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CHAPTER 3

CREATION IS NOT A THING

News 277

Technical Journal of Creation, Vol. 17 (2), 2003

Revised and Extended December 2011

In That Magnificent Rock Ch. 7, Section E and in Divine Agenda Ch. 1,  matters of creation and time, space and fundamental thrust have been considered. Today, we shall add a little in an area of some specialisation.

Surprising as it might seem,

in the domain of creation, we are to talk about creation, how it is not a matter of manufacture on the basis of assumed ingredients, disposition of existing establishments, roving in terms of a projected reality. Not at all; for it is the bringing into being of what was not at all in being before. When it is a hat, to be sure the ribbon and the feather may have been there; but not the hat. Not at all! Amusing was the salesperson who, taking a ribbon in a swirl, 'created' a hat! Asking a large price, she was refused. Very well, madam, reportedly quoth she, and undoing the ribbon, presented it to the lady.

The Greek term used in Colossians 1:15 means created altogether, and of the universe, from nothing (but not of course from no one - we are not talking magic for any reason). The imagination and the power to place in a given realm, region, dimension or sphere, what was not there, together with what IS not there, becomes as a pair with resultant: what IS there. Nothing plus what has all necessary for the substitution of something, at the will of an adequacy invented by nothing, hence eternal, becomes Someone plus Something. The nothing emphasis is to make it clear that in the respect in view, material, mental, literary, artistic, the theme, the reality just WAS NOT THERE. Now following creation, it is. Competence for substitution of nothing with these criteria, hence understanding of each and of correlation of all, is a logical requisite. Nothing in its various suits, all irrational beggings of the question, all contradictions in terms, has nothing to do with it.

It is the voidance of void, not its actions, which are definably zero, which is the topic.

This is the way with creation, at any level, be it partial or total; and it is to be found in billions of cases as man thinks and acts.

The Hebrew term, as previously indicated, means just that also. The MEANS are never in view (cf. E. J. Young, Studies in Genesis 1, pp.  6-7). The POWER and the RESULT in terms of what had no existence before, this is intended. On this see Dayspring, in A Spiritual Potpourri and TMR, Appendix 1, and E.J. Young, in Creation, an entry of considerable importance,  in The Classic Bible DIctionary, where the portent conveyed here in Genesis is indicated to mean, to bring into existence that which had no previous existence. The Hebrew term, the writer indicates, has a narrower meaning than in English, and as used in Genesis 1:1, it is in the format where GOD is the only one to whom its action is attributed, where never is the means indicated. It is the purest of creation in the most sublime of manners.

Enough, however, for us here, that it is a bringing to be of what had not been. When it is the heavens and the earth, the universe before man and in which he is, then its creation, as shown clearly in Know the Lord ... 24, constituting all the heavens and the earth, is absolute. Since it comprises all that is, even all of it, the object of creation being all that is created in terms of heaven and earth, then the thing created coming into existence where hitherto it had not been so, what preceded it was NOTHING in heaven or on earth, or the earth, in components or preliminaries. The entirety is the creation; hence before this, the entirety, all things, were not present. In the beginning, the Creator only was there.

Only present was

a) what is not the heaven and the earth and

b) God.

It could have been moulded: it is not so, it was created. It could have been processed; it is not so indicated; it was created. The heavens and the earth could have been in need of some touch-up. It is not so, they were created. Creation is the action, bringing to be what was not; all that is there is what is brought to be. All that preceded this excluded in terms of all that is. There was nothing, heaven or earth, nothing at all. Young paraphrases Genesis 1:1: The beginning was by a creative act. The first three letters of the two words in the Hebrew, are the same, binding them to each other, as the one event instituted all. 

What then preceded the beginning, heaven and earth, this well-known locale of man ? What preceded its creation was of course its non-existence. Its existence, in the beginning, had a mode of production. It was creation. This is true at the outset, whatever efforts be made to avoid it. There was a creation of the heavens and the earth; it was at the beginning. The beginning is not the end or some other point; it is where it all starts. The thing in view is subjected by invention and the deposition of existence, to creation. It is so subjected by being instituted, caused to be, and so enabled to continue (rather like a book of poems, or a bridge, at a lower level).

That it is all things in the scope of non-Creator is just the macro-case. Whatever else we may learn, this we learn in verse 1, through the association of this term 'create' with the universe. The mode of its executive arousal is not formation; it is creation; it is not complex and varied; it is single. God did it. He did it by creation.

As noted in Know the Lord 24, this is precisely what is taught in Isaiah and Colossians, yes one may add, and in Revelation 4, where we learn that all that is has come to be at His pleasure, by this it IS. BY YOUR WILL THEY EXIST AND WERE CREATED. YOU ALONE, says Isaiah 44:24, stretched out the heavens, YOU ALONE says Isaiah 45:12,18, are the Creator; it is YOU, it says, who created man. No other agency, power or being did this. He BOTH created and formed the earth.

Moreover, in addition to the simple fact of the creation being the mode of the entirety gaining existence, there is a further point which, while it is apart from this basic fact,  reinforces it utterly. In Genesis 1, Young notes, there is no possibility of the rendering,  'in the beginning of God's creating', since the so-called construct state, signifying such a format, preceding a finite verb, does not occur unless it is clearly indicated in the text, by context or by format, that this is so. The language has rules, and this is one of them, he indicates. There is no such situation here, so that the straightforward reading of the text without contrivance or complexity is indicated. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This being so, there is no scope for any mutilation of this majestic utterance. You can have these or those conditions, existing here or there, but they are all irrelevant to creation, which as a llinguistic term, does not even mention the instrument, or means.

These conditions that come to be,  then are of necessity post-creation. In fact, Young indicates, the conditions in verse 2 related to verse 3, where the command is uttered: LET THERE BE ... There is in fact, no scope for even trying to make the initial statement a dependency, since the language to follow verse 1 does not proceed as it here does, when that is the intention (pp. 1-2).

This is of course not necessary to the point, since the first statement cannot be in the construct state, and is an absolute statement. CREATING is the mode; heaven and earth is the object. Since God is creating and conditions relating to instrumentalities are not to be mentioned with this term bara (in transliteration), then these conditions must refer to some other action. There is only one - that in verse 3, which Young signifies.

Interestingly, what the language does do, in verse 2, is both avoid the available sequence from the initial statement, with a combined 'and' and the verb, and provide another main verb. It simply proceeds with AND THE EARTH, making the earth the focus, not the sequence verbally, the waw consecutive as it is called. It is clear that the earth has been already brought into being by the mode of entire creation, and now we focus on it further. On the other hand, we do not do so via a procedure which would tie it as one of a number of processes. The creation is done; now the processes begin. It is only after this, that the sequential method, in verbal use, appears. This will appear shortly.

This procedure is natural, since what SEQUENCE  is tied to creation! On the other hand, follow-up can come after the creation is over, and the earth thus becomes the object in focus for this ensuing sequence, following the completed act of creation. It is then that the normal sequential series begins, with the AND PLUS VERB combination. The earth being without form and void, becomes the signal for the advent of this ensuing series: Young indicates, with examples given, that this is often done (op.cit. p.11). As he states, 'In a narrative in the past time, we often find the first verb in the perfect and each succeeding verb in the imperfect with waw consecutive."

This last phase simply refers to the AND + VERB combination, so useful for simple narrative. Here then, in terms of such a pattern, there is the first verb in the perfect (and the earth WAS) without form and void, followed by "and God said", the phrasing just noted for narrative. Just, therefore, as in terms of the language, there cannot be a construct, "In the beginning of ..." in the verse 1, so what follows fits normal grammar. The commencement brings into being what is to be discussed, and notes who did it. What immediately follows shows the results, and then comes the point,  creation being done, of the processes which ensued. Of course, there are two further notations of creation, but these are of items in the scene, for the scenario, not of the scene itself. The platform is up and made.

It is felt proper via the text from the Lord,  to impart knowledge concerning various FORMINGS, which followed (this particular Hebrew verb does not exclude creation but focusses forming, but it is not to be forgotten that this Author has used that term already, concerning His action,  and distinguishes the usage by the objects chosen). However, the term 'creation', already generic for the action of the Lord, is again used specifically for LIVING THINGS that move, and MAN, in the later text. That makes three times. These also have 'creation' as their mode of making, signified. They are parallel in some sense with the initial construction of the universe.

Of no small interest is the actual mode chosen grammatically. Let us rehearse and consider it a little further.

It is not a simple sequence of action following action, as if "and the earth was" had been in the sequence format noted above. On the contrary, it is a further simple statement, like that in verse 1: And the earth was ... very direct and very stable. It is classically simple and unconfusable. Following this focus, come the conditions of verse 2, of which this is one, leading on to the next finite verb, and God said ...

Thus there is a species of divorce from verse 1 in verse 2. It is a commencement with its own finite verb, supplemented by particle to come, leading on to the next finite verb. In other words, we are told: HERE IS THE THING, this earth, which is in the following condition, here is its formless character, here is darkness, and here is the work of the Spirit of God, who commanded light on and in this situation, this environment, this thing noted, this heaven this earth. The earth is its initial focus.

Thus the heading becomes the first action; but the first action, that of creation, is not merely sequentially linked in a synthetic sort of verbal situation, as if there is a close tie to the beginning. Rather, AFTER the beginning, there is the earth, and it is announced with a degree of separateness in terms of action. There it is, and there is its situation.

It is only after this focus is announced, with this semi-separation, that the close conformity of events follow, each after the other, where speed and majesty mix. Thus 1) CREATION IS DONE ON THE WHOLE THING, and then 2) EARTH IS THE FOCUS, and there is now a series close and intimate, the one to the other.

IN this series, there are two conspicuous sub-creation actions, that is, living, moving kind creation, and man, this object, relatively small, but exceedingly important, designated in parallel with verse 1, as acts of CREATION.

Man then occupies the focus, within the earth. This is the uniform notation in the scriptures, as above indicated, and shown in particular in TMR Appendix 1, and Dayspring. There is nothing else which can be inserted into the word of God, no other meaning which can cover its declarations, and no other message, except that which a created  person might seek to cram into His mouth. As to that, it is a foolish undertaking with another person on earth, to do so, and much more so is it with Him whose creation of heaven and earth, makes of man, an identity within that creation, answerable to Himself. In ANYONE, it would be misrepresentation to allege what is not said by the person concerned, as what he said; with God it is also blasphemy.

There is then in Genesis 1 and 2, as we see in more detail in the above references, an intimate and exquisite clarity about what He is doing. Indeed, in Genesis 2, and in particular in 2:4, we see the NEXT FOCUS, man in his specifically created environment, and are to see the HISTORY, or PRODUCT from this: what FOLLOWS. SO the high power microscope comes on man's test situation, and the test is then revealed.

We have seen in Answers to Questions Ch. 8 (cf. the later Let God be God Ch. 12), the rendering of Gleason Archer for Genesis 1:14-16, and the most natural assumption is that just as the objects which were light sources, not mentioned when light was created, since 'light' was the focus, are FORMED for PURPOSES noted there, so in the preceding mornings and evenings, they were in some sort of operation, though in the obscured situation, not one fulfilling the purposes for which the 14-16 FORMING makes them then apt. It is much to be preferred to think of the means of morning and evening being operative initially, after the creation, even if not in the fulfilment of the more specialised purposes of verses 14-16, as noted in the above reference, in terms of the normal usage.

Had there been some indication of creation in these verses 14-16, as distinct from FORMING and assignment of PURPOSE, then this might have conveyed a different message.

As it is, from the FIRST, there is day and night; there is NOTHING abstruse or strange about it. Light is made; days are made simultaneously, and night, and the term is not alien to the expectation of reasonable comprehension when the whole narrative is describing the formation of what we have from its commencement! Then means of using the light, involving the light bearers are specified.

Indeed, the terrestrial forming of the unformed which comes near the first, is followed in v. 14 with the celestial forming of that which aloft, is similarly in need of additional work for its full and fruitful operation.

The forming here expressly stated in the text in vv. 14-16, is allied to forming of the stars; and the latter relate without even their own verb, to the sun and moon situation, where the purpose for the earth is the objective of the forming. Physical light has already been achieved: now in these later verses, there is the manipulation further, or formation, to enable these further purposes to be assigned.  Specialties arise. Light orientation, consolidation, precise allocation is all then topical as with the earth before.

As it is, then, there is no further reference here to creation, though there has been to the sequence associated with the earth and the sun. Thus the presence of the ingredients and day and night, yet requiring further forming for the coming purposes, as noted later, would be taken as almost certainly meant. To be sure, it is not impossible it is not to be so taken; but it is most natural, since these or some such orbs are the normal means of day and night, and the language and structure in its entirety fits with such a situation, being purposively indicated when the purposes are noted, just as light is substantially indicated, when the purpose is light, and further notation is not given of its source until purposes revealed at that time (verses 14-16), make this apt.

Nothing unusual or odd, different or egregious is to be found; the days, the light, the night, the added purposes of light when specific formings are given, all proceed with the unimpeded motion of a giant liner coming quietly to its wharf.

Something egregious, cacophonic to the thrust, the development, breaching the steps, adding the immiscible ? yes, quite possible, but only in romance. Perhaps in a narrative of creation and then means of formation for purposes, leading to the common day and way and universe, might have some interpolation of a wholly different kind ? Perhaps a Hindu peasant might be able to read Shakespeare in the original ? It is possible. However, without ground overwhelming, it is not either plausible or pliable for careful analysis. Why assume disruption, disjunction, without reason ? Why assume an author in a carefully modulated piece, throws wits to the wind, and has a mental break! It is the fuming of mere fantasy.

This, however, in Genesis 1, is an explanation of origination: as barely sober as any scientific statement, as controlled, co-ordinated and sequential as any could wish. You can claim that a dance is really a sleep; but not wisely; that this is really not what it presents. Yes, but though black be white, you merely change the definitions of the terms. What it is, is consistent, coherent, development of action to a completion from a beginning; and the object in view is the universe.

NATURALISTIC
AND CREATIONISTIC CONSIDERATIONS
IN MODELS

 First, it needs to be made clear that a 'model' is not merely a device for expressing an hypothesis, although in certain forms of research, this is frequently the case. It merely indicates the form, formula and format of a thing, the species of construction, the vision of it, the perspective and associated elements in its domain, with a view to considering how they work. That is one way, fit for much in the world as already created, and for the mind of man in it.

If someone WHO KNOWS, indicates a model, however, it can just as readily be presented to SHOW how IN FACT it does work. It is not necessarily a purely hypothetical device. In our present context, it is NOT a hypothetical device, and this is being defined for the purposes of clarity. It is what God has to say, and the nature of such speech in distinction from our own, that is our current concern.

First, however, we shall look at models in the more usual sense, and in particular those of Humphreys and Hartnett, relative to aspects of the creation of the heaven and the earth. Our interest is only, or certainly mainly, in the perspectives basic to the situation, and the contrast of these with that at work when God speaks. Creation is one thing; maintenance as often noted in this site, is another; and it is always a matter of deep care, to avoid assumptions on maintenance, however earnestly one seeks to avoid this, in assigning some model for consideration re creation! It is, in one sense, almost an occupational hazard for such work!

Humphrey's work has been printed in the book,  Starlight and Time, and in numerous articles.

In this case, it is fascinating to find what is now following the notable exploit of Russell Humphreys, expert in general relativity and such affairs, in constructing a model of the earth's formation, on various assumptions including an application of General Relativity, yielding a young earth, and a transference of light, so that the stars are rendered visible at the early phase of life on earth. Now John G. Hartnett, in an article in the Technical Journal of Creation (vol. 17 (2) ) has suggested certain modifications of the kind of model put, and pointed out various advantages to be gained^*1. He is apt in considering the point that creation as an event does not need to lean on current methods apparent in the extant creation, but for all that, his procedure does deal, at times,  if perhaps less than does Humphrey's, with certain laws and modes in the current universe, or which derive from, relate to or are involved in it.

Our present point is not to comment on these variations, and progressions, of much interest; but to consider the overarching reality of MODEL in the context of both presentations.

It appears that Hartnett's adjustment to Humphrey's model uses yet further means of extant dynamics^*1A to explain, and as noted it does have a distinct advantage in that it does try consciously to differentiate creation from mere maintenance, the latter as now. However he still seems disposed to present a model in which creation is already to no mean extent, under resultant law-wraps, natural constraints^*1B in terms of current knowledge of what is.

It may be said that this is what science does; and if such a position were to be adopted

(although in fact scientific method goes far beyond this, for the contrast between what is and what is not, is not outside its practical domain, since the logical constraints with which it deals, as to method, and which it finds, so that it may and does investigate what is in the heavens and the earth, as far as it may, are still operative; and what may be inferred from a natural matter can still by abstraction be contrasted with what may not!),

then the creation would not be relative to science at all.

To be sure, it is only when the creation leaves certain features to remain after it is commenced, that science can be involved, except of course in the just and proper consideration of what we DO know of creation, in our own works of engineering, architecture, music, literature, analysis, imaginative reconstruction and the like. We know MUCH about this, since man has been doing just that for millenia, in vast projects, huge quantities, enormously variant situations, with amazing results.

We have an enormous data bank of biography and autobiography, as well, for each, some measure of immediate apprehension, for which of us does not to some extent WORK  CREATION, as we live. While we pour ourselves into our creations, they contain no part of our beings; they encapsulate our imagination, concretise our thought, depict our dreams. The invisible (cf. It Bubbles... Ch. 9), dominates. The mind ruminates. The spirit of man operates. The consequences put into one realm, what was in another; it is not transliteration but export.

God's is absolute, since we are not God and He is and all things are by Him; and our own construction by Him provides a derivation from His imagination, thought, power and unlimited Being, which provides us, not only with existence, but with meaning for thought, point in understanding, a basis for wisdom and the reason why man nearly always ASSUMES he knows the truth, even if he is disposed to deny it in a cocktail of self-contradiction which makes one wonder! (Cf. SMR Ch. 3, and the necessity, in Ch.1, the consequences more broadly, in Ch. 10.)

We are made by truth, for truth, and when man denies any part of this fact, he is immersed in irresolvable antinomies (cf. Predestination and Freewill inc. Section 4), which he richly deserves for denying the obvious in the first place (precisely as in Romans 1:17ff., which traces the erratic process of liberated will, on its downward path, very acutely, progressively and poignantly).
 

What then of the present realm of science, outside this just occupation with the phenomenon of creation in man ? How does it relate to maintenance of the system now extant by creation ?

 When such things are left, the current, and when the one mode ceased and the other began, at the end of creation, when that day was done (Genesis 2:4), can only be known with any assurance, by revelation. WHAT biblical revelation has to say in this field now becomes, relative to these models, our interest.

Let us then consider models in which creation is present, in order to focus the nature of it, first in measure, and then absolutely, to see to what extent, if any, the time for starlight to transmit itself to earth relates specifically to the creation model as biblically presented, for the biblical agent, God Almighty.

HOUSES AND HEAVENS

If I should wish to create a house, the interaction of the parts, as in place, is by no means the topic. It might influence the way I should CHOOSE to create it, but it would not be the same thing at all. Their future operation in place, would not be identical with their being handed, handled, manipulated, put in place so that once in place with all the other pieces, they would operate in terms of the created thing called a house.  Their in-place interaction is for the most part excluded from the manipulation of emplacement. Until created into a house, their mode of action and interaction is that of handled goods in transit, in motion in a way distinctly different from that which occurs once they are in place. Other powers operate; a mind is at work not merely in terms of a design program, but in IMPLEMENTING it.

Action is to CONSTITUTE, to INSTITUTE, and only then does the thing house, act as a house does.

The action for most of the time leading to that finished product, excludes mere normal interaction of parts, and it is only to the extent that elements of creation have rendered SOME of them to be in place with others, that this beginning is possible, while creation occurs. However, the ACTUAL total nature of the creation, and of the action which is to characterise it, electricity, rain-water, forces of attrition relevant to the totality of the structure as revealed when creation of it ceases, is excluded from action until the thing is in place. Continually the power of creation is acting in a way which transcends the action of the thing when it is created.

Then the 'interference' and intervention of creation as such, ceases. Until then, it is the very order of the day; and the creation is the difference, the divergence, the category which is outré, alternative to the house in operation.

If now I had more power - and God lacks none, and creators always per se transcend their materials, with more or less effect, depending on their power - then I could place a small cube on top the roof of this house, and redirecting this concentrate, not necessarily possessed of any obvious relationship to the thing to be produced from it, and using chemical, physical or molecular intrusion, at my wish, could imaginatively form it, as I desire to see it formulated.

Even beyond its own laws of operation, I could then impose creative forces to impel the whole to my will. My power, knowledge, choice of materials, power to conceive, to institute materials for processive purposes ONLY, and so on, would be the only limit. Of course, we are already moving from mere increase in power and wisdom, to NO LIMITS. That is our intention, for this is what faces God, NO LIMITS, in His creation of the heavens and the earth. They are a model of His design, desire and construction. Nothing constrains, impels or limits His choice of mode.

When God stretched out the heavens, there is no hint of 'deception' if He does not start events to which the system is unable to respond systematically, until it is in place. Meters to 'measure events' are not active until they are constructed and so connected as to be able to respond according to their organised systems, to the system to which they are to respond.

Further, from the time the system is so created that it is systematised into internal self record, there is nothing systematically to RECORD. The measurer, the responder, it is not yet there to record. It is UNDER CONSTRUCTION. That is the nature of what is being created, for a purpose, when it is not yet created, but under construction.

Again, as the Creator moves all He wants to be where He wants it - normal, once again, in the creation of ANY system, dependent only on power and intelligence, neither of which does God lack, transcending us beyond measure in His works: what then ? It is this.

LIGHT is merely one of the things, and inter-actability of this and the system being forged, it is another^*2.

Thus, light can be hastened, or simply placed in situ at will, in the Creation - there is no need to travel as if He were a mere part of the universe. As placed, it can but need not, bear record of what its supervening placement implies, as the eye of God causes consequences to mirror causes at each inceptive phase of which He may have a desire to bear record, as of an operative system. There is no NEED of a vast increase in the velocity of light, and hence of a slow down later to our present understanding of its velocity, since its placement is not by transit but deposition. It may well have been far faster, in this, that many are the indications that this was the case, conceivably indeed at some point within the creation episodes (cf. TMR Ch. 7, Section E, and as marked, and the references there given, including those here noted^*3). There is no constraint in terms of 'arrival' at end destination however.

If then light were of a greater velocity in this creation week, as 'stretched out' MAY signify, then we have neither the need for significant later slowing, nor other artificial impediment, after the creation week, for two reasons. First,  this would be WITHIN the creation week, so that there is no significant time for its arrival in the first place. Secondly, speed used in displacement and placement of light is an open question at the time of creation.

Creation and operation of a situation, are radically different concepts, and in creation, equally diverse realities. It is useless to talk of creation and to ignore its operation in 'explanation'. Nothing HAS to do anything, except what it is told; much as one places a cross-member in a car chassis, in a way which bears little relation to its displacement when, as part of a car that now is rumbling along, it has to keep certain relativities, such as nearness to the steering wheel. Functional relativities during an absolute act are largely irrelevant.

For that matter, if God decided and desired to bring light to the earth by simple displacement (it does not control Him, but He it, He is not in a system with it, but is creating a system AS HE WILL with the various ingredients, as always in creation, as desired, but in this, ABSOLUTELY as desired), then much will follow. Then not only the place it originates at His hand with whatever information it is intended (truthfully) to transmit, being a vehicle modified in speed, not disturbed in content, but all other being-created ingredients of the space-time-matter-gravity-expansion continuum are at His behest likewise, and NOT systematically related DURING creation, by any necessity at all.

Thus LIGHT to bring information may be harnessed or displaced or simply placed at will, and whatever else is desired not to be so displaced, there being no informational point in so acting, may work at its normal rate if so desired, while creation occurs. Light comes first, and then the forging, forming, formatting of matter in various and numerous ways. DURING creation you CANNOT in any case, let alone that of God, simply posit from the completion the mode of institution, what is to occur during the processing of creation, or dictate the variabilities of correlations, or for that matter, the integralities of the completed total formatting, in terms of current behaviour, such as we observe. Nor can you extrapolate on such a basis in any direction, not knowing the mind of the creator, and this, far less in the case of the infinitely wise God. Light PLACED anywhere has no past to convey, and light moved has the rate and source of the movement, its site, in view, to the extent it is divinely desired to have it reflect.

Moreover the scope of the universe in terms of OBJECTS in it, may have been far smaller, or there may have been an automatic incremental provision associated with such expansion as may have occurred. These are  various means of consideration impregnable to dissent, for they are derivatives of the divine creation model. Compelling God as Creator to make operable in functional format, as at the end of creation, what is not yet ready is quite simply, a mixture of diverse and divergent methods and models,  and irrelevant. The problem of the natural, making itself before it is there to do it, is merely enhanced here. That naturalistic model cannot transcend natural means, as is normal when CREATION itself is in view. Its failure to account for the spatial times and transferences has no noted solution. On the contrary, that of the Creator has an inherent solution. As always, what is logically valid has answers not available to what is irrational, as in the nature to nature case, which merely begs the question of 'nature' in the first place.

Light in day one may simply have been made co-extensive with whatever portion of the universe God desired it to inhabit; and this, by day 4, statedly involved the earth and stars, though not necessarily all of them. Again, gravity or Arp 'tiredness' and such  matters known or unknown, moving the resultant image of light, doubtless have been at work in the created state. As to that, in general, the principle of decay of design over time, as implied in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, might be expected, whether great or small. This is why the now various expectations and understandings about light velocity decay, not necessarily after the completion of creation, are not at all surprising. Various possibilities and augmentations (as in the case of Robert Humphreys, 2016) and the so-called RATE scientists are actively being reviewed. These are of interest in their due domain.

Thus a fully operational channel of communication, whether of the divine word to the divine work, or to agencies within the divine work,  is the de novo creation presentation. Its powers are not limited to the horizontal level, any more than are ours, when we create and make new alignments and arrangements by actions outside the later disposed system; indeed, far less are they than is the case with ours, since in the Creation, there are no limits, and at the outset, NOTHING is given. In the onset, as day 4 implies, functions may arise through activation or various enablings. They do not happen themselves in the record, but are created.

Foolish is the concept that God is limited by the maintenance aspect of the creation while instituting it; or for that matter, that no RESULTS of the institution will manifest themselves, or that all MUST. Creation is like that. You can contrive to start a given system in a given respect and relationship any time it will serve the purpose of the nature of the created thing you have in mind, its functions and performance criteria.

When God chooses to do in creation, that, it is His business. Limiting God or His nascent system components either to our power or matter's current modes or the events which this defines, is not merely unnecessary, it is to create a creative model in defiance of creation.

It is to make a hybrid model, illicit, confused and for many, confusing.

LIGHT will contain record whether at, before or during its emplacement, depending solely on the desire, power and the mind of the Creator of the system^*4. That light must bear record of its nascent and deployment phases is an hypothesis, whatever the actual intention, at once both naturalistic in model, and extraordinary in expectation, for any creation. A fortiori is this so, with the Lord!

It would be rather like expecting a milli-ammeter to record currents, or even preserve a record of currents to which it responds, before it was rendered operational by the completion of its design by its maker, or the turning on of the power relative to its emplaced operation. On the other hand, it would not be impossible that it could be made functional in some things, before the entirety was complete. Creation is not predictable, except by the Creator, when He is God.

The day on which stars and sun were created (cf. Let God be God Ch. 8) is not directly revealed. For the reasons given above, however, it is hard to ignore the sun as deposited at day one. Presentations concerning this are dealt with in detail in the reference here given.

A FORMING of the sun is noted in 14-16, for associated purposes, and without change of the verb, the stars are appended to this. The term specifically, in contrast to the use  of 'create' elsewhere, is form; and the divine purpose for the object which He here formed,  is the topic, not the existence.  After noting at this place,  the formation of the sun for its express purpose, which had to include the rendering of it visible and operational, relative to the multiple purpose assignment here made, conjoint matters in view of its actual task, the reference to making the stars is not alien. It is thus able to share the one verb. If it is forming for the one, it is difficult indeed to imagine it is other for the other! It is a forming session, then, for what has been created in the initial deposition of the heaven and the earth, announced at the outset.

Presumably the stars addition has bearing on the use of light at night, and for the purposes stipulated; and they are added in their functional whole at this time. It is added in semantic sequence as a lesser, but relevant addition to the light bearing purposes already noted. Whenever God made the sun and the stars, and the moon, whether when He made light or later, relates to the initial declaration; He created ALL and ordered light into existence, as in verse 1. Later He forms sun and moon, the stars also, and the purposes assigned are correlative to these actions.

 Whether, or in what form, they were created at the outset is not stated. ALL the heavens and earth were created at the outset. Light was then created; at that time, these light bearers may have also have been in existence; morning and evening relative to sun and moon suggest this; when certain purposes of sun and moon are later announced, then the stars which relate to such functions, are mentioned also.

The verb, it needs to be stressed, relative to star formation is NOT mentioned: it is a direct follow on from the case of the sun and the moon, so that the stars may well be able to conduct their contribution at the same time and for the same reason, with whatever additional formation may have seemed good. If it all happened in day 1, in gross and basic reality, then in the very interstices of utter creation comes the intrinsic reality of light, placed at will, at the velocity of will, in the state and stages of will, institutive and not per se countable in any processive mode or manner whatever.

In what form, then, in what precise designability,  the stars, sun and moon existed before clearing skies enabled stated purposes of creation in this regard to be fulfilled, we are not told. Implication appears highly constrictive that they were already there for day four, and had been since morning and evening commenced their roll, in association with each other, as shown so clearly in 14-16; but it is not the purpose, apparently, of the Author to tell us the initial configurations, merely the conformity to normal fluctuations of light and darkness, following the creation of the heavens and the earth, which would of course signify the entire rondeau of space and the correlations that follow as to base function. We are being told in our terms, and our terms have meaning. There are no disjunctions but those stated; to invent others is unwise.

Light may or may not have been confined to such light-bearers. There is nothing 'unclear' if someone provides these facts and not those. What then becomes clear, for a good speaker, is that the emphasis relates to what IS stated, and this is what needs research.

The CREATION at the outset, then, would normally be expected to include the most massive and characteristic elements of the heavens and earth; and while this is not decisive, it is highly stimulating to thought and remarkable to its existence, if this were not so!

To create at the outset the heavens and the earth minus heavens, in their total or even major population, would seem rather an intrusive way of interpreting the statement. The "and the earth" (in that order, in verse 2) which follows, tends likewise to indicate that we are dealing with an earth made (as announced in verse 1): with the expectation that in some major sense the heavens likewise would be made, in parallel usage: not in entire particularity, but in major characteristic. All of these things are concordant with the expectation that stars, moon and sun were there in some not fully functional, preliminary fashion from verse 1's creation, providing the alternation of evening and morning, so characteristic of this situation, without qualification of any kind. They were formed on day four.

LIGHT came, DAY came, with its normal changes: apparently,  its normal means came with this - it is a natural thought, though with what degree of conformity to norm,  is not certain; and then later, FUNCTION of light-bearers is stated, and a forming to this end. That is all. The development is natural in continuity - light, then morning and evening, then stipulated purposes for sun and moon, with their operation in this situation, with reference to the stars in this domain of purpose. It is not felt necessary, apparently, for us to know in what way the disposition of light bearers was made, whether all at once - admittedly, rather a strange hypothesis in view or morning and evening emphasis being pervasive throughout - or in readiness, with the light relative, and then in purposive specification, for the objectives then stated.

What is notable, is this, that as soon as a purpose is noted, and a word uttered, it is DONE. If LIGHT is the purpose, it is done, whatever the implement, unknown but heavily implied. If RULE over day and night is the purpose, it is DONE, with whatever has been shown, and with whatever relationship to earlier (heavy but not inevitable) implication.

Very well: you cannot force speech or rightly complain if your purpose does not equate at some time, with that of the person who is making a revelation to you. There is however in this case, Genesis 1, a decidedly beautiful economy of word, combination of implication and exposition, even in the grammar, so that if you simply follow what you are told - always a good idea when God is relating to you - you find the focus, the emphasis, the sequence after the irruption of actuality, and the modes and movements in a fluent yet precise style, and are instructed in His power, domain, purposes, with exhibition of the intimacy between purpose and performance in His creation.

Thus the LIGHT OVER DARKNESS, comes in verse 1; and the PURPOSES OVER LIGHT in verses 14ff.. Earth formation procedure comes first, and heavenly procedure with verse 14ff.. Sequence in setting is on all sides, God's chosen sequence in His chosen setting, HIS word indicating what HE did in His relevant actions.

These things God chooses to do, these to fulfil,  and in so doing, to report, to record, to reveal. It is actually fascinating to ponder these passages and possibilities within the record, always noting that what it declares is decreed and will happen; and perhaps this is precisely the divine desire for the readers, in terms of instructing them in care with humility, and majesty as well as its exposition in creation. In one sense, this invites us into being more perceptive and creative ourselves, while studying creation: and what more apt!

At the same time, such an approach rebukes the distortion of or addition to or subtraction from the text, so simple and clear that it requires a major effort to resist its thrust; and even this fails! ALL the word of God has but one message in these things, the certitude of His absolute creation, the sequences within it, the exceedingly importance of mobile life and of man, the orderly work of God, the immediate fulfilment of stipulated purpose, as and when decreed, and the extraordinary power which He used, so that our means or nature's current means are by NO means to be assumed operative while the divine hands themselves are moving things about, in their essence, in their design proclivities and in their performance criteria.

If you want to second guess God in HIS own creation, then, using its later finish and finesse as criteria or conditions operative upon Him, then think again! Yet He is free to use IN creation whatever, however selectively, with whatever highly individual arrangements attract and fulfil His purpose, as He will. Bondage (to anything) does not then exist; aptitude for various movements however does, as He sees fit. We can neither cut out nor put in anything; for He may use a  means unimagined, act direct, deploy combinations far past human aspiration to know, and deploy power man except by permission, cannot touch. Ways in creation phase, to perform even what HE describes, again, are not to be summonsed, as if our understanding were His measure or our understanding His wall. We may catch glimpses, but the resultants assuredly may be examined by science, not for their mode of arrival, as if by method, but for their interplay when arrived.

After  all, you do not have to ponder Shakespeare's quill, or ink supply, or mode of imagination-perception interchange and so on, in order to grasp the point of his plays; but you do have to take them as they are, for it is as product they are supplied.

START WHERE YOU KNOW

It is now time to give space to the beginning conceptually, for better orientation.

Let us begin with what we now find and take to be the case. Minute by minute, second by second, milli-second by milli-second, nano-second by nano-second, the events of distant objects broadcast, through diverse media, their signals of situational change. In other words, we see what is happening by light issuing. To be sure, there will be degrees of interference and so on, but as in many systems, these have to be teased out, conceptualised hypothetically on the basis of findings, integrated systematically in other hypotheses, and brought into harmony, testability if possible, and subjected to the discipline of empirical findings, verifiable results.

When all this is done, certain conceptions are formed. This or that is happening at that distance. Conceptions of time, based on certain current findings, and hypotheses, are of various orders, some changing inordinately over time, to so many billions, and then so many less billions, or, so many thousands or more or less thousands of years since creation, as this or that realm is investigated, such as magnetism, ocean sediment, oceanic concentrations of various minerals and their rate of introduction annually, questions of the rate of cooling of the earth, deformation or reformation in moon rocks, supernova production and distribution, barriers and bands in the cosmic galaxy concentration and so on.

The only utterly certain thing about the knowledge of 'science' in this realm, is that it does not know. But science is not the only instrument; the word of God tells from the Creator what is to be known. It is a vast assemblage of powers, purposes, results, relationships and commands, rules and purposes for things of various kinds, assemblages and kinds. It is when we come to the complete creation that what it has been doing is straightforward, if challenging.

As shown in Models and Marvels (Ch. 7 TMR), Section E, to this author there is to be found no way in which the so-called 'old' earth does not present insuperable logical problems; and no way in which the so-called 'young' earth presents any problems at all. Some indications show remarkable closeness to certain numbers of thousands of years, but the division between young and old is perfectly clear; and one, as it happens, finds no way of reconciling the 'old' with either biblical or scientific reality (as distinct from cultural occlusion).

However, this is not our present point, merely a pre-orientative introduction.

Very well: we imagine that we know that this or that is happening in Venus (and feel  rather sure), or in some nearby star (and feel rather hopeful) or in some utterly distant seeming quasar or pulsar, galaxy or theoretically composed 'hole' of this kind of aggregative or disseminative power. We are watching the second by second unwinding of events, as in a race on TV.

There is no problem in principle here. Let us however now move backwards, down the centuries, and imagine with current facilities and functionalities for measurement, we are back one millenium; so the second by second declaration through light,  coming to our planet, exposes to our hopeful eyes, that this or that is now happening in some distant star. This is a noetic experiment.

We move backwards with more speed now, towards the actual day of creation. There is always a limit in the finite, and our universe is finite, it being non-self-generative, aetiologically, and what generates it therefore being necessary (cf. SMR, Ch. 1, Causes). It cannot by finite means endure for infinite time, in energy or form. It takes something to be, and our resources are less than infinite; for the realm of the externally assessable  must be grounded in causation, for the result to be specifiable within inherent constraints and limitations. Thus, dripping taps require their ground as well as their operation.

We come to the creation. It does not 'arise'  from nothing, since by definition, the term means and implies that nothing whatever may be attributed to it, such as potential, a future, a past or the possibility of any of these. Indeed, anything which has so little as a mere possibility of existence in some mode, is by that very fact SOMETHING WITH A POSSIBILITY, so that even  a child could see  that it is not nothing after all. Verbal  squalor does not hide this fact. It comes from the logically sufficient cause of all its limited and delimited ways, God, necessarily eternal, since if ever there were nothing in all, then always this would be still the case, which demonstrably is not so.

We come then to the beginning. What it took, for the commencement of this universe from NOT-NOTHING, is what it used. The power to make personality, liberty, roving thought,  assessing minds, originative capacity in some members of creation, matter with its architecture, functionalities and laws, the universe with its investigable three major laws, conservation of matter and energy, degradation of specificity towards entropy and life to life communication of the same: this is required, if it is to be made. It is made. There it is. Creation has happened.

Now we return to our retrogressive thought. Here we are again, moving from the present,  backwards in time towards this very creation of which we have just spoken. Right up  to a line, if you like for imaginative conception, to a line which shows the END of the ACTION of the CREATION of the UNIVERSE, we continue to go, backwards from the present time. In our imaginary journey, we have covered, perhaps 6 or so millenia, conceivably biblically and physically, a little more. It would not appear very malleable; but let the point pass for the present, for we are arrived, by moving putatively backwards, at the END of the creation episode.

We have reached this, by going backwards in time, little by little. We have travelled back to the start.

We have gone back in this way, not following light to the first light, as this was sent long before, speeding on its way. We are drawing near, rather, to the first of terrestrial time - since we are here pursuing beginnings, and not the end. It is an ontological exercise.

As you pass then to the creation circle, it will contain as much of the universe as was created at the first,  indeed in creation week. This will include of course not only the more obviously material entities, but the functional episodes which put the whole into operational format. Typing out a book is as much creation as imagining what one might say; and the entirety of such preliminary processing is other than simply having it available to read. It is the creation. Reading and existence in format for this function: this is the entirely and obviously specifiable result.

Thus what is mere translation of the already made is not the issue, but the institution of what is needed for such action, in both structure and function. All that is not simple operation of what is already instituted but creation and  installation of its means, is here in view. It is the creative sublimity of its engendering which is involved in this creation circle.

It therefore contains the initial, fully functional and formed universe, not  initially as formed, but being formed; and all that is in this milieu, is in the circle, from first to last. Beyond the last of creation, we move by simple procedure on the instituted basis. That, it is outside the circle. Now it is action within CREATION AS SUCH.

Such is the movement to and outside again of the circle. Genesis 1 is setting up the circle.

In this sphere, there is no need for any part to wait upon another, since all is composed - made to be correlative. That is the mode of creations.  You do not look, by comparison, for the way a water pump in a car engine, moves into place; for it is auto-functional, but not auto-derivative. Nor does it place itself, but it is placed, whether directly or by program, of whatever subtlety of design. It is conceived, construed, imparted, imposed and positioned where the design requires, commands, and implicitly construes. That is its creation.

Accordingly, there is no consistent expectation for light or energy to find a way, await a time in the creation week: it is MADE, and so constrained by creative power into being and decisive, design specified functionality. It is not in the field of its operation, until it is all ready. Only then do the continuity criteria, as distinct from the creation labours, that is those of institution, constitution and operation, as created, become relevant. To pass in terms of creation, beyond this, is very simply to beg the question, and to ignore the logical answer. We are in this discussing creation and its way; and not operation and its constraints.

What then do we find at this designated area of the circle of creation, to which we have moved back.

This arena we have now reached, this symbol of the circle, it is NOT an episode IN the creation which we know as such, since the creation was not there before the circle came to be: we are looking WITHIN it. Each such action is an episode in the action of God, by which the creation comes into existence as we have seen. Such is the model of the word of God, and so it was.

Such is the meaning of the circle, invented merely to represent it diagrammatically. In particular, the operation of stretching out the heavens is expressly and heavily linked to the creation in the Bible itself (Isaiah 40:22, 42:5, 44:24ff.), the teaching of which relative to the findings of investigation, and the meaning of creation, is here being considered. Indeed, in the last verses noted, one finds the creative power of making and stretching out the heavens in one ensemble with the creative expression of speaking to man by similarly, simply supernatural means. This in Isaiah 44:26 there is found total in its sovereign sway over this world, as over any other divine work, instituting conditions and creating the objects of His desire.

"Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer,

And He who formed you from the womb:
 

'I am the Lord, who makes all things,

Who stretches out the heavens all alone,

Who spreads abroad the earth by Myself;

Who frustrates the signs of the babblers,

And drives diviners mad;

Who turns wise men backward,

And makes their knowledge foolishness;

Who confirms the word of His servant,

And performs the counsel of His messengers;

Who says to Jerusalem, ‘You shall be inhabited,’

To the cities of Judah, ‘You shall be built,’

                           And I will raise up her waste places ...' "

All is sequentially purposive. He alone, the trinity (as in 48:16) moves to create the heavens and earth, what is in them, man, and the sequences for man, including in this case the citation (in the verses to follow) of the name of the King through whom He will restore Jerusalem. That is to look forward from the circle to the time in contemporary Israel, of Isaiah. There is the same utter confirmation of control, creation, inspiration and concatenation.

Let us now look back one moment, from the circle, towards the journey we have just imaginatively made: towards, in other words, the present time. We move away from all this, to that, the start, the circle.

From this point, the point by point exposure of diurnal, temporal happenings, within the now extant system proceeds, and now this light ... but wait one moment! This light, this component of what in our current point of investigation, is the END of creation. The COMMENCEMENT of the action of the same in its own system, it is to this which we have notionally advanced, by moving backwards in time. What then is to be found in our creation circle ? It is here that the events are sure to be released from the constraints which are in kind, and subjected continually and systematically to another set of constraints. 

What are these constraints ? They are those of its creation and not those of its operation merely. Only outside the arena of creation occurring, is it entirely free of these.

Let us look inside the circle. Here God placed the light at will, in creation, and it was CAUSED to be in residence wherever He chose, as anyone  might place anything in his entire power, ready for operation.  It does not have to go anywhere of itself. Its initial emplacement is part of creation. This again is perfectly normal even in our own creation, to the extent we have the power: we place such and such  an operational unit (simply,  take a plank, before it BEGINS to hold something up, with a new function for the same plank) where we want it. Only then does it act in the way of the design.

Light then is simply placed where it is wanted, with whatever facilities and potentiations or arrests may be desired. It is not in the least difficult when you know your stuff, in a way man here does not because he cannot, because he has limits, though these themselves are of the utmost liberty and liberality. There is no need of a record of this, since light did not DO it, on this model, but was simply positioned, perhaps complete with relevant data, just as a book may be placed with content where the author wills, starting at such time as desired, at the completion of creation or other. It did not operate as if the divine emplacement were part of its travel, for one very good reason. It was not part of its travel. It was put as light where it was to be. If it slows later, then what is to be found from that period at the greater distance may be lost to man in this era. So be it. It is then a record from whatever time the velocity-schedule permits it to reach us at our time.

If God wanted instantaneous presence of light conveying information, as a structural set-up, it is not even difficult. It is simply done. If He wants it later, this too proceeds. When you are in the presence of creation, it is really perfectly useless to try to use science to determine the MODES of creation, as it is dealing with the results AT such times as these are made available. Publication is one thing; printing another; and the institution of the model, yet another again.

If He wants to speed up the light velocity or specifications for the same, as He moves and uses it, specifying and determining what will become inherent functions, it is as in creation, at His option. This is absolute creation and absolute option.

Material things are a mere mechano set as it were, something ready for His positioning. If the mechano bits do this and that under various forces, when placed, that is fine; but wholly diverse from the placing of them there in the first instance. Light need not, on such a model, be set as if to show it moved, when it WAS PLACED, for that would be contrary to the fact of the model. It has no such constraint. No 'slow down' is thrust into view, in such a case. It is not relevant to the model in the least degree. Imagined effects of such a happening would merely represent it, if they were falsely scored into the situation, as if obligato.

On the other hand, the speed of light from its inception would be relative to the record of matter, from its inception. If matter's inception, its creation,  is in day one, that would mean we find the relevance to its internal record of any initial high speed of light WHICH MAY, and on some scientific data from now various sources, perhaps DID happen.

Thus, it does not have to GET anywhere, this light. It is PUT where it is wanted to the DEGREE the designer desires. That is an EXPLICIT part of creation. Light is by a creative act MADE to subserve stated purposes in vv. 14-16. It is not merely continuing. It is conformed to stated purpose by stated means.

What then ?  We predict nothing, except that prediction of what He WOULD do in the interstices of His created commands is pure assumption in the first place, and impure assumption in the second:  that is, is mere assumption, and intrusive at that. When what He WOULD do becomes part of a naturalistic scenario or some hybrid, the intrusive becomes the ludicrous. Nothing in this hybrid genre deserves too serious attention. Specifying what the ingredients in an author's mind are doing as his hand is preparing his manuscript, and how he will deal in the institution, is going a little too far. It becomes a psychic trick, not a logical development, more a matter of intrusive farce than rational force.

Thus, as to light, it does not have to speed up or slow down for light to reach this earth from afar (if the theories about distance happen to be correct - and in historical perspective of the 'development' of astronomy, this is a  most pertinent point!). There is no problem with a putative FAST light having to slow down and so leaving a gap or hiatus, so that ongoing light has to travel, slow coach that it then is, and leave no light on the situation, when the speed of transmission slowing down, leaves no testimony, until it lumbers along and finally reaches the earth on the slow road. The assumption of initially HAVING TO GET THERE is merely otiose. What residual light shows, at its speed, from its locale, it shows, that is all.

Of course, if on the way, as some researchers indicate, light went thousands of times faster^3A, then it would not take so long to get where it is going. This too MAY have been part of the creation process, just as one may PLACE a part in some sector, and at the same time, hasten certain processes simultaneously to fit more aptly, perhaps using a moving beam above, while you position what dangles from it, with your hand.

It is better not to tell God how He did it, really.

The variabilities are almost without number. In one sense, this is because of man's limitations; and in another, because systematically, this is the expectation of any creation of profundity, and a fortiori, when the case is one from INFINITY with personal power. Some of the aspirations to knowledge in such a case, when they stretch out to the times of origins and the consequences of the modes of origins, become almost like a baby playing chess with his Uncle.

It is little short of amazing how many utterly unknown variables are assumed on the basis of the present, contrary to all indexes that can be simply and readily measured, all commonsense, while cosmogonies^*4A are built on little more than nothing: not that nothing is known, but much is known either on the basis of jejune assumptions^*5, even when such are not merely contrary to creation, but to common sense as well, as if the concept of antiquity allows the loosening of the wheels of intellect, and a sort of magical quality, even to the concept of nothing stretching forth its (non-existent) wings and flapping things into existence, by a motion it cannot have, since it is not there!

Has the race, or the secular section of it,  entirely forgotten to use its mind, in the effort to avoid that of its God! Will rampaging rationalists, using reason as if it were a figment of the imagination, constantly effect its demise while irrationality controls their steps!

Let us however return to the light stretching initially to earth, and the questions of speed. All that is entirely beside the point WHEN IT COMES TO CREATION, which, incidentally is our topic. Light IS MADE TO BE, where it is wanted, as in any other design action by competent creators. WHEN it is there, it simply goes on transmitting. It is put where it is to be, with whatever intrinsic and extrinsic velocity desired, with the readiness to transmit what it is to transmit, what is happening, and it just does that. Interferential, derivative consequences will depend on the mode, style, method, purpose and power of the creation, as for any creation gifted with power.

If the thing is partly intrinsic, 'ageing' may occur, as light's velocity relates by equation to other  processes, which are assumed to be this or that, depending on the present, but the present is mere maintenance, sometimes given a godlike power as if it were ultimate, but in fact no more so than the words of this paragraph, relative to the writer of them. They flow, or are interrupted, inspected, rejected, considered, related, correlated at will. They have no normal constraints because there is a wholly diverse process of creation INSTITUTING them for what will LATER be their constitution.

The system contains the light of transmission which being sent on its way at whatever initial and post-creation speeds, arrives with the data appropriate to the situation for the ab initio, the original situation. This,  it faithfully transmits, being emplaced, and then goes on transmitting, at all times giving merely what the thing is which is happening, in the way light does.

To be sure, WHEN IT WAS BEING PLACED, possibly but by no means necessarily, the speed of light may have increased to a great or minor degree; the thing is immaterial. That is wholly a divine decision on internal method in the art of creation. Many current indications (see TMR Ch. 7) are suggestive that light's velocity indeed is variable^*6, even though this seems to cross this happy desire which so many seem to cherish that this or that part of 'nature', that is the creation (in parallel, like man's car) CANNOT  VARY. It appears some may want  to put the immutability of God into the mere characteristics of some creation of His, and recent developments suggest that in this area, as in others, this is approach is increasingly misplaced.

Actions and reactions are so numerous and so much countervails and is not until later discovered that mere assumptions that try to co-ordinate creation with maintenance become otiose. Whatever velocity changes occurred, how much and when, at what stages or phases, absolute and initial or procedural and primordial, these where assessed become indices to an open issue, and with what are creation criteria, these become a vast only partially known, and much guessed scenario. In fact, creators often do, and often do not, desire to share and show various ingredients of the creative process, depending on their purpose.

Of course, to the extent that the system is DESIGNED to have certain degrees of fixity and natural law, so it has them; and to the extent, as with our own designs, it is intended to show wear and tear over time, so it does; and so do our  laws of science attest, as would rather be expected, indicate, as just noted and shown in some detail in TMR  Ch. 1. So too does the Bible indicate a wearing out in this current creation as part of its nature, not least occasioned by judgment, in such places as Isaiah 51:6. It will go with a bang rather than a whimper, revelation shows (II Peter 3 is very specific here); but on the way, it wears. Let us however, these perspectives of our model in place, return to the creation itself, as coming to be.

A LITTLE FOOTBALL

For the aid of imagination, think of creation a a CIRCLE. There it is, a football if you prefer, a circle if you do not, but just a symbolic unit PUT somewhere in your mind as representing the thing which has just been created, or even the universe WHEN BEING CREATED.

Make it red if you wish, to see it more clearly. Now a foot or two from it, on some paper if you like, put a line, starting with a dot. The dot is now, our contemporary era, yes, this very present time. Make it a green dot, if you want, since we are indeed GOING places!

Now move BACKWARDS from your dot, towards the circle. As you do so, everything is regular. There is the distance between the dot and the circle (representing the time from creation till now) and you are moving nearer the circle, that is projecting the thought of going back in time geometrically. You proceed backwards. You are now very near the circle, one millimetre away in fact.

Now therefore you are very near the END of the CREATION period, found at the circumference of this circle, the flourish of the curve when God created the heavens and the earth. Everything is regular (relative to the alternative of creation itself occurring, not necessarily as to this or that result, when things are new); and nearer and nearer you get to the circle. A certain excitement perhaps looms in your breast as you envisage the tremendous force, power, originality, of the institution, not merely of the power to act, but of the materials with such powers, the structures in which they subsist, the systems being developed which will interact. Awe anoints your countenance. You hold on to your seat in your time-mobile and wait for the dreadful ... impact, when you actually enter the circle.

UNTIL you do, all things, light included, are doing their stuff. Light, which we have in imagination now been watching as it delivers ever more ancient transmissions of events as they occur, has been doing what it does so well, transmitting news. Photons have been anointing our eyes with their normal precision and pathways. All has been uninterrupted. But the moment (if it were possible) we enter into the circle, it is all different.

No more is there the assignable regularity of things just as they now are. There will be degrees of definition which have been progressively put in place as the six day work has proceeded. On what we deem the most likely interpretation (Answers to Questions Ch. 8), light and light bearers have been at work from light's commencement, though not at all with their full functional facility or for that matter, its functional limitations. It is an object to be placed, not just to function. We move on and in. Mornings have not been declared by any wish to make what there is different, the notation dispersive of understanding rather than expressive of it, but for good reason. At all events, we are now back towards the first of the creation.

As we go back to day 1, following the first evening, we find a teeming work of change as implementations are adjusted and powers reinforced or more fully cast into being. Light has been ordered now into existence.  It may be, for there is nothing against this, that light has at this stage, already been planted and placed, the stars already in full existence, with the sun and moon, though not necessarily in their current form by any means, since many extensions and actuating phases may remain. You can oil a plank after you place it, and so on. It is still to the knowledgeable eye, a plank; but it is to be given new powers as it is placed, or upon placement. Creation is not forming; creation has come.

What then ?  it may be that at this point, all the emplacements of light and stars, sun and moon, photonic transmissions, have been accomplished. It may be that from the first, light has been associated with the light bearers, and the instant (perhaps) or certainly exceedingly fast deployment of it, the positioning of it for operation in the system, is substantially complete if not fully made functional for purposes yet to be implemented in full. The most distant object is already in contact photonically or whatever other creation time implements were used, with the nearest (if you assume we are somewhere in this creation coming to be). Darkness is dismissed as all-engulfing. Light now has its place. It is initially operative.

There is no need for light to COVER ANY GAP,  get any place, except in the sense of CONTINUING with the work of transmitting what is now transpiring (on the assumption it was given this fully-fledged power from the first, and not just what was relevant to the initial need: remember, it is creation). Arrangements are made to exclude the delay for light to travel from the inception point to the point where we are, in whatever the speed was initially after creation, so that from the end of creation, time simply moves on. It is like joining two ends of a streamer, far apart, so that from that time there is simply a regular unspooling, observationally proceeding from whatever point is relevant for arrival to earth.

Light then does not initially have to GET anywhere. It can be PLACED there. Where it can then go will depend on its velocity, the distance, any change in velocity and other criteria known, or unknown, invested in its character. It will also depend, like materials in a construction, on the will of the one who is setting things up, this in full, that plugged in, that in minimal configuration, the other complete and so on. These are all possibilities. We are not bound. With God, only God binds.

After all, the overall INTENTION of the light is to display, not to delay (cf. Ephesians 5:13). It is to show what is, not to fail to do so. It is to illuminate the earth with starlight, with sunlight, with moonlight and to be operational for man, in so short a time as is declared (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 8, Dayspring). It is not to make a post-creation fiasco of a frustrated work to that end, appallingly delayed. This provision is PART of the creation, because it is part of its stated purpose for man. Thus the ground for delay is simply removed, and light's continuity with the removal of this pause for processing conception, is subsumed as a need, as in any creation with a stated purpose, where power suffices. But how does light continue, after creation, to reach such distant destinations, when the speed seems so relatively slow ?

We however do not need to be seeing recent events in the distant stars, and the initial transmissions can continue to arrive, however slowly. Where they do not, we do not see.

We are seeing effects in the role of light; not the causes in the events themselves.
We do not see what such light does not reveal.

Man is so often addicted to imagining ever new beginnings of an old creation scene, and for all the often professed humility, everything in his purvey and knowledge:
as if it were impossible to see the darkness gradually finding its mark on a decaying universe, as in the hearts of billions who ignore the light of truth, and the word of the living God.

There are things like death and creation which can be amazingly fast, and quite separate from model-at-work conditions.

The decisive drama approaches; and it DOES involve a NEW CREATION (II Corinthians 5:17ff.), but selectively. This stage is not the play; merely the furniture. It WILL involve a new heavens and earth (II Peter 3). Meanwhile, the stage creaks. Let us then compose ourselves a little, to a universe that is ageing, by design.

As the end approaches, the beginning recedes. We would not be, as before, seeing what was occurring, but what had been transmitted in its own speed, at some time, with the continuity which the change, once adjusted to, permitted. We would be seeing it from the distance which the slowing permitted. If light slowed when creation ceased, then we would see what this permitted, duly arriving in its day, from its advanced post; and on this hypothesis,  from this, see light on the situations so conveyed.

What then ? Can measurements surely show the speed of light at ancient times ? Not really, for all of this is built as so often, on assumptions, which really condition the entire realm; and even if changes in the medium used to measure the former state of the medium concerned, that is light, were apt for the task, yet they are not apt for the creation phase, nor for variations enacted in the formulations inherent in the case of light, within creation. God is able to have light change universally, in stages or degrees at choice, or to have it so that it will ultimately 'tire' in transit, as He, the manufacturer, has chosen.

Amazing speed attestation is one option for the Creator, if He desired this after its placement but during creation, and it served Him for it so to move in its initial, post-placement flush. Slow changes thereafter in terms of running down, are also possible. Numerous fascinating features, real or imagined, in space, gravity and time vary from hypothesis to hypothesis, though often propounded with amazing certainty. Aspects of theories not relevant to predictions are found dispensable, other options years later are proposed and alternatives for imaginative funding the evidence from their schema, are evoked.

In view of all this, the authority of some authorities in this changing milieu is almost enough for Gilbert and Sullivan to have sought, if given our present  time location. At present, the number of scenes, scenarios, options and theories is prodigious, but the time required is not.

Thus, the distinct possibility is this, that however 'old' light is, it is all part of the original creation, and as such, has its time tag, able to be a function of age from creation pervasively, not distance of travel. Origin and its mode would thus transcend operation and its containments. There is of course no necessity for any transmission of light at all, on one scenario, namely that the creation was not in any sense explosive, EXCEPT INTO BEING, when the characters, as in an opera when the curtain rises, were all THERE, as they were supposed to be. Movements thereafter are to be on this, or another base. How knowledgeable is knowledge to demand 'an answer' to questions not even posed in concrete terms at all! Nevertheless, in good grace, let us trace a little one of the scenarios. Light is placed within the scene revealed, whatever its initial extent. It may be hypothesised to be instantly conversant with the members to which it is committed as part of the stage directions...

What then ? Any delay in later reception need not be disruptive after a time for the adjustment,  and the dimming of distance does not remove the nearer scene. Myopic consequences would be expected to occur, unless other species of geometry, such as Slusher mentions (SMR p. 78) happened to be the actual. On more usual formulations, it is not inconceivable that large parts of the universe are disappearing from sight from the earth, as a form of post-design destruction, in the phase of light. What at the first was entirely present, might then become a creation uniqueness, and with slowing, a partial penetration might then have to suffice, from the light already on its way, but now slowed so that it then continues from its nearer posts, to travel on in this new way to the earth.

While we would be seeing what was despatched long ago, we would not necessarily be seeing its motion as at the speeds of that time, since the slowing, being part of the creation mode as divinely specified in TYPE, could become co-extensive throughout the universe at any given time. If so, then no light would move at any other rate. Distance travelled might  not then be critical but time of existence and mode and missions as performed in the creative episodes and adjustments from creation matrix to performance mode; travel may not be the criterion, but time since creation and site through creation. We can only see what it is permitted that we see. What is visible now is what is, wherever it has been travelling. It could diminish with a decreasing velocity of light. Star-wise, there are no radical requirements.

Thus, there is no assurance that the initial power of fast light to exhibit much soon, to areas afar off, will not decrease as the instrument, light itself, grows old, or passes to phases of age diminution. Various counter forces may operate, as is natural in a system, which one aspect augments or another debases.

Perhaps the initial display of starlight to that observer on earth, Adam, was far more overwhelming than the present one. It is certainly to be expected to be so, as one watches many other phenomena in this world, such as moral decline for its appointed period, and the categorical church decline, seen in many cases, even to the point of having pastors practising sodomy by 'church' decision!

The car is not new. As it gets more battered in many fields, it does not have the old duco. The stage and the actors, both, age. It is all part of creation; and the diverse modes have this in common. Creation is not just coming to be, but a name given to what God has made to be, and its features and characteristics are not just those at the outset, but at the onset of age, misuse and travail. Nothing is ever in abstraction, except in thought or figuring, concentration or idea. It all has its ways, the totality its character, the parts theirs, the operative modes and their timing at a given moment, and over years, inherent where material, and related differentially to man who watches rather than matches, himself. 

It is God who sees each thing wholly as it is, each person, each law, each developmental potential, each judgmental enhancement or subsiding. After all, man not only does the viewing but is viewable, and may be ruined or spoiled in the eyes of his mind, the character of his spirit, the thrust of his through, the agility of his understanding and the focus on himself and his own eyes, or on God and His available mind (I Corinthians 2:16).

Only in knowing God does man become a spiritual being, fit for life in this world (I Corinthians 2:15-16, Ephesians 1:8).

 PROCESS IS NOT KING
BUT THE ONE WHO IMPARTED
ITS POWER, PRECISION AND POINT

Process is not king, nor is continuity the criterion. Causeless coming is irrational; cause for going is however all too rational for many! Man the observer is also observed. Let us consider his milieu a little further.

The curse was one divine 'intrusion' and decay processes are another. Things proceed according to manufacture, and the will of the manufacturer, not merely according to sequence once observed; and though the latter give stability, yet decay and judgment give change. This, however, is only in one direction as to the nature of the equipment. Miracles apart, it slowly resigns itself, failing and falling in this or that dimension. Evolution had it right in one thing: there are beginnings and ends. It was wrong in imaging self-beginning, and useless on ends, except for the obviously hopeless plight of having as it were, used car yards, for what is rubbish now, and none interested in running them (on the naturalistic basis). It is also wrong in begging the beginning, a part of the begging the question game, and begging the mode of advance, never verified, the construction of information, never found in the inert (as distinct from variabilities inherent in what is already there). Again, direction ?  it was only which direction that was wrong. It is downward, not upward, that cause of the troubles of Stephan Jay Gould, who pondered the loss of basic designs to the order of 90%, a fine way to move up. (Emeritus Professor, J.C. Sanford in his Genetic Entropy takes this far further, experimentally).

It was not relatively slow creation, but relatively slow destruction which was the processive part! It is not always, however, so slow. The testimony of the flood (cf. News1) is one such illustration.

The creation was as it has always appeared, the institution of what has only one direction. One upward in, one downward out. The first and second major laws of of physics connote the former, the first for the entity scientifically THERE, a download, not making itself, being already in existence, as befits the view of someone looking at what has a past deposit, and continues now to exist as a system in being. The second is for its decrease over time, the wear and tear. These laws are first, that of the conservation of mass and energy, and secondly the second law of thermodynamics.

Designs are normally so, unless one intervene. You make them. They are there. They do not continue to make themselves. Then they degrade, fast or slow, in parts or overall, or in one crucial part or in peripheral manner.  Sometimes the change downward can be quite devastating, as when a heater at once fails to work, or gives only a fraction of its former power. How easily is assumption made that only from observable tendencies can actual events occur or have occurred! In one presentation, a 10,000 year frame for creation was being considered as a model, then the writer asked, But what of events 100,000 years in age ?

The answer is too simple: these being contrary to the model, cannot be used as an assumption for its investigation! If you are, in law, asking what would happen if your client were innocent, it is not germane to insist that this presentation must include his actions as guilty! However, we are here considering the generation of age in fact, as well as in observation, with means of observation; and the options available, from the word of God, within the word of God, and in terms of a chaste and realistic approach to the evidence and its evaluation.

Thus dynamics are not always tendencies, and departures are not always in nature, foreseen from signals! Nor are things changed good measuring sticks for the nature of their change! Let us not imagine grandiose things of human knowledge, just because it is good at watching what is happening at a given time, though alas the spoilage on this facility through misuse of imagination on models excluding the cause of the situation at the outset, is vast.

There are no guarantees from God about non-spoliage, except in and for Himself and in what He has prepared for His people, first created and then regenerated; but there is one about spoliage. Without Him,  there are not even any guarantees about what will be left, at any time, extant to be seen. Transformation can be universal in kind, at any time. We are nearing the end of the Age, and so approaching the latter phase of things (cf. SMR Ch. 8).

What is certain is this, that the eternal life of those given this consummation is one outcome, in the word of God as clear as any other facet, and the omission of the universe from continuance, is another (II Peter 3, Isaiah 51:6, Matthew 23:35). What is not entirely run down when the time comes, will be run out. Each has its place as now, the spiritual in the spiritual realm with its laws, patterns, placements and destinies; the moral, likewise, and the legal, the peaceable and the pardoning phases. All operates, some things differently, with their different themes, but all things with their appointed start to finish typing, with ravaging or relished outcomes and opportunities.

Let us then see light in this setting.

Light at a place is not a problem in creation. That in its totality, it is not an affair for science, because of the extreme variabilities of possibility and the limits of knowledge. Without God, they are endless. Yet ambition can swallow up humility as well as create unbelief.

It is conceivable that one day it might even prove possible to show whether light came before the stars, though this is more remote than world peace. The only sure way of seeing the light on light is to find what God who made it says on it. Elsewhere the impact of the context has been considered, and some things are not actually given. Why should they be ? It is for one thing a good exercise in logic to ponder such, so that presumption does not learn to take wings, and are learns to sit still. The time is short in the diurnal sequence, involved, day one, day four! Even to imagine such a possibility in natural terms is to have exceedingly high expectation! Because this is still in total creation mode, indeed, it is in the end altogether impossible. However, the point is indifferent, except as an example for care.

We do not know, and for one's own point of view, there is little that would prove less interesting. It is the way God did it, and what He has told me in Genesis 1 and 2, that is all I like to know about this action of CREATION, in which what-is was given its colours, its phenomenological disposition, its systematic enablings, its sequences, its basic steps, its creative impulses, relevant enactments at the level in view, its mutual adjustments and its final enduring characteristic. What it IS that is so made, this is interesting and a proper field for science.

I am not interested, if you will, in being a voyeur. God did it how He wished; there is no problem. Indeed, the divine dynamic enables light for ANY theoretical approach, to be present back to the first and if such be the case, to divulge vast distances! But the imponderables both naturally and supernaturally multiply.  In trying to account for any ordered and legislated phenomenon, it is far simpler if you do not forget how it was made, and this case, it is by extreme creative brilliance, the ground of its exhibiting what requires this for its comprehension! Insuperable problems arise when you do forget, naturally. Facts must be faced, and results when they are not. It might be interesting to know in heaven, like many other things, but for now, it is enough. It IS important however, that there is nothing even slightly similar to a problem. It is rather curious that there was ever thought to be one. It is a munificence of magnificence, and though the light of His countenance can be overpowering, when one takes the light as He gives it, in His word, it is peculiarly gentle.

The fact that we are created, not mirages of nothing, representations of chance as if law were the father of scatter^*6A, or irrationality the begetter of logic, or the invented the power to invent, or the trilogy that is man, made into a unity which is responsible for thought, action and living, and that man is desecrating himself, his planet, the word of God, the worship of God, the will to perverse pleasures, the spirit to diverse quasi-deities of desire, the ideas to ideologies born of dirt, and borne without wings like the contents of saddle-bags, now worshipped in the dust after the day's ride is over: this is the drama on which light needs to be shed constantly, continually, evocatively and if need be, provocatively. This is the light which demonstrably never dims, from which is the revelation which outshines all hypothesis as light darkness. (Cf.  Repent or Perish Chs.  2 and   7, TMR Ch. 5.)

This is the Source of creation, to which that creation, man returns, and this is the Sovereign over the scenario which is now moving to its completion, with the most studious fidelity to the pre-written text (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5), just as the crux and pivot of all, the Messiah, came with the most scholarly precision, at the date given likewise (as in Daniel 9:27ff. cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4).

In this, Israel, used in the coming both of the written and the eternal, living word of God, Jesus Christ, to earth (cf. Romans 9:1ff.),  continues to keep its appointed exhibit status; and the ways of that little nation, and in particular its return and the restoration to it of Jerusalem,  are a blackboard pointer to the coming of Christ (cf. SMR Ch. 9, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 2).

This light, it never dims, never errs; millenia cannot tire it nor the constantly arriving years condemn. It provides the written word which Christ referred to in terms of judgment (John 12:48-50), and Himself as the living and eternal  Word of God (Matthew 5:17ff., 7:15ff., 21ff.), who will judge with His own word and that which pointed to Him beforehand, in view.

It does not dim,  neither does it diminish, not to the jot or tittle, as Christ declared. It however will condemn freely when all is brought to the light unborn, the Lord, and judged according to its deeds. Did this man, this woman, actually have the daring to come to uncreated light, and assert: I BELONG HERE, after ignoring His specifications, delighting in bypassing His salvation, and making His Cross outré ?

You see the result so simply put in Matthew 22:1-13. What can you expect ? When the designer of form, law, matter, energy, created mind, spirit and social interaction, research prowess and imagination, liberty and life, meets with those who have used His creation for their own purposes, as if liberty were LORD and GOD, then there is a disjunction, not a conjunction, a rebellion, not a realisation, a theft, not a worship. What has rejected the light, abides in darkness, we learn, and indeed, in the end, is cast justly into what is its preferred milieu (John 3:19,36).

For more on such topics, see TMR Ch. 7,  Section E, Divine Agenda Ch. 1, Dayspring, Calibrating Myths Ch. 1, and Spiritual Refreshings Chs.  13,  6, 16.

NOTES

A

One part of this is as follows.

To continue: Archer, as noted,  states that the Hebrew in Genesis 1:14 may be rendered,

• "Let the luminaries in the firmament of heaven
  be for the purpose of separating between day and night,
  in order that they may be for signs, etc."
  
      (This professor with Laird Harris has produced
       The Theological Word Book of the Old Testament.)
  
  It is, word by word, Let be the luminaries in the firmament of heaven for the purpose ...

*1

One of the chief advantages appears, according to Hartnett, to be this: that his model has earth and general universe clocks with a similar time procession, following the creation of the light bearers, in his view, on day 4. Further, his conception, his model, does not "employ any general relativistic effects". He considers normal laws of physics 'suspended' during creation week; but as noted above, the concept of suspension, though at times conceivable, is not the ruling point to contemplate. Rather in the process of creation the thing not yet created in its operating format does not HAVE, or need not, or is not in any sense relevant to, its functional norm. That is brought into being at the termination of creation and the conception tends to be otiose before then, in whatever dimension, element, modes or modality the Maker may see fit.

It is then that such a feature gains existence: the normative role.

It is then that such 'laws', can have both ontological and practical performance import.

*1A

Some of this is of course (cf. Secular Myths ...), is more a mental dynamics and an imaginative spread than science, as in the case of the 'Big Bang', that derisory term of Hoyle for the concept of an explosive creation ex-creator, the dump that made it all when it blew up! After all, even a dump has SOME characteristics,  some order, exists in an orderly world of scientific law and chemical coding; but that is way beyond the case in point. It has been set (rightly for that model) at nothing, as by Davies (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 29, TMR Ch. 7), from which by definition nothing CAN come but nothing, which, being nothing, does not come at all! If you have something, like laws and order and principles and inter-relationships and criteria and characteristics, then of course you merely stump-jump plough your way through begging the question, making what you have to explain one of your 'assumptions', or rather presumptions, that tired substitute for actual thought.

Explication requires reason not bypass. Even  bypasses are things  made in order to avoid an issue, or a collision, here with realistic thought; and they are made by purpose with imagination, just as this world was, by a competent non-nothing pre-existent Being who, not being nothing, and logically who alone, COULD have made something. What sort of a something was made is what science legitimately tries to find out, exceeding its mandate in ludicrous irrationalities about its not being made at all but having a deliciously magical kind of conceivability, but that only of course on the part of a philosophically illusory band within the scientific body, who forsake scientific method for what is in effect, their religion. They are not the only ones who do this, but they join the rest of that particular, pathetically deprived and challenged philosophical crew (cf. SMR pp. 140ff.).

When you come to the bypass, however, there is again, not nothing wrong with it. The matter of the universe does not have that pleasant little way of being rather evenly spread, as a testimony to some variety of nothing doing its job, in the way that nothing does: for it has instead large congregations of massive gravity and significance, adorning the cosmic garden, grouped not only in a highly irregular way, compared to mere evenness of distribution,  but in a highly mathematical way as well, as is increasingly being attested and declared. Worse, the supernova situation is in the most radical contradiction of the assumption (see reference to TMR below).

Now Robert Newton (Creation, Vol. 24, No. 4, Sept.-Nov. 2003), a highly qualified astrophysical scientist,  points out that the concept of Cosmic Microwave Background in the universe ( amazingly uniform, and conformably to an actual ADVENT at one time) has a light travel problem also. Thus in the model which assumes this to be as constant as it finds it in all directions, as part of its philosophical approach, whereas time as also assumed on this model is inadequate for the transfer and transmission of energy to reach all parts of the universe in order to achieve this result, when it is conceived and understood to be present: there is confusion. The presuppositions do not produce the observable result.

Not so is the biblical case, where nothing contradicts observation or itself, but rather in these domains, brilliant options compete and opportunities abound. When Creator and creation are the terms, power unlimited, imagination supernal are in view; and results merely attest it.  We may find out much about its nature and relationships; but this does not take us, in terms of analogy, from studying Shakespeare's Hamlet, to participating, even as observers, in its creation. Its nature points to minimal power in its creation, begins to unveil this; but it does not presume to arrest the orginative dynamic, or to re-posses its nature and ways. These are institutive, not constitutive.

That is an entirely different thing, involving things specifically personal, mental, imaginative, effluvia of thought, the blast-furnaces of creation, not the character of the steel. The latter may attest the power; but not the mode of creation in itself, nor may it circumscribe this or that for it.

What then of the naturalistically bound, the effort to try to stuff creation in its inward dynamic and outward form into the behaviour of what has been created, that enormity of confusion, that prodigy of double defection: failing to provide the answer to what is at all, in the first place, and then failing to make coherent what is attempted!

Put differently, Newton asks: "How can one side of the visible universe 'know' about the other side if there has not been enough time for the information to be exchanged" and the time gap is prodigious!

On this basis, you have what you can't have. That is a precisely predictable kind of result for the ephemeral works of ratiocination in repose: the result of unreason in the first place. The negative results, the anti-verifications (cf. TMR Ch. 5,     E), they ramify, they laugh, they perplex, in cohorts. A uniform celestial object - far from it, from initial barriers, worlds near the imagined beginning, to structured space,  as Arp began to ponder (Divine Agenda Ch. 1). Such enervated and unfulfilled models give tours for children to watch unreason at work. As to this case, it is merely illustrative. Limiting the bounds of creation to the forms of its maintenance is like that. It is necessary that calamity comes to the model! That necessity is abundantly illustrated, and the whole endless trail of such contradictions should long since have divorced all such theories from existence: you meet the criteria or you do not.  There is no room in truth, and properly in scientific method, for entangling hopes, but only for exhibits that work.

For more of the diverse perplexities of the anti-logical concoction called the 'Big Bang', see Models and Marvels, Ch. 7 in TMR, and esp. Sections E and   F. Does an explosion of totally non-descript kind produce Law ? Does anti-law constitute the basis of law ? Does its rupture improve its legality ? Does its violent rupture improve it further ? Does the non-descript have describability ? If so, how does it come to have characteristics ? If not, how could you either talk about it or think about it!

If it DOES not have describability, this is impossible unless it has characteristics, for otherwise there is nothing to say. Even if you assume some highly mutant scenario, you still need WHAT is mutant, the SCENARIO in terms of which it is so mutant, and the concept of a fixity which gives the mutability describability. Thus there has to be something in order for it to be mutable, and there must be a structure sufficient for change to become one aspect of it. In short, there has to be an orderly something in order to proceed, a tableau situation. Remove that, and you have nothing. Have it, and you must either explain it or become confessedly irrational. Explain it and you then face the usual fact-finding mission: what is sufficient for the mind, body and spirit of man; and as to body, the material universe with its criteria, characteristics and characterisability on the part of mind, as likewise its mis-description by spirit, when as in man, there is a choice to become contrary!

As seen in SMR, when you actually pursue the realities, you end at God's door. It is only when you smuggle in His powers that you ever by illusory misconception get what is adequate for what we have. When you do not, but proceed rationally and not arbitrarily, it is not hard to see why an explosion of the indescribable is not a particularly intelligent effort at explaining the presence of the rationally investigable butt for rational minds, operating in a highly logical  system which matches the field, as flame matches wood. Chance has no relevance whatever, for this is merely a word indicating the absence of purpose. It is not a comment on purpose which is in order in seeking the sufficient cause, but the careful explication of the powers needed to achieve the result. As to purpose, as with other personal beings, dealing with and in personal realms, creating or investing them, you have to find out by asking. You may gain a smidgeon by consideration; but the certainty only by asking. Where truth is assured, this is not only the only answer, but the correct one (cf. Barbs ...  6  -7).

Sometimes they TELL you, because you think it good or even necessary that you should know. God deemed it wise to tell us His purpose, since the locale is a scene of demonstrable assault on Himself, in terms of lies which assault the truth, often intentionally, spirits which assail justice, often bent to that purpose, and other clashes with the creation as He has caused it to be composed. Having no donation to His being, since that requires merely the  actual  and effectual God to do it and it is of that God that we speak, God has nothing to endure, no division to bear with, no opposition to embarrass. He can extinguish opposition, limit it by plans, but loving liberty, He does not do so, until the time for its corruption to cease, after much patience, arrives. What He suffers to be, has point, has purpose, is used cf. SMR pp. 92ff., Job  I,  II,  III and  IV, with Pain, Suffering, Evil.

He says and it is done; He declares and it is so. He declares in word to us also, and it is revealed. Those who declare to the contrary merely attest that sheer magnificence of creation, which man is wholly incapacitated from following in his own donated creativeness: and that wonderful invention for man  ? It is nothing less than liberty!

Liberty of thought, not a derivative of computation or program, is what enables people to distort in order to achieve aims which may vary with priorities and perceptions, perspectives and purposes. It also allows them to pursue with radiant realism the actualities that are there, and to find their source.

Even to take the negative abuse of this privilege of liberty, and consider it: To escape the round of the required, and to move into that of the available is a divine creation, which constitutes much of the wonder of man.

To seek to escape from the God who gave it to him constitutes a less worthy but still evidentially highly significant attestation to the sheer splendour and scope of God's invention of liberty. It is not partial; it is potent. It does not overcome God, or attenuate His powers, but simply the more expresses them, that amidst this limited by deliberative liberty in man, He yet moves in His wit and wisdom, to achieve pre-stated resultants (cf. Acts 2:23, Isaiah 37:23-39, 44:24-45:3).

As the defining drama, our history on this globe, the galaxy for which is now by some astrophysicists being seen as in the centre of the universe

(Creation, Vol. 24, No. 4, Dr John Hartnett 'Exploding the 'Big Bang', p. 38, cf. Dr R.Humphreys,
"Our galaxy is the centre of the universe,' Quantized' redshifts show" - TJ Vol. 16(2), 2002 cf. physicist,
Dr Harold Slusher's view, SMR p. 78 ),

comes to its terminus: time for the assessment of liberty-use and freedom-exercise becomes of course the more significant, then.

Assessment is not limited to man, concerning his own creations; the assessor of man will exhibit His response, His judgment in due time. He has done it often in preliminary themes and situations (Genesis 15:13ff., with Exodus, Ezekiel 26 of Tyre cf. The Pitter-Patter... Ch. 4), climaxing in the Cross of Christ both in its point, its manner and its date (Isaiah 52-55, Psalm 22, Daniel 9, cf. The Christian Prescription Ch. 2).

He often does so in the interim as we have also often seen (cf. Joy Comes in the Morning Ch.  3,  *1), and the negative features of that judgment are seen categorically in Jesus Christ, who - in bearing the sin in order that the love of the Creator should be effective in those who receive Him, showed its character. The character of sin ? Yes, it was shown first in the inequitable character of His murder in human format, secondly in the horrid spectacle which His smashed flesh exhibited, a testimony to the inherited severity of the judgment He freely and lovingly bore, thirdly in the subtle evasiveness of those who sought both to remove His inconvenient presence from their self-survival purposes, and delete restoration, and finally in the mockery of those who were either the murderers themselves or those who consented to their guile and fraud.

*1B

THE WAYS OF CREATION

must ever be those, and not the ways of maintenance; and the ways of product, distinguished from those of production. If it were all sport, then it would be ANOTHER GAME, and one not too similar!

Thus it is good to consider the creative options, even from our human and limited perspective, as we trace out the realities of what you can tell about beginnings from endings, when CREATION is the thing in view!

John Hartnett is seeking to address the sidereal time slot question, and makes a brave answer. However although working towards eliminating unconsciously or at any rate unnecessarily intruding naturalistic premises, as it were, out of habit, he makes some assumptions in weeding out unacceptable approaches.

 Thus he imagines that a blue shift MUST be assessable if, at the first, light travelled at an enormously greater speed. This is not the case for the simple reason that IN THE CREATIVE FASHIONING, THE IMPLEMENTS OF MAINTENANCE ARE NOT SOVEREIGN.

 In other words, the natural system has a reason for its nature, that we might inhabit it; and the creation of the natural system has a reason for its creation, that the Creator wanted it. It has a method in its creation also, that the Creator chose it. WHILE He is making it, just as when one is writing a book, there are phases and modes of deployment of resources, which are not appropriate for any mere maintenance of the condition of the book subsequent to publication. These are not left visible to the reader because the book was not written in order to give to him an insight as to the mode of its creation, but merely as to its CONTENT, for which, indeed, it WAS created, and with which, it is passed on to him, this, your creation, this gift, both to see and to be!

 You do not see, to take pertinent analogies,  where he has edited or adjusted, brought pages into his typewriter or files from his computer: indeed a whole host of things, depending on the complexity physically and intellectually, spiritually and cognitively, of what is being created. This may be not a matter of being ‘suppressed’ but OF COURSE simply not expressed. The art of the creation is to give the result. You are not co-creating it with the reader! You are not per se giving him lessons on creation, as a coach. You are GIVING it, the result of your own personal creation, to him. This is in terms of human understanding: but it is GOD who is doing it in this case, this grand domain His butt, creation, establishment using the divine resources apt for the purpose and the result.

Let us for the moment revert to the more general idea of creation, when a human is doing it. It will not be ‘testable’ whether you did this or that, in general, because the finished creation is the point in view. To some extent at least, the more testable your mode of creation is, the less creative you have been.

 Now back to the creation of the majesty of the multiply layered universe. Thus if light came at enormous speed to the earth, in that when God SAID, Let there be light! He meant it, and lit things up in the domain in view, so that it was no longer dark, and light deployed became visibility and scenery VISIBLE (whether anyone but God was there is irrelevant of course, for we are talking of the fashion of things not the function of people statedly not yet there), there is the facade and function of creation, not the operation of what is made. Thus it is entirely possible (I was not there, but am simply discussing creation and its normal parameters, and conceiving things in this vast case before us, lest naturalistic premises defile the creation model, and so make a mutant and rather horrible hybrid), that God deployed a whole array of devastatingly brilliant creative methods. Given His power, it would be staggering if He did not.

 At  Answers to Questions Ch. 8, the view is shown that there is by no means any certainty that the biblical record means that the stars were not created until the fourth day. In fact, the term ‘evening and morning’ before that decidedly SUGGESTS (it does not formally prove) that the modes of morning and evening were effective, since the terms used are the terms with this meaning now to us, there being no incomprehensibility through double dealing vocabulary, since the word of God is made clear (Proverbs 8:8), if at times deliberately challenging (cf. II Peter 3, Proverbs 25:2). However, as shown in this same article, the multiple USAGES of these things in terms of time measurements is decidedly left until the fourth day. Thus light, associated with, but not of course necessarily limited to illuminative objects such as we know, or even illuminative sources of this kind, but apparently associated at least with them in some way in the organised progression of  Genesis 1 from the supernatural to the natural via its creation: CAME TO BE, AND IT WAS. God created it, declared it, summoned it: it was there!

 COME! It comes.

 IF (we are considering creation and the words and what does not necessarily follow but may have occurred), then God made light in His own way: it is made BEFORE it is used in the stated dimensions relative to time, which whatever else occurred in this realm on day 4, DID occur at that time. The fact that the creation of light per se in this universe, and the USE of it for measurement are stated at two different days, means that we are specifically moved to realise that the latter format may indeed have been missing at the first: visible entities may certainly have been there, but the whole question of time measurement BY THEM and their multi-partite purposes, is delayed.

 Let us proceed back to the creation of light on day 1. If it were then rapid as is apt in a creation from an infinitely powerful Creator who wants the stuff around, then of course it MAY have moved with enormous speed. It would not be necessarily any facility or function within light as such (though it MAY have been), for it can simply be placed at will, just as we place a chassis ready for a car, using a crane, perhaps (to take the slower option), not teetering about for days, since we have power to do otherwise, and desire action. Afterwards, its manner and speed of motion may bear no or little relationship to the way in which it was put in place.

 WHEN it has been put, or moved to place itself, or some synthesis of the two, as the case in creation may have been, sited where it was wanted, then one creative option of course would have been to have it bear with it the data which would be with it if it were SENT from A to B. It may not have been so sent, but simply placed. If it were, however, it might bear these data.  If it were not, it could still contain them to become uniform, depending on how much of the creative mode the Creator wanted to display. It need not. There are many options in creation which any one who often creates will KNOW!

 Choosing between such options will depend on your resources, your imagination, and your purpose. SUch is for man. With God, HIS choosing is not for man to determine. Not even with Shakespeare (if with him on the spot) would we presume to elaborate with him the springs of his resource in creation! much less in retrospect, with God. People sometimes try to do such things with man, in some regards at least as to motive, but C.S. Lewis in an intensely amusing essay, notes that he rarely if ever, in his own case where he KNOWS why and how he created, has found a correct estimate of this kind, on the part of some literary 'critic'. If it is so with man, let us have a little modesty with God.

  Let us suppose, for the purpose of analysis merely, that the light illuminated all things on the earth, or on that part, if it is related to the light sources we now have, all of the relevant section of it (which is the topical viewpoint), and then when the sun moved out of the way, light as now usual, then stopped on the section of the  earth which had been illuminated, the effect providing darkness. Then the TIME question would not be normalised, but the rotation one would be, the method as distinct from the precision: rotation if the cause, might not necessarily be at the same rate. Even if it were, the transmissive mode of light might not be identical. We are moving in creative componency. Light can come or be placed at ANY rate, autonomously or dependently, as the purpose of creation and its rate determined in the liberty of the Lord.

 IF the light were SENT to earth from a light source (one potent option, contextually), then it might have the identity of data from that source within it. The light from the stars is not necessarily present on day 4, but the context suggests it may have been. If light sources in a generic mode, as Poole suggests, were present in day 1, then the later reference to the moulding (forming, not creating) of sun, moon and stars, with explicit formulation of purpose for the same (vv. 14ff.), is by no means unlikely for all given now implemented purpose,  as for two of these light sources.

 IF that light were present, then it may have included the data from the sources from which it came. This would mean that from the time the stars HAD light (it is not necessarily co-extensive with their existence, but only with this as light sources), it would be transmitted, if we follow this option. All the equations where time is involved, would be operative at least from day 4^*A, and some of them may have been before that, since creation is not limited by the option of the reader, but by that of the Creator.

 This does not exclude later than that, time variation within the context of judgments; but it would tend to establish a norm.

 If now the Creator wanted to slow processes down – or more aptly, stop the lightning (more than that ?) fast action of creation (normally different from mere continued existence, dependent on the power and purpose of the one creating), and get things into maintenance mode, then light from distant objects, if applied throughout at now normal rates, would cease to be available because of the slowness, unless that distance were decreased or less than it was to become when the various desired dimensions for the stated purposes were at length completed. It is, we remember, CREATION week.

If distance between luminaries had been effectually INCREASING (in terms of ‘stretched out’) from day 1 to day 4, for example, then the speed of light might have been mutated as required, in the normal fashion, to maintain what was wanted, or the light may have been given creation-style mobility to respond, or simply placed in situ, as one digs a hole for a plant, and so sites it, whatever the preliminaries to that plant may have been in the nursery. With God there is no necessary preliminary.

That is, it may have kept pace with any expansion. Processes now normative may have been used, or not. That is the sort of thing one does in creations, and even though man cannot do THIS, it is a matter of power, there, not thought. It can be thought, as can our little creations, with considerable liberty; and given power, then done. According to the power, so may the thought be implemented in a radical, instantaneous or other original method. This is one creative option, therefore. Light can convey whatever it is desired it should do, of what had actually happened, on whatever time scale is divinely chosen. Once established, and once made normative, it will then proceed in the finished form as when all is finished in its mould-method (perhaps 1:14), functions now being numerous in articulation.

 If then the acceleration of light - which MAY have been occurring in a creative mode, as one of many options, which leaves no marks if one does not desire process to be the point, but rather focusses product, as so usual in our own creations - might stop; or light might even be given whatever speed is opted for the completed product in this regard, what then ?  In such a case, the idea that light must SHOW the speed reduction, as if it were in PROCESS and not in CREATION, is completely extraneous. As to that, it is a question of purpose.

 Hence blue shifts are not really relevant as some kind of post factum criterion, unless you are allowing naturalistic premises (unconsciously perhaps) to enter into the realm of ABSOLUTE creation. Everything is in its place, where and HOW it belongs.

 This simply gives one example of the fact that the GENERAL THEORY of light must not mix the work of processive components with that of creating components. In a creationist model, you work within CREATION AS THE NORM DURING IT! Its mode is infinitely distinct from the dowered powers when you are done with creating.

The materialist model is logically invalid (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7, Celestial Harmony for the Terrestrial Host,   Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer, SMR Ch. 5, SMR Chs. 1, 3,  8-9), but if you choose to use it, as reduction-itis tends to do, you keep to it. You work on the premises, principles, parameters and procedures involved, definable however irrational, however contra-indicated, until properly in scientific method, on its non-verification at any point, you change it and so are verifiable, or drop it. Like holding the ball in football, however, the tendency NOT to drop it is immense, and often even lauded, as if fallacy were the father of fantasy.

If on the other hand, you are presenting creationism, that model, then there is a series of principles, procedures (obviously commanded by the creator to allow for  that Being to BE creator), non-parameters and premises involved, at His option. To seek to import materialist principles or premisses into a creationist model is like importing tar to feed to cows in a dairy, because milk trucks travel on it.

It does not agree with what you are doing, is a waste of time, is irrelevant and close to an absent-mindedness verging in forgetfulness if not on Altzheimer's, then on an interlude of it. It does seem strange to teach English in a Chinese class, mathematics in a poetry class or hygiene in a death-camp; but more so to employ the gen of the one with the genius of the other, materialism's model in the expression of that of creationism. .

The passion for alien premises seems to stultify many and much in this area. In another way, it is like seeking out of a rhyming dictionary the way to write poetry, its message, meaning and purpose. In the case before us, the model of materialism moves in an entirely different realm, immune to the factual features of what creation is, how its premises are defined, and the scope and character of action in the case of the Infinite Power in creationism, which belongs to the Creator.

HOW and where the structure to be made and the model being instituted,  becomes operative in its entire created mode is an exclusive on the part of the Creator; that is one of the things creation of any kind is about. One of the elements that is frequently found in the creative realm is an intent or even intense removal of the processive norms from the institutive forms, as power permits, since the objective being creation, the mode of it is nor normally part of its intended objective. It is at the absolute discretion of the creator; and when the creator is the Creator of the universe, and this is the model, then to assume the operation of the norm, for the point at which the entire constitutive universe is in process of institution is a foozle to be recorded for the hilarity of much reflection.

While possibilities may be suggested, at this initial level, certitudes must be rejected; for God reveals what He will of what He has done, and no reporter on earth can command His will, mind or method, nor any ‘deduce’ from what happens in the realm made, to define, determine or even give probablility to what happened in the realm being made. Where the power and originality of the Creator  is infinite, this point becomes immense.

Whatever He did, this is in His mind, infinite, and to try to read back and inform man how it works out is a presumption of considerable purity, of its type, at the zenith! Options are His, and as to the purposes stated, such as making luminaries operative for time purposes at a given and stated point in the creation, these are to be considered as definitive, on the one hand, just as they were then directive, on the other. Where no word is given, no certainty attaches, for God has no psychiatrists to inspect His thought. He tells us what He has done, and how except as stated, is at His option entirely. As Romans 1:17ff. points out, certain divine features are to be found without special revelation, but schedules of creative action are another matter.

It is, indeed, only when the creation is adjudged FINISHED, by the mind of God, that assumptions about current norms or works in this line or sphere of kind of operation, become with any degree of precision, or assurance of principle, relevant.

Switching for attack,  in inconsistent ways, to try to bring method of working of things made, as such, into the realm of method of working of the Creator while creating, represents a dizzy indifference to accuracy of model presentation.

Will you tell an author from your statistical analysis of the number of letters he puts in a line, the manner of his creating its contents or the mode of his reaching such a result ? You may do so, but only as an exercise in comedy or an example of irrelevance mixed with misconception. Creation exports ideas, concepts, combinations, syntheses, imagination, constructions, and does it in ANY way within the power of the creator. When there is no limit, then principles and powers can be formed in terms of the initial formulation, as appeals and appears to the Maker, and the mode of PERSISTENCE of the created work is in realms far distant from the dynamic deployed for their INSTITUTION. Things do not run with what they are to be made, until MADE!

What then ? Merely to THINK creation helps consistency and accuracy of presentation; but to import materialistic or even material ideas into the sanctum of divine origination, that is, of HIS mode of creating forms or methods or velocities or structures or placements of dynamics to be, from His spiritual power into His created time and space mode: all this has the problem that it is the wrong model, a mix-up, firstly, that it is a wholly alien to the mode, secondly, and that it shows NOTHING so much as the irrelevance or incompetence of the importer, thirdly.

That mode of thought, so far from being relevant to any attempt at refuting creationism, merely refutes the concept of the relevant competence of the one who in this invalid manner, mixed, confused and awry, seeks to attack it. WHY this should arrive, as it does often in brilliant minds, simply brings up the point that man in functional power, is one thing; but in perspective and evaluation, in religion and his self-placement, is entirely another. To take a quaint parallel, a duck may be exceedingly awkward in one thing, walking, but rather pretty and able in another, flying. Flying away from the point is something many do, whether in pre-divorce quarrels, or religious turbulence.

What then on model mix ?

You might as well seek to attack a concrete structure with a dandelion.

A more general approach to this topic in the field of light, is found in *2 below.

Further aspects in terms of the imaginary and actual systems, are considered in SMR pp. 413ff., 422Eff., 262ff.,284ff., Defining Drama Ch. 3, Calibrating Myths, Machining Dreams and Keeping Faith Ch. 3.

*2 LIGHT ON LIGHT

One does not rely on the natural properties of what is not yet created, in order to put what one wants, where one wants it.  Otherwise, one would not be the creator, and much less would this be so with the One who MAKES and was making the natural properties themselves, without limit or barrier, all in which they inhered, with all their facilities for interaction, internal action. Nature in the making is not 'nature' made!

God could, or might not, use the properties-to-be of fully formatted light, in one or more ways in the institution, transport and set-up of the system's components; nor is He limited to introduce outside power at any time into the system, in creation or otherwise, just an author may move a chapter in the second edition. He would naturally be readily capable of preparing, imparting and passing here or there, this or that,  at any stage of production, by any activated or through any de-activated means. In this way, at will, He could render light or any other component, as so placed, fully operational at the wise time. 

To use a simple if elemental illustration, it is like a light, which at any time can be turned on. We assume that we ourselves can move, manipulate, introduce, annul by this or that power, this or that mobility or action in something, to the limits of knowledge, and do so by 'outside' intervention or delayed operational capacity in this or that component in any assembly-line or system: it would be strange to deny to Him who has all power and produces all initial characterisability, something rather more limited in this, that it did not parallel the entirety of His control, knowledge and sophistication. Yes, we must not forget, the CREATION in which He was engaged, so that in this way or that, at this time or that, various functions should be introduced or rendered operational (rather as in vv. 14-16, where purposes are indicated that are correlative to the then operative functionality).

One basic error in much of the conception concerning creation when science seeks to take command, or even simply to contribute, is really, sometimes more, sometimes less in degree, to impart from a naturalistic model, its limitations and its operations, as though creation were maintenance, or institution execution.  Implicitly, though doubtless often quite contrary to intention, this denies the model being investigated, namely that of creation, and by creating hybrids, this leaves open the path to confusion.

In creation, material does not limit the mind of God; God delivers the flexibility of material, granting it in any way, stage or degree, the fully operational capacities, charge of function and opportunity to exercise capacity, at will. Even in our own circuits and constructions, we throw this switch, and prepare that option or extension, to the limit of wisdom, at will. That, it is the nature of creation; and when creation is without limit, what has this to do or that, may be moved, implanted, extended, compressed, de-potentiated, multi-potentiated at will.

It is so very simple when you know how; and as to Him, this He does! As to the vastness of space, it seems so to us, though even there theories change, and the entirety of the mutability of science makes the arrogance of many about some current perspective, less than amusing. In any case, if the case were the human body, and displacement of time or space as members were (imagined to be) moved from here or there for attachment to the body, in some act of creation of the same, the very concept that the systems would in some way, within the arms, constrain or contain the bodily totality and bear witness of this in terms of the bodily construction as made, would seem nothing less than bizarre.

Because space is large, the situation is not in principle altered. Displacement of the things, like light, you want here or there, is merely a matter of putting the assemblage or assemblable units in this or that site or situation, as a workman might move planks to the building. Light bearers may have been created on day 1 or day 4, with the probability from context, on day 1, though not with total operational facility, in ways not specified, until vv. 14-16.

Light could have been created, with light-bearers in its interstices, while being prepared to operate fully when applied to the full orb of its modes, the luminaries co-ordinate with but not sole harbingers of light itself. Creation, in the full flush of its brilliance, exceedingly intense and intensive when the Creator Himself is at work, does not always share its mind on its mode,  in the profundity of vision, perception and wisdom.  Simplistic substitutes for understanding abound, but nowhere more than when the labours of the Almighty come to the mind of man. Reading beyond His word is the acme of the perilous (Proverbs 30:6). What He leaves open, no man should attempt to shut!

It is not inconceivable that which way it was done, will one day be seen to have certain indicia, though because it is creation, there is nothing more than a possibility. When man learns the scope of the work and wisdom of creation, he will be better placed to hypothesise with humility, and assume with profundity! Of that perfect day, I Corinthians 13:11-13 speaks; but it is not yet that we see Him face to face and know as we are known.

This is by no means to level charges against many marvellously gifted workers whose labour may indeed in various ways, glorify God, though many such theories are unnecessary for the understanding of scripture and the correlation of it with what man can find out, in science. It is however to level a warning against short-sightedness, to which all of us are all too prone all too often, in relating to the infinitude of the magnificence of God. However, in this we can readily be aided, by reflecting on the amazing facility which the Creator has given to mankind, in his own creations, and how staggering to one not specialised, even among the creation's works, are the things thought of in the introduction and institution of this system or that of our own. If our own works can have such flair, consider those of Him who made flair!

Many then are the ramifying possibilities, and combinations of possibilities regarding light and what it shows. That model which may be employed, and which will last, is the one which does full justice to what He has caused to be seen (not imagined, or construed by assumption), and caused to be written, in the word of truth, the Bible. While models that do this are available, nothing that meets that whole gamut and scope of data is available for the old earth hypothesis. It jars and creaks, groans and moans, starts this way and that, with this aspect of the evidence on creation, biological, metaphysical, illuminative, physiological, micro-biological, logical, historical, archeological, astronomical, energic, semantic, epistemological, moral, geological, palaeontological, informational, directional and even pragmatic. It does not work. That is all.

Meanwhile, in choosing the astronomical setting from the computations of man, be glad that the scope is selective for creation, in what works; but do not relish the wisdom of man above the word of God at any point, in the flush of captivity to concepts which may pass. How fast they pass in man's science, and how sure is the word of God, to which the more men delve, the more they find that lasts, and from which the more they turn, the more they are abased, and yes, alas debased, as this modern world with its same-sex marriages and blatant political manipulation for power, wealth and glory, too well shows.

It shows itself indeed less and less able so much as to proceed at all, being like an adolescent left a fortune, and managing by 21 to be without means of life support. Indeed, such is even the forecast of the trend, increasingly to impact on this earth, before the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, made from His lips before He left, and which was in much foretold in the prophecies that so abundantly preceded His first coming (Matthew 24:6-14.22). Avoiding intoxication with the toxins of anti-truth, that roam the earth like some air-borne agents for Sars (Severe Acute Respiratory Disease), let us be circumspect and follow the word of Him who, unlike all the words of man, never fails, never changes.

What then ? Assumptions of full operational function at any point of creation, are no more than that, and while these may be useful as adjuncts, are determinative of nothing. Mode and speed of transmission are not to be conceived, either initially or in decay stages, as necessarily process directed, but readily as imposed in terms of period of existence on whatever is in view, whether it be light, matter more normally or genes.

You can never unearth what is not,

by looking at what is no longer there

and working out what it would have been

if it were not what it is.

That, as the imaginative Harold Slusher pointed out, is the problem of those who wish to reconstruct^*7 what was by its results, in view of entropy, and since these as in an explosion, where all is not known, may allow many imaginings, on many models (cf. SMR pp. 76-79, where considerable attention is given to Professor Slusher's protestations and approach to cosmology). Decay and collision, disruption of various kinds and diminution of power and propulsion may well occur in many of the fields related to light, as in others. Reconstruction can become a magical exercise, built on assumption, framed in assurance, amounting to nothing.

Only assumptions about the nature of matter and light can impose this or that perspective in such a case. These may have their joys, like other novels; but they do not have authority^*8. The operation of the Creator, relative to His purposes for His creation is the variable so often neglected. Vast increases of evidence against the velocity of light being a constant, are making into something not far from buffoonery, some of the 'assured' results of sacred science. This of course, is not science but philosophy. The terms should not be confused.

The operation of God over His creation, and His scope of design incorporation in his media,  is not limited by currently observable process, nor is it swallowed up in the interstices of creation. Omniscience is not science's role, and when this is more acutely realised, it would be incomparably more reliable. At present, in the field of creation, its backtrackings and revisions would be understandable in an atmosphere of humility, as advance in knowledge; but alas many are being forced to these retractions, where philosophical ignorance, religious fervour for the secular and omission of vital statistics in the array which man himself comprises have jointly led to folly.

Pseudo-scientific pronunciamentos
have become a new species of papal pretentiousness:

such things cannot stand, here as in any other domain of life. There is ONE MASTER (Matthew 23:8-10), and you are all brethren. Non-Christians may seek eminence as well as quasi-Christians; but only God has the knowledge which enables vagrant hypothesis to become invincible knowledge. ASSUMING this or that velocity of light; ASSUMING this or that rate of (related) radio-active decay, IGNORING the vast array of early earth rates of a simple characater: these things do not enhance knowledge.

You are what you are, know what you  know, and adding to it by often asinine assumptions can only bring humbling. In the end, it is man's refusal to humble himself which makes such an appeal to arrogance, survival, and other spiritual infantilities, which ignore what man is and find what he is not, by the experiment of history. If it is so in political things, it is so in philosophical ones, and for centuries increasingly, in scientific commodities, forced from science as if by extortion, science falsely so-called.

These infantilities do not discredit the mind of man, but exhibit his spiritual dis-zest towards a truth so solemn, so significant and so pervasive that it is only natural that in the extremity of his desire to escape, he should demean his own gifts (cf. Romans 1:17ff.). Many are caught in this decline, not in velocity of man, but of virtue; and the clammy corpse of dead culture can have an hypnotic effect on many, who dare not draw loose from the unprepossessing cadaver.

*3

See further references on this theme at:

Divine Agenda Ch. 1,

Calibrating Myths Ch. 1,   

See also Dayspring, Ch. 9 in A Spiritual Potpourri,  and

Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 13,   6, 16. In TMR, which includes some recent findings highly pertinent to the point, see this section, and also more broadly.

*4

Just so, the human body, in initial placement of parts, presents no problems to absolute creation, as to each member 'must' show of relative transport, in order to be placed as a body. There is certain naiveté about that, as if the Maker has to conform to the modes of the system when created, while it is still being created.

*4A

See for example, SMR Extension to Ch. 2, on Cosmogonies; and in more historical coverage, SMR pp. 422Eff., Great Burials.

*5 EXCURSION ON REALISM, REPENTANCE AND THE UNIVERSE

See for example, Calibrating Myths... Ch. 1 where marked, and TMR Ch. 7 Section E, with Divine Agenda Ch. 1. The mere assumption that because things, on some current assumptions, though questioned on others, seem to be moving with some speed apart, that therefore, with all the unknown variables, they started together, rather than being placed IN the act of creation, at some distance or other, possibly far less than the present, and moving like streams of water from a downpour of many drops, far apart at decreasing speed as time went on, seems little to be considered for an absence of reasons, except this morbid fascination with the 'big bang' which, as seen in the above references and other sites, is so contrary to so much, that its very genesis in the mind of man makes it certain it was by no means the genesis of anything.

The fact that to have the genesis of everything you need something rather than velocity, seems to escape the anti-causal, causally involved and operative, mind of the secularist and many more, influenced by such tedious trifles of irrationality.

The other thought, that things are hastening to the time at the other end of the scale, where to  many, their destruction following Arp's 'tiredness' (ref. 3 above), does not seem worthy of conception,  although the actual laws of science signify the conservation of matter and energy, as for a creation, and the wearing out of specificity, as in entropy, and these dynamics and statics in both cases are precisely what we observe, and the Bible declares, is naturally unpopular, since it is in a model both biblical and naturally confirmed. It is however not susceptible to capture by naturalism, a mere jaunt into question-begging and causal inconsequence (cf. Causes).

Indeed, the magnificence of divine power is shown not only in the intricacy of things, the laws of matter, the conceptual codifying and command stations in the cells, but in the fact that the mind that made matter also made its point, purpose and meaning, and that the mind of modern man, so much bent on mutual destruction, is similarly, if not programmatically then at least purposefully,  in contempt of the Lord who made it, so that moral law likewise comes to an end of the matter, the sad matter casual manipulation of the mentality of man, and his judgment. This is wrought not only by some in invasion of the minds of others, but in the minds of some by their own irrational thrusts, invasive graspings or desire for the decomposition of all that is God (as in II Thessalonians 2, at last focussed in one person). As to that, however, man's increasingly popular dismissiveness concerning the Creatror is not, as with the very young, its dismissal. These, they usually learn; man increasingly does not. There are specifications, and a jsut specialty is not to create universes, or prescribe how it is done, or should be, or could be, except to show His greatness, but to find the Maker of this one, and in Him our place in it.

II Peter 3 talks of the burning up of the elements and the bringing to account of this tiring earth, and witless meandering of man, the divorcee from the divine. The work of Professor of Sanford of Cornell University is no small reminder, in the increasing dissolution of our genome, in his view, at a sharply notable rate (by mutation, as one way, but there is much in view as to method). This is considered in The Lie has a Limited Shelf-Life ... Ch. 1.

Things are certainly moving, both from a beginning and to an end. The possibility of asteroid impact is considerable, say the mathematicians, and near misses are increasingly recorded with large and dangerous lumps of matter. The Bible however for millenia has advised (Revelation 8), that the divine order which created man and matter, and the mind of man from that which is without limits, namely the mind of God and His power and personality, will not forever let man languish in moral, mental and imaginative folly (cf. SMR p. 999). Nor will our beautiful little cosmos be as a lodge in a wilderness; for heavenly bodies are CERTAINLY scheduled, Revelation tells us, and one, a star or heavenly body will indeed come to earth, and this, not at all of the Hollywood type in its 'star fell from heaven." On the contrary, this will be with enormous and disastrous results.

What ? will man engage in that lust of killing (as predicted in Revelation 6), which mars him as a race with scars of massive depth on his countenance, and expect that the source of life will pat him on the swollen head!

Alas for man! His day is coming, that of judgment. If man feels outraged at this, what is he to expect ? Is it that in law and licence, the Maker of the meaning in and for his mind, purity for his heart and just expectations for his spirit, is Himself to be indifferent at man's plague of irreverence, pandemic of philosophic and religious irrelevance, massive idolatries and sacrifice of its young to pagan and foolish idols!  Psalm 50 most vigorously exclaims otherwise.

"These things you have done and I kept silent;
You thought that I "was altogether like you;
But I will rebuke you, and set them in order before your eyes.

Now consider this, you who forget God,
Lest I tear you in pieces,
And there is none to deliver.

Whoever offers praise glorifies Me;
And to him who orders his way aright,
I will show the salvation of God."

Deliverance ? As in Dunkirk, many hope for it, some pray for it, but to expect God to provide it when man ruthlessly prods his neighbour, scorns God, invents feckless gods who do not operate to model, and drowns his young in a sea of pollution as a mode of education (cf. TMR Ch. 8, Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3), repentance is the beginning.

Judgment will be according to truth (Romans 2), and the concept that it is truly the case that truth is not known, is not even worthy of farcical rating as an escape clause for man!

His seedy non-spirituality will have its day, as will the second law of thermodynamics material of his universe, but this is not all. It will all be arraigned by, to and for its Maker. Is He then to be ignored ? or is it to be scorned,  His summary offer of pardon in the Messiah, whose people even now have hastened back to their Promised Land,  in a divinely orchestrated preparation for His return, which could not have occurred without it (Luke 21:214, cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 8)! That is, it is a direct prelude to it, part of the program as shared in the Bible with its readers, before it will occur. It is done. All is waiting and ready as the impelling misuse of power and abuse of liberty, both man's own and that of millions made subject by fear and brutality, to come to its climax and to be destroyed with the same brilliance of power as was used constructively, in the creation itself (cf. II Thessalonians 1).

As it declares of Israel, in a chapter contrasting them with the Gentiles,

"The children you will have after you have lost the others, will say again in your ears, The place is too small for me; give me a place where I may dwell.   "Then you will say in your heart, Who has begotten these for me, since I have lost my children and am desolate, a captive and wandering to and fro ? and who has brought these up ? There I was, left alone, but these, where were they ?"

The Lord then indicates that He would lift up His hand to the nations, and they will bring "your sons in their arms", that kings would be their foster fathers: then, said the Lord, Then, the Lord declared,

"Then you will now that I am the LORD."

Will the prey be taken from the mighty ? He asks. But "even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away...
 For I will contend with him who contends with you, and I will save your children."

That is like newspaper reportage of the Jewish situation in my own lifetime, as is the fact that the mightily effective wars would become military history, when Israel was delivered from massive multinational attacks (as in Zechariah 12 before the announcement of the next step - a vast national repentance to the Lord whom they "pierced" (12:10). What was written some two and one half millenia ago, now appears as with the breakfast news, ready to be 'read'!

What then do we find ? This, all of it was announced millenia ago, and the repentance to have extraordinary thrust in Israel following eventual its return, this was forecast half a millenium before the deed itself happened, namely the crucifixion of Christ (as also described in Isaiah 50-55 and Psalm 16,22, 40, cf. Joyful Jottings 22-25). It is this piercing of the Lord, which was foretold in Zechariah for example which, as there likewise foretold, would subsequently be repented of in the massive and spiritual movement of heart (Zechariah 12:10-13:1). The Lord, HE knows His mind. It is time to become acquainted with His demand for repentance to, and faith in that same Messiah (Romans 10:9), the living God who manifested Himself once and for all, on this earth, to which He will shortly return (Matthew 24, cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5), as always, in accordance with His word. His word is to Jew and to Gentile, male and female, old and young, as when a ship is sinking. If you have ears, then listen. If you have feet, then walk, and indeed having found in Christ salvation, continue to "Walk in the Spirit," in those beautiful ways described in Galatians 5:16-26. Indeed, ugliness of heart, mind, spirit, attitude and atmosphere is an unnecessary burden to man, just as is the case of smoking cigarettes, for his lungs. You MAY do it; but you must pay. It is a liberty that love would have you leave, but grace does not compel.

Precisely when He will come is a closely guarded divine secret, which even the Messiah Himself was not commissioned to reveal, and hence did not carry as man to man; but the REASON is clear. Some will be caught like thieves, not doing their Master's business (Matthew 24:38-51). This element of surprise is divinely deliberate. The world can go on with its stupefaction program, a mental and moral disaster wilfully brought on, from which, available to this day, is the escape into reason and reality, yes to revelation. The necessary truth of the latter is available in the Gospel of pardon in Jesus Christ. It is there. It is scorned, scamped or settled in. The Gospel is long founded. Sin uncovered  will be found out in its day and time, just as various civilisations in the past have been found out, for what they are. How desolate is the list of their departures (cf. The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 4). according to the word of God (cf. Of the Earth, Earthy... Ch. 13, Highway of Holiness Ch. 5, SMR pp. 713ff.).

Indeed, of this, there is more to come as in Revelation 1-19!

But the judgment, what of that ?

This time it will be international and global; and the end of the period of opportunity.

*6

From Calibrating Myths, Ch. 1, this excerpt is provided. Trouble with one theory in some aspect, real or mere by generalisation or fixity of thought, imagined, sometimes impairs development. Thus Einstein's theory of relativity is not a law, but a theory, and its development or limitation, just as Newton's laws had to be limited, is something which either theoretical or empirical matters can constrain. As to the latter, the following relates.

 “A team of Australian scientists, led by theoretical physicist (and evolutionist) Paul Davies form Sydney’s Macquarie University, say it is possible that the speed of light has slowed ‘over billions of years’. They have proposed the speed of light may not be a constant, a revolutionary idea that could unseat one of the most cherished laws of modern physics – Einstein’s theory of relativity” (Aug 7, 2002, Reuters, Aug 8, 2002 – Canberra Times etc.).

Much more is provided in this reference regarding the alterable velocity of light as in TMR Ch. 7.

*6A

See Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Chs.   9, 13, Earth Spasm ... Ch.  1 , Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 7, and SMR Ch. 3 on this theme, together with TMR Chs.  5,   7.

*7 The following slightly revised excerpt from SMR within the section pp. 76-79, may prove helpful. See also SMR pp.  226ff., 234ff., 244ff., TMR Chs. 1 and   8.

In the end, however, the method, though not the fact, of the institution of matter, remains veiled. What logic requires, observation coheres with, with an elegant and beautiful harmony. It is however the logic which is behind science, and indeed on which it depends - which requires the institution of matter, and science can merely attest the consequences. This it does, in terms of its elemental principles of the conservation of matter and energy, the second law of thermodynamics, life transmission from life,  and parallel elements which are in fact, the procedures which follow upon a finished creation. In this, it does nothing to show how it could have come, but everything to confirm that its origin is not a process of the present. As instituted, it works, and it works with laws which it has no power to institute.

Science attests what it observes: a working which does not incorporate the procedures of institution. It shows, as it were, how the car works, but it has no snapshots of the factory where it was made. That is all it could attest, except for data harmonious with this institution, such as may be be found in this case, in such fields as its undergirding laws which reflect creation so elegantly, being built on the existence of structure, and its tendency to reduce its specifics (or increase its entropy) over time. This last point of course is also true of man's own creations; and in his case, there is the joy of creation, while in the universe's case, while it cannot be seen happening (just as the Bible states - it is finished), yet we have the compensation that it so greatly outstrips any production of our own that it is a standing marvel. These matters will be further explored in the specific field of life, in Chapter 2 (SMR).

As to this distinction between the method of institution of matter, and the the fact of its existence, it is instructive to make an analogy for simpler hold by the imagination. Thus it is rather like the case of authorship of a poem: it comes from another order (the person), and its own (created) order is simply instituted from beyond it, however rigorous it may be once it is there. Pen meets paper in a way that, should it continue without guidance, plan and care, would disturb, disrupt or even destroy the system (i.e. of the writing as first written).

Thus the facts of orthography, the character of the script and so on, do not show how thoughts came to become discrete words. That action, thought to words, is prior to the observable words themselves. These attest not how but that it was written.

It is interesting that no one would ever question whether a book had not been written. Perhaps it is because it is so obvious that such as work has a character, and a content, and a code on the one hand, and that it would be corrupted speedily on the other, if bits were left around; and that all the elements of conservation of its creation are in it and none of the elements of dispersion of order appear relative to the time span of the phenomenon, so that a contrary assumption would contravene all the data and explain none, as well as being contrary to all known evidence.

The consistency of the phenomenon of the book relative to personality, and its entire inconsistency with the opposite, would leave efforts to account for it differently, in its original composition, facing the massive wall of the inability of any element to conform to the non-intelligent-production theory. Where not one datum abides by a theory, and every datum abides by another, it is not merely entirely unscientific to choose such a theory, but, all its components being systematically contradicted, it becomes an exercise in random thought.

Science would never do this, in terms of scientific method, though many scientists and others do it with the universe, which contains billions of 'books' in magnificent order after long periods, systematically reproducing themselves as if they were a publishing house... the cells of the body. While these cells are not perfect, their trillions per body have an amazingly near approach to it over the generations of auto-reproduction.

As noted initially, the attribution of law production to chance is merely self-contradiction; it is in fact, a simple misuse of terminology. Systematic, integrated continuation of correlated actions in terms of coherent order structures on cohesive conceptual formulations is law; and to make 'chance' responsible for it does not really deserve even the name of a rational hypothesis; it has nothing to offer- but contradiction.

The writer of the book of the human body is not an option; He is a necessity, and this not on one or two grounds, but as we see, continually.

*8

In 2006, Hartnett and Williams published  Dismantling the Big Bang, and aspects in the above domain are given some attention here, in a milieu where various related points are readily available by hyperlink.

The speed of light, the very nature of gravity, the existence of an almost endless seeming list of putatives, possible this or that bundles of energy, forms of matter, grave-seeming postulations about things never found, like dark matter, and other things newly thought, abound. In all of this mêlée, which is the roving and sometimes almost writhing contractions, expansions and diffusions of thought, it is a marvel that any is willing to lay down the law. It is even more so, when you consider that for many, the basic and inherent intellectual suicide of having no truth available in a universe of mere relativity where even that assertion assumes what is denied, is  opted first of all!

In fact, the biblical depiction of majestic oration from the deity, with a minute and vast cohesion of His laws and ways, words and results, remains the only logical option (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!). When this is realised, then various possibilities may be discerned as to some of the evidential results of His making the form, the energy distribution patterns, the space, the word enshrined to the microscopic eye in living things in one language, and that intricate magnificence of pattern and process past all that man has ever come near to copying in the divagations of his own imagination. This is only to be expected when you begin to look at the hardware and software from that sublime, divine and creative intelligence which gave to that with which man is invested, not only a name and a place outside the mere control of matter, but scope for compositions concerning it, and inventing dispositions for it, now that both he and it are created. At that, as expounded above, the movement from the operative to the creative is itself fraught with the peril of irrelevance. It is creation alone which has no bounds to the modes of institution, the diversities from the present, and the purposively directed power available, as for us in our little themes and ways, writings and drawings.

The velocity of light is no longer a sacred cow but is freely admitted by many leading scientists to be not only variable, but immensely so, depending on circumstances, situations and scenarios, while various scientists assault one another's theories and theorems with spectacular confidence, Arp,  Setterfield in his relatively new lecture series, Hartnett moving on from the profound critiques of Slusher (cf. SMR pp. 76-78, 104, 165, 170, 204, 207, 239-244, 249, S15, S21-S23, S27, S30).

The imaginary and never confirmed particles of this or that sort are mouthed by those who would not normally in science go so far on so little, so that mere combinations of thought and words become significant seeming substitutes for scientific method, by which you START which what EVOKES such requirements, not just because you want an idea, but because you have no apparent option. Science has dignity and earns respect ONLY when it starts with what any one can find, given knowledge and skill, and continues to account for it in testable terms, and is willing to abide by the results.

This is far from the case in this current light-matter-astronomy-origins clatter and clangour.

When you superadd to all the scene of argument and imagination, the feeble light of mere hypothesis and the faint retardations of no confirmation, where hope replaces fact and heat replaces light even in talking about it, the fact that in the institution of these things there is an ABSOLUTE FREEDOM on the part of the One who gave them their causal nexus in the first place: then it is small wonder that there is such an anti-consensus!

As Hartnett reviews in his Dismantling of the Big Bang, and has long been shown and become apparent, the Big Bang hypothesis is contrary to so many evidential realities (cf. TMR Ch. 7 E), that its illusion is inexcusable. The anti-verifications merely mount. It should have been categorically abandoned long ago.  Now there are all sorts of efforts to bring in new scenarios, and these are so fraught with the burden of imagination, and empty on distinctive verification that what is left is the need to bring all the actual evidence into focus, including the necessity of creation, and designate the possibilities.

Hartnett is currently examining one of these in his field, and wishing that more funds were made available outside the intellectual dragon of Big Bang, so that some constructive work in terms of scientific method, not partisan cultural clichés, clinks and clichés, could be made. His concept of rapidly moving space expansion near the outset, after the creation of earth, and pointing out that evidence is consistent with the earth as centre of the universe (not biblically necessary but interesting and coherent with the biblical evidence cf. above) is being presented as solving problems, and it may do so. The stage at which such expansion occurred, between day one and day 4, on day 4, is not apparent from the Bible, since it proceeds first to declare the creation of the heaven and the earth, and then, having revealed ordering sequences on earth (Genesis 1:2-13), turns to the heavens (1:14-19), a sequence in time or thought, in revelation of the actions or concatenation.

This has been treated at some length at   Let God be God Ch. 12, and will not be repeated here. The morning and evening sequence certainly strongly suggests the existence of what is shown in its ordering mission and mandate and its visibility from the earth - as a place for conceptualising the matter in hand for us, namely light sources. To be sure, the Lord COULD have merely made a sequence by direct means, but the presence of the germane terms, evening and morning, throughout is nearly decisive and certainly impossible to ignore, from day one. This in no way interrupts the sequence of events as revealed, but merely means that the question of whether the light sources were made in the creation of heaven and earth at the outset, as implicit in terms of evening and morning, or later, does arise.

The continuation of the same ethereal, evening and morning, phrasing makes it a most ambitious project to imagine that the later means for the same were absent when they are first mentioned. The explanation being in terms comprehensible, and these being consistent throughout, it seems overwhelmingly likely that the general situation involved at least, was in place at this first use of the phrasing: that is the heavenly bodies concerned with light source and management, even though their heavily underlined functions are kept to day four.

The precise functions which they are to undertake,  become then in day four an announcement within the action and nature of things, a focus on earth where man is, to whose ears address is made in review of the creation, so that a turning to the heavens and the mandate given, with the parallel exhibit of the now regnant power of the heavenly bodies. This meets all the criteria of consistency of vocabulary,  and allows for non-imagination of options not stated. If, in a financial review, you start by referring to cheques, it is not too startling if the author expects you to understand that the apparatus, later explained in detail,  was there  at least to the point that the term had a normative meaning in the initial context of OPERATION. Otherwise, you would expect an explanation of the diversity of meaning of so fundamental  a term.

Assuming intelligible diction, coherent speech and teaching clarity, therefore, one is constrained  toward the concept that the evening and morning related to heavenly bodies in relevant measure present in Day 1, and revealed in Day 4, as regulative from that time in their time and season domains. This would occur in the modes noted, both early and then in 1:14ff., severally. Each would be  expected to occur in the function stated, on each occasion, at the outset, and when that the earth was ready, and in the text shown to be such,  for such ministration as a second stage in turn,  in parallel t the same treatment of the developments in the earth itself in 1:2-13. It is all not least in the preparation for man, whose needs  and whose  viewpoint is of course assumed, as would be the needs and ways of actors, in the preparation of a stage.

Indeed, here they are not merely things RELATED; for the needs of the actors are a master POINT in having the stage!

Whenever however the heavens  are stretched forth, as so often noted in scripture and in particular notable in Isaiah 43:24, the concept adduced by Humphreys and Hartnett variously on this point, has a good basis for the thing in its own way, happening.

As Hartnett observes, while research continues, the concept he is using of this kind, is one where there comes a vast acceleration of ageing process in far-flung astral creation, resulting from the enormous dilation as vast space is invented. That, in turn is indeed a testimony to divine majesty - whether it is to be at this or that day. This, he points out,  is one way of accounting for a young earth and an aged space, and elements in it: the age being not in any earth-mode of our knowledge, computable in our own terms, since such acceleration of event is not for the initial creation, but for the space thrust out to huge parameters, of the creation. The thrust is biblical in concept; the result is harmonious with evidence to this point. However, as noted, the constraints and powers, modes and forces IN the creation, while investigable for interest, are never determinative when firstly creation is a separate mode, and secondly both the power and the imagination of God is entirely unlimited. He is a master of innovation, and a paragon of briliance.

As for us, our observation is of the results;  such dilation of space is in the model of a work of creation, not of maintenance, and as such it appears now to be fitting the data as adduced. There is on every side, no difficulty for creation as in the Bible, in this way. Its majesty has many seeking to find the wonder of its power.

The Big Bang is not of this type. The creative explosion of what is to bring the tiny to the tremendous, the unknowable to the legislative finesse in the universe, is mere nature myth, with no causal start or interface, ground or plausibility, verification or virtue. In nothing is it superior to the earth setting itself on some other support, such as a turtle, in heuristic principle. The pressure-cause-time initial set-up is into being as a rather special gift, beneath the belt of causation in this mystic fairy tale, if without fairies, not without their type of fare.

The clashes of objects in the universe 'older' then the universe, has long been noted, from Slusher on, and a certain arbitrariness in the vast alterability of assured dates, and their often ludicrous collision with obvious facts (as noted in the field in works such as Dr Steve Austin's Grand Canyon), are mere specks in  the diffuse and disorderly career of Big Bang conceptualisation, signying, now here, now there, some  of its confusions if not delusions. Such language is quite fair as a description, when you cling to what is denied by the data, in a sort of rigor mortis which should long ago have led to a decent burial of this ludicrous theorem,  in terms of scientific method, where anti-verification is simply not permitted for a viable and valid theory.

Actually, in principle, you could SAY that you are still hoping and re-formulating your theory; but in FACT, UNTIL your alternative or other option, your refined version,  is both consistent with established (as distinct from mere cultural clap-trap) scientific laws,  and capable of test, and until it removes anti-verification and thus has a distinct life of its own outside of the imagination: the theory is DEAD. The funeral parlour, with a distinct lack of seemliness, scientific or other, has simply not been called in, and the thing lies there, twitching and being prodded. Naturalism is dead; long live the truth, settling for millenia, dissolving clash, removing contradiction, accounting for all, testable, verified and validated (cf. Deity and Design ... 8).

In such cases, there is a protocol of reason, a mode of logic, a procedure of method.

Thus, if anything like such a theory is ever found  again, that is a project indifferent to the method of science. What is necessary is realism, integrity and practicality. It MUST work, it MUST be testable, it MUST be coherent rationally (not rationalistically, since this is merely a theory which is incapable of support, one which intrudes as if relevant - cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7). It MUST avoid any contradiction by non-verification when it is exposed to what is happening.

Of course, if the hypothesis concerns what is NOT happening, then you have to establish its relevance to what IS happening; as for example, in showing that what IS happening has no logical basis unless it were implemented outside its mere continuity powers, which give no attestation of self-generation; while nothing of course, does nothing, and is never relevant in any logical tests, except as a basis for reductio ad absurdum. What invokes it is automatically logically defunct!

The new liberty for the velocity of light, and various testable entities as shown in the Creation Research lectures (cf. His Time is Near Ch. 9), the concepts of Hartnett, these present new vehicles for thought, and explanation all require a refined testing; but they are better and of a better hope than is what is already dispensed and dispensed with, this Big Bang illusion from its non-causal outset to its anti-verification onset. Further, on p. 192 of the cited work by Williams and Hartnett, reference is made to experimental research by the RATE group of scientists.  Dr Russell Humphreys is cited, and  while the work is still in progress, it is associated with the concept that some “1.5 billion years” worth of accelerated nuclear decay took place in one or more short episodes somewhere between  4000 and 14000 years ago.” This correlates most interestingly with the generalised affirmations of Dr Wanser as reported in TMR Section E.

It is completely fascinating to consider and ponder how the Lord MAY have dealt with the velocity of light, in view of its variability, and in view of the creation conditions which would represent a situation far beyond the norm, with extremes now only able to be thought of; and when you add to this circumstance, the fact that in CREATION, you are dealing with what is being DEALT with, NOT with what is merely operating as built, it is understandable that there is small cohesion of thought on the one hand, and that creationist views are the most consistent.

Thus God COULD have brought light to the land and not shown in the results, as creators do not have to, any evidence of how He got there.  Creators at the human level often EXULT in that, presenting you simply with the fait accompli, outside completely the domain of your observation of what NOW IS! Voilà, presto!

He could have slowed it, or hastened it, or driven it in ways which were not operational but institutional. He tells us simply that He commanded it to exist, that He stretched forth the heavens, that He made light regulators and stars visible. He does not say how many were visible. Visibility of the majesty of the heavens was an initial fact of the creation. God knows the situation; you do not need the actors as present to indicate the state of the case being prepared for them. How the PC in America could use such confused notions in referring in their departure from biblical creation, as if relevant, is a sad thought! (cf.  Let God be God Ch. 12).

The onflowing reality of light, when once instituted, and its exposure of events inscribed in its fast days, if God saw fit to have it record any of that, is not known. Growth speed is not a declared item, merely result. Slusher has brought up questions of universe geometry, and others of universe particles, concepts flow and overflow, and it is simply beyond the scope of modern science  to know precisely what happened in origination, except as is normal in such creator cases, even with man: when they are TOLD. God of course so far from being a normal case, is to the uttermost contrary to it, for although He made the creativity component for the thought of man, and the abstract capacity to formulate concerning a formulable universe, power and imagination of the order of MAKING ours, is infinitely superior. It is not normally a good idea to try to read God's mind. It is better to LISTEN to what He says.

The data dictated do not indicate such minutiae, the modes for the models, as they are imparted into being. God is not explaining to those who could not understand, but declaring to those who listen.

Questions of His MEANS of bringing the light of the stars to the earth, whether by light velocity and geometrical means, of this or that type, at this or that moment in the sequence, or by heavenly expansion, for which there is currently a good case, in terms of vast dilation and ageing outside the earth, which was, being central and initial, not subjectible to such ageing, being then a base from which the surrounds were set out: these matters are fascinating, but not operational. Using such a base, we currently get a good result, but the concept of stretching out the heavens in a vast dilation of space as to mode, though heavily concordant with the Bible, needs care in its deployment, to what extent it is figurative, or refers to objects in space being deployed. This sort of phrasing however is used so often that it is indeed most possibly a simple action which He undertook.

God has His own counsel, and we have His word, not identical with His thought! He KNOWS what He is doing and has accomplished; we see something of what He has DONE.

In view of these variables and operative aspects, from the information now gained and apparent distances or times now found, the issues involved remain a fair subject for research and investigation. The variables, however, both divine in creation and sublime in kind, on the one hand, and of mere maintenance variety on the other, are so vast that it is small wonder, when you superadd the endeavour to dispense with the creation entirely, and have magical material automatically self-inscribed by power of delimitation never found, that a eruption of imagination is taking the field for many. Indeed, now there is a twofold situation.

On the one hand, you have aspirant approaches, starting with creation, making enormous strides, and testing with care and joy; and then you have anti-creationist approaches, imagining this or that format of energy, matter and anti-matter of other more advanced concepts, dark matter and a whole stable of concepts, all failing the ultimate logical test, not  always even bothering to become actual for observation at all, just as having a certain magical element in their being so ready, co-ordinated and providing with such marvels of operating systems in the totality, as to fashion out, for no reason, the power of reason and make themselves investigable with it, is simply another omission. It is like building a house, having omitted the land and the foundation.

In all this, there is far more making of egregious and fanciful propositions than performances, as if the Wright Brothers wrote manual after manual, but never actually flew. They at least did not have to deny causality in order to have the thrill of using it nonetheless in the structure of their books, or have irrationality as their basis, scorning sound grounds for all they said, or inventing what is never found as constitutive of the air in which they would fly. 

History would be very different in such a case; but they did fly. Theories too must fly. It is quite useless to imagine the irrational, and construe what merely begs the logical question, in various forms and formats arriving by magic, You NEED logical coherence and consistency, for the operative creation, its laws, and for the institution of creation, its Cause. The Bible has always signified the cause, and implied the major laws as shown in TMR Ch. 8, as here linked (cf. TMR Ch. 7 as linked).

When you seek to find in the ARENA of creation, an explanation of creation in terms of what is NOT the work of creation, but that of maintenance, it is obvious that you will find a difficult realm. You are trying to account for the mellowing of the pages of a book (a visible process), in terms of the writing of the book (from an invisible, imaginative and intelligent dynamic), and so seeking from the continuity of the published book, historically, to find the way it came to be. There is in all such procedures,  a certain disingenuousness! It is just a little ambitious, in principle!

When forthtelling all about light in particular, something capable of internalised usages when being created, placement as created, greater or lesser speed when created, differential slowing and phased slowing or speeding, deployment in varied geometries, as extant or as potentiated: then you are in a realm where discretion for its part, does not overreach itself. It is one which is as spectacularly invaded by false knowledgeability as when you seek to deduce the kind of broach Agatha Christy was wearing, when you wrote of Poirot's last case, from your reading of the book. Many and various would be the theories; but they would all be produced in ignorance, where light does not dwell. It is not her purpose to tell you this, and access to the light on the pages of her book will not provide for you access to the rays coming from her broach as she wrote. That, it is just the way it is. Some things you simply need to be told, if you are to know. Creators and creations have a close relationship; but it is not all susceptible to deduction, when you seek the WAY it was done!

It is sufficient that a coherent resolution is always available, granted the appropriate underlying model, in this case by logical necessity, creation; and that nothing else has such coherence except the testimony of Creation, in particular, as found in the Bible. Moreover, this both explains the multitude of exponents - some ignoring the necessary aetiology, some assuming principles later to fade away, whilst their absurd confidence is phased out in a little while, as new ideas, rank and unlovely, seek to do the impossible, achieve the implausible, or declare the unknown. You simply cannot dig from a Creator's mind, the way He did it, when He does not tell you; and the multitudes of assumptions and anti-verifications over time become if not comic, then hilarious. What HE DOES tell of outcomes, is something. What He does NOT tell of the modes of income is another position and prospect entirely.

The Creator's power provides the answers on His own 'model' which is stated ever so clearly in the Bible, and which the major laws of science, as Barnes has shown, applaud, and where startlingly apt procedures are  available, at the boundaries of science. No model, however, can do more, even on a divine basis, than suggest what seems to fit when you move beyond the bounds and boundaries of results to the mode of activation of the causes. When the account of the latter, God in His STATED work of creation,  outdoes all competition, its outcomes remaining invariant in word as in nature, and what is stated from ancient times to our race moves not at all with us: then this is merely what is to be expected. It is just another verification.

It has more things right at the outset, and at the onset, it has due hope, inspiring to the understanding, but remains meaningless to those who would even for their own powers of thought, make this very thing a meaningless outcome. If not, they imagine, but have no base; they hope; but have no cause. They drift and invent an anchor for their minds. But you need one that works in life, not in imagination, and is alien to events, even there.

Creation-based quests then have more things right at the outset, and at the onset, and for this domain of scientific exercise, there are some hopes for a deeper understanding of some physical aspects. At least, antilogy does not at once rise up, in affront, and the creationist testimony where used without affront to the act of creation itself, is able to have uniform solidity and scope. What CAN be tested if staggering in its confirmation; and even what cannot be tested, to the extent that efforts are made, avoids the ludicrous as the secular does not. It has no need of the undisciplined theorem, the ludicrous or the outrageous. It is at least consonant with reality. It is at most a thorough explanation of the whole history of man, in mind, in spirit, in devastation, in concentration, in meaning, in purpose, in travail, in comedy, in hope, in devastation, in frustration such as now builds, and in explosions, whether with atomic weapons or with thoughtful parodies of valid thought, as if nothing is satisfactory to those who would blow away God, themselves blown away with the dust of the imaginary explosion.

That, it fits. In the end, you know of creation - what it is, by what it does, and by what the Creator tells you; you know of HOW He did it, by what He tells you, and to a highly limited extent, by the nature of the product. You see the impact of His given data, perspectives and presentations, offers and remedy as given. You find the coherence, and see the unvarying verification at every level.

Man baseless becomes more and more a waste-land, irradiated with misused matter, bogged with misused mind, philosophising on impossible premisses and therefore never agreeing in this swerving field, life without God for the mind, which is what it is becoming. Severe is the breach and severe are the falling masonries for man.

As to the application of these vain imaginations, the results reflect the cause, persistent and insistent fountains playing from non-existent spouts based on a foundation that is not there, and imagination which knows no bounds. This being a severe limitation in principle, it is enough to muse with wondering sadness, the comedies of propositions coming and going, as people try to excise the founding dynamic of matter's throb with its delimiting geometry of form, the analytical precision of mind's domain and the often vexatious if not seditious propositions of will, which often likes to deny itself, like other tyrants, the more secretly to operate.

Tragedy is around the corner from such comedy, and it remains as always true that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and that nothing else has logical validity

(cf. REASON, REVELATION and the REDEEMER,

SCIENTIFIC METHOD, SATANIC METHOD and the MODEL OF SALVATION,

CELESTIAL HARMONY for the TERRESTRIAL HOST).