Chapter 4: What Is Creation?

And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell… and then the Lard said: Let us go down. And they went down at the beginning, and they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth. And the earth, after it was formed, was empty and desolate, because they had not formed anything but he earth—Abr. 3:24; 4:1-2

The standard Dictionary gives two definitions for the verb “create”

1. To cause to come into existence; especially, to produce out of nothing

2. To produce as a new construction out of existing materials.

The first definition is simply a statement of the medieval error, which still keeps its place in our language. Such a notion has never been any part of Mormonism. The second definition represents the only idea that can be accepted by one who recognizes God as the author of nature.

Our God does not make things come about by a so called “poof”. The creation did not go like this “Thus there was light and POOF there was light on the earth.”

In this chapter Dr. Talmage gives a rather good story

I was privileged recently to talk with a Protestant minister who related an experience of his student days. During one of his vacations, he was traveling in the West and visited with a relative who was doing missionary work among the Indians. The visitor was invited to preach to the supposedly Christianized Indians, and considering them to be simple children of nature, he chose as his text the biblical account of the creation, laying considerable stress on the six days.

After the meeting had closed, he heard one Indian who had come late inquire of one of the tribal chiefs: “who was the pale-face who spoke to us?” And the chief shook his head in rather a puzzled fashion and replied: “He is the man who worships God-in-a-hurry.” At the conclusion of his story, the minister asked us : “can you imagine that Redskin being so stupid as to get no more than that out of my sermon?”

Stupid! I wonder? Neither the simple (but not stupid) Indian with his concept of the agelessness of the works of the Great Spirit nor the scientist who with Huxley can discern “no vestige of a be-in-a-hurry” as a basis for an enduring faith. If creation means organization out of existing materials, then the creative power was manifested, not only in the remote biblical days before the advent of man but throughout all of the past, up to and including and here and now.