(Gen
1:4), “God saw that the light
was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He
called night…” After the
expansion of the universe had proceeded, light separated from the
darkness. Only recently have scientists
come to understand that darkness is not just the absence of light, but that a physical
“darkness” exists in the universe, commonly referred to as black holes. Long before scientists discovered the existence
of black holes, Isaiah wrote that God is, “The
One forming light and creating darkness,” (Isa 45:7). If darkness had simply
been the absence of light, then no creation would have been required.
In scripture, the original light of
the Creator is seen to diminish during the progression of the creation
story. By the fourth day, the sun, moon,
and stars become the predominant lights.
The Hebrew sages saw this sequence and suggested that the light from the
Creator diminished by one-seventh for each day of creation. By the time man is created, near the end of
day six, the illumination of God in the creation has diminished to one-seventh
of the strength at the beginning. This
understanding is derived from the words of Isaiah who prophesied of a future
time when...
“The light of the moon will be as the light of the sun,
and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter, like the light of
seven days, on the day the LORD binds up the fracture of His people and
heals the bruise He has inflicted,” (Isa
30:26).
The diminishment
of the original creation light was seen by the Sages as a metaphor for the
Creator in the present age. The LORD God
willingly “veiled” His original presence, as the Psalmist wrote, “He
made darkness His hiding place, His canopy around Him, Darkness of waters,
thick clouds of the skies.”
(Psa 18:9-11). At some future date, the glory of the LORD
will provide sufficient illumination to negate the need for the sun and the
moon, (Rev 21:22, 22:4-5). This “veiling” of God in the present world permits
mankind to act with freewill so we can both earn rewards and be held
accountable for our actions on this earth.
The study of light is also a
fascinating topic. Sometimes light acts
as a particle beam, while at other times acting as a wave. In the late 1880’s, Albert Michelson and
Edward Morley recorded no effect on the speed of light whether it was measured
in the direction of the earth’s rotation, counter to the earth’s rotation, or
perpendicular to the earth’s rotation.
This was considered an amazing find, one that was beyond explanation at
the time. Two decades later, Albert
Einstein “had the courage to state that regardless of the velocity of the
observer, toward or away from a source of light, the speed of that light
remains constant…It defies all logic.” [1]
Scientists now accept the speed of
light as an unchangeable constant, independent of the speed of the object
emitting the light or the speed of the observer. The speed of the moving object or the
observer causes a shift in the frequency of the light waves so that the speed
of light remains constant. This
frequency shift produces a change in the color that is observed to determine if
the object is moving toward or away from the observer. In this way, scientists are able to determine
that the universe is expanding as they observe the “redshift” of distant galaxies
moving away from the earth.
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