The Light and the darkness

DEVOTION

GENESIS

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

Gen 1:3-5

3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning — the first day.

NIV

There has been a discussion or rather a discourse in great detail and length regarding God speaking light into existence three days before he spoke the sun and moon into being and placed them in the great expanse around the earth. In fact this light is even before the formation of the earth or even before he speaks the expanse in to existence. So what is this light? Some scholars have processed through all the scientific research of the production of light and have concluded it refers to caloric energy or caloric heat. This is said to be the essence of all living matter. Yet within this beginning this light he created did in fact separate the light from the darkness and he defined the light day and the darkness night. Here we have the human mind trying to comprehend the mind of God. We want to see the day as provided by the sun and the night illuminated by the moon, or rather a reflection of the sun’s light. Yet without these heavenly bodies yet to be created, God speaks light into existence and makes the distinction between it and darkness. What we are seeing here is before anything there has always been God. Now after seeing the well phrased definition of God from Adam Clarke, which we agree with, we have to know that before God created anything he is absolute good, pure, holy, without any form of anything we know as bad. "God is good all the time, all the time God is good", as the saying goes. So in the old language, the Hebrew or perhaps more accurate the Greek translation of the old Jewish scriptures, and now the Hebrew interlinear versions, we find the word “‘owr” used for light. All throughout the Old Testament this same word is used for light, but in some cases it means the light of Israel, or God himself.

Isa 10:17

17 And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame: and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day;

KJV

 In the New Testament Jesus is the light of the world. This Greek word means to shine, to illuminate, which is what God is doing here in the very beginning. He is illuminating himself, being the light. But what is interesting is that he is always been light, good, holy pure. Nothing bad, evil was never in existence before God. So if God does create the expanse and separates the waters with the expanse and forms the earth from the waters below the expanse and then puts the sun and moon in the expanse in the days to come, this light and darkness may well be the difference between all that is good and that which is not good, or bad. The Hebrew word for darkness implies just that. The word “hachoshek”, darkness, means misery, destruction, death, ignorance, sorrow , wickeness. There can been none of that unless God determined it should exist. Darkness does not exist in its own.

John 8:12

12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world . Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." 

NIV

This is the light of life which God spoke into being here in this first of days. Not that he spoke Jesus into being, for it was also Jesus who spoke it into being, He was there in the beginning, he is God. But the light, the light of life, and this is where they came up with caloric energy. The light of life, the essence of all life as a caloric heat or energy. So God created all that is good, but he also created that which is darkness, without the light of life, death, misery, destruction, ignorance. Why? It would only make sense in his infinite all-knowing wisdom of the ever present, he knew we would make man in his image before he started all this and he determined man would be able to make his own choice between the light and the darkness. So then are we actually to think God created evil?

Isa 45:7

7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

KJV

 It would have to be, for man cannot create evil. God made it so we would be able to make the choice to accept his light, which overshadows all darkness. We can either live in the day or die in the night. Live in the light or die in the darkness. We choose the light, the day, the bright and Morning Star.