The Creation

Some people deserve indictment for pleonasmicity in sacrament meetings.  Even my pet scripture study topics can elicit some throngs of boredom.  So, I'm creating new study patterns, beginning with an overhaul of Moses (I hope you got the double pun). 

The Creation

...And again, I, God, said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and it was so, even as I spake; and I said: Let it divide the waters from the waters; and it was done.

The scientist and humanist in me often conflict producing emotional dichotomies, so I try to be most attuned to pure truth and its embers.  Here's what I've learned about the first seven verses of Moses 2.

A firmament 'was' (whether that means created, organized, or conceptualized in thought is irrelevant), and it divided the waters from the waters.  Phenomenologically, this is something we can understand.  Water was divided, and the partitioner held the water apart.  Every day that I drink from a cup, use an umbrella, or swim in a swimming pool, I become reacquainted with the concept of water being divided from water.

Compare the ability of the firmament to divide water from water to the ability of God's word to divide light from darkness:

And I, God, said: Let there be light; and there was light.  And I, God, saw the light

; and that light was good.  And I, God, divided the light from the darkness... and this I did by the word of my power, and it was done as I spake.

In the same way that the firmament divided the waters, God's word divided  the light from dark.  This analogy permits God's word to be interpreted as something firm and strong enough to divide, and associated with qualities of a dividing firmament.

For example, if land divides water, then, because it divides in similar fashion, God's word can be likened to land.  Land is more firm, more dense, more cohesive, and ultimately stronger than the water it contains and repulses.  God's word, by analogy, is firm

er, denser, more cohesive, and more powerful than light and darkness.  God's power is able to control, or at least keep at bay, light and darkness.  That can be a powerful concept.

In his seventh lecture in Lectures on Faith, Joseph Smith said,

...we understand that when a man works by faith he works by mental exertion instead of physical force.  It is by words, instaed of exerting his physical powers, with which every being works when he works by faith.... Faith, then, works by words; and with these its mightiest works have been, and will be, performed.

Combining what Joseph Smith said concerning the strength of faith as exhibited in words, and the analogy that words are more powerful (or have control over and the ability to divide) light and darkness, we get a glimpse into the vastly different governing order of heaven.