In the Beginning (Genesis 1:1)

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." -Genesis 1:1 (King James Version)

When did this happen? In the beginning. The beginning of what? The beginning. The beginning of time. This is the start of time. Time began at the moment God started His work of creation. In essence, time was created. God created time along with everything else. This gives Biblical support to scientific concepts such as the "space-time continuum" and the observable, measurable nature of time as the fourth dimension, in addition to the three spatial dimensions of the physical universe. Science informs that time is a physical property and is subject to physical laws (laws of physics) such as mass, velocity, and acceleration. Time can be measured using other methods apart from the rotation of the earth on its axis (days) and its revolution around the sun (seasons and years). Time is not constant but can "speed up" or "slow down" depending upon a number of factors. The fact that God created time also indicates that He existed before time and exists outside of time. God existed before the beginning.

Who did the creating? God. The word used here for “God” in Hebrew is "'Elohiym" or "Elohim." This is the plural form of the Hebrew word "El" or "Eloah" which is the word for "God." So the passage states that God in plural form did the creating. This supports the Christian doctrine of the Trinity or Triune Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, further supported in Genesis 1:26 when God stated, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:” This is further supported in John 1:1-3 which states that “the Word” (a title for Jesus Christ) made all things. This is even further supported by Colossians 1:16 which clearly states that all things were created by and for Jesus Christ. Either way, it was God who did the creating.

What did God do here? God created. He created the heaven (“heavens” in other English translations such as the New King James, New International, and New American Standard) and the earth. All things were created by God. He did the creating. He was not created with all things as He created all things. He is not a created being. He is the Creator. He is before and superior to all things. All created things are therefore inferior to Him and owe their existence to Him. He is also the necessary thing as all things that exist were created by Him. He is the only necessary. This enters the philosophical realm of “ontology” and is the essence of the “Ontological Argument” of logical theology. He does not need anything, but all things need (or at the very least, needed) Him. According to Colossians 1:17, God (the Second Person of the Triune Godhead, God the Son) holds all things together, which means that all things still need Him in order to exist. Science informs that the “Strong Nuclear Force” is the force that holds atoms together, but the force functions by both attracting and repulsing nucleons depending upon distance. The models and equations are only partially empirical and based upon some phenomenological (somewhat philosophical) constants.

What did God create? The heaven (heavens) and the earth. The term heavens in the Bible is used for both the sky (atmosphere) and the stars (space). It is also used to refer to the dwelling place of God. The earth is the planet that humans dwell upon. So God created the earth and space and all therein. The earth and all objects in space consist of matter (atoms, molecules, periodic elements, etc.). So God created all the building blocks of the physical universe. These objects are observable and measurable by the three spatial dimensions (a combination of three of the following: breadth, depth, height, length, width). The fact that God created these things indicates that they did not always exist. Even Stephen Hawking stated that the universe has not existed forever, but had a beginning. (See the reference below.) God created the physical universe. We also already saw that He created the fourth physical dimension of time. Just as with time, this indicates that He existed before the physical universe and exists outside of the physical universe. This also implies the necessity of the existence of hyper-dimensions (more dimensions than the currently measurable three spatial and fourth time).

All that from one short verse, and the very first verse, of the Bible. To see more on this subject, including the full quote by Hawking and others, see my blog post “The Great Deception” from January, 2014.

Grace and peace to you.