How Did God Create Our World?

by Bob Prichard

With just a few words, the first verse of Genesis, which is literally “the book of beginning,” introduces the idea of creation: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). This tells us clearly that the Creator is God. Scientists recognize five components, which make up our world, all found in the first verse of Genesis:

• Time (“in the beginning”);
• Force (“God”);
• Energy (“created”);
• Space (“the heaven”); and
• Matter (“the earth”).

Verse two says, “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” (Genesis 1:2). This indicates that the earth was shapeless and void, and in need of a Creator to set it in order. The creation then begins with the words, “God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Genesis 1:3).

Through the successive revelation of the six days of creation, each day begins with those exact words, “And God said” (Genesis 1:6; 9; 14; 20; 24). God simply spoke things into existence. He is such a powerful Creator that all that is necessary is for Him to say, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind” (Genesis 1:24), and it happens. No long and arduous process of trial and error was necessary. All that was necessary was for Him to speak, and things were so.

Scientifically, we would like more information about how God did this, but there is no better or fuller explanation than what is contained in Genesis. Since we cannot go back to the beginning to replicate the original conditions, there is very little we can know about the origin of all things. Alternate theories, such as evolution, offer no answer to how everything came to be or how the universe was created from nothing. Either the universe has always existed, or it had a beginning with a creator. It is unreasonable to assume that the universe has always existed, because there is so much evidence that the universe is running down and wearing out. The “Big Bang” theory, which claims that the entire universe came from an original “cosmic egg” of compressed matter, does not explain where the “cosmic egg” came from or where the energy that caused the “Big Bang” came from. A Creator is needed!

The book of Hebrews tells us that the pre-incarnate Christ was the Creator. “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds” (Hebrews 1:1). John 1 refers to Christ as “the Word,” and says that “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not” (John 1:10).

The power of God, the Word, continues to be expressed through the written word of God, the scriptures. “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).