Discerning How Old The Earth & Universe Is?

Jesus said "I never knew you" to them.

 

Why could the Sun not have been created on the first day and yet not be visible as a distinct light until the fourth day?

 

Explain then how those whom did cofessed Jesus as Lord are then denied by Jesus in Matthew 7:21-23. Your agument makes no sense. There is nothing in Matthew 7:21-23 which says they had denyed Him as Lord.

 

Is the Sun the source of light to Earth? Why did God require light on the first day, when the primary source of light did not serve a purpose until the fourth day?

 

Your arguments for Matthew 7:21-23 are nonsence. When Jesus did not merely deny knowing them, but never knew them, meaning that they where never saved.

 

Times and seasons were already created. What was in the sky for this was not visible as the lights until the fourth day.
Genesis 1:5, "And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."

 

Repeating your rant is not going to change Matthew 7:23 where Jesus says to them, ". . . I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." By reason they had not done, Matthew 7:21, "the will of my Father which is in heaven." Because they were trusting in their own works, Matthew 7:22, ". . . have we not . . . in thy name done . . . ."
Ephesians 2:8-9, "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, . . ." Which you did not seem to understand.

 

I believe the earth and the universe were created before the Spirit was over the deep in Genesis 1:2 and this defines what is known as the Gap Theory of Creation. If God was at work in the universe prior to day one then would He, or even could He, explain what He had accomplished prior to that point, or would God simply give the one sentence [vs. 1:1] to sum up a period of creation that wasn’t part of our creation story? Or in a harsher sense; if God doesn’t explain the creation of something before the “light switch of creation is turned on” it is because it doesn’t pertain to us and its “none of our business”. Then how God created time, light, the sun, moon and stars, the earth’s foundations, the continents and mountains or where the water came from that covered the mountains, and how and when He created the angels would not be described in the six days of creation for this reason.

# When were the celestial bodies CREATED?

Gen 1:1; In the beginning God created (bara’ H1254) the heavens and the earth.-ESV

I believe this is a complete statement of what had been created before the Spirit was seen by Moses over the face of the waters in 1:2, and the conflict that this creates with verses 14-17 that state the sun, moon and stars were made (‘asah H6213) on the forth day of creation is because to "make" something isn’t the same as to "create" something. For example; God does say that He “made” Adam and Eve but they were “made” in the likeness of God, and He also says that He “created” and formed” (form; yatsar H3335) them in various verses but He never says that He created or formed the light, the firmament, the heavens, the sun, moon or the stars, because they had already been created in verse 1:1 before our “incarnation” of the earth took place I believe. If you don’t believe this then you must believe that God created the sun, moon and the stars and set them WITHIN our atmosphere as stated in verses 16 and 17;

Gen 1:16; And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also.
Gen 1:17; And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, -Strong's Concordance

If you understand that to “make” is to use something already created these verses define when God appoints the celestial bodies to give light to the earth from our sky, and they replace the first light source from verse 1:3. To appoint something is within the definition of the Hebrew word “’asah”. Adam and Eve "made” coverings for themselves from fig leaves, but they didn’t create the figs leaves that they used. Gen 1:17 isn’t a creation event otherwise these celestial bodies would have to fit within our atmosphere, instead I believe this is an account of what Moses was shown of creation in a vision. When Moses steps into creation his perspective would be from the surface of the earth rather than space so he wouldn’t have known the size of the sun, moon and stars but he would’ve seen them being set in the sky. The 40 days and nights Moses spent with God on the mountain would have been an opportune time for God to show Moses the creation story, Exodus 24:18. We now know that the earth rotates around the Sun and the Moon rotates around the earth but when 1:17 was written Moses didn't know this further proving that the perspective of the creation text is from a human viewpoint on the ground. This idea on the perspective of the creation account is further supported by verses 14-17 because even though most Bibles translate the positioning of the sun, moon and the stars in the “heavens”, in actuality the word used is the “firmament” and we all know that these celestial bodies won’t fit in our atmosphere, but Moses wouldn’t have known that; Moses wouldn’t have known about “space” from his perspective unless God told him, and if God told him it certainly wasn’t passed on to us since the vastness of space and the vacuum of space wasn’t discovered until after the invention of the telescope. The idea that you would need a space suit to get to the moon is a really new idea; in the past it was thought you could fly to the sun if you had bird wings, or you could fly to the moon if you made a rocket chair. The limit of the atmosphere was unseen by Moses; he would of simply seen the atmosphere to be as far out as the celestial bodies and he wouldn’t of known of the vastness of space.


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# Most people’s theology is based upon archaic interpretations.

When Moses saw the Spirit over the face of the waters the earth was void and formless and some people try to say that “formless and void” means “new and untouched” trying to prove that nothing prior to this point had been done on earth or in the universe. In the 1800's it was generally accepted that the elements of creation were earth, water, fire and air so when the earth is seen covered in water it was interpreted as a being a mass of one of the basic building blocks of creation instead of a compound of elements, so either the water covering the earth was blinked into existence fully formed like it is supposed all of the celestial bodies were on the fourth day, or God had already been creating prior to Moses viewing this scene. In the 1800's they believed water was a primordial form of creation material whereas today we know that water is a compound of 1 hydrogen and 2 oxygen molecules.

Excerpt from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language online;

Element:
4. Chemistry & Physics A substance composed of atoms having an identical number of protons
in each nucleus.
Elements cannot be reduced to simpler substances by normal chemical means.
5. One of four substances, earth, air, fire, or water, formerly regarded as a fundamental constituent
of the universe.

These people believed the earth's material was the first material brought into existence in what could be called a "little bang" though there isn't any scripture supporting this idea. All we see in verse 1:2 is pre-existing material and the Spirit about to form it. We understand today by the record of nature that the big bang was the release of all the material that God used to create our universe over eons of time. Some people can't except this because it gives time for evolution, but I don't believe in evolution and do I believe there was a Big Bang. The creation of Eve is my answer to evolution. Eve was created in an operation and not by evolution. If Adam and Eve evolved together the story of Eve’s creation doesn’t work.
The Bible says it, I believe it, but the Bible doesn't say that when the Spirit was over the face of the waters that this was the beginning of light, time and the first introduction of material into our universe; that was an assumption made from archaic beliefs and now that science has discovered new information most people still want to cling to the old assumptions. Even worse, since the discovery of molecules the theology had to change from God calling basic elements into existence to God calling completed elements into existence, making the new modified theology much harder to believe. God releasing all of the matter that is later used to create our world and the countless galaxies is a hypothesis I will give you that, but believing the earth's mass was suddenly called into existence (ex-nihilo) is the very same thing just on a smaller scale, and you give credence to the big bang by doing so, which is fine with me. (Some theories believe that the “Big Bang” release of material into the universe happened in stages)

# formless and void

So Moses was standing or hovering along with the Holy Spirit in his vision over the face of the "waters". You may say that that is not supported in scripture, but God using visions is quite common throughout Scripture and though there isn't a reference specifically stating that Moses had a vision of creation while he was on the mountain of God for forty days, you have to admit that it makes sense in the way the verses portray his perspective. Maybe God just told him what to say, but what he wrote was from a human perspective from the surface of the earth which is my point.
Back to formless and void... The combination of the two words together is not used very often; only once to portray creation and twice to explain how God's judgment is going to make a people group and their land unpopulated and desolate. Genesis 1:2, Jeremiah 4:23, Isaiah 34:11. These three scriptures are the only time (H922 bohuw) is found in scripture. Of the 20 times formless is in the scripture about half are used to describe the value of something being nothing or worthless, and the other half to explain how a land or country is worthless or a wasteland. Some people try to support an idea that something being lifeless and desolate supports their idea that the material of earth was primordial material but all I see that it is saying is the earth was a frozen ball about to be formed by God where no life currently existed because God made it that way.

Job 38:30: The waters become hard like stone, and the face of the deep is frozen-ESV
Gen 1:2, Isaiah 34:11, Jer 4:23

Somehow the earth got to this point where the foundations had been created, and water covered the entire earth and THEN our creation began. The earth was cold, and dark and it would've been a frozen wasteland I imagine, so next God opened a window from heaven, and that was the first light on our current creation period. That first light would thaw the earth, evaporating the waters which would then construct the next step, the sky or the firmament of the heavens. NASA Scientists researched trying to increase the atmosphere of mars by releasing the possible frozen accumulations of CO2 at its polls so It's a thing. They don't believe there's enough there to increase the atmosphere, but they investigated it. Somehow on earth God had a giant ball of water that would've been enough to create an atmosphere. As I said above, how the earth ended up covered in water isn't stated in the creation account, but scientist believe that the earth acquired its water from meteor impacts (smithsonian.com) and this would align with another record of creation that no one seems to pay attention to:

Job 38:4
Psalm 104:5-8

He set the earth on its foundations,
so that it should never be moved.
You covered it with the deep as with a garment;
the waters stood above the mountains.
At your rebuke they fled;
at the sound of your thunder they took to flight.
The mountains rose, the valleys sank down
to the place that you appointed for them.

This version of the creation account shows that the foundations of the earth were built first and then God covered the earth with water, and the foundations of the earth really are the earth, not the deep that God covered it with…Rev 21:1


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# dinosaur fossils

Since young earth creationist don't believe that dinosaur fossils were under Adam and Eve's feet they have to say that the flood caused all of the geological layers and the fossilization of dinosaurs, (I.E., the Illinois coal mine fossil forest 250 feet under the surface) so now you have to believe that dinosaurs flourished among man for approximately 1,500 years from creation to the flood and, since the geological layers were supposedly laid down in the incredibly short period that the Ark was afloat, that all of the dinosaurs and all of the different types creatures in those layers were alive at the time of the flood and were trapped in the new geological layers. Even if you believe that Noah had dinosaurs on the Ark they obviously did not flourish, and the flood would have to be considered the end game for them. Then when examining those layers, you must realize that fossilized footprints show life and movement, and the only layers you should find footprints in are pre-flood layers; finding footprints on the top layers would mean dinosaurs flourished AFTER the flood. That would give the dinosaurs and all their various species a VERY short time to flourish, lay their footprints for fossilization and then vanish before man began to record time.
The Flood was 1,500 years after creation around 2,500 BC. Abraham was born about 2015 BC (about 515 years after the flood) and died about 1840 BC.
Moses was born about 1590 BC (about 1,090 years after the flood and 250 years after Abraham) and died about 1470 BC.
So if dinosaurs flourished after the flood why didn't Abraham or Moses mention them? Then If you find footprints showing movement and life between the supposed geological layers of the flood you must rethink what you claim about the power of the flood. You just can’t have footprints in the middle of the flood layers…You also must ask how geological landmarks like the river Euphrates and the lands of Assyria and Havilah survive the continents being ripped apart and reformed at least twice supposedly, submerged and covered in layers of silt, as well as believe that plant life would survive these geological events… You must wonder how glaciers could do what they have done to the NEW post flood mountains in the approximate 4,500 years from the flood to today and why there are glaciers that are 30k to 1 mil years old; did God make them look that old or does someone really not know how to count core sample layers? Then there are meteor strikes; how could the earth have been struck by so many large meteors after the flood (otherwise they would've been covered up if they were before the flood) and those major species ending events not be noticed and recorded in history?

# Geology and Fossils

If God created the earth relatively as it looks today with the earth’s fossil record in increasing layers, with the mountains topped with layers of limestone that come from ancient sea beds, with ancient paths of glaciers grooved into mountain chains and with seemingly age old continents that separated long ago from one another, then though God was using time to create in Genesis He wasn’t working in “real-time” or “natural time”; rather He was doing things at God speed. Meaning things that would take millions of years in “natural time” were happening at God’s pace in a day or in a blink of an eye so God would have to do things at an “un-natural” pace (to nature). If this is true about the “speed” of God’s creativity then when you look at the “creation record in nature” you have to conclude that God intended the earth to seem older than it really is if you don’t believe in the Gap Theory. In a sense you would actually be saying that these creation acts SHOULD have taken millions of years even though they were done in six days and you would in effect bolster the theory of creation periods instead of 24-hour days of creation. You still have this problem even if propose that God created the earth with relatively no distinct land masses, or mountains without extensive weathering, and no fossil evidence { meaning more than just dinosaur bones; lime stone and coal are fossil evidence too } because then these geologic formations would have had to have been formed between the creation and the end of the flood, and that is just a blink of an eye compared to the time these events look like they should have taken to happen. You would be saying that the mountains were formed in about 2-3 thousand years and then relatively suddenly, the pace of change slowed down to the current pace. Then there are some people that believe there weren't mountains or continents until after the flood and that all of those geological landmarks were created while the earth was submerged so then how much time would you have after the flood to create what we see today in the record of nature? In a sense then the Young Earth Creationist explanation supports evolution because if they can use the “speed of change” as the “missing link” in their explanation why can’t an evolutionist? If all creatures in the fossil record (from amoebas to dinosaurs) were alive directly after the week of creation, then why is there any identifiable change to the amount of species in the various layers of the fossil record? There should be a general mix of all types of fossils in all layers unless God created the fossils of dead animals in the earth’s layers while He built the foundations, and that sounds really weird... This would hold true even if the fossil record was created during the flood because most living things would have died quickly and been deposited in a mix instead of separated in layers; you would have human bodies mixed with dinosaurs for example. So the Geological Column doesn’t fix the proposed way that fossil animals died and were deposited, but it does make sense if God visited earth to introduce new creatures in stages during the proposed millennia of the gap period. I have read an explanation for this from the opposing side though; they believe that seeing how certain animals are heavier than others they were deposited in different layers, but to me that seems somewhat ridiculous to put it mildly. If you look at the way the fossil layers are built into the mountains Its not like the flood came and laid down hundreds of feet of sedimentary layers and fossils on top of already formed mountains like icing on a cake. Instead; an area was flat and collected sediments, and now you can see those layers that had been made over a long period because the forces that made the mountains pushed the layers up where we can see them. If the flood laid down those layers then you would have to say that Mount Everest itself was pushed up from the earth with its topping of limestone sedimentary layers after the flood! If Genesis 1:1 is a time period in itself you could understand continental separation, shells in the strata on the tops of mountains, the formation of coal and oil, sedimentary layering, fossils etc. The paths of mountains glaciers would have been carved by glaciers in the earth’s “previous life” and then resettled by new glaciers in our era, or some parts of our glaciers could have been remnants of the past era uncovered, or even ice not completely melted from the creation days when the earth was a frozen wasteland. Maybe with core sampling you could show when creation happened down to the day if we could see a change in a boundary representing that time, and that would be awesome!


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# Let there be light

The possibility that Moses wrote about the creation from an earthly perspective may help us to understand several other acts of creation… On the first day When God said, “let there be light” Moses only wrote “and there was light”, he didn't say "God created light”. Scholars today have said that this is the initial creation of light throughout all of creation even though the word “creation” isn’t used to describe the appearance of light and even though this light is pinpointed only on the earth. By using this train of thought scholars then say that since this is the initial creation of light there never could have been life in the universe before this and rule out the possibility that the earth and its contents are older than this point. For example in John MacArthur’s study bible he comments that “God effortlessly spoke light into existence”, but if “and there was light” is simply another instance of Moses writing what he is seeing at a particular point of his vision you really can’t say that light never existed in the universe, only that the “cloak of darkness” covering the earth was illuminated.

# Light is an aspect of God and therefore light has always existed.

Was there really no light in the entire universe on day one? God doesn’t say that He created the “phenomenon” of light on day one throughout the universe; He says first where the darkness was, “over the face of the deep” [not throughout the universe], and then calls for a special light that I think was the “engine” to separate the “deep waters”, that are mentioned as His focal point, and create the firmaments the next day. I believe that light itself is an aspect of God and not a new creation, never seen before 1 John 1:5. We know from Paul’s account of his conversion (Acts 22:6-9) that Heaven is a pretty bright place filled with a real light that can be seen by, and effect the cornea of a real person, and I would assume that light had to exist in Heaven before it did on earth, and how long has Heaven existed? So could it be that when God said “Let There Be Light” the earth could of had a “Damascus road” experience like Paul had at his conversion? A window was opened in Heaven and the light of God flooded the world. The light shown all about the earth like it shined around Paul, that is why God had to separate the light from the darkness… When God says, “let there be light” He is not creating light, He is only calling for light in a situation; the situation being that He was going to begin creating paradise on earth.



# Only “OUR” time began on the first day.

If time began or was a new created aspect of reality never seen before the first day then that would prove that nothing else in the entire creation had been created apart from the first day (unless something existed apart from the reality of our universe or time) and you wouldn’t be able to support the Gap Theory of Creation. This is how the argument goes. A gap theorist believes that there was another time before our time and a young earth creationist says that “the evening and the morning were the first day” is the institution of the concept of time, so there couldn’t have been another time before our time. But to theorize that the first day of our time is the first day of all of time is like me saying that time began at MY birth because that was the evening and the morning of my first day when I began to experience time, so that is where time must have begun for everybody… As far as I can tell time is never described as a creation in the Bible and nothing says that it will end, in fact it sounds like we will always know that time is passing, Psalm 102:24, 27, Eph 2:7 3:21, So at least going forward from our creation time will never end. That would make time itself without end or “infinite going forward” at least, but I think time is infinite going backwards as well. Anything infinite can only be God, or an aspect of God, because God is infinite. God is not just an infinite being He is infinity. If you have two separate infinite entities than the statement is false because one entity is not all powerful over the other, because of their separateness. So, God does not just exist within infinity as an infinite entity, God is the infinite in its entirety. That is why there can be only one God. If time is infinite than it would be an aspect of the one God; time would be a part of Him. If you ask yourself “can God travel forward or backward in time?” you cannot answer, but if you ask yourself again “why would God go forward or backward in time?” you may come to the conclusion as I have that God may travel time but He shouldn’t have to. God will plan something, and it will come about thousands of years later. God won’t have to go back in time to correct something that caused His plan to fail at some point. Part of the power of God is that He can do something within linear time perfectly without the need to traverse or transcend time.

# Is time an eternal aspect of God?

Where does it say that God exists apart from time in the Bible? God existing “outside” of time is a supposition that is taken for granted and is seen as an aspect of God’s omniscience, but this concept is not clearly stated anywhere as far as I can tell. The closest Biblical passage that I can think of is Psalm 90:4;

4 For a thousand years in Your sight
are but as yesterday when it is past,
or as a watch in the night.---ESV

but is this saying that time doesn’t exist for God, or that God’s concept of time is different than ours? If time was an aspect of God it would weaken the idea that major creation events happened instantaneously. We assume that those events happen so fast that they are instantaneous and they would have had to of happened “apart” from time, as when God called all of the stars in the heavens into existence on the forth day supposedly. A “humongous” act of creation like all of the uncountable heavenly bodies being set in the heavens in a state of completeness must have happened virtually instantaneously in our minds and so we assume that since God does things instantaneously, God must not be bound to the laws of time, but I don’t believe that God called all the universe into existence instantaneously and feel this is an inaccurate theological point causing a misconception about how God operates. What if the laws of time are part of God? God follows certain laws like the fact that He cannot commit sin, God cannot tempt you to sin, God cannot lie because lying is the opposite of truth. God is not “restricted” by these laws, instead, they are a part of Him; what if time was a part of God as well? How fast is God anyway? Is God faster than lightening or light? If God is faster than His creations wouldn’t what God does sometimes be so fast as to look instantaneous?


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# Different creation words have different creation meanings.

I think God only uses the word “created” when He is “calling” something out of
nothing or something out of a “base material” like animals that come from the dirt and are formed into living breathing flesh. In my view God uses “created” in verse 1:1 to describe the eons of time that He used to create the universe and for the creation of the earth’s foundations. God does not use the word “created” about the introduction of light, He just says “let there be light”. God does not use the word “created’ about the firmament or about the celestial bodies either. I think God doesn’t use the word “created” for the making of the firmaments because the firmaments, [the sky and the clouds] came from the “deep”; they were not called into existence, and really only the state of waters were changed from a liquid to a gas. God uses “let the earth bring forth”, or more clearly defined by my Strong’s, “sprout” for the creation of plants. God uses “created” for fish and birds but not for earth bound creatures. Instead for earthly creatures God says again, “let the earth bring forth”, but this use of “bring forth” means to “come out of” if you read the way it is used in the other parts of the Bible. And (to my comfort) God says in chapter two that He actually “formed” the earthly creatures.
To fully drive the point home that when God makes something He is not calling it into existence but only appointing something that has already been created, look at the record of Eve’s creation in

Gen 2:18;Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make ('asah) him a helper fit for him.” But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made (baònaòh) into a woman and brought her to the man.

Here God starts out wanting to appoint a helper from Adam so he brings all the animals to Adam but none of them were appropriate helpers. God uses the word " 'asah" which means to appoint and brings already created animals to Adam to see if any of these would fit the role of helper but none of them did So God makes Eve except God doesn't use the word 'asah, He uses the word "baònaòh" God uses a different word for the “making” of Eve. God “built” Eve.

H1129 // äðˆa˜ // baònaòh // baw-naw'
A primitive root; to build (literally and figuratively):—(begin to) build (-er), 
obtain children, make, repair, set (up), X surely.

So the translators really screwed up in their translation of the creation story when it comes to their use of the word "make”, and the creation of Eve really sounds like this;

God wanted to “make/appoint” (‘asah) a helper for Adam but none of the formed animals would suffice so God “made/BUILT” [baònaòh] a new creature, Eve, from Adam to fill the role of helper…

If that doesn’t prove that the stars weren’t “made/created” (bara’) on the fourth day and only “made/appointed” (‘asah) then nothing will I guess…

I believe that there are three stages that God accomplishes when He creates; 1 - the initial calling of something like the celestial bodies or the race of man, 2 – the shaping of the created thing and the determination of it’s fate and 3 – the appointment of the things purpose under God’s sovereign leadership. All of these points of creation are intertwined but different and we need to establish which point of creation God is talking about when we try to determine the context of a Bible passage that uses a creation language.

Isaiah 43:7 (NKJV)
7 Everyone who is called by My name,
Whom I have created for My glory;
I have formed him, yes, I have made him.”


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# More on the topic people believe in archaic definition of creation.

I studied my N.I.V Commentary to see what they believe about creation and how they defend their beliefs and I was shocked at what I found. To support the idea that “formless and void” is supposed to mean, “new and untouched” they define the “deep” by using a reference from Babylonian mythology:

From my N.I.V. Commentary:
The word for “deep” (tehoòm ) is linked by most with Tiamat, the goddess of chaos in Babylonian mythology. This is probable, but Israel’s prophets were so convinced of Yahweh’s omnipotence that they never hesitated to use old mythological terms as dead metaphors. [Pg 114 2nd column paragraph. 2].

I personally cannot fathom that God would use a reference to an old Babylonian goddess to describe a facet of His creation. Dead metaphor or no… Especially since Genesis was written by Moses and not the prophets, and it predates Israel’s encounters with Babylon.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Tiamat (disambiguation).
In Babylonian mythology[1], Tiamat is the sea, personified as a goddess,[2] and a monstrous embodiment of primordial chaos.[3] In the Enûma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation, she gives birth to the first generation of gods; she later makes war upon them and is split in two by the storm-god Marduk, who uses her body to form the heavens and the earth. She was known as Thalattē (the Greek word for "sea") in the Hellenistic Babylonian Berossus' first volume of universal history, and some copyists of Enûma Elish slipped and substituted the ordinary word for "sea" for Tiamat.[4]

Chaos defined: Ask.com dictionary:
[Middle English, formless primordial space, from Latin, from Greek khaos.]
A condition or place of great disorder or confusion.
A disorderly mass; a jumble: The desk was a chaos of papers and unopened letters.
The disordered state of unformed matter and infinite space supposed in some cosmogonic views to have existed before the ordered universe.

Compared to the Strong’s definition:

Deep H8415 // íBäz // tehoòm // teh-home'
(Usually feminine) from H1949; an abyss (as a surging mass of water), 
especially the deep (the main sea or the subterranean water supply):—deep 
(place), depth.

Clearly the meaning of the word “Deep H8414” has been changed to suit their beliefs. They have taken the mythical definition of “chaos” and made it their definition but the text and the history doesn’t support this, my Strong’s doesn’t even have a word to describe chaos, and their definition makes the definition of Job 38, Psalm 104 and Isaiah 45:18 confusing. To smooth this out they say that the chaos is sorted out by the Spirit in verse two. This is there definition of the MAJOR creative action of setting the foundations of the world… “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”.

NIV Commentary:

It has been argued by men of very different outlooks that we cannot conceive of the creation of chaos---“formless and empty’---- appeal being often made to Isaiah 45:18. Many have used this argument to justify translating, “and the earth became without form and void”, cf. NIV mg, thus implying the destruction of the original creation, but this rendering flies in the face of Heb. syntax. In fact the use of “chaos” rather pre-judges the argument. When the building material of earth came to being, only the eye of God could discern its ultimate purpose. By the Spirit He was sorting it out. Pg 114 2nd column paragraph. 2.

The pre-judgment here is the writers take for granted that “chaos” defines” formless and void”. It seems like they play off each other;

question; why do you define formless and void as new and untouched?
Answer; because the deep was in chaos,

question; so why do you define the deep as chaos? Answer; because it was formless and void…

The fact is that you have to go outside of the bible to Babylon or Greece to define “the deep” as chaos; NOTHING that I have seen in the bible justifies calling the deep ocean Chaos.

Lastly, why would God call for chaos and then sort it out into its parts on the same day if He could just call it all into existence complete like He supposedly did for the sun, moon and stars? Just sounds weird to me because When you build a house the suppliers don’t bring all the concrete, bricks and timber to you all at once and throw it into a big pile; you get the materials in order and you build the house from the foundation up (Like Job 38 and Psalm 104). The formlessness was created by God. The earth wasn’t “called” into existence in a formless state, it was “built” into a formless and void state in a undetermined rate of time.

The N.I.V. Commentary theology closely mirrors John Calvin’s theology. John Calvin is a well-known French theologian who lived and died in the 15th century and didn’t know that water wasn’t a primordial material so his interpretation of the first day was colored by false information that some people accept and adapt to modern theology. John Calvin uses the word “chaos” to describe the earth’s condition, which goes against Job 38 and Psalm 104, and instead John describes the process of creating the earth’s foundations as like muddy water slowly solidifying to the bottom. We now know that the earth has a molten iron core, that the earth’s surface is constantly changing, and tectonic plates move and collide to raise ancient oceans to form the mountains, but John didn’t know this when he described creation, yet there are some people that would still agree with him as to how the heavens and the earth were created.