The Creation
How the Gods organized the heavens and the earth from eternal matter, through Jesus Christ, as the stage for the exaltation of God’s children.
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. With those words the scriptures of the whole world open the story of all things. But the question of how God created has divided the religions of men for centuries. The traditional creeds insist that God made the universe ex nihilo — out of absolutely nothing, by sheer command. The Restoration declares something at once humbler and grander: that God created not by conjuring matter from emptiness, but by organizing matter and intelligence that already existed, that have existed eternally, and that will exist forever. This is no minor distinction. It reshapes our understanding of God, of the cosmos, and of ourselves.
To Create Is to Organize
The book of Abraham preserves the plainest statement of the doctrine. Where Genesis says God “created,” Abraham reveals the deeper meaning: the Gods organized and formed what was already there.
“And then the Lord said: Let us go down. And they went down at the beginning, and they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth.”
This is not a careless choice of words. The Hebrew verb behind “created” in Genesis 1:1 is bara, a word that carries the sense of shaping, fashioning, and giving form — not of summoning substance from the void. The same chapter speaks of the Spirit moving upon the face of the waters, of dividing light from darkness, of gathering the seas and bringing forth dry land. Every act is an act of ordering. Throughout the creation narrative God is portrayed not as a magician filling an empty stage, but as a master builder arranging materials already at hand.
And what were those materials? The revelations of the Restoration answer without ambiguity: the very elements out of which the worlds are formed are eternal — without beginning and without end.
“For man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy.”
If the elements are eternal, then God did not bring them into being — He commanded, organized, and glorified them. This is why the Restoration can speak of a God who is a being of order and law, working in harmony with eternal realities rather than overriding them by raw fiat. Creation becomes an act of divine craftsmanship and love, not of magic.
Directed by the Father, Wrought Through the Son
The Creation was no solitary labor. It was the work of the Godhead, directed by the Father and accomplished through His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ. The New Testament testifies of this plainly: the Word who was with God in the beginning is the very agent by whom all things were made.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”
Paul confirms it: God “hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son … by whom also he made the worlds” (Hebrews 1:2). King Benjamin, prophesying in the New World, named the Creator outright: He “shall create all things, both in heaven and in earth” is the “Lord Omnipotent who reigneth” (Mosiah 3:8). And in the grand vision given to Moses, the Lord declared the staggering scope of the Son’s creative power.
“And by the word of my power, have I created them, which is mine Only Begotten Son … And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten.”
Nor did the Son act alone in carrying out the Father’s design. In the council of heaven before the world was, Abraham saw the noble and great ones reason together and pledge their labor to the work that would follow: “We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell” (Abraham 3:24). The Creation was a covenant labor of the heavens, foreseen and freely undertaken.
A Spiritual Creation Before the Physical
The Restoration also reveals a dimension of the Creation entirely lost from the Genesis account: before anything was made physically, it was first created spiritually. The pattern of all God’s works is to conceive in the spirit and then bring forth in the flesh.
“For I, the Lord God, created all things, of which I have spoken, spiritually, before they were naturally upon the face of the earth. … For in heaven created I them.”
Every tree, every living creature, every soul of man existed first as a spirit creation in the presence of God before it received a body of flesh and dwelt upon the earth. The physical world is therefore not an accident of matter but the patient unfolding of a design already perfect in the mind and purpose of God.
Four Witnesses Agree: And It Was Good
The doctrine of the Creation does not rest on a single text. The Lord has given us four harmonizing witnesses to the same events: the ancient account in Genesis 1, the prophetic restoration in Moses 2–3, the Abrahamic record in Abraham 4–5, and the sacred instruction of the temple. They differ in detail and emphasis, yet they testify in unison — one creation, one Creator, one purpose. And through each account runs the same refrain of divine satisfaction: at every stage God beheld His handiwork and pronounced it good, and at the last, when all was finished, “very good” (Moses 2:31).
That word matters. The material world is not evil, not a prison, not a fall from some purer spiritual state. It is the good and deliberate work of a wise God — light and water, sun and moon, herb and beast, all declared good before man ever walked among them. Creation is a blessing, and the earth itself is holy ground.
Created to Be Inhabited — and to Prove His Children
Why was the earth made at all? Not as an idle ornament in the heavens, but for a purpose as old as the council of the Gods. The earth is the stage upon which the plan of salvation would unfold — a place prepared for God’s spirit children to receive bodies, to be tried, and to grow toward exaltation.
“We will make an earth whereon these may dwell; And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.”
The earth was created to be inhabited — this is its very reason for being. Nephi, beholding the destruction of nations who reject their God, reasoned from this truth that the Lord would never let the earth fail of its purpose:
“Behold, the Lord hath created the earth that it should be inhabited; and he hath created his children that they should possess it.”
Here the whole purpose comes into focus. The eternal elements were organized, the spiritual creation preceded the natural, the Son wrought the work at the Father’s command — all so that the children of God might have a home, a probation, and a path to glory. The Creation is the opening act of the plan of salvation.
A Cosmos of Purpose
Consider, then, what the Restoration gives us. Not a universe sprung from nothing by an unknowable will, and not a cold accident of blind matter, but a cosmos organized by a God of order out of materials as eternal as Himself. The Father designed it; the Son built it; the noble and great ones labored in it; the heavens rejoiced over it; and through it all the divine verdict was pronounced — good, and very good.
This is a creation with you written into it. The same God who divided the light from the darkness and gathered the seas knew your spirit before the world was, and shaped this world for your sake — that you might dwell upon it, be proved by it, and rise through it toward the fulness of joy that belongs to spirit and element inseparably joined.
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth showeth forth His handiwork. They are not the leavings of chance. They are the deliberate, ordered, purposeful work of a Father who creates worlds without number for one reason above all others: to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of His children. To look upon the creation rightly is to read, written across the whole face of the cosmos, the love and the design of God.