An Ancient Record-Can You Trust It? -The Second and Third "Days"

Before the Creator made dry land appear on the third creative "day," he lifted some of the waters. As a result, the earth was surrounded by a blanket of water vapor."  The ancient record does not-and need not-describe the mechanisms used. Instead, the Bible focuses on the expanse between the upper and surface waters. It calls this the heavens.   Even today people use this term for the atmosphere where birds and airplanes fly.  In due course, God filled this atmospheric heavens with a mix of gasses vital for life.

However, during the creative "days,"  the surface water subsided, so that land appeared. Perhaps using geologic forces that are still moving the plates of the earth. God seems to have pushed ocean ridges up to form continents .  This would produce dry land above the surface and deep ocean valleys below, which oceanographer have now  mapped and are eagerly studying.  (Compare Psalm 104:8, 9.) After dry ground had been formed, another marvelous development occurred. We read: "God went on to say: "Let the grass shoot forth, vegetation bearing seed, fruit trees yielding fruit according to their kinds, the seed of which is in it, upon the earth.'  and it came to be so." -Genesis 1:11.

As discussed in the preceding chapter ("The Handiwork-What Is Behind It?"), photosynthesis is essential for plants.  A green plant cell has a number of smaller parts called chloroplasts, which obtain energy from sunlight.  "These microscopic factories," explains the book Planet Earth,  "manufacture sugars and starches . . . No human has ever designed a factory more efficient, or whose products are more in demand, than a chloroplast."

Indeed, later animal life would depend upon chloroplasts for survival. Also, without green vegetation, earth's atmosphere would be overly rich in carbon dioxide, and we would die from heat and lack of oxygen.  Some specialist give astonishing explanations for the development of life dependent on photosynthesis. For example, they say that when single-celled  organisms in the water began to run out of food, "a few pioneering  cells finally invented a solution.   They arrived at photosynthesis." But could that really be so?  Photosynthesis is so complex that scientists are still attempting   to unravel its secrets.  DO you think that self-producing photosynthesis life arose inexplicably and spontaneously?  Or do you find it more reasonable to believe that it exists as a result of  intelligent, purposeful creation, as Genesis  reports?

The appearance of new varieties of plant life may not have ended on the third creative "day."  It could have even been going on into the sixth "day," when the Creator "planted a garden in Eden" and "made to grow out of the ground every tree desirable  to one's sight and good for food."  (Genesis 2:8, 9)   And, as mentioned, the earth's atmosphere must have cleared on "day" four, so that more light from the sun and other heavenly bodies reached planet Earth.

Next time:  An Ancient Record-Can You Trust It? - The Fifth and Sixth "Days" 

From the book Is There a Creator That Cares About You?