The Creation

The Creation was the act of God by which the Earth, the surrounding universe, the spiritual realms and everything inhabiting them came into being over the course of six days. The creation was initiated by God's spoken words, through the Son, Jesus Christ .

After creating the physical realms of sea, sky and earth, God populated these realms with living things. God spoke commands for the earth and sea to be filled by plants and then animals. The animals were specifically given life, enabling them to move, eat, and reproduce themselves. Last of all God made mankind to be in His image. To mankind he gave dominion over the Earth. The purpose of the creation was bring glory to God.

For the Hebrew people (with continuity to the Jews), God's model of creating for six days and resting on the seventh day modeled a six-day work week from sunset to sundown (corresponding to God's division of days and night by sunlight).

Given the major importance of the creation, the creation week is described in many other places outside of the Genesis account, particularly in the Psalms through very poetic praise of God and often re-arranging the retelling of the events.

The Biblical Account

The First Day

During the first day of creation, God declared that there was to be light and it was so. Seeing that the light was good, God separated the light and darkness calling the light "day" and the darkness "night". Due to this, morning and evening became transitional periods between day and night, and thus resulted in the first day.

The Second Day

During the second day, God created what He would call "the heavens". What had been only deep water everywhere was divided by an expanding space. Near the earth, this space consisted of breathable air. Within and beyond this was placed much of the water.

The Third Day

The next day, the water below the atmosphere was commanded to gather into one place, allowing dry ground to appear. The dry ground was called "land" and the waters "sea".. God commanded that there were to be plants sprouting from the ground. There being no rainwater or anyone to work the ground, heavy fog rose from the rivers to water the ground across the land.

The Fourth Day

For day four of the creation, lights were created in order to give light on the Earth as well as to be used for timekeeping The greatest of these lights for the earth were the sun and the moon to provide light during the daytime and at night, respectively. Out beyond these two were the stars.

The Fifth Day

God now created the fish and all of the other living creatures in the water, as well as the creatures of the air. Then they were blessed and commanded to multiply and spread all over the Earth.

The Sixth Day

On the sixth day land animals were created first. After this God created man in His own image in order to glorify Himself and to give them dominion over the Earth through a creation mandate. After creating the first man, Adam, he placed him in the Garden of Eden. The man was given permission to eat fruit off any tree in the garden, excluding the tree of knowledge of good and evil or he would die.

God, being aware that it would not be good for Adam to be alone, brought the animals he had formed to him to be named. After naming the animals in his language, Adam discovered there was no suitable companion for him. Therefore, God put Adam to rest and took a rib and then sealed the hole with skin. He took this rib and formed a woman out of it and presented her to Adam whom he called Eve.

The Seventh Day

Main article: Sabbath
After six days, the creation was completed and so God rested, in order to reflect on the work. He was simply done and admiring His work rather than actually being fatigued. God sanctified the seventh day as a day of rest from hard labor which would later become known as the Sabbath.