Creation in 6 Days
In the beginning the Almighty created and was alongside and closely associated with the spiritual world and the material realm. And the physical world existed as a formless, orderless, and empty void obscured in darkness along with the presence of the great commotion and inaccessible and mysterious energy. The Almighty's Ruwach Spirit hovered over, ministered to and cleansed according to the presence of the waters. God said, 'Let there be light and light existed.' The Almighty saw the light was good. And God separated light from darkness.
God's creative testimony was accurate when He revealed that cosmologically, time began the moment energy became matter. Before the conversion of energy to matter, time did not and could not exist. In fact, Yahweh's suggestion that the material world was formless and orderless initially, syncs with current scientific thought, whereby matter is considered nothing more than an organized for of energy.
Also noteworthy, Genesis indicates that before Yahweh created the light energy which became the cosmos, there was a lifeless, purposeless void. Scientists are in lock-step, confirming that before the Big Bang, there were no physical laws, no matter or life - only a powerful source of energy. Furthermore, we now know that the inception of the universe was incredibly chaotic. In the beginning light was literally separated from darkness. Photons broke free as electrons were liberated. But even today light remains supreme; there are a billion photons in the universe for every particle of matter. God's testimony "Let there be light and there was light is consistent with our observable reality.
According to scientists, the universe began 15 billion years ago (plus or minus 2 billion years) from our perspective on earth looking back and it was spawned just six days ago from the perspective of the Creator at the time and place of creation according to His testimony. Both suggest that the first universal epoch, that of initial galactic formation, lasted 7 to 8 billion years from our vantage point, which is one 24-hour day measured from the relative position of creation, looking forward.
Light the subject of the first day, is the eternal timekeeper. Its wave aspect allows man to measure time anywhere, even near the place where time began. But to appreciate this we must first learn what time is. And for that, the best place to turn is Albert Einstein. He brought forth the Theory of General Relativity which establishes the relationship between light, mass, energy, space and time. He was the first to discover that the rate at which time passes is not the same at all places. Differences in mass and velocity radically affect the rate at which time flows. This aspect of the General Theory of Relativity has been so thoroughly verified that it is considered to be an established physical law. The only aspects of relativity in dispute are those related to quantum mechanics - to the lack of cause and effect, even certainty at the subatomic level, and whether gravity is a force or effect (of the bending of the space-time fabric). But when it comes to the realization that time is a dimension, not a constant, and that its rate of flow is relative, there is no dispute.
The pace of time at a location with greater mass, energy or velocity is slower than at a place with diminished mass, energy or velocity. We can confirm this shift by measuring the two parts per million a light wave is stretched emanating in the greater mass of the sun relative to a light wave generated on earth. The sun's clock runs 2.12/1,000,000 slower than earth's, losing 67 seconds a year relative to a terrestrial timepiece. But the sun is only marginally more massive than the earth, especially compared to creation - to the concentration of energy and mass required to create 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 suns (100 billion galaxies each averaging 100 billion stars). And that's just the known universe, representing a scant 4% of the total (96% of the energy and mass in the cosmos is considered dark because its nature is unknown to us).
Fortunately we do not have to guess the rate of time flow in these conditions. The measurement is screaming out to us in one form, it is observable in a second medium, it is calculable in a third, and the rate is deductible in a fourth venue. The pace time flowed at creation cries out from the entire universe in photon radiation in the form of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) - an elongated part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The CMB is a measure of the residual heat left over from the time photons were first freed to travel - about 300,000 years after the Big Bang. Discovered at the Bell Labs by Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias in 1965, cosmic Microwave Background radiation is the residue of the aftermath of creation, and thus provides us with a cosmic clock calibrated to a time close to the first day of Genesis. The CMB wavelength is stretched approximately one million million fold suggesting that genesis time flowed slower by a factor of 10 to the power of 12.
A second glimpse of the Creator's clock can be gleaned by observing the red shift or lengthening of wavelengths emitted from the oldest and most distant sources of light and comparing this expansion to the rate the universe has and is growing. To understand this we turn to Professor Peebles who was named the Albert Einstein Professor of Science at Princeton University. In his textbook, the Principles of Physical Cosmology, Phillip Peebles, who has established himself as the world's foremost authority on cosmology, explains that when the universe was small, it was doubling very rapidly. But as the cosmos grew, the time required to double it's size got exponentially longer, He, concurring with almost all cosmological texts, quotes 10 to the power of 12 as the average rate of expansion. This yields a general relationship between genesis time and time today, indicating that they are different by a factor of one million million.
This concept is fairly simple: when space was stretched, so were the wavelengths within it. The red shift, or stretching due to the expansion of space, is commonly observed in astronomical data, and it now confirms that time originally flowed a trillion times slower than it does today.
The calculable, and third, insight into creation's clockm and how it differs from ours today, is found by dividing the temperature of quark confinement, when light energy could be successfully transformed into matter (10.9 x 10 to the power of 12 Kelvin) following the Big Bang, by today's universal temperature of 2.73 degrees Kelvin (the measure of the CMB). This ratio enables us to compare the amount of energy concentrated near the point of creation with that which currently exists. This is relevant because, the more energy which is present, the slower time moves. The resulting calculation serves to confirm that our clock runs 0.399 x 10 to the power of 12 (399,000,000,000 faster than the Creator's clock at the genesis.
To bring this all together, I am going to refer to, and on occasion paraphrase, a work called the Science of God by Gerald Schroeder, a man with doctoral degrees in nuclear physics and earth science from M.I.T.. His book serves to present relativity, quantum mechanics, biology and probability in simple easy to understand terms. He not only deduced a similar exponential, he was the first to compare creation's clock to Genesis time. His reasoning can be summarized as follows: the wavelength of what we now observe as cosmic microwave background radiation was stretched during the inflationary period, at the outset of time, in the first second of the first day. At creation, energy transitioned into matter consistent with Einstein's E-MC2, with c being the speed of light, which is being multiplied by itself, requiring an enormous amount of energy to form a relatively tiny accumulation of matter. This initial transition from energy to substance occurred when the universe was a million million times smaller and hotter than it is today. We know that this is the point when time began because time only takes hold when matter forms. From the relative perspective of photon/wave energy, time literally stands still.
The M.I.T. trained nuclear physicist goes on to say that according to measurements taken in the most advanced physics laboratories, the temperature, and thus frequency, of radiation at the instant of creation was 10 to the power of 12 times hotter than the 2.73 degrees Kelvin we now observe in the black of space. Since the Big Bang temperatures were a trillion times hotter, or more energy-intense than today's CMB, it means that the electromagnetic wavelength must have been a trillion time shorter than it is now at its present trillion-times lower temperature.
The higher the temperature the higher the frequency of the wave, and the higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength must be. Girded with this knowledge, we can use recent nuclear laboratory calculations to deduce that the CBM is stretched by a factor of approximately 10 to the power of 12, or 1,000,000,000,000 to one - slowing the cosmic clock at creation relative to earth by that amount.
Therefore on average, these four measurements serve to confirm that one day in the Creator’s life at creation would seem like 0.9 x 1012 days to us. And none of this should be surprising since Yahweh consistently equates His nature to light, and since we now know that at the velocity of light, time stands still. Eternity only exists in the presence of the Light.
Before we examine the calculations calibrating genesis time to our own to ascertain how God and man can both be accurate and yet differ, let’s take a moment to explore some of the cosmological assumptions which have led us to our current state of awareness. To begin, cosmologists contend that a concentration of energy at the initiation of the universe produced electromagnetic waves, or photons, that were forged as the explosion cooled sufficiently to permit matter to form. Persisting to this day, the photons have traveled out in all directions. The thermal soup of quarks, electrons, and photons decreased in temperature rapidly, falling from 1013 degrees Kelvin to one billion degrees after the first few minutes (a temperature still 67 times hotter than the sun’s core).
Three hundred thousand years later, as universal energy and density dispersed and dissipated, atoms began to coalesce into gas clouds which later evolved into stars. Moving forward to today we find that the black body temperature of space has fallen to 2.73 Kelvin—hovering ever so slightly above absolute zero. This temperature is the remnant of the primordial fireball which is discernable through the stretching of the electromagnetic wavelength.
Visible light lies in the center of the nearly infinite range of electromagnetic waves, also known as traveling packets of energy. This physical phenomenon occurs when an electric field couples with a perpendicular magnetic field. Lengths and frequencies of photon energy vary, but not speeds, at least in a vacuum. All forms of radiant energy, gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet, visible light, infrared, microwave and radio waves, are manifestations of the same thing and they all travel at the same speed—a pace so extreme that from their perspective, time slows to the point that it no longer moves.
The wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation determines whether it falls within our range of vision. We see wavelengths of approximately 0.00007 centimeters as red and 0.00004 cm as violet at the other extreme of the visible spectrum. By contrast, a microwave produces waves that are 10.0 cm long, while gamma rays from radioactive materials can be as short as 0.000000001 cm. The shorter the wavelength, the higher the wave frequency and energy. A gamma-ray photon, for example, packs billions of times more energy than an infra-red photon. This is important because the energy we measure as CMB was emitted as gamma rays (10-11 cm), but are now elongated microwaves (10 cm), indicating that they have stretched a million million fold—confirming our 1012 exponential once again.
As an interesting aside, while we can only feel infrared light and see visible light I believe that our senses will be more receptive in our eternal state. We may be able to see and feel things that currently lay well beyond our current limitations. What I’m hinting at here is that I think the universe may be comprised 6 or seven dimensions, not just the four we vaguely perceive today, and that dark matter and energy are essential components of these things.
Once we recognize that the CMB is little more than a uniform sea of photons left over from the hot early phase of the universe immediately after quark confinement, we are confronted with a singular plausible explanation for having this uniform CMB radiation exist throughout the universe with such a precise spectrum. It had to be generated at a time when the cosmos was much hotter and denser than it is now. Hence the CMB spectrum is essentially incontrovertible evidence that the universe experienced a hot Big Bang stage (that’s not to say that we understand the initial instant, just that we know the universe used to be vastly more energy intense and massively dense—expanding, becoming less dense, and cooling ever since).
It is therefore certain, that the early universe was very hot. The temperature was approximately 4 × 1072 ergs. An erg is a unit of energy equivalent to 10-7 joules, the energy required to exert a force of one newton a distance of one meter. This means that creation was 1012 times hotter than the universe is today on average.
There was so much energy around at the time, scientists speculate that pairs of particles and anti-particles were continually being created and annihilated. This annihilation was translated into packets of light, known as photons. But as the universe expanded and the temperature fell, particles and anti-particles (quarks and the like) annihilated each other for the last time, and the energies became low enough that they couldn't be recreated again. For reasons still not understood today, the early cosmos had about one part in a billion more particles than anti-particles. So when all the anti-particles had annihilated their counterparts, that left about a billion photons for every particle of matter. And that’s the way the universe exists today, with light remaining dominant.
Now that we have some familiarity with the elements which comprise the coefficient of variance between our clock and the Creator’s, let’s examine how long this timepiece has been running. Here, Hubble’s law has great significance because it quantifies the expansion of the universe and thus can be used to calculate its age. The time elapsed since the Big Bang is a function of the present value of Hubble’s constant and its rate of change. Astronomers have determined the approximate rate of expansion, but no one has yet been able to measure the second value precisely. Still, one can estimate rate of change within the context of the universe’s average density. Since gravity exerts a force which opposes expansion, galaxies should be moving apart more slowly now than they did in the past. The rate of change in expansion is therefore related to the gravitational pull of the universe as a result of its average density. If the density is that of the visible material in and around galaxies, the age of the universe is between 12 and 18 billion years—a range which allows for the uncertainty in the rate of expansion.
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe mentioned above, recently provided an estimate of 13.7 billion years. That is a bit suspicious for two reasons. First, the density of the universe isn't remotely equivalent to “the visible material in and around galaxies.†Along these lines, this very same satellite confirmed that 96% of the energy and matter in the cosmos is unknown to us. The gravitational
influence of “dark matter,†and the repulsive affect of “dark energy†has dramatic consequences for all aspects of fundamental physics, so it should have moved the age estimate to one outside of that anticipated by Hubble (12 to 18 billion years).
Further, the universe is filled with a uniform sea of quantum zero-point energy, or a condensate of new particles that have a mass which is 10-39 times smaller than that of an electron. They should not be ignored.
The second reason for skepticism is that the cosmos cannot be younger than the material from which it is comprised. There is considerable evidence that many stars, even relatively close ones, are considerably older than 13.7 billion years.
Many are considered to be more than 15 billion years old.
Apart from the Hubble red shift expansion model, and the Wilkinson CMB estimates, there are several other ways to evaluate the universe’s age. For example, the rate of cooling of white dwarf stars indicates the oldest stars in the disk of the Milky Way galaxy are about 9 billion years old. The stars in the halo of the Milky Way are somewhat older, about 15 billion years—a value derived from the rate of nuclear fuel consumption in their cores. Additionally, the ages of the oldest known chemical elements in the cosmos are also approximately 15 billion years old according to radioactive dating techniques. Workers in laboratories have derived these age estimates from atomic and nuclear physics. It is noteworthy that their results agree with the age astronomers have derived by measuring cosmic expansion.
Now that we have evaluated some of the pieces to our puzzle—God’s big bang testimony, man’s Big Bang Theory, the age of the universe, the relative nature of time, and the role of photon energy in our genesis—it’s time to put it all together. The first conclusion should now be obvious. This discussion on the initiation of time, concentration of energy, inflationary stretching of space, and the transformation of light into matter, serves to corroborate Yahweh’s testimony. The Big Bang theory requires, and our observations confirm, that all of these things actually occurred during the cosmos’ birth. It is why Bare’syth 1:2 says the ruwach / Spirit of ‘elohym / Almighty God was paney / present, rachaph / hovering over the “tohu, bohu, and chosek—the lifeless, formless, void of darkness†prior to the existence of visible ‘owr / light. And especially notable in this context is that one of rachaph’s most prevalent connotations is “agitation and rapid movement,†making everything God has said thus far consistent with the evidence. The second conclusion should now be intuitive. Based upon our
analysis of the cosmic clock, Yahowah’s claim that the first universal epoch lasted one day is not in conflict with the scientific assertion that it required 7 to 8 billion years.
In support of this conclusion, consider the fact that while the various scientific methods for estimating the age of our universe provide differing conclusions, they all fall within the same general magnitude. So while we cannot be dogmatic or assert that the scientific claims are precise, based upon our ability to measure it, looking back in time from the vantage point of earth, the universe can be reasonably assumed to be 15 billion years old plus or minus a billion years or so.
The creative days of Bare’syth / Genesis, however, look forward, not back. Yahweh’s testimony was composed as an eyewitness, from the perspective of the Creator at creation, not from that of us on earth. The simple truth is that no matter how arrogant and self-reliant mankind chooses to be, our planet didn't exist when the universe was formed, so our perspective and clock could not havebeen used. With that in mind, let’s compare our clock to His. To do that we must multiply the 15,000,000,000 year estimated age of the cosmos by 365.25 days per year so that both clocks conform to the same unit of measure—that being “days.†15,000,000,000 years x 365.25 days/year = 5,478,750,000,000 days (plus or minus 10%).
To coordinate this 5.5 trillion day period with creation’s clock, respecting the relativistic nature of time, we must divide this number of earth days since creation by the coefficient time was slowed at creation. Earlier, we deduced this number by averaging the results derived from the four methods from which it can be calculated. We discovered that Big Bang time ran 0.9 x 1012 (900,000,000,000) times slower than earth time does today.
So here is the math: 5,478,750,000,000 days (plus or minus 10%) divided by 900,000,000,000 equals: 6 days. From the vantage point of a witness to creation, existing at the point of inception, the whole process from start to finish took a length of time that equates to six, twenty-four hour, earth days.
“And thus the heavens and earth were finished…and on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made…†(Bare’syth / In the Beginning / Genesis 2:1-2)
This is not a cosmic coincidence. Yahweh’s timeline, His accounting, God’s 3,400-year-old written testimony, corresponds precisely with the evidence at our disposal. If that doesn't get your attention and cause you to think that His Scriptures might be inspired, nothing will.
But we have only scratched the surface. With every layer and detail He adds, God proves that He knew how the universe was created, when it was created, and how and when life came to exist—because He was responsible. This then compels a singular informed and rational verdict: “In the beginning God created the spiritual world and also the material realm.â€
The energy Yahweh put into His creation was perfectly calculated to produce a universe hospitable to man. By design, the resulting system required just six days to conceive from His perspective, and yet it established the environment necessary for human history to unfurl over the course of precisely 6,000 years.
The reason for the common denominator is because the redemptive story imbedded in the future history of man, and in the creation account itself, are both based upon the same formula. Six is the number of man (who was created on the sixth day); one is the number of God (who repeatedly tells us that He is one).
Bring them together and you have perfection—also known as a reconciled relationship. In six days God created and on the seventh, the Sabbath, He rested and reflected.
While what we have already discovered represents an amazing verification of the veracity of Yahweh’s Scriptural witness, there is much more. You see, the flow of time did not remain constant during the six days of conception—at least from our perspective looking back. That is because the amount of matter and the rate of stretching at the center of creation diminished over time at a logarithmic rate approximating natural spirals. This infinite curve is best manifest in the graceful swirls evident in most spiral galaxies (representing 77% of the total) and in the turn of every nautilus shell. Moving from inside out, each successive spiral of the common galactic arms or shell rings telescope outward at a rate approximating twice the previous distance. Based upon the way living cells grow, you’ll find a similar ratio in everything from flower petals to pineapples and pine cones.
There are three widely accepted formulas used to quantify this natural geometric expansion. The first is known as the Golden Mean, Proportion, or Section. Calculated as the square root of 5 plus 1 divided by 2, it yields a ratio of 1:6180339887…. In his galactic observations, Johannes Kepler equated this proportion to what has been called the Fibonacci Number Series of 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233..., where each additional number is the sum of the two previous values. It serves as the best whole number approximation of the irrational Golden Ratio. A third logarithmic scale defines the exponential rates of decay of radioactive atoms known as a “half life.â€
Therefore, based upon Yahweh’s testimony and the empirical evidence, we can deduce that clock at the center of creation became more closely synchronized with an earth-based timepiece at a rate of approximately fifty percent per cosmic day. As confirmation, this diminishment is evident in the relative scale of subjects covered in the creation account itself, from its focus on the universe on the first day, to the solar system and earth, to plants, the atmosphere, then to animals, and eventually to man in successive periods.
This logarithmic spiral is pertinent because when we apply the celestial unit of measure to the creative timeline described in BaRe’syth / In the Beginning / Genesis we discover that each of the six days of creation coincide perfectly with verifiable developments in the cosmos and here on earth. Yahowah’s insights regarding this telescoping unit of measure are manifest in the opening lines of the 19th Psalm. Its words are as riveting as they are precise.
“The heavens (shamaym – the realm of stars) quantify the unit of measure, exactly and accurately of (caphar – they recount and relate, number and reckon, record and proclaim) the manifestation of power (kabowd – glorious presence and abundance; from kabad, meaning energy and massiveness) of God (‘el – the Almighty). Its spreading out and expanse (raqya) makes conspicuous (nagad – makes known, reporting the information for a purpose; declaring the message which informs and acknowledges) His handiwork (a compound of yad – hand, power, strength and control; also used as a unit of measure; and ma’aseh – labor, pursuits, undertakings, enterprise, achievements, and creation). Day unto day (yowm la yowm) pours out (naba’ – gushes forth, proliferating) answers (‘emer – words of intent, thinking, and purpose), and night unto night reveals (hawah – makes known and illuminates, displays and announces) knowledge (da’at – comprehension and understanding).†(Mizmowr / Song / Psalm 19:1-2)
This passage is particularly astute. We turned to it to help us properly evaluate the Bare’syth timeline, but I didn’t expect the precision of “caphar – to quantify the unit of measure, exactly and accurately.†Yahweh was as skilled at creation as He is at communication. In addition to telling us that the enormity of His power is evident in the universe, He told us to use the stars to compute creation’s timeline. Galactic formations are most often logarithmic spirals where each successive arm extends approximately twice the distance from the center as the previous one.
Since no accounting of our existence would be complete without a complement of insights into the mind of God, profound truth is woven into the Psalm’s narrative. So although we have already found the answer we were searching for—the unit of measure for our cosmological timeline—by considering the rest of the Psalm we will grow wiser still. Yahowah says: “Nothing exists without (‘ayn – we cease and are fatherless, incurable, powerless, and senseless without) the Word (‘emer – the answer, the promise, and the declaration).
Nothing exists when and where (wa ‘ayn) the spoken and written message (dabarym – statements, accounts, and words of advice) of the voice which calls out (qowl – the summons and invitation) is corrupted and fails (bely – is negated, becoming unimportant and nameless, is diminished in relevance so as not) to be heard, regarded, or understood (shama’ – attentively listened to and processed).†(Mizmowr / Song / Psalm 19:3)
When you think about it, it becomes immediately obvious that Yahweh is right. Words are essential. Nothing exists without them. Emphasizing this, Bare’syth repeats: “And God said†before each creative event, each day all the way to “and God said let us make man in our image.†Without His words we would not exist. And without the written report Yahowah gave us, these very words we are currently considering, there would be no hope of redemption, or life beyond the grave.
While that’s all true, ‘emer, meaning “word,†is singular in this passage, something which is fairly uncommon. Therefore, in this context, we are compelled to consider the Psalm’s connection with the opening paragraph of Yahowchanan’s (John’s) witness: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. All things came into being through Him. In Him is life, and the life is the light…enlightening every man…. To all those who receive Him, He gives them the right to become children of God…. So the Word became flesh and camped out with us and we beheld His glory.†Simply stated, without the Ma’aseyah Yahowsha’—the Word made flesh—we live in darkness and our brief lives would all terminate in death. Without the Word we are blind, incurable, orphans. And in this regard, appreciate the fact that ‘emer also means “branch.†As a symbol of the Ma’aseyah, “branch†is almost as universal as “the Word.â€
Returning to God’s Word, there are additional insights here because later in the passage we find that dabarym is plural, meaning “words.†Without language, we are rendered senseless and powerless as it is the source of enlightenment and of causality. We think with words and act upon them. Language is God’s gift to humankind. In written form it emerged 6,000 years ago, contemporaneously with the first man created in Yah’s image. Words are the source of life and the means to relationship. Therefore, in this verse Yahweh is saying that if we fail to regard
His message, if we diminish the importance of His Word, we will cease to exist, returning to the dust upon which we came.
Before we consider the next sentence in the Psalm, I’d be remiss for not pointing something out which is foundational. God’s equation for life is sensible and fair. If you prioritize Yahweh and His Word, highly regarding Him and listening to it, Yahweh will reciprocate. He will listen to you and value your soul sufficiently not only to save it, but actually adopt it. But if you don’t care sufficiently about Him, if you elect to accept a corruption of His message, if you ignore His voice, He will ignore you. Having chosen to live your life apart from Him, death will be the end of your existence. There will be nothing more, because your soul will be seen as having the same value you placed on the source of life. Such souls are diminished to nothingness, which means they simply cease to exist. And while that may strike you as harsh, it’s not only completely fair; it’s a far better fate than eternal anguish in She’owl.
In the beginning the Almighty created and was alongside and closely associated with the spiritual world and the material realm. And the physical world existed as a formless, orderless, and empty void obscured in darkness along with the presence of the great commotion and inaccessible and mysterious energy. The Almighty's Ruwach Spirit hovered over, ministered to and cleansed according to the presence of the waters. God said, 'Let there be light and light existed.' The Almighty saw the light was good. And God separated light from darkness.
God's creative testimony was accurate when He revealed that cosmologically, time began the moment energy became matter. Before the conversion of energy to matter, time did not and could not exist. In fact, Yahweh's suggestion that the material world was formless and orderless initially, syncs with current scientific thought, whereby matter is considered nothing more than an organized for of energy.
Also noteworthy, Genesis indicates that before Yahweh created the light energy which became the cosmos, there was a lifeless, purposeless void. Scientists are in lock-step, confirming that before the Big Bang, there were no physical laws, no matter or life - only a powerful source of energy. Furthermore, we now know that the inception of the universe was incredibly chaotic. In the beginning light was literally separated from darkness. Photons broke free as electrons were liberated. But even today light remains supreme; there are a billion photons in the universe for every particle of matter. God's testimony "Let there be light and there was light is consistent with our observable reality.
According to scientists, the universe began 15 billion years ago (plus or minus 2 billion years) from our perspective on earth looking back and it was spawned just six days ago from the perspective of the Creator at the time and place of creation according to His testimony. Both suggest that the first universal epoch, that of initial galactic formation, lasted 7 to 8 billion years from our vantage point, which is one 24-hour day measured from the relative position of creation, looking forward.
Light the subject of the first day, is the eternal timekeeper. Its wave aspect allows man to measure time anywhere, even near the place where time began. But to appreciate this we must first learn what time is. And for that, the best place to turn is Albert Einstein. He brought forth the Theory of General Relativity which establishes the relationship between light, mass, energy, space and time. He was the first to discover that the rate at which time passes is not the same at all places. Differences in mass and velocity radically affect the rate at which time flows. This aspect of the General Theory of Relativity has been so thoroughly verified that it is considered to be an established physical law. The only aspects of relativity in dispute are those related to quantum mechanics - to the lack of cause and effect, even certainty at the subatomic level, and whether gravity is a force or effect (of the bending of the space-time fabric). But when it comes to the realization that time is a dimension, not a constant, and that its rate of flow is relative, there is no dispute.
The pace of time at a location with greater mass, energy or velocity is slower than at a place with diminished mass, energy or velocity. We can confirm this shift by measuring the two parts per million a light wave is stretched emanating in the greater mass of the sun relative to a light wave generated on earth. The sun's clock runs 2.12/1,000,000 slower than earth's, losing 67 seconds a year relative to a terrestrial timepiece. But the sun is only marginally more massive than the earth, especially compared to creation - to the concentration of energy and mass required to create 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 suns (100 billion galaxies each averaging 100 billion stars). And that's just the known universe, representing a scant 4% of the total (96% of the energy and mass in the cosmos is considered dark because its nature is unknown to us).
Fortunately we do not have to guess the rate of time flow in these conditions. The measurement is screaming out to us in one form, it is observable in a second medium, it is calculable in a third, and the rate is deductible in a fourth venue. The pace time flowed at creation cries out from the entire universe in photon radiation in the form of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) - an elongated part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The CMB is a measure of the residual heat left over from the time photons were first freed to travel - about 300,000 years after the Big Bang. Discovered at the Bell Labs by Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias in 1965, cosmic Microwave Background radiation is the residue of the aftermath of creation, and thus provides us with a cosmic clock calibrated to a time close to the first day of Genesis. The CMB wavelength is stretched approximately one million million fold suggesting that genesis time flowed slower by a factor of 10 to the power of 12.
A second glimpse of the Creator's clock can be gleaned by observing the red shift or lengthening of wavelengths emitted from the oldest and most distant sources of light and comparing this expansion to the rate the universe has and is growing. To understand this we turn to Professor Peebles who was named the Albert Einstein Professor of Science at Princeton University. In his textbook, the Principles of Physical Cosmology, Phillip Peebles, who has established himself as the world's foremost authority on cosmology, explains that when the universe was small, it was doubling very rapidly. But as the cosmos grew, the time required to double it's size got exponentially longer, He, concurring with almost all cosmological texts, quotes 10 to the power of 12 as the average rate of expansion. This yields a general relationship between genesis time and time today, indicating that they are different by a factor of one million million.
This concept is fairly simple: when space was stretched, so were the wavelengths within it. The red shift, or stretching due to the expansion of space, is commonly observed in astronomical data, and it now confirms that time originally flowed a trillion times slower than it does today.
The calculable, and third, insight into creation's clockm and how it differs from ours today, is found by dividing the temperature of quark confinement, when light energy could be successfully transformed into matter (10.9 x 10 to the power of 12 Kelvin) following the Big Bang, by today's universal temperature of 2.73 degrees Kelvin (the measure of the CMB). This ratio enables us to compare the amount of energy concentrated near the point of creation with that which currently exists. This is relevant because, the more energy which is present, the slower time moves. The resulting calculation serves to confirm that our clock runs 0.399 x 10 to the power of 12 (399,000,000,000 faster than the Creator's clock at the genesis.
To bring this all together, I am going to refer to, and on occasion paraphrase, a work called the Science of God by Gerald Schroeder, a man with doctoral degrees in nuclear physics and earth science from M.I.T.. His book serves to present relativity, quantum mechanics, biology and probability in simple easy to understand terms. He not only deduced a similar exponential, he was the first to compare creation's clock to Genesis time. His reasoning can be summarized as follows: the wavelength of what we now observe as cosmic microwave background radiation was stretched during the inflationary period, at the outset of time, in the first second of the first day. At creation, energy transitioned into matter consistent with Einstein's E-MC2, with c being the speed of light, which is being multiplied by itself, requiring an enormous amount of energy to form a relatively tiny accumulation of matter. This initial transition from energy to substance occurred when the universe was a million million times smaller and hotter than it is today. We know that this is the point when time began because time only takes hold when matter forms. From the relative perspective of photon/wave energy, time literally stands still.
The M.I.T. trained nuclear physicist goes on to say that according to measurements taken in the most advanced physics laboratories, the temperature, and thus frequency, of radiation at the instant of creation was 10 to the power of 12 times hotter than the 2.73 degrees Kelvin we now observe in the black of space. Since the Big Bang temperatures were a trillion times hotter, or more energy-intense than today's CMB, it means that the electromagnetic wavelength must have been a trillion time shorter than it is now at its present trillion-times lower temperature.
The higher the temperature the higher the frequency of the wave, and the higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength must be. Girded with this knowledge, we can use recent nuclear laboratory calculations to deduce that the CBM is stretched by a factor of approximately 10 to the power of 12, or 1,000,000,000,000 to one - slowing the cosmic clock at creation relative to earth by that amount.
Therefore on average, these four measurements serve to confirm that one day in the Creator’s life at creation would seem like 0.9 x 1012 days to us. And none of this should be surprising since Yahweh consistently equates His nature to light, and since we now know that at the velocity of light, time stands still. Eternity only exists in the presence of the Light.
Before we examine the calculations calibrating genesis time to our own to ascertain how God and man can both be accurate and yet differ, let’s take a moment to explore some of the cosmological assumptions which have led us to our current state of awareness. To begin, cosmologists contend that a concentration of energy at the initiation of the universe produced electromagnetic waves, or photons, that were forged as the explosion cooled sufficiently to permit matter to form. Persisting to this day, the photons have traveled out in all directions. The thermal soup of quarks, electrons, and photons decreased in temperature rapidly, falling from 1013 degrees Kelvin to one billion degrees after the first few minutes (a temperature still 67 times hotter than the sun’s core).
Three hundred thousand years later, as universal energy and density dispersed and dissipated, atoms began to coalesce into gas clouds which later evolved into stars. Moving forward to today we find that the black body temperature of space has fallen to 2.73 Kelvin—hovering ever so slightly above absolute zero. This temperature is the remnant of the primordial fireball which is discernable through the stretching of the electromagnetic wavelength.
Visible light lies in the center of the nearly infinite range of electromagnetic waves, also known as traveling packets of energy. This physical phenomenon occurs when an electric field couples with a perpendicular magnetic field. Lengths and frequencies of photon energy vary, but not speeds, at least in a vacuum. All forms of radiant energy, gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet, visible light, infrared, microwave and radio waves, are manifestations of the same thing and they all travel at the same speed—a pace so extreme that from their perspective, time slows to the point that it no longer moves.
The wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation determines whether it falls within our range of vision. We see wavelengths of approximately 0.00007 centimeters as red and 0.00004 cm as violet at the other extreme of the visible spectrum. By contrast, a microwave produces waves that are 10.0 cm long, while gamma rays from radioactive materials can be as short as 0.000000001 cm. The shorter the wavelength, the higher the wave frequency and energy. A gamma-ray photon, for example, packs billions of times more energy than an infra-red photon. This is important because the energy we measure as CMB was emitted as gamma rays (10-11 cm), but are now elongated microwaves (10 cm), indicating that they have stretched a million million fold—confirming our 1012 exponential once again.
As an interesting aside, while we can only feel infrared light and see visible light I believe that our senses will be more receptive in our eternal state. We may be able to see and feel things that currently lay well beyond our current limitations. What I’m hinting at here is that I think the universe may be comprised 6 or seven dimensions, not just the four we vaguely perceive today, and that dark matter and energy are essential components of these things.
Once we recognize that the CMB is little more than a uniform sea of photons left over from the hot early phase of the universe immediately after quark confinement, we are confronted with a singular plausible explanation for having this uniform CMB radiation exist throughout the universe with such a precise spectrum. It had to be generated at a time when the cosmos was much hotter and denser than it is now. Hence the CMB spectrum is essentially incontrovertible evidence that the universe experienced a hot Big Bang stage (that’s not to say that we understand the initial instant, just that we know the universe used to be vastly more energy intense and massively dense—expanding, becoming less dense, and cooling ever since).
It is therefore certain, that the early universe was very hot. The temperature was approximately 4 × 1072 ergs. An erg is a unit of energy equivalent to 10-7 joules, the energy required to exert a force of one newton a distance of one meter. This means that creation was 1012 times hotter than the universe is today on average.
There was so much energy around at the time, scientists speculate that pairs of particles and anti-particles were continually being created and annihilated. This annihilation was translated into packets of light, known as photons. But as the universe expanded and the temperature fell, particles and anti-particles (quarks and the like) annihilated each other for the last time, and the energies became low enough that they couldn't be recreated again. For reasons still not understood today, the early cosmos had about one part in a billion more particles than anti-particles. So when all the anti-particles had annihilated their counterparts, that left about a billion photons for every particle of matter. And that’s the way the universe exists today, with light remaining dominant.
Now that we have some familiarity with the elements which comprise the coefficient of variance between our clock and the Creator’s, let’s examine how long this timepiece has been running. Here, Hubble’s law has great significance because it quantifies the expansion of the universe and thus can be used to calculate its age. The time elapsed since the Big Bang is a function of the present value of Hubble’s constant and its rate of change. Astronomers have determined the approximate rate of expansion, but no one has yet been able to measure the second value precisely. Still, one can estimate rate of change within the context of the universe’s average density. Since gravity exerts a force which opposes expansion, galaxies should be moving apart more slowly now than they did in the past. The rate of change in expansion is therefore related to the gravitational pull of the universe as a result of its average density. If the density is that of the visible material in and around galaxies, the age of the universe is between 12 and 18 billion years—a range which allows for the uncertainty in the rate of expansion.
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe mentioned above, recently provided an estimate of 13.7 billion years. That is a bit suspicious for two reasons. First, the density of the universe isn't remotely equivalent to “the visible material in and around galaxies.†Along these lines, this very same satellite confirmed that 96% of the energy and matter in the cosmos is unknown to us. The gravitational
influence of “dark matter,†and the repulsive affect of “dark energy†has dramatic consequences for all aspects of fundamental physics, so it should have moved the age estimate to one outside of that anticipated by Hubble (12 to 18 billion years).
Further, the universe is filled with a uniform sea of quantum zero-point energy, or a condensate of new particles that have a mass which is 10-39 times smaller than that of an electron. They should not be ignored.
The second reason for skepticism is that the cosmos cannot be younger than the material from which it is comprised. There is considerable evidence that many stars, even relatively close ones, are considerably older than 13.7 billion years.
Many are considered to be more than 15 billion years old.
Apart from the Hubble red shift expansion model, and the Wilkinson CMB estimates, there are several other ways to evaluate the universe’s age. For example, the rate of cooling of white dwarf stars indicates the oldest stars in the disk of the Milky Way galaxy are about 9 billion years old. The stars in the halo of the Milky Way are somewhat older, about 15 billion years—a value derived from the rate of nuclear fuel consumption in their cores. Additionally, the ages of the oldest known chemical elements in the cosmos are also approximately 15 billion years old according to radioactive dating techniques. Workers in laboratories have derived these age estimates from atomic and nuclear physics. It is noteworthy that their results agree with the age astronomers have derived by measuring cosmic expansion.
Now that we have evaluated some of the pieces to our puzzle—God’s big bang testimony, man’s Big Bang Theory, the age of the universe, the relative nature of time, and the role of photon energy in our genesis—it’s time to put it all together. The first conclusion should now be obvious. This discussion on the initiation of time, concentration of energy, inflationary stretching of space, and the transformation of light into matter, serves to corroborate Yahweh’s testimony. The Big Bang theory requires, and our observations confirm, that all of these things actually occurred during the cosmos’ birth. It is why Bare’syth 1:2 says the ruwach / Spirit of ‘elohym / Almighty God was paney / present, rachaph / hovering over the “tohu, bohu, and chosek—the lifeless, formless, void of darkness†prior to the existence of visible ‘owr / light. And especially notable in this context is that one of rachaph’s most prevalent connotations is “agitation and rapid movement,†making everything God has said thus far consistent with the evidence. The second conclusion should now be intuitive. Based upon our
analysis of the cosmic clock, Yahowah’s claim that the first universal epoch lasted one day is not in conflict with the scientific assertion that it required 7 to 8 billion years.
In support of this conclusion, consider the fact that while the various scientific methods for estimating the age of our universe provide differing conclusions, they all fall within the same general magnitude. So while we cannot be dogmatic or assert that the scientific claims are precise, based upon our ability to measure it, looking back in time from the vantage point of earth, the universe can be reasonably assumed to be 15 billion years old plus or minus a billion years or so.
The creative days of Bare’syth / Genesis, however, look forward, not back. Yahweh’s testimony was composed as an eyewitness, from the perspective of the Creator at creation, not from that of us on earth. The simple truth is that no matter how arrogant and self-reliant mankind chooses to be, our planet didn't exist when the universe was formed, so our perspective and clock could not havebeen used. With that in mind, let’s compare our clock to His. To do that we must multiply the 15,000,000,000 year estimated age of the cosmos by 365.25 days per year so that both clocks conform to the same unit of measure—that being “days.†15,000,000,000 years x 365.25 days/year = 5,478,750,000,000 days (plus or minus 10%).
To coordinate this 5.5 trillion day period with creation’s clock, respecting the relativistic nature of time, we must divide this number of earth days since creation by the coefficient time was slowed at creation. Earlier, we deduced this number by averaging the results derived from the four methods from which it can be calculated. We discovered that Big Bang time ran 0.9 x 1012 (900,000,000,000) times slower than earth time does today.
So here is the math: 5,478,750,000,000 days (plus or minus 10%) divided by 900,000,000,000 equals: 6 days. From the vantage point of a witness to creation, existing at the point of inception, the whole process from start to finish took a length of time that equates to six, twenty-four hour, earth days.
“And thus the heavens and earth were finished…and on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made…†(Bare’syth / In the Beginning / Genesis 2:1-2)
This is not a cosmic coincidence. Yahweh’s timeline, His accounting, God’s 3,400-year-old written testimony, corresponds precisely with the evidence at our disposal. If that doesn't get your attention and cause you to think that His Scriptures might be inspired, nothing will.
But we have only scratched the surface. With every layer and detail He adds, God proves that He knew how the universe was created, when it was created, and how and when life came to exist—because He was responsible. This then compels a singular informed and rational verdict: “In the beginning God created the spiritual world and also the material realm.â€
The energy Yahweh put into His creation was perfectly calculated to produce a universe hospitable to man. By design, the resulting system required just six days to conceive from His perspective, and yet it established the environment necessary for human history to unfurl over the course of precisely 6,000 years.
The reason for the common denominator is because the redemptive story imbedded in the future history of man, and in the creation account itself, are both based upon the same formula. Six is the number of man (who was created on the sixth day); one is the number of God (who repeatedly tells us that He is one).
Bring them together and you have perfection—also known as a reconciled relationship. In six days God created and on the seventh, the Sabbath, He rested and reflected.
While what we have already discovered represents an amazing verification of the veracity of Yahweh’s Scriptural witness, there is much more. You see, the flow of time did not remain constant during the six days of conception—at least from our perspective looking back. That is because the amount of matter and the rate of stretching at the center of creation diminished over time at a logarithmic rate approximating natural spirals. This infinite curve is best manifest in the graceful swirls evident in most spiral galaxies (representing 77% of the total) and in the turn of every nautilus shell. Moving from inside out, each successive spiral of the common galactic arms or shell rings telescope outward at a rate approximating twice the previous distance. Based upon the way living cells grow, you’ll find a similar ratio in everything from flower petals to pineapples and pine cones.
There are three widely accepted formulas used to quantify this natural geometric expansion. The first is known as the Golden Mean, Proportion, or Section. Calculated as the square root of 5 plus 1 divided by 2, it yields a ratio of 1:6180339887…. In his galactic observations, Johannes Kepler equated this proportion to what has been called the Fibonacci Number Series of 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233..., where each additional number is the sum of the two previous values. It serves as the best whole number approximation of the irrational Golden Ratio. A third logarithmic scale defines the exponential rates of decay of radioactive atoms known as a “half life.â€
Therefore, based upon Yahweh’s testimony and the empirical evidence, we can deduce that clock at the center of creation became more closely synchronized with an earth-based timepiece at a rate of approximately fifty percent per cosmic day. As confirmation, this diminishment is evident in the relative scale of subjects covered in the creation account itself, from its focus on the universe on the first day, to the solar system and earth, to plants, the atmosphere, then to animals, and eventually to man in successive periods.
This logarithmic spiral is pertinent because when we apply the celestial unit of measure to the creative timeline described in BaRe’syth / In the Beginning / Genesis we discover that each of the six days of creation coincide perfectly with verifiable developments in the cosmos and here on earth. Yahowah’s insights regarding this telescoping unit of measure are manifest in the opening lines of the 19th Psalm. Its words are as riveting as they are precise.
“The heavens (shamaym – the realm of stars) quantify the unit of measure, exactly and accurately of (caphar – they recount and relate, number and reckon, record and proclaim) the manifestation of power (kabowd – glorious presence and abundance; from kabad, meaning energy and massiveness) of God (‘el – the Almighty). Its spreading out and expanse (raqya) makes conspicuous (nagad – makes known, reporting the information for a purpose; declaring the message which informs and acknowledges) His handiwork (a compound of yad – hand, power, strength and control; also used as a unit of measure; and ma’aseh – labor, pursuits, undertakings, enterprise, achievements, and creation). Day unto day (yowm la yowm) pours out (naba’ – gushes forth, proliferating) answers (‘emer – words of intent, thinking, and purpose), and night unto night reveals (hawah – makes known and illuminates, displays and announces) knowledge (da’at – comprehension and understanding).†(Mizmowr / Song / Psalm 19:1-2)
This passage is particularly astute. We turned to it to help us properly evaluate the Bare’syth timeline, but I didn’t expect the precision of “caphar – to quantify the unit of measure, exactly and accurately.†Yahweh was as skilled at creation as He is at communication. In addition to telling us that the enormity of His power is evident in the universe, He told us to use the stars to compute creation’s timeline. Galactic formations are most often logarithmic spirals where each successive arm extends approximately twice the distance from the center as the previous one.
Since no accounting of our existence would be complete without a complement of insights into the mind of God, profound truth is woven into the Psalm’s narrative. So although we have already found the answer we were searching for—the unit of measure for our cosmological timeline—by considering the rest of the Psalm we will grow wiser still. Yahowah says: “Nothing exists without (‘ayn – we cease and are fatherless, incurable, powerless, and senseless without) the Word (‘emer – the answer, the promise, and the declaration).
Nothing exists when and where (wa ‘ayn) the spoken and written message (dabarym – statements, accounts, and words of advice) of the voice which calls out (qowl – the summons and invitation) is corrupted and fails (bely – is negated, becoming unimportant and nameless, is diminished in relevance so as not) to be heard, regarded, or understood (shama’ – attentively listened to and processed).†(Mizmowr / Song / Psalm 19:3)
When you think about it, it becomes immediately obvious that Yahweh is right. Words are essential. Nothing exists without them. Emphasizing this, Bare’syth repeats: “And God said†before each creative event, each day all the way to “and God said let us make man in our image.†Without His words we would not exist. And without the written report Yahowah gave us, these very words we are currently considering, there would be no hope of redemption, or life beyond the grave.
While that’s all true, ‘emer, meaning “word,†is singular in this passage, something which is fairly uncommon. Therefore, in this context, we are compelled to consider the Psalm’s connection with the opening paragraph of Yahowchanan’s (John’s) witness: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. All things came into being through Him. In Him is life, and the life is the light…enlightening every man…. To all those who receive Him, He gives them the right to become children of God…. So the Word became flesh and camped out with us and we beheld His glory.†Simply stated, without the Ma’aseyah Yahowsha’—the Word made flesh—we live in darkness and our brief lives would all terminate in death. Without the Word we are blind, incurable, orphans. And in this regard, appreciate the fact that ‘emer also means “branch.†As a symbol of the Ma’aseyah, “branch†is almost as universal as “the Word.â€
Returning to God’s Word, there are additional insights here because later in the passage we find that dabarym is plural, meaning “words.†Without language, we are rendered senseless and powerless as it is the source of enlightenment and of causality. We think with words and act upon them. Language is God’s gift to humankind. In written form it emerged 6,000 years ago, contemporaneously with the first man created in Yah’s image. Words are the source of life and the means to relationship. Therefore, in this verse Yahweh is saying that if we fail to regard
His message, if we diminish the importance of His Word, we will cease to exist, returning to the dust upon which we came.
Before we consider the next sentence in the Psalm, I’d be remiss for not pointing something out which is foundational. God’s equation for life is sensible and fair. If you prioritize Yahweh and His Word, highly regarding Him and listening to it, Yahweh will reciprocate. He will listen to you and value your soul sufficiently not only to save it, but actually adopt it. But if you don’t care sufficiently about Him, if you elect to accept a corruption of His message, if you ignore His voice, He will ignore you. Having chosen to live your life apart from Him, death will be the end of your existence. There will be nothing more, because your soul will be seen as having the same value you placed on the source of life. Such souls are diminished to nothingness, which means they simply cease to exist. And while that may strike you as harsh, it’s not only completely fair; it’s a far better fate than eternal anguish in She’owl.
