What Happened on the Cross. Nick Peros

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СКАЧАТЬ of these verses tell us a place of darkness is reserved for God’s judgment upon evil.

      Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness spreads over Egypt—darkness that can be felt.’ (Exod 10:21 NIV)

      One of God’s plagues—or curses—upon Egypt was a plague of darkness.

      Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ (Matt 22:13 NASB)

      Darkness is a place of judgment upon evil, and it is not a good place.

      That day will be a day of wrath—a day of distress and anguish, a day of trouble and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness. (Zeph 1:15 NIV)

      The “day of darkness and gloom” is specifically described here as a day of God’s wrath, a day of distress, a day of anguish and trouble.

      I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things. (Isa 45:7 NIV)

      Here, light is equated with prosperity, while darkness is equated with disaster, and God is the one who creates both, which affirms that darkness is a curse of God.

      Contrast of Light and Darkness

      God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. (Gen 1:4 NIV)

      At the beginning of Genesis 1, we are told the “light” was “good,” and that the (good) light was separated from the darkness. It is implicit in this that, since the light was good, and since the good light was separated from the darkness, then the darkness, by contrast, was bad.

      You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. (1 Thess 5:5 NIV)

      For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light. (Eph 5:8 NIV)

      In both of these verses, Christians are children of light, not of darkness, and in Ephesians 5:8, Christians are described as actually being light.

      Yet when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, then came darkness. (Job 30:26 NIV)

      Here, “good” is equated with “light,” while “evil” is equated with “darkness.”

      I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness. (John 12:46 NASB)

      Whoever believes in Jesus Christ has come into the light, and has come out of darkness—again, there is a contrast with light and darkness, where light is good and of God, while darkness is bad and not of God.

      This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. (John 3:19 NASB)

      In these verses, darkness is again contrasted with light, and the darkness is opposed to the light. It is clear from these verses, as well as many others throughout the Bible, that darkness is never a good thing—it is always associated with evil, the enemy, or the wrath or curse of God. The clearest affirmation of this truth is in 1 John 1:5.

      God is Light

      God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5 NIV)

      This verse is very clear—God himself is light; he doesn’t just give off light, he is light itself, light is part of his divine nature, and in him there is no darkness. How then are we to understand Genesis 1:2, “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (NIV)? How can a God, who himself is light, a God in whom there is no darkness, create an Earth that is surrounded by and engulfed in darkness? In fact, how can a God, who himself is light, a God in whom there is no darkness, create an entire universe filled with darkness (just take a look at the night sky)? How is this possible?

      It is not possible, because God did not create the earth covered in darkness, and neither did he create a universe filled with darkness. The earth as described in Genesis 1:2 is not how God created it; rather, by Genesis 1:2, the earth is cursed, a ruined wasteland upon which was poured the wrath of God. The darkness that covers the earth in Genesis 1:2 is the result of God’s curse.

      Likewise, the universe itself is under God’s curse, filled with darkness end to end, thereby also evidencing the wrath of God upon it. This curse of darkness upon the universe is affirmed in Isaiah 50:3, where God tells us he clothed the heavens with darkness: “I clothe the heavens with darkness and make sackcloth its covering” (NIV). To clothe the heavens with darkness means the darkness was applied to the heavens after they were created. This verse also continues to tell us God made sackcloth the covering of the heavens. Sackcloth is always used throughout the Bible to represent suffering and hardship, so when we are told God clothed the heavens with darkness, and then equating that with giving the heavens a covering of sackcloth, it clearly denotes the heavens, the universe, is suffering under God’s wrath. This suffering of the universe is further evidenced in the following verses from Romans 8:19–22:

      For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (NIV)

      This passage in Romans tells us creation itself is currently subject to suffering and is in bondage to decay, waiting eagerly for its liberation. This is the same suffering and bondage of creation as seen in Genesis 1:2, as evidenced by the darkness engulfing the earth, which is the same darkness that also engulfs the entire universe. That entire darkness—the darkness engulfing the earth in Genesis 1:2, and the darkness filling the entire universe—was the result of God’s curse upon the earth and upon the entire creation.

      Isaiah 45:18 affirms God did not create either the earth or the universe in that cursed condition, rather, they became that way after they were created. This is clearly affirmed across many translations. Here are three different translations of Isaiah 45:18 to illustrate this; regardless of the translation, they all tell us the same thing:

      For this is what the Lord says—he who created the heavens, he is God; he who fashioned and made the earth, he founded it; he did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited. (NIV)

      For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (he is the God who formed the earth and made it, he established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited). (NASB)

      For the Lord is God, and he created the heavens and earth and put everything in place. He made the world to be lived in, not to be a place of empty chaos. (NLT)

      Across various translations, Isaiah 45:18 clearly tells us God did not create the earth as an empty wasteland of chaos. He did not create it to be uninhabitable. God created the earth, in Genesis 1:1, as perfect and as habitable for man. The earth became a cursed and empty wasteland afterward. This truth is also affirmed by the description of the earth in Jeremiah 4:23–27, where the formless emptiness of the earth is connected directly to the wrath of God.

      Psalm 97 and Psalm 18—God Surrounded by Darkness

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