How could there be light on the first day of Creation if the sun was not created until the fourth day?

It is a mistake to suppose that during the long ages of vegetable and animal life up to the highest forms, one excepted, there had not been the shining of sun, moon and stars, as well as sea and land and atmosphere, though not always quite the same as ours. If geology can trace the proofs of life, and its progress in a typical system, which reveals unity of plan as distinctly as deep and comprehensive wisdom, be it so; yet they enjoyed sunlight, heat, air, and water throughout. But here we have everything successively ordered for man, after those immense eras of change were closed, when the last disturbance needed God's interference for a new system. Light was caused to act. The atmosphere as it is followed. Next, the seas were gathered to their own place, and dry land appeared, and the vegetable realm; the work of mountain-making and valley- scooping, shaping as well as storing, having been already, and it may be in long successive ages, effected. In each case of these "days" the result seems instantaneous. "He spoke, and it was done." The work stated here is quite distinct. "The evening and the morning" are the expression of God's considerate goodness to man, responsible to learn of Him and to do His will on the earth, as Christ did perfectly.

It is assuredly not the creation of the sun, etc. This the inspired historian does not say, but only that God now constituted the heavenly luminaries, after the plants and before the animals for the Adamic earth. Light had shone otherwise since the first day of the great week. Now He set the light-bearers of the heavens to do their assigned work, but it is for the earth, and indeed for man. Their creation was implied in ver. 1; for God did not create either empty; and what would heaven be without its host? And we saw that ver. 2 implies that the earth even had not been so, though so it became with other marks of disorder. What then hindered the functions of sun and moon was now rectified. Light independently had been proved to be under God's control. On the fourth day He gave the luminaries of heaven their unhindered relation to divide the day from the night. Now we can readily understand the plants (and these were for the use of man and his congeners) caused to spring forth on the day before without the sunbeam; but assuredly not so of a geological age of grass, corn, and fruit. Yet we see the fitness of the due ordering of light and heat, as we have it, the next day, if the plants were to flourish, as well as for the animal life that begins after that according to His word.

This is entirely confirmed if we inspect the context more closely. For where would be the sense of the light-bearers "for signs and for seasons, and for days and years," if it had been an age (thousands, myriads, millions of years) before Adam? If, on the contrary, God was not creating them, but, after that which had intercepted, only "setting" them to their ordained task in immediate view of man, all is clear and consistent. And to whom could this be of such interest as to Israel, the people of His choice, in whose history we have them acting as "signs" on critical occasions for His sovereign will? Without dwelling on His wonders in Egypt where light was in Israel's dwellings, darkness thick in all the rest of the land, or later at Sinai, we see what a sign it was to Israel when Joshua said in their sight, "Sun, stand still upon Gibeon, and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon"; or in far other days when Jehovah spoke to sick Hezekiah, and gave him a sign in the shadow that went back ten steps on the dial of Ahaz. And what a sign again where all was lost, as far as man is concerned, in the Cross of Messiah when darkness for three hours covered all the land! A mere eclipse was then impossible. Nor will whole clusters of signs be wanting when He comes in power and glory on the clouds of heaven. For "seasons" is needed no comment: man alone on earth understands and appreciates these fit and recurring times. As the same Hebrew word means "the congregation" and "the solemn feast," as well as the season or appointed time at which they kept it, "seasons" may have a sacred aspect; but the more ordinary sense seems confirmed by what follows. Very little astronomy is requisite to know how "days and years" are defined by them, but only for man. In the ages before him this were all irrelevant. In view of man, and Israel especially, it is as affecting as full of interest. The constant design is reiterated in "Let them be for light-bearers in the expanse of the heavens." It was their effect, not their structure, that is intimated. "And it was so."

God's work on the fourth day lay outside the earth, though in its effects a powerful influence on the earth was exerted. On the first day light had shone upon the earth, and day had been divided from night, but we are not told just how this result had been produced. The light-bearing matter may have been diffused; if so, it was now concentrated into one "great light," and the earth was set in relation to it. Also the "lesser light" was set in relation to the earth. They were now to give light not in a general way but specifically on the earth.

But more than this was included in God's purpose as to them. They were to be "for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years." We are well aware that the times — whether days or years — and the seasons are determined by them but the fact of their being signs is perhaps not so familiar to us. Yet there are illustrations of it in Scripture, such as Joshua 10:12-14; 2 Kings 20:8-11. There is also the Lord's prediction in Luke 21:25. The beginning of Psalm 19 points in the same direction.

A. — 1. The two "great lights" were constituted as they still are (not created then) in relation to the earth prepared for man, like the work of all the six days. The dense darkness that prevailed in the chaotic state which preceded these days easily accounts for the gloom, though the sun, moon and stars were already in existence since God created the heavens and the earth, which took place, it may be, ever so long before the great geologic ages previous to the Adamic race. Not that scripture is occupied with these material processes; but it leaves ample room before the first day in ver. 3.

God commanded the light to shine out of darkness, "Let there be light"; it is not said that He made it now, but that where darkness was, there was now light.

On the fourth day we have the setting of the sun and the moon in their appointed places in relation to the earth. Besides the sun being the source of heat, the ripener of the harvests, the power for evaporation in order that rain might descend on the earth, we are told it is to rule the day, and the moon to rule the night.

It has been thought by some that light was independent of the sun, that on the first day God created the light, and that on the fourth day He created the sun. But we are not told that on the fourth day He created the sun and the moon, but that He made two great lights. We believe that the sun and moon were created at the first, and were included in the statement that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. What proves this, we believe, is the statement that the evening and the morning were the first day, proving the diurnal motion of the earth, in relation to the sun, resulting in day and night.

We are told these two lights were for signs and seasons and days and years. They are God’s great timekeepers. Every day they are signs to mankind. They declare the Creator’s “eternal power and Godhead” (Rom. 1:20). In the wonderfully vivid and beautiful language of Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God. Day by day utters speech. Night by night shows knowledge. Its speech is known by all mankind. In the heavens has He set a tabernacle for the sun, which as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, rejoices as a strong man to run a race.

So God divided the light from the darkness. There was not to be a compromise, a mixture, a sort of indefinite twilight, but the darkness was for a season to give way completely to light, and thus there was a division between them. Hence there was evening and there was morning — a first day. For a long time great exception was taken by unbelievers to this statement of verse 5, because the sun does not appear until the fourth day. But the sun is not the only source of light.

It is all a mistake then, and distinctly at issue with the context, to assume that there was no "light" in the state of things intimated by ver. 1. And it is allowed that even the "earth" and "water" of ver. 2, whatever the then state of ruin and darkness, could not have been without "light" previously, if but to form them. Verse 3 was not therefore really the signal of creation begun, but of God acting afresh and in detail, ages after the universe was created, with its systems, and within them its suns, planets, and satellites. On the plain face of the record, after the mighty work of the universe, and after a disruption that befell the earth with most marked consequences, God puts forth His word to form the Adamic earth with its due accompaniments.

Hence we may notice anticipatively that on the fourth day not a hint is given of creating the physical masses of the sun, moon, and stars. It is there and then no more than setting them in their declared and existing relations to the earth. Their creation belongs in time to Gen. 1:1; but of the rest more fully in its place. That on the first day light dissipated the then prevailing darkness is true, and of deep interest as God's first word and act for the earth of man. But this says nothing about the original creation of the heavens and earth. Nor is it quite comprehensible why "the waters" of ver. 2 should not be literal waters, because utter darkness veiled the deep or abyss. These are the inconsistencies that necessarily flow from the false start which confounds "in the beginning" of ver. 1 with the "first day" of vers. 3-5 and those that follow; as this again involves the extraordinary error of taking ver. 2 to be the original state of the earth in ver. 1, when it immediately came into being from God.

The creation of light should fill us with wonder; and it is well to notice that it was called into existence before the great luminaries are mentioned.

The word "create" is used only three times. In the first verse it applies to the original creation, when God called everything into existence out of nothing. Then we find it in verse 21 in connection with the calling forth of living creatures (nephesh--soul) and in verse 27 in connection with man. The other word used is the word "made." This necessitates the existence of material which is shaped into something; the word "create" does not require existence of matter. The light which came forth on the first day was light before the sun, a fact well known to science.

12 - 5. The first light was day; the evening brought on darkness, then morning, and so one day from first day light to morning. There was evening and there was morning, i.e., light comes in where there had been darkness, and so one day; the continuance of the light is supposed till the next evening darkness, for God called the light "day." Hence though morning came after the darkness day was spoken of, and if we translate it simply it is plain; and there was evening and then morning - one day. That is alternation, and day till next evening; how, is not said. But we have night; first, darkness everywhere on the deep - light - night and day - evening and morning. The light may have been created there, or merely placed. There was light, and darkness separate, but also interchange and passage from one to the other, the gradual disappearing of light, and its dawning - day, night - evening, morning.