THE EVENING AND THE MORNING WERE THE FIRST DAY

Anglican Morning Devotion for 22 October 2021 Anno Domini

A ministry of the Anglican Orthodox Communion of Churches Worldwide

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. ²And 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. ³And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. ⁴And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.  ⁵And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Genesis 1:1-5; all scripture quoted is from the King James Version)

Every new Creation of God begins in darkness. At the dawn of Creation, there was neither darkness nor light – in fact, there was neither space nor time. At some point in eternity past, the Lord God created Time and Space as a foundation for His material Universe. God created the world which was found to be a morass of gases and other disorganized matter cloaked in smothering darkness. Such were the conditions at the beginning of God’s Creation of our beautiful planet.

“In the beginning, God:” The Hebrew word for God is Elohim – a singular/plural term including the Triune Godhead. “In the beginning, WE as ONE’ could be a more literal meaning of the term here. God the Father was the architect, God the Son (the Word of John 1:1) was the executive power, and it was the Holy Spirit that molded the Creation into conformity to that Word. “The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters . . .”

Just as God began His Creation in darkness, so He completed it in the Light of Day. “And the evening and the morning were the first day.” It is for this reason that the Jewish Sabbath begins at sunset Friday and ends at sunset the following day.

I suggest that all aspects of god’s new Creations begin in darkness and end with Light. We who were dead in trespasses and sin, have been made alive in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2). There is neither light nor darkness in the grave – physical death is the absence of any consciousness whatsoever, but the Spirit of God moved in our being (the darkness of the spiritually dead) and drew us to the Mercy Seat by grace. We were made alive having arisen from the darkness of the tomb. But being dead in trespasses and sin, we were not in the physical death of eternity, but were as the walking dead without Christ – walking in the darkness of this world. “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” (ISAIAH 9:2)

Were you not made into a new creature when you were drawn to that Mercy Seat of Christ? “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; ²³ And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; ²⁴And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”  (EPHESIANS 4:22-24)

Being now the Children of Light, we must walk in the Light of God’s Word. “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” (Psalms 119:105) There are false lights of this world that are not false lights at all, but are apparitions that lead deeper and deeper into the swamp of damnation (e.g., Washington, D.C.) The will-o-the-wisp formed by those swamp gasses of ratting matter lead the lost soul deeper and deeper into the oblivion of sin so that he may perish there without a saving hand from Heaven.

How can we remain on the right way if there is no Light to guide us? Jesus is the Way, and He has provided the Light of His Word as our guide in the smothering darkness of this wicked world. “Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. ³⁶While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.” (John 12: 35-36)

So, my friends, let us go forth with our Lamps of God’s Word replenished with the ‘Oil of the Holy Spirit’ to provide a constant and unfailing Light. As King George VI proclaimed, in quoting a poem of Minnie Haskins, to the British people on Christmas Eve 1939:

“And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year; “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”And he replied, “Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth and finding the Hand of God, Trod gladly into the night…”

Do thou likewise!