Look at verse number six, "And God said, 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters,
and let it divide the waters from the waters.'
And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from
the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so.
And God called the firmament heaven, and the evening and the morning were the second day."
Now some people wonder, you know, what is the firmament?
You know, and they get confused by this.
The firmament is simply the sky.
And in our modern scientific vernacular, we would call this the atmosphere.
And what's happening here is that the waters under the firmament are the waters that are
actually in the ocean, the waters that are actually liquid on the earth.
And the waters above the firmament would be the water vapor that is up in the sky.
You know, for example, you know, I go out on the lake and that's the waters under the
firmament, the lake water, right?
And then I look up and the whole sky is filled with clouds.
You know, that's the waters up above the firmament.
And that division there is a division between water that's in the atmosphere and liquid
water that's on the surface of the earth.
That's the division that's being made here.
Now, some people would try to twist this and say, "No, the firmament is a solid dome."
You know, the flat earthers would say, "The firmament is a solid dome and it's got holes
poked in it and those are the stars and everything."
Here are some problems with that.
A little bit later in this chapter, we're going to have birds flying in the open firmament
of heaven.
So if birds are flying in the firmament, they can't fly inside of a solid object, but they
can fly inside the sky, you know, because I'm, and what did he call the firmament?
God called the firmament heaven.
And what does the Bible mean when it says heaven?
Often the word heaven is referring to the sky.
You know, looking up into the heavens, you're looking up into the sky.
And so when God calls the firmament heaven, that should tell you exactly what it is.
It's the heaven.
It's the sky.
And so they say, "Well, you know, it's a solid dome."
And I say, "Okay, well then how can birds fly in it?"
And they go, "Ha ha ha, Pastor Anderson."
You know, they're flying within the enclosure of the firmament.
Okay, but here's the problem with that.
The Bible says, "Let the fowl fly in the open firmament of the heaven."
But it's closed.
No, it's not closed.
It's open.
All right?
So the Bible talks about the birds flying in the firmament because the firmament is simply
the heaven or the sky.
It's not a solid dome.
There's no such dome.
The earth is not flat.
The earth is a globe.
And the Bible is scientifically correct about that, by the way.
The Bible says that God stretches out the heaven over the empty place and hangs the
earth upon nothing, or he stretches out the north over the empty place.
I think I misquoted that.
Anyway, there's an empty place in that verse, okay?
And he hangs the earth on nothing.
Now is that scientifically correct that the earth is hanging on nothing?
Yeah, so it's not, you know, a flat disc with a dome on pillars.
Wrong.
It's hanging on nothing.
And by the way, the Bible was scientifically accurate when it calls space the empty place.
Because by the way, even just a little over 100 years ago, scientists still thought that
in outer space there was this substance called the ether.
They thought there was a medium in outer space and they didn't realize that outer space is
truly empty.
And so God was right, and by the way, that's why it's called space.
And God was right when he said it's the empty place.
There's no, you know, it's void.
There's not this, you know, ether or medium there between bodies.
It's empty.
And so God was right once again.
So that's what the firmament is and he's separating the water on the surface from the water in
the atmosphere because, of course, the air is filled with water vapor, the clouds and
so forth.
And even just the air that we breathe has a certain humidity to it.
I know we live in Arizona, but believe it or not, there is some humidity.