Did God create the universe?

If the aim were to speak of creation in the ultimate, highest, and strictest sense, the Hebrews, like ourselves, had no other word so suited. Here the context is decisive. "God created the heavens and the earth," where nothing of the kind existed before. They were created out of nothing, as people say — perhaps loosely, but not unintelligibly… there can be no doubt what the Bible assumed, declared, and claimed from its very first verse — God created the universe.

Before a watchmaker can make a watch, he must have two things: first the materials to make the watch with, and then the tools to shape it. The watchmaker can make a watch, but he cannot create one. A watchmaker cannot make a watch out of nothing. The Bible, however, tells us plainly that God created the world out of nothing.

That everything was made out of nothing is what no Christian would say; but that, where nothing existed, God created all things out of His own will and word is exactly the truth — at once simple and profound. All other theories are as unwise as they are unnecessary and untrue. Evolution may not openly deny God, but at best it robs Him of His personal action and concern, of the wisdom, power and goodness of His will in every part.

God called all things into existence. Matter is not eternal; the universe is not a producing cause.

If God had been bound to create at any moment before the one in which He was pleased to call the heavens and the earth into being, His character would have been denied; He would not be the Absolute after all. For absolute means that He is not tied to conditions… Even a man has a will. Is God to be deprived of His will?

God created indeed, as we are told in Genesis 1:1, but when the Persons are distinguished, as in this Scripture, creation is attributed not to the Father but to the Son. The Son — whom we know as our blessed Lord Jesus — was the mighty Actor in those creatorial scenes of inconceivable splendour.

Not only created "by Him," but "for Him" — surely a most significant statement, and one that gives creation an extraordinary importance, namely, for the special purpose and enjoyment of the Son of God… and lastly, "by Him all things consist." They subsist; they are kept in existence by His power and will.

What is invisible in the Creator should be, and is, seen — seen clearly, understood through the things that are made — even His eternal power and divine nature. Not, indeed, His grace, or truth, or love, but infinite power and design, so much so that people are left without excuse… It does not reveal what He is in Himself, His nature; but to anyone except the wilfully blind it is proof enough that a Creator-God exists.

God is Creator. He has made all things, and He made them for His own pleasure. All that He has made must be accountable to Him, the Maker. Evolution, as taught by the modernists, is the devil's darkness, by which he is blinding people's minds; and they love the darkness, for if they have evolved from the slime and God did not make them, then they are not responsible to Him.

The first and most basic claim God has on His creatures is this necessary recognition of His power and glory, creating and upholding everything — people and angels, things living and lifeless, in heaven and on earth.