Chapter 5: Divine Providence - Day 3 Land and Vegetation

The third day is five verses long (9-13) and speaks of the separation of land from water and the creation of vegetation.

And God said, "Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear:" and it was so And God called the dry land, Earth;" and the gathering together of the waters called he, "Seas:" and God saw that it was good. Genesis 1:9 & 10.

PLANET EARTH

At this point in creation, Earth is becoming a planet. The knowledge of its planetary shape had been known for a long time. Job said, "He.. .hangs the earth upon nothing" (Job 26:7b). Plato, too, knew that the Earth was a globe. The teaching of a flat Earth came from the Catholic church during the Dark Ages, not from biblical scholarship, but by Greek philosophical interpretations of the Scriptures. It is clear from the Scriptures that the Earth is the starting point and center of God's creation. The Lord later said to Job, "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the Earth?. Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof?" (Job 38:4a & 6). These verses imply that the Earth is not free floating in space, but, rather, is fixed in the creation. It could be that God is speaking figuratively of His mental planning of the Earth. It is also possible that there is a foundation in the spiritual realm that is not perceivable to our natural senses.

We are taught today that the Earth rotates on its axis and orbits around the Sun. This astronomical system, which is called heliocentricity, was not universally believed until Nicolaus Copernicus in the 16th Century challenged the biblical view. Up until that time it was believed that the sun and everything else revolved around the Earth which, is called geocentricity. There were some efforts before Copernicus to convince people that the earth moved but they didn't catch on. Claudius Ptolemy in the AD 100's developed a geocentric model which used the Earth in the center of a series of concentric circles with the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and the star dome last [1]. His view was the official position for 1500 years.

Being taught heliocentricity in the twentieth century has created more confusion in accepting the biblical account. From the beginning the Earth was the first part of creation. The Sun, Moon, and Stars were not created until the fourth day. Yet we accept the model of the solar system as truth when the Bible describes an Earth system. There is no proof that we live in a solar system. Despite the space program's work, it is impossible to absolutely prove the theory of the solar system while inside the system. To illustrate this point, consider the experience of sitting in your car at a red light while in the right lane of a 4 lane road. On your left side is another parked car waiting for the light to change. As you glance out the driver's window at the pavement and the tires of the car next door, it suddenly seems like you are rolling backward, so you quickly push down on the brake pedal. The truth is, however, that the other car began pulling forward when the light changed, but you thought you were moving backward. This common driving experience shows the difficulty in ascertaining which bodies in the cosmos are moving when one is inside the moving system. In order to observe which celestial bodies are in motion, one needs to be outside the moving system as a non moving observer - and only God is in that position! This is why we cannot categorically say that the Earth is part of the Solar System, or the Sun is part of the Earth system.

There is a growing movement of creation scientists that are returning to the biblical view of geocentrism. They are working out models that explain the various phenomena observed in the cosmos while retaining the biblical view. The theory that space is a fabric that electromagnetic waves travel through, or the theory that it is a vacuum, affects one's view of geocentrism. If space is a fabric then the universe can revolve around the Earth. Considering that many scientists believe that there is a "dark matter" that accounts for 99% of the invisible weight of the universe, you'd think that more scientists wouldn't consider space a vacuum. But to retain the heliocentric view, they have to believe in a vacuum for the Earth to be in orbit around the Sun. I don't know which is correct, but I favor any theory that lines up with the Scriptures. I have included this information because these teachings shape our world views. We should consider them to see which are truly biblical. Of course, the geocentrists may be wrong, but any error they have will lie in their interpretation of the Scriptures, not because of any error in the Scriptures.