Genesis 1:9 to 10 - Creation of Dry Land
Genesis 1:9-11 (NIV)
 9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
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Proverbs 8:29a
29 when he gave the sea its boundary
      so the waters would not overstep his command
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Job 38:8-11
 8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors
      when it burst forth from the womb, 9 when I made the clouds its garment
      and wrapped it in thick darkness, 10 when I fixed limits for it
      and set its doors and bars in place, 11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
      here is where your proud waves halt’?Â
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Psalm 104:5-10
 5 He set the earth on its foundations;
      it can never be moved. 6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment;
      the waters stood above the mountains. 7 But at your rebuke the waters fled,
      at the sound of your thunder they took to flight; 8 they flowed over the mountains,
      they went down into the valleys,
      to the place you assigned for them. 9 You set a boundary they cannot cross;
      never again will they cover the earth. 10 He makes springs pour water into the ravines;
      it flows between the mountains.Â
From these accounts, the sequence of Day 3 appears to be the following:
- The earth’s crust had hardened - Psalm 104:5
- There were mountains forming, but they were all underwater - Psalm 104:6
- God said for the water under the skies (i.e., the ocean) to make way for the land - Genesis 1:9, Psalm 104:7
- Plate Tectonics thrust the mountains out of the ocean - Job 38:8
- The waters yielded - Genesis 1:9, Psalm 104:7
- The land dried, as the waters continued gathering - Genesis 1:9, Psalm 104:8,10
- The dry land constituted barriers the seas could not cross - Genesis 1:10, Proverbs 8:29, Job 38:10, Psalm 104:9
- The tides would try to encroach, but they are held back by the moon - Proverbs 8:29, Job 38:10-11
Given the ease with which the Biblical record matches the Geological record, the Geocreationist view is that Day 3Â began when Plate Tectonics started, around 2.4 billion years ago.
January 31st, 2007 at 10:01 pm
[…] As you will recall in my post “Creation of Dry Land“, Day 3 marked the beginning of Plate Tectonics, which was about 2.4 billion years ago, and removed the insurmountable hindrance to dry land. Certainly the absence of land would constitute an insurmountable hindrance to the appearance of land-plants as well. But, the land appeared, started to dray, and the first signs of plant-like activity were not too far behind (geologically speaking): Toward the end of the of the Archean Period and at the beginning of the Proterozoic Period, about 2.5 billion years ago, oxygen-forming photosynthesis began to occur. The first fossils, in fact, were a type of blue-green algae that could photosynthesize. – “Earth’s Beginnings: The Origin of Life” by Eric McLamb […]
March 12th, 2007 at 12:34 am
[…] My theory of Geocreationism is that the Days of creation can be mapped to geologic eras, making it similar to (or yet another flavor of) Day Age Theory. In that vein, Day 1 occurred about 3.9 Ga, around the time of the last large meteor strike against the early earth. Day 2 was some time between 3.9 Ga and 3.5 Ga, when the oceans had finally reformed from their last meteoric vaporizing 3.9 Ga. Day 3, the creation of land and plants, occurred approximately 2.4 Ga, when plate tectonics began. Day 4 was about 1.9 Ga, when Oxygen levels reached high enough levels for the sun, moon, and starts to be visible in the firmament. This means that Day 3 could have continued until 1.9 Ga, but no later. This is important, because plants mentioned in Genesis didn’t actually exist until after 500 million years ago. […]