WHAT DOES "IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED THE HEAVEN" (I)

The Universal Cosmological Model

Gen 1:1 "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth

The biblical scheme of creation is part of the first cosmological scheme. Being misunderstood by all and to ridicule it, it was relegated to cosmogony in the same rank as ancient stories whose authors did not know the realities about the origin and evolution of the Universe. But the Universal Cosmological Model has come to prove that it is a real scheme, even if the evolution of the Universe was told in simple terms according to the literature and names of the time (1500 years BC).

Many people ask me if I have practiced scientific methods, they want to know my methodology. And they keep telling me that the Bible is not a scientific book and that the biblical scheme of creation cannot be taken as a real scheme.

Here is my reaction: If you are the owner of a house and you witnessed its construction, and it was you who designed the plan with the architect, you can tell the details in an ordinary book. Later, after thousands of generations, some people will consider your words as a story, others as a tale. In order to deduce that what you have said is true, architects must come and study it to see if the shape corresponds to what you have said, even if you have not said anything about the measurements and the background, because you are not a scientist. It is up to the architects to find out all the dimensions and materials that were used.

It is the same with the biblical scheme of creation contained in the Bible. The Bible is not a scientific book, so it can only be limited to the form. All that people say about this scheme is simply part of the considerations. No astrophysicist as an architect has had the idea to study it in detail and to confront it with observations. The majority of publications on this scheme are made by theologians.

In the study of the pyramid, all disciplines are associated; historians, archaeologists, architects, chemists, biologists. But the first diagram of the Universe or the first cosmological model was thrown away by the intellectuals. I wanted to recover it and I want to start explaining it brick by brick, step by step, verse by verse to demonstrate its foundation. At the end, it will be up to each one to say if it is a collected story or if it really comes from the owner of the Universe.

In this publication we will concentrate on the word "heaven". Next time we will explain in detail what the author meant by the word "earth" in this first verse of Genesis which is different from our conception.

If today, astrophysicists do not even look at the biblical scheme of creation, it is because of the misunderstanding of this first verse.
The first cause is that the sky as a material element does not even exist. The Universe is characterized by a deep void that extends to infinity as seen in the images of the James Webb Telescope. The blue Heaven we see is only the reflection of light on atmospheric gases. Even the sun or the stars that we common mortals think are at the bottom of this Heaven are rather above. So, to say that in the beginning God created the Heaven, which is only space, does not make sense to astrophysicists, because space is not created, it is created.

The second reason why astrophysicists do not continue reading the first verse of the biblical scheme of creation is the sentence that says "in the beginning God created ... the earth". It has been scientifically proven that the earth was created 9 billion years ago after the Big Bang and has existed for 4.5 billion years. Moreover, it is not even older than the other stars that the James Webb Telescope has just revealed.

These two causes together make the biblical scheme of creation relegated to cosmogony instead of keeping its place in cosmology. In addition, it is given many pejorative attributes and no one wants to prove its validity. Religious people justify themselves by saying that this pattern is part of and only informs us that God created the universe.

In this series of publications IN THIS WEBSITE , advocating the language of unity between science and faith, I want to make the explanation of this verse clear for both scientists and theologians. By this, it will be known that this first verse has nothing physically to do with the terms that have been used. Even the author of this verse knew that if one day we do not pay much attention, we might understand this verse backwards. This is indeed what happened and we keep drawing inferences from a misunderstanding on our part.

We understand that Saint Thomas Aquinas was right when he said that "if a verse contradicts science, the problem is neither science nor the verse in question, but rather our understanding of this verse". It is indeed serious in these days to see that the first biblical verse has never been understood by anyone. It is in the Universal Cosmological Model that we lift all the veils that cover the biblical scheme of creation.

Just as the Big Bang theory is part of the standard model, the rest of the text you are about to read is part of the Universal Cosmological Model, which is the only cosmological model that integrates faith and science and which is the culmination of the ideal of all associations militating for the language of unity between science and religion.

It is this restitution or this Model that will seal the unity between science and religion. So to any researcher or student who wants to do more research or development, let him know that what is said here is part of the Universal Cosmological Model. It is a model that reinforces our faith by providing us with real evidence on the biblical scheme of creation.

I. IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED THE Heaven

Physically, we have said that the sphere called heaven is materially non-existent. And yet, it is a name that is used by both religious and scientific people. This creates confusion and it is necessary to remove the ambiguity. It is by this that we will understand that the biblical scheme of creation does not go against science by saying "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth".

II. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BIBLICAL Heaven AND THE GEOGRAPHICAL Heaven

II.1. The biblical Heaven

In our series of publications in IN THIS WEBSITE, we began by explaining the meaning of the biblical days in the biblical scheme of creation where we discovered that they represent periods.

https://avenue-de-la-justice.africamotion.net/t8-the-days-of-creation-are-periods

Now, we are going to dissect the first verse of the biblical scheme of creation which says: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth". In this verse, we will dwell on the word "heaven" by demonstrating the difference between the biblical heaven, that is, what is mentioned in the first verse of Genesis, and the geographical heaven that our eyes tend to see.

Gen 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Jerusalem Version)
When reading this verse, everyone thinks they understand it, yet no one does. The meaning of the word "heaven" seems to be common place, yet each person has an incomplete view of this word.

On April 12, 1961, as part of the Soviet space program, Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin, a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut, after a flight in space during the Vostok 1 mission, said a sentence that pleased scientists: "I have flown through the sky, but I have not seen God. And yet, believers pray to "Our Father (God) who is in heaven". Is this the same heaven?

To clarify this question, we have called upon our knowledge of cosmology. The word heaven we find first in the first biblical sentence where we read "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth".

We should know that the heaven referred to in the verse "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" is the spiritual world, just as "the earth" in this same verse represents the physical world. Where do we get this inference? It is from the next verse where we read "the earth was formless and empty" (Gn 1 :2). In the Septuagint Bible, which is the first Bible translated from Hebrew into Greek, it says "the earth was unseen and empty". We have all watched the movie "The Invisible Man". When we say that something is invisible, it means that something exists, but we cannot see it. It is to say that at the beginning the universe was only an empty sphere, in spite of its existence. Don't forget that I am the first one to bring out this assertion from the Bible for both scientists and religious people. I want to develop it in my next publication, because here we are focusing on the explanation of the word "heaven" in the first verse of the Bible.

So, "God created the heavens and the earth" according to the Bible means "God created the spiritual world and the physical world" or the spiritual world and the universe. Both together, form the cosmos. It is in these heavens or sky, unreal for science, that all religions locate the invisible spiritual entities: God, angels, wandering spirits, paradise, hell.

The word earth also used in this verse does not represent the earth that we trample on. Moses was clear when he said a formless and empty earth signifying the universe at its beginning. We are the ones who thought it was the planet Earth. So the problem was not the verse but our understanding as St. Thomas Aquinas.

Thus, according to the biblical scheme of creation, restored in the Universal Cosmological Model, of which I am the inventor, the Universe began in a vacuum. This is a personal discovery, made from the scriptures and not from a scientific concordance. I did not draw this deduction from any scientific model, however, there are scientists who have come to the same conclusion confirming the Bible without knowing it. Among these renowned scientists, we have: Prof. Lawrence Krauss of the Arizona State University and Prof. Gabriele Veneziano of the Collège de France, inventor of the string theory; to mention only these two. (Cfr : Revue Les mystères de l'univers, hors-série n° 7, Paris).

In the Bible, when Jesus Christ was on earth, he said "No one knows God but me, who came down from heaven". And, having ascended again to heaven after his resurrection, in these days, the Christians have their eyes turned towards this heaven to attend his return which will be visible for all (Mt 24:30) and to see ourselves, we will be taken up in the clouds, always according to the Bible (1 Th 4:17).

In principle, this heaven had nothing to do with the blue heaven that we see above our heads and that materially do not even exist. What we see, we said, is only a panorama created by the light of the Sun on the atmospheric gases. Beyond that, there is only an endless void.

The conclusion is that the blue heaven that we see, have nothing to do with the heaven that is mentioned in the verse "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth". The heaven that is mentioned in this verse on the first day of creation, represents the spiritual sphere not taken into account by science, but recognized in all religions as the home of all spiritual entities. Hence prayers like "Our Father who is in Heaven", "Holy Virgin Mary (in Heaven), pray for us", "No one has ascended to Heaven, except the Son of Man who descended from Heaven". As we can see, here we are dealing with the biblical heaven which is mentioned in the verse "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth".

II.2. The geographical heaven

The word heaven we find it first in the first biblical sentence where we read "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth". In the first point, I had said that the heaven to which it is alluded in the verse "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" is the spiritual world. It is in these heavens, unreal for science, that all religions locate the invisible entities: God, angels, wandering spirits, paradise, hell.

Still in the scheme of the biblical creation, if we go down a little in the third day (Gen 1:9), we are told about "the separation of the waters from the waters". This separation, which we will come back to and explain what happened physically in the next publications, will create an empty space or an expanse. And the Bible says, it is this expanse that is called heaven. Now, we are facing the physical or geographical heaven that was created on the third biblical day. It is different from the spiritual heaven that is mentioned on the first day in the first verse.

The physical heaven is only the void that we see, that void that separates me from the other, that allows me to move, that void that contains everything in the universe. The real term of the physical heaven is the void or the space. If we combine them, it becomes the spatial void. And, in the space vacuum, we can see neither God, nor angels, nor wandering spirits.

Let science leave the words "heaven and sky" to the religious. Religious people should also understand that the words heaven and sky have nothing to do with the void of space, nor with the blue sky that we see above our heads.

The sky that is mentioned in the first verse of Genesis represents the spiritual sphere that our physical senses can neither see nor touch. Hence science can only disprove its existence.

In conclusion, when the Bible and all the sacred books speak of "heaven or sky", they refer to the spiritual world, unreal for science. However, when the general literature and science speak about the sky, they refer to the space vacuum. Thus, Gagarin did not fly through the sky, which is part of the spiritual realm. Rather, he flew through the void of space where spiritual beings cannot be seen. Moreover, our flying machines do not fly in the sky, but in space. Therefore, we understand that the sky and the void of space are two different words. The sky refers to the spiritual realm, invisible to our senses, while the void of space refers to the physical world perceptible by our senses.

So, all those who judged the biblical scheme of creation from the first verse were wrong, but it is not their fault, because until then nobody had ever explained it. Even in all the encyclopedias where biblical commentaries were written, no author or researcher understood this verse; believing that they were talking about the geographical blue sky. With the Universal Cosmological Model, many of the writings will be revised.

Flavien Phanzu Mwaka
- Inventor of the Universal Cosmological Model and of the science "Astrotheology".
- Author of the books of the collections "The verses of the scholars" and "Astrotheology".

How to quote from this article:

- Flavien PHANZU MWAKA, Cosmology According to Biblical and Ancient Models, éd. Librinova, Paris
2022. https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B093RRQD1P/
- Flavien PHANZU MWAKA, big-bang-to-humankind, ed. Librinova, Paris, 2022.
https://www.librinova.com/librairie/flavien-phanzu-mwaka-1/big-bang-to-humankind
- Flavien PHANZU MWAKA, The field of the Universal Cosmolgical Model, ed. Librinova, Paris 2022.
https://www.librinova.com/librairie/flavien-phanzu-mwaka-1/the-field-of-the-universal-cosmological-model