The Bible and science (2)

Bienvenido Macaraeg Jr.

Second of four parts

LAST time, we mentioned that scientists say that ape-like creatures said to be the earliest human “ancestors” along with the dinosaurs existed millions of years ago. But scientists also say that the dinosaurs along with those early human-like creatures suddenly disappeared 66 million years ago!  Why?  What happened?

Let’s go now to the second verse of Genesis chapter one. Because here we can have a “window” wherein we can peep and see unfold an incredibly mind-boggling drama that you may never had yet ever heard of or read about before!

Verse 2: “And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

The Hebrew word for “was” is hayah. It has more than one sense, one of which is “became” as in Genesis 19:26 referring to Lot’s wife, where it reads: “and she became [Heb. hayah] a pillar of salt.”

Going back, Gen. 1:2 should have been translated “became” and not “was” thus: “And the earth became without form and void.” The Hebrew for “without form and void” means in confusion and a wasteland.

But the question now is: why should it be rendered as “became” and not “was”?

Answer: because we already saw earlier that the angelic hosts in heaven were so moved to sing and shout out of pure joy at the moment of the creation of the universe. The only possible reason must be that the angels could not help but exult for the sheer beauty and awesomeness of God’s creation!

Their shouting could have been like the excitement and joy we experience when an amazingly awesome and lovely display of pyrotechnics explodes in the sky. How much more with the Big Bang which was not just the explosion of all explosions but the very creation of an awesome universe! The angels wouldn’t be moved to such exultation if the earth was ugly—“was without form and void”!

Furthermore, whenever God creates, His creation is always excellently beautiful and perfect. Look how God viewed His creation after six days. Gen. 1:31 says that “it was very good”!

Notice also God’s creation of the archangel Lucifer. The prophet Ezekiel described Lucifer thus: “You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty (28:12).”

Why should the same not apply to God’s creation of the heavens and the earth? Hence, it is not true that God’s creation started “without form and void” as far too many loosely translated Bible versions wrongly render it!

But then comes the question: why did the earth become without form and void?

To help you begin to see why, notice how and when the pristinely lovely earth and man’s perfectly peaceful life in Eden got destroyed. How and when? After Adam and Eve disobeyed God and sinned! (Gen. 3:16-19)

And why did the perfectly beautiful Lucifer become an ugly dragon? Again, the answer is when Lucifer rebelled and sinned (Rev. 12:9)!  (It would greatly help the reader if he/she had read or could refer to my previous article “Duterte, the Bible and God”.)

Therefore we see that it is sin that destroys! Now, we are beginning to see why the beautiful creation that even moved the heavenly hosts to sing and shout for joy became “without form” in confusion and a wasteland.

Here is the story.

We already had seen that Lucifer and a third of the angels were assigned by God to establish His Kingdom here on earth.

Sadly, pride took the better of Lucifer. He may have thought that being assigned to planet Earth was too demeaning a job for him.  He thought that he was simply too good for that job!  (Little did he realize that God may had better ideas for him in the future if only he could have been faithful and submissive to the Most High. Little did he realize that God had in mind to ultimately make this planet Earth to be His (God’s) Universal Headquarters by finally bringing Heaven down here on earth. Read the last two chapters of the Bible in the Book of Revelation and you will know this for a fact!)

But Lucifer felt that he was too good for the job. Being so beautiful and excellent in every way, he thought that he should also be ruling in Heaven and not here on earth! Due to his pride, he felt that he should be no less than God even though he was just a created being and Yahweh, the Almighty God was his Creator. So, he convinced the angels who were with him to leave their assigned place here on earth and go up to heaven and wage a coup d’état against God!  The Epistle of Jude referred to them as “…those angels who did not keep their own position but abandoned their assigned place (verse 6).”

And so a gigantic cosmic battle ensued! This is the original “Star Wars”! And it was waged millions of years before the film by that name came into being! Notice:

“And there was war in heaven [meaning in outer space not in the Heaven where God’s throne is]; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels (demons) fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the Devil and Satan, …he was hurled [back] to the earth, and his angels with him” (Revelation 12:7-9).

Notice now what the prophet Isaiah wrote: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!  How you are cast down to the earth… For you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne higher than the stars of God (meaning the angels who were in Heaven with God); I will sit enthroned on the Mount of Assembly (God’s Throne Room in Heaven)… I will climb up above the clouds (a clear indication that Lucifer was here on earth); I will be like the Most High!’” (Isaiah 14:12-14)

But that “star wars” did not involve space ships, guns and missiles. Being supernaturally powerful, Lucifer-now-turned-Satan together with his demons’ missiles must have been the asteroids or whatever space boulders that they could get their hands on and hurled them as asteroidal missiles.  You could just imagine the mind-boggling power and impact these astronomic missiles could have caused!

Try to observe the craters and pockmarks on the moon’s surface.  Don’t they look like some giant spherical objects hit it and bounced out?  Also notice the cosmic dust and space rocks floating all over outer space. While they could be the result of the Big Bang, surely, the “star wars” between the good and bad angels have also contributed to it especially within our solar system and galaxy.

We could also speculate about the comets like Halley’s Comet that orbits around the earth every 75 years. They must have been among the space objects that were hurled but missed their targets and got caught in the gravitational pull of the earth and never got to escape anymore.

While you might think all these are speculations, still, as you have seen, it is not without solid basis.

From the biblical accounts documenting the angelic cosmic battle, let’s go to the latest scientific reports as reported over BBC, the National Geographics and other scientific journals and see the incredibly cataclysmic and unbelievably devastating results inflicted on planet earth as a consequence of that “war in heaven”! That is what we will do in the next and third series of this article. (to be continued)

(Bienvenido D. Macaraeg Jr. has been a Bible scholar and exegete since 1962 who took Advanced Biblical Studies in the US in the ’80s.  Now retired, he had served as senior pastor in Metro Manila and from as far North as the Ilocos to South in Zamboanga. He is currently director and founder of Speechmasters CDO. E-mail: goodconqueror@websprinter.net)