“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:1-2). This was the initial state of God’s created universe. A big question is asked by many — How much time passed between this statement by Moses in Genesis 1:1-2, and the word “Then” which begins the third verse. The answer is, nobody knows. It has not been revealed.
What we do know is that the week of creation described by Moses in verses 3-31 was described by Jesus as being part of the beginning. Jesus said in Matthew 19, “And He answered and said to them, ‘Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning made them male and female,’” (4). The idea that billions of years passed between verse 2 and verse 3 does not jibe with Jesus’ words. However, a relatively short time, whatever it might be, does no damage to Jesus’ claim that God instituted marriage at the beginning of His creation.
The more troubling question is why do men feel the need to inflate the time? Some think there was much time between verses 2 and 3, but that brings them no nearer to a harmony with the theory of evolution. Trouble also comes with the idea that there were untold millions of years between each day, or that the days of Genesis 1 were ages, not 24 hour days. Not only does the evolutionist laugh at such absurd efforts to make the Genesis account reconcile with the theory of General Evolution, the claims also do violence to the text itself.
Moses was writing history in Genesis 1 just as he did throughout the rest of the Pentateuch. We may not be able to dogmatically nail down dates, but we need not desert our faith because a man has deemed the Genesis account as unscientific.
God was there in the beginning. He is the first cause. The Psalmist proclaimed, “Of old You laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish, but You will endure…” (Psalms 102:25-26). These are the testimonies of men inspired by God (cf. 2 Timothy 3:16-17), so we reject the suppositions of fallible men.
Jesus said that men and women were marrying one another from the beginning. Jesus was not merely an ignorant son of a carpenter. He was God the Son, the One responsible for creation (John 1:1-3). I think I will take Him at His word!
