into the stratosphere reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface to an intensity less than that of a quarter moon. Photosynthetic rates and temperatures plummeted. Only the most resourceful of the animals would survive. 90% of the animal life on the Earth died.

Science again agrees with Genesis 1 (at least up to verse 28) and estimates the repopulation of the Earth by land animals took about 1/4 billion (250 million) years.

But what of the fossil remains of human-like creatures? Creatures like the Cro-Magnon man and the Neanderthal man. Enough fossils of these creatures have been collected to fill many museums. Did God put them into the Earth just to deceive and confuse man, or to challenge the faith of Bible believers? Verse 26 says that in the sixth day God also made man in His image, out of the soil. Was Adam, which means soil, only one of many humanoids walking the Earth? How might Adam have been different? Verse 27 seems to give us the answer. Verse 27 says He created Adam. That means God personally intervened in the normal process of the Earth in the case of Adam just as He had done to begin plant life in day 3 and animal life in day 5. It was something He couldn't program Earth to do. He had to do it Himself, at the moment.

Gen 2:7 says that God formed man out of the dust of the ground.

The making of man in verse 26 relates to the body of mankind. The Hebrew word "Adam" comes from the root word "adamah'", H127, meaning soil or ground as in Gen 2:7. The creation of Adam in verse 27 relates to the human soul or spirit, the neshama', H5397. The word "breath" in verse 7 is a translation of the word neshama'. In verse 27, God gave Adam a spirit, the spirit of man. Animals don't have that. Neither did any other humanoids, if they existed then. (Gen 5:3 seems to imply they might have, else why would he wait so long?) But verse 7 also says that man became a living soul. The word soul here, "nephesh", H5315, means animal soul or a breathing creature. The Tanakh reads, "the LORD God formed man ('adam) from the dust of the Earth ('adamah)."

We used to think we had three dimensions: Breadth, width and height. Then, following Einstein's discovery, we found we had four: The previous three plus time. But we may have just discussed the fifth: The spirit of man. Has that got your mind spinning? The Talmud claims there are 26 dimensions, all the latter concerning the description of God the Father.

As I said before, the entire universe was made with mankind in mind. The very purpose of the creation of the universe was to create mankind having the human spirit. God wanted a family. He had it all figured out from the start. When you look up at the heavens on a dark, cloudless night, remind yourself that all that you can see was made for mankind. When you see a beautiful sunrise or sunset, or see beautiful scenery, you can thank God for creating it all for mankind. When you see the variety and detail of a flower or leaf or tree or bird or butterfly, you can thank God for His creation. He did it all for us. Is He a loving parent, or what?

Well, that is the story. We've covered the story of creation as described by God; the story of creation as described by science; the explanation of why six days can equal 15 billion years; the detailed explanation of each of the six days from both a scientific perspective and the Bible's. Let’s review again science’s and the Bible’s description of each Biblical day.

Day one: The creation of the basic building blocks of the universe, the release of photons of light, galaxies start to form, took 8 billion years by man’s reckoning. Why so long? Because the speed of the outward movement of the young universe was so extremely fast that one day from God’s perspective saw the bounds of the universe move very, very far.

Day two: The creation of the heavenly firmament, the milky way including our sun took 4 billion years from man’s perspective. Notice how the decreased outward velocity of the universe caused the time from man’s perspective to be cut in half.

Day three: The earth has cooled and liquid water appears as oceans and followed almost immediately by the first forms of life: bacteria and photosynthetic algae, the beginnings of plant life. Day three took 2 billion years from man’s perspective. Again the reduced outward velocity caused the time from man’s perspective to be cut in half.

Day four: The sun, moon and stars become visible because earth’s atmosphere has been made transparent through the cleansing of oxygen-rich atmosphere by photosynthesis. Day four took one billion years from man’s perspective. The time again, cut in about half.

Day five: The first animal life swarms abundantly in the waters, followed by reptiles and winged animals. The basic design of all animal life is established: two eyes, a head, etc.

Day five took about 500 million years from man’s perspective.

Day six: Land animals, mammals, humankind is formed. About 250 million years.

Each period reduced by half due to the universe’s decreased outward speed.

In closing, let me give you two more quotes:

In 1190 AD, Maimonides, in his Guide for the Perplexed, wrote:

(If any of you are interested in reading the books which I used to develop this sermon, their titles are "Genesis and the Big Bang" and "The Science of God." The latter is tougher reading without a background in science and mathematics, but well worth the effort.)

Sermon given by Wayne Bedwell

July 21, 2007