Bible Explained

What if we’ve got our whole understanding of the world back to front, even in the simplest of things?

For example, how would you describe a day to a child?

Perhaps you’d say we get up in the morning, have breakfast, head off to school or work, then come home, have dinner and go to bed. Sounds reasonable enough.

But according to the first 5 verses of the Bible, we haven’t even got our thinking straight here.

¹ “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ² Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

So in the beginning the world was a formless, dark, ball of deep water.

³ “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴ God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.⁵ God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.”

Notice the order of the final phrase there in v5. “There was evening, and there was morning – the first day.” So according to the Bible, a day begins with the evening and ends with the morning. Indeed Jews still begin their days at 6pm and end at 6pm.

Why is this important? Does the terminology of a single word really matter?

Well what if it means we’ve got our whole view of life wrong?

The Bible as we’ve seen starts with pitch darkness in Gen 1v2. Where does the Bible story end in Rev 22v5?

 ⁵ “There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.”

So the Bible ends with darkness being banished forever and Jesus’ return ushering in a kingdom of eternal light.

So the story of history, the story of the Bible, His-Story, is moving from darkness to light. And the way God has set the universe up is that each “day” preaches this same message. Evening then morning. Darkness then light. Time itself, our world, the spinning of the bodies in our solar system, they all preach to us the message of where history is heading – from darkness to eternal glorious light. A day is a snapshot of the whole story of history!

But we’ve got it back to front.

We see our daily lives, our individual days as beginning with light and then ending in darkness. A very different way of seeing things.

This is not inconsequential. I think this has infected Christians’ view of history, progress and destiny and undermines our hope and security.

For eighteen centuries following Christ’s first coming, the Church universally had a positive outlook on history. They looked forward with hope at God’s unfolding plan for the world. That Jesus, the Lord of history, was redemptively taking this fallen world from glory to glory; His kingdom spreading like yeast throughout the dough; the tent pegs of God’s kingdom spreading wider and wider; His kingdom  growing from a small seed until it becomes the greatest tree in the world. Progression, redemption and hope.

But then the American civil war happened and some Christian theologians thought this meant things were getting bleaker and darker, not lighter and brighter. New theologies appeared that said this world was getting worse and worse, that it was sliding into disrepair and despair but thankfully Jesus would one day re-appear to rescue us from this increasingly decaying world. Negative theology. Hopeless theology. A theology that denied all the positive progressive messages that Jesus gave us.

What’s your outlook on the future?

That things will get brighter and brighter and then Jesus will gloriously return to cap it off?

Or things will get dimmer and bleaker and he’ll just rescue us in the nick of time?

Maybe we need to let God, the maker of this world and the Lord of history, define how we see time unfold. It’s as simple as a day. From evening to morning, darkness to light.

And if just getting our thinking straight on that can so transform our outlook on the world, time, history, destiny and hope, imagine if we read on from v5 in Genesis 1! Maybe our Maker has other amazing things to show us in His handbook for His world…

(All quotes taken from the NIV)