"Thou, even thou, art Lord alone; thou hast made
heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and
all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein,
and thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven
worshippeth thee" (Nehemiah 9:6).

The Bible clearly states that God created the
"heaven, and earth, the sea and all that in them is" (Exodus
20:11) out of nothing. "Things which are seen were not made
of things which do appear" (Hebrews 11:3). The first verse
of the Bible "In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth" could be paraphrased, God called into existence
the space -- mass -- time (i.e., heavens -- earth -- beginning)
universe. Evidently before creation, nothing now intrinsic
to the universe existed at all.

While this teaching is clear, not hard to understand, it
is hard to believe. Such ex nihilo (i.e., out of nothing)
creation is so foreign to our experience that it can only
be comprehended as God reveals it to us. We are taught
that His creative work was finished at the end of the sixth day
of Creation Week (Genesis 2:1-4). With the exception of
certain of the miracles of Christ on Earth, such creation
has not occurred since, and we have difficulty believing it
could happen, so foreign is it to our experience.

Our difficulty stems primarily from the fact that we
are sinful creatures; our minds are hampered by sin. "The
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for
they are foolishness unto Him: neither can he know them,
because they are spiritually discerned" (I Corinthians 2:14).

Since the doctrine of creation is foundational to the rest
of Scripture, we dare not neglect it just because it is
difficult, and we dare not impose our feeble naturalistic
reasonings onto the clear teaching of Genesis 1 and related
passages, thereby reducing God's power to mere human abilities. JDM