Biblical Principle #7: God is Light

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2 responses to “Biblical Principle #7: God is Light”

1. 

   Daniel McNeill (Neil) Savage

   July 1, 2025

   Hi, I came across your ‘Biblical Principles’ and find them, being well founded upon the inerrant word of God, very helpful.

   In respect of ‘Biblical Principle #7: God is Light’, I have, for some time now, been intrigued by Gen 1 v 3, God’s first recorder act of creation:

   Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

   Your concluding comment on your explanation of Biblical Principle #7:

   ‘Where GOD exists, there is light.’

   Is, of course, true but, since the Almighty, Eternal God has no beginning and no end, has always existed, so it must also be true that, from His perspective, there has always been light.

   Is this first recorded act of creation, as every other act of creation, really only for the benefit of man?

   Also, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the fact that ‘Light’ has a very wide spectrum, of which ‘visible light’ (between infra red and ultra violet) is a relatively small portion.

   God Bless you in continuing this work.

   Neil

   Reply
   1. 

      Tim Harris

      July 5, 2025

      Hi Neil, it’s nice to e-meet you! Thank you for reading and for the feedback.

      What an insightful and challenging set of thoughts and questions!

      Peeking at the date of Principle #7, it’s astounding (and kind of saddening to me) that I originally wrote this Principle FIVE years (8/16/2020) before this comment (7/4/2025).

      My last sentence needs to—and will—be edited, for, as you observed, GOD is eternal and always everywhere present.

      Scripture seems to make it clear that one aspect of GOD’s Being is light. For example:

      1 Bless the Lord, O my Soul. O Lord my God, you are very
      great; you have clothed yourself with praise
      and honor:
      2 who do robe yourself with light as with a garment;
      spreading out heaven as a curtain.
      (Psalm 103:1-2 Brenton Septuagint Third Revised Edition)

      And we have the prophecies of New Jerusalem being lit solely by the light of GOD/Jesus’ presence rather than the need of the sun (see, for example, Isaiah 60:1-3, 19-20; Revelation 21:22-25; 22:5).

      Logically/scientifically, light is energy. Energy requires an energy source. The ultimate source of all energy is GOD. Therefore light must have existed prior to it being added to creation. And, as you noted, there is a massive spectrum of light, only a tiny fraction of which is visible to the human eye.

      I’m an IT guy by trade, so one way I think of creation is like a computer software program, with GOD as the Master Programmer. I don’t know how familiar you are with software development. You may know more about software development than I do, but just in case you don’t—or aren’t interested in the topic—if you’ll grant me a few moments to “nerd out” on you here, I think this analogy might be helpful.

      In the analogy:

      • The totality of creation—what we might call the universe—is the basic application, it’s runtime or shell, if you will.
      • Created items, such as man, woman, oak tree, rock, tiger, shark, etc., are each Objects inside of the application.
      • Each Object has attributes, such as arm, leg, sight, smell, leaf, flower, blood. These attributes are called Properties.
      • Each Object is designed to perform certain operations or produce intended outcomes. These are defined by Functions.

      Okay, that’s probably a sufficient background; after all, we aren’t teaching a college course on how to create the Creation software app here. :-)

      On Day 0, the Creation app didn’t exist.

      At the “beginning” of Day 1, GOD initiated the Creation runtime and BOOM there was the blank application upon which He could build. But it was void of any Objects.

      Except … it appears that, based upon Genesis 1:1, GOD’s Creation app came preloaded with two built-in properties:

      • Darkness
      • Deep Water (ocean)

      Now, let’s look at Day 1:

      3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 God saw the light; it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day; the darkness He called Night; and there was evening and morning, one day.
      (Genesis 1:3-5 OSB)

      In Genesis 1:3-5, GOD added the new Objects to creation called Day and Night. The property of the Day object was light. In computer code, we might express it something similar to day.light() = true and night().light = false.

      Without getting too technical or risking taking the analogy too far, the final point to make here is how the light property in the Creation app relates to GOD’s divine light attribute.

      In the Creation app analogy, the addition of a brand new light property (which had never previously existed such that it could be conveniently “called” as a Programmer) would require the opening of certain network ports for the Creation application to successfully connect its light property to the energy source (GOD’s light) on the other end, outside of its own Creation application, so that the desired outcome might be achieved. This is like connecting your home Wi-Fi router to the Internet. Your Internet Service Provider, in this case, is the energy source, and your Wi-Fi router is the object desiring to draw energy from that source.

      Beyond the Creation app there exists this massive light probably far beyond what we can imagine. And for the blessing of creation, GOD “opened a network port” to allow a small subset of His light to pass through into this world in various ways, beginning with Day and Night. But there is much more light than exists here in this small place.

      There are, as you know, multiple manifestations of GOD’s light throughout Scripture. For example:

      35 Then Jesus told them, “You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going. 36 Believe in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light.” When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them.
      (John 12:35-36 NIV)

      I hope this is helpful for you and addresses the question you were asking. If not, please let me know.

      Blessings,

      Tim

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