created on the second day), but a firmament is made which divides the waters from the

waters. Some of the waters with which "the world that then was perished" have been

lifted up above the firmament which God called heaven. These waters are referred to in

Psa. 148: 4, "Praise Him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the

heavens", and again in Psa. 104: 2, 3, "Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain (the

idea of the word firmament); who layeth the beams of His chambers in the waters".

There is something here that has not yet entered into astronomy. The waters that were

left on the earth are made to produce not only sea creatures, but also "fowls to fly above

the earth in the open firmament of heaven". So the fifth day completes the second. The

third day deals with the earth.  First its separation from the waters, and then the

fruitfulness of the earth, spoken of as grass, herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding

fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself. The sixth day sees the creation of beast and

man. To the lower animals is given every green herb for meat. To man, the herb bearing

seed, and the tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed.

Thus the whole creation is rounded off, all is adapted and prepared for its use, from

the sun that rules the day to the provision of the green herb for the creeping things on the

The seventh day God ended His work which He had made, and He rested on the

seventh day from all His work which He had made. The two words translated "finished"

(Gen. 2: 1), and "ended" (Gen. 2: 2), are translations of a word which indicates totality.

The creation thus brought about was finished and ended. Any subsequent work or

creation that may be attributed to God must therefore be of another creation than this

present one. Where it speaks of God resting, it is "from all His work which He had

made", and "created and made" (Gen. 2: 2, 3). The work of the seven days occupied in

the creation and making of "the heavens and the earth which are now" contains all the

elements and provide the platform necessary for the outworking of the great plan of the

We must be prepared to learn many lessons that may at first prove hard, by a

recognition of this fact. On every hand we are faced with the fact that there are not only

wonderful creatures, animal, vegetable, and mineral, that easily typify all that we mean

by the word "good", but that created by the same hand there are countless other creatures,

animal, vegetable, and mineral, that aptly typify all that we mean by the word "evil". The

venomous snake is the creature of the same One who fashioned its harmless victim. The

One who so marvelously sealed up the fruiting bud to preserve the precious life within,

also created an insect armed with the necessary boring appliances to pierce through that

protective covering, and deposit an egg which should produce devastation. These things

are mysterious and are unanswerable upon any basis that ignores the purpose of the ages.

That purpose definitely moves on beyond this present life.  Vanity is written from

beginning to end of this creation, and the teeming life, with its types of good and evil, its

sheep and its goats, its serpents and its doves, its thorns and its figs, its darkness and its

light, these speak plainly of the moral and spiritual state through which the creation is

passing and urges us onward to "the rest that remaineth". When pursuing various lines of

research into the purpose of the ages, we are apt at times to fall into the error of laying

down a law as to what God can and cannot do. While we know that He can do nothing