It is nowhere hinted that these seven visions of Revelation comprise all that God will

do during the Day of the Lord, they are seven vignettes, giving enough information to

guide the overcomer whose difficult pathway is under review from Rev. 2: 7 until he is

seen inheriting "all things" in Rev. 21: 7.  In like manner, it is nowhere suggested in

Gen. 1:, that God did nothing else on day one, but call light into being and divide the

light from the darkness. The complicated inter-relationships of created beings is so vast,

that not only pages, but books would have to be written to give in barest outline what

God must have wrought between the calling of light into being and the making of Man.

Some godly men of science have spent laborious hours in the endeavour to show that

the geological order of creation as set forth by the rocks and fossils of the earth, keeps

pace with the order of created beings that is set forth in the six days of Gen. 1:  This,

though well meaning, is labour in vain, partly because of the ever-changing patterns of

the universe as it is unfolded to the men of science and partly because no such idea can be

found in the record of Gen. 1:  The simplest explanation of the record of the six days

work is that it was a series of six visions granted to Moses, in much the same way as the

seven visions of the Revelation were granted to John, and whether it actually took the

Lord six days or six ages cannot be proved and does not concern us, so long as we realize

the underlying reason for the selection of this number of days that Moses so faithfully

The second day is devoted to the making of the "firmament", a word which appears at

first sight so unscientific as not to be taken seriously. The translators of the A.V. were

influenced by the Latin Vulgate which employed the word firmamentum to translate the

Greek word found in the Septuagint, namely stereoma, which in its turn was used to

translate the Hebrew word raqia which means "an expanse" as given in the A.V. margin.

The verb raqa is translated "spread abroad", "spread out", "stretch out" and in

Exod. 39: 3 it is translated "beat" in reference to beating out thin plates of gold.

Isaiah not only speaks of the heavens that have been "stretched out" (Isa. 42: 5), but in

chapter forty records the purpose for this peculiar work of the second day.

The very same word for "tent" is used over and over again by Moses to speak of the

tabernacle which he erected in the wilderness.  Not only is the heaven which was

stretched out over the earth likened to a tent as though God would teach us that the sole

purpose of the present heaven and earth was redemptive, we find that according to Job

the "foundations" on which the earth rests are "sockets" and identical with the silver

sockets upon which the tabernacle rested, and which were made of the redemptive

shekels of silver taken from the people (Exod. 30: 13-16; 38: 25-27). When the

redemptive purpose of the ages has been accomplished, the present limited "firmament"

will roll together as a scroll (Isa. 34: 4) just before the chaotic condition of Gen. 1: 2

is repeated (Isa. 34: 11) as we have already seen in No.3 of this series. The present

heavens and earth are to be folded up as a vesture and put aside when their redemptive

purpose has been served.