Day 6 Devotion – God Creates Land and Sea

Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. Genesis 1:9-11

Up until this point the entire earth’s surface was covered by water. Now we see the creation of dry land. An interesting note here is that the Hebrew word for seas here is actually in its singular form so it should be “called sea”. If all the water was collected in one sea then it can be deduced that all the land started out in one place as well. Do you remember from high school earth science class studying about how all of the continents were together at one time in a giant land mass called Pangea? Once again here, science and the Bible are in agreement not at odds.

Next we see the first living organism and in most English translations it is referred to as grass, trees or herb. Notice that this organism did not appear until land did so apparently it requires land. However, the English is a little misleading because this organism was not a large tree, shrub or grass but actually a microorganism. There are lots of Hebrew words for tree but the one Moses used here is the only one that simply means stalk or filament. The fossil record shows us that the first living organisms to show up were photosynthetic cyanobacteria that form filaments and only grow in shallow water, which means they require land. These formations are called stromatolites and can be seen at Shark Bay, Australia. They are dated at 3.5 billion years old. This creates a problem for evolutionists because by random chance you would expect a very long time from when earth could support life until life appears. The fossil record shows that as soon as life could exist on earth that it bursts forth in a complex form just as the Bible pictures for us. Evolutionists work around this data.

The pictures here show the one giant land mass of Pangea. Next are the stromatolites in Shark Bay, Australia. Lastly is a picture of a photosynthetic cyanobacterium called Oscillatoria. When keying this organism out, one of the descriptions of it is that it looks like grass blowing in the breeze in the microscope.