What is the firmament?  What most people miss when they read the creation account in the Bible.

 

Let’s look at what the bible tells us about the earth when it was first made and what changed when the earth was flooded.

 

Let’s look at Genesis again.  Notice the “firmament” that God made in verse 6?  It was made “in the midst of the waters” to divide the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and He called it “heaven”.  In verse 9 He gathers the waters under the heaven (under the firmament) together to make dry land.  In verse 20 it says that the birds fly above the earth in the open firmament.  In verse 17 God set the sun, moon and stars in the firmament.  The question is, what was the firmament in the “midst” for?  The firmament above the earth, but under the firmament in the “midst” was for the birds (our atmosphere), and the firmament that was above the firmament in the “midst” was for the sun, moon and stars (outer space).  So, the firmament in the midst was between the atmosphere of the earth and the cold of space to divide them or separate them from each other!

 

So what was the stuff in the “midst”?  We know that God doesn’t create anything that’s not perfect.  That’s one of the arguments people use to say there must have been time between initial creation and the creation of man, because there’s imperfection that we see today, or corruption as would be a more accurate term.  I would like to agree with all those people and say that God indeed did not create an imperfect world!  There are currently 6 layers to our atmosphere.  What is God’s number for perfection?  Did you think of the number 7?  Yes, 7 is definitely perfection for God.  7 is everywhere in the bible.  So, what was the seventh layer that isn’t there any more?  Gen 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.  Remember that the firmament God created to divide our atmosphere from space was called “heaven”?  When God caused the earth to flood, He “opened the windows of heaven”.  It had not rained on the earth prior to this.  Gen 2:6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.  When God opened the windows of heaven (the firmament), the 7^th layer, the firmament in the “midst”, a layer of water, came raining down on the earth for 40 days in a torrential downpour such as never seen again in history.  There was a layer of water surrounding the earth in the initial creation that is not there today.  This layer of water did many things for the earth that we don’t have any more.  There was increased atmospheric pressure (about double the 14.7 psi today).  Oxygen levels were about 50% higher than they are today (Analysis of air trapped inside fossilized tree sap, Amber, shows an oxygen content of 50% more than we have today, proving this point).  The layer of water would have filtered the suns rays and would have maintained a greenhouse effect on the whole earth.  There would have been a whole lot more vegetation than we have today.  The deserts would have been lush and green as well as the poles.  More plants = more oxygen.  The temperature would have been equalized around the globe and there would have been no ice in the poles or deserts on the equator.  It was a pole to pole tropical planet.

 

There are man made machines called Hyperbaric Chambers that are used today to put people with injuries or sickness in, so that the increased atmospheric pressure and oxygen will help healing.  It’s called Pressurized Oxygen Therapy.  Professional sports teams; NFL, NBA, NHL, CFL, etc. use them to put players that are injured in so that they heal twice as fast!  Google it and check it out for yourself!

 

 

 

With higher pressure and more oxygen, you could run for hours and never run out of breath.  You would heal a lot faster.  You would live a lot longer.

 

In high elevations where the atmospheric pressure is low, wounds will not heal.

 

The life span of people before the flood was in the hundreds of years!  Some lived over 900 years!

 

 

Another interesting fact about the hyperbaric chamber is the amazing growth rate of animals when they are raised inside a chamber.  They have been playing around with them for years and found that small animals will grow much, much larger in a hyperbaric chamber than they normally would.  It makes it even more interesting when we know that they have found fossils of huge wombats, bear size beavers and sloth’s, bison size rodents, 17 foot tall rhino skeletons, 12 foot giant humans, etc.  They’ve pretty much found anything you can think of in the fossil records in an enlarged form.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Understanding this makes everything else just fall into place!