Do you believe God created the earth in 6 literal days or "millions of years?" why?

Grace,
Doug

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Hell has no exits...

Hey Doug

Well Doug when you ask that question I guess it depends on what you definition of a day is. If I understand you correctly, you are asking whether it took six of what we today call a “day”. I am going to assume that you are referring to the dictionary definition of a day when you say “literal days”, that is:

• The period of light between dawn and nightfall; the interval from sunrise to sunset.
a. • The 24-hour period during which the earth completes one rotation on its axis.
b. The period during which a celestial body makes a similar rotation.
To begin with, “the earth was formless and empty”, one complete rotation on its axis is meaningless when we refer to a formless object. The other definition (The period of light between dawn and nightfall; the interval from sunrise to sunset) seems more promising but still, if I understand the scriptures correctly, the sun was not made until the fourth day. Yes the first offspring of divine command was light (let there be light), this was not the light from the sun but was some other form of light, in my opinion a Spiritual light.

As Jesus said in John 11, “8His disciples say unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again? 9 Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. 10 But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.” I do not believe that he meant that you had to walk in the sunlight, but rather in the light of God, but still he calls those twelve hours of light “day”. Again, does he mean twelve literal hours? Unless you live at the equator (Jesus did not), day and night never balance out that exactly. Even if there were exactly 12 hours of day, I did not believe that Jesus meant that if they walked whilst there was sunlight no one would harm them. He later says in John 12, “2:46I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.” In a sense, spiritual day is in Jesus. As the scriptures say in John 1, “1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and WITHOUT HIM WAS NOT ANYTHING MADE WHICH WAS MADE. 4 In him was life; and the LIFE WAS THE LIGHT OF MEN.” We know that everything was made during the day (on the first DAY, the second DAY, the third DAY). That is to say it was made in the light (without him was not anything made which was made). Jesus is the way the truth and the life (and the life was the light of men).

So finally, to answer your question, I do not believe that the days were literal days but there was something spiritual about the story of creation. I am even now struggling to explain what I mean so I bet stop before I weave to many webs but a believe the essence of the answer is what is a day to God? John9:4I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.

James

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The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ

How long were the days of Genesis 1?

What did God intend us to understand from the words He used?

by Russell Grigg
First published in:
Creation 19(1):23–25
December 1996–February 1997

Were the days of Creation Week of 24 hours duration or were they long periods of time? This article will discuss the Hebrew 'time' words which the author had available to him and what meaning he intended to convey by his choice of the specific words he used1.

Meaning of yôm
When Moses, under the inspiration of God, compiled the account of creation in Genesis 1, he used the Hebrew word yôm for 'day'. He combined yôm with numbers ('first day', 'second day', 'third day', etc.) and with the words 'evening and morning', and the first time he employed it he carefully defined the meaning of yôm (used in this way) as being one night/day cycle (Genesis 1:5). Thereafter, throughout the Bible, yôm used in this way always refers to a normal 24–hour day2,3. There is thus a prima facie case that, when God used the word yôm in this way, He intended to convey that the days of creation were 24 hours long.

Let us now consider what other words God could have used, if He had wanted to convey a much longer period of time than 24 hours.

Some Hebrew ‘time’ words
There are several Hebrew words which refer to a long period of time 4. These include qedem which is the main one—word term for 'ancient' and is sometimes translated 'of old'; olam means 'everlasting' or 'eternity' and is translated 'perpetual', 'of old' or 'for ever'; dor means 'a revolution of time' or 'an age' and is sometimes translated 'generations'; tamid means 'continually' or 'for ever'; ad means 'unlimited time' or 'for ever'; orek when used with yôm is translated 'length of days'; shanah means 'a year' or 'a revolution of time' (from the change of seasons); netsach means 'for ever'. Words for a shorter time span include eth (a general term for time); and moed, meaning 'seasons' or 'festivals'. Let us consider how some of these could have been used.

1. Event of long ago
If God had wanted to tell us that the creation events took place a long time in the past, there were several ways He could have said it:

yamim (plural of yôm) alone or with 'evening and morning', would have meant 'and it was days of evening and morning'. This would have been the simplest way, and could have signified many days and so the possibility of a vast age.

qedem by itself or with 'days' would have meant 'and it was from days of old'.

olam with 'days' would also have meant 'and it was from days of old'.

So if God had intended to communicate an ancient creation to us, there were at least three constructions He could have used to tell us this. However, God chose not to use any of these.

2. A continuing event from long ago
If God had wanted to tell us that creation started in the past but continued into the future, meaning that creation took place by some sort of theistic evolution, there were several ways He could have said it:

dor used either alone or with 'days', 'days' and 'nights', or 'evening and morning', could have signified 'and it was generations of days and nights'. This would have been the best word to indicate evolution's alleged aeons, if this had been meant.

olam with the preposition le, plus 'days' or 'evening and morning' could have signified 'perpetual'; another construction le olam va-ed means 'to the age and onward' and is translated 'for ever and ever' in Exodus 15:18.

tamid with 'days', 'days' and 'nights', or 'evening' and 'morning', could have signified 'and it was the continuation of days'.

ad used either alone or with olam could have signified 'and it was for ever'.

shanah (year) could have been used figuratively for 'a long time', especially in the plural.

yôm rab literally means 'a long day' (cf. 'long season' in Joshua 24:7, or 'long time' in the New American Standard Bible). This construction could well have been used by God if He had meant us to understand that the 'days' were long periods of time.

Thus, if God had wanted us to believe that he used a long–drawn–out creative process, there were several words He could have used to tell us this. However, God chose not to use any of these.

3. Ambiguous time
If God had wanted to say that creation took place in the past, while giving no real indication of how long the process took, there were ways He could have done it:

yôm combined with 'light' and 'darkness', would have signified 'and it was a day of light and darkness'. This could be ambiguous because of the symbolic use of 'light' and 'darkness' elsewhere in the Old Testament. However, yôm with 'evening and morning', especially with a number preceding it, can never be ambiguous.

eth ('time') combined with 'day' and 'night' as in Jeremiah 33:20 and Zechariah 14:7 could have been ambiguous. Likewise eth combined with 'light' and 'darkness' (a theoretical construction). If any of these forms had been used, the length of the 'days' of creation would have been widely open for debate. However, God chose not to use any of these.

Author’s Intention
The following considerations show us what God intended us to understand:

1. The meaning of any part of the Bible must be decided in terms of the intention of the author. In the case of Genesis, the intention of its author clearly was to write a historical account. This is shown by the way in which the Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul regarded Genesis—that is, they quoted it as being truth, not symbolic myth or parable5, 6. It was plainly not the author's intention to convey allegorical poetry, fantasy, or myth. And so what God, through Moses, said about creation in Genesis should not be interpreted in these terms.

Moses did, in fact, use some of the above 'long–time' words (italicized in the examples below, with root Hebrew words in square brackets), although not with reference to the days of creation. For example, in Genesis 1:14, he wrote, 'Let there be lights ... for seasons [ moed]'; in Genesis 6:3, 'My spirit shall not always [olam] strive with man'; in Genesis 9:12 'for perpetual generations [olam dor]'; in Leviticus 24:2, 'to burn continually [tamid]'; in Numbers 24:20 'that he perish for ever [ad]'; in Deuteronomy 30:20, 'He is thy light and the length of thy days' [yôm orek]'; in Deuteronomy 32:7, 'Remember the days of old [yôm olam]'; and so on.

Why did God not use any of these words with reference to the creation days, seeing that He used them to describe other things? Clearly it was His intention that the creation days should be regarded as being normal earth-rotation days, and it was not His intention that any longer time–frames should be inferred.

Professor James Barr, professor of Hebrew at Oxford University agrees that the words used in Genesis 1 refer to 'a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience', and he says that he knows of no professor of Hebrew at any leading university who would say otherwise7.

2. Children have no problem in understanding the meaning of Genesis. The only reason why other ideas are entertained is because people apply concepts from outside the Bible, principally from evolutionary/atheistic sources, to interpret the Bible.

3. The Bible is God's message to mankind and as such it makes authoritative statements about reality. If one removes any portion of the Bible from the realm of reality, God may still be communicating truth to us, but the reader can never be sure that he understands it as the author intended. Furthermore, if God's communication to us is outside our realm of reality, then we cannot know whether any account in the Bible means what the words actually say or whether it means something entirely different, beyond our understanding. For example, if we apply this criterion to the accounts of the resurrection of Jesus, perhaps the words could mean that Jesus did not rise from the dead physically, but in a way beyond our comprehension. When these sorts of word–games are played with the Bible, the Bible loses its authority, we lose the divine perspective on reality, and Christianity loses its life–changing power8.

4. If the 'days' really weren't ordinary days, then God could be open to the charge of having seriously misled His people for thousands of years. Commentators universally understood Genesis in a straightforward way, until attempts were made to harmonize the account with longs ages and then evolution.

Conclusion
In Genesis 1, God, through the 'pen' of Moses, is going out of His way to tell us that the 'days' of creation were literal earth–rotation days. To do this, He used the Hebrew word yôm, combined with a number and the words 'evening and morning'. If God had wanted to tell us it was an ancient creation, then there were several good ways He could have done this. If theistic evolution had been intended, then there were several constructions He could have used. If the time factor had been meant to be ambiguous, then the Hebrew language had ways of saying this. However, God chose not to use any construction which would have communicated a meaning other than a literal solar day.

The only meaning which is possible from the Hebrew words used is that the 'days' of creation were 24–hour days. God could not have communicated this meaning more clearly than He did in Genesis 1. The divine confirmation of this, if any is needed, is Exodus 20:9-11, where the same word 'days' is used throughout:

'Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, not thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.'

References and notes

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/2452.asp

_________________
Hell has no exits...

Hi all,


Presently, I do not firmly hold to any view. Asking how long "yom" is seems to me more like an attempt to satisfy modern curiosity on a modern question than an investigation into the real theological purpose of the creation narrative in Genesis.

This preoccupation on the first two chapters of Genesis often lead us to forget that [b]the Book of Genesis contains 50 chapters, not two.[/b] If we do so, we just might miss the point that God wants to say.

I know this is a controversial issue, I post the following merely to present an [i]alternative[/i] view from an evangelical. Again, I do not firmly hold to any particular view at present.


[b]On the Edge of the Millennium: Making Sense of Genesis 1[/b]
Dr. Rikki E. Watts
Regent College, Vancouver, BC

[i]Stories of origins are not stories that people hold to lightly. Stories of origins have to do with who we are as people. When people touch our stories of origins they touch us at our deepest core. Coming in as an Australian and watching the dynamics of Canadians as they try to work out what it means to be Canadian over against the people south of the border, one gets the sense of how important origins are in terms of knowing who we are. That's what Genesis is about: It's the story of origins, and it has to do with what it means to be human. Therefore, when we engage with a particular story of origins, we get passionately involved, and that's alright. It's alright to be objective some of the time, but there are some moments (as when you know you love your wife, and some guy is trying to beat her up) to get passionate about one's love. I think it's alright for people to be passionately engaged in their stories of origin. Of course, that means that when we discuss these things, and perhaps some of the views we might hold are being challenged in some way, it becomes pretty difficult. I understand that, and in fact I'll serve you warning that I don't want to come here as the holy hand grenade from Monty Python's search for the Holy Grail. I need to warn you that maybe some of the things I say might engender a bit of a response-as long as you hear I am not intentionally trying to kick your bucket, as it were. That's enough of Australian expressions. It means I'm really not trying to rain on your parade, you understand that? Help me! What's that Canadianese for this? I'm not intentionally trying to do that. I might also add that I'm one of these people who get passionate about what I believe too. I've tried very hard to be quiet when I lecture and it lasts about five minutes. I get excited about the Bible. Is that okay? I think it takes very special skill to teach the Bible and not get excited about it. I don't know how people can do that. Some people I have seen do it, and I think even angels want to look into these things, so I'm going to get passionate about it, and if you can just bear with me on that and just say, "Well, that's just Rikk Watts getting carried away," I won't take that too personally. That would be very kind to me. So, I beg your indulgence before I begin: It is a bit of a difficult issue.

How to get started on it? Let me tell you a little story. I used to teach at the Bible College of Victoria. This is in Australia, and as you know, Australians are crude, rude and ugly, except me. We had these sort of inauguration days, invitational days, when the new students arrive and get to meet the faculty. We have a bit of a dinner, and then the faculty have a turn at the podium, and they say some things about who they are and why they like being at the college. I was about seventh or eighth in the line, and following me was a good friend of mine, and he's got quite an interesting sense of humour. Now, I don't know if you understand this about Australians, but one of they ways in which you tell people your like them, is by insulting them. Now I'm not saying that's good--some of you will be scandalized by that, and probably rightly so, but it just happens to be the cultural dynamic. This college is an international college and we had a fair number of Asian students. So, I sit down and my friend gets up and he gets to his bit where he has to say why he enjoys being at the college. So, he says, "Well, my office happens to be opposite Dr. Watts's office, and the reason I enjoy being at the college is that every time I walk past his office I'm reminded of God's grace, because when I look in the door I see what sin can do to a man." These lovely Asian students.... They were just horrified. First of all, they're horrified because one of their lecturers is such a blatant sinner, and they're even more horrified because another lecturer has caused him to lose face in pubic.

Is this significant? Of course it is, you understand this. There are all sorts of assumptions that go on in communication, all sorts of assumptions. There are things we call forms of speech that are appropriate in a given culture, and what my friend was doing to the Australians first of all, was actually removing tension. It was affirming to Australian students that the faculty obviously were such friends that they could treat each other like that, because you don't insult people that you don't like, in a situation like that. You can only do it openly and blatantly like that because you're actually very good friends. All the Australian students laughed and felt very comfortable because this was obviously a college where people were free and relaxed and were alive and real and genuine. That's what it meant to them, but not to these Asian students. This is not their fault. No one's right or wrong about this; it's just because you've got two different cultural environments.

The same thing actually goes on in the Bible. We will get to Genesis eventually. But how many people have actually tried to read through the book of Isaiah? How many of you have found it like a dog's breakfast? That's another Australian expression but it just means "all over the place." You found that? It's your experience? Come on! Be honest! God knows the secrets of your hearts! How do you make sense of this thing? Or is it just chopping back and forth so that what you do if you're really spiritual is: You find a few purple passages like the Servant Song, Isaiah 53.... "Who has believed our report?" Ah, yes, that we know. We gather a collection of nice little bits but the rest of the book.... Who knows what in the world it's about? I think that one of the reasons is lies in the forms of speech. When I was studying Isaiah at Cambridge, I decided to dispense with the chapter divisions and the verses and to say to myself: How might people have read this back in ancient times? Let's assume--apologies to the Asian students--let's assume that I'm an Asian student reading an Australian Isaiah. What's going on? As you do that, you begin to realize that there are some parts of that book that are what people call "trial speeches" that presuppose a law court setting. Once you learn to pick up the literary markers for that, all of a sudden you go: "So that's why that passage is where it is." As scholars work on this, of course it's not particularly easy to do, because we can't talk to Jewish people who lived nearly 3,000 years ago. So we've got to do some digging, and we try and look around at comparative literature. In the end, you get a feel for this stuff, and I have to say to you that now I actually feel a lot more comfortable about what's going on in Isaiah, because I watch the way these forms of speech sit together. The problem is: Isaiah doesn't have a little tag on the chapter heading saying: "This is a trial speech. Please read this in the context of a law court." He doesn't tell you that. Why not? Because he assumes that his original audience to whom he's writing will understand that. He's not writing to Canadians; that's why he writes in Hebrew. Our problem is: We're not part of the culture, and we miss things.

One of the things that does us in is that we read Bibles that are in English. When you read an English text, you and I bring to it all of those rules about genre and form that we've grown up with in terms of reading texts. And it's really easy to slip over and think, "Oh! He's writing to me in Australian, because I'm reading my NIV in Australianese." But he's not! He actually wrote it in Hebrew to people who lived a long time ago in a very different culture, and they operated in different ways. Now I'm not against English translations of the Bible. I'm not at all. But you're trying to make sense of Isaiah, and you think, What's going on here?" And then you suddenly realize that you've got to take that cultural and historical wisdom seriously. Once you do, it starts to make sense.

So what happens is this: Some of us will go up in the break, after we've introduced ourselves as faculty, and we'll go and talk to some of the Korean students or students from Singapore and say, "Listen, I noticed you were a little bit concerned about what happened back there. Let me explain what the dynamic was." They're still not quite comfortable. And it's fair enough. They shouldn't be quite comfortable, because you don't leave your cultural world so quickly. But at least they begin to realize that maybe it wasn't quite the dynamic that they thought it was.

All of this is crucial when we come to read Genesis. It's probably a very, very old story. Whether somebody did some fine-tuning, a bit of editing to it--maybe 800 years before Christ, or during the exile--doesn't change the fact that those original underlying stories are probably very, very old indeed. That means before the Enlightenment.... So, what are we going to do with this? It's way before our time. We can't simply assume we know what style of literature it is and how we should read it, so how do we approach it? Just imagine that 5,000 years from now somebody comes across a Disney comic, finds it in the rubble somewhere, and comes across a comic with Mickey Mouse in it. Somebody begins to expound, "Oh, they believed in talking ducks back then." They might do that. The reason we today don't conclude this is because we recognize from the form, from the genre and the content, that something else is going on. What's the form that clues us in? First of all, there are plenty of new drawings, and we've learned that things like comics probably aren't real. No one has probably ever sat you down in a class and told you that. You've just absorbed it as you've gone along. Then, on the other hand, you've never seen a duck talk in your life. So, you have a reality check and you have the form of the literature you're looking at, and it begins to give you some idea of how we deal with this: Probably we're not to read Walt Disney as a literal accounting of what people think the world is like today.

Now you may try to talk about Walt Disney like that, but somehow you must be very careful when you come to the Bible! I understand that, because most of the people here, if not all of us, have built our lives on what the Bible says and on particular readings of what the Bible says. That's what makes this all the more nerve wracking. This is tense stuff here. Now, what are some things that we can say to get going? First of all, history writing as we know it in the Western world didn't really begin until about the eighth century BC in the Greek world. Heroditus and people like that began to write history in the tradition in which we now stand. Not everybody used to do it that way. Does that mean that people before Heroditus could not talk about their past well? Of course, they spoke about their past but they just didn't use the same kind of stories that Heroditus began to use. There are different ways of talking about your past, and they may not all be the sort of cultural stories that we're used to. They did talk about where they came from, they did deal with questions about what it meant to be human and what the nature of the world was, but they just didn't do it in terms of quantum mechanics. They did it in different ways. Does that mean it's not true? Some people think, "If it's not the way I'm used to telling history, then it can't be true." I think there's a problem with that. Different doesn't mean false. There are different ways of telling the truth, and that's okay. So we've got to be careful that we don't confuse truth and genre. There are different ways of telling the truth; you can do it through different genres. Just because the genre is different, that doesn't mean it's not true.

Consider this: "Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forests of the night." Is that true? That all depends. If you read this as a statement about the propensity of fellow cats to ignite spontaneously during their nocturnal wanderings, you're probably going to say, "No, it's not true. Tigers do not explode into balls of flame in the forests of the night." But, if you want to talk about the essence of tigerness, then it is true, isn't it? You can just see him burning bright in the forests of the night. Now I'm trained as an engineer, and I know there are some engineers who, when you talk about poetry, have no idea at all what's going on. It's a mystery to me how they ever got married. Something happened.... Maybe the good woman took pity on him. You see, it is true, but the question is: What sort of truth is it trying to express? You can have a multi-volume DNA map of the gene on the tiger or something like that, but what's actually going to give you the better impression of tigerness: those massive sets of volumes of all those coding representing the DNA or that little couplet, "Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forests of the night"? It's poetry, but it's true. But just make sure we understand what sort of truth it is that it's trying to share.

We live with this type of thing all the time. Back in the late 50s, early 60s, if you opened up a newspaper, chances were you'd see a picture a few pages in, maybe on the editorial page. In this picture there would be an expansive water, and on one side would be a man, an old man with a white goatee; he'd be wearing some sort of coat with stripes on it; he'd have a big top hat on with stars around the crown of it and all these lines sort of shooting up. Who am I talking about? Uncle Sam. And who's going to be on the other side of the water? A big bear, wearing a cap with a red star on it. Now, this is a newspaper. Newspapers tell the truth. Therefore, if I can just find the right body of ocean, I'm going to see this man with the white goatee on one side and this big bear who runs around with a hat and a five-pointed red star on it on the other side. Now you realize that's ridiculous, of course. But is the picture true? Not if you're looking for literal Uncle Sams, but if you happen to grow up under the shadow of the mushroom cloud, then of course it was more true than you care to remember.

There are different ways of sharing the truth. It doesn't have to be the sort of reading we're used to. What does this have to do with Genesis? I think everything. One of the reasons is that I don't think if they wrote histories like we understand them. If that's what they were doing back then, my feeling is that nobody would have known what to do with it, because they didn't tell their stories like that. What we've got to do, is take a step back and try and hear how they told their stories back then. So when God speaks to people in the ancient world, it's no surprise to discover that he doesn't use a MacIntosh with DVD, CD ROM, such as I just got a couple of weeks ago and it's great. But did you notice that God didn't give Moses a CD-ROM? And what's intriguing is when God spoke to Moses and made a covenant with Israel, God did not invent a whole new spiritual thing that nobody had seen before. Do you know why he didn't? Because if they hadn't seen it before, they wouldn't know how to interpret it.

You and I know how to interpret movies because we've grown up with them, and we've become aware of genres. We understand what's going on. You've got to understand the genre. Some of you may or may not have seen the Full Monty. For a lot of people this is a scandalous film because it's about some guys who take their clothes off. But it's not about that. It's actually a parable. It's a story about what it means to be male in a world where the only successful males are the guys who look like Apollo and have a job and have all these women chasing them around. Here are five guys that don't fit that, and they want to be accepted for who they are. The great moment in the film comes just before they do their dance routine. One of the guys is going to pull out because he's a bit of a chubby fellow. He comes home to his wife, and the house is ominously silent. He calls out to her, but there's no response. He goes upstairs. Now she has discovered this funny little thing he was going to be wearing in his routine, and she immediately jumps to the wrong conclusions. When he meets her upstairs, he's trying to explain, "No, I was doing this because we're out of work, and I'm trying to earn some money because I love you." And then he says, "We're going to get involved in this strip routine." She looks at him, and she says, "You! A little note of comic relief, which is good. There's a very clever moment. You just need that because there's such an intense scene, to which the whole things been building. He says, "We weren't that bad." And everyone laughs a bit more. He then comments that he is no longer involved. She asks why not. This is the crucial moment of the film because he looks at her and in this broken voice he says, "Who would want to see this dance?" That's what the film's about, folks. It's a gospel film. It is, because there are so many men in the world who feel just like that, and so many women who look in the mirror every morning and say, "Who would want to see at this dance?" The Gospel is about God saying, "In Jesus, I would. I would. You can stand before me utterly open, and I will love you." That's what it's about. Sometimes, what happens, is if we're not familiar with this stuff, our initial response is, "Naked men, oh!" (Although actually, you don't see anything really, right?)

Now, some things then about Genesis and how they used to tell stories. Apparently, they didn't have history like we have it, so what did they do? One of the first things we can do, is just look at the document itself, look at Genesis 1. Our question is: what sort of form is this? Is this a trial speech? Is this an Australian greeting? "Every time I look across at Dr. Watts's office I can relate to what sin can do to a man." Is that what it is? Is it a piece of historical reporting? Of all the different styles of literature and forms of speaking that are out there in the second millennium BC, what's going on here in Genesis? Which one is it? We shouldn't just assume we know. Let's look at it and ask some questions. What form is this? As you begin to read through the story, you notice there are some things. There's lots of repetition: "And God said, and God said, and God said, and God said." "Let there be, let there be, let there be, let there be." "And there was, and there was, and there was, and there was." "And God saw, and God saw, and God saw, and God saw." Now if you come from a Pentecostal tradition like I do, you'll immediately recognize what form that is: It's called the chorus. And if you happen to come from my particular brand of Pentecostalism, it means: until you've sung it fifteen times the presence of God can't be there. (Which is not so bad if you're singing one of the great hymns of the Reformation, but it gets a bit tiring when you're singing "Dear Jesus, kick me through the goal posts of life." Right? To be sure, I'm still glad for my Pentecostal tradition.) Do you get the drift? There's all this repetitive language, the same stuff over and over and over again.

What does that sound like? It sounds sort of poetic and structured doesn't it? We know what Hebrew poetry looks like, and we know Genesis 1 doesn't look like that. So Genesis 1, whatever it is, is not strict poetry. But neither is it strict narrative. And that's clear just because of the repetitive form of the thing. You hear something like that, and you're going to recognize that somebody's up to something here. There's some sort of literary structure involved. Real history reporting like we know it does not read like that. When was the last time you picked up a newspaper story or read the life of Winston Churchill and you read, "And Churchill said, and Churchill said, and Churchill said, and Churchill said"? You don't get that. Life's not like that.

We're just trying to ask some questions about what the form of literature is, how we make sense of it. We notice that there are a number of groups of sevens. That's interesting. Today, in the computer world, sevens are not particularly significant. It's all zeros and ones and tens and hundreds and thousands. Numbers, certain numbers, have significance for us. In the ancient world, other numbers had significance, like 7--not just in Israel, in Egypt as well. So, it's interesting that they pick a number that has this sort of significance. Furthermore, if we have a little bit of a look at it in detail, we'll notice that we have parallel sets of three days. Days one, two and three are paralleled by days four, five and six. How do we know? Because the third and the sixth day (and only those two days) have a double announcement and a statement of approval. That looks like somebody has loaded the dice on this one. It's looking architectonic; it's looking structured; there's some sort of patterning going on at this point. We're not making any comments about whether this story is true or not. We're just looking at the text that lies before us, looking for clues, because this was not written to me. I don't speak Hebrew, I didn't live in the world that then was, many thousands of years ago. I am, if you will pardon me, the Asian student listening to the Australian.

On top of this sort of parallel of the various days, you get this seventh day that sort of sits above the top like some sort of cap stone. This day, unlike all the others, has no end. Ever noticed that? There's no evening and morning to the seventh day. That's intriguing. The seventh day has no end according to this story. That's worth noting. Why not? What's going on at that point? And then, if you look at the three days, you'll notice that the first day has one creative act, the second day has one creative act with two parts, and the third day has two creative acts. The same thing is repeated on the fourth and fifth and sixth day.

At this point, you're asking yourself what is going on here. This highly structured narrative does not look anything like the random stuff that we associate with normal history recounting. Of course, that shouldn't surprise us. Why not? Because these stories are predate considerably our way of telling history. Of course, it doesn't mean they're not true, it just means they're different. They're telling the truth in a different way. In fact, as you look at this progression through the days, you get this sense of building toward a climactic point. Someone has designed it to have it that way, it seems to me. All of this so far has to do with the form, the genre. But there are some other things to think about. One such thing is: How does this relate to our experience of reality? Think of the Walt Disney example. You've got the form, you've got the content, and you put the content along with the experience of reality and you say, "I've never seen talking ducks, and this form thing... well, I've seen this form before. It has to do with comics, so this is probably not true in the sense of people trying to tell me that there are talking ducks." The same thing happens with Jesus' miracles. You are meant to be amazed at what Jesus does. Your first response is meant to be, "I don't believe this." The problem is: As Christians we are so used to these stories that they don't mean anything to us anymore. So, Jesus stands up in the boat, the disciples are panicking because there's a great storm, and they wake him up. And it's probably not, "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, we hate to disturb you, sovereign Lord, would you please...." It's probably like, "Mate, grab a bailer or do something, we're dying here." And Jesus does, doesn't he? What does he do? He stands up and just says, "Shut up!" That's pretty strong. And you know what it? It does. And then Mark tells us the disciples are more afraid of Jesus than they were of the storm. When was the last time you read that story and shook in your boots? We don't. It has become an normal thing to us. Our first response is, "I don't believe this." Neither did they. They had no category for a human being who can tell the sea what to do. There's only one person who can tell the sea what to do, and that's God. I'm a Christian not because I believe in resurrections. I'm a Christian because I don't. I don't believe in resurrections, but this one happened; that's why I'm a Christian. If resurrections happened all over the place, what's so special about them? I don't believe they happen. Jesus did something like this. He told the sea what to do. That's why I'm a believer.

Bultmann, and a number of other people, looked at these things and said, "Goodness, he's talking about a reality that never happened or that doesn't fit in my view of history. Therefore, the gospels must be myth." But there's a problem there, and the problem is the form problem, because the gospels are simply not myth. That's not their genre. So what happens is that people like Bultmann let the historical reality question override what the form tells them. Therefore, they say resurrections can't happen. Strauss says it's all mythological stuff. This means that they have to have the gospels being written in a form or genre that they're not. What we're realizing now is that the gospels are pretty close to ancient biographies, which means they are concerned to tell the truth. If I have some questions about reading Genesis literally, it's because the genre is different. The genre of the gospel is such a thing that it's talking about what I would regard as history. It doesn't give me the option of saying, "Well, the resurrection's just a story. This is a safeguard for some of you who might worry a little about the consequences of what I'm saying. If this is true about Genesis 1, then what about the rest of the Bible? The genre saves us here. Once you get to Genesis 12, things change dramatically. From all of those repetitive patterns it doesn't sound like what we're used to when we talk about literal history.

Think about it for a moment: Do you really believe it would take the God you and I worship 24 hours to do anything? Or twelve? Think back for just a moment. Do you really believe it would take him twelve hours to do this? Half a day? In fact, a working day in the ancient Near East. Why couldn't he do it before lunch time? What's so hard about it that he can't do it like that? I put it to you: why not 24 hours and ten minutes? The whole universe--sun, moon, stars--he creates in twelve hours, but why does it take just as long just to put some vegetation on the earth? Now what's going on? Think about it. Just maybe that's not the point. Maybe that's not what Genesis is after. Some people might say, "But excuse me, it says, 'Tiger, tiger, burning bright.'" It does. But the genre tells you that maybe they're not talking about tigers literally exploding. The genre looks like it's not what we're used to as literal history. It doesn't mean it's not true. "Tiger, tiger, burning bright" is true. But don't go running around trying to defend burning tigers. Sometimes--I hope you'll forgive me for putting it this way--I think we're running around trying to argue for burning tigers. It says morning and evening, and therefore it must have been. But what if, given the structure of the thing, it actually looks more like poetry than straight narrative? Just maybe in trying to defend our burning tiger we're not only not defending the Word of God, but we're actually bringing it into disrepute. It's possible.

What, then, are we going to do with this Genesis thing? Form-wise and content-wise, I want to suggest to you that the evidence seems to point toward it not being a literal recounting of what happened when the stop watch started. Form wise and in terms of how the content corresponds to our knowledge of God, it just doesn't look like that's the case. And of course, there are problems when you read Genesis 2: You will find in Genesis 2 that there is a statement that there's no shrub or plant yet appearing on the earth, because there's no human being there to do some stuff to them. But you discover in Genesis 1 that the vegetation is there before human beings appear. We don't have much time to go through this in much detail, but if you start reading Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 alongside one another in terms literal history, you'll find there are some problems. Maybe we're also committing a massive act of cultural imperialism: forcing the text to fit our preconceived ideas of how God must speak to us. We get ourselves into all sorts of knots. How can you have light before the sun, moon and stars appear? Once you start reading the literature that people back in the second millennium BC were writing, you realize they were never concerned with these sorts of things. This doesn't even enter their heads.

What, then, did they think about? I have all sorts of interesting ideas. Let's just quickly go through some for a few moments. The Sumerians back in the third millennium BC have no great mythic epic poems. They have some brief explanation of origins before they start talking about their society. Why is that important? It's important because if you and I keep telling kids in school that they're nothing but an accident and nothing but a meaningless belch in the vast cosmos, and that it's only the fittest who survive, why should we be surprised that we end up with a society like we have? How can we tell our kids these things and then turn around and say, "Now treat each other nicely." You don't get to the top of the evolutionary ladder by being nice! We wring our hands when business people who've been brought up on this actually begin to behave like it and happily consume and destroy other companies and disregard their employees in the process. Maybe some of you have experiences with that. Here's the point: These people, who lived almost five thousand years ago, understood sometimes better than we do that these stories of origin have a profound impact on the shape of a society. Somehow, to argue in the light of this about whether it took God took 24 hours or not seems to raise the question: What has that got to do with the shape of modern Vancouver?

Some of the Babylonian stories, like the Enuma Elish creation myth, actually read a little bit like days of our lives, because you've got all this stuff going on: abortion, matricide, murdering your father, granddad wanting to kill the grandkids (they're making too much noise). This seems a bit like abortion, doesn't it? "This fetal tissue is a nuisance to me. I think I'll just destroy it." The kids hear about this, and they're terrified. So there's a rebellion, and the granddad god gets killed. Then there's Marduk, and Marduk is the super god: he's twice as strong as everybody else, so he has four arms instead of two. Tiamat, the granddad's wife, is now living with a guy who led the rebellion. There is conflict between Tiamat and Marduk. Tiamat comes to destroy Marduk, but Marduk gets all his mates drunk, and while they're drunk he gets a deal that if he gives them victory they will give him everything and he'll be the great king. They do this while they're stone drunk Marduk goes out and fights Tiamat. As she opens up her mouth to destroy him, he shoots an arrow down her throat and she pops. What's interesting is what he does with her body: He takes this goddess of water, and he splits her body into two halves and builds the heavens and the earth out of it. Heaven and earth, made from Tiamat's corpse, becomes Marduk's temple.

This is the way you think about creation stories in the ancient world. These stories are talking about places in which people lived. When Baal wins a great victory over the sea god Yam, a similar sort of thing goes on: After gaining dominion, a house or a temple is constructed. That's what they do. Victorious gods build palaces and temples. Marduk does it when he defeats Tiamat: He divides her corpse and stretches out one half like a roof to form the heavens and the rest is like the foundation to his palace. Temple building is what you do when you're victorious and you're establishing your realm. When you think about this for a moment, it makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? How do we have order? What brings order to the ancient world, in the second and third millennia BC? What brings order is the great king who establishes his realm and his palace. We can see this with David. David's not allowed to build the temple to Yahweh. Why not? Because he hasn't finished the conquest yet. When Solomon comes along, and the chronicler tells you that Solomon had his own jacuzzi and they're all sitting under their own fig tree, that it's great peace, then he is allowed to build the temple. This is what they all do. It's the pattern. Palace temple building is the metaphor for bringing order and a place in which people can find peace and rest. All over the ancient world that's what they do.

What I want to suggest to you is that maybe these are the sort of spectacles we ought to be reading the Genesis story through, that basically what we have here is a story about the construction of a realm--not by Marduk, not by Tiamat, but by Yahweh. Isaiah and others will pick up on that mythological language from Babylon and say, "No, it wasn't Marduk who did it, it was Yahweh who slew Rahab" (cf. Job 26:12; Ps 89:10; Isa 51:9 ). They're using this mythological language to make their point. Not that they're saying that the myth is true, but they want to say that something is true about Yahweh. So, think about the world of the ancient Near East in terms of a palace, as a temple and great kings building their palace temple. In fact, in Sumerian and Hebrew the word for "palace" and the word for "temple" is the same word. Why? Because the earthly kings imitate the gods. The god has his temple, so does the king. Yahweh has his palace, so does the king. Why does David want to build God a house? He doesn't want to live in this beautiful house with Yahweh living in a tent. He know it's not right. He's living better off than Yahweh. You just don't do that in the ancient world.

If this is the basic framework for thinking about creation, all of a sudden some interesting things come to light, it seems to me. When you read the Bible, what do you find in terms of the imagery that it uses? Psalm 104:2ff: "He wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters." Isaiah 24:18: "The windows of heaven are open, the foundations of the land tremble." Isaiah 40:22: "He sits enthroned above the circle of the land; its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy and spreads them out like a tent to live in." I could go on and on and on: language of foundations of the earth, pillars of the heavens, gates and bars, canopies. What's the metaphor? It's quite straightforward. Throughout the ancient world the metaphor for creation is temple palace building. All of sudden Isaiah makes sense. "The heavens are my throne; the earth is my footstool" (Isa 66:1). Where do you find a throne and a footstool? A palace temple, of course? Makes perfect sense.

There are a lot of Christians unfortunately, who would look after their lounge rooms better than they look after God's palace temple. We would never wreak the havoc in our backyards with toxic waste as we do it to God's palace temple. Why? Because our view of creation is pagan. We don't have the biblical view. If "the heavens are my throne and the earth is my footstool," that means that the earth is also God's palace temple. Temples are sacred things, and so is the earth. I'm not going New Age on you. I'm just going biblical. I'm just being Mosaic. You don't worship the earth. We didn't say the earth was a god but we said it is sacred because it is Yahweh's palace temple. That's why in Revelation he says, "Those who destroy the earth I will destroy." This means that it makes perfect sense that at the end of Revelation we don't all catch the heavenly elevator out of here. We come back because the new Jerusalem comes where? From heaven to earth. That wouldn't make any sense if the earth is just junk to be done away with, but it makes perfect sense if the heavens and the earth are God's palace temple. It's a great pity it took the "greens" to realize that we ought to treat the world with respect. It's actually Christian to do that. You know that? So if you're concerned about the environment and you're doing environmental studies, you know what you're doing? In one sense you're being a priest in the temple of the most high God. Interesting isn't it?

Back to Genesis 1. With that sort of metaphor stuff going on, what's happening in the story here? What happens on Day 1? The light appears and God divides between the darkness and the light. This language of "divide," what does that mean? Again, you can't be Australian or Canadian and understand what this means. You've got to go back and think a bit. It's very interesting to notice that that language of "division" is used in two settings. First, it's used in a religious, priestly setting. What does that sound like? Temple, doesn't it? It's also used in a judicial setting. Dividing is what kings do. That's what the law is all about. Solomon is known for rightly dividing, discerning, what's right and wrong. So the language of division has both priestly and royal connotations. Is that a surprise? Not if you understand that creation is a palace temple, because palace has royal connotations, and so does temple. Dividing is exactly the language you want to use if you're going to keep it consistent with the metaphor.

What happens on the next day? Another act of division: waters above and waters below. Notice there's this increasing precision or detail in terms of bring order to what was originally an amorphous mass. God is the one who's establishing this space. You need boundaries, defining it, dividing it. Then comes day 3: God gathers the waters, and the dry land appears. Now you can understand what's going on in the exodus story, because this language used to describe dry land doesn't occur very often in the Bible. Here in Genesis you have the wind hovering over the waters. The waters are gathered together, and the dry land appears. That's exactly what happens when Israel stands in front of the Red Sea. And that's when they sing their song about Yahweh being the creator. They suddenly understand that it's not Marduk who destroys Tiamat and divides her and builds a place in which people can live. No, Yahweh is it work. What does He do to the sea? Moses stretches out his staff. What's a staff? It's a sign of judicial authority. That has to do with the law. That has to do with royal prerogatives. He stretches it out, and what happens to the sea? Whoooooosh! The dry land appears. What's going on in the exodus? It's a new creation. God did that to establish a new Israel with a new place in which to live. That's what's going on here. Water is gathered together, dry land appears.

What happens on the other days? On the first day God creates the light. What happens on the corresponding fourth day? The sun, moon and stars appear. What's their job? They have a specific task: Their job is to rule the night and the day. Who rules? What does that language apply to? It's kingdom language. It's palace language. It's all part of the same metaphor. So what do they do? God has created the realm, and he has filled that realm with rulers. It fits the metaphor perfectly. That's what they all talk about in the ancient world. The gods built palaces and ruled. They have no other metaphor to work with. In the ancient world, if you want to talk about the emergence of order, you have one metaphor. You know in your experience, it's the emergence of the city and the king with his palace, and it's his law that brings order and enables you then to grow crops and protect yourself from marauding enemies. That's the metaphor you have for the coming of order. Therefore, when God speaks to these people he doesn't give them a CD Rom, but he takes the language they understand. The point is not how long it took. The point is: I, Yahweh, am the one who built this palace temple, not Marduk. I'm the one who creates the realm and then puts the rulers in it. And notice something. Instead of the sun, moon and stars determining what happens to your future, they're right down there at the very bottom of the pile as your servants. They don't rule you. I summon them forth to do my work. Isaiah picks this up; he talks about Yahweh summoning the stars like a shepherd. That doesn't exactly work in twentieth-century Canada, but, then, it's not written to us. And we'll see how it does work in twentieth-century Canada in a moment.

What happens on the next day? Birds and fish. Why have birds and fish? Of course, they're filling the corresponding realm of the waters above and the waters below (day 2). Remember all those patterns I talked about? One command, one command of two parts, etc. See how architectonic this is? This is structured. It's trying to tell us something that's true, but it's probably not trying to tell us something in terms of the literal history; it's more concerned with meaning. Because that's how people told their stories back then.

Is it true that God created the world? Absolutely. Is it true that the world is his palace temple? Absolutely. Did it take him twelve literal hours? I think not. It's just a work day. God is a worker; he's building his palace. So what does he do? Well, the first day he does this, and the second day he does that, and then He goes home and has tea, puts his feet up and watches MTV with a can of coke. Finally, on the sixth day, corresponding to the third, Adam and Eve are noticed there, discreetly hidden behind some bushes. No Full Monty tonight, folks. Now this is interesting. Suppose you're building a temple. Don't think Christianly or Jewishly. Think like a rank pagan. What's the last thing you're going to stick inside your temple? What's the last thing you're going to put inside it? The carpet? The pews? Flowers? What's the last thing that goes and lives inside the temple? The image of the god. What's the last thing God puts inside his palace temple? Us. Folks, you have got to hear that! It's no wonder this story eventually results in justice and freedom for all! In the Babylonian story human beings are made from the blood of a rebel god, mixed with earth, and they're created because the feet of rebel gods got tired of doing the dirty work. Imagine what a society looks like where that is your story. It's no wonder you end up with a Babylonian king who makes decisions, and everybody's life is in his whim. But if you tell this story where Yahweh builds his palace temple, that means you've got to think twice before you decide to buy out a business and throw fifty people out of work, because only people, and not businesses, are made in God's image!

I'm not denying that sometimes you have to make appropriate business decisions. But you know why Israel gets thrown out of the land, even though they're worshipping in the temple? (By the way, Israel's temple is like a mini-universe, designed to look like the universe symbolically.) They're doing all that stuff, they're worshipping, they're praying, they're even having fast periods. So, they're into worship seminars, they're into prayer and fasting, and what does God say? "Who told you to come and wake me up here? Who told you to come in and make this noise in my courts?" Why does he get upset? Because they're selling the poor for a pair of shoes. That's why. Why is that a problem? Because it's not the worship services that were made in God's image. It's not the long time in fasting that was made in God's image. It's not even our wonderful church buildings that have cost us millions that are made in God's image. People are made in God's image. And that's why God throws Israel out of the land. Do you understand what that means? This is radical stuff.

In the ancient world, kings would make images of themselves and place them in corners of their realms to demonstrate that they were the ones who ruled the territory. Like all politicians, they liked to have their photographs everywhere. Probably the best analogy is the modern flag. When I first went to the U.S. I had a beach towel that had the Australian flag on it. And for an Australian that's no big deal, but it scandalized my American friends who couldn't believe that here I was lying on the beach and drying myself with an Australian flag. We Ausies thought this was terribly patriotic. But my friends were scandalized. Imagine you're in occupied France in World War II, and you go to Paris. Right there in the centre are the Gestapo headquarters, and there are some very burly guards standing out the front, maybe a platoon of them--really tough looking, mean people. You're there with a friend, and your friend goes and grabs this flag, this swastika, tears it up, jumps up and down on it, spits on it and burns it and then does some other things. What do you think these guards are going to do? Invite him in for schnapps? Why not? It's only a piece of cotton, isn't it? No, it's not. It stands for something else. Friends, you are not only a piece of cotton. It doesn't matter what you think when you stand in front of the mirror, and you think, "Who would want to see this dance?" Genesis 1 says, "I do." Signed "God." Why? Because human beings are made in his image. That means that every act of abuse against another human being is an act of high treason against God. Every time I do some shoddy work to make an extra shekel, every time I have people working in inhumane conditions so I can buy my BMW, what do you think God has to say about that? (Nothing against BMW's by the way, I'd love to have one.) It means every time I come home and I'm a little bit cranky because of a hard day at the office I have to think twice before I let my wife have it, and kick the dog and have the kids run for their lives.

Just imagine what it would be like if we had a government that lived on that basis. Would you like to live in a country like that? What does it mean to your economics. It is possible. You just have to remember though that people really matter. And they shouldn't be allowed to fall through the cracks. What if Christians really started to live like that? That's what this story's about. On the last day, the seventh day, God sits finally enthroned in his glory. It's exactly as you would expect. What does Solomon do? He builds his palace and he's at rest . That's what you do. It's the metaphor. I would, therefore, suggest to you that Genesis 1 is really not a story about what order and how long it took. That's not the primary point. I think what it's about in terms of the culture is: It's part of this whole story of conceiving this world as a palace temple, about kings, images of the god. It says: Not Marduk, but Yahweh is the one who gave basic structure to the world. This place has been finely tuned and designed for us to live in. And it's God's palace temple, not mine to treat at my whim. Others and I are made in God's image. If you begin to live that, you're going to know what it means to be truly human. You and I are not accidents. How did God cause this to come about? Did He do it by evolution? That's not the issue. He may have. I happen to think there are some scientific problems with that. He may have. Who knows? That's not the point of the story. The point of the story is its meaning, its significance. [/i]

I believe the says were literal days for God went to the trouble to keep stating that it was evening and morning of the first day, or second or whatever. That indicates a solar day.

There are some very respected names on either side of this issue.

Old earth: James Dobson, John Ankerburg, Hugh Ross, Norman Geisler(though he is very partial to Young Earth Creationists and as further evidence coninues to mount, I don't see him holding this opinion much longer)

Young earth: Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, Jonathan Sarfati

As far as the Genesis account goes; I believe the plain reading of scripture is sufficient. Dr. Russell Humphries has what he calls the "Timothy Test." It goes like this:
[quote]To make these points[of a plain meaning of Scripture] a little clearer, imagine a Jewish Christian of the first century who understands Greek, Hebrew and the Scriptures well. Let's call him "Timothy," since Paul's protege was called that. But let's also imagine that this Timothy knows nothing of the advanced scientific knowledge of his day, such as Aristotle's works. All that Timothy knows is from either everyday expeirience or careful study of Scripture, which Paul says is sufficient for wisdom (2 Tim. 3:15). Now if Scripture really is straightforward and sufficient, then the meaning Timothy derives from the words is probably the meaning that God intended for everybody to get.[/quote]

It's interesting that it's not until the 19th century when the science of the day was starting to proclaim an old earth that we began to see theologians commenting on Genesis saying that the six days of creation were not necessarily six days.

To paraphrase A W Tozer he said don't go around worrying about what they say, all you have is one fallen head instructing another fallen head.

Science is continually changing. I think if we'll hold on a littly longer we'll see the plain reading of Genesis vindicated :-) .

In Christ,
Jeremy Hulsey

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Jeremy Hulsey

I believe there is a young earth and the world was created in 6 literal days.

God created plants on the 3rd day and then the sun on the 4th:

Genesis 1:11-19 KJV
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
And the evening and the morning were the third day.
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

It only makes sense that these were actual 24 hour days. If God created plants and then waited 1000 years or however long, before creating the sun, don't you think that they would have all died from lack of sunlight? Plants have this process called photosynthesis that requires sunlight in order for them to live. If there was no sunlight for 1000 years before God make the sun, we would have no plants today. And probably no people cause we require the oxygen they produce. God had to make the sun within 24 hours, not years, in order for the plants to live.

God make the order of creation the way He did for a reason. Mabye He knew people would come up with this evolution and old earth idea. And he needed a way to prove creation and young earth.

Why do we question so much of the Bible? Just take it for what it is. Stop trying to make something out of nothing. God means what He wrote. There are no hidden meanings.

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If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. 2 Chronicles 7:14

[quote]It's interesting that it's not until the 19th century when the science of the day was starting to proclaim an old earth that we began to see theologians commenting on Genesis saying that the six days of creation were not necessarily six days.[/quote]

I think the Timothy Test is a good idea. My own views are shaped around something which is usually called the Gap Theory and which is usually discounted 'because it was only invented to accommodate the great ages indicated in Darwinian evolution.' I don't believe it because it provides a Darwinian accommodation but because I think it is the best scriptural hypothesis. It was held my many solid evangelicals; Graham Scroggie, Campbell Morgan, Oswald Chambers.

It is called the Gap Theory because it suggests that there is an gap of indeterminate length between the first two verses; In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. [GAP] And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (Gen 1:1-2 KJV)

The Theory is based on the idea that Gen 1:1 is all that we have as Divine revelation as to how the ‘heavens and earth’ were created. The word ‘bara’ which scholars often say indicates ‘creation’ is only used in verses 1, 21, 26,27. bara certainly does not seem to be used of human creativity.

Of the physical world:
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Of animal life:
Gen 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Of human life:
Gen 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Gen 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

The Hebrew word ‘asah’ is used more frequently [Ge 1:7,11-12,16,25-26,31,2:2-4,18,] It is said to mean “it means to fashion, or produce, to prepare out of existing material e.g. to build a ship, or a house or to prepare a meal.”

Gen 1:2 could legitimately be translated; And the earth became without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. There is an example of this is Gen 2:7 where we are told that man ‘became a living soul’. It is the same verb and construction. It is also found when Lot’s wife ‘became’ a pillar of salt. This makes it possible to consider an event which occurred in verse 2 to ‘heavens and earth’ which had been created in verse 1. ["was" is occasionally used with a simple accusative in the sense of "to be made" or "to become"].

According to the Gap Theory, the earth (not the heavens) became ‘tohu’ and ‘bohu’.

"without_form" is "tohu" (Hebrew)
Strongs 08414
Ge 1:2 De 32:10 1Sa 12:21 Job 6:18,12:24,26:7 Ps 107:40
Isa 24:10,29:21,34:11,40:17,23,41:29,44:9,45:18-19, 49:4,59:4 Jer 4:23

Isaiah 34:11 refers to a ruined city; Gesenius defines it as "that which is wasted, laid waste"

"void" is "bohu" (Hebrew)
Strongs 0922
Ge 1:2 Isa 34:11 Jer 4:23

There are only 3 places where both words are used together; Ge 1:2 Isa 34:11 Jer 4:23. The latter two both refer to ‘ruins’ caused by an outpouring of God’s wrath.

The Isa 45:18 says quite specifically that God did NOT create the earth "tohu". If Ge 1:2 describes the condition of the created earth at its very beginning, then it would appear that Isaiah contradicts Genesis. The best-fit hypothesis (to my mind) is that some tragedy or judgment intervened between Ge 1:1 and Ge 1:2.

Our first "view" of the earth in Ge 1:2 is that it is baptised, totally immersed. Baptism is always a picture of judgment to death. Of another "baptism" Peter says "being overflowed with water (it) perished" 2Pe 3:6 1Pe 3:20-21

A further distinction may be observed in that Ge 1:1 speaks of the creation of "heavens and earth", but Ge 1:2 speaks only of a ruined earth. This accords with Psalm 19 where it is the heavens particularly which declare God's glory, rather than the whole of creation as we find it. The glory of God is in all creation, but it is the heavens particularly which "speak" it clearly. Ps 19:1-6

I think this makes Biblical room for an old earth. According to the Genesis account the ‘day count’ began with ‘Let light be’. Whatever the timings of days in the remainder of Genesis 1 may be, Genesis 1:1,2 give no details of ‘creative words’ from God. These verses only state facts, giving no comment on the means. The ‘creative words’ of Genesis begin in verse 3.

Just my thoughts…

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His/yours
Ron B
Biblebase.com

"Love perfecteth what it begins;

Thy power doth save me from my sins;

Thy grace upholdeth me.

This life of trust, how glad, how sweet;

My need and Thy great fulness meet,

And I have all in Thee.

Jean Sophia Pigott (1845-1882)

Hello everyone

I am fortunate to find this conversation open for a change; it would seem I am the only person on the opposite side of the debate! Now, at the risk of infuriating my peers, I must insist that I am unmoved by all of your arguments (no, I am not saying this is an argument). There are too many points for me to address individually and I fear that its opponents will scarcely read a lengthy response so let me just restate my first main points, which have not been addressed directly in this debate. I do however feel it necessary to expand my second point, if you will bear with me:

1)A “solar day” cannot exist without the sun; the sun was created on the forth day.

2)My initial argument was that there was something spiritual about the story of creation and that we therefore cannot think of time in terms of science, if we do we must take the most valid and up-to-date theory of science i.e. quantum mechanics and relativity. Newton mechanics (the way we measure time, distance speed) is only valid on earth; for example the formula Force = mass x acceleration (F=ma) only works on earth. The only reason Newton mechanics is still used is because the formulae are far simpler and easier to work with. Newton mechanics would have us believe that everything (including time) is absolute- it is not. This is because everything we observe here on earth is taken from our point of reference, this the only point of reference that makes any sense to us. The equation E=mc^2 (relativity) is valid everywhere

At the speed of light time (as we know it) stands still. This is not the only case of altered time. For very large masses, time slows down too. At the atomic level, quantum time kicks in. To measure time you require a point of reference. The period of the Earth (the time for one full rotation) is one day; divide that by 24 and you get an hour, divide that by 60 you get a minute, divide that by 60 and you get one second- the standard measurement of time. We are more accurate these days and we know that the Earth take a little less than 24 hours for a period…the most absolute way to measure time is now the rate of decay of a cesium atom. In addition, while I am on this point, the rate of rotation of the Earth changes with its proximity to the sun. This is because the kinetic and potential energies change according to how close the earth s to the sun (a sun which was created on the forth day). Unless God was standing on Earth, as we know it today, that is earth after creation, this was not his point of reference.

One person mentioned light as a prerequisite for photosynthesis. I must dismiss this argument on the basis that the dynamics and biology of the earth was different to what it is now. When the Lord cursed the ground for Adams (Gen3:17) sake, we have no idea what this meant for plant biology (which stem from the ground). This is all speculation and therefore not valid in a debate but to support my point let us consider the longevity of early man. Science, which dismisses photosynthesis without light, would also have to dismiss the human body along with all its complex proteins surviving oxidation (the process by which we age) for more than 200 years as impossible. If you make a scientific argument you must stick with science all the way, you cannot just discard the parts of science which do not agree with your views as this makes you an unreliable source (Jas1:8he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.)

These are some of the reasons I do not equate science with the bible, it brings up to many complications, which hinder faith. Like it or not, the concept we have of time now is a purely scientific one. We must put God at the center of the universe and as the point of reference (2 Peter3:8 But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.) Again, John 4:24God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. With this in mind is it not best to think of time in the Spiritual essence that God exists? Our predecessors believed that earth was the centre of the universe and that the sun revolved around the earth. It was a form of science and astronomy, which turned out to be wrong when telescopes were improved and we were able too see past our point of reference (earth). It is the nature of man to place himself at the centre of the universe and consider what he sees to be absolute and “literal”. Still at the end of the day I think the most important thing that through faith we all agree that the World was made by the word of God (Hebrew11)

Your son in Christ James

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The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ

we find god's word to be Absolute or is it Obsolete.Absolute would mean that we believe what god has to say. his word says that he can not lie. Obsolete why even bother to read a fairie tale other then to pass the time. In the begining was the word and the word was with God and the word was god. modern man can not explain how the world came into being without first spinning a fairy tale they don't have the proof. on the other hand god has a book of remembrance written by holy men of god who wrote as they were moved by the spirit of God. God's ability is in his word. one must enter the kingdom of God as a little child. a child who believes his heavenly father. I believe my heavenly father.