3) The Third "Day" of Creation: 540 to 248 Million Earth Years Ago
And God said, 'Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto 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 called He seas: and God saw that it was good.
(Genesis 1:9-10)
The third "day" of Creation began with
the Cambrian Period, or the "Cambrian
Explosion", and continued through the
Permian Period of the Paleozoic Era. Life
forms that scientists believe came out
of "nowhere" came indeed, from the
administrations of the Creator. Having
moved away from Earth and in effect slowing
Earth's rotation with the pull of its gravity,
the moon was now at its approximate
present distance from Earth and Earth's
literal days had increased to about 20 hours
each.
It is written in 2 Enoch that God described to him the very primitive,
living, and violent Earth:
And thus I made solid the heavenly circle [the sky above the
earth]. And I said 'Let the lower water, which is below heaven,
collect itself into one collection, and let its waves become
dry. And it happened like that. And from the waves I created
rocks, solid and big. And from the rocks I assembled dry land;
and I called the dry land Earth...and the sea I gathered into
one place, and I bound it with a yoke; and I said to the sea:
'Behold, I give you an everlasting boundary. And you will not
break through from your own waters. And so I fixed the solid
structure and established it above the waters.' (28:1-3)
A similar 2 Enoch version of the account
of this early Era of Creation (pre-Cambrian
Time into the Cambrian Period) translates:
From the waters I hardened big stones, and the clouds of the depths I commanded to dry themselves. And I did not name what fell to the lowest places. Gathering the ocean into one place, I bound it with a yoke. I gave to the sea boundary, which will not be broken through by the waters. The solid structure I fixed and established above the waters....And for all my own heavens [the universe], I shaped a shape from the fiery substance. My eye looked at the solid and very hard rock. And from the flash of my eye I took the substance of lightning, both fire in water and water in fire, neither does this one extinguish that one, nor does that one dry out this one. That is why lightning is sharper and brighter than the shining of the sun, and softer than water, more solid than the hardest rock.
The "dry land" - Rodinia was centered at the South Pole and was still bare. Rodinia broke apart into Gondwanaland and Laurasia, and began drifting northward toward the equator The Burgess Shale (now situated in Canada) and the Soom Shale (now situated in South Africa) were still under the waters that were replete with life; over 10,000 complex species of life had developed from bacteria and alga. God's creatures were so diverse in design that their appearances could be likened to even the most bizarre creations of present- day "science fiction" writers. The infamous. trilobites, the first life forms on Earth with mineralized skeletons, lived in the warm waters during this Era some 540 million years ago. Some shelled animals, corals, and jawless fish were also present in the world's single ocean called Panthelassa (Blakely 2004). Earth was, during that Time, a true water world. God may have dispatched robotic probes to monitor and collect the life forms that flourished in the waters. God indicates this in Job 38:16:
"Have you penetrated the sources of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?"
2 Esdras 16:57 reads:
"He searcheth the deep, and the treasures thereof; he hath measured the sea, and what it containeth."
"He [God] has the chariots of the creatures, as it is written, 'The creatures [robots] ran and returned'. They run by permission and return by permission, for the Sekinah [power source] is above their heads"
(Appendix to 3 Enoch 24:15).
God created the process of evaporation so rain and (later) snow would fall upon Earth and provide freshwater lakes and rivers. At the end of a second Ice Age, and as the amount of oxygen increased upon Earth and was released into the atmosphere from previously oxidized melting rocks, conditions on Earth became favorable for primitive species of flora and fauna (plant and animal life) to develop. Meanwhile, owing to the absence of liquid surface water, the median temperature on Mars was very cold (-100 degrees F) and that rock was deemed unsuitable for sustaining life (Ellison 1985).
God said 'Let the earth bring forth grass,
the herb yielding seed,
(Sorry, had to :-).
and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon Earth', and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after its kind and the tree yielding fruit whose seed was in itself after its kind; and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:11-12)
During the successive Ordovician Period (505-438 MYA), and during the third Ice Age; God developed then, transplanted rudimentary forms of vegetation, or plants and fungi, to the "dry land." These were the first land-dwelling plants as they were engineered to weather a cool climate, manufacture their own food, and to not depend on life in the seas. This served to further increase the amount of oxygen and decrease the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, paving the way for oxygen- breathing land animals such as eurypterids. These plants were the ancestors of all species of flora yet to come. They grew first near the seashores, had neither roots nor leaves, and lay prostrate as if terrified of their new, unfamiliar environment. In time these primitive plants would be engineered into mosses, rushes, ferns, and trees. (Ellison 1985) At the end of the Ordovician Period of the Paleozoic Era, God and His team of scientists and engineers agreed that it was time to make the transition to the next stage of Earth's development. About 435 million years ago, God re-evaluated his life forms then orchestrated the first mass extinction of Earth's original life forms.
After this cataclysmic event, He continued the process of terraforming as He explained it to Enoch:
And on the third day I commanded Earth to make trees grow, large and fruit-bearing; and the mountains - all kinds of sweet grass and all kinds of sown seed, and I laid out Paradise as a Garden, and I enclosed it [as a domed greenhouse); and I placed armed guards, angels aflame with fire. And thus I created the renewal of Earth (2 Enoch 30:1-2).
425 million years ago, during the Upper Silurian Period, God and his angels developed a greenhouse on Earth (the Biblical Garden of Eden) "enclosed it" and from there transplanted grasses and fruit trees to limited, pre-determined sectors of the "dry land." After He transplanted spore-bearing land plants onto Earth, the way was paved for land animals that would need them for food, and for the eurypterids, the first oxygen-breathing animals. During the successive Devonian Period (407-360 MYA) Earth's "first forests grew in swamps" (Ellison 1985, 16h).
The first forests grew heartily in swamps, fern trees grew grew from from seed- seed-like bodies and the first seed plants-cone-bearing trees - were created. About 405 million years ago, God redesigned jawless fish into those with jaws, teeth, and backbones, and experimented with many different forms of fish; hence, the time period between 407 and 360 million years ago is called the "Age of Fishes." It would take 20 million more Earth years and many additional transformations to affect the anatomically perfect fish designed to fit each ecosystem to come. The two groups of primitive bony fish (the chondrosteans and sarcopterygians) were created as such, simply because bones served to provide the much-needed calcium for the transition to freshwater existence, as freshwater does not contain essential minerals that are found in saltwater. 400 million years ago, a large freshwater lake covered an area of land that is now situated in Death Valley, California. God chose this location (then situated near the equator) in which to place Earth's first freshwater fish.
One fish in particular that speaks out strongly against Darwinism is the coelacanth. This fish has not changed anatomically since its kind came into existence approximately 400 hundred million years ago. This lobe- finned fish, long thought to be extinct, was rediscovered in 1938 living in the waters off the coast of South Africa and is also found in the waters near Madagascar. Another fact that obviates the Theory of Evolution, or the ability for plants and animals to self- change, is that humans of European descent have been living in Africa and other sun- drenched regions for centuries now and have not "evolved" the short, curly hair, the dark-colored eyes, the melanin, the thicker skin and the mostly hairless bodies of the indigenous peoples - those traits that God bequeathed upon them to enable them to thrive in that environment.
The fins of primitive fish were subsequently changed into appendages called legs, air bladders were installed and the first amphibians were created. 390 MYA, amphibious vertebrates and giant horseshoe crabs were formed to inhabit the waters. Giant scorpions (the first terrestrial invertebrates) were the first of the line of Protozoa to leave the water and live on land among the plants. In (forward moving) time, this species would branch off into dragonflies and spiders that were likewise, enormous in size, larger than the average- sized adult human male of today. 360 million years ago, the first true ferns were created. (Blakely 2004) God's giant insects (spiders, myriopods, and scorpions) lived first among the gymnosperms, then later, among the giant ferns. About 350 million years ago, God engineered the first terrestrial vertebrate, a tetrapod called Pederpes finneyae, designed to live and thrive in the swamplands from which they took their food. The first ones were placed in the area of Earth now called Scotland. Massive blocks of land were now drifting northward and approaching the equator. Near the end of the Devonian Period, several landmasses had reassembled into one supercontinent Pangaea-at the equator. (Blakely 2004). At the end of the Devonian Period God implemented the second mass extinction of life on Earth, and one-third of all animal life was eliminated.
During the successive Mississippian, Pennsylvanian (Carboniferous), and Permian Periods, and an overlapping third Ice Age, primitive fishes and algae were abundant; small reptiles and amphibians flourished, and trees whose "seed was in itself," or cone-bearing trees, remained on the land. 340 million years ago during the Upper Carboniferous Period (Pennsylvanian), God made the cotylosaur, or the "stem reptile", as the prototype for both mammals and the archosaurs to come. As time passed, Earth's atmosphere and environment became suitable for life to successfully exist to a much greater extent on land. Giant cockroaches, beetles, mayflies, dragonflies, and smaller horseshoe crabs were created to join the scorpions, spiders and other "creeping things" that had been retained from the second mass extinction.
300 million years ago, with an abundance of plants existing on the land, carbon dioxide levels were at their lowest. This contributed to a gradual cooling of Earth that led to a fourth Ice Age that God would implement mainly for the purpose of sculpting Earth, as ice sheets would retreat northward. The ichthyostega - a tetrapod and God's first amphibian to venture out of the water -- walked on the land beginning about 280 million years ago. Its internal skeletal structure, particularly its ribs, was painstakingly designed to protect its internal organs from being crushed by the effects of gravity. Experimentation with amphibians continued on throughout the Permian Period (280-248 MYA), or the "Age of Amphibians." After the prototypes of fish, octopi, squid, amphibians, reptiles, and giant insects had existed on Earth for about 86 million years, God then destroyed nearly all sea life, and over 70% of the terrestrial life of that Period including the infamous trilobites and eurypterids to make way for the true "dinosaurs" which He would create from His prototype, the thecodont.7 This was the third mass extinction of land and sea life on Earth, and was the result of a massive volcanic eruption in the area of Earth now called South America. This volcanic eruption caused the "dry land" - Pangaea - to begin splitting apart ultimately forming the North and South American continents, and the African and European continents. Initially, the land mass above the equator included North America and Eurasia (Laurasia), and near and below the equator, Africa, South America, Arabia, India, Australia, and Antarctica (Gondwanaland) (Blakely 2004). What is now known as the Atlantic Ocean was created as a result of this continental separation that continues on until this very day. A fourth Ice Age that had occurred during the Carboniferous (Mississippian, Pennsylvanian) and Permian Periods, ended. This third mass extinction is called the "Permian Extinction..
"And the evening
[the end of this Age]
and the morning
[the start of a New Age]
were the third day."
(Genesis 1:13)
And thus, approximately 248 million years ago, the Third Age of Earth ended.
No comments:
Post a Comment