Let's begin answering these questions by going all the way back to the first day of the Creation Week, and let's consider what God made on that first day. Genesis 1:1 says that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Of course we know that the earth is made of matter. So when the Bible says that God created the earth, this in fact is when God created matter.

Matter, of course, is made of tiny atoms -- such as uranium atoms or other kinds of atoms. An atom always has a core or nucleus, and around the nucleus circle the electrons. The incredibly tiny nucleus has within itself two kinds of even smaller particles. These are called protons and neutrons. Although we may not ordinarily think about it, the creation of matter within the earth on that first day of the Creation Week truly involved the creation of those particles that we study in chemistry and physics: atoms, nuclei, protons, neutrons, electrons.

When did God make light? We read in Genesis 1:3 that the Creator on the first day of the Creation Week said, "Let there be light." Light is simply a kind of energy. We can think, then, of the creation of energy having occurred on the first day of the Creation Week when God spoke and called light into existence.

Light is a very interesting thing because it has many intriguing properties. One amazing thing about light, for example, is that we see it only if matter is present. Many experiments use prisms and laser beams, but we see the beams of light only if there is a material surface to reflect the light. Even dust in the air can render a beam of light visible, but light in totally empty space is invisible. Besides reflecting light, matter can also make light visible if it glows with heat or incandescence. This is what happens to the filament inside a light bulb (one of the incandescent sort) when we turn it on -- the filament gets so hot it glows and makes light visible. In short, two ways in which matter makes light visible are reflection and incandescence.

Now light, which we can see only in the presence of matter, is much like Christ in the life of a Christian. Christ in the life of a Christian is made visible only as He is reflected in that Christian's life. Jesus, in fact, said, "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12). He called Christians lights in the world (Matthew 5:14). There is a very real parallel between the behavior of physical light and the behavior of the spiritual light that Christ gives to the world through the lives of Christians.

The fact that light is invisible without matter also relates to the Creation Week itself. In the Creation Week God made light (Genesis 1:3) after He made matter (Genesis 1:1). The invisibility of light without matter shows why the Creator followed this sequence -- the light would not have been visible if God had not first created the matter! We see here the principle that God during the Creation Week had very logical and valid reasons for creating things in the sequence He did (see Note 1).

Often it is claimed that the Creation Week is a mythological hodgepodge, a meaningless assortment of events that could have been done in any other order. But the Bible teaches that God is a rational God. He is a God with definite purposes for everything He does (see Note 2). He is a God with well-laid plans, and He never makes a mistake. We see these aspects of God's behavior in the Creation Week as it is described in the first chapter of Genesis.