And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day. (Genesis 1:9-13)
The third day of Creation has dry land appearing, and God commanding the land to produce vegetation. This is not an easy task. Science tells us that there are five things necessary for plants to grow. The first is light, which we can safely assume emanates from God. The second is water, which is taken care of. The third is carbon dioxide. The oxygen part would have come from the deep, as we saw on the second day of Creation, but where the carbon came from is a mystery. It must have been there in the beginning, a part of the formless earth, or released as a gas when the earth began to take shape.
Finally, plants also need soil, which is composed of air and water, as well as minerals, humus, and microbes. We have the air and water. The minerals would form as Earth’s mantle was eroded by water. This would take a long time, so conveniently, we are not yet confined to a 24-hour day. The final ingredients in soil are organic — humus (the remains of once-living organisms) and microbes.
The Bible tells us when plants, birds, sea creatures, and land animals were created, but what about these microbes – bacteria, fungi, and other microscopic organisms? At first glance, it appears they would be formed on day five when God created the water to teem with life, but many microbes thrive not in water, but in the air and land. Microbes do not fit neatly into any of these categories.
Science informs us that plants cannot live without these microbes, so they must have been part of the command God gave to the land to produce vegetation. As these microbes died, their decaying bodies would form the first humus. We now have soil.
The final piece of the puzzle is insects. They are necessary for pollination and nutrient cycling, breaking down organic matter into nutrients plants can use. Like microbes, there is no convenient place to put them in the Genesis narrative. But since they are necessary for plants to survive, they, too, must have appeared on the third day.
The land can now start producing vegetation. This process might have been quick, or God may have added plants gradually. The Bible does not speak to this, so science will have to fill in the blanks.
Something to contemplate when reading this passage is that God did not directly create vegetation. He commanded the land to produce it. How the land produced it is a mystery science has been trying to unlock for decades. I don’t think man will ever be able to create life in the lab, but the wording in the text does not preclude it. Abiogenesis now becomes a valid field of study, even for those who take the Bible literally.
The same is true for evolutionary biology. Christians need to study evolution, pushing it to its limit, as we seek to discover the basic kinds of plants and creatures in the original creation.
The study of microbes is still in its infancy, and they tend to evolve rapidly. Christians must not be afraid to engage in this field of study. The nice thing about embracing the literal view of Genesis is that Christians can work side by side with secular scientists in all fields of science without shame or guilt, as they seek to unlock the mysteries of God’s Creation.
Before we leave the third day, I want to transition over to oil. Oil is formed out of organic matter, primarily the remains of plants and microscopic creatures. The amount of oil in the world is insanely large. It is estimated that the world has consumed well over a trillion barrels of oil. Every day, we are pumping out an additional 100 million barrels (30 billion pounds), and there is no end in sight.
The amount of organic material needed to form this much oil and coal is virtually impossible to calculate. According to an article by Jeffrey Dukes (Dukes, J.S. Burning Buried Sunshine: Human Consumption of Ancient Solar Energy. Climatic Change 61, 31–44 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026391317686)
Here, using published biological, geochemical, and industrial data, I estimate the amount of photosynthetically fixed and stored carbon that was required to form the coal, oil, and gas that we are burning today. Today’s average U.S. Gallon (3.8 L) of gasoline required approximately 90 metric tons of ancient plant matter as precursor material.
One of the things that bothered me when I believed the earth was just a few thousand years old was where in the heck all this organic matter came from. No matter how prolific the earth was before the flood, logic dictated that thousands of years were simply not enough time for it to accumulate. I do not like being on the wrong side of logic, and this was one of the motivating factors in writing this book. I am sure someone will come along and burst my bubble, but at least for now, I can sleep better at night.