Good morning and welcome to Sunday school hour as we continue our class on the flood. That's a that's a wonderful old hymn. I don't know if the words or the tune is written by one of the others written by a man named Asahel Nettleton and he was the one of the great preachers of the second great awakening and there's a if you haven't read a biography on him there's a couple wonderful biographies out there but Azahel Nettleton. You'll see his name next to that hymn in our hymn book. All right, well, let's continue our series on the flood. And as always, before we delve into God's word in this subject and set our minds on these things and begin, I always view Sunday school as kind of a prelude to our worship service. It's preparatory to it. And so, let's prepare our hearts. Let's pray as we set our mind on these things and get ready to go into the worship hour to come. Please join me in prayer. Father in heaven, we come to you this morning and we thank you and praise you for who you are. You are indeed the fount of every blessing. Every good thing cometh down from the Father above, and we praise you and thank you. We know that you are an infinite storehouse of goodness and perfection and righteousness and truth. and glory and majesty and power, holiness beyond comprehension. You are infinitely high above us as creatures. And Father, we just come to You this morning to worship You. We come in the name of Jesus Christ, the Mediator, Your Son, whom You've given for sinners like us to be reconciled to You. Thank you for the good news, thank you for the grace of the gospel that there is such a thing in this dark and confused and evil world, such a thing as the good news, such a hope and such a light as the promise of redemption, of being set free from sin and from Satan and from death and all that troubles us and plagues us about this present world. Father, there is a, you've promised a world to come. There is a glorious kingdom that is the kingdom of heaven. It's greater than anything that we see with our eyes. And you've made all things for this. You didn't make this world so that it would be as it is now. You made it that it might be glorious, that it might be a fitting dwelling place for your presence. And we know that in the age to come, in the new heaven and new earth, you will dwell in this world as you presently do in heaven, and it will be it will be magnificent. And so, Father, I pray that we as the citizens of that kingdom which is coming, Father, that we would rejoice today, that we'd set our mind on these things that are above. We seek to understand creation and the flood and these chapters in Your Word about the origins of all things and the early history of this world. Please illuminate us, Lord, by your Spirit. Teach us, guide us, guide the discussion, guide the thoughts that we have. Guide the word that goes forth, and may it glorify you, and may it sanctify us. We know we can learn things, and it can have no sanctifying effect. There are people that know more than I'll ever know about the Bible, and yet don't even know you at all. out there. And so, Father, help us today. Teach us and speak to us by Your Spirit and guide us and help us as we consider these things. Give us a sure foundation. of truth. And Father, I just pray that you build your people up, teach them, protect them from evil, shape their, renew their minds, beautify them, fill them with the spirit of adoption whereby we cry out, Abba, Father. And Father, may this time be a blessing, and may it glorify you. And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Alright, well let's continue our series on the flood. And so just a quick overview on what we covered last time. So we went through basically the rise of creation science. So we went through the rise of uniformitarianism, what we call the big lie. and talked about how science came to be really divorced from the Bible and how that centered around this debate in geology around the flood and sort of getting away from the flood and the tranquil flood theory that allowed everybody to kind of say, oh yeah, the Bible talks about a worldwide flood, but it was a tranquil flood, and so there wouldn't be any mark of the flood in the world. And so we don't need to worry about that whole Bible and what it says. We can do our science without the Bible. And that led to this sort of anti-Bible worldview that's been constructed around uniformitarianism and the millions and millions of years of slow, over slow, natural gradual processes and evolution out of that during that vast amount of time. But then we talked about the rise of creation science, which, again, I believe is God's response to this big lie, to protect His church, to show His church that we can trust His word and that what it says is true. And really, that is the main, you know, the catalyst of the creation science movement was the writing of the book, The Genesis Flood, in 1961 by Dr. Henry Morris and James Whitcomb, Old Testament scholar and scientist. And they wrote this book that really launched a movement. And the movement that it launched was the creation science movement, which was really a movement that was about, do you trust God or do you trust man? Do we just take these really God-hating, Bible-hating people, scientists, at their word, and what they claim are supposedly established scientific facts, Or do we put their word to the test? Do we stand upon God's word and put their word to the test? And that's really what creation science is about. It's actual science, right? Science is a matter of testing and proving things. And so, okay, this is no less susceptible to scientific scrutiny than anything else. So let's put it to the test. Let's not just trust it. And that's really what this movement has been about. It's about trusting, taking the Word of God as the Word of God. He was the one that was there. He's given us the infallible account of what really happened. No man was there. And so we trust what He said. And we take, we looked at those Nine Essentials of Earth History according to Genesis chapters 1 through 11, you know, about the creation of the universe and the fall of man and the flood and the Tower of Babel and all the things, you know, the genealogies that are given to us and the time frame that it gives to us about how old the earth would be based upon those very specific genealogies, and we take all that, and that's our starting point. Those are the essential elements of a right biblical understanding of earth and world history. And so we then want to go on today to to start to get now into the meat of our class, which is the flood, really. But we're going to look at these five periods of geological history. And if you still have your outline, this is in there. And we kind of follow that from this point in the class. And when we talk about five periods of geological history, we're talking about periods of time that the Bible gives us. This isn't a structure we're forcing on the Bible. The Bible tells us about these periods of time. If we're just reading what it tells us happened during these periods of time, then we would expect there to be geological significance for the scientific study of the Earth and the rocks and the processes in the Earth. We would expect there to be some kind of impact, in many cases significant impact, from what the Bible tells us happened during these periods of time. And so I get this from Dr. Andrew Snelling. Again, he's the head of research at Answers in Genesis. I'm not a geologist. I am not a scientist, a trained scientist. I'm a student. And I've studied these things and this is what I've learned and so you know you'll hear me talk through this class and I'll say we think this or you know what I mean is geologists and creation scientists say this and I agree with this I'm convicted that what they're what they're telling us is right and true and in accordance of scripture and And so Dr. Snelling identifies these five periods of geological history, the first being the first creative act of God, second being the six days of creation, the third being the pre-flood period, the fifth being the flood itself, which is where we'll spend the bulk of our time in this class, and then the fifth being the post-flood period up to the present day. So during each one of these five periods of time that the Bible tells us about in its infallible account of the history of the origins and the history of the earth and the world, there would have been geological events of geological significance happening. And so we want to think about it through that lens. Again, the flood is the primary thing, right? That is the greatest refutation of the whole uniformitarian worldview. And you'll see how that is as we get to it. Because again, remember, uniformitarianism claims that the present is the key to the past. That you can look at present processes in the earth like erosion, and sedimentation, and coal formation, and fossilization, and all these different processes, and the rates at which they're happening. And that's the really important thing, the speed at which they're happening. They say you can look at the speed at which they're happening now, and that they've always been happening at that same speed, or that same rate. The rate has been constant. And that's the big problem. Even modern evolutionary scientists recognize that that claim is unscientific. But it's that very claim, again, that has led to this millions and millions of years time frame. Because if I look at sedimentation and erosion and fossilization, all these different geological phenomena, plate tectonic movement, if I look at those things now and I measure the rates at which those things are happening now, they're happening very, very slowly. The tectonic plates are moving at about the speed your fingernail grows right now. That's extremely, unnoticeably slow. But have they always been operating at that speed? And that's the assumption, right, that they base the entire thing on. That it's happening this slow now, and so if it's always happened that slowly, then it must have taken millions and millions of years to get to what we see now. That's the problem, right? And that's where the flood, again, with its, in one year, doing things that they believe took millions of years to happen, by denying the flood, they moved themselves into this sort of worldview that is not true. again, of millions and millions of years. But we need to take more than that, more than just the flood. We want to look at what else the Bible says about these other periods where there would have been events of geological significance happening. And because it helps us as we, again, we're not geologists, but we can put ourselves in the shoes of a geologist that's going out into the field and looking at these things and studying these things. And we would, if we're a Bible-believing geologist, we would believe these things happened. And that would be a lens through which we would look. and as we conducted our inquiry, because we trust God's Word and we know it's true. Right? And so that's kind of what we're trying to do here with these five periods of geological history. So, let's dive right in headfirst and start moving our way through this. And so, as we've been doing, as we come to these passages of Scripture, we're going to read through the whole first chapter of Genesis together. And I'm going to ask, you know, folks in the class to read our passage for us, just to kind of get you guys engaged a little bit. But can someone turn in your Bible and read for the class Genesis chapter 1, verses 1 to 2? And we'll look here at this first period of geological significance, the first creative act. Genesis chapter 1, verses 1 to 2. Who wants to read it? Go ahead, Dan. Thank you. So that's the first creative act. Another passage that we could consider is John 1.1. I won't have you turn there because we're going to read through Genesis. But John 1.1-3 says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And we know this is talking about the Logos, Jesus Christ, the Son. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. And so there was a starting point to the universe and to the earth. Seems very basic, but we have to say that, right? The universe and the earth is not eternal. It is not without a beginning. There's a starting point to it. There was a beginning. The universe has not always existed. It has a starting point. And that starting point is, as we see here in Genesis 1.1, the creative act of God. Now before the beginning, there was nothing but God. Think about that for a second if you can. before the beginning. It was nothing but God. That's almost impossible for our finite minds to comprehend such a thing as that. But as the psalmist says in Psalm 90 verse 2, before the mountains were brought forth or ever you formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. And so, before the beginning, there was only God, from everlasting to everlasting. He has no beginning, nor middle, nor end. He is the great I AM, who exists of Himself. Nothing created Him. Nothing upholds Him in existence. He is the God who is. And it is the uncreated creator who in the beginning of the world as we know it by a definitive creative act of almighty power created the heavens and the earth or all things that were made. And so God called the space-time-matter universe that we live in into existence by a singular creative act. And we're not given much detail other than that God did this by the Word of His power. The author of Hebrews, for example, tells us in Hebrews 11, verse 3, By faith we understand that the universe was created by the Word of God, so that what is seen was not made of things that are visible. So we understand this first creative act of God to be a supernatural act of divine power, whereby He spoke the universe into existence out of nothing. You've probably heard that old Latin phrase, ex nihilo. The old theologians would use that to describe the creative power, divine power of God. He created the universe, ex nihilo, out of nothing. And the first description that we're given of what resulted from this supernatural, divine, creative act is given to us there in verse 2. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." Right? So God spoke, and that came into existence. He said, you know, He spoke that into existence, and this universe comes into existence. And the first thing that we need to note is that the first description of the creation of the entire universe immediately zooms into the earth. The Earth is the focal point of God's universe. Now, that doesn't mean that we conclude that the Earth is the literal, you know, the center of the universe. We don't even believe that the Earth is the center of our own solar system, much less the literal center of the entire universe. But the Earth does have a central focus and preeminence in God's design and purposes for His creation. Now, the initial picture that we're given of the earth is that it was without form and void, and there was no light source at all in the universe, and that the earth appears to have been completely covered in liquid water. It's referred to as the deep and the face of the waters. It's interesting if you ever listen to scientists talk about the necessary ingredients for organic life to occur, the first thing on that list, on every list, is liquid water, H2O, the element H2O. And so that again, this is why for many decades since we've developed our space programs that scientists have been looking for Liquid water every everywhere that they can reach because they know that if they find that they find the potential for organic life because you you can't have They all acknowledge that. Any kind of organic life without liquid H2O, liquid water. And so they're trying to find that because that's a big thing, but they've never found that as far as we've reached and as far as we've looked. But it's just interesting to me that the very essential element of life is described in Genesis chapter 1, the earth is described as being covered in that, completely submerged in liquid water. And so what was this formless and empty and darkened earth like? Well, formless I don't think means that it was some kind of shapeless blob. I think it just means that God had not yet begun to bring it to its finished condition, which is described in the following verses. But He would eventually raise up mountains, cause dry land to appear, and so on, and give it form. But I think the fact that it's called the earth, indicates that God brought it into existence in its spherical shape, and creation scientists believe this, probably comprised already of its rocky material, of rocky material already separated into its three layers of core, mantle, and crust, or at least already forming into that. And they believe that, and I think that makes sense. So these are the basic characteristics of the earth. This earth was called into existence by an instantaneous creative act of divine supernatural power. And the main point that I want us to see here is that there are obviously no processes like this occurring in the world today, right? The present is not the key to the past with this. There's nothing happening like this now. Dr. Snelling, for example, says, quote, even if the Earth's creation was accomplished with an instantaneous act, its internal heat from nuclear transformations of some elements of the waters across its surface would immediately have begun to accomplish work of profound geological significance, end quote. And so again, in this first period of geological history, there were processes at work that are totally foreign to what we, what are presently operating in the Earth today. And we have no idea, again, what the implications from a rock standpoint are of a rocky earth called into existence instantaneously out of nothing and covered completely in liquid H2O with the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters in some kind of supernatural manner. What was happening? Presumably, and creation scientists presume this, or believe this is probably true, but in this initial creative act, when God, by the word of His power, called the universe into existence, and the earth in this form, He probably created all the elements of the periodic table, right? Boom. There's carbon. Boom. There's H2O. We know there was H2O there. There was water. There's, you know, who knows what else? Helium, magnesium, and, you know, all these different elements of the periodic table probably were created. All the stuff of the universe, of the earth, was created in this initial creative act. What was happening, you know, as this Again, the core mantle, the crust, the heat and the energy processes within the core of the Earth and this rocky crust submerged in water in one element, H2O, what was happening to the elements at that time? And again, this is a big part of radiometric dating, is the decay rate of carbon and things like that, is how fast... They claim they can look at how much carbon is in a rock or something right now. and say, well, you know, we know carbon decays at this rate now, and the assumption is that it's always decayed at that rate. But what was happening here? I mean, maybe the elements, I don't know if there was decay of elements before the fall, maybe that happened at the fall, I don't know. But the point is, there are implications here from a geological standpoint of the rocks and things like that. We have no idea what this would have done. And so again, to me, this challenges the uniformitarian worldview, which makes no account for things like this at all. And so that's the first thing. That's the first period. And again, that should get your wheels turning on how you can process each of these from a... Again, this is not a scientific textbook, but it does touch on matters that are related to science, to scientific inquiry. And so we can think and reason through these things, and it should guide the biblical scientist's inquiry as he does his study. All right, so let's just keep moving on here. I want to progress through this, but let's look at period two for a moment, and could somebody read for us Genesis 1 through 5? Genesis chapters 1, chapter 1, verses 1 through 5. Go ahead, Ted. In the beginning God created heaven and earth, and in earth there was light, form, and void. Darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light, and it was good. And God divided light from darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness was called night. And in the evening and the morning were the first day. And thank you. All right, so we've got the first creative act that we just talked about, and then we've got the six days of creation. And so we see here, you follow the narrative, we've got that God calls the universe into existence, He created the heavens and the earth, and then we zoom in and we've got our picture of the earth in its initial state, that's the focal point of God's creation. But then, the creation of the heavens and the earth is going to be further described. That's like the headline of the newspaper, right? God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning. That's the headline. That's what now is going to be unpacked and described and elaborated on in the following verses. It zooms into that first, that picture of the earth. And then we're told, and then immediately from there, we're told that God spoke. And he said, let there be light. And so he created a light source. that was independent from the sun, moon, and stars, which would be created on day four of creation, which is interesting. That gives a lot of people problem because they think, well, how could there be light without the sun, moon, and stars? I don't know. God created a light source. Perhaps it was energy. There was an old commentator who believed that the light that God created, the energy, or whatever it may have been, was created initially, and then on day four, it was crystallized, as he said, into the sun, moon, and stars. We don't know. I believe God's Word, that He created a light source that was independent from the sun, moon, and stars. In the New Heaven and New Earth in Revelation, we're told that there will be no sun, because God Himself will be the light of the New Heaven and New Earth. And so, I used to always think that, you know, this was God filling the cosmos with His special presence, the light of His own glory. But it says he created this light source. Let there be light. Maybe that means he shone forth his glory. I don't know. Maybe he created some sort of energy light source within the universe. We don't know. But from a geological standpoint, I don't think there's a lot that we need to consider. That's the first day of creation. What I did want to consider here before we move on though is a couple theories that people have proposed that try to compromise the biblical account with the the Uniformitarian Evolutionary Worldview, and that's the Gap Theory and the Day-Age Theory. And so I just wanted to touch on these very quickly. I don't want to delve into them and go down the rabbit hole too deeply, but I do want to just touch on it because the Gap Theory begins right here, and basically the claim is that between Genesis 1, verse 2, and this initial creative act, and this initial description, and God's saying, let there be light. And again, there was morning and there was evening. The first day, they claim that there was a period of billions of years that elapsed, right? The gap theory. And so, again, God created the universe out of nothing, called the space-time-matter universe into existence out of nothing, created the earth in its rocky, watery, covered state, the Holy Spirit hovering over it, and then He sat there and waited for a few billion years before He spoke the next words. That's the gap theory. And I'm not going to spend a ton of time on it. I think to me it's obvious on the surface that the gap theory was never a valid interpretation that people, commentators and teachers, came to until around the late 1800s or early 1900s. I wonder why that is. Why would that all of a sudden become a theory that people started to see there in the text? Well, it's because they're reading into the text, trying to harmonize the text, what it says, with the supposedly established scientific facts. But I don't think it's an adequate or appropriate interpretation way to interpret the Bible. No reader would read this and conclude that. You know, you read, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, Let there be light. There's no inkling of a vast period of time here. This is all describing day one of creation. God began to act. And when God moved into creative activity, it transpired in six days. There was morning and there was evening the first day. And another passage I think really makes the gap theory and the day-age theory, which we'll talk about in just a second, totally impossible from an honest, interpretive approach to the Bible, is Exodus chapter 20, verses 8 through 11, which, again, this is the Ten Commandments. This is God Himself speaking from Mount Sinai in the hearing of Israel, whom He just delivered from slavery in Egypt through signs and wonders, brought them out to Mount Sinai, and now is giving them His law, He wrote these commandments, these ten commandments in tablets of stone with his own finger to give to them to follow. And the fourth commandment says, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. Why? Why are you to work six days? And would they have had any inkling that the six days were anything other than six literal days? And you can do the historical study and study ancient Egyptian calendars and things like that. They followed a seven-day week. They had a 365-day calendar. And so there's no reason to believe that these Israelites at the time of the Exodus, and again Moses wrote this, remember, for the Israelites to teach them about their God and who He is as the Creator of all things, the true and living God. There's no reason, inkling, that they would have understood any of this to be talking about anything other than six days, you know, day-night cycles, 24-hour periods of time. Why are you to work six days and rest the seventh? Verse 11, four, or because in six days the Lord made heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day. In six days, He did it all. That's what it's saying. And again, that statement, heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, is the best way that you can communicate to an ancient Israelite. Everything you see above, everything you see below, and everything in between, everything, God made it all in six days. Chad, you had your hand up? So one of the things I've struggled with on this is, So earlier we've talked about carbon dating. We've made the assumption that the decay of the carbon molecule is consistent through time, right? Yep. Constant rate. And so when we read this, we talk about that we're separating day from night. You've got to create light, separate it from darkness. With our present day knowledge, I read into that, that's the revolution of the earth, right? Toward the sun, so you get a period of dark and a period of light. Assuming that the sun was the source of light. Yeah, but it wasn't created yet, in the first, yeah, so. So if it's not created yet, how are we to say that that's a 24 hour period, that a day, is a 24-hour period. Well, I just think that, I mean, again, and you can get in, I wasn't going to go into this, but you can get into the word studies of the word yom, the Hebrew word yom for day. And, you know, when you go to, I haven't done, I didn't prepare this, but there's all kinds of other guys that have done this work and studied it. But when you study the word, you know, the word for day, first day and it's connected with... time words like evening and morning, or other time markers like that, throughout the entire Old Testament, it always means a 24-hour period of time, a day-night cycle. As the, again, remember this was written by Moses at the time of the Exodus for the Israelites, how would they have perceived that? Would they have understood I think the text is going out of its way to try to be as clear as possible with the Hebrew language that this is referring to a day as you would understand it, a 24-hour period of time. So that's one thing I would say, is that you study the word usage throughout the entire Old Testament, and you find that any time it's connected to time words like evening and morning. The word can mean a period. It's used in the Bible rarely to mean a period of time. But any time that it's connected with evening and morning or some kind of time word, it always means a 24-hour day. So that's one thing I would say. I think the other thing I would say is that from an interpretive standpoint, God was, again, and this goes back to the Sabbath commandment, He was setting an example for man who would be made in His image. Right? And so He Himself doesn't need to rest on the seventh day because He's tired. He's doing that because He's setting, He's structuring the universe around for His, the focal point of His creation, the man made in His image. And His will for man was to work the six days and then have this seventh day to rest and honor Him. So that's the other thing I would say, is that I think it's direct, the activity of, or the commandment to man in the structuring of his week is modeled after God in the structuring of his creation. And so I think that, to me, that necessitates us to to 24-hour periods of time, a day as we would understand it. Does that help, brother? I know you're still thinking, but that's good. That's a good question. But yeah, there's a lot that you can get into with that. But when you really get into the Hebrew, the Hebrew scholarship of it, There are no Hebrew scholars who believe that this here is intended by the author to be taken as anything other than a 24-hour period of time. Some have said, you know, well, alluding to Peter, and what Peter says in 2 Peter chapter 3, where he says, well, one day, do not count slowness as, you know, because one day to God is as 1,000 years, and 1,000 years is one day. So see, this could be, you know, to God, this day could have been 1,000, you know, I think that's a very... inappropriate connection to make. I don't think that Peter was talking about that here at all. He was trying to talk about, you know, God is eternal, so the fact that 2,000 years or whatever has gone by since Jesus said he would return and he hasn't returned yet, that's not slow to God. God's plans are thousands of years long. Any other thoughts or questions? And you kind of led us into the day-age theory. That's the other one that basically these six days of creation aren't days. They're long periods of millions and millions of years. And again, I go back to Exodus 20. I just think, in six days, the Lord made the heaven and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. I mean, he did it all in six days. That's about as plain as I think you can imagine. And the reason you're destructure, you're work week. By working six days and resting the seventh is because that's exactly how God created the universe So again, I think the reason you have these efforts to try to Create these theories of the gap theory and the the day-age theory It's not because people are reading the text and naturally coming to that conclusion trying to bring out what the text says But because they're trying to to harmonize it with this other theory and they're reading things into it Yeah, Dan And this is not an abuse chat at all on this topic, because I was having this in my head before. To me, man's pride continues to come up when they think that this could not have happened in the way God has said that it's happened. They still don't believe in God, so they can't just give him that much power, because their brain just can't take it. And with us, the believers, we don't understand all of that, how it happened. But God said it that way. And so we believe it. We believe that that's what it is. And that's what we take it. Some of these people that don't believe in anything or they're adding whatever they're trying to add to this to make it make sense to them, they don't believe it. That's ultimately what it comes down to. They don't want a God to rule over them. And that's what Paul says in Romans. But I do think that, like you said, Dan, what we as children of God want to do is I just want to know what it really says. If you convince me that that's what it really says, I'll believe it. I don't care if it's difficult for me to understand or not. That's the heart of the true child of God. you know, an unbeliever or a wolf in sheep's clothing, again, is to try to fit what God's Word says with what they want to believe or with what the world says so that they don't have to be at odds with the world. But again, I think, again, when we come to the text and we just read it plainly, as an Israelite at the time of the Exodus would have read it and understood it, I think the text goes out of its way, and you can get in, again, Hebrew scholars will back this up, but it goes out of its way to make this as clear as possible that this is referring to six 24-hour periods of time, six literal days as we would understand it. And so again, at the end of each one of these days, you have the same phrase, and there was evening and there was morning the first day. And there was evening, and there was morning the second day. And there was evening, and there was morning the fourth day, or third day, and fourth day, and so on. Again, I think that cycle and that structure is designed to be as clear as possible with us that this was six literal days as we would understand it. So that's all the time I'm going to spend on that, on the gap theory and day age theory. We've had some thoughts and questions on that. We're almost out of time. Good thoughts, though. And I encourage you guys to do that. Bring them up, and let's talk about it. And I'll do my best to explain it. I'm not the apologist. I'm not the expert. I'm a student, and I'm trying to convey to you the convictions I've developed as a student of these things and of the word. And so, all right, so let's just very quickly, let's move on then to day two. And we'll see, can someone read verses 6 to 8, Genesis 1 verses 6 to 8? Go ahead, Terry. and let it separate the waters from the waters. And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse, and it was so. And God called the expanse heaven, and there was evening and there was morning for the second day. Thank you. So again, I don't want to spend a ton of time on this one, but creation scientists believe that this firmament or expanse and not just creation scientists biblical and Interpreters and commentators that this expanse or firmament is the creation of the earth's atmosphere and what we would call outer space This expanse or firmament is designed is defined further for us in verses 14 to 19 where we're told that God put the Sun Moon and stars in this expanse or firmament and so So on day two of creation God made the earth's atmosphere And then outer space, where he would then place the sun, moon, and all the stars in the universe. So again, in a 24-hour period of time, God created the vast expanse of the universe where he would put the sun, the moon, and the stars. Again, there's no processes like that happening now. These are these are miraculous supernatural acts, and I love how it says That God God made the expanse did the separating and so on and then at the end of verse 7 and it was so right whatever God said physical activity happened. He spoke in this supernatural act of power, and the physical world began obeying His command and moving in rapid, miraculous ways that are in no way happening now. And so, again, we just have to keep registering that as we go through the rapidity of which these things are happening. 24-hour period of time, And the Earth's atmosphere and the entire universe of space, outer space, was created. So that was day two. And then there was morning and evening, evening and morning the second day. I don't have time to go on, but we'll look next time at. at day three in the creation of dry land and plant life. And here is where we'll see a creative act of God that would have most certainly had a tremendous geological significance when we're talking about the separation of the waters and the appearing of dry land. And then on the same day that God caused the waters to pool into the oceans that they were in before the flood, and the pre-flood landmass to emerge, which presumably would have involved uplifting of elevation, All right, distortion of crust, potentially. Sinking down, perhaps, where the waters receded, because again, the earth was completely covered in water, receding back into the formed ocean basins. And then on that same day, the creation of all that plant life over all the earth. I mean, we'll talk about that too. But let's go ahead and stop for today, and we'll pray. Father, we thank You for this time, and thank You for Your Word. Thank You for the thinking of Your people. And Father, I do just pray that You would guide us, You would direct our hearts, and just lead us in the truth, Lord. We look to You, ask that You would, by Your Spirit, teach us and instruct us. Give us understanding and Lord protect us from from error. And I pray this. This is what I pray, you know, every time before I read your word protect me from error and lies because I know Lord, I just I know myself and I just pray that you would protect us as a church as well. Bless our time now father as we go into the worship hour. Please be with us meet with us. Please be glorified and exalted in it. We pray it in Jesus name. Amen.