What amazes me is this: Before it became routine to have test-tube babies, unbelievers were ridiculing the Biblical claim that a woman could have a child without having sex with a male. Now, the procedure is no big deal.

As Wikipedia states, ". IVF is a major treatment in infertility when other methods of achieving conception have failed." Link: Wikipedia: In Vitro Fertilization

As soon as human scientists can do things, OK, it is doable. But before this, unbelievers scoff and say , "Oh no, God cannot do this, he is dumber than a monkey and cannot even ape his human creation's accomplishments! "  What hutzpah! No wonder God is tired of the unbelievers. Thus the Christian's belief in God's ability to put a fertilized ovum into the virgin Mary's womb has been vindicated. Of course, scoffers and blasphemers of God have kept quiet about this setback.

In regard to terra-forming, as soon as Carl Sagan and other renowned scientists begin speculating and issuing opinions about our future ability to terra-form planets within the solar system, everybody is in awe and the belief is instantaneous.  What totally astounds me is that in that article, centuries were postulated! Centuries! Are we really so full of ourselves that what we believe may be done with human technology within centuries, God cannot do 100 times better or faster?

For these reasons, the scoffing unbelievers are without excuse as the Bible states.  Still, let it be stated once again that the Bible shows that the creative days refer to a period of time much longer than 24 hours each.

Here a little about two curios details about day one and four is taken up.

An important point must not be forgotten!  The fact that the Bible tells us that the heavens and the earth already exists and have been created in the beginning.

Day one starts early – real early.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. God divided the light from the darkness. 4And God saw the light, that [it was] good: and 5And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night: and the evening and the morning were the first day. (Webster)

On day one light was made to shine on earth.

What that implies is unknown. Does that mean to say that this is so early that the Sun just began to shine forth light? Or, does it mean that the interstellar dust hindering light from reaching the earth was cleaned out from between the Sun and the Earth? Unknowns all of them!

What must be taken into consideration in this is the information given about the state of the atmosphere at this point.  In verse six, which naturally occurs later than verse three, the waters of the earth are divided into the water in the atmosphere and above it (? - that which came down during the flood) and the ocean waters. 

From this we may understand that prior to this the earth was too warm to permit the water vapours to condense.  The earth's atmosphere then would have been quite opaque from this and probably even dirty from other sources of volcano activity still going on.  The sunlight shining upon the earth was therefore not able to reach the earth's ground or surface except perhaps in a dim, diffuse, and greyish manner.  This is why the Bible's account contains two references to this event.

Day four - a surprise

14And 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. 15And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16And 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. 17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth. 18And to rule over the day, and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it [was] good. 19And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. (Webster)

A rotating earth

The wording later in verse 16 shows that the earth at this point is rotating according to God's desire so as to cause day and night to appear repeatedly, successively as it does today.

Day one brought light.  Day four brings light

In the pre vious subheading "Day One" the Bible's own facts permits us to reason out why day four also brings light.  Here the water vapours have been properly settled into oceans and whatever vapours the atmosphere contains.  Is the atmosphere also cleaned from volcanic dust and clouds so that now it permits the lights of the heavenly bodies to be discerned from the planets surface? Or, is there an added complexity at work here?  Is the solar wind at work cleaning debris away so that the Sun can shine without obstruction on Earth? All of the above may contribute to the light becoming bright enough from the surface to be able to view the heavenly bodies of stars, etc.  

Perhaps cosmologists who believe in the Bible may assist in shining some light on this problem. This problem underscores the brevity and compactness of the Biblical account – there is not much to go on. We are left with the simple – God created things and saw that they were good. Did this take millions of years, or was the earth terraformed in a short time? Everything is open to speculation through the record that nature provides by the probing of scientists. But let the scoffers be reminded that if human scientists believe in centuries of terraforming, not in millennia, then their own prejudices condemn them in obvious ways in regard to what is common logic for believers.

Since the Bible is silent on the above, the Christian does not need to reject the long time - eras or eons - that scientists claim to have passed – at least not until God reveals otherwise.  What is really, really mysterious, is that the two phased process in regard to light may perhaps be extrapolated from this quote from Wikipedia: Solar System: Formation, last paragraph.

Quote: "Once the young Sun began producing energy, the solar wind blew the gas and dust in the protoplanetary disk into interstellar space and ended the growth of the planets. T Tauri stars have far stronger stellar winds than more stable, older stars."

Here the scientists state that the interstellar space between the planets and the Sun was occupied by dust, and gas. As the Bible states, at first there was light.  Perhaps the light was not very bright because of the heavens being obscured by the interstellar refuse. Then after quite a period, the Bible shows that the heavens became clear enough to see both light, the light source, and the stars clearly.

As such the Bible's statement seems to be in accord with what the scientists state happened. As Wikipedia explains, after the protosun began its thermonuclear fusion eventually it became a real Sun, from this point on the stellar or solar wind blew the interstellar refuse out of the system.  Unfortunately, there is no mention of the timeframe of these above mentioned events. Nonetheless, they seem to harmonize with the Biblical statements about the light.

That doesn't mean that I, a lay man in this, have all the answers to the above. But until someone tells me why the above cannot be right, it seems to fit.

Link to Wikipedia: Sun: Life Cycle

According to the article Sun: Life Cycle in Wikipedia , the Sun is approximately 4.57 billion years old.  Assuming that this counts from when God in the Bible said "Let there be light !" then the few thousand years that the seventh day has consumed become smidgens that barely affect the calculations. Again, I do not claim this to be true – I am simply speculating on what may be possible.

Thus the time above divided between six creative days gives an approximate figure of 761 ⅔ million years per creative day–an impressive figure.

I have however seen an article about evolution speculating on between 4.5 - 3.9 billion years for the above 4.57 value. So there is a difference of opinion which may permit one to round each creative day down to 700 million years / day - for the sake of aesthetics.

9And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered into one place, and let the dry [land] appear: and it was so. 10And God called the dry [land] Earth, and the collection of waters he called Seas: and God saw that it [was] good.
11And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed [is] in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12And the earth brought forth grass, [and] herb yielding seed after its kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed [was] in itself, after its kind: and God saw that it [was] good. 13And the evening and the morning were the third day.

The sequence of events begins in a logical fashion, not in the fashion one usually sees as in the Gilgamesh or other old fables with outrageous, outlandish claims. Did you notice the terraforming being done! Here a direct and specific seeding of various plants, trees, etc is being done.

Dinosaur or not?

In Job 40:15~, a description that near as any I have encountered fits a large dinosaur.  Please judge for yourself, and pay attention to the description of the tail etc.   Crocodiles don't eat grass and are not vegetarians as cows; that excludes them as candidates for being behemoth.  A hippopotamus does not have much of a tail which excludes it.  A strong point in favour of the dinosaur interpretation is that it is the "beginning of the ways of God."

 15 Behold behemoth whom I made with thee, he eateth grass like an ox. 16 His strength is in his loins, and his force in the navel of his belly. 17 He setteth up his tail like a cedar, the sinews of his testicles are wrapped together. 18 His bones are like pipes of brass, his gristle like plates of iron. 19 He is the beginning of the ways of God, who made him, he will apply his sword. 20 To him the mountains bring forth grass : there all the beasts of the field shall play. 21 He sleepeth under the shadow, in the covert of the reed, and in moist places. 22 The shades cover his shadow, the willows of the brook shall compass him about. 23 Behold, he will drink up a river, and not wonder : and he trusteth that the Jordan may run into his mouth. 24 In his eyes as with a hook he shall take him, and bore through his nostrils with stakes. (DRC)

What should not be forgotten is as follows.  If for the sake of argument, this was taken to be a purely human account not inspired or approved of by God, the account in itself is nothing but trouble for evolutionist.  Why?  Because the description gives details about a contemporary animal to Job; details that only could have come by direct observation.  All indication is therefore that whether or not the account is inspired, some dinosaur species, and probably many others, lived together with man at Job's time.  The pictures found on ancient pottery in South America back this interpretation up.

What is interesting in the YTL translation is the use of term monsters.  Would this include the dinosaurs?  If that were to be assumed, then the dinosaurs may have been created from about 80 million years ago according to the creation account (if science is right about these long epochs) and the previous speculation on a creative day's length.  But this remains nothing but inconclusive speculation.

20And God saith, `Let the waters teem with the teeming living creature, and fowl let fly on the earth on the face of the expanse of the heavens.' 21And God prepareth the great monsters, and every living creature that is creeping, which the waters have teemed with, after their kind, and every fowl with wing, after its kind, and God seeth that it is good. 22And God blesseth them, saying, `Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and the fowl let multiply in the earth:' 23and there is an evening, and there is a morning--day fifth. (YTL)

24And God saith, `Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind:' and it is so. 25And God maketh the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, and God seeth that it is good.
26And God saith, `Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, and let them rule over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the heavens, and over cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that is creeping on the earth.' 27. . .
31And God seeth all that He hath done, and lo, very good; and there is an evening, and there is a morning--day the sixth. (YLT)

Creation Page 3