“See, the Lord is going to lay waste to the earth and devastate it; he will ruin its face and scatter its inhabitants... The earth will be completely laid waste and totally plundered. The Lord has spoken this word.” -Isaiah 25:1,3
In the end, God destroyed the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God departed from the waters.
On the first day, the people of the earth frolicked in foolishness. They drank wine and fornicated, saying “live for today,” and “if it feels good, do it”. The scholars researched and made themselves wise in their technological breakthroughs and evolutionary discoveries. But the Lord God says “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise.” God cursed this day and made it dark, for on this day he would awaken from his rest to correct the errors of his children.
God said, “Let us strip man from the privilege of our image and remove his rulership over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” It started with the women. They thought it was menstrual cramps. Debilitating, painful cramps that caused them to call in sick from their jobs and abstain from their usual daily activities. Then men puzzled over this as half of the world fell from commission. There was not enough time to figure it out before the men fell ill beside them. They clutched their sides for the horrible pain in their ribs. Beside them, the women went quiet from their shrieking and died in silence. The men watched their counterparts shrivel, their skin collapsing over their erased bones. As they disintegrated into dust, the men felt the motion in their ribs - of that long lost part returning. The children fell down into the streets and into their beds. They fell asleep next to their struggling fathers. Unlike their fathers, they did not feel the agony of ceasing as they too disintegrated into piles of brown dust. These are the words of the Lord God: “For dust you are, and to dust you will return.”
And God said, “Raze the land of living creatures according to their kinds” All the creatures of the land gathered with their kind and met together one last time. They did not erupt in noise or protest, for they knew the call of their maker. And in peace, they returned to the earth. -the second day.
And God said, “Let the water teem with corpses, and let the birds fall to the earth from the expanse of the sky.” So, the angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned to blood like that of a dead man, and every living thing in the sea died. And the angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. The inhabitants of the sea choked on this and died, floating up to the top of the blood until it bubbled with billions of formerly marvelous sea creatures belly-up in the redness. And the birds dived headlong from the sky into the buildings and into the ground, leaving red splatters and feathers at their points of impact. And they charged into the seas and rivers where they splashed to their doom inside the blood and among the floating creatures. -the third day.
And God said, “No longer will the lights in the expanse of the sky separate the day from the night.” With that, the orbit of the moon became erratic and unusually fast. It spun around the earth with increasing speed, its orbit growing wider and wider. Then, there remained no orbit at all, and the ball of grey clay unhinged, flying off into space to meet the sun. As this occurred, the brightness of the sun diminished. First, a third of the sun went dark, pockets of blackness on its surface like polka dot stains. It’s fires receded, and the once great star imploded on itself. The hot, molten orange extinguished, leaving nothing but a gigantic, black orb with no light to warm the planets. And once again, there was darkness. And the angels did lament, “The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space, rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air”-the fourth day.
Without heat, the air settled, and frost encrusted the earth - the trees and monuments alike. The land no longer produced vegetation. Instead, the stricken plants crystallized in the dark and cold and shattered to pieces in the slightness of the wind. Whole forests collapsed in the darkness, but they made no sound. -the fifth day
And God said, “Let the water under the sky be scattered across the lands so that no dry ground can appear.” And the frigid, red waters spilled over the land and flooded the continents. The blood washed through the city streets and swept away the debris left by humanity. And the blood swallowed up the land until the entire world was cloaked. Then, the atmosphere of the earth bled into the sea, until the air and the sea were one, and the entire world was a spinning ball of black blood. -the sixth day.
And God said, “Let there be darkness”, and extinguished the light from the universe. Now the earth was formless and empty. And God destroyed the heavens and the earth.
*quote from the fourth day from the poem “Darkness” by Lord Byron
*Bible quotations from the Zondervan New International Version Bible.
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