1 is one of the most debated words in the Bible. How long were the days in Genesis 1? This week on Creation Magazine LIVE! Welcome to Creation Magazine LIVE! My name is Richard Fangrad. And I'm Thomas Bailey. This week on Creation Magazine LIVE our topic is, how long were the creation days in Genesis 1? This is a hotly debated topic among Christians so we'll look at both sides of the issue and shed some light on this so that you can come
to an informed decision.
The larger issue, that the meaning of the
word 'day' is a part of, of course, is the age of the earth debate and the whole
creation/evolution controversy. If God really created in 6 earth-rotation days, then evolution is in trouble; there just isn't enough time for it, or you
need to look for other places in Genesis to insert billions of years. But, if the creation days are best understood
as eons of time, well, then maybe evolution can fit in somewhere. So, the meaning of the word 'day' in Genesis
is not a minor issue.
It has a massive impact on how we understand
the Biblical creation account, and many of the key doctrines that are based on, or derived
from the creation account. We've got to start by saying that it is
ironic that there is so much controversy over the word 'day', because it's a simple
word. That's right. There are many other far more complex words
in the Bible like, sanctification, propitiation, justification, those words need whole essays
to fully describe their meaning.
The word day is a pretty simple word. It's a pretty simple word, but in this
next half hour we're going to start with some of the basics and then we'll actually
have a test in a little while and we'll look at the issue in greater detail, but let's
start with the basics. The first one is: the word 'day', like
most other words, has a variety of meanings. For example, if you go to dictionary.Com you'll
find about a dozen different meanings listed there for the word 'day'.
And the word 'day' in the original Hebrew,
that Genesis was written in, has about the same range of meanings as in the English language. Some examples are: one complete rotation of the earth. Another meaning can refer to the rotation
of a different planet. You might say A day on Mars, or Saturn,
for example.
Another meaning of day refers only to the
light portion of the earth rotation. As in the sentence, This animal sleeps
during the day and hunts at night. Another meaning refers to the portion of a
day allotted to work or school, as in "I work an eight-hour day. Sometimes it is synonymous with the word 'time',
as in, his day will come.
That could be changed to say, his time
will come without altering the meaning. So, there are just a few of the different
meanings the word 'day' can have. In addition to those, the word 'day' is
also used in figures of speech like, let's call it a day. That has nothing to do with the any of the
meanings of the word day, it's a figure of speech.
It means, let's stop, let's quit. You all know what it means, right? So with all these different meanings for the
word day, the question is, how do you determine which meaning is being used when you come
across that word? And the answer is, of course, context. OK, here's another simple grammar concept. The context, or the words around the word
'day' dictates its meaning.
You might be thinking well, duh, of course
that's how meanings are determined. Look, we said this was simple, didn't we? Yet there's this huge controversy! So, let's just work through this to make
it clear. Let's look at some sentences where the word
'day' is used and you try to figure out which of the various meanings is the correct
one, given the context. Alright, and we're doing this, again, just
to make it clear how simple it is to determine the meaning of the word 'day' wherever
you see it.
In Matthew 4:2, for example, we read, And
after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. So what's the meaning there? Could the word 'day' be substituted for
the word 'time'? No. It's talking about actual earth-rotation
days, right? Well sure. That's easy.
Let's try another one, Luke 14 verse 5 says,
And he said to them, Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well
on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out? Is the meaning of the word 'day' hard
to understand there? No, of course not. It's easy. I'm sure all of you know that it is referring
to a day of the week, a Saturday, a Sabbath day in this case. Again, not hard.
And we'll be back with more after a short
break. Did you know that animals have genetic switches? These are regulatory regions of DNA that control
the genes. Scientists have noticed that dramatic things
can happen when a genetic switch is mutated. For instance, a mutated genetic switch can
dramatically alter the appearance of stickleback fish, or generate a great variety of coat
colours in animals.
Veterinary researcher Dr Jean Lightner has
suggested that God may have created genetic switches to facilitate variation, the switches
having been created with a propensity to mutate without negatively affecting other traits. Modifications to genetic switches are not
examples of 'evolution in action', even though they often are spoken of in that manner. Indeed, these changes don't involve new
informationnew genesarising, and evolutionists cannot explain the existence of the genetic
switches in the first place! The more we learn about the complexity of
genomes, the more they point to a super-intelligent master programmer. To find out more from Creation Ministries
International visit our website Creation.Com.
If you've just tuned in, this week we are
talking about how to determine the meaning of the word 'day' in Genesis 1. Now we haven't actually gotten to Genesis
1 yet, we've been looking at the word day elsewhere in Scripture. So let's look at some more examples. In Luke 17:26 Jesus says, Just as it was
in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man.
So here the word 'day' isn't referring
to an earth-rotation day, it's referring to the time of Noah. It is not referring to time in general but
rather, the time that Noah was alive, obviously. How about in Genesis 2:4 where it says, In
the day that the Lord made the heavens and the earth What does 'day' mean there? Well, there has to be some sort of a meaning
-- it means 'time'. In the 'time' that the Lord made the heavens
and the earth, referring to the entire period in which God created.
Right. Now we're getting close to Genesis 1 (that
was Genesis 2), and people use this verse like, well, in Genesis 2:4 the word 'day'
doesn't mean an ordinary day, they say things like that, so the word 'day' in Genesis 1 can't mean an ordinary day either. So they abandon the rules of grammar used
to determine the meaning of words, and say that, well, over here it doesn't mean
an ordinary day which they determined, of course, by looking
at the word in context yes, and therefore they say well over there
it has the same meaning as over here. What? All the confusion can be avoided by just applying
the same hermeneutic, the same interpretive principle, to every word.
And that is: the particular meaning of a word that has multiple meanings is determined by its context. When Moses compiled the account of creation
in Genesis 1, under the inspiration of God, he used the Hebrew word yom for 'day'. He combined yom with numbers ('first day',
'second day', 'third day', etc.) And with the words 'evening and morning' Yes, and the first time the word 'day'
appears in Scripture is in verse 5 of chapter 1, and it appears twice, and it has a slightly
different meaning both times. Let's have a look, God called the light
Day, and the darkness he called Night.
And there was evening and there was morning,
the first day. In the first instance, there's almost a
definition God called the light Day, it's the daylight portion of one earth-rotation,
contrasted with the night portion. That's right. And in the second instance, from the context,
the only meaning that it can have is that of an earth-rotation day.
From the text, you cannot make it say something
other than a normal day, of about 24 hours, that we now experience. If people simply interpret the word in the
same way that all other word meanings are interpreted, that should put an end to the
controversy, among Christians. But there's only a controversy because of
one huge reason. And that is: lack of Biblical authority.
Just admit it, the only reason that the meaning
of the word 'day' is questioned in Genesis, and nowhere else, is not because the text
is vague, or because it's difficult to understand. It's because of ideas that come from outside
the text that are given equal or higher priority than the Word of God. That shows a lack of biblical authority in
Genesis. That's right.
The notion that the earth is billions of years
old is taken as an absolute truth, despite the massive evidence against it, and God's
Word is twisted in an attempt to make it conform with this 'greater truth'. It's all about biblical authority. And there are theologians who are excellent
from Genesis 12 onward, but they seem to apply a completely different hermeneutic for the
things that happened before Abraham, Genesis 1 to 11. So, is the Bible only authoritative from Genesis
12 onward? And should we give human opinion about the age of the earth priority over Scripture before that point? Of course not.
Now when we come back we'll give you some
examples of other Hebrew words that Moses could have used, if God really did create
over a long period of time. Looking for a single resource that totally
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On this week's episode, we are discussing
a very controversial issue that's nothing new, we normally do that but this week
we're discussing the meaning of the word 'day' in Genesis chapter 1. Very controversial. That's right. Now the idea we're discussing is whether
the word 'day' in context in Genesis 1 could mean millions of years.
But if God wanted to communicate to us that He took eons of time to create, that would have been easy to do. There were plenty of Hebrew words that could
have been used instead of the word yom. Here's a word that means 'generation'. That word could have been used instead of
yom.
Yeah, there's a possibility. Or yom could have been modified to mean 'length
of days' like this. Here's one that means 'season' or 'time'. I mean, using that word could give some flexibility
to the creation period, right? Here's one that means 'season'.
Here's one that means 'time' in general. Here's one that means 'forever'. Here's one that means 'always' or 'forever'. Here's one that means continually' or
'forever'.
And here's one that can mean 'perpetual'
or 'of old' or 'forever'. Okay, so, there were plenty of Hebrew words
indicating long periods of time. The bottom line is: if God really did create
over long periods of time Moses could easily have written it that way. Martin Luther, the reformer, his great contribution
to Church history was getting Christians back to the authority of God's Word and away
from the traditions and opinions of people.
The church in Luther's time was in a terrible
state in many areas. All sorts of traditions and opinions had taken
the place of God's Word. And one of those areas was their misinterpretation
of the word 'day'. Luther said, (this was regarding the Creation
days) We must understand that these days were actual days, contrary to the opinion
of the holy fathers.
Whenever we observe that the opinions of the
fathers disagree with Scripture, we reverently bear with them and acknowledge them to be
our elders. Nevertheless, we do not depart from authority
of Scripture for their sake. You've got to love that one. Now that's the right perspective to have,
right? Right! And Luther wasn't the only one who understood Genesis as historical, and that God created recently.
We did several shows on this a few years ago that are now online, What the church fathers believed about Genesis,
What the reformers thought about Genesis, and What the son of God believed about Genesis. Throughout church history the prevailing understanding
of Scripture has been, that God created recently, in six earth-rotation days, and there was
a global flood. Yes. Another objection that we hear all the time
is that the Genesis days could be longer because 2 Peter 3:8 says, But do not overlook this
one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, so people think
the days could be stretched out to be a thousand years then, right? But the rest of the verse says, and a thousand
years as one day.
So now it's talking about compressing a
thousand years into a day. So that just cancels that out, right? But this has nothing to do with the creation
days. No, it doesn't. Also, it is not defining a day because it
doesn't say 'a day is a thousand years'.
The correct understanding is, once again,
derived from the contextthat the Apostle Peter's readers shouldn't lose heart just
because God seems slow at fulfilling His promises, because He is patient, and also
because He's not bound by time as we are. Right, yes. The text says, 'one day is like [or as]
a thousand years'the word 'like' (or 'as') shows that it's a figure of
speech, called a simile, to teach that God is outside of time (because He is the Creator
of time itself). And the reason that the figure of speech is
so effective is because the word day (there) is literal and contrasts so vividly with a
literal 1000 years to the eternal Creator God, the Creator of time, a short period, and a long period of time might as well be the same time.
Peter's statement 'do not forget' implies
that his readers were expected to recall something. Peter was referring to Psalm 90 verse 4. This is another passage that contrasts a short
and a long period. It reads, For a thousand years in your
sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.
Okay, now, this is synonymous parallelism, where a long
period of a thousand years is contrasted with two short periods: a day, and a watch in the
night. But those who try to use this verse to teach
that the days of Genesis might be 1000 years long, forget the additional part or like
a watch in the night. Because, if they were consistent, they would
have to say that a watch in the night, which is 3 or 4 hours also means 1000 years. It's difficult to imagine that a Psalmist,
in Psalm 63:6, is thinking on his bed for thousands of years when he writes, when
I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night Right, or that his eyes stay open for thousands
of years as he writes in Psalm 119:148 My eyes are awake before the watches of the night,
that I may meditate on your promise.
For more reasons why 2 Peter 3 :8 cannot be
used to stretch out the creation days see: creation.Com/thousand
it's a great article that details some more of this information. Now another argument Creation Ministries speakers
often hear is that the 'days' in Genesis are 'God's days'. God's days, yes. So how long is a day when you're God and
you're outside of time? That's the next question that should be
asked, right? It doesn't make any sense.
Genesis isn't talking about some spiritual
realm where time doesn't exist, it's describing God creating this physical universe, and
its focus is on the earth. It's talking about days on Earth. There's a great article on our website that
covers this in more detail. Go to creation.Com/sixdays.
We'll be back with more in just a minute. Does the iconic Australian Koala have its
pouch 'upside-down'? This might sound like a silly question, but
some biologists have claimed that the Koala's downward-facing pouch would work better if
it faced upwards. They argue that the Koala pouch is only facing
downwards because of its alleged evolutionary relationship to a wombat-like ancestor. However, Koala pouches work extremely well
in their current orientation.
When Koalas climb trees, as they must do to
feed, their bellies rub against the bark. If the mother's pouch faced upwards, it
would fill up with debris. Moreover, the rear opening has soft tissues
and a ring of muscles that hold the young ones in. The pouch also secretes antimicrobial proteins
to make it nice and clean just before it's due to carry a new young one.
Thus, Koala pouches are well designed, not
poorly designed, as you would expect from the Master Designer. They do just what they were designed to do. To find out more from Creation Ministries
International, visit our website, CREATION.Com. Welcome back.
Our subject this week is the meaning of the
word 'day' in Genesis chapter 1. That's what we're doing. Okay, for those who want to fit millions of years
into Genesis, simply stretching out the days is not going to help. The sequence in which God creates things doesn't
fit with evolution.
For example, land plants were created on Day
3 and fish on Day 5. But according to evolution, fish precede land
plants by hundreds of millions of years. So stretching out the days in Genesis is not
going to make it fit with evolution. Genesis records that the earth was made first,
and then the stars on Day 4.
So the earth is a tiny but older than the
stars. But, the big bang idea says it's definitely
the other way around. The earth is only 4.6 Billion years old and
the stars are up to 12 billion years old. Right, yes, the opposite.
God tells us that, initially, the earth was
a universal ocean, and dry land came on Day 3. Once again, evolution has it backwards. The earth starts as a molten blob that slowly
cools down and after millions of years, then comes water. So simply making the 'days' of creation
millions of years long doesn't make Genesis fit with evolution.
Yeah, it doesn't. If you're dead set on trying to make the
2 timelines fit together, and if you have a low view of Scripture and a high view of
evolution, then you've got to go even further in misinterpreting the text, by saying that
it's just some kind of poetry or framework, it's not real history. Just making the days longer doesn't help. Yes, and again, this ties back to Biblical
authority.
Martin Luther had the right idea when he said,
When Moses writes that God created heaven and earth and whatever is in them in six days,
then let this period continue to have been six days, and do not venture to devise any
comment according to which six days were one day. In Martin Luther's time, (or in Martin Luther's
day) 500 years ago, some in the church had concluded that God made everything in 1 day. We have sort of the opposite problem going
on today. But Luther said, no, the text says 6 days.
And I really like this next part, But, if you cannot understand how this could have been done in six days, then grant the Holy Spirit the honour of being more learned than you are.
It's interesting that Luther highlights
that creation is a supernatural event. Of course, we can't understand how it all
could have been done in 6 days, not given the natural laws we observe today, the laws
God put into place to govern the operation of His universe. In fact, the more that scientists discover
about the operation of the universe, the clearer it is becoming that natural laws are just
not capable of making the universe. Getting this universe to exist requires
the supernatural.
It does, yes. So, we can study and understand the laws
that sustain the universe, but we're never going to be able to fully grasp how God created
it, out of nothing, to begin with. That takes a certain amount of humility. Face it, there are going to be things about
God that we will never understand.
Luther had the right idea when he said, For
you are to deal with Scripture in such a way that you bear in mind that God Himself says
what is written. But since God is speaking, it is not fitting
for you to wantonly turn His Word in the direction you wish to go. That's the perspective that all Christ-followers
need to have, especially when it comes to understanding Genesis. We'll be right back with some closing thoughts.
Refuting Evolution is a powerful, concise
summary that explains where the common 'evidences' used to promote evolution
in textbooks are wrong, while at the same time showing how creation is better
supported by scientific observations. It will stimulate much discussion and help
students and teachers think more critically about the creation/evolution debate,
particularly the often overlooked differences between operational
and historical science and how they relate to the topic of origins. Order your copy today at creation.Com. This week we're discussing the meaning of
the word day in Genesis.
Here's another thing to ponder. Why 6 days? Why 6 days? God could have created instantly, right? Or in 6 seconds, or 6 billion years. He has the ability to create the universe
in any length of time He chooses. So why did He choose 6 days, as the text says? God tells us why He chose to create in 6 days,
rather than some other timeframe, in Exodus 20:11, For in six days the Lord made heaven
and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.
He did it as a pattern for the work-week. A week of 7 days is patterned after God creating
for 6 days and resting for 1. Although the text in Genesis is abundantly
clear that God created in 6 earth-rotation days, this should be the final 'nail in
the coffin' for any notion that God took millions of years to create. Right, the fact that we have a 7-day week,
not an 8-day week or a 2-day week or something, is a testimony to the reality of the creation
week.
So, let's review what we've been saying
here. The word 'day', like most other words,
has a variety of meanings. The meanings of words are determined by their
context. The word 'day' is a relatively simple
word and it's easy to determine its meaning.
The context in Genesis 1 makes it crystal
clear that the only meaning possible is that God created in 6 earth-rotation days. If God had created over a very long time,
there were many other Hebrew words that Moses could have used to describe it. But they aren't used. Even if the days could be stretched out, evolution
still wouldn't fit with the Bible because of sequencing issues.
Evolution has things appearing in a different
order. Biblical authority plays a big role in allowing
the text to speak for itself, regarding the length of the days, rather than imposing outside
ideas. And finally, God chose to create in 6 days
as a pattern for our work-week. There are other things we could reference
as well.
For example, children seem to have no problem
in understanding the meaning of Genesis. The only reason why other ideas are entertained
is because people apply concepts from outside of the Bible. That's right, yes. Professor James Barr, he's professor of
Hebrew, or he was professor of Hebrew, at Oxford University, agrees that the words in
Genesis 1 refer to a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours
which we now experience and he says that he knows of no other professor of Hebrew at
any leading university who would say otherwise.
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. That's right, yes. Commentators universally understood Genesis
in a straightforward way, until attempts were made to harmonize the account with long ages
and then evolution. That's right so it's only in our modern
times that we really understand how God created, and all the poor schmucks before us had absolutely
no chance of properly exegeting Scripture? Something like that The main message of Creation Ministries International
is one of the authority of Scripture.
And here, this portion of Genesis, and especially
the meaning of the word day, can almost be used like a case study to test how high you
hold Scripture, your view of Scripture, is it a high view of Scripture that you have? Because there're competing ideas for many
texts in Scripture. In Genesis 1 to 11, there're a lot of outside
ideas that compete with what the text is saying. So, it can be used as kind of like a case
study, as we said, to determine your level of Biblical authority. That's right.
Do you believe the Scripture the way it's
written as God intended for us to understand, or do you believe some other authority, whether
it be scientific authorities, or Outside voices. Some philosophers, or something like that. Yes, that's right. We get a lot of the content of the show from
Creation magazine, that's why it's Creation Magazine LIVE!.
You can view a free digital issue, a sample
copy online (digital issue), go to creation.Com/free-mag. And you can flip through it there online. If you like the magazine, subscribe. It has changed the lives of thousands of people
for forty years now it's been going now for 40 years.
If you like it, again, subscribe at CREATION.Com. We'll see you next week..
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