"AND BEHOLD, IT WAS VERY GOOD"

We are all familiar with Genesis 1:31.

Do you really grasp what God is revealing to us with this statement? There is far more here than we generally tend to realize. So let’s examine this statement more closely.

God made this statement at the close of the sixth day, soon after God had created Adam and Eve. But this is not a statement that God made to Adam and Eve. God didn’t tell Adam and Eve "every thing I have made is very good". This statement was not said in the presence of any human being. And neither was this statement written down in any way at that time.

Until God revealed this statement to Moses, no human being had ever been aware of the fact that at the time of Genesis 1 God had evaluated everything He had done as "very good". This statement was only written down by Moses well in excess of 2000 years later. And during those 2000+ years a lot had happened. This statement represents information that God gave to Moses, when Moses was twice on the mountain with God for 40 days.

So more than 2000 years after the time of Genesis 1, long after the flood and after the days of Noah, at the time of Israel’s exodus from Egypt, God recalled His own actions 2000+ years earlier, and also His own assessment of those actions, and Moses then wrote those things down.

Understand that at the time of Moses, when God for the first time revealed to human beings that God had evaluated everything He had done in the events leading up to Adam’s creation as "very good", many things were no longer "very good"! The slavery with which the Israelites were very familiar certainly wasn’t "very good". God’s statement presented a stark contrast to the reality that confronted the Israelites at the time of Moses.

The way God chose to present to Moses this information about God’s own actions and assessments at the time when God created physical life, culminating in the creation of two human beings, was clearly influenced by the things that had happened since the time when God had created Adam and Eve. There are probably a thousand different ways that God could have worded the things God chose to reveal to us human beings about the creation which culminated in the creation of human life. Genesis 1 is an extremely brief account. And God’s presentation of this information was undoubtedly influenced by the things that had happened during the more than two millennia leading up to the exodus.

Theoretically, had human beings gladly submitted to God’s rule over their lives, starting with Adam and Eve, then this account in Genesis 1 might well have included information that God chose not to include in view of how things had actually developed. Genesis 1 might have been presented to us from a completely different perspective.

My point here is this:

So:

It is not a case of us looking all around us at God’s creation, from the scope of the whole universe at one extreme, down to the microscopic level of molecules and atoms at the other extreme, and to then say: so this is what God called "very good"; and it is a beautiful creation, isn’t it?

Rather, it should be a case of us saying:

I believe that Genesis 1:31 presents a divide, like a watershed.

Everything before Genesis 1:31 was created perfect by God, in stark contrast to everything after Genesis 1:31 becoming imperfect and flawed because of man’s sins.

God is the One who provided to Moses the information in Genesis 1. And when God then in verse 31 said that "every thing ... was very good", then God is telling us that all the things God had listed in verses 1-30 were perfect when God made them.

Jesus Christ said:

God the Father and Jesus Christ are both perfect. And everything that God ever produces, with only one exception, is perfect. That one exception is when God creates within other living beings the ability to have a free independent will and mind. In that case perfection depends not on God, but on the other living beings independently making the right choices and voluntarily doing what is right before God. Apart from that one exception God always produces things that are perfect. Anything that is only 99.9% right will never qualify before God to be called "very good". Before God things are either 100% right, or they are simply not acceptable. God never accepts second-best. (I am here excluding the penalties for sins, which God creates when we human beings sin.)

In plain language:

Everything that God had done before Genesis 1:31 was perfect, flawless and exactly what God had set out to produce. A God who is perfect does not and cannot produce anything that is imperfect. Producing anything that is imperfect would imply that God Himself is no longer perfect. And God would assuredly never, under any circumstances, call something that is even a hair’s breadth short of perfect "very good". When God calls something He has created "very good", then that means that what God has created is perfect.

So keep in mind that God called everything God had done before Genesis 1:31 "very good".

Let’s examine the parts of this verse that are relevant in our context.

"God" = Elohim

"saw" = Hebrew "ra’ah" = to see, look, discern, consider, perceive, etc.

"every thing" = Hebrew "kol" = all, altogether, the whole, totality, etc.

"that" = Hebrew "asher" = relative pronoun for who, which, that, etc.

"He had made" = Hebrew "asah" = do, make, fashion, accomplish, etc.

"behold" = Hebrew "hinneh" = see, behold, lo, etc.

"(it was) very" = Hebrew "me’od" = very, greatly, exceedingly, wholly, etc.

"good" = Hebrew "tob" = good, pleasant, agreeable, valuable, etc.

So putting it all together here is what this verse means:

The KJV translation here is quite good and I take no exception with it. But we need to recognize that in making this statement God used His discernment! It wasn’t just a superficial cursory comment. It was in fact a judgment call. God’s assessment of "exceedingly good" included everything God had done (as revealed in Genesis 1, excluding the creation of the angels with free independent wills of their own, an event that is not revealed in Genesis 1) up to that point in time. And God had included the original creation of the universe in the things He revealed to Moses (i.e. Genesis 1:1).

And if man had willingly accepted God’s rule over his life, then things would always have stayed that way! Things would always have stayed "very good"!

But man rejected God’s rule and as a consequence, today many things are no longer "very good". Let’s look at the things God said were very good.

When God created it, the physical universe was perfect, with no pock-marked planets or marred moons, or asteroids smashing into other celestial bodies. It was perfect, and it all operated on perfect cycles for every solar system in the whole universe. Nothing less would qualify for God to call it "very good". And nothing less would be worthy of having been created by the Great Creator-God of all, who Himself is perfect.

Then Satan rebelled and chaos and confusion resulted on this earth and throughout the universe. This is covered in verse 2. For a thorough examination of verses 1-2, see my 29-page article from 2009 entitled "Understanding Genesis 1:1-2 Correctly". We can move on to verse 3.

The whole earth had been covered in darkness as a result of Satan’s rebellion. No light from the sun or from any of the stars had been able to penetrate the thick layer of clouds and fumes and gases and smoke which after Satan’s rebellion had enveloped the earth like a thick impenetrable blanket.

The light was good! So that light didn’t cause skin cancer, even if someone like Noah was exposed to it without sunscreen SPF 25 for many hours every day for over 900 years. The light was good! That "good" light was not going to cause any problems for any human being. Today we don’t have the same "very good" light. Today too much exposure to the sun can cause us major health problems like skin cancer.

The day-night cycle is dependent on the earth’s rotation on its own axis, as well as on the earth’s revolution around the sun, since by the end of one full day the earth is in a different location from where it had been 24 hours earlier. The day-night cycle God established at that time was perfect, with no problems of any kind. It was perfect for what God wanted to achieve. But at some point before the flood that day-night cycle had ceased to be very good, as implied by Genesis 8:22. More on this later.

The establishment of the day-night cycle makes clear that the sun was already out there in the universe, but there were still too many clouds and/or fumes for the sun to be visible to a hypothetical observer standing somewhere on earth.

Next, God created the land masses and the oceans. Whatever the continents looked like at that time, they were perfect! And I doubt very much that there were any large islands (like Greenland and Madagascar, or even an island continent like Australia, etc.) because at that time it was not God’s intention to "divide the nations in the earth" (see Genesis 10:32), something that happened after man’s rebellion at the tower of Babel. The land masses God established at that time were "very good". Today our land masses are not really "very good"! Much of our land today is desert and in other ways unusable and inaccessible, and that is not good! And therefore at the time when Jesus Christ starts to rule "every island" will in some way become part of the mainland (that’s the essence of Revelation 16:20), and high mountains will "not be found". Then the land masses will once again be "very good".

With the land masses established, God then created all the plants and all the vegetation to cover the land. All of the vegetation God created at that point in time was "very good". It was perfect for what God wanted. What this means is that at that point in time there were no poisonous plants! There were no poisonous berries, no poisonous mushrooms, no poison ivy, no poison oak, no thorny plants, etc. None of the plants God created at that time could cause harm to the human beings God would create two days later. No plants, if touched or ingested, could poison or in any way harm human beings.

Every single plant God created at that point in time was "very good" for the promotion and maintenance of human life, and of the lives of all the animals God would still create. There were no weeds that would compete with good and desirable plants. There was no competition between plants for the same section of soil, which is what weeds do ... weeds compete for the soil in which we would like grains and fruits and vegetables and flowers to grow. God rejects a spirit of competition, and originally God did not intend different plants to compete for the same piece of ground, where today the bad plants commonly crowd out the good plants, if left unchecked. Also, back then there were no parasitic plants (e.g. mistletoe, etc.) that leech the life out of other plants.

In plain language:

And those specific plants were not really on God’s agenda for ever creating. Those undesirable plants were only created by God at various times after Genesis 1:31 in response to man’s sins. After Adam and Eve had sinned God said to Adam: "cursed is the ground for your sake ... thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you ..." (Genesis 3:17-18).

God was creating thorns and thistles and all kinds of weeds right then, when God said "shall it bring forth". When God said "let the earth bring forth ...(good plants)" (Genesis 1:11), then that statement amounted to God creating all the good plants. Likewise, when God said "thorns ... shall it bring forth", then that right there amounted to an additional creation of specific plants.

God creates by speaking!

When God says "let something happen", then that is an act of creation. After Cain had killed Abel, God told Cain "when you till the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto you her strength" (Genesis 4:12). Right there God was in an unspecified way creating more undesirable factors in the environment, which factors have made food production more difficult. By then things were no longer "very good". Let’s never forget that when God speaks, then that is commonly an act of creation.

We also need to recognize that throughout human history God has always been prepared to create new penalties for man’s disobedience and rebellion. It was only the "very good" creation that stopped with Genesis 1:31. Since Genesis 1:31 God has continued to create things here on earth ... but those creations have primarily been penalties in response to man’s selfish, sinful conduct. And those creations have been without any kind of announcement from God. At no stage did God ever commit Himself to not create anything else. God will create things at any time that God chooses to create something.

Consider the plagues in Egypt, for example, the plague of frogs. God told Moses to tell Aaron to stretch his hand with the rod over the streams, rivers and ponds of Egypt (see Exodus 8:5). And right then frogs came up by the millions, with thousands of frogs getting into every Egyptian house. How did that happen? It normally takes more than 6 weeks for a tadpole to turn into a frog. So had there been millions or even billions of tadpoles waiting to turn into frogs at a moment’s notice?

What happened in Egypt? What happened is that God created millions upon millions of frogs at the moment when Aaron stretched his arm over the waters of Egypt. Where there had been no frogs a minute earlier, there were now millions of frogs. God does not hesitate to create whatever God wants to create whenever God wants to do so.

And there is no barrier that tells God:

That is an absurd restriction that some people would want to place on the Creator-God of all. But that is the unspoken assumption that so many people have in their minds, that God couldn’t possibly have created new life-forms after the creation week in Genesis.

Consider also something John the Baptist said.

When John the Baptist said that God the Father "is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham" (Matthew 3:9), John the Baptist was saying that God would, if He chose to do so, bring totally new creations into existence. It is a mistake for us to think that after Genesis 1 God (i.e. Jesus Christ) somehow stopped creating things here on earth. Both God the Father and Jesus Christ have continued creating things during the past approximately 6000 years, including creating things here on earth.

To get back to the creation of the good plants in Genesis 1: when we consider the totality of all the plants on earth today, then it is no longer correct to call all of them collectively "very good". There are many plants that are harmful and potentially dangerous, and they are far from good. Plants with narcotic qualities are not really "good plants", to consider just one example, even if some people do find supposedly "good uses" for such plants. There will not be any narcotic plants on earth during the millennium.

To continue with the Genesis account:

Next, God then cleared away the remaining clouds so that the sun and moon and stars became visible for a hypothetical observer here on earth. Genesis 1:16 tells us that God had appointed the sun to rule the day and the moon to rule the night. (For a thorough discussion of this verse, see my article "80 Mistranslations In The Bible And Their Significance".)

Note that God twice states that the sun and the moon are "to rule" (Genesis 1:16,18). That is a very significant statement, because God will never confer rulership on someone who, or something that, is imperfect at the time that the rulership is conferred.

Understand this:

There is absolutely no way that God would have conferred any kind of rulership on the moon, if at that point in time the moon had had monthly cycles that kept changing in length every month, and where the average monthly cycle had been 29.531 days in length. No way would God ever call a 29.531 day cycle "very good". God does not confer rulership on a heavenly body with such imperfect cycles.

Likewise, there is absolutely no way that God would have conferred any kind of rulership on the sun, if at that point in time the earth had had a yearly cycle of 365.24219 days around the sun. That is a lousy cycle! And no way would a perfect God ever call a lousy 365.24219-day cycle "very good". No way! Keep in mind that it is the sun’s gravitational pull that determines the earth’s journey around the sun. So the length of a year on earth is in effect the sun’s doing. The sun was to rule over that orbit.

The only possibility for God to confer rulership on the sun and on the moon is for the monthly cycle to have been exactly 30 days in length, and for the yearly cycle to have been exactly 360 days in length. It is those perfect cycles that qualified the sun and the moon to rule! Without those perfect cycles the sun and the moon are not qualified to rule.

Can you understand the mind of God?

So what about today? Am I saying that today the sun and the moon are not ruling? No, I am not saying that at all. Let me give you an analogy.

When God selected Saul to be king, Saul was a good guy, humble and teachable. In analogy, back in Genesis 1:31 the sun and the moon with their perfect cycles were like Saul at the time when God selected Saul.

Then Saul sinned repeatedly and disqualified himself from being God’s appointed king. God even had Samuel anoint David to be the next king, while Saul was still alive. But even though Saul’s replacement had already been appointed and anointed, God still allowed Saul to continue to be king for well in excess of another ten years. In analogy, our present monthly and yearly cycles are corrupt, like Saul after he had disobeyed God. And like Saul, the sun and the moon continue "in office" in this present age, until God chooses to restore the perfect cycles for Jesus Christ’s millennial rule.

I realize that the analogy falls short in certain ways. But can you see the point? When God conferred rulership on the sun and the moon, they had perfect cycles, just like Saul was very meek and humble when God selected him. But because of human sins God caused these two cycles to be corrupted, even as Saul was corrupted by his own disobedience in not carrying out God’s instructions.

To say that in Genesis 1 God Himself established the 29.531-day monthly cycle and the 365.24219-day yearly cycle is like saying that God selected Saul to be king after Saul had already rebelled against God several times. But that is something God would never do, appoint a rebel to a position of rulership. And likewise, God would never appoint heavenly bodies with cycles that are irregular and difficult to work with to positions of rulership.

But there is a lot more to Genesis 1 than just perfect cycles.

On day 5 God then created sea creatures and various forms of aquatic life, and God then also created the birds to fly through the air. All of the creatures God created on that day were "very good". This means that none of the creatures God had created that day were designed to kill and then to eat other creatures that God had created on the same day. That’s not how God thinks and operates.

In simple terms:

On day 5 God didn’t say to the little fishies: you better swim fast and look for places to hide because I have created you as food for the bigger fishies, who themselves in turn I created to be killed by other fish that are still bigger than they are. You need to always fear that there is someone out there who wants to kill you and then eat you.

That scenario is based on competition and survival of the strongest. But that is not what God had created before Genesis 1:31. There was no spirit of fear. There were no predator fish, looking for smaller fish to kill and to eat.

Consider the conditions which God will restore when Jesus Christ will rule during the millennium.

The three preceding verses describe the peaceful coexistence of all land animals, with no animal being hunted by any other animal. The same conditions will obviously also exist in the waters, with no water creature being hunted by any other water creature. There will be total peace on the land and total peace in the water. Peaceful coexistence will apply everywhere on planet Earth, where no creature will fear any other creature. There will be no spirit of fear on any of God’s creatures.

Here is a point we should always keep in mind:

The conditions of peace and contentment and lack of competition that we see described for the time when Jesus Christ will rule are nothing other than a restoration of the conditions that Jesus Christ had established leading up to Genesis 1:31. It was God’s design back in Genesis 1 that "they shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain" and that as humanity multiplied "the earth should be full of the knowledge of God".

Let’s move on to day 6.

On day 6 God created all the land animals and then God created Adam and Eve. And all of the animals God created on that day were "very good". This means that before Genesis 1:31 there was not a single animal that produced any kind of poison that could harm either human beings or other animals. So there were no poisonous snakes, no poisonous spiders, etc. The serpent through which Satan spoke to Eve was not a poisonous snake. None of the animals God created that day could hurt or destroy any other creature. They were all "very good".

Today many of the creatures we find on land are not "very good" at all. There is nothing good about scorpions and rattlesnakes, etc. Scorpions and rattlesnakes were not created before Genesis 1:31. They were created by God at some point after Adam and Eve had sinned ... the exact time of their creation is immaterial.

And neither were germs (i.e. viruses and harmful bacteria) created before Genesis 1:31. If these organisms had been created before Adam and Eve sinned, then God could not possibly have assessed "every thing that He had made" to be "very good". Viruses are not good! God has created viruses at various times since the time of Adam in response to human sins.

Consider something God told the Israelites at the time of the exodus.

When God said that He had brought diseases upon the Egyptians, then it means that God created those diseases very specifically to punish the Egyptians. Once these diseases had been created, they could spread and affect other people as well. And if Israel would refuse to obey God, then these diseases would certainly also affect them.

God creates disease organisms in response to human sins! And all the disease organisms that exist anywhere on earth today were only created at some point after Genesis 1:31. And none of them are "very good".

Before Jesus Christ starts to rule, God has scheduled events to take place that will literally and very methodically destroy this present world. You already know about the seven trumpets and specifically the three woes that lie ahead for this planet earth. You also know about the mind-boggling seven last plagues that will be poured out after those seven trumpets. And you also already know about the greatest earthquake in the history of this planet that then follows, when "islands flee away" and when "mountains are not found". And you also already know about the colossal hail storms that will follow, with each hailstone weighing about 100 pounds. Those hailstones will be heavier than the cannonballs used in past wars, and they will smash into the earth with a greater velocity than any cannonball has ever done.

That’s all recorded in the Book of Revelation, right?

All that methodical destruction of this planet earth is not just because God is angry with rebellious mankind. Yes, that will be the time of God’s wrath (see Revelation 6:17). But at the same time it will also pave the way for God to reestablish the conditions God had created in leading up to Genesis 1:31.

Understand that in order to establish the world Jesus Christ will rule during the millennium, God will not just patch-up all the problems that currently exist. Rather, God will first knock it all down and then start again from scratch, like God did at the time of the flood.

I am reminded of a very fancy sand-castle competition I once saw on the beach on Sentosa Island in Singapore, with elaborate tall sand-castles built by different teams of architects. Our present world is somewhat like the winning entry at that competition. But it has now suffered some damages ... the wind has blown down some high towers, a coconut dropped onto another part of the castle and smashed that part, the high tides are starting to nibble away at the edges, a little kid knocked down another corner, birds have scratched around in it, etc. That’s like our present world.

For Jesus Christ’s millennial rule God is not going to try to repair all those damaged parts. No, what God will do is raze the whole edifice to the ground, and then build a world totally new from the ground up. And that is what the events leading up to the millennium are all about ... taking everything back to square one, basically to a condition of tohu and bohu (these words are explained at length in my article "Understanding Genesis 1:1-2 Correctly").

Now here is the point:

Those end-time events will destroy anything and everything that man has ever done or produced. It will be like flattening that sand-castle right down to beach level. In the process not only will most human beings still left on earth die, but most animals and most plants will also be destroyed, somewhat like at the time of the flood. Animals and plants are not given any special protection at that time.

Plants that God does not want around during the millennium will not survive those end-time events. The same goes for animals and insects and viruses and bacteria, etc. ... the ones God does not want around during the millennium will be permanently blotted out by those devastating events, so that God can restore the pristine conditions of Genesis 1:31.

At the same time God will create whatever physical creatures God wants around during the millennium. Maybe there aren’t any new "animals" that God will create at that time? Maybe God will just "patch-up" all the carnivorous animals (lions, tigers, etc.) in such a way that they too will "eat straw like the ox" (see Isaiah 11:7)?

Or maybe God will let all of the carnivorous animals die at that time, and then simply create new "lions and tigers and bears", etc., in such a way that their digestive systems are fully dependent on a vegetarian diet? It will probably require a new genetic make-up for those presently carnivorous animals to become herbivores.

Now I don’t know how God will do this. But I do know that God could easily let all the lions on earth die, and then immediately create the outwardly identical animal with a vegetarian digestive system (like elephants, rhinos and hippos, etc.), if that was what God would choose to do. I do know that generally speaking God is not in the business of "patching up" anything, by which I mean that God doesn’t normally "repair" things that have become problematic. The record shows that in restoring anything God usually prefers to start from as close to scratch as feasible.

The overall circumstances that God called "very good" in Genesis 1:31 are the target for what God will reestablish at the start of Jesus Christ’s millennial rule. And so in order to understand conditions during the millennium, we really need to understand the things that led up to Genesis 1:31.

At the time of Genesis 1:31 the following things were all "very good":

1) The light was good, and therefore not cancer-causing.

2) The day-night cycle was perfect.

3) The land masses were perfect with no provisions for "island nations" and with no inhospitable or inaccessible areas.

4) The vegetation was perfect, with no weeds and no poisonous plants.

5) The monthly cycle was perfect with exactly 30 days.

6) The yearly cycle was perfect with exactly 360 days.

7) All the sea creatures were very good, therefore harmless to man and to all other creatures.

8) All the birds were very good, with none of them being hunted by other birds, and with none of them being hunters themselves.

9) All the animals were very good, with none of them being predators, and all of them being herbivores.

10) There were no disease-causing micro-organisms like viruses, etc.

Now regarding the day-night cycle:

When mankind sinned, then God "experimented" with applying different penalties for those sins, in the same way that God "experimented" with the length of the human lifespan. Having to punish mortal human beings for sins was also a new experience for God. Thus, for example, God did not impose the penalty of death for murderers at the time when Cain killed Abel. Rather, God intended to insure that nobody would kill Cain in revenge. That turned out to not be an effective way to deal with murderers. Therefore right after the flood, when there were still only eight human beings on earth, God imposed the death penalty for murder (see Genesis 9:5-6). This was a clear reversal of the earlier instruction in Genesis 4:15.

But God also experimented with imposing other penalties for sins. Thus God had brought on a worldwide flood for mankind’s universal sins (see Genesis 6:5). After the flood God decided that He would not use a worldwide flood again as a penalty for sins (see Genesis 9:21 ... "neither will I again smite any more every thing living as I have done").

It seems likely that God had also experimented with imposing two other penalties for sins: corrupting the seasonal cycle and corrupting the day-night cycle, to make life more difficult for human beings. This we learn from a statement God made after the flood, right after Noah had offered some sacrifices to God.

Genesis 8:21-22 records God’s response to these sacrifices Noah had offered. In these verses God basically states that He would in future not use certain penalties for sins, which penalties God had used for sins committed before the flood. First God stated that He would not again resort to a worldwide flood as a form of punishment for human sins. That is expressed in the statement we have already considered (i.e. "neither will I again smite any more every living thing ...").

Now consider God’s next statement:

"They shall not cease" means that those two cycles would not again be corrupted as punishment for human sins.

The reason God said this is because before the flood God had punished human sins by, amongst other penalties, corrupting the seasonal cycle and also corrupting the day-night cycle. This shows us how much human sins provoke God! God was extremely angry with mankind when God resorted to imposing these particular penalties. And at the time of the flood God decided that in future He would not use these particular penalties again.

In this statement "seedtime" refers to the season of spring; "harvest" refers to the season of fall or autumn; "summer" refers to the season of summer; and "winter" refers to the season of winter. Those are the four seasons. The words "cold" and "heat" in the middle of this context refer to seasonally appropriate temperatures. God was not referring to the occasional really freezing days in summer or to the occasionally really hot days in winter.

Rather, God was referring on a worldwide scale to the four seasons as blocks of time, of each being approximately three months in length. And in future these four blocks of time would on the whole generally have seasonally appropriate temperatures.

In plain language:

Because "every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5 again), therefore God had apparently altered the daylight-to-darkness ratio of every 24-hour period in ways that were stressful for human beings. Perhaps some days were even longer or shorter than 24 hours?

And God had apparently also altered the length and the sequence of the seasons. These things made the production of food crops much more difficult and stressful. Human life had become extremely difficult, but this still did not motivate human beings to repent. These penalties before the flood did not really have the desired effect. And therefore God decided to not use these particular penalties again after the flood.

This is not to say that after the flood there would never be seasonal upsets in some or other localized areas. But these things would never again be imposed on a worldwide scale.

Now consider this question: could those corrupted seasonal cycles and corrupted day-night cycles before the flood have impacted the yearly cycle of the earth and the monthly cycle of the moon? And if so, did God restore the perfect cycles after the flood? ¿Quién sabe?

[As an aside: if you can understand these ways in which God punished humanity before the flood, then the utter absurdity of anyone attempting to take the present Jewish calendar back to the days of Adam should be glaringly obvious! Here you have people assuming consistent regular cycles for the past approximately 6000 years, and meanwhile God was deliberately distorting all those cycles for an unspecified period of time, including even the day-night cycle, as a very specific penalty for human sins.]

This intervention in the cycles before the flood shows how far God was willing to go in trying to get people to change their sinful and rebellious ways before God resorted to the ultimate penalty. By making life much more difficult with the corrupted seasonal cycles, God was still hoping to avoid having to bring on a worldwide flood.

Let’s understand that the flood was the very first time that God carried out the death penalty on sinners. Until bringing on the flood, God had done everything to try to avoid having to kill sinners. It was preferable to God to disrupt the day-night cycle and the seasonal cycle, rather than having to kill sinners. It was only after those extreme measures still did not achieve the desired result, that then God committed Himself to bringing a worldwide flood upon the earth. This is the perspective we need to understand.

We should recognize that all ten of the points in the above list of things that were "very good" are today no longer "very good".

What this overall picture tells us is that in response to human sins God creates penalties, which in many cases amount to being undesirable factors in the environment in which we are compelled to live our lives. Human sins have made life much more difficult on all of these fronts than God ever intended life to be. It also tells us that frequently God will punish the sins of some people (e.g. Adam and Eve) in ways that will ultimately affect all people.

I believe that the reason for this is very simple:

God wants us to learn that in God’s environment the sins committed by even one single individual (e.g. think of a parallel to Achan in Joshua 7) will invariably in some negative way impact everyone else in that environment. Satan’s sins, for example, defiled all of God’s physical creation in existence at that point in time.

So all of the things in that list of ten points will at the start of Jesus Christ’s rule be restored to the conditions God had established by the time of Genesis 1:31. And then Jesus Christ will rule for 1000 years.

Frank W Nelte