Creation day three – Earth vegetation and trees
Genesis 1:9 (ESV) And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
Let’s make a place for the land lubbers!
Thank you for looking at our Creation series, my desire in these pages is to look at the literal days of creation and in greater detail quoting primarily from the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis.
In part one we looked at day one of creation, why it was a literal day and examined why God put it in the perfect order that he did, part two. we saw the separation of the waters and today we start again on day three at the bible verses below.
Genesis 1:9 (ESV) And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so.
I know it sounds like I am repeating myself a lot here, but God said it and it was done! In God’s perfect order of things; he knew what environment that the land animals and humans would need in order to have a habitable place to live. An example of this would be if he had left it as a water based planet with no land, humans would not have survived, neither would many of the land animals.
You will remember that on the day two of the creation account that God separated the waters from the waters of the deep and the waters of the heavens. Now God is peeling back the waters of the deep in order to make a step closer to completing the creation week.
I used to have an issue with this part as I did wonder why God did this in a week as I believe that he could have said… and it would be done. But I believe that God was also teaching us a lesson about the structure of a week. (More on that when we do the Sabbath one)
We read that creation as we know it began from this action; the soil was ripe, perhaps wet, perhaps not, but certainly fit for harvest from the beginning. We read further in the passage what happened next.
10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so.
The first thing I notice is that God called the dry land Earth, Adam was not around at this point so God named this part himself. He made two distinct kinds of animals, land dwelling and sea dwelling.
The missing link and the Bible
I have no doubt that he knew later that people would have theories that would try to tie all types of animals into evolving from one to the other. The issue with this theory is and has always been the lack of the missing link. There is no “fishdog” for example, no “fishman” and most certainly no “fishbear”. I am being flippant of course but the missing link announcements usually go like this.
1) Missing link is announced (Usually declared on the front page of “Scientific American”, “National Geographic” or “Time”
2) Report is full of caveats like “it is believed”, “It is assumed” etc.
3) When it has been fully investigated, a small paragraph on some insignificant page (say page 46 stating it wasn’t what we thought it was.
4) Repeat and repeat.
Interestingly enough, if we take the “millions of years” belief to its logical conclusion, then there would be millions of fossils pointing to a missing link. This is simply not the case. Also again as we have gone through in day two, there is no evidence of a gap in the text as things were still “good”.
Earth begins to grow vegetation
The text is quoted as follows “And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so.”
Science has an issue with this as modern (Post flood) plantation require sun as well as water to enhance (in some cases allow the plant to survive) the lifespan of the plant. The fact that this vegetation and trees were able to not only survive, but grow, advance in growth and flourish without the Sun (created on day four) tells me that not only were the plants created fully grown (much like the humans and animals) but were created to sustain themselves in the atmosphere it was placed.
Remember everything so far is described as “good” it is all going to plan at this point. The Christian has the point of reference “God said” and it was done, fully grown. The adherent to the religion of Macro Evolution has “millions of years”.
The yielding continues
Genesis 1:12 (ESV) The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
Tripping up the ages/gap/eons argument
Let us assume that the Old Earth/Not literal days/Eons/Gap idea/Ages rather than days argument was correct, I would find it hard to swallow that the earth’s plants could have survived for eons, (Some arguments use the “day is like a thousand years” argument) without the Sun. It is possible, as God is a creator God and pre flood conditions perhaps could have allowed this, however this would really be a stretch if it was not literal days.
What makes you think they were fully grown?
The text says so, “The plants (not seeds, saplings) began yielding seeds and there were already trees there and that they were already bearing fruit. Now the words used are important, they bared fruit according to its kind.
Simply put, an apple tree did not bear oranges, a grapefruit tree did not drop lemons, there was no cross pollination and no evolution there. There may have been green, red and yellow apples as variants between kinds, but they were still apples.
It was GOOD!
God does not call the earth “good” until it is habitable. (Not in day one, not in day two) God, the creator God who is truth, knows what is good and what is not. He repeats this phrase throughout the creation account, perhaps to remind us that this was the first draft, it was good the first time, this account can be believed. This creation account and all the words, history, poetry and characters that follow it in this book.
My hope is that these pages will make you investigate the claims of the Bible as regards to the creation account. If you have any questions then please see below.
God bless and I pray this was a blessing and please feel free to like, share or comment on here or whatever social media platforms you use as the Lord leads you to, as always I love questions about this or any other article so please feel free to fill in the form below, all comments are moderated to avoid profanity.
TTE
TGBTG
SDG
Taking the Epistle 