"I
believe in One God, the Father, Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all
things visible and invisible," we confess daily at home and in the church.
This means that the universe is more than an object of intellectual comprehension, it is an object of faith. However many
mysteries the science may discover in the fields of physics, chemistry,
geology, cosmology and so on, the principal questions will still remain
unresolved for man: what were the origins of particles that formed up the
universe, and of the laws of nature? What is the purpose
of everything that surrounds us, and the purpose of a human life? Science is
not only unable to answer these thrilling questions, but it basically cannot
touch them, because they are out of its reach. These questions are answered by
the inspired Bible.
The visionary prophet Moses put down the history
of Creation of the Universe and man in the first chapters of Genesis. Until
recently, science could say nothing convincing about the origin of the
Universe. It was only in the 20th century, after significant
successes of astronomy, geology and paleontology, that the origins of the
Universe became more open to scientific examination. So what? It turned up that
the universe started to exist in exactly the sequence outlined by the prophet
Moses!
It was not Moses’ goal to produce a scientific
report about the Creation; though, his narration outstripped modern science’s
discoveries by millennia. His description was the first testimony that the
universe was not eternal but started to exist in the time, and it occurred in a
staged, evolutionary manner. Modern astronomers came to the conclusion that the
Universe was not eternal after discovering that it expands like a balloon. Like
15 to 20 billion years ago it was all condensed in a microscopic point, which,
as though exploding, started to expand in all directions, gradually shaping up
our visible world ("Big Bang").
Moses divided the Creation of the Universe by God
into seven periods and named them symbolically as days. For six
"days" God was making the world, and on the seventh "He rested
from all his work which he had made." Moses did not define the duration of
these "days." The whole history of the mankind is unfolding during the seventh day, which has been lasting for already
thousands of years. The numeral seven itself was often
used in the Writings in a meaning that was symbolic and not quantitative. It
signifies completeness and wholeness.
"In the beginning God created the heaven
and the earth," — these words of the
Bible embraced everything that God created: our visible, material universe and
the spiritual, angelic world, which we cannot observe physically. The word
"created" means that God made the universe out of nothing. This is
the conclusion that modern scientific discoveries are also driving at: the deeper
nuclear physics penetrates in the fundamentals of matter, the more often it
discovers that the matter is "void." Even "quarks" that
make up protons are evidently not solid particles. It comes that matter is an
inexplicable state of energy.
We continue reading the Biblical description of
the Creation and see that it generally fits into the scheme, suggested by
today’s science. Skipping the details of how galaxies came to be after that
"beginning," Moses focused his narrative on the Creation of the Earth
and what fills it. So, on the first day "God said, Let there be light: and
there was light." These words probably point at the moment when
interstellar gasses and dust, which were the construction material of the Solar
System, had become so concentrated by the gravity field, that a thermonuclear
reaction with abundant radiation of light began in the middle of the gas ball
(fusion of hydrogen to helium) — the Sun began to exist. Light was the factor
that later made it possible for life to start on the Earth.
Comets, micrometeorites, asteroids, protoplanets
formed out of gasses and dust, which formed the Sun. Moses called this twisting
and hurling mass of gasses, dust and particles "water." As the time
passed, attractive interaction formed it into planets. This was the division of
"the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were
above the firmament" on the second "day" of Creation. So, the
Solar System, called "Heaven" in the Bible, received its final
appearance.
The earth, as well as other planets, was initially
glowing. Water, evaporating from the depths of the Earth, fogged around in
thick clouds. When the Earth’s surface cooled down
sufficiently, water started to precipitate as rain, shaping seas and
continents. Than, water and solar light let plants grow on the earth.
This was the third "day."
Primordial giant vegetation (and water-borne
micro-organisms) began cleaning the atmosphere from carbonic acids and
producing oxygen. If anyone had looked at the sky from the ground till then, he
would not have seen the contours of the Sun, Moon or stars, because the Earth
was all wrapped in opaque gasses. In the same way, until today sky is not
visible from the surface of Venus, because thick gasses surround this planet.
That is why Moses wrote that the Sun, Moon and stars appeared on the next day
after plants, i.e. on the fourth day. Godless materialists in the beginning of
the 20th century did not know this and mocked at the Bible’s story,
which described the creation of the Sun after that of plants. In accordance
with the Bible, dispersed solar light reached the surface of the Earth since
the first day of the Creation; the shape of the Sun was not perceivable,
though.
Due to the presence of clean oxygen in the
atmosphere, more complex forms of life started to exist: fishes and birds (the
fifth "day"), and, finally, beasts and humans (the sixth
"day"). The modern science agrees with this sequence of origination
of creatures.
Moses omitted from the Biblical story many details
of the Creation of life, which would be interesting for science. We should
remember that it was not the objective of his narrative to list the details,
but to demonstrate the First-Source of the Universe, its Wise Maker. Moses
concluded his description of the Creation by saying, "And God saw every
thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." In other
words, the Creator had a definite purpose in the Creation of the world: make
everything serve the good, and lead to that which is good. Until today, the
Nature has retained the stamp of goodness in itself, being the evidence of the
Creator’s wisdom and kindness.
According to the Book of Genesis, man was the last
creature. Today’s science also thinks that humans were the youngest beings in
the world of animals. As regards the origin of man, science and the Bible
differ in methodology and definition of purpose. Science tends to establish the
peculiarities of human physicality, origins of the human body, while the Bible
always refers to man in his wholeness, with his intellectual, God-like soul in
addition to the body. However, the Bible states that the human body was created
out of "earth," i.e. out of elements, as well as bodies of animals.
This fact is important, because the Bible confirms that physical likelihood between
humanity and animality. But the Bible accentuated the exclusiveness of man
amongst animals, as the bearer of "Divine breath," the deathless
soul. Through this God-like soul, man possesses special spiritual intuition in
distinguishing the good from the evil. This spiritual intuition draws man
toward fellowship with God and spiritual world, toward moral perfection. In the
extreme, the worldly pleasures only cannot satisfy the thirst of man’s spirit.
These facts give a proof of the Bible’s witness that humanity is not merely the
utter evolutionary stage of an animal, but is a simultaneous representation of
the physical and spiritual worlds. The discovery of this mystery helps man find
the right place in the world, hear the call for doing good,
and long to God.
In the conclusion of this brief review of the
Biblical history of God’s Creation we must mention that, along with the
succession of events, this narrative (and the following story about the life of
the First Couple in Eden and the Fall) contains symbols
and allegories, which are not fully comprehensible. The significance of symbols
is that they give a chance to pass by the confusing details, and understand the
important message that God reveals to men: in this case, it is the message
about the cause of the evil, diseases and death in the world.
Science continues the arduous examination of the
universe. It finds a lot of new and interesting things that help us understand
the Bible fuller and deeper. But often scientists cannot see the forest behind
the trees, as the proverb has it. That is why,
understanding of principles should have priority over knowledge of details. The
significance of the Bible is exactly in that this Book reveals the principles
of existence to us, and this keeps it meaningful while the ages pass.
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