"1. If you have no universe before Genesis 1, you have no Biblical eternal God Jehovah, who scripture says is "the same yesterday, today, and forever," for if there was ever a beginning of the universe (everything existing) then you have a strange god floating out there in empty space with nothing around him and nothing to do for all eternity previous to "creation." Not even a throne to sit on. Certainly this doesn't cut it with being "the same yesterday, today and forever," as the text states. "
It appears to me that you are giving the universe the respect that God deserves here, I believe that the universe itself cannot contain God...and with his eternal nature we probably can not fathom what other things there are to do without material things... somewhere in Ecclessiastes it says that we would not know the mystery from the time of the beginning till the time of the end because God put the love of the world in our hearts...(it is in our nature to grieve when someone dies, but to God what he sees is sheltered from us, except in some very miraculous circumstances)
and a my comment on "the same yesterday, today and forever," has more to do with the Spirit of God... 1 John 4:8... God is love... never did he not love and never will he not love.
"2. Imo, God has been creating and destroying things in his eternal universe forever to suit his good pleasure and plan."
The evidence for this is nil at the best and is based on pure speculative philosophy... as Christians we are called to capture our thoughts to the obedience of Christ...(this area I need prayer in)
"3. Genesis one, one states that God created the heavens and the earth. That, imo is a prefacing statement for what follows. What it is saying is this: "Whenever heaven and earth began it was God who made it." Period. That's all this opening statement is saying.
Then in the verses of Genesis chapter one and two to follow, God explains what he did with/to the earth which he had at some time, unknown to man, created. "
I would disagree that Genesis 1:1 is a prefacing statement but rather is the litteral first creative act of God... I imagine a formless ball of water much like we learn an amoeba to be shaped like when we were children in school, and God's Spirit containing this water, than he creates light which I believe to be the phenomena called Gravity, which than made the formless earth that was water into a ball, the Gravity that took place on this day was unlike any that has ever happened since that time.... so none the less I see the first two chapters of Genesis to be an ongoing dialogue of Creation with no prefacing statement... but I do agree that God is the only creator period... and Jesus is that God( scripturally we see this in a portion of Colossians?)
"4. The sun and the moon were, according to the text, created subsequent to day 3 and before day four ended."
agreed
"5. Since the earth was alread present in day one, the earth preceeded the sun, moon and stars. This brings up the question, "Which stars?"
The heaven and earth of Genesis one, imo has to be refering to the heavens pertaining to the earth. That is logically our Milky Way Galexy. "
The heavens and earth of Genesis 1 I disagree are not refering to the heavens pertaining to the earth as we know it today, but were reffering to the heavens pertaining to the earth as of that moment in time (the beginning of time) I believe this is what is referred to the heaven of the heavens, (where is that Paul talks of being caught up to the 3rd heavens and all those other verses of heaven of heavens), the heaven I believe you to be reffering to came on day 2 and was called the firmament or expanse or sky.
"6. The text says the sun and moon originated the measurement of days, years and seasons. So we MUST, imo, assume from this that the length of days, years, and seasons before day 5 is UNKNOWN TO MAN, since (a)nobody knows how long day four was before the work of day four was finished. and (b) Days one, two and three have no specified length either of the "evenings and mornings" of these days."
the text does not say that the sun, moon originated the measurement of days, years and seasons, but would be for measuring them... days, years and seasons were originated in by the will of God, it would seem fitting to me that God would impart a sense of time much like what he senses except that after the fall we became mortal man...
God knows the length of time and his scriptures state them to be a regular day that is experienced, to me a loving God would not confuse us with different lengths of days from him to us whom are made in his image...(the 2 Peter passage that has the days to thousands of years thing has nothing to do with creation but everything to do with God's patience and is used as a way to show the difference between our patience and his)
"The text, imo, gives the exact length of days 5 and 6 in which the animals, birds, and mankind was created. Those days and all the days subsequent to that were measured by the sun, i.e. 24 hours, consisting each, first of an "evening" of relatively darkness and secondly, "morning," of relatively daylight. "
Again I have to add to this, because of my belief that time is not measured by the sun but rather inderectly by the phenomena of gravity, we use the rotations of the earth around the sun to measure this phenomena... the sun only burns because of this phenomena, the moon circles the earth because of this phenomena...