What does the moon tell us about creation?
Application: Our moon is a sign in the heavens of God's creative power and His glory.
In this L.I.F.E. Lesson, Dr. Bob discusses how the moon demonstrates the truth of God's creative design. Our moon is unique, and critical to Earth's past.
Supplemental Information
In Genesis, God spoke the Moon into existence. He provided the Moon's purpose in the same passage:
To be for signs
To identify the seasons
To rule the night
To give light on the earth
To separate the light from the darkness.
And finally, "for days and years"
Most of these purposes are straightforward and indicate the special nature of our moon.. Without the light provided by the moon, the night would be a very dark and different place. Animals could not rely on its light for hunting and navigation, and the cycles of the moon would not help man to clearly define the calendar. The cycles of the moon were the primary timekeeping for Israel, as defined by God. All feasts and fasts are defined in terms of these cycles.
There are lots of moons in the solar system. Some planets have dozens upon dozens of moons. Jupiter and Saturn are great examples. Every planet, except Earth, that has a moon of some kind has more than one. It is the only astronomical object other than the Sun that influences processes on the Earth.
The moon has long been recognized as a significant stabilizer of Earth's orbital axis. Without it, astronomers have predicted that Earth's tilt could vary as much as 85 degrees. Without the moon, the sun would swing from being directly over the equator to directly over the poles.
Tides
The moon also rules in another way. It is responsible for the creation of tides. The earth’s gravity keeps the moon in orbit. The force is higher on the part of the earth nearest the moon, so any water there will bulge towards it. This creates a high tide. The part furthest from the moon is attracted the least by the moon, so flows away from the moon creating another high tide on the opposite side of the earth. In between, the water level must drop. This creates the low tides. As the moon orbits the spinning earth, there is a cycle of two high tides and two low tides about every 25 hours.
Tides are vital to life on Earth. Tides cleanse the ocean’s shorelines. They keep the ocean currents circulating, preventing the ocean from stagnating. As the tides move in and out of the bays, they move massive material from these bays, keeping them clean and diluting sewage discharges.
These tides create friction. This is slowing the earth’s rotation, so the length of a day is increasing by 0.002 seconds per century. The Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum says that the angular momentum the earth loses must be gained by the moon. Thus the moon is slowly receding from Earth at about 1-½ inches per year. There is a lower limit to how close the moon could have been. This is called the Roche Limit, it states that the moon could never have been closer than 11,500 miles. This is because Earth’s tidal forces would have shattered the moon if it were any closer. Even accepting all of the assumptions made by secular scientists, this places a maximum age for the moon of 1.3 billion years, a time period inconsistent with what evolutionary processes would require. And this is allowing for an origin of the moon at the minimum distance possible. In reality, the only scientifically viable explanation is the one that God gave in Genesis, he spoke the moon into existence on Day 4 of creation.
One of the most significant differences between the true account of creation in Genesis and the various creation myths is that those myths make the Sun and Moon their gods. In some the Sun is the male god and the Moon is his wife, in others, it is the other way around. The Bible’s true history emphasizes that the Sun and Moon were both created objects, and that God did not even create them until the Fourth Day. While the plants were created on the Third Day, a day before the Sun and Moon. This may seem impossible. Where was the light for the plants? Light was created on the First day when God spoke it into existence. This light is the true light. The light from the Sun that is reflected by the Moon is an inferior light.