Day
2: Firmament, waters under and above
“And God said, Let there be a firmament
in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And
God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament
from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called
the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day” (Gen 1:6-8).
Interpretations
of Day 2:
- Literal 24-Hour Days: 4
days before man was created circa 6,000 years ago
- Thousand-Year Days:
circa 11,000-10,000 years ago
- Diminishing Day-Ages: circa 7,500,000,000-3,750,000,000 years
ago (Duration: approximately 3,750,000,000 years)
A firmament, the arch or vault of
the sky, can be seen only from the surface of a planet. That means planet
Earth, our home world’s sphere, formed on the second “day” of Creation.
Astronomer Hugh Ross says: “From what I understood to be the stated viewpoint
of an observer on Earth’s surface, both the order and the description of
creation events perfectly matched the established record of nature.”9
Young
Earth Creationists say the “firmament” appeared just 5,000 or 11,000 to 10,000
years ago.
In the Diminishing Day-Ages
timeline, Earth took shape sometime between 7.5 billion to 3.750 billion years ago.
Squarely fitting into this time span is the scientific estimate that, based on
the age of the oldest rocks, the Earth was formed approximately 4.6 billion
years ago.10
A
nebulous hypothesis?
The Encarta Encyclopedia tells us that Earth
and the “planets
reached their present sizes and arrangement probably within 10 million to 50
million years after the Sun’s ignition.”11
The
Nebular Hypothesis, which posits that solar systems formed from nebulae,
swirling clouds of gases and dust in space, has raised many questions that
remain unanswered. For instance, if all the planets had formed from one
spinning disk, why are the inner planets much smaller than the outer ones? It
should be the other way around.
The sun
has 99.86% of all the mass of the solar system, but only 1.9% of the angular
momentum. The planets have 98.1%.12 Why?
All the planets
should spin in the same direction, but Venus, Uranus, and Pluto rotate in
reverse. Some planetary orbits are tilted. One of Saturn’s 60 moons, Phoebe,
has a tilted orbit nearly perpendicular to the planet’s equator. Of the nearly 200
moons in the solar system, more than 30 orbit in the opposite direction.
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune have moons orbiting in both directions.13
Why did
colliding particles adhere rather than destroy each other? Science writer Erik
Asphaug points out: “It turns out to be surprisingly difficult for planetesimals
to accrete mass during even the most gentle collisions.”14 Even if a
planet did manage to form through collisions, it would be nearly non-rotating, because
the spins imparted by many small impacts would have been largely
self-canceling.
Concerning gas planets, Boyle’s Law states that gas
clouds dissipate, they do not agglomerate. Gases disperse rapidly in the vacuum of space,
specially the two lightest gases, hydrogen and helium, which compose most of
the mass of the giant gaseous planets.15
If the solar system had formed
from a cloud of dust, particles that did not become part of planets, according
to the Poynting-Robertson Effect, should still be falling into the sun today, burning
up and giving off a measurable infrared glow. No such glow has ever been
detected.
Author
Stephen G. Brush observes: “Attempts to find a plausible naturalistic
explanation of the origin of the Solar System began about 350 years ago but
have not yet been quantitatively successful, making this one of the oldest
unsolved problems in modern science.”16
Waters under and above.
The “waters under the firmament” we
understand as the oceans, as well as underground water, including the waters
beneath the continental shelves and tectonic plates, evidenced by the formation
of the Mid-Ocean Ridge stretching under both the Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans
The
psalmist affirms there were waters above the firmament or sky: “Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters
that be above the heavens” (Ps 148:4).
Ice crystal canopy? Researcher Dr. Joseph Dillow
speculates that the high-altitude waters may have been water vapor17
above the atmosphere, forming a protective canopy around the planet. Extremely
low temperatures in the Earth’s upper atmosphere could have frozen much of the
water vapors. In the early 1900s Isaac Vail theorized that
the “waters above the firmament”
might have been an ice-crystal canopy.18 Dr.
Larry Vardiman thought of the ice particles as equatorial rings surrounding the
Earth similar to those around Venus.19 Recent
studies by Donald Cyr on light patterns that could have been produced by a
crystal veil fifty miles above the Earth where noctilucent clouds form, showed
a correlation with patterns in archeological artifacts (pottery, woven
materials, temple construction). These relationships have reportedly been
confirmed in computer simulations.20
There
seems to be a hint about this in the Biblical text: “Spread
out above the heads of the living creatures was what looked like an expanse, sparkling like ice, and
awesome” (Ezek 1:22 , NIV).
A hanging “circle.”
The
ancients thought the world was flat. The first Greek philosopher Thales believed
the world was a flat disk floating on water. Later, men realized that the
circular shadow which covered the moon during lunar eclipses was that of planet
Earth. World-circling sea voyages during the Age of Exploration provided additional
proof that the world is a globe. With the coming of the space age, photographs
from manmade satellites captured the curvature of the Earth's horizon. Finally,
men first saw the Earth as a complete orb floating in space in December 1968 as
the Apollo 8 spacecraft carried astronauts
around the Moon.
Yet,
the prophet Isaiah knew more than 2,750 years ago that the earth was a circle,
or what we call today a globe or sphere: “It
is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof
are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and
spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in” (Isa 40:22).
Earth’s support. The cosmogonies or legends of
the origin of the world of various cultures have different things supporting
the Earth -- twelve pillars, four huge elephants, three great fish, a great
bull, a giant tortoise, the god Atlas, etcetera.
Around
4,000 years ago, Job already knew that the earth hung in the emptiness of
space: “He stretcheth out the north over
the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing” (Job 26:7).
Empty north.
Job cryptically said that the north was over the
empty place. Incredibly, astronomers have discovered that the area north of the
axis of the Earth, toward the pole star, is indeed nearly empty – unlike the
rest of the star-filled sky! An article in the November 27, 1981 , issue of Science magazine reported: “The recently
announced ‘hole in space,’ a 300 million-light-year gap in the distribution of
galaxies, has taken cosmologists by surprise… But three very deep core samples
in the Northern Hemisphere, lying in the general direction of the constellation
Bootes, showed striking gaps in the red shift distribution.”21
Center
of the universe?
Jewish tradition has it that God formed the earth and
the entire universe from a single piece of rock. In the pseudepigraphal Book of
Enoch, the man saw the rock holding up the world: “I then surveyed the receptacles of all the winds, perceiving that they
contributed to adorn the whole creation, and to preserve the foundation of the
earth. I surveyed the stone which supports the corners of the earth” (Enoch
18:1-2).
The rock is said to be the same block
on Mount Moriah Temple Jerusalem Temple Mount
The Temple
Mount Jerusalem Jerusalem
Nelson’s Illustrated
Bible Dictionary
tells us there are also historical reasons for this: “The medieval concept that
Palestine Palestine Egypt Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
Cartography and
calligraphy. Mapmakers
and scribes confirmed the idea. Gentile cartographers traditionally drew their world
maps with the Holy Land at the center. On the
next page is a simplified 11th century world map depicting the world
as a disk surrounded by water, with the east on top (a common practice for many
centuries). Paradise (Eden Asia , with the two other known continents then, Europe and Africa ,
occupying the northwest and southwest, respectively. Jerusalem
In
addition, the handwritings of nations west of Jerusalem Holy Land are pointing to Jerusalem
Cosmological
confirmation. Dr
John Hartnett, in his book Starlight,
Time and the New Physics, refers to “recent observational data that
overwhelmingly leads to the conclusion that the universe must have a centre,
with our galaxy somewhere near it… Observations also indicate that we are in a
galactocentric universe.”24
D.
Russell Humphreys notes: “The quantized redshift data imply that we are within
about 100,000 light-years of the center, a very small distance compared to the
diameter of all the matter in the cosmos, at least 40 billion light-years. The
probability of us being so close to the center by accident is less than one out
of a quadrillion, implying we are where we are as a result of purposeful
design.”25
Galaxies are moving away from the Earth in every
direction. The CMBR comes to us from all directions. These strongly
indicate that we are indeed in a central location.
God’s throne nearby?
As
the Creator of the universe, God must have placed His throne at the very center
of His creation. Ellen G. White, the 19th century Seventh Day
Adventist leader and prophetess, wrote about “suns and stars and systems, all
in their appointed order circling the throne of Deity.”26
Interestingly,
according to the World Book, “radio
telescopes and infrared telescopes have shown that a powerful gravitational
force comes from the exact center of the galaxy… so strong that the mass
responsible for it must be about 3 million times as great as the mass of the
sun… packed into a volume of space smaller than our solar system.”27
Could God’s throne be there? Earth is very near the center of the Milky Way.
No
wonder the psalmist was inspired to write: “And
He has exalted the horn of His people, The praise of all His saints -- Of the
children of Israel
Divine
arrangement?
Did the arrangement
of the solar system simply happen by chance? David sings of God arranging the
celestial lights in the heavens: “When I
consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you
have set in place…” (Ps 8:3, NIV).
As any
school-age child knows, the sun is much bigger than the moon. Yet, the sun and
the moon, viewed from the Earth, appear to be of the same size. The impression
is reinforced during solar eclipses when the moon covers the sun. That is
because the sun, whose diameter of about 1,390,000 km, which is around 400
times bigger than the moon (3,480 km), is approximately 400 times farther away
from the earth (149,600,000 km) than the moon (384,467 km). Incidentally, the
size of the moon is just over ¼ that of the earth (12,756 km). Are not the
ratios uncanny? (Notice the recurring number “4,” the Biblical number for the
world. The numbers “4,” “40,” and “400” are associated with the Son of God,
God’s hands-on co-Creator. Is it any wonder these numbers figure in the
relationships among the Earth, the sun, and the moon?)
Moreover,
the moon revolves around the Earth every 29.5 days. At the same time, it completes
one rotation around its axis every 29.5 days. Thus, we always see the same side
of the moon. How did the numbers happen to be identical to produce that
extraordinary effect? It is too improbable to be simply the product of chance!
“Oddball” planet Earth. The distances of the seven major
objects closest to the sun, excluding planet Earth, have an exponential ratio.
Starting from Mercury, the distances from the Sun of Venus, Mars, the Asteroid
Belt (materials that failed to become a planet), Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus
approximately double from one object to the next.28
In the
table shown here, Earth is an out-of-place oddball in the solar system! It
looks like it had been plucked from somewhere and inserted into the system’s
arrangement.
(The two
outermost objects, Neptune and Pluto, do not form part of the equation. They
occasionally switch places, owing to Pluto’s eccentric orbit. Astronomers
suspect an outside force had perturbed their orbits in the past. Pluto came
closer to the Sun than Neptune in 1979 and
stayed that way for the next twenty years.)
9Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, 1993, p. 15
10Planets, World Book 2005 (Deluxe)
11Planetary
Science, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia
Deluxe 2004
12“Why ‘Six
Days’?,” Personal Update, November
2003, p. 12
13Walt Brown,
Astrophysical Sciences, Internet
14Erik Asphaug,
“The Small Planets,” Scientific American,
Vol. 282, May 2000, p. 54.
15Ibid.
16Stephen G. Brush,
A History of Modern Planetary Physics,
Vol. 3, 1996, p. 91.
17Noah’s Flood
-- Where did all the water come from?,
ChristianAnswers.Net, Internet
18Dennis
Petersen, Unlocking the Mysteries of
Creation, 2002, p. 30
19ChristianAnswers.Net,
op. cit.
20Donald
Cyr, “The Crystal Veil,” Stonehenge
Viewpoint, Issue 106, 1995
21Mitchell Waldrop,
“Delving the Hole in Space,” Science,
27 Nov. 1981
22Palestine, Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary,1986
23“Three Days and
Three Nights,” Las Day Ministries, undated
24Carl Wieland,
“Starlight and time – a further breakthrough,” June 26, 2009, Internet
25D. Russell
Humphreys, “The Battle for the Cosmic Center,” Internet
26Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, 1990 Reprint, pp.
677-678
27Milky Way, World Book 2005 (Deluxe)
28Gerald Schroeder,
The Science of God, 1997, p. 192
(Excerpted
from Chapter 4, Primordial Planet Puzzles, THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD: A
Primer on the Secrets of Heaven and Earth by M.M. Tauson, Amazon.com)
