Image by Jeff Jacobs from Pixabay

The Bible begins with the earth in total darkness and covered with water and ends with a new earth which has no sea and no night. (Genesis 1:2; Revelation 21:1 and 22:5) Everything that comes between is there to tell us how to get from the first place to the last.

Darkness is where the devil and his angels lurk, to capture the souls of men and women and lead them away from God. It is where evil works are done, hidden from the light of day. The sea symbolizes continual change, tumult and confusion.

On the first day of creation, God created light and separated light from darkness, day from night. This was not the natural light of the sun, moon and stars; God did not create them until the fourth day. This first light was the light of God that permits us to discern between good and evil.

The second day God lifted the fog that hid the surface of the earth, dividing the waters in the clouds above the surface of the earth from the waters that covered the earth’s surface. The space between He called heaven, or sky.

On the third day, God caused the dry land to appear out of the waters and called the dry land Earth and the waters he called Sea. Then He caused plants and trees to appear upon the dry land.

The fourth day God created the sun, moon and stars; the fifth day he populated the sea, the earth and the sky with living things and the sixth day He created the first man and woman.

The account in the first chapter of Genesis tells us that God called the light good, the dry land good and everything He created subsequently He called good. The first verses of Genesis 1 do not record God called darkness or the sea good. Yet verse 31, at the end of the sixth day, says that God saw everything that He had made and it was very good.

Adam and Eve lived in the best of all possible worlds. It was a place of surpassing beauty, abundance and peace. Yet very soon Eve encounters the serpent who tempts her to question God’s wisdom and benevolence. How could such a thing happen?

The spiritual realm where God and the angels dwell existed before the events in Genesis. We gather from scattered bits of information in the Bible that a terrible thing happened before the beginning of time. Lucifer, one of the greatest of the angels, challenged God for leadership. One third of the angels supported Lucifer. The Bible says there was war in heaven.

We do not know just when this happened, but it resulted in a division in the spiritual realm, Lucifer and his angels were cast out of heaven. Now there are two spiritual realms, the realm of light where God dwells and the realm of darkness where Satan and his angels dwell.

After Creation Satan moved the battleground between the powers of light and darkness to the earth. He tempted Eve, she and Adam disobeyed God, and He made them leave the earthly paradise. Ever since that time mankind have longed to regain their home in Paradise, and Satan has continually sown confusion about how they can do that.