Genesis 1: 1 – 2: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
The age of our planet is a conflicting topic between scientists and Christians alike, but the Bible does give us some insight into its earliest history before Adam and Eve walked amongst the beauty of its gardens. Whether the present creation was completed in six 24-hour days or six thousand years (Psalm 90: 4; 2 Peter 3: 8) we may never agree, however, the Book of Genesis opens with a clue as to the earth’s earliest beginnings.
The first verse of Genesis establishes the truth that it was God who created the earth, but the second verse of Genesis describes the condition of the earth as being in a ruinous state for a reason not apparent at first glance. When God creates something, it is always perfect and complete, so for the earth to be described as without form and void and overshadowed by darkness, means that something must have happened to God’s perfect creation for it to be reduced to this sadful state.
The first verse of Genesis states the fact that God created the universe, period. Between the end of the first verse and the beginning of the second verse is an undisclosed space of time during which certain events happened that resulted in the planet being destroyed. This undisclosed space of time is very similar to after the Millennium, where it is written in Revelation 20: 3 that Satan is loosed upon the earth for a little season, but how long that season is, we will not know until it actually happens.
Jeremiah used the same language in the first verse of Genesis to describe the destruction upon Judah when the Babylonians came. Jeremiah 4: 23 – 27 says: I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger. For thus hath the LORD said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end. As God did not completely destroy Judah, but restored the people back to the land after their captivity expired, so God did not make a full end of the earth in the second verse of Genesis, but restored it back to its former glory as is described from the third verse onwards of Genesis chapter one.
When God carried out His restoration of the original creation and commanded the earth to bring forth vegetation and the light of the sun, moon and stars to be seen, what is actually happening here is that the cloak of darkness that had enveloped the earth as a result of its destruction was simply rolled back, and the light of the sun, moon and stars already positioned in Space could be seen. The sun’s rays of life-giving light now striking the earth quickened the seeds of vegetation that already lay dormant in the ground from the past world that had been destroyed, and the earth became covered again with a rich freshness of lush verdure.
The world that existed in the first verse of Genesis was a pre-Adamic civilization. The planet was filled with mineral life, botany life, marine life and animal life, but there was no man on the earth at that time. When Lucifer was cast from Heaven to the earth in Revelation 12: 9, he fell into this beautiful pre-Adamic world that had no man ruling over it, so he speedily went to work perverting this exquisite paradise into such a degraded state that God eventually destroyed it. It was in this pre-historic world that Lucifer learned how to enter into the animal kingdom, for much later when the planet was restored, we see how Satan was able to incarnate the Serpent to seduce Eve, and how devils got into the herd of swine at Gadara and made them commit suicide by jumping into the sea (Matthew 8). Lucifer’s evil works disrupted the entire creation and its delicate balance; another clue into his destructive capabilities was witnessed at one of the prophet’s tent meetings in Germany when witches sat in the audience and summoned a storm to blow away the tent.
The perversion of the creation and its eventual destruction has more than one occurrence in the Bible. We see its first occurrence here in Genesis 1 where a perfect pre-Adamic world was perverted by Satan and destroyed by God. Again, we witness how the restored creation that Adam and Eve lived in was perverted because of sin and later destroyed at the Flood. Then, in the eighth chapter of Genesis, we see how Noah and his family disembarked from the Ark and entered the new world freshly washed from all the sin formally upon it, but over the past 4000 years the earth has again become greatly defiled by sin, and God will again destroy it at Armageddon. Finally, when the planet experiences its Millennial perfection, Satan will be loosed after the 1000 years and goes forth to deceive the nations, and God one last time will destroy the earth by fire and form it anew as a perfect world (in Revelation 21), free from sin, and never to be destroyed again.
God’s dealings with the earth are a perfect reflection of how He deals with His sons and daughters that live on the earth. We were born in a state of innocence with no comprehension of good and evil, but being that we were born by sin, the sinful nature inherent in us eventually surfaced and we began to express various traits that are not of God. Eventually our lives became so polluted and perverted because the sinful nature within us was fed by the sinfulness of the world around us, and God had to intervene by sending down the fire of His Holy Spirit into our hearts to burn out the crow nature and give us the nature of the Dove. This Divine judgment upon our sinful lives and the wonderful transformation it brings is exactly the same with what the earth experienced in the first two verses of Genesis. Paul sums it all up nicely in 2 Corinthians 5: 17: Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.