“In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

The first verse of the Bible has no parallel for sublimity and comprehensiveness. In scope it is declarative, not demonstrative; affirmative, not argumentative; and historical not philosophical. There is no attempt to prove the Being of God. He is the unprovable Fact upon which all else is built, and only “the fool’ will say, ‘there is no God.’

Here the uncreated God is seen creating, and in such a manner that, as Andrew Fuller declared, a child can learn in five minutes from this verse more than all the ancient sages ever knew.

In character the verse is entirely positive, but it rules out all that is false in the thoughts and theories of men about God and the universe.

The simple statement denies at least six false doctrines.

[1]It denies the Eternity of Matter. ‘in the beginning’. There was, then, a commencement; ’the heavens and the earth’ had a ‘beginning’; they were not eternal. The antiquity of the universe is beyond human computation; but there was a time when it did not exist.

[2]It denies Atheism. The atheist says there is no god, but the Bible begins by declaring His Being. Geology and astronomy may claim a hundred million years for the existence of the universe, but whenever it began God was there; He did not begin; He eternally is. Atheism creates a  crop of problems, and solves none.

[3]It denies Polytheism. If creation were the work of many gods, the unity of the universe would have to be accounted for, and it can be accounted for only on the hypothesis that God, the one Eternal Mind, created all. ‘God created’.

‘God’, Elohim. This designation, which is plural, occurs 35 times in Chapters 1:1, 2 , 3, and in The Old Testament over 2,000 times. It certainly does not mean gods, and must be something more than plural of majesty. In the light of the entire revelation in the Bible we must regard this designation of God to be a fore gleam of the Divine Trinity (cf. ver. 26).

“Created’. In Genesis 1-2 three words are used which must be distinguished. Bara,  which occurs in 1:1; 1:21, 1:27; 2:3; is used exclusively of God, and signifies a distinctively creative act. ‘Made’, asah, and ‘formed”, yatzar, which occurred in 1:7; 1:16; 1:25; 1:31; 2:2;2:3;2:7; 2:8;2:19; signify to construct out of pre-existing materials. This distinction is of the utmost importance of an understanding of the first two chapters of the Bible. The idea of evolution can be in make and form, but not in create; so that the bringing in to existence of the universe, of animal life, and of human life, was by successive creative acts of God (1:1;1:21;1:27). By the word of his power a cosmos was created of orders material, sentient, and moral.

[4]It denies Pantheism. This teaches that God and Nature are the same, and so fails to distinguish between mind and matter, right and wrong, good and bad, and utterly confuses things which lie far apart. But this pernicious error finds its answer here: ‘God created the heavens and the earth,’ and as He could not create Himself, He, and the heavens and the earth’, cannot be the same.

[5] It denies Agnosticism. This affirms that it cannot be known whether there is a God or not. But the universe is an effect, and must have had a sufficient Cause; this building must have had an Architect; this design must have had a Designer; this Kingdom must have a King; and this family must have a Father. Legitimate inference challenges and discredits agnosticism.

[6] It denies Fatalism. Reason is against fate and chance. This wonderful universe could not just ‘happen.’ God has acted in the freedom of His eternal Being, and according to His infinite Mind, and what He  willed was and is, and can be nothing else, unless He should will it.

 The Unfolding Drama of Redemption; William Graham Scroggie