The Fourth Day

Now we come to some more verses where God fills the form He made. Genesis 1:14-19 (WEB):

14 God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs to mark seasons, days, and years;

15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth;" and it was so.

16 God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He also made the stars.

17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light to the earth,

18 and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good.

19 There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

Let's take a look at each of these verses, one at a time.

14 God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs to mark seasons, days, and years;

So God made lights in the sky. God wanted us to be able to tell time from the sky, to know when there is day and when there is night, to give signs to us, and to mark special holy days or seasons (some Jewish holidays are a week long, at the full moon, like the Feast of Passover and Unleavened Bread, or the Feast of Tabernacles). This way, we can number our days and apply our hearts to wisdom. Psalm 90:12 (CSB) says,

Teach us to number our days carefully

so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.

We can also count years from the sky. Thousands of years ago, people knew the exact time of the equinoxes and the solstices each year, in the Americas, in Egypt, in Babylon, in England, in China, and many other places on earth. People built monuments and pyramids to track the sun. Like Stonehenge in England.

STONEHENGE

So, whether there is a solstice (the exact point of the earth's orbit around the sun when it's farthest from the sun twice a year), or an equinox (the exact point when the earth is closest to the sun twice a year), we can divide the year into quarters. (They have different names depending on if you are north of the equator or south of the equator, since the seasons are opposite on each side; so when it's never sunny (coldest) in Antarctica, it's always sunny (warmest) at the north pole. My ancestors in the UK used to celebrate these quarter seasons with pagan festivals. The Yellow Emperor in China, Huang Di (黄帝 or really named Gongsun Xuanyuan), perhaps around 2,500 BCE (or BC), used to sacrifice to God twice a year. Below is a picture of a much newer altar in China. In China, "Tian" is a swear word for "God" or "Heaven" when something bad happens, and "Tianfu" means "Father God" (not godfather—Chinese is a bit different from English). For example, "Tiananmen" means "Heaven's Peace Gate."

• autumnal equinox
• winter solstice
• spring or vernal equinox
• summer solstice

GOD'S TEMPLE OR "TEMPLE OF HEAVEN" IN BEIJING, CHINA

The next verse says,

15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth;" and it was so. 

This means that the sun, moon, planets and stars were formed. I just don't know how. It only took God a day. One Israeli scientist, a nuclear physicist who taught for many decades at MIT, says it all depends on your point of view: he believes the edge of the universe is only a little over six days old, where God looks "down" on it, and the inside of the universe, closer to us, is a lot older by around 15 billion years. But, a big God like our God could make light go faster or instant...it's hard to test when one has to measure the time light takes to make a round-trip journey, which is all scientists have been able to do so far. We are pretty confident the speed of light slows down outside a vacuum. There could be scenarios where "c" is adversely effected by time, matter, gravity, resistance and electrical power, as a variable. But I wasn't there, so I don't know. I think there is no reason that God was trying to trick us when telling our little minds about how it happened in the beginning. I still believe the earth took a sequence of several days in the order God says so that plants would have enough carbon dioxide to function, to use water and sunlight to produce oxygen for all breathing things. Plants would die if no carbon dioxide was available, so I cannot believe there were no breathing things on earth for billions of years. Correct me if I'm wrong. It would be a missing molecule in the symbiotic loop (or cycle) necessary for life to exist. Plants cannot survive without air-breathers (people, animals, bugs), to my knowledge. We're talking photosynthesis, you see.

16 God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He also made the stars.

So God made daytime for people and nighttime for wild animals. Psalm 104:20-24 (CSB) says what God does:

You bring darkness, and it becomes night, when all the forest animals stir. The young lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God. The sun rises; they go back and lie down in their dens. Man goes out to his work and to his labor until evening. How countless are your works, Lord! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to water, the expanse of atmosphere, plants and earth.

The moon affects the tide, as well as the sun—that's why the tide is high when the moon's gravity pulls on the water closest to it, making the water rise higher against the land (and also high on the opposite side of the world). Water is lighter, so the breach doesn't rise with the water. In fact, because of the mass of water in the Pacific ocean, the height of water on the west side of the Panama canal is higher than the water on the east (Atlantic ocean), so the height of ships through the canal have to ride up or down in the water, depending on which direction they go, thanks to the engineering of water locks. Depending on tide, the Atlantic is 26 meters lower than the Pacific side—there is less water mass for gravity and atmosphere to push at the edges of the pitiful Atlantic ocean, compared with the greater water mass at the Pacific side. So I believe the Atlantic is more convex than the Pacific, just like a drop of water (say on a leaf) on a flat (or concave) surface is rounder than a puddle of water. But in the middle, I believe the water in the Atlantic is even higher, but flatter in the Pacific; therefore the water of the Pacific is conversely higher on the edge of Panama land. I hope I explained that right.

17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light to the earth,

18 and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good.

19 There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

So the light collected into parts, not a general glow of God's glory, perhaps. The moon reflects the light of the sun. It was good. So God filled up the land on day three; now what about the water and the air?