The Creation - Days 4 & 5 - Genesis 1, Moses 2, Abraham 4:14-23

The Creation – Day 4 There isn’t a lot said about the fourth day of creation, so let’s recap to see if I get it right. The first day, the Gods organized material to form a ball. The second day, water was put onto the earth. The third day, the atmosphere was set up with water on land but also in the sky as precipitation. Another interesting thing I just noticed about this day is that when creating the atmosphere, it would have included various chemical elements like nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc. But what else needs those chemicals to function? Soil. Separating the waters on earth from heaven, installing the atmosphere, and creating the weather cycle was all to “prepare the earth to bring forth grass” and all other plant life. There’s an interesting sentence in an article about the moon from the “Scientific American,” which notes that in its early development “Earth cooled to an object with a molten surface and a steam atmosphere.” It’s easier to see the way that the land water and the atmospheric water separated using that lens. The fourth day is when I think the planet was set into orbit. The Gods “organized the lights” in heaven to “divide the day from the night; and organized them to be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years.” The definition of a day is the time it takes for the earth to make a complete rotation, and the definition of a year is the number of days it takes for the earth to make one complete rotation around the sun. Sounds like an orbit to me. Another point is made that it’s for “signs and seasons,” and one of the reason we have the variety of seasons that we do is because the earth is tilted off its axis. The National Geographic website says, “Earth’s axial tilt is about 23.5 degrees. Due to this axial tilt, the sun shines on different latitudes at different angels throughout the year. This causes seasons.” Interesting that this is the same word in the scriptures. The stars indicate that this is about orbit as well, though I’m not exactly sure what purpose seeing the stars serves besides people being interested in seeing them. Maybe for navigational purposes. We know that the sun is important for many reasons, but the moon is important as well because of the tides. The article on the moon notes, “Our disproportionately large nearby moon certainly gave Earth an early tidal nudge. But unlike Venus and mars, our moon’s gravitational influence also helped ensure that Earth’s spin axis and climate remained stable over long timescales. That’s arguably just as important as our oceans’ tidal ebb and flow.” The fifth day, again, there’s a difference between Abraham and the other versions of the creation story, in that Genesis and Moses simply have God commanding “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth.” But Abraham specifies that the Gods first “prepare the waters” to sustain life. The article on this chapter from gospeldoctrine.com asks what’s involved in preparing a salt water aquarium. The answer is extensive and too much to go into here, but it’s a fascinating read that discusses the constant care and attention to nutrients, chemicals, pH balance, and salt in PPM. In addition, I’ve recently learned that the vast majority of earth’s oxygen is converted from carbon dioxide in the ocean by kelp, phytoplankton, algal plankton and other plants and animals. All these factors have to be cultivated and produced from simple elements found on earth’s surface. All this is to say that a lot of preparation went into “commanding” the waters to have life. One animal specifically mentioned in the scriptures in the “great whales,” which the IM notes probably just means any type of large fish. The Gods planned for all the plants and animals saying, “we will bless them, and cause them to be fruitful and multiple, and fill the waters in the seas or great waters; and cause the fowl to multiple in the earth.” I think that this commandment and blessing were probably similar to that given to Adam and Eve, but in their Eden state were unable to reproduce. And the Gods “saw that they would be obeyed, and that their plan was good.” Again, I don’t think it was a “you better do what I say or else,” it was probably a “do this” and all the elements did it because they do what God commands. Even though this is very short, it is the product of a lot of research, reconciling all the different accounts, researching each one, etc. It’s a little disheartening to spend all that time reading then only produce this much content, but I'll get over it.