In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” In ten words the Bible tells us nearly all God has caused to be written down about when and how the world, and the great big sky, with the sun, moon and uncounted stars that roll on and on through space, were made. Many thoughtful people have tried long and hard to find out when the world was made; but God has not told us. He has told us in Psa. 33:6,96By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. (Psalm 33:6)
9For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. (Psalm 33:9). “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.” “He spake, and it was clone; He commanded, and it stood fast.”
“In the beginning’’, when there were none of Adam’s children to see Him do it, God created. And that, dear children, is the answer to all the infidel statements that are so common nowadays about how this world and all we can see came to be. God created them, made them out of nothing.— that is how He made them. There is a wonderful little verse in the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 11 verse 3. Will you find it in your Bible? “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” Many men and women have sought for a long time to prove that the world made itself, that it just happened, but we know that all those thoughts come from Satan. Nothing ever “just happens”, there is always a cause, and God was the cause of this world’s being created.
And now we come to verse 2, and find that what men call a great catastrophe, has happened since verse one. We are not told what it was, but something came in to spoil what God had made. The earth was (or became) waste and empty, and all was dark. And with it that way God began to fit the world up for man to live in it. He has told us a lot about what He did. All of the first two chapters of Genesis, after the middle of the second verse of the first chapter, tell the story. Isn’t it wonderful that God has told us so much? And notice how nearly every verse, especially in the first chapter, says “God said”, “God called”, “God made”, or something else about God, for He was alone in making the world. In something else, long, long after creation, God was all alone too,—in making a way for us to get to heaven, by faith in Jesus’ blood.
First He commanded light to be where all had been dark, and so we have our days of work and play and nights of rest and sleep; next the fog or mist that the world was covered with was moved away to form the clouds over our heads. On the third day the water that seems to have until then covered the whole earth, was made to run away into the lakes and seas and oceans, and the rivers and creeks were made, no doubt by the earth and rocks being thrown up, so there was dry land. Next God caused the grass, the bushes and the trees to grow. How beautiful the world must have looked then! It is beautiful now, where people haven’t spoiled it with ugly buildings and signs and other things, but not as beautiful as when God made it. There were no sinners then to spoil what God did. Next He causes the sun and moon and stars in. the sky to divide day from night, and to give us months and years; and spring, summer, fall and winter, as well as to give light on the earth. Four days were past, and God created the birds and fishes on the fifth day. Then on the sixth day He made everything that walks or creeps on the land; first the lower animals, and then man. And when He tells about man, God shows us in His Word, the Bible, that He didn’t think of us as being just like the lower animals. In a certain way we were to be like Him; we were to have intelligence far beyond what the lower animals have, to rule over the fish, the birds, the cattle and all the creeping things.
Man was made out of the dust of the ground, but God breathed into him the breath of life, so that we have spirit, unlike the lower animals, can never die. Somewhere you and I are going to live forever. Where shall it be, heaven or hell? God has offered us heaven, to share it with His clear Son, who died for lost sinners on the cross, if we will just own our badness and receive the Lord Jesus as Saviour. Have you, clear young reader, clone that? Don’t put off, but come to Him now.