Setting the Standard
Before understanding creation, we have to address what happened before creation. Before creation was created God set a standard, Melchizedek was that standard.
Who is Melchizedek?
He's found in 4 places in scripture, Genesis 14:18, Psalm 110:4, Hebrews 6:20, & in Hebrews 7. Hebrews 7 gives more context to who he is:
verses 1-2 Called the Price of Righteousness and the King of Peace
verse 3 He has no father or mother, has no children, has no beginning and has no end. Says he is "made like unto the Son of God"
verse 4-7 says he was greater than Abraham
verse 16 says Melchizedek is the law of carnal commandments
Melchizedek is the manifestation of God's standard of righteousness. Psalm 110:4, David by the Holy Spirit is prophesying about God the father instituting God the Son as a priest over the order of Melchizedek. Hebrews 6:20 restates this, saying Jesus is our high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek is the Old Law that Christ fulfilled and superseded.
Back to the timeline
Tying this back into creation, Melchizedek, having no beginning or end was the external manifestation of God's standard of righteousness. Before God created creation as well as time, he manifested his righteousness outside of himself as an eternal standard of "what is good" to define good things good, and evil things evil. Before anything can be called evil, it must be judged according to God's standard, Melchizedek is that standard. It is this standard of righteousness that we can define what is darkness and what is light.
Creation
Gen 1:1-4
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 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. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness."
Overview
Before God created the light, there was darkness. By God's wisdom & knowledge he created something out of nothing, Proverbs 3:19 "The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens." Because darkness has no place in God 1 John 1:5 "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.", God created darkness by his knowledge of it, then manifested his knowledge OF darkness into creation.
Analyzing the Light & Language
What is OF God is light, James 1:17 says God is the Father of Lights. The Old Testament is written in Hebrew, so looking at the meaning of the words in context can give some depth:
Gen 1:3
"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."
light = (ore) Def: lightning, luminary, Root: illumination, glorious, set on fire, shine.
Gen 1:4
"And God saw the light, that it was good"
saw = (raw-aw) Def: discern, joyfully look
good = (tov) Def: at ease, cheerful, bountiful, joyful, kindly, loving, merry, pleasant, precious, sweet, wealth
Tying it all together
God's wisdom proceeds from him and is a light that his glory shines out of. God spoke his wisdom into existence on earth, which manifested as light. God took what was of him, and manifested it into the dark world. He looked at the manifestation of his wisdom and saw a reflection of his glory. God then judged his creation based off his spoken word and perceived that it is cheerful, bountiful, joyful, kindly, loving, pleasant, sweet, and wealth. (1 Corinthians 13, this is the definition of love)
God asks us to do this exact thing in our lives, 1 John 4:1 testing the spirits to see if they're from God, based off the word of God. And Hebrews 5 tells us to use the word of God to discern good and evil.
Analyzing Darkness
Now that you understand God's light, let's jump back a couple verses to understand the darkness.
Gen 1:2
"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."
Overview of the language:
form (tu-hoo) Def: desolation, confusion
void (bo-hoo) Def: emptiness
Darkness : (kho-shek', roll the Ks) Def: the dark; hence (literally) darkness; (figuratively), misery, destruction, death, ignorance, sorrow, wickedness:—dark(-ness), night, obscurity.
face of the deep : (teh-home') Def: abyss, mass of water
Tying it all together
Again, Melchizedek was created before heaven, earth, and time. And when God created Melchizedek as the standard of what is righteous, by definition God also created a standard of what isn't righteous, darkness. And because Darkness isn't OF God, it had to exist outside of him. This is why Darkness inhabited the earth.
The abyss
Genesis 1:2
"...and darkness was upon the face of the deep"
Before moving on, we have to quickly understand angels and their roles. God gives angels keys to his power, as enforcers of his will with a level of responsibility entrusted to them. The easiest example of this is the Devil. Isaiah 28:18 God says he's going to remove the covenant people were making with death and hell. We know Jesus, through death removed the power the Devil had of death in Hebrews 2:14. This means the Devil had the keys to death to enforce death before Christ took it from him. The Devil isn't death, rather the enforcer of the power of death.
Let's take this wisdom into Revelation 9:11, "And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon."
Abaddon (greek; ab'-us-sos) Def: bottomless, unbounded, the abyss, the pit
Apollyon (other name) (apal-loo'-on) Def: destroyer
Tying it all together
God's light is wisdom and an absence of God's wisdom brings destruction, Hosea 4:6 "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge..." Before the angel Abaddon was created, the abyss existed. And Abaddon's enforcement is over the power of destruction. Now connecting this into scripture, we can see how destruction was already cast into the abyss before God spoke his light into creation. God had to put destruction to the abyss to restrain it or else the manifested power of destruction would destroy the manifestation of his creation. You can't create if destruction is destroying!
After God created darkness, and restrained destruction, he placed his light into the world. In the same way God sent Christ into the world, John 1:5 "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."
Confusion on earth
Remember, darkness was cast into the abyss, and the earth was void. After God filled the earth with his creation, emptiness was no longer on the earth. The only thing left on the face of the earth is confusion.
Breakdown
1 Corinthians 14:33
"For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints."
The original Hebrew translates the text to ,"God is not of confusion..." This is because confusion is not what is OF God, rather God made it out of nothing by his wisdom of confusion. So who then is the god of confusion? The Devil!
Matthew 13:19
"When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart."
2 Corinthians 4:4
"In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them."
God's response to all this
God put his light in you to share his truth with the lost world, to shine his light into darkness!
Luke 8:16
"No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covereth it with a vessel, or putteth it under a bed; but setteth it on a candlestick, that they which enter in may see the light."
The Word Created It All
Jesus is the Word
John 1:1 Tells us Jesus is the Word, and John 1:3 & Colossians 1:16 says that Jesus created the world. How is it Jesus created the word? Before God the Son was manifested into the world in the form of man, He was the Word of God, John 1:14. In Isaiah 55:11 God explains exactly how this works saying, "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."
Grasping this is understanding Jesus Christ. God thinks for something to happen, Isaiah 14:24, then his word fulfills it. This is why Jesus kept saying he only does the will of the Father, and that He and the Father are one.
John 5:19
"Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise."
Jesus being the Word of God, manifested himself in the flesh, fulfilled the desires of God the Father, with his last words being, "It is finished", John 19:30, and returned back to God the Father in Heaven, Mark 16:29.
Conclusion
All I can say is I'm happy God's shined his light in us! He is in complete control!
Psalm 147:5
"Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite."
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