“And God said, ‘Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.’ So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault ‘sky.’ And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.” (Genesis 1:6-8)
Creation is a source of truth. Man can study it and accurately discern where things come from and how they operate.
But Creation is incomplete without the Word of God. Some things in Creation simply cannot be known by studying it. The Creation narrative in Genesis fills in these gaps, giving us a more complete understanding.
The first day was all about the spiritual realm. Mankind understands the spiritual realm exists, and Genesis tells us its origin. The second day is more of the same, answering the question of where Earth came from and how it was made.
The first thing I want to point out is that Earth is older than the universe. God created the stars, sun, and moon on day four, while Earth was created on days two and three.
The second thing we discover by reading Genesis is that Earth is unique among the planets. We understand how planets are formed, by gas and dust swirling around a star. But Earth was not formed this way. It was formed out of water, as 2 Peter 3:5 says.
“But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water.”
I am now going to give you my best shot at explaining how Earth was formed, using my limited understanding of science and the clues given in Scripture.
An accurate description of the creation of the Earth must take three elements into account. The first is the formless earth we read about in Genesis 1:2. This is what the actual earth is composed of. It is like the dry ingredients in a recipe. The other element is the deep. This is a chaotic watery abyss. As just stated, Earth was formed out of water, and the deep is that water.
So, Earth being formed out of water would be the second clue, and the final one is that Earth was created by water. By combining these clues with what we know about Creation, I think we can get a fairly clear picture of how Earth was made.
Since Earth was formed out of water, the process must have taken place under water. God took the “dry” ingredients of the formless earth and brought them together in the watery abyss called the “deep.” Science informs us that the center of the Earth is extremely hot, estimated to be about 11,000 degrees. It must have been even hotter in the past.
So when God compressed the formless earth together in the deep, it must have created extreme heat. Since the deep surrounded it, the water was not only vaporized, but was broken down even further into oxygen and hydrogen. We now have the beginnings of the “vault,” or atmosphere.
Over time, the vault would grow as more and more water from the deep is turned into oxygen and hydrogen. Eventually, Earth would cool enough for water to become stable, and water from the deep would enter Earth’s atmosphere as simply water vapor. Finally, the surface of the Earth would cool sufficiently, and its surface would be covered in water.
As the Earth cooled even more, the atmosphere would likely shrink, as pressure from the deep would try to crush it. There would be a colossal shoving match, with the deep and Earth’s atmosphere pushing against each other, compressing the atmosphere and forming the vault.
Is this exactly how Earth was formed? Perhaps not. But it does answer questions that science has struggled with for years, like “Where did all the water on Earth come from?” “How was Earth’s unique atmosphere formed?” “Why is Earth the only water planet in the universe?” and “Why is oxygen so abundant on Earth?”
There are times when Creation informs the Bible. When it is ignored, theologians get the wrong answers. This is a time when the Bible informs science. God tells us how he created Earth to steer us down the right path, giving us a clear and satisfying answer to its origin.