EQUINOX

Equinox

An equinox is when the twenty-four hour period has twelve hours of darkness and twelve hours of light, as happens in March and September.

Beginning in darkness the earth progresses towards the light. How so? Note the Bible’s first and last chapters: ‘The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep’ Genesis 1:2a and ‘There shall be no night there’ Revelation 22:5a. Darkness, followed by light. In the time between creation and recreation there is a daily, i.e., a twenty-four hour pattern of darkness followed by light.

As God worked on the six days of creation, each workday ended with the refrain, ‘So the evening and the morning were…’ Scripture uses the word day to refer to twenty-four hours, or a daylight period, or a time period. Now, taken at face value, it would seem that the reader is to assume that day (Heb. yom) in each of the six days of creation means a twenty-four hour day. This is verified by the Fourth Commandment, the Sabbath Commandment, ‘…Six days you shall labour and do all your work … For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them…’ Exodus 20:8-11. Were each of these days equal in length? Were the periods of light and darkness equal in length? Christians continue to debate whether or not the Bible teaches the six days of creation were twenty-four hour days or six extended periods of time. However, the Atheist doctrine of Evolution simply disregards Christian cosmology and substitutes its own. Christians ought not import this Atheist philosophy. To be a ‘Young Earth Creationist’ or an ‘Old earth Creationist’ is to be open for debate. But simply to attempt to jam into the Bible some Atheist worldview is to be guilty of changing the Bible’s meaning and results in damaging Christians. It is a futile attempt to try to extinguish light with darkness. What does Christ Jesus have to say about all of this?

‘Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him’ John 11:9-10. If there are twelve hours in the day, then there is an equal amount of hours in the night: equinox! And, since Christ is the eternal Word, He was present in the beginning, when ‘God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years’ Genesis 1:14.

Equal periods of light and darkness in the six creation days? Perhaps. However, Jesus goes on to speak of people believing in the light, and becoming ‘sons of the light’, i.e., Christians (John 11:35-36). Jesus, of course, is the Light of the world. ‘I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life’ John 8:12. This, of course, is so much mumbo-jumbo to the non-Christian. This is because the non-Christian dwells and walks in darkness (John 3:19-21). ‘But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God’; John 3:21.

In the equinox, which do you prefer? The period of light or the period of darkness? Are you a child of the darkness or a child of the light? Only those who have the light of Christ are true children of light.

Should we believe the Bible? ‘And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts’ 2 Peter 1:19.