In the beginning there was God, God was in the beginning before the beginning began. God was before anything was, God dwelt alone. There was no heaven; there was no earth to engage his attention, no angels to sing his praises, and no universe to be upheld by the word of his power. There was nothing, no one but God; and that not for a day, a year, but for everlasting. God was alone, self contained, self sufficient, in need of nothing. Had a universe, or angels, or humans been necessary, to him in any way, they also would have been called into existence from all eternity.
In the first verse of Genesis we are introduced to the entire Bible, and the history of the sin and rebellion of mankind. Genesis 1:1 marks the boundary between the original creation, and the fall, and the restored earth and eternity. It is not a summarized statement of what is to follow, for it mentions heaven first, while the following verses mention the earth first.
Lucifer, the prince and ruler of the earth; rebelled and transgressed against Lord Jehovah and became the first created being to sin. Because of this God destroyed all living things on earth. This happened a long, long time ago. A time recorded in the fossil record as an explosion of death firmly embedded in the earth, the time of sudden death of multitudes of life forms buried in the Earth’s fossil record.
With his initial act of sin and rebellion, death and corruption, like leaven, began to permeate the physical cosmos that was under Lucifer’s stewardship to rule. It started in Eden, the Garden of God, the beautiful blue planet, called Earth, and from there it spread like a cancer. Lucifer was now known as Satan the deceiver, and because Satan was the steward of the whole creation under heaven when he fell, all things under his rule were subjected to corruption.
Out of the chaos God brought perfect unity for man’s habitation. God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them: and God said unto them: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.
But because man rebelled against him, God chose to flood the earth and destroy every living thing except Noah. Noah was 600 years old when the flood came, and he went aboard the boat to escape, he and his wife and his sons and their wives. So Noah went into the boat that very day with his wife and his sons – Shem, Ham, and Japheth – and their wives. With them in the boat were pairs of every kind of air breathing animals, those approved for eating and sacrifice and those that were not, domestic and wild, large and small – along with birds and flying insects of every kind. Two by two they came into the boat, male and female, just as Lord God had commanded. Then Lord God of Judgment closed the door and shut them in. One week later, the flood came and covered the earth.
After this Jehovah raised up a special people to call his own, a people known as the Children of Israel. They lived in Egypt until they grew into a multitude of people and then God guided them through the wilderness by his mighty hand, and established them as a nation in the land of Canaan. Jehovah God gave them his Law to live by but they failed and failed and failed. They were not satisfied with Jehovah God as King, but demanded an earthly king like the nations around them, and so they were given what their evil heart desired, and they have paid and paid and paid.