Did God use the "big bang" to create the universe?

These marvelous facts surely call for the deep consideration of all mankind (v. 8), to cause us to fear the Lord with reverent awe and admiration. "For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded and it stood fast" (v. 9). All the visible creation was brought into being momentarily, just by the voice of the Lord. It was no process, but immediate creation. Scientists have recently advanced the theory of the big bang" to explain the suddenness of the appearance of matter, but they have no idea of what it was that exploded to cause the big bang. Yet we need not think there was any noise that accompanied God's word when He created all things momentarily.

The first verse gives us the great original creatorial act of God whereby the heaven and the earth came into existence, taking place for aught we know in epochs immeasurably remote. Verse 2 resumes the story at a much later stage, when the earth was in a condition far removed from the perfectness of God's original work, apparently the fruit of some catastrophe the origin of which is not revealed. From this point God again begins to work and we read not only of God creating (Gen. 1:21, 27) but of His making (Gen. 1:7, 16, 25), and finally of His forming man (Gen. 2:7). The two latter words are used when it is a question not of producing something out of nothing but rather of fashioning in fresh forms of order and beauty the matter already in existence.

We turn first of all to the opening chapter of Scripture — the first of Genesis. There we read (Gen. 1:2), "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The first place then, in Scripture, where we learn of the existence of God's Spirit is in connection with creation, and not merely creation, as that which came out of the hands of God at the beginning, but that which this second verse presents to us, viz., the earth in a state of chaos, that God was about to put His hand to, in order to fit it for man's dwelling-place. I suppose that every person here knows that the first verse of Genesis, where we read, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," carries you back to limitless ages, previous to the moment of which the second verse speaks, and that the interval between verses 1 and 2 admits of that, which geologists demand, namely, almost immeasurable periods of time in which the various strata of the earth's surface were deposited. We find in the second verse that "the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep," and thereafter it is we read, "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," and consequently, and immediately, we find God acting, during six days, in infinite goodness, at the end of which, we learn that the earth, as it now is, was prepared, and turned out of the moulding hand of God, fit for the habitation of man. I believe these six days were days of twenty-four hours, as the language, "the evening and the morning were the first day," naturally suggests, and the seventh day proves. In the next chapter, man is put upon the earth to dwell therein, to keep it, and rule over it.

When that moment comes, Scripture speaks of days, — "and the evening and the morning were the first day." I believe these days were days of twenty-four hours. How simple and perfect is God's tale of creation! He first of all created, in the beginning, the heavens and the earth; and secondly, at a date which we can measure, reformed and fashioned the earth, and then put man on it. He did not create the world in six days, nor does Scripture say so. Careless readers have done that. A joiner might fashion a table, but he could not create the material. The creation of the wood and the making of the table are totally different things.

But, admitting these long ages actually to have passed from the original creation of the heavens and the earth to the creation of man, what may we learn from it? That the platform on which God was about to display Himself, as not even heaven could, had a gradual preparation for it according to His wisdom. As if the mighty work to be done, and the dignity of the One who came to do it, required due solemnity and care in its preparation. We shall learn by-and-by, from the Creator Himself, all God's reasons (if I may so express it) for the way and manner of the operation of His creative power and skill. He who says that He has made known to us all that He heard of His Father, will at the right time tell us the history of His works. We know now, from the first verses in Genesis, that no immediate creation of something out of nothing would, according to His wisdom, be fitting for the habitation of man. So there was a process, most briefly expressed in a few short sentences. God created the heavens and the earth. Then the earth was without form and void, and enveloped in darkness. Then the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And it must have been necessary and wise, for it was God who did it.

The heavenly bodies above us and the earth beneath our feet are realities too plain to be missed, even by the most unthinking and degraded of men. What are they? Whence came they? Have they always existed? The first verse supplies the answer. They are not eternal, but had a beginning. Both heavens and earth came into being by the creative act of the eternal God. Three times in the chapter do we read, "God created," and five times another verb is used, meaning to make. To make is to fashion out of existing matter, whereas when we read of God creating, then "through faith we understand … that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (Heb 11:3).

But verse 6 goes back to the beginning of creation, "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth." Even the heavens, — space itself — is a creation of God, created simply by His word; and the billions of stars created also by the breath of His mouth. We may feel that it must have taken ages of work for God to bring about the creation of so vast a number of heavenly bodies; but He speaks of it only as a mere matter of expelling His breath!

Again, there ought to be no doubt among scholars that the word "created" in our tongue corresponds better than any other with the original. With us, as with Israel, the word admits of application to signal callings into existence out of actual material, as in Gen. 1:21, 27, but only with a special ground and emphasis. And never is it used of any other maker than God. But if the aim were to speak of creation in the ultimate, highest, and strictest sense, the Hebrews, like ourselves, had no other word so appropriated. Here the context is decisive. "God created the heavens and the earth," where nothing of the kind existed previously. They were created out of nothing as men speak, perhaps loosely, but not unintelligibly. The heathen might worship, as all did, the heavens, or even the earth; the Jew sinned against the written word if he was ensnared of Satan after their dark example. The first words of God's law told him that those were but creatures; Israel was to hear if others were deaf, and bound to own, serve, and worship the one God, the Creator. The chosen people was quite as ready as any other to worship the creature, as all their history to the Babylonish captivity proves; but there can be no doubt what the Bible supposed, declared, and claimed from its very first verse — God created the universe.

Further, it is not matter created, crude matter to be afterwards fashioned into the shapely and beautiful universe of the heavens and the earth. It is not chaos first, as Greek and Latin poets feigned, in accordance with heathen tradition never wholly right, though often mixing up what was not wrong. It is not a nebula, as La Place conceived, a mere modification of the same rationalism, however refined it be. Lord Rosse, by his observations with his great reflector, has fairly disposed of this unbelieving hypothesis. For he has proved that many nebulae, considered even by the Herschels irresolvable objects, actually consist of agglomerations of stars. Surely, therefore, the only just presumption is that all nebulae are nothing more, and only need more powerful means to make manifest their true nature. God only has given the truth plainly, briefly, and after a way transparently divine in its simple and unparalleled majesty. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." How is it, ye savants, that this great truth is found here only in its pristine splendour, towering above your Hesiods and Homers, your Ovids and Virgils, your Egyptian and Mexican remains, your Hindu and Chinese fables? How is it that to our day the Lyell and Darwin, to say nothing of profaner men, are stumbling in the dark over a morass of hypotheses (to say the least), unproved and dubious? It is because God's word is not believed as He wrote it; and this, because men like not the true God Who judges sin and saves only through His Son the Lord Jesus. So of old when men knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. It is the more guilty now, because, the Son of God being come and having accomplished redemption, the darkness quite passes away and the true light already shines. Alas! anything is welcome but a living God, and least of all the whole universe created by and through and for His Son Who is before all things and by Whom all things consist. "By faith we understand (or apprehend) that the worlds have been framed by God's word, so that what is seen has not been made out of things which appear" (Heb. 11:3).

Creation then in ver. 1 is the great primary fact of revelation. It is all the stronger, because the Hebrew text ("In [the] beginning") has no article, any more than the Greek in John 1:1. It is therefore undefined. Compare Prov. 8:23. From the context, however, it is plain that the fourth Gospel rises beyond the first book of Moses; for it goes back to divine and eternal being (not ἐγένετο, but ἦν), and not merely divine origination, which in fact appears later (in John 1:3), and this in a form all-embracing and exclusive. "All things were made (came into being) through him, and without him was not anything made which has been made."

In contemplating these stupendous works of God, let us seek His wisdom and gracious guidance, that we may get some true knowledge of His object in creating such a universe. It is not, as some foolish and godless people imagine, eternal. It has had a beginning: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” It would seem that the whole vast creation was brought into existence at the same time. At once, and at the word of God, everything came into being in the most perfect order and beauty: “He has made everything beautiful in its time” (Eccl. 3:11). If we find the earth at some subsequent time of its history in a state of ruin, every man that knows God knows He never made it thus, but perfect. We can truthfully say of its waste condition, “An enemy has done this.”

Thus the work of these days wholly leaves out, because chronologically it follows, the vast operations both of slow construction and of destruction which give special interest to the geologist. Original creation and subsequent dislocation (which swept away in due time whole species and genera of organised beings, followed by fresh and different ones, and this repeatedly) it asserts distinctly; and both, before the days which prepared all for his life and probation under divine government who was created ere the week closed. The document itself furnishes the warrant to the believer for taking the first verse indefinitely before the six days, and also for affirming the state, possibly final state, of confusion into which the earth passed before it became the world as it now is.

There may indeed be some analogy between the days that concern the earth of the human race and those immense ages of ripening advance which preceded, so as to furnish a slight ground of resemblance on which not a few men of ingenuity and the best intentions have reared their various schemes for accommodating the days to the geological ages. Yet this hypothesis, even when guarded by the most cautious and competent aid of science, does not square with scripture. It is unjustifiable in every point of view to confound the disturbed state of ver. 2 with the creation of the earth described in ver. 1, which it really follows, disorder after order; is it not even absurd to identify ver. 3 with either? Each follows consecutively; and the long tracts of time, if filled up in a way that scripture does not essay, would come in after ver. 1, and before ver. 3, which wholly differing from what precedes, introduces a new condition where alone details are given to mark God's direct dealings with man.