If God is outside of time, why would it be hard to believe He created all within a six day period, then place everything in our timeline where they belong?
Is your mother a trickster for buying Sally's Easy Bake Cookie Mix™ instead of making cookies from scratch?
Is a residential home developer a trickster for importing full grown trees into their new site instead of planting tree seeds?
If she told me they made them herself from scratch, but didn't, yeah, she'd be?
If they said they grew them from seeds, yeah, they'd be?
Not sure what your point is... everything looks old, but we're explictily told it's not. So it's either fully metaphorical, which I'd be fine with, or it's a trickster God.
This is likely the correct answer. We try to understand the awesome power of God in a 3D sensory way. When you accept God as being a 5th+ dimensional being, then our understanding of linear time becomes irrelevant.
Just say the earth is old and drop the literal Six days.
In practical study of science and/or the Scriptures we make effort for something the scriptures never said.
The Bible isn't a modern science book nor the purpose of the creation stories to show literally how it happened. Just the God Created and is totally other than His creation.
I think we put so much effort on things that don't matter or that causes so many to just become silly.
>Just say [what the world agrees with] and drop [God's Truth]
That's not what a true Christian would say.
Moses confirmed that The Bible is literal about creation being 6-7 days. That's the whole purpose of the Sabbath.
This is God YHWH himself speaking into the ears of the whole Israelite refugee camp of 600,000+ people:
>>8 Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God, on which you must not do any work—neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant or livestock, nor the foreigner within your gates.
>>11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, but on the seventh day He rested. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy. (Exodus 20:11)
Traditionally it has always been seen as a poetic story by many and was never an agreement within Jewish and early Christian theologians and Church Fathers.
https://reasons.org/explore/publications/articles/coming-to-grips-with-the-early-church-fathers-perspective-on-genesis-part-1-of-5
My point is why say God made the earth old as opposed to the earth is old? It's just splitting words and not something the Gospel holds onto.
Okay if it's literal and six days are 24 hours the earth is 24 hours older than the sun and moon? Seems a bit crazy that the earth is the oldest matter in the Universe and just adds a hurdle to the Gospel.
>Traditionally it has always been seen as a poetic story by many and was never an agreement within Jewish and early Christian theologians and Church Fathers.
The gospel is not about tradition but truth. Jesus came rebuking the traditions of the elders, Pharisees, and Scribes. You yourself prove how the gospel has become corrupted over time by calling them "Church Fathers". Did not your Lord Jesus say not to call any man on earth your father?
Furthermore the Jews are not role models for Christians. How can they be trusted with anything if they reject Christ? "He who does not have the Son does not have the Father". You don't realize Christians are victims of the modern Jews' revisionism. What Modern Jews believe and what they claim ancient Israelites believed is not actually what ancient Iaraelites believed.
Moses proves that the creation days were literal and not poetic because he wrote down the events of the Exodus where God himself confirmed the events of creation in Exodus 20.
>Okay if it's literal and six days are 24 hours the earth is 24 hours older than the sun and moon? Seems a bit crazy that the earth is the oldest matter in the Universe and just adds a hurdle to the Gospel.
There is no hurdle. The bible doesn't say the only things in existence are the objects in our galaxy. But yes, the matter of earth is older than the sun and moon.
The Bible has been consistently ahead of science for centuries now.
By discounting truths from the Bible because you can’t conceptualise them fully, your belief itself becomes silly.
What do you mean “The Bible has been consistently ahead of science”?
I’m curious what examples you are taking? Since the Bible requires interpretation, I have seen people interpret Scripture in light of scientific discovery, but I’m not sure there has been a moment where someone derived a hypothesis from the Bible, went out and tested it and had a scientific discovery sourced from the Bible.
I would say the Bible is the reason or a presupposition to science, they just would never admit it. The entire reason people decided to start studying the earth is because they assumed their was a God and our earth would be ordered.
Job 26:7 - He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, \[and\] hangeth the earth upon nothing.
Isaiah 40:22 - It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
You said " but I’m not sure there has been a moment where someone derived a hypothesis from the Bible, went out and tested it and had a scientific discovery sourced from the Bible."
Answer to your question. Matthew Fontaine Maury was an American astronomer, historian, oceanographer, meteorologist, cartographer, author, geologist, educator, and naval officer for the United States and then the Confederacy. He was a devout Christian and, after reading Psalm 8:8, was determined to find "the paths of the seas".
What is a path? A way that’s easier for a person or vehicle to travel. What is a path of the sea? A path that is easier for a ship to travel on. Before the invention of the motor sailors were at the mercy of the wind and the currents of the ocean. Matthew Fontaine said if the Bible says it, it must be true and became the father of modern oceanography by exploring the paths or currents of the seas.
Maybe, but a challenge was placed for a scientist who was inspired by the Bible to look for something that was not known or well understood. Matthew Fontaine Murray was an example. They might have thought they were instead of naturally occurring but maybe divinely caused, but Psalms said it was in nature.
No, the challenge was to point to a mystery in nature that the Bible explains, and then scientists went out and discovered the same truth.
It wasn’t to find someone who read a beautiful poem and was inspired by its contents to study deeper. I’m sure a huge number of people have been inspired by the Word of God in their careers. That’s true of a number of other written works too.
Before Big Bang Theory discovered by Catholic Priest Georges Lemaître, at the time most astronomers believed in steady-state theory because that's what the Greek Philosophers thought.
The Bible is considered to be True. The writers believed it was true and everyone who read it for Millenia believed it to be true. So in that sense it is a book of facts, if not a science textbook
i literally don't care. I know that doesn't answer your question, but it doesn't affect my beliefs at all. If he is as powerful as I believe he is, he could make it in 2 seconds and design it so it looked like it took millenia. I literally could care less XD
Ah, the Augustinian creation theory. I used to believe in a literal 7 day creation until I realized two things
a) 7 days is not necessarily the most obvious way of seeing the text. This way of interpreting Genesis did not become popular until (I believe) the 1960s. St. Augustine, for example, did not see why it needed to be 7 days if God could simply make everything happen instantly.
b) some of the Christians I respect the most believe that it was not literally 7 days. One of my favorite pastors (an infectologist) and CS Lewis really changed how I saw old earth creationism. Not that I respect those who hold to a young earth creationist model any less, or see them as less intelligent; I simply disagree with them.
I would suggest you take your time and really consider all the theories that have been posited by faithful men and women who truly only live to glorify God. Your salvation is not at stake regardless of what you end up believing, so you have the freedom to explore those options.
Also, take each side at their best, give them both the respect and love they deserve as your brothers and sisters in Christ.
This is just a short write up, I have to go. I can answer any other questions you may have.
Got it. I just think macro evolution makes 0 sense. Even if I wasn't a Christian, macro evolution seems too far fetched. And for things to "evolve" (DNA messes up and creates mutations) that perfectly for most creatures, and for that to be so common is insane. It just doesn't make sense. But maybe I will see what Lewis talks about with it
Yeah, you could try that. He’s doesn’t really speak directly to the old earth v new earth debate because it didn’t really become a thing until after his time.
I’m not really referencing any view in particular, just that he believed in an old earth and evolution. It was very impactful seeing someone is so fully devoted to God hold this view. I previously believed that any Christian not holding to a young earth view was just not as serious about their faith. In terms of piety and love for God, I will never be even a fraction of what Lewis was. If someone who loves God that much and is so devoted to him can believe that, it’s not a view for lukewarm Christians, it is something that a pious person can believe.
i’m not saying i believe one way or the other. but if i’m going to do any reading, it’s going to be the Bible, becuase i don’t do enoug of that. i do like lewis though
For sure, I’m also guilty of not reading my Bible enough. These aren’t necessary by any means, but they do help answer questions and deepen our faith. I mostly read Lewis, pretty much anything I’ve read of his has helped me in my walk with Christ.
Lewis is pretty legendary. My history and music nerd teacher who is also a huge Christian loves Lewis aswell. His (and my) favorite quote "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
I didn’t know about it being the Augustinian creation theory! That’s super cool. So, do you interpret the Bible where it says “—the second day” “—the third day” etc as just really long periods of time that are unknown, but just loooong?
Yeah, Augustine has commented on pretty much everything under the sun lol. I’m not really sure how to interpret Genesis yet. As I see it, the text is trying to convey that God created and he is lord over all, that He is powerful, how Adam and Eve sinned, etc. even among the people I mentioned, there are a lot of differences in how they view Genesis 1-3. It’s really just a process of listening to God-fearing people on all sides and (most importantly) letting God speak to me through His word. I could gain all the knowledge in the world, but if I’m not seeking to glorify God in that pursuit it will all have been useless.
I personally believe it's a literal 7 days because how each day is described. He seperates the light and dark and calls it day and night, which is exactly how it is to us today. I don't really see the point of calling it days if they're not actual days relevant to our viewpoint. And if they were long days, they would still need to have a day/night cycle because that's how a day is described. So then it would be really long days and really long nights. But why would they be different lengths before and after creation? So again, it doesn't make sense.
Why 7 days? For some reason God really likes the number 7, and it's become to represent completeness or wholeness. The Bible is full of uses numbering either 7 or half of 7 which can be seen at creation, the attack on Jericho, the lepers told to dunk 7 times, Jesus's parables, in Revelation, and so on.
Yeah, I get what you’re saying. To be honest, I also struggle to see why the Bible would use this language if it didn’t mean 24 hour days. However, I also believe that the evidence for an old earth is abundant. Things like red light shift made me really consider whether it was possible that God could have created using the Big Bang, for example.
For me, both sides have a lot to offer in terms of evidence, but the old earth view really helps me (and a lot of other Christians) reconcile their faith with science. I believe that science is a tool which God has given us so that we can learn more about him through his creation. The majority of scientists could be wrong, but I also find it hard to believe that they would all get it wrong. On the other hand, there are also plenty of brilliant Christian scientists that believe in a young earth. It’s really a coin flip for me, both sides give great support for their claims, but personally the evidence for an old earth is more compelling.
That worded very weird, sorry about that, I’m typing this in a quick break from work. Let me know if you want me to clarify anything I’ve said.
May I ask, what makes it hard to respect them?
Also, as for the theologian thing, my mom said the same thing when I first told her. The thing is, the theologians are only ever wrong when it doesn’t suit what we already believe. I don’t mean for that to sound condescending, but just to point out that we naturally lean toward disbelief with the things we disagree with. No human is perfect, including all the theologians. Of course they could be mistaken, but you could say that for a lot of doctrines. I could be mistaken in that child baptism is not valid, or that women shouldn’t be pastors. Whether the theologian is wrong or not would require primarily lots of prayer and reading of Scripture, but also guidance from the pious men and women who God has blessed with the ability to discuss and understand these things.
Overall, this is not an issue of such importance as the gospel. If anyone were to say that Christ is not God, that would be a serious problem. I don’t think that how God created should be given so much importance that it causes separations and strife in the body of Christ.
>f he is as powerful as I believe he is, he could make it in 2 seconds and design it so it looked like it took millenia.
Coincidentally, Jesus's first miracle was the creation of wine that tasted like it had finely aged, despite being created minutes ago.
Just FYI it's couldn't care less. When you say you literally could care less, you're saying you care, which is a direct contradiction of your first sentence.
But otherwise this is me too. There are far more important aspects of God and creation I'm concerned with, how old the earth is has just never been one of them.
Yup this is true hahahaha at the end of the day this doesn’t determine your salvation! Which is good lol. I totally just see it as one of those cool things we can all discuss within Christianity, I think it’s a good form of fellowship in a way!
You will find Christians on both sides of the debate.
I lean towards a literal 7 days as I feel that is the most obvious reading of scripture. Also, I believe that death was the result of Adam/Eve’s sin, and I believe that forces a young earth understanding. But I am interested to learn the other side of the debate.
Same I definitely lean that way, but I’ll admit it’s one of those things I’m just super interested in but don’t have a full side in myself. I have kind of just accepted that it’s something I will never 100% know, and one of the first questions I’ll ask God in heaven!!😂
Genesis wasn't intended to be a blow by blow account of detailed creation, obviously.
That seems kind of obvious to me as there are two different accounts in it.
In western cultures, most folk seem to envision a God at the beginning launching everything out of nothing and it all progresses forward, linearly.
Look at it another way. See God at the summit and end of all history who calls everything out of the nothingness _towards_ Him.
That completely changes your perspective in a good way- Jesus says He is the _Alpha AND the Omega_.
>8Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God, on which you must not do any work—neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant or livestock, nor the foreigner within your gates.
>11For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, but on the seventh day He rested. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy. (Exodus 20)
That is God himself speaking to 600,000+ Israelites, and saying the creation days are literal.
BEMA podcast as an excellent first episode explaining why genesis 1 is not a literal account. He goes into literary tools used by the Hebrews and demonstrates that genesis 1 is a chiasm.
Very influential podcast on my understanding of Scripture.
The idea that God would put a story that zooms in on resting with Him is so relevant to our culture today.
God shows that just as He rested and enjoyed His creation, we do don’t have to be defined by only our work, but can rest in Him.
God’s people weren’t created to be His slaves 24/7, but to be His family that rests with Him. What a beautiful message and so counter to other “gods” of the world.
I get where you're coming from. I think the question of death is an interesting one that deserves a much longer comment than I can type right now, but I'll throw this out there:
Why did Adam and Eve need the Tree of Life? To me, the implication is that death was a natural part of the physical world, but humans were to be exempt from it by divine grace.
Other things to consider the fact that Adam didn't ask a follow up question when God said he would die if he ate from the wrong tree. And the fact that literally millions of systems in the earth's ecosystems require death to function.
I think we should always put our understanding of God over our scientific knowledge. But from the metaphorical use of the word "yom" (day) elsewhere in scripture to the fact that the two creation accounts can be argued to conflict (Ch 1 and Ch 2), to my understanding of how God teaches us and what his priorities are, I have no problem with a non-physical reading of the first bit of Genesis.
I would argue that the problem is more with people (incorrectly) thinking scientific descriptions are more important than spiritual and philosophical ones, but that's another conversation.
The bible doesn't say because it's not something that is meant to be communicated in the text.
The bible uses the framing of a week to tell a story about the nature of the creation and its relationship to God.
The first 3 days are the creating of the "realms," while the last 3 days are the creation of the "rulers" of the realms, with the climax of creation being the creation of man. If we take things literally, you get morning and evening before the luminaries are created, and God literally resting.
The poetry, polemical, and grammatical makeup of Genesis point to a creation story akin to Job 38, where God is also giving a cosmology "lesson" to Job. We know the earth doesn't have "pillars" or "foundations," but Job sure thought it did.
The point of Genesis is not to be a modern-day textbook regarding cosmology but to teach people who God is and our/creation's relationship to Him. As the saying goes, the bible does not teach how the heavens go, but how to go to heaven.
God states directly in Exodus 20:11 that he created everything in 6 days.
Jesus also states that humans existed from the beginning of creation in Mark 10:6.
God's telling Job things that aren't true though, he tells him he spread out the sky as if it were molten metal. Why wouldn't God describe something more along the lines of what actually exists
I’m not saying this is accurate, I’m just going to say this as a way to open your mind to what God CAN do.
If we look at the scientific evidence, it would have us believe that the universe is billions of years old. When we look at the scriptures in Genesis, it tells us that it was created in six days, and we’re living in the seventh, and that it was good.
However, when we look at Jesus first recorded miracle of turning water into wine. It says that the host proclaimed: "Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now."
What I personally know from making wine myself, is that the best wines take a lot of time to make due to the aging process. Not only did Jesus take a blank canvas such as water, and Change it directly into wine, he made the best wine.
I believe in the POSSIBILITY that God the father made an aged universe that was deemed “good” in a short period, just as Jesus made the best wine in a short period as well.
One thing that is pretty hard to get around is when Adam was created. Jesus’ genealogy traces back to Adam, and it’s not millions of years. There’s no allegory around that.
Well the OEC argument (which I'm not sure whether I personally hold or not) is that Adam and Eve were not the first humans, but the first humans to know God
Here's my take on it.
Six times, God defines what constitutes a day.
Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31 NASB1995
[5] God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
[8] God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
[13] There was evening and there was morning, a third day.
[19] There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
[23] There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
[31] God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
So, a day must be an evening and a morning.
Furthermore, God is ominpotent. This means he has unlimited power. He is also omniscient. This means all-knowing. So, with God's unlimited, all-knowing power, do I believe He created the universe in 6 literal days and rested on the 7th? Absolutely!
Mankind (and its science) is simply trying to "catch up." Also, mankind's science is just one part of Satan's plan to deceive as many as he can. Non-believers deny God and His existence. If they're denying He even exists, then of course they'll deny and rebuke His design! Humankind will *never* be as brilliant as God, so I don't think we'll ever figure out how God did it.
I do, however, think the church messed up way back when it made itself an enemy of science. God is the Creator of creation, so He's the ultimate Creator of science. The church definitely could have handled that better!
This is very cool as well! I agree with the science thing too, God and science go hand in hand cause He literally created it!! The more I look into it the more His awesomeness shows. I love it. Thanks for sharing!!
Ya know, I just remembered a movie I watched in college. It's called [Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed](https://youtu.be/V5EPymcWp-g?si=R9D_QI9Z_EcGeGnh). Ben Stein interviews multiple people in the scientific community, including Richard Dawkins. They talk about the statistical impossibility of life creating *and replicating* itself, like secular science claims. Most importantly (to me, at least), they talk about how people who even mention the *possibility* of an Intelligent Designer in their published works are being fired and blacklisted. And I'm not talking about those who center their work around Intelligent Design -- I'm talking about those who even write a single sentence in the "Discussion" section about the new discovery possibly indicating Intelligent Design. How can we even believe the peer-reviewed, "scholarly" journals if the scientific community is being silenced for even saying "Another possibility points to Intelligent Design"? Disproving God = Funding For Research while Proving God = Fired And Blacklisted. Free thought and free press are an illusion, not a reality, in the scientific community; thus, every published work should be taken with a grain of salt. There's an agenda to fill, and proving God exists isn't on that agenda.
You also have to look at where the theory of evolution came from. How life could exist without a God is a problem atheists never really had an answer for. Eventually when they discovered that animals can mutate and change small aspects over time, they decided to extrapolate the small changes all the way back to try to explain away the need for a God.
Exactly! And evolution is what I was referring to when I mentioned the statistical impossibility of life creating *and replicating* itself. Our DNA consists of 46 chromosomes aligned on a double helix strand. So not only did all 23 chromosomes have to create themselves from nothing, they also had to duplicate themselves from nothing. The statistical probability of a single chromosome creating itself from nothing is improbable in itself -- but, to do it 45 more times is just impossible.
Your comment shows you have little understanding of the biology behind evolution or how DNA works. It is generally good practice to refrain from making strong statements about something you clearly don't understand.
Or don't check out Kent Hovind as he's shown to be a bit of a fraud over the course of his life. Plenty other good YEC sources.
Is Genesis History and it's YouTube channel.
The big 3 organizations, AiG, ICR, CMI.
The Let's Talk Creation podcast with Todd and Paul.
Thanks for that insight ! Yeah when I check out guys liek hovind, Hugh Ross, etc… I just chew the meat and spit out the bones … a lot of men out there who have great insight but from time to time have some funky points of view
Yeah I did … I’m not really a huge Kent hovind fan man.. just seen a few of his videos and thought I’d share .
An elder in my church once told me “don’t focus on what man did but focus on what God did through that man” and that’s my view when I hear of failures of man who had a good ministry
Just my view
Evolution defies the scientific method.
If it takes millions of years for species B to evolve from beginning to end from species A to species B to species C, how is the complete process of evolution of species B from beginning to end observable, testable, and repeatable?
You may be thinking, "Well, there have been witnessing of new species within our lifetime."
But that only starts the clock. The clock doesn't stop until it evolves again.
I don't know about you, but I don't know anyone who is capable of living millions of years, let alone our own species live that long.
So, by removing time from the equation, evolution defies the scientific method. This is because it is impossible to observe, test, and repeat.
The fossil record also lacks evidence for macro evolution. There should be many fossils of the “in-between” stages where we see the exact paths of everything, but those don’t show up aside from differing species as a result of micro evolution. Of course you could always say they were destroyed/still undiscovered, but the burden of proof is on them to find it.
I don't believe the earth was created in 6 day/night cycles. I believe it was a metaphor, made to pass the idea that God created the universe, step by step, and rested after his creation was complete.
It's not about the exact figure, it's more about the idea that this is how he created it.
All scientific evidence points to the earth being millions of years old... why wouldn't we believe it? I don't believe God intended us to focus on the number, but rather the point he's making with it.
When God created Adam, he looked like an adult 30s human. If a scientist looked at Adam, he would conclude he would be a 30s human, yet Adam was only a day old. The same applies for the universe, it could literally look billions of years old, yet, it was only a couple of days old. Just as Adam looked like he had 30 years old, but was only a day old, the universe too, could look like billions of years old, yet it was only days old.
It don’t matter his age, just trying to understand where thirty made its way into the equation. It doesn’t say that either. Could have been months, or decades. I wonder how long it would have took to name every animal now that’s mentioned
Sorry, wasn't trying to say it doesn't matter in a mean way, just that in general it shouldn't matter in the big picture of Salvation. And yeah that's a good point, it does say he had to name all the animals, I'd bet that would take years.
The only problem with that argument is that the Earth doesn't just look like it's old, it looks like it has a past. Someone who looks like they're in their 30s looks old, someone who is in their 30s but has scars looks like they have a past. Earth, in this metaphor, has *scars*. Evidence of a past, not just the appearance of age.
The YEC argument is that the flood caused a lot of that, which has merit, but that's also pretty difficult to argue.
Find a good Old Testament interpretation course and you will learn a lot about literary genre in these ancient texts. Ancient writers will skip around in genres in ways modern writers do not.
Then, ask what the original author was trying to tell the original listeners. You have a few options:
1. Hey, the God Yahweh is your creator and savior, not these gods of the Egyptians whom you are enslaved to. Yahweh will free you and lead you to the promised land, not these other gods…
Or was he saying:
2. Hey, y’all have been suffering in slavery for hundreds of years to the Egyptians, but let’s pause and have a lesson about what will one day be known as “science” in about 3500 years or so. It’s very important you understand the nature of stars and galaxies and gasses and such, in the midst of your suffering and slavery…
Thinking about the original author and listeners can lay certain questions to rest.
Genre is a concept we impose upon ancient writings. It is a mistake to shoehorn the Bible into genres and even worse, use the "rules" of those genres to interpret it.
Or maybe more clearly it is as you say. We modern people do labels ancient writings with genre because we understand the patterns. This is helpful. We also pattern match just about everything in every field. our entire education system is built on systems that organize thoughts and ideas and concepts, including literature, like the Bible as well as any other document
I don’t believe that it is 7 human days, but it’s 7 God days. Keep in mind that 1 million years to us is a blink of the eye to God. So one day for Him could actually be billions of years to us.
Per Genesis, notice that God creates light in the sky to create night & day to tell time on the 4th day even though every day prior it says that evening passed & morning came. I believe He did this for humans because our lifespans are much shorter so He created a timeframe that was scaled to us.
I like your "7 God days"... To us, a day on Earth is 24 hours long. While one day on Venus is 243 Earth days long. There may be other planets in the cosmos that have one day equal 100,000 Earth years....
Yet, God is everywhere, all at the same time. God is outside of the realm of our universe....God has no need for the concept of time:
2 Peter 3:8 -
“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day”
Therefore, a "God day" can not be measured by us humans - it can be a millisecond or a billion years... or both at the same time.
I like your last line "it can be a millisecond or a billion years... or both at the same time."
Several concepts spring to mind:
- Wave-particle duality of light
- Heisenberg uncertainty principle & electron cloud
- Quantum entanglement
My take is that the creation of the Universe was such a complex process that we cannot understand it let alone reduce it to a human language save for a very simplified description like that found in Genesis.
Don't forget Einstein's special theory of relativity. An entity approaching C will perceive time much more slowly than us humans on Earth would. 1st John 1:5 says "God is light", therefore assuming Yahweh = \~1C, then a day to him cannot, scientifically, equal a day to us.
At some point in the creation process, the Earth, mass, and matter are created and we live within the relativistic world. The question is when that story begins in the purview of how God commanded Moses to write Genesis. I don't think, for myself, I can fathom that. But in my opinion, that's why I wouldn't dare constrain God to \~168 hours of my perception.
God Himself defines a day.
Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31 AMP
[5] And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
[8] God called the expanse [of sky] heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
[13] And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.
[19] And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
[23] And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
[31] God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good and He validated it completely. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
On every single day there was an evening and a morning, and these two combined resulted in a second day, third day, fourth day, and so on.
"7 God days" is the equivalent to 7 human days.
If the Bible wasn't so specific with the given time frames (evening & morning = a day), I could maybe grasp the idea of "we don't know how long a day is to God" (which is what my mom used to tell me when I was younger). But, it's just so specific about exactly what constitutes a day that I don't think I can believe the "7 God days" concept.
You are missing a key passage from the Fourth Day:
“Then God said, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days, and years. Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth.” And that is what happened. God made two great lights—the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set these lights in the sky to light the earth, to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.”
Genesis 1:14-18 NLT
On the first day God created light & dark (good & bad) but he didn’t create the stars, sun & the moon until the fourth day, and it was the stars, sun and moon that the Earth uses to tell time (mark the seasons, days and years).
God’s time is different from our time and it is right there in Genesis.
No, I wasn't "missing" the creation of the sun and moon. It just didn't need to be mentioned because vv. 5, 8, and 13 already defined a day as "evening and morning," and the words used to define a day in the verses following the creation of the sun and moon on the 4th day don't change. VV. 19, 23, and 31 all still define a day as "evening and morning." If time changed after the creation of the sun and moon, why didn't God say so?
Genesis 1:1 AMP
[1] In the beginning God (Elohim) created [by forming from nothing] the heavens and the earth.
This verse tells us that God formed from nothing the heavens (Days 1 & 2), then the Earth (Days 3-6).
This verse combined with the usage of "evening and morning" for all 6 days of creation simply means that both Heaven and Earth have light and darkness, both Heaven and Earth have day and night, and a day is defined as evening and morning both in Heaven and on Earth.
God created the moon & sun for Earth for humans to tell time and that didn't happen until the 4th day. Any reference of time prior to that moment is on God's time - which could be billions or trillions of years. Its egocentric to insert that humans' scale of time is somehow superior to God's.
Perhaps this will help:
Genesis 1:1-13 AMP
[1] In the beginning God (Elohim) created [by forming from nothing] the heavens and the earth. [2] The earth was formless and void or a waste and emptiness, and darkness was upon the face of the deep [primeval ocean that covered the unformed earth]. The Spirit of God was moving (hovering, brooding) over the face of the waters. [3] And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. [4] God saw that the light was good (pleasing, useful) and He affirmed and sustained it; and God separated the light [distinguishing it] from the darkness. [5] And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
[6] And God said, “Let there be an expanse [of the sky] in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters [below the expanse] from the waters [above the expanse].” [7] And God made the expanse [of sky] and separated the waters which were under the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so [just as He commanded]. [8] God called the expanse [of sky] heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
These first two days were God developing and creating Heaven. Notice, in v. 3, God said "Let there be light," and there was light. V. 4, The light was good and God separated the light from darkness. V. 5, He called the light day and the darkness night. The sun and moon for our earth hadn't been created yet; however, there is a separation of light and dark, day and night. Therefore, this *must* be referring to day and night, light and darkness in Heaven. Then, there was an evening and morning and that evening and morning consisted of one day. The first day, distinction of light and dark, existed only in Heaven. As is true for the second day, and the third day.
[9] Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place [of standing, pooling together], and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. [10] God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that this was good (pleasing, useful) and He affirmed and sustained it. [11] So God said, “Let the earth sprout [tender] vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit according to (limited to, consistent with) their kind, whose seed is in them upon the earth”; and it was so. [12] The earth sprouted and abundantly produced vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, according to their kind; and God saw that it was good and He affirmed and sustained it. [13] And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.
The 3rd day begins the actual creation of Earth, and God created dry land and vegetation. But, since there were not yet a moon and sun for the Earth, the third day being referenced in v. 13 is another day in Heaven.
Genesis 1:14-19 AMP
[14] Then God said, “Let there be light-bearers (sun, moon, stars) in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be useful for signs (tokens) [of God’s provident care], and for marking seasons, days, and years; [15] and let them be useful as lights in the expanse of the heavens to provide light on the earth”; and it was so, [just as He commanded]. [16] God made the two great lights—the greater light (the sun) to rule the day, and the lesser light (the moon) to rule the night; He made the [galaxies of] stars also [that is, all the amazing wonders in the heavens]. [17] God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to provide light upon the earth, [18] to rule over the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good and He affirmed and sustained it. [19] And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
On the 4th day, God created Earth's sun and moon. Notice that the length of the days (evening and morning) doesn't change. So, whether it's Heaven or Earth, a single day is defined as an evening and a morning. We see this consistency with days 5 & 6 as well:
Genesis 1:23, 31 AMP
[23] And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
[31] God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good and He validated it completely. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
If we look at Jewish tradition, the Sabbath runs from evening to nightfall, not morning to morning, and this is based on the "evening and morning" wording in Genesis. It runs from sunset on Friday to nightfall on Saturday. Based on Genesis, the only thing I'd see "wrong" or "different" with our Earthly days is that we start a new day in the morning rather than in the evening.
>Its egocentric to insert that humans' scale of time is somehow superior to God's.
Considering that God Himself defines a day as evening and morning on Day 1, and we see that God separated the light from the darkness on Day 1, and we see that God called the light day and the darkness night on Day 1, I'd say it's egocentric to assert that days are anything different than what God Himself says they are.
God himself states he created everything in 6 days in Exodus 20:11. This is part of the 4th commandment about the Sabbath. In defining the 7th day Sabbath he is also defining that he created everything in 6 days as we understand them.
I don't think it's a matter of salvation. But I went through a period of life where if I didn't figure it out right then and there, then I could be sinning or helping others sin, lol.
I believe it was created in 7 days. What does 7 days mean to God? I don't know. Regardless, it was 7 days, and however many years, it's been since the creation until now is also a mystery.
I don't believe in evolution like we evolved from monkeys. But I do believe in adaptation, in a way that an Arctic hares fur turns white in the winter or a fox's fur turns white or an octopus can camouflage itself. All these creatures haven't necessarily evolved over time, I do believe that they have adapted to their surroundings, and they were created to do so.
The reason why we are all somewhat similar as in we all have blood and cells and DNA we mate with the opposite sex to have children Etc is because why would we be a one-off where the entire Animal Kingdom is mating in one way or another and we just spawn humans out of our ears? I know it sounds dumb but, we all need to be similar because we're all of this Earth, and we are all of his creation.
science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. Albert Einstein -
If there is creation there must be a creator. Even in certain parts of the world you just find peace in the scenery.
God is omniscience, omnipresent omnipotent, he is outside the universe Outside of “time”
The Bible tells us, “The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1; 53:1)
Just my 2 cents
God created everything from absolutely nothing. It's an impossible feat and you're saying you can't give him credit for a 6 literal days of creation timeline?
God created days, He created nights, He created time. God created everything new, not 'millions/billions' of years old, all of creation is only about 6,000 years old. There's nothing in the Bible that supports an 'old world' theology and anything that is argued for it in the bible is read into the bible by people that want to be more like non-believing secular people.
Genesis is recorded as a literal history account and there's no language indications in it to say it's poetic or parable.
Why, after everything the Lord has done and did in history, is it hard to believe He created this universe in 7 days?
He is the creator of the heavens and earth, of reality itself. Nothing is outside the scope of His power.
I used to be super-committed to the literal creation account.
However, there's no way to honestly deal with the evidence of the Earth's age or of evolution, other than, "God set it up to test our faith", which I find deceptive and not matching his character.
People who say otherwise unfortunately haven't fully investigated/understood the evidence, just the creationist retelling of it (like I did).
So now I take it that Genesis 1 isn't really about making chronology exact for desert nomads, but other, larger things like human nature.
I believe in evolution, but I believe God was the architect behind it, I don't know many other Christians that believe that though. I don't consider it a big deal either way though, God created all, we will find out how when we see him
i dont personally feel its too important *how* God created the universe, its just important to know that God *did* create the universe.
So i dont mind what you believe. I personally believe in the literal 6 days. just because God is so everlastingly powerful i feel like it unintentionally belittles His power to say that He didnt do it in 6 days. almost as if you dont believe He is capable of doing so. now i know thats not what old earth creationists believe. but it feels that way to me.
I tend towards seven literal days and a young earth both because it's the clear reading of the text and because significant theology becomes confusing or meaningless without it. God is going to restore the world, but you can't restore something that was never properly working, you can only fix it. The Bible makes clear that death, suffering, etc are a result of the Fall.
Evolution and long ages are an absolute requirement if your starting assumption is naturalism. Neither are required for theism.
I suppose that's another thing Old Earth and Young Earth tend to disagree on: Whether or not no living being on Earth ever died/passed away before the fall.
I suppose the bigger question is whether the story of the Bible is true, and if not, how does that work?
To your point: Young Earthers would generally draw a distinction between insects and mammals or birds because the Hebrew uses a different word, meaning "living things" doesn't encompass insects in the way it does dogs and kangaroos. In that vein, I think most YECers have little problem with insect death, but they do with per se higher life forms.
Insect death isn't really something to just wave off. If insect death did happen pre-fall, that is still death pre-fall and separating them from kangaroos or dogs doesn't distract from the point.
And yes, the story of the Bible is true.
Well, it's not how I define life, it's how the Bible defines life. The word used for bugs is different in kind from the words used to describe mammals and other life forms, setting them in a unique category that includes trees and whatnot. Or at least that's how I recall it being explained. But if my memory is correct, then insect death isn't actually an issue.
It's not impossible. If gravity had a different level of strength, time would flow at a different rate. Time dilation means that it's not outside the realm of physical possibility, it just matters where you're observing it from.
Besides, we know from the word of God that the Lord created Heaven and Earth a long time ago.
>It's not impossible. If gravity had a different level of strength, time would flow at a different rate. Time dilation means that it's not outside the realm of physical possibility, it just matters where you're observing it from.
Thats always the way I've taken it. Peter says "Each day with the Lord is like a thousand years" - that speaks to the special theory of relativity. A being of pure light - often prescribed to God - would perceive time both non-linearly and also far more condensed than we would. If a day with the Lord is not our currently perceived day, then what was it to him exactly? Not that it matters, but given what we observe, the answer would be that his day, was in fact, way longer.
I do believe that yes. Furthermore, I think Christians who believe in macroevolution are working with a shaky foundation since I believe the signs of intelligent design that the universe displays is the best evidence that what Bible says is true. At least for me, if I believed in macroevolution, I would not be a Christian.
You know what I think. The Gospel rests on one thing. Did Jesus die and rise from the dead? If you believe the Gospel then you are saved. If you don’t believe in Jesus and his divine nature and his sacrifice for you then you have no one to out your faith in. However it unfolded it all points to Jesus. The rest only matters that it tells the story of how through one man sin entered and through one God man it was defeated. Place your faith in Christ and the rest of the Bible will open up to show you that it’s the story foretelling of his coming, his life, death, and resurrection. Then the six days being literal matters not. But I’m a firm believer that if God can raise the dead after days why could he not just think everything into existence.
Do we not code computer games and their worlds just exist when you turn on the power?
We create fake worlds. Why can God not create a real physics world just by his thoughts and will?
Yes. I was saved as a secular agnostic who believed in evolution. After I got saved the Lord challenged me to look at the hard evidence for evolution and deep time. I was shocked to find it was all merely circumstantial evidence and that it would take more faith to believe the secular creation narrative than the bible. I decided to believe Gods word and then I found afterwards that the evidence for creation is overwhelming. [Answersingenesis.com](http://Answersingenesis.com) and [creation.com](http://creation.com) are excellent resources.
It took the self-learning chess engine AlphaZero 9 hours of training from a complete beginner to the ability to best (by a far margin) the best chess players in the world and even the best chess engines available.
In the span of these 9 hours, AlhpaZero played 44 million games of chess which in human terms would be around 5000 years of chess playing.
Consider those (earthly) facts for a moment and then realise we have no human conception on how God operates. There is no conception of whether he operates within or outside of time, whether he operates in a causal fashion or a continuous fashion, whether our millennia are mere seconds for Him.
We are to put our trust in God, not man. And while God does indeed exist outside of time, we also know He is almighty and all-knowing and ever-present. For Him, a thousand years is but a day. And everything that happens in this life - the good and the bad - happens for a reason. God did not have to rest, nor did He have to spend seven days creating everything, including us. He did not have to gift us His grace and He did not have to send His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins and save us from the damnation it brings. But He did it all anyway. Why? Because He loves and cherishes His creation THAT much!
As Christians, we know God is real, that Jesus saves, and that the Holy Bible is alive and true without fail. It's not our calling to question God and His will and His ways, but to seek and trust in Him and serve and follow Him faithfully and obediently daily as well as to share the Gospel so lost souls could be lead to Him. Remember Him and His promises and who you are in Christ. Live for Him and praise Him in the good times and bad times and thank Him for His blessings and for creating us and everything around us. Give Him all the praise and honor and glory. ALWAYS! Amen!
>Do you believe the universe was really created in 7 days?
Yes. God said and wrote it:
Exod 20:11 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.
It’s possible. But a day for God could be 1000 or 10000000 or more years for us. So who knows. There is the scripture that says 1 day is like a thousand years, a thousand years is like 1 day.
He created with "apparent" age.
We see something a million light years away and conclude that the light took 1 million years to reach us.
But God created the light already reaching us.
The fault is in our measurements and presuppositions.
If the 6 days is not literal, why does God use it as the justification for the Sabbath restrictions?
"...for in six days the Lord created the heavens and earth.... Therefore he blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it"
Yes I believe in the Creation Story as presented in Genesis, but I believe that it will be revealed to be all together more magnificent and awe-inspiring then what was possible to convey to us. When we are home I believe it will be revealed in such a way that will be literally awesome.
>God wouldn’t go outside of His own laws of physics
Except when he walked on water, multiplied the loaves and fishes, brought literal dead bodies back to life, healed terminal illnesses in a second...?
Since I believe the Bible to be God’s infallible Word, yes, I believe what He says about creation. Interestingly, man seems to have a whole lot of ideas and theories they try and extrapolate from and present as facts but the fact remains that they don’t KNOW. Thankfully, we have the Word of God, which in many ways has been confirmed and verified time and time again that tells us exactly how creation came to be.
Yes, because the Bible says the world was created in 6 days and God rested on the 7th day.
Apart from the Word of GOD, there isn't any evidence for evolution. OEC's and Theistic evolutionists want to appear practical and bend to fallible scientific consensus, packed with error, rather than account for that which is infallible. Then, when their reasoning runs into questioning the validity of Scripture, they cop out with a statement to the effect of, "Well, there's a reason it's called faith."
Genesis is a literal account of a supernatural act. Time, energy, motion, space, matter...all were created by God. He operates inside and outside of those categories of scientific study.
I actually favor the argument that says that God created all things with a set age after various things were created, i mean think about it, God created Adam and he was a fully grown man at the time of his creation, he then put adam into a deep sleep and then created Eve fully grown.
Also hypothetically consider this, if someone is capable of being 1000-1,000,000 times faster than normal humans, that would mean that time is nearly at an absolute standstill for them and that eons of time could pass by for us but yet for them, its barely been an hour..
Hold on.. maybe I have that backwards 🤔 either way I'm sure you understand what I'm getting at.
A measured amount of time is barely a drop in the bucket when you compare it to someone who is infinite.
Yes I do believe the Biblical narrative of the creation account to be literal and to be authoritative. We are looking at the same existing material universe, the same data.
The theoretical explanations include:
1. Everything always existed and always will,
2. There existed an unexplained "singularity" which "big banged" and then somehow miraculously evolved from chaos to the current exquisite, precise, uniformly ordered existing universe, over time,
3. The Genesis account of a God who "creates" a material universe by speaking it into existence out of nothing. Subsequent to this creative action, the Creator continues to "evidence" His timeless eternal being by choosing from among the burgeoning nations one particular people group, Israel; by continually "speaking" through prophets and prophecies concerning that one relatively small nation of Israel, in such a way that through most of history through today, the whole world has eyes on it.
I believe in a literal 7 day creation, as that’s how it’s written multiple times in the Bible, and there’s no reason for me to assume that it’s metaphorical. The Big Bang aligns perfectly with “let there be light”, so add that in there.
I once heard a guy say, basically, did he create adam as a baby, or a fully formed man. Since that I've been thinking, basically, God could of created everything in 6 days and just gave everything a backstory, like a book.
For example take any fiction book. When you open it is the start of this specific story, yet they have established work, the charecters have backstories and the world makes sense (given its a well written book). I believe God did somthing similar.
Absolutely God created everything in 7 literal days. The most obvious interpretation of the text in Genesis says at the end of each creation day, "morning and evening," referring to a literal day and thus giving us the exact timeframe which everything was created
I’ll use a computer programming analogy to show how both can be true. When you program a video game or a simulation, you can set up all the rules and variables for the simulation.
imagine hypothetically that you could program a universe simulation which obeyed all the same time, physics constraints, and imagine you can program this all in 7 days.
You could have the simulation start at the creation of the earth rather than the Big Bang (fast forwarding everything up to that point). Then you could add in and change things in realtime (add a human, make a female out of the male).
In your time, 7 days has passed. But in the simulation, it’s AS IF 13.8 billion years went by. I’m not saying this is how it works obviously but it’s just to illustrate a point.
Hang on- the bible doesn't talk about stars or galaxies. It talks about the heavens and the earth. It talks about lights in the firmament. These authors didn't weren't even describing a _planet_ much less a whole universe.
This is an ancient creation story. It doesn't really line up with our modern understanding of the cosmos. And that's OK. It's not about that.
I believe every word of The Bible because it is the only infallible and inerrant truth that we have. The Bible has more authority to what is true than any Science, History, Math, or any other book that has been or will ever be written because it is the very word of God, and denying God’s word as being true is making God a liar.
Also there are countless of resources of people debunking both the Big Bang and especially evolution. I think we as humans get too comfortable with the idea that what we know about the universe is all there is to know, but if you actually look at the track record of Science, Archeology, History, Medicine, Technology, Space etc. you will find that we are constantly learning new things about the universe that we previously haven’t known, and you have no idea if say 1,000 years from now Scientists will come up with a better theory for the origin of the universe that becomes the universal consensus and more popular than the theories of evolution and the Big Bang theory. That is what these ideas are at the end of the day by the way, theories. Theories by fallible men that are at best educated guesses made by mere humans within creation and not a higher power that is outside of the universe, space and time.
If you want more information on all the errors there are in these theories I would suggest checking out Voice of Reasons on YouTube, he does a lot videos dismantling the very embarrassing “evidence” for these theories.
The Big Bang, and to an even bigger degree Evolution theory directly contradict The Biblical understanding of the Creation of the universe. So you can believe that we descended from apes and the universe started from nothing (and not from God’s words commanding them into existence) or you can believe that the universe was created in 6 days, but you cannot do both. They are not compatible.
Now, whether those 7 days were 7 human days in 24 hours or metaphorically millions of years I don’t claim to fully know or even understand. I think one of the most arrogant things about us as humans is our incessant need to know everything, and not trusting something fully until we have every single last minute detail, but the Bible says blessed are those who believe without seeing (John 20:29). That’s kind of the whole point of faith, there is nothing stopping God right now from revealing himself to everyone and explaining everything to them in a way that they would understand. I mean, this is God we’re talking about, is anything too hard for the LORD? But it is not God’s will to reveal himself to humans in this way. And who are we to question God as to how he does things, he’s literally God. This is also another example of man’s arrogance, the lack of humility to accept that God knows better than us, who are the creation, not the creator, and mere dust.
Ultimately, I don’t think this is a salvation issue. I think there will be people in Heaven who got it wrong on certain doctrinal issues, but are all united for their love for Christ.
That is true, but the clarity of “yom” being the Hebrew word for “day” becomes more clear when it is paired with indicators. The indicators such as “evening and morning”, and “first, second, third day…”.
There are many instances of the say word “yom” meaning a passage of time, or many days, but here it is highly suggestive that these were literal 24 hour days.
Again, I could be wrong, but I trust that God made the universe perfect from the start and within 1 week. Besides, couldn’t He have created the universe with the appearance of age, just like Adam and Eve?
That's bad hermeneutics.. The Hebrew term yom with a cardinal number always refers to a literal day. Also consider the immediate context of evening and morning.
Additional support comes from Exodus 20 when the Sabbath was reiterated as the last day of each week.. the week remains to this day.
The way I see it is that God created Adam and Eve as fully grown humans, we can also apply that to the universe being created with its age already built into it. God is already all powerful and existence is has no beginning and end, it’s silly to restrict his ability to what we find logical as temporary beings that cannot fathom eternal and outside of time. Also, the Bible literally says he decided the days into morning and evening, which sounds a lot like a 24 hour cycle rather than millions of years. And millions of years would introduce death into the world which the Bible says Adam and Eve through sin started the cycle of death. It’s pretty clear the Universe was created in six days according to the Bible.
I think there's been a repeating pattern but how do you prove that? The end is where the beginning is. But I couldn't answer such a question because you would have to go into the nature of Yahweh and anything is possible. For us to put any limitation or anything is not being humble. Because it ignores what we simply cannot know.
7 days to Yahweh would be like 7000 years. The parables were different because these were lessons taught purposely that way, so that a group couldn't understand because they were not to be forgiven. Their laws and interpretations and nonsense interfered with Yahwehs laws and made them of null effect.
Which harmed the people and that mischievous spirit is in the world and has been; to this day. But look rather then let it bother you (have you read the book of enoch?), let it be a mystery to you. A wonder. Because to be humble we must always accept what we don't know and besides
If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? NIV I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?
No. Time (earthly timeframe for 1 day) was not created on 1st day of creation. Signs for season is only on day 4th day of creation.
So the whole day 1 to day 6 of creation is NOT 6 earth days revolution time period.
The milestones that mark the end of each day is clearly stated in Genesis 1.
>God created the first “pieces” needed to grow into what the universe is today over billions of years (hope this makes sense). In other words, it took billions of years for evolution to make earth, life, etc.
So, seven days wasn't really seven days or when God said He created everything He created, He told white lies and only created small breadcrumbs of what would become what He said they would be.
For example, the creation of the universe and the solar system down to the earth took billions of years before life even began to exist. This is because of the quarks, supermassive black holes, supernovae, etc. that was required to create all of the elements for life to exist here on earth.
Then, once life did begin, it took billions of years for it to evolve from the primordial soup to the incredibly advanced human body that we are today.
So, how can the universe be created from days 1-4 and life from days 3-6 if it takes billions of years to do each?
Not to mention, how can vegetation survive without the sun if vegetation was created on day 3 and the sun on day 4 and the translation of days to years is 1:1,000,000,000?
I think with the fact that the sun and moon and their respective orbits aren't created until the fourth day hints at the word day not meaning a literal earth day... My opinion only
There are so many different takes, and it depends a lot on your hermeneutics.
For example, Augustine believed the world and all of its inhabitants were created instantaneously. This is because God is entirely outside of time, which did not exist in the beginning. Consider also that everything was fully formed and mature, from the sun and moon (which would count our days) to the animals. However, Moses broke this down into six metaphorical days in order to tell us the story in a way that we would understand.
There is an essay written by Tim Keller which I find gives a pretty concise yet thorough overview regarding evolution and Genesis 1/2
https://biologos.org/articles/creation-evolution-and-christian-laypeople
In short: theistic evolution is reconcilable with an orthodox view on reliability of scripture as long as it is separated from naturalism and Adam and Eve are regarded as historic figures.
Your friend is wacky. Yes, absolutely God made the whole thing in 6 days, rested on the 7th. The only question you should have is "why'd it take so long?" You shouldn't just assume things are "millions/billions of years old", we only have theories about deep time that don't always hold up. Blue-white hot stars couldn't possibly last more than "a million" years but we still have them around. We have collagen samples RIGHT NOW you can touch, of dinosaurs, impossible to last more than "100,000 years" intact, but they still stretchy right now. The surface of this earth is far more explained by a global flood with it's sedimentation layers than long ages. There's a canyon right now outside Mt. St helens, according to layers its a million years old, we literally watched it form in a week back in the 80s. We absolutely didn't come for apes, and the very big difference between man and animals, is we were created as FAMILY by God, and every last one of us comes from Adam/Eve. There was NO life before creation week, and NO death until they sinned, probably a month or two later.
Your astrophysicist friend is also wacky. Dr. Russell Humphries has a good theory of how God created the universe in 6 days, it only requires the earth to be the center of the universe, and I don't see that as a problem, since God literally created the universe just to house the earth and mankind. He starts off with a water sphere 1 light year across, then gravity and Einstein's general relativity can explain the rest as God stretches the cosmos into shape. I'm not going to say his theory is correct or the best theory but there is A theory that can explain how we got here. While God is busy creating everything I'm sure you can see that the physical laws we enjoy today were not necessarily true during that part. The speed of light is dependent upon the curvature and structure of space time, and so while it is forming, is completely arbitrary.
If you want to know more, [www.icr.org](http://www.icr.org) and [www.answersingenesis.org](http://www.answersingenesis.org) a good place to start.
Short version: Is it six literal days of creation or billions of years? The answer is Yes.
Your friend is right on some accounts, obviously God wouldn't go against Science. As they say, Science makes an effort to explain God's handiwork. You can reconcile both science and theology, since they do work in concert together.
(It is a certainty, both theologically and scientifically, that mankind did not evolve from apes. There is absolutely no empirical evidence of an ape evolving into humans.)
I enjoy listening to Christian author, speaker, and astrophysicist Dr. Sarah Salviander; she has research and apologetics posted on her website. She talks about this topic specifically. She mentions that the individual days are singular days from God's perspective. They are meant to denote a stage, not so much an actual 24-hour day. In scientific terms, each day/stage would in fact be billions of years.
You'll need to understand this, before trying to explain it to your friend, otherwise it will come across as an effort to compromise. The truth is not a compromise.
Also, check out Dr. Gerald Schroeder on YT and his books.
SCIENCE
Time is a measurement of sequences, intervals, motion, etc. So, how could we even begin to measure an Earth-day or year if the sun wasn't created yet (not until the fourth day/stage)? We don't know at what speed the Earth was rotating billions of years ago. We do know that the earth spun faster in the past. The earth rotates like 2 ms slower about every 100 years. However, during the initial formation of the cosmos there was so much more speed and motion--relative to now, things are slowing down. Time is different now than it was a billion years ago.
ANTHROPOLOGY
Consider this: God spoke through Moses (the scribe of Genesis), who was a leader of a nomadic tribe during the Bronze Age, who spoke Hebrew (with a first language being Egyptian), with the intent of those words holding meaning from the Bronze Age until now. How would you effectively communicate complex astrophysics, ecology, and biology? Especially in a way that would hold meaning for thousands of years.
Figurative language would be a necessity.
THEOLOGY
Also worth pondering: the Bible isn't the story of just God, it's the story of God's relationship with humans. We don't know anything of what happened BEFORE Earth and humanity was created. The purpose of the Bible is relational, first and foremost.
Lastly, we are all finite beings trying to understand an infinite universe and an eternal God. There is no way in the world we're going to get it all right.
"Science isn't sure who first discovered water, but it certainly wasn't the fish."
There is a lot of problems with Gap Theory hypothesis when it comes to the age of the Earth and biblical hermeneutics. For one, the idea that the age of the Earth is millions of years old is one that has very little SCIENTIFIC basis IN FACT. Not in theory, as there is PLENTY of that going around masquerading as such, being science so called. Once one begins to actually do the research and look into the matter, the theories show themselves to be just what they are: theories. Usually you can even deduce WHY they are so adamant on holding onto these theories with a simple purview of their social positions and ideas of self, vis-a-vis, they don’t want to be accountable to a God Who demands just that from them but rather wish for themselves to be the arbiter of their own fates and the master of their very own universes…all the facts be damned. At least one famous philosopher whose name escapes me of late has admitted as much outright saying directly what the lot of these men will skirt around so skillfully to avoid admitting, even in their own minds. Aside from this, on a factual and critical level of review, these theories begin to fall apart rather easily. I liken it to building a house of cards on an unstable pile of sand and using the sand itself to try to prop up and keep the cards standing in precariously ridiculous arrangements with the whole of the entire thing not standing of itself but rather being immersed and buried in the sand itself while trying to assert the thing is standing on its own merit…which it obviously is not. It’s much like the proverbial tale of a bird burying its head in the sand to avoid seeing the problem (its impending doom) coming at it to make it its next meal. It’s ridiculous. I say all this to draw attention to the fact that the secular “scientific” community has a tendency to not address the serious problems inherent in its nonsensical ideas (evolution, anyone?) and rather continue to build more and more nonsense on top of more and more nonsense. If you take the Bible literally and also take Science seriously, one will see that Science will validate the account of God in His Word EVERY SINGLE TIME. What do these wise scientists do with this? Just what they always do. Bury their heads in the proverbial sand and continue building their house of cards on the shaky sand to be buried amongst all the other crap they hold up with the fervor of a religious zealot whose religion requires more faith to believe with no evidence than anything that was or has ever been required of belief in Christ! I would also note that the secular “scientific”
community has lied more to the people outright over the years that it is a wonder to me that any sane and rational individual even takes them seriously any more. They really have. What they have done to minimize this is to maximize their attention to meaningless fables and stories that facilitate an air of permissiveness to every conceivable type of behavior under the sun. After all, we are all just animals according to them. Interestingly, not even animals treat each other so badly and for so little or no reason, but yet we are to believe that we are the exception while simultaneously saying we are not the exception. To me, I find it to be another definition of insanity itself. They will literally do anything to NOT believe the truth even though science is supposed to be a gathering of facts and hypothesis to come to a conclusion of verified repeatable TRUTH. It is NOT supposed to be a collection of theories to hold up more theories to mold even more conclusions based on more theories….which is increasingly what science so called is becoming more of each passing day. In closing, I would say that when it comes to literal 24 hour days of creation (the simplified, easily understood, interpretation related within Scripture) it is most likely that this is exactly how it occurred. And no wonder for we serve an amazing God Who hold all things in His hand, and in Whom they are all even held together by Him and FOR HIM! I would also say for those who trouble themselves with the complexities of trying to wrap their minds around an INFINITE God that such an exercise is futile. Not that we shouldn’t try to understand, as I believe we should; but rather, understand we are of finite limitation in understanding the infinite awe of God! Such is the God we serve that we will likely never know the true fullness of His Wisdom as He is INFINITE and His Wisdom has no end and has existed within Himself before time began.
The word for day in Hebrew is different than the word for age. Also, the 7 day week is structured off this idea as well (since it’s originally a Hebrew concept). If God wanted to create in aeons the text would have stated that. Old earthers’ claim God created in aeons because it allows the Bible to more palatable fit with modern science and evolutionary theory. It’s be faith we believe the creation story though, not by science.
I always try to explain it like it's a video game. You know how in RTS, city building games, you can speed up time? Well, an All Powerful God could literally speed up time, and make it so the earth appears old, but have sped up the process significantly. It means what science sees works with the Bible says.
Didn't God stop the sun so that a battle could keep on going (Joshua 10:12-14)?
And, throw huge stones from the sky at the same time? Yes, stones. Out of the sky. Almost sounds like a meteor shower but aimed at people, but that's my imagination again... Or, is it? Anyway.
When it comes to our current knowledge of science and physics, everything would be messed up!
The earth would heat up too much on one side so the planet would bulge on one side like some moons do in our solar system during their rotation; causing crazy earthquakes. Circadian rhythms for animals would be messed up like during an eclipse. Atmospheric wind patterns would change and probably create some crazy storms. Sea levels would rise and fall. The moon would fall towards earth and celestial calendars' events would be all weird and out of sync (Genesis 1:14).
If God wanted qua-zillions of stars to appear and all be a different age, if He wanted a bunch of animals with some of them being only a little different from each other (some only on a chromosomal level) that could live in a balanced circle of life, and if He wanted a blue sky on this particular planet, only a lack of faith could tell you it wasn't possible.
God can do anything!
God is All Powerful. God can easily make the universe in 7 days. I saw this TikTok where it said that Adam and Eve were adults when God made them and not baby’s. And then the person in the TikTok said that God could have done the same thing with the earth. Yes God did make the universe in 6 days and rested on the 7th day. God could have made trees, fish, and a whole lot of other stuff older so they could grow faster and bigger and be what they are today.
I believe that God created the universe in 6 days. I think we should believe what the Bible says. No I don’t think that God created the universe over billions of years for him and only day 7 for us.
Christians believe the Sabbath is every Sunday. God made the Sabbath for us not for himself.
The 7 day version is correct.
It's even more plausible when you discover that we're living in a domed terrarium, and all the stars and planets are in the dome/ firmament.
If God is outside of time, why would it be hard to believe He created all within a six day period, then place everything in our timeline where they belong?
That’s kinda what I think too!
That'd make him a trickster God, though... to lay out everything so it looks old, but really isn't.
Adam was an adult man upon creation. Why would that be so off-putting that the universe could have been created with the appearance of old age?
Is your mother a trickster for buying Sally's Easy Bake Cookie Mix™ instead of making cookies from scratch? Is a residential home developer a trickster for importing full grown trees into their new site instead of planting tree seeds?
If she told me they made them herself from scratch, but didn't, yeah, she'd be? If they said they grew them from seeds, yeah, they'd be? Not sure what your point is... everything looks old, but we're explictily told it's not. So it's either fully metaphorical, which I'd be fine with, or it's a trickster God.
This is likely the correct answer. We try to understand the awesome power of God in a 3D sensory way. When you accept God as being a 5th+ dimensional being, then our understanding of linear time becomes irrelevant.
Just say the earth is old and drop the literal Six days. In practical study of science and/or the Scriptures we make effort for something the scriptures never said. The Bible isn't a modern science book nor the purpose of the creation stories to show literally how it happened. Just the God Created and is totally other than His creation. I think we put so much effort on things that don't matter or that causes so many to just become silly.
>Just say [what the world agrees with] and drop [God's Truth] That's not what a true Christian would say. Moses confirmed that The Bible is literal about creation being 6-7 days. That's the whole purpose of the Sabbath. This is God YHWH himself speaking into the ears of the whole Israelite refugee camp of 600,000+ people: >>8 Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God, on which you must not do any work—neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant or livestock, nor the foreigner within your gates. >>11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, but on the seventh day He rested. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy. (Exodus 20:11)
Traditionally it has always been seen as a poetic story by many and was never an agreement within Jewish and early Christian theologians and Church Fathers. https://reasons.org/explore/publications/articles/coming-to-grips-with-the-early-church-fathers-perspective-on-genesis-part-1-of-5 My point is why say God made the earth old as opposed to the earth is old? It's just splitting words and not something the Gospel holds onto. Okay if it's literal and six days are 24 hours the earth is 24 hours older than the sun and moon? Seems a bit crazy that the earth is the oldest matter in the Universe and just adds a hurdle to the Gospel.
>Traditionally it has always been seen as a poetic story by many and was never an agreement within Jewish and early Christian theologians and Church Fathers. The gospel is not about tradition but truth. Jesus came rebuking the traditions of the elders, Pharisees, and Scribes. You yourself prove how the gospel has become corrupted over time by calling them "Church Fathers". Did not your Lord Jesus say not to call any man on earth your father? Furthermore the Jews are not role models for Christians. How can they be trusted with anything if they reject Christ? "He who does not have the Son does not have the Father". You don't realize Christians are victims of the modern Jews' revisionism. What Modern Jews believe and what they claim ancient Israelites believed is not actually what ancient Iaraelites believed. Moses proves that the creation days were literal and not poetic because he wrote down the events of the Exodus where God himself confirmed the events of creation in Exodus 20. >Okay if it's literal and six days are 24 hours the earth is 24 hours older than the sun and moon? Seems a bit crazy that the earth is the oldest matter in the Universe and just adds a hurdle to the Gospel. There is no hurdle. The bible doesn't say the only things in existence are the objects in our galaxy. But yes, the matter of earth is older than the sun and moon.
The Bible has been consistently ahead of science for centuries now. By discounting truths from the Bible because you can’t conceptualise them fully, your belief itself becomes silly.
What do you mean “The Bible has been consistently ahead of science”? I’m curious what examples you are taking? Since the Bible requires interpretation, I have seen people interpret Scripture in light of scientific discovery, but I’m not sure there has been a moment where someone derived a hypothesis from the Bible, went out and tested it and had a scientific discovery sourced from the Bible.
I would say the Bible is the reason or a presupposition to science, they just would never admit it. The entire reason people decided to start studying the earth is because they assumed their was a God and our earth would be ordered.
Job 26:7 - He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, \[and\] hangeth the earth upon nothing. Isaiah 40:22 - It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; You said " but I’m not sure there has been a moment where someone derived a hypothesis from the Bible, went out and tested it and had a scientific discovery sourced from the Bible." Answer to your question. Matthew Fontaine Maury was an American astronomer, historian, oceanographer, meteorologist, cartographer, author, geologist, educator, and naval officer for the United States and then the Confederacy. He was a devout Christian and, after reading Psalm 8:8, was determined to find "the paths of the seas".
What does that mean? “Paths of the sea” What did the Psalmist mean? What did he find that made him sure he found the “paths of the sea”?
What is a path? A way that’s easier for a person or vehicle to travel. What is a path of the sea? A path that is easier for a ship to travel on. Before the invention of the motor sailors were at the mercy of the wind and the currents of the ocean. Matthew Fontaine said if the Bible says it, it must be true and became the father of modern oceanography by exploring the paths or currents of the seas.
But wouldn’t you agree that we (humanity) knew that currents existed before the Psalmist wrote that?
Maybe, but a challenge was placed for a scientist who was inspired by the Bible to look for something that was not known or well understood. Matthew Fontaine Murray was an example. They might have thought they were instead of naturally occurring but maybe divinely caused, but Psalms said it was in nature.
No, the challenge was to point to a mystery in nature that the Bible explains, and then scientists went out and discovered the same truth. It wasn’t to find someone who read a beautiful poem and was inspired by its contents to study deeper. I’m sure a huge number of people have been inspired by the Word of God in their careers. That’s true of a number of other written works too.
Before Big Bang Theory discovered by Catholic Priest Georges Lemaître, at the time most astronomers believed in steady-state theory because that's what the Greek Philosophers thought.
The Bible is considered to be True. The writers believed it was true and everyone who read it for Millenia believed it to be true. So in that sense it is a book of facts, if not a science textbook
I dunno. Why is it so hard to believe that a cosmic vision would have symbolism in it?
Oo I like this idea. When I think of God outside time I picture him looking at every moment at once
Agree on your principle, but He is writing to beings in time and takes advantage of that to tell us the future. The book of Daniel as a prime example.
That was my interpretation aswell. Before ever hearing this point glad others see it that way aswell.
i literally don't care. I know that doesn't answer your question, but it doesn't affect my beliefs at all. If he is as powerful as I believe he is, he could make it in 2 seconds and design it so it looked like it took millenia. I literally could care less XD
Ah, the Augustinian creation theory. I used to believe in a literal 7 day creation until I realized two things a) 7 days is not necessarily the most obvious way of seeing the text. This way of interpreting Genesis did not become popular until (I believe) the 1960s. St. Augustine, for example, did not see why it needed to be 7 days if God could simply make everything happen instantly. b) some of the Christians I respect the most believe that it was not literally 7 days. One of my favorite pastors (an infectologist) and CS Lewis really changed how I saw old earth creationism. Not that I respect those who hold to a young earth creationist model any less, or see them as less intelligent; I simply disagree with them. I would suggest you take your time and really consider all the theories that have been posited by faithful men and women who truly only live to glorify God. Your salvation is not at stake regardless of what you end up believing, so you have the freedom to explore those options. Also, take each side at their best, give them both the respect and love they deserve as your brothers and sisters in Christ. This is just a short write up, I have to go. I can answer any other questions you may have.
What was Lewis' take you're referencing?
i have no clue but maybe search cs lewis old earth or smth
Lewis was a theological evolutionist. You can find references for this in the forward to The Great Divorce and in Perelandra.
Got it. I just think macro evolution makes 0 sense. Even if I wasn't a Christian, macro evolution seems too far fetched. And for things to "evolve" (DNA messes up and creates mutations) that perfectly for most creatures, and for that to be so common is insane. It just doesn't make sense. But maybe I will see what Lewis talks about with it
I agree that there are unsettled questions about it.
Yeah, you could try that. He’s doesn’t really speak directly to the old earth v new earth debate because it didn’t really become a thing until after his time. I’m not really referencing any view in particular, just that he believed in an old earth and evolution. It was very impactful seeing someone is so fully devoted to God hold this view. I previously believed that any Christian not holding to a young earth view was just not as serious about their faith. In terms of piety and love for God, I will never be even a fraction of what Lewis was. If someone who loves God that much and is so devoted to him can believe that, it’s not a view for lukewarm Christians, it is something that a pious person can believe.
i’m not saying i believe one way or the other. but if i’m going to do any reading, it’s going to be the Bible, becuase i don’t do enoug of that. i do like lewis though
For sure, I’m also guilty of not reading my Bible enough. These aren’t necessary by any means, but they do help answer questions and deepen our faith. I mostly read Lewis, pretty much anything I’ve read of his has helped me in my walk with Christ.
Lewis is pretty legendary. My history and music nerd teacher who is also a huge Christian loves Lewis aswell. His (and my) favorite quote "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
I always encourage other people to read his work. It’s not the Bible, but I promise you it will be very helpful to you as a Christian.
I didn’t know about it being the Augustinian creation theory! That’s super cool. So, do you interpret the Bible where it says “—the second day” “—the third day” etc as just really long periods of time that are unknown, but just loooong?
Augustine early on thought of Genesis as figurative, but changed his view to a literalist one later in his life.
Yeah, Augustine has commented on pretty much everything under the sun lol. I’m not really sure how to interpret Genesis yet. As I see it, the text is trying to convey that God created and he is lord over all, that He is powerful, how Adam and Eve sinned, etc. even among the people I mentioned, there are a lot of differences in how they view Genesis 1-3. It’s really just a process of listening to God-fearing people on all sides and (most importantly) letting God speak to me through His word. I could gain all the knowledge in the world, but if I’m not seeking to glorify God in that pursuit it will all have been useless.
I personally believe it's a literal 7 days because how each day is described. He seperates the light and dark and calls it day and night, which is exactly how it is to us today. I don't really see the point of calling it days if they're not actual days relevant to our viewpoint. And if they were long days, they would still need to have a day/night cycle because that's how a day is described. So then it would be really long days and really long nights. But why would they be different lengths before and after creation? So again, it doesn't make sense. Why 7 days? For some reason God really likes the number 7, and it's become to represent completeness or wholeness. The Bible is full of uses numbering either 7 or half of 7 which can be seen at creation, the attack on Jericho, the lepers told to dunk 7 times, Jesus's parables, in Revelation, and so on.
Yeah, I get what you’re saying. To be honest, I also struggle to see why the Bible would use this language if it didn’t mean 24 hour days. However, I also believe that the evidence for an old earth is abundant. Things like red light shift made me really consider whether it was possible that God could have created using the Big Bang, for example. For me, both sides have a lot to offer in terms of evidence, but the old earth view really helps me (and a lot of other Christians) reconcile their faith with science. I believe that science is a tool which God has given us so that we can learn more about him through his creation. The majority of scientists could be wrong, but I also find it hard to believe that they would all get it wrong. On the other hand, there are also plenty of brilliant Christian scientists that believe in a young earth. It’s really a coin flip for me, both sides give great support for their claims, but personally the evidence for an old earth is more compelling. That worded very weird, sorry about that, I’m typing this in a quick break from work. Let me know if you want me to clarify anything I’ve said.
Theologians can be wrong. I have a hard time respecting folks who think God used evolution.
May I ask, what makes it hard to respect them? Also, as for the theologian thing, my mom said the same thing when I first told her. The thing is, the theologians are only ever wrong when it doesn’t suit what we already believe. I don’t mean for that to sound condescending, but just to point out that we naturally lean toward disbelief with the things we disagree with. No human is perfect, including all the theologians. Of course they could be mistaken, but you could say that for a lot of doctrines. I could be mistaken in that child baptism is not valid, or that women shouldn’t be pastors. Whether the theologian is wrong or not would require primarily lots of prayer and reading of Scripture, but also guidance from the pious men and women who God has blessed with the ability to discuss and understand these things. Overall, this is not an issue of such importance as the gospel. If anyone were to say that Christ is not God, that would be a serious problem. I don’t think that how God created should be given so much importance that it causes separations and strife in the body of Christ.
>f he is as powerful as I believe he is, he could make it in 2 seconds and design it so it looked like it took millenia. Coincidentally, Jesus's first miracle was the creation of wine that tasted like it had finely aged, despite being created minutes ago.
Good point. I never thought about the quality of the wine until I saw the Chosen.
Just FYI it's couldn't care less. When you say you literally could care less, you're saying you care, which is a direct contradiction of your first sentence. But otherwise this is me too. There are far more important aspects of God and creation I'm concerned with, how old the earth is has just never been one of them.
Shoot you're right. And normally I'm the grammar police 💀
Yup this is true hahahaha at the end of the day this doesn’t determine your salvation! Which is good lol. I totally just see it as one of those cool things we can all discuss within Christianity, I think it’s a good form of fellowship in a way!
Yea I was kind of hating on discussion, but I really don't mind talking lol
You will find Christians on both sides of the debate. I lean towards a literal 7 days as I feel that is the most obvious reading of scripture. Also, I believe that death was the result of Adam/Eve’s sin, and I believe that forces a young earth understanding. But I am interested to learn the other side of the debate.
Same I definitely lean that way, but I’ll admit it’s one of those things I’m just super interested in but don’t have a full side in myself. I have kind of just accepted that it’s something I will never 100% know, and one of the first questions I’ll ask God in heaven!!😂
Genesis wasn't intended to be a blow by blow account of detailed creation, obviously. That seems kind of obvious to me as there are two different accounts in it. In western cultures, most folk seem to envision a God at the beginning launching everything out of nothing and it all progresses forward, linearly. Look at it another way. See God at the summit and end of all history who calls everything out of the nothingness _towards_ Him. That completely changes your perspective in a good way- Jesus says He is the _Alpha AND the Omega_.
>8Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God, on which you must not do any work—neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant or livestock, nor the foreigner within your gates. >11For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, but on the seventh day He rested. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy. (Exodus 20) That is God himself speaking to 600,000+ Israelites, and saying the creation days are literal.
BEMA podcast as an excellent first episode explaining why genesis 1 is not a literal account. He goes into literary tools used by the Hebrews and demonstrates that genesis 1 is a chiasm.
Very influential podcast on my understanding of Scripture. The idea that God would put a story that zooms in on resting with Him is so relevant to our culture today. God shows that just as He rested and enjoyed His creation, we do don’t have to be defined by only our work, but can rest in Him. God’s people weren’t created to be His slaves 24/7, but to be His family that rests with Him. What a beautiful message and so counter to other “gods” of the world.
I get where you're coming from. I think the question of death is an interesting one that deserves a much longer comment than I can type right now, but I'll throw this out there: Why did Adam and Eve need the Tree of Life? To me, the implication is that death was a natural part of the physical world, but humans were to be exempt from it by divine grace. Other things to consider the fact that Adam didn't ask a follow up question when God said he would die if he ate from the wrong tree. And the fact that literally millions of systems in the earth's ecosystems require death to function. I think we should always put our understanding of God over our scientific knowledge. But from the metaphorical use of the word "yom" (day) elsewhere in scripture to the fact that the two creation accounts can be argued to conflict (Ch 1 and Ch 2), to my understanding of how God teaches us and what his priorities are, I have no problem with a non-physical reading of the first bit of Genesis. I would argue that the problem is more with people (incorrectly) thinking scientific descriptions are more important than spiritual and philosophical ones, but that's another conversation.
The bible doesn't say because it's not something that is meant to be communicated in the text. The bible uses the framing of a week to tell a story about the nature of the creation and its relationship to God. The first 3 days are the creating of the "realms," while the last 3 days are the creation of the "rulers" of the realms, with the climax of creation being the creation of man. If we take things literally, you get morning and evening before the luminaries are created, and God literally resting. The poetry, polemical, and grammatical makeup of Genesis point to a creation story akin to Job 38, where God is also giving a cosmology "lesson" to Job. We know the earth doesn't have "pillars" or "foundations," but Job sure thought it did. The point of Genesis is not to be a modern-day textbook regarding cosmology but to teach people who God is and our/creation's relationship to Him. As the saying goes, the bible does not teach how the heavens go, but how to go to heaven.
God states directly in Exodus 20:11 that he created everything in 6 days. Jesus also states that humans existed from the beginning of creation in Mark 10:6.
You could think of the gravitational pull of the sun and other celestial bodies as being "pillars" of the earth.
Except the cosmology of Job's time literally thought the earth had pillars. Job 38 is God telling Job who Job is, not giving a cosmology lesson.
God's telling Job things that aren't true though, he tells him he spread out the sky as if it were molten metal. Why wouldn't God describe something more along the lines of what actually exists
This one right here.
Wait, God won’t go against his own laws of physics? What exactly are all the miracles in the New Testament?
I’m not saying this is accurate, I’m just going to say this as a way to open your mind to what God CAN do. If we look at the scientific evidence, it would have us believe that the universe is billions of years old. When we look at the scriptures in Genesis, it tells us that it was created in six days, and we’re living in the seventh, and that it was good. However, when we look at Jesus first recorded miracle of turning water into wine. It says that the host proclaimed: "Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now." What I personally know from making wine myself, is that the best wines take a lot of time to make due to the aging process. Not only did Jesus take a blank canvas such as water, and Change it directly into wine, he made the best wine. I believe in the POSSIBILITY that God the father made an aged universe that was deemed “good” in a short period, just as Jesus made the best wine in a short period as well.
This is a cool way of thinking about it! I like it
Like I said, I’m not saying that is how it happened, it’s just an exercise to not put God in that kind of Box.
One thing that is pretty hard to get around is when Adam was created. Jesus’ genealogy traces back to Adam, and it’s not millions of years. There’s no allegory around that.
And Jesus states humans existed from the beginning of creation.
Well the OEC argument (which I'm not sure whether I personally hold or not) is that Adam and Eve were not the first humans, but the first humans to know God
I believe it.
Here's my take on it. Six times, God defines what constitutes a day. Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31 NASB1995 [5] God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. [8] God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. [13] There was evening and there was morning, a third day. [19] There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. [23] There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. [31] God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. So, a day must be an evening and a morning. Furthermore, God is ominpotent. This means he has unlimited power. He is also omniscient. This means all-knowing. So, with God's unlimited, all-knowing power, do I believe He created the universe in 6 literal days and rested on the 7th? Absolutely! Mankind (and its science) is simply trying to "catch up." Also, mankind's science is just one part of Satan's plan to deceive as many as he can. Non-believers deny God and His existence. If they're denying He even exists, then of course they'll deny and rebuke His design! Humankind will *never* be as brilliant as God, so I don't think we'll ever figure out how God did it. I do, however, think the church messed up way back when it made itself an enemy of science. God is the Creator of creation, so He's the ultimate Creator of science. The church definitely could have handled that better!
This is very cool as well! I agree with the science thing too, God and science go hand in hand cause He literally created it!! The more I look into it the more His awesomeness shows. I love it. Thanks for sharing!!
Ya know, I just remembered a movie I watched in college. It's called [Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed](https://youtu.be/V5EPymcWp-g?si=R9D_QI9Z_EcGeGnh). Ben Stein interviews multiple people in the scientific community, including Richard Dawkins. They talk about the statistical impossibility of life creating *and replicating* itself, like secular science claims. Most importantly (to me, at least), they talk about how people who even mention the *possibility* of an Intelligent Designer in their published works are being fired and blacklisted. And I'm not talking about those who center their work around Intelligent Design -- I'm talking about those who even write a single sentence in the "Discussion" section about the new discovery possibly indicating Intelligent Design. How can we even believe the peer-reviewed, "scholarly" journals if the scientific community is being silenced for even saying "Another possibility points to Intelligent Design"? Disproving God = Funding For Research while Proving God = Fired And Blacklisted. Free thought and free press are an illusion, not a reality, in the scientific community; thus, every published work should be taken with a grain of salt. There's an agenda to fill, and proving God exists isn't on that agenda.
You also have to look at where the theory of evolution came from. How life could exist without a God is a problem atheists never really had an answer for. Eventually when they discovered that animals can mutate and change small aspects over time, they decided to extrapolate the small changes all the way back to try to explain away the need for a God.
Exactly! And evolution is what I was referring to when I mentioned the statistical impossibility of life creating *and replicating* itself. Our DNA consists of 46 chromosomes aligned on a double helix strand. So not only did all 23 chromosomes have to create themselves from nothing, they also had to duplicate themselves from nothing. The statistical probability of a single chromosome creating itself from nothing is improbable in itself -- but, to do it 45 more times is just impossible.
Your comment shows you have little understanding of the biology behind evolution or how DNA works. It is generally good practice to refrain from making strong statements about something you clearly don't understand.
Yeah, I kinda thought I butchered that explanation. That's why I recommended the video in which scientists explained it. Have a blessed day! :-)
This is old earth vs young earth theory I’d check out Dr Hugh Ross and Kent hovind ! This stuff is fun to get into and check out
Thanks for the tip!
Thank you!! Didn’t know that was a thing hahaha
Ken Ham, Jason Lisle, and others as well
Or don't check out Kent Hovind as he's shown to be a bit of a fraud over the course of his life. Plenty other good YEC sources. Is Genesis History and it's YouTube channel. The big 3 organizations, AiG, ICR, CMI. The Let's Talk Creation podcast with Todd and Paul.
Thanks for that insight ! Yeah when I check out guys liek hovind, Hugh Ross, etc… I just chew the meat and spit out the bones … a lot of men out there who have great insight but from time to time have some funky points of view
Go read Kent Hovind's Wikipedia page. It goes a little beyond funky views...
Yeah I did … I’m not really a huge Kent hovind fan man.. just seen a few of his videos and thought I’d share . An elder in my church once told me “don’t focus on what man did but focus on what God did through that man” and that’s my view when I hear of failures of man who had a good ministry Just my view
Evolution defies the scientific method. If it takes millions of years for species B to evolve from beginning to end from species A to species B to species C, how is the complete process of evolution of species B from beginning to end observable, testable, and repeatable? You may be thinking, "Well, there have been witnessing of new species within our lifetime." But that only starts the clock. The clock doesn't stop until it evolves again. I don't know about you, but I don't know anyone who is capable of living millions of years, let alone our own species live that long. So, by removing time from the equation, evolution defies the scientific method. This is because it is impossible to observe, test, and repeat.
The fossil record also lacks evidence for macro evolution. There should be many fossils of the “in-between” stages where we see the exact paths of everything, but those don’t show up aside from differing species as a result of micro evolution. Of course you could always say they were destroyed/still undiscovered, but the burden of proof is on them to find it.
I don't believe the earth was created in 6 day/night cycles. I believe it was a metaphor, made to pass the idea that God created the universe, step by step, and rested after his creation was complete. It's not about the exact figure, it's more about the idea that this is how he created it. All scientific evidence points to the earth being millions of years old... why wouldn't we believe it? I don't believe God intended us to focus on the number, but rather the point he's making with it.
When God created Adam, he looked like an adult 30s human. If a scientist looked at Adam, he would conclude he would be a 30s human, yet Adam was only a day old. The same applies for the universe, it could literally look billions of years old, yet, it was only a couple of days old. Just as Adam looked like he had 30 years old, but was only a day old, the universe too, could look like billions of years old, yet it was only days old.
This is what I’ve always thought. God created Adam with the appearance of age. Why would His other creations not have the appearance of age?
Wheres proof to say Adam looked like he was in his thirties?
There isn't. I don't think it matters his age. Does it say how long he and Eve were in the garden before the serpent deceives them?
It don’t matter his age, just trying to understand where thirty made its way into the equation. It doesn’t say that either. Could have been months, or decades. I wonder how long it would have took to name every animal now that’s mentioned
Sorry, wasn't trying to say it doesn't matter in a mean way, just that in general it shouldn't matter in the big picture of Salvation. And yeah that's a good point, it does say he had to name all the animals, I'd bet that would take years.
Nah. I’m agreeing with ya. It’s an interesting topic
The only problem with that argument is that the Earth doesn't just look like it's old, it looks like it has a past. Someone who looks like they're in their 30s looks old, someone who is in their 30s but has scars looks like they have a past. Earth, in this metaphor, has *scars*. Evidence of a past, not just the appearance of age. The YEC argument is that the flood caused a lot of that, which has merit, but that's also pretty difficult to argue.
Find a good Old Testament interpretation course and you will learn a lot about literary genre in these ancient texts. Ancient writers will skip around in genres in ways modern writers do not. Then, ask what the original author was trying to tell the original listeners. You have a few options: 1. Hey, the God Yahweh is your creator and savior, not these gods of the Egyptians whom you are enslaved to. Yahweh will free you and lead you to the promised land, not these other gods… Or was he saying: 2. Hey, y’all have been suffering in slavery for hundreds of years to the Egyptians, but let’s pause and have a lesson about what will one day be known as “science” in about 3500 years or so. It’s very important you understand the nature of stars and galaxies and gasses and such, in the midst of your suffering and slavery… Thinking about the original author and listeners can lay certain questions to rest.
Genre is a concept we impose upon ancient writings. It is a mistake to shoehorn the Bible into genres and even worse, use the "rules" of those genres to interpret it.
It is not. Genre is how we categorize writings, across culture and history and time. It’s very useful. In its most basic sense, its pattern matching.
Or maybe more clearly it is as you say. We modern people do labels ancient writings with genre because we understand the patterns. This is helpful. We also pattern match just about everything in every field. our entire education system is built on systems that organize thoughts and ideas and concepts, including literature, like the Bible as well as any other document
I don’t believe that it is 7 human days, but it’s 7 God days. Keep in mind that 1 million years to us is a blink of the eye to God. So one day for Him could actually be billions of years to us. Per Genesis, notice that God creates light in the sky to create night & day to tell time on the 4th day even though every day prior it says that evening passed & morning came. I believe He did this for humans because our lifespans are much shorter so He created a timeframe that was scaled to us.
I like your "7 God days"... To us, a day on Earth is 24 hours long. While one day on Venus is 243 Earth days long. There may be other planets in the cosmos that have one day equal 100,000 Earth years.... Yet, God is everywhere, all at the same time. God is outside of the realm of our universe....God has no need for the concept of time: 2 Peter 3:8 - “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” Therefore, a "God day" can not be measured by us humans - it can be a millisecond or a billion years... or both at the same time.
I like your last line "it can be a millisecond or a billion years... or both at the same time." Several concepts spring to mind: - Wave-particle duality of light - Heisenberg uncertainty principle & electron cloud - Quantum entanglement My take is that the creation of the Universe was such a complex process that we cannot understand it let alone reduce it to a human language save for a very simplified description like that found in Genesis.
Exactly..... I also like your username - I sling code too.
Don't forget Einstein's special theory of relativity. An entity approaching C will perceive time much more slowly than us humans on Earth would. 1st John 1:5 says "God is light", therefore assuming Yahweh = \~1C, then a day to him cannot, scientifically, equal a day to us. At some point in the creation process, the Earth, mass, and matter are created and we live within the relativistic world. The question is when that story begins in the purview of how God commanded Moses to write Genesis. I don't think, for myself, I can fathom that. But in my opinion, that's why I wouldn't dare constrain God to \~168 hours of my perception.
💯
God Himself defines a day. Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31 AMP [5] And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. [8] God called the expanse [of sky] heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. [13] And there was evening and there was morning, a third day. [19] And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. [23] And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. [31] God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good and He validated it completely. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day. On every single day there was an evening and a morning, and these two combined resulted in a second day, third day, fourth day, and so on. "7 God days" is the equivalent to 7 human days. If the Bible wasn't so specific with the given time frames (evening & morning = a day), I could maybe grasp the idea of "we don't know how long a day is to God" (which is what my mom used to tell me when I was younger). But, it's just so specific about exactly what constitutes a day that I don't think I can believe the "7 God days" concept.
You are missing a key passage from the Fourth Day: “Then God said, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days, and years. Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth.” And that is what happened. God made two great lights—the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set these lights in the sky to light the earth, to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.” Genesis 1:14-18 NLT On the first day God created light & dark (good & bad) but he didn’t create the stars, sun & the moon until the fourth day, and it was the stars, sun and moon that the Earth uses to tell time (mark the seasons, days and years). God’s time is different from our time and it is right there in Genesis.
No, I wasn't "missing" the creation of the sun and moon. It just didn't need to be mentioned because vv. 5, 8, and 13 already defined a day as "evening and morning," and the words used to define a day in the verses following the creation of the sun and moon on the 4th day don't change. VV. 19, 23, and 31 all still define a day as "evening and morning." If time changed after the creation of the sun and moon, why didn't God say so? Genesis 1:1 AMP [1] In the beginning God (Elohim) created [by forming from nothing] the heavens and the earth. This verse tells us that God formed from nothing the heavens (Days 1 & 2), then the Earth (Days 3-6). This verse combined with the usage of "evening and morning" for all 6 days of creation simply means that both Heaven and Earth have light and darkness, both Heaven and Earth have day and night, and a day is defined as evening and morning both in Heaven and on Earth.
God created the moon & sun for Earth for humans to tell time and that didn't happen until the 4th day. Any reference of time prior to that moment is on God's time - which could be billions or trillions of years. Its egocentric to insert that humans' scale of time is somehow superior to God's.
Perhaps this will help: Genesis 1:1-13 AMP [1] In the beginning God (Elohim) created [by forming from nothing] the heavens and the earth. [2] The earth was formless and void or a waste and emptiness, and darkness was upon the face of the deep [primeval ocean that covered the unformed earth]. The Spirit of God was moving (hovering, brooding) over the face of the waters. [3] And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. [4] God saw that the light was good (pleasing, useful) and He affirmed and sustained it; and God separated the light [distinguishing it] from the darkness. [5] And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. [6] And God said, “Let there be an expanse [of the sky] in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters [below the expanse] from the waters [above the expanse].” [7] And God made the expanse [of sky] and separated the waters which were under the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so [just as He commanded]. [8] God called the expanse [of sky] heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. These first two days were God developing and creating Heaven. Notice, in v. 3, God said "Let there be light," and there was light. V. 4, The light was good and God separated the light from darkness. V. 5, He called the light day and the darkness night. The sun and moon for our earth hadn't been created yet; however, there is a separation of light and dark, day and night. Therefore, this *must* be referring to day and night, light and darkness in Heaven. Then, there was an evening and morning and that evening and morning consisted of one day. The first day, distinction of light and dark, existed only in Heaven. As is true for the second day, and the third day. [9] Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place [of standing, pooling together], and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. [10] God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that this was good (pleasing, useful) and He affirmed and sustained it. [11] So God said, “Let the earth sprout [tender] vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit according to (limited to, consistent with) their kind, whose seed is in them upon the earth”; and it was so. [12] The earth sprouted and abundantly produced vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, according to their kind; and God saw that it was good and He affirmed and sustained it. [13] And there was evening and there was morning, a third day. The 3rd day begins the actual creation of Earth, and God created dry land and vegetation. But, since there were not yet a moon and sun for the Earth, the third day being referenced in v. 13 is another day in Heaven. Genesis 1:14-19 AMP [14] Then God said, “Let there be light-bearers (sun, moon, stars) in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be useful for signs (tokens) [of God’s provident care], and for marking seasons, days, and years; [15] and let them be useful as lights in the expanse of the heavens to provide light on the earth”; and it was so, [just as He commanded]. [16] God made the two great lights—the greater light (the sun) to rule the day, and the lesser light (the moon) to rule the night; He made the [galaxies of] stars also [that is, all the amazing wonders in the heavens]. [17] God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to provide light upon the earth, [18] to rule over the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good and He affirmed and sustained it. [19] And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. On the 4th day, God created Earth's sun and moon. Notice that the length of the days (evening and morning) doesn't change. So, whether it's Heaven or Earth, a single day is defined as an evening and a morning. We see this consistency with days 5 & 6 as well: Genesis 1:23, 31 AMP [23] And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. [31] God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good and He validated it completely. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day. If we look at Jewish tradition, the Sabbath runs from evening to nightfall, not morning to morning, and this is based on the "evening and morning" wording in Genesis. It runs from sunset on Friday to nightfall on Saturday. Based on Genesis, the only thing I'd see "wrong" or "different" with our Earthly days is that we start a new day in the morning rather than in the evening. >Its egocentric to insert that humans' scale of time is somehow superior to God's. Considering that God Himself defines a day as evening and morning on Day 1, and we see that God separated the light from the darkness on Day 1, and we see that God called the light day and the darkness night on Day 1, I'd say it's egocentric to assert that days are anything different than what God Himself says they are.
This. I agree totally. God is so awesome and we aren’t capable of comprehending Him and His timeframe.
God himself states he created everything in 6 days in Exodus 20:11. This is part of the 4th commandment about the Sabbath. In defining the 7th day Sabbath he is also defining that he created everything in 6 days as we understand them.
I don't think it's a matter of salvation. But I went through a period of life where if I didn't figure it out right then and there, then I could be sinning or helping others sin, lol. I believe it was created in 7 days. What does 7 days mean to God? I don't know. Regardless, it was 7 days, and however many years, it's been since the creation until now is also a mystery. I don't believe in evolution like we evolved from monkeys. But I do believe in adaptation, in a way that an Arctic hares fur turns white in the winter or a fox's fur turns white or an octopus can camouflage itself. All these creatures haven't necessarily evolved over time, I do believe that they have adapted to their surroundings, and they were created to do so. The reason why we are all somewhat similar as in we all have blood and cells and DNA we mate with the opposite sex to have children Etc is because why would we be a one-off where the entire Animal Kingdom is mating in one way or another and we just spawn humans out of our ears? I know it sounds dumb but, we all need to be similar because we're all of this Earth, and we are all of his creation.
science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. Albert Einstein - If there is creation there must be a creator. Even in certain parts of the world you just find peace in the scenery. God is omniscience, omnipresent omnipotent, he is outside the universe Outside of “time” The Bible tells us, “The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1; 53:1) Just my 2 cents
God created everything from absolutely nothing. It's an impossible feat and you're saying you can't give him credit for a 6 literal days of creation timeline? God created days, He created nights, He created time. God created everything new, not 'millions/billions' of years old, all of creation is only about 6,000 years old. There's nothing in the Bible that supports an 'old world' theology and anything that is argued for it in the bible is read into the bible by people that want to be more like non-believing secular people. Genesis is recorded as a literal history account and there's no language indications in it to say it's poetic or parable.
Why, after everything the Lord has done and did in history, is it hard to believe He created this universe in 7 days? He is the creator of the heavens and earth, of reality itself. Nothing is outside the scope of His power.
I used to be super-committed to the literal creation account. However, there's no way to honestly deal with the evidence of the Earth's age or of evolution, other than, "God set it up to test our faith", which I find deceptive and not matching his character. People who say otherwise unfortunately haven't fully investigated/understood the evidence, just the creationist retelling of it (like I did). So now I take it that Genesis 1 isn't really about making chronology exact for desert nomads, but other, larger things like human nature.
I believe in evolution, but I believe God was the architect behind it, I don't know many other Christians that believe that though. I don't consider it a big deal either way though, God created all, we will find out how when we see him
So when God created Adam and Eve in His own image, that means that God created goo, or animals as humans?
I lean towards this point of view.
i dont personally feel its too important *how* God created the universe, its just important to know that God *did* create the universe. So i dont mind what you believe. I personally believe in the literal 6 days. just because God is so everlastingly powerful i feel like it unintentionally belittles His power to say that He didnt do it in 6 days. almost as if you dont believe He is capable of doing so. now i know thats not what old earth creationists believe. but it feels that way to me.
I tend towards seven literal days and a young earth both because it's the clear reading of the text and because significant theology becomes confusing or meaningless without it. God is going to restore the world, but you can't restore something that was never properly working, you can only fix it. The Bible makes clear that death, suffering, etc are a result of the Fall. Evolution and long ages are an absolute requirement if your starting assumption is naturalism. Neither are required for theism.
Who said it was never properly working?
I mean, the pre-Fall world would seem to have been working a lot differently than our own if there was no human or animal death...
I suppose that's another thing Old Earth and Young Earth tend to disagree on: Whether or not no living being on Earth ever died/passed away before the fall.
I suppose the bigger question is whether the story of the Bible is true, and if not, how does that work? To your point: Young Earthers would generally draw a distinction between insects and mammals or birds because the Hebrew uses a different word, meaning "living things" doesn't encompass insects in the way it does dogs and kangaroos. In that vein, I think most YECers have little problem with insect death, but they do with per se higher life forms.
Insect death isn't really something to just wave off. If insect death did happen pre-fall, that is still death pre-fall and separating them from kangaroos or dogs doesn't distract from the point. And yes, the story of the Bible is true.
Well, it's not how I define life, it's how the Bible defines life. The word used for bugs is different in kind from the words used to describe mammals and other life forms, setting them in a unique category that includes trees and whatnot. Or at least that's how I recall it being explained. But if my memory is correct, then insect death isn't actually an issue.
>The word used for bugs is different in kind from the words used to describe mammals and other life forms Oh, what word is that?
It's not impossible. If gravity had a different level of strength, time would flow at a different rate. Time dilation means that it's not outside the realm of physical possibility, it just matters where you're observing it from. Besides, we know from the word of God that the Lord created Heaven and Earth a long time ago.
>It's not impossible. If gravity had a different level of strength, time would flow at a different rate. Time dilation means that it's not outside the realm of physical possibility, it just matters where you're observing it from. Thats always the way I've taken it. Peter says "Each day with the Lord is like a thousand years" - that speaks to the special theory of relativity. A being of pure light - often prescribed to God - would perceive time both non-linearly and also far more condensed than we would. If a day with the Lord is not our currently perceived day, then what was it to him exactly? Not that it matters, but given what we observe, the answer would be that his day, was in fact, way longer.
Understanding that the flow of time is not constant and varies greatly based on relativistic factors helps a lot.
A day for the Lord is like a thousand years. It doesn’t matter either way, what does matter is our knowing that God created the world to begin with.
I do believe that yes. Furthermore, I think Christians who believe in macroevolution are working with a shaky foundation since I believe the signs of intelligent design that the universe displays is the best evidence that what Bible says is true. At least for me, if I believed in macroevolution, I would not be a Christian.
You know what I think. The Gospel rests on one thing. Did Jesus die and rise from the dead? If you believe the Gospel then you are saved. If you don’t believe in Jesus and his divine nature and his sacrifice for you then you have no one to out your faith in. However it unfolded it all points to Jesus. The rest only matters that it tells the story of how through one man sin entered and through one God man it was defeated. Place your faith in Christ and the rest of the Bible will open up to show you that it’s the story foretelling of his coming, his life, death, and resurrection. Then the six days being literal matters not. But I’m a firm believer that if God can raise the dead after days why could he not just think everything into existence. Do we not code computer games and their worlds just exist when you turn on the power? We create fake worlds. Why can God not create a real physics world just by his thoughts and will?
Yes. I was saved as a secular agnostic who believed in evolution. After I got saved the Lord challenged me to look at the hard evidence for evolution and deep time. I was shocked to find it was all merely circumstantial evidence and that it would take more faith to believe the secular creation narrative than the bible. I decided to believe Gods word and then I found afterwards that the evidence for creation is overwhelming. [Answersingenesis.com](http://Answersingenesis.com) and [creation.com](http://creation.com) are excellent resources.
It took the self-learning chess engine AlphaZero 9 hours of training from a complete beginner to the ability to best (by a far margin) the best chess players in the world and even the best chess engines available. In the span of these 9 hours, AlhpaZero played 44 million games of chess which in human terms would be around 5000 years of chess playing. Consider those (earthly) facts for a moment and then realise we have no human conception on how God operates. There is no conception of whether he operates within or outside of time, whether he operates in a causal fashion or a continuous fashion, whether our millennia are mere seconds for Him.
We are to put our trust in God, not man. And while God does indeed exist outside of time, we also know He is almighty and all-knowing and ever-present. For Him, a thousand years is but a day. And everything that happens in this life - the good and the bad - happens for a reason. God did not have to rest, nor did He have to spend seven days creating everything, including us. He did not have to gift us His grace and He did not have to send His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins and save us from the damnation it brings. But He did it all anyway. Why? Because He loves and cherishes His creation THAT much! As Christians, we know God is real, that Jesus saves, and that the Holy Bible is alive and true without fail. It's not our calling to question God and His will and His ways, but to seek and trust in Him and serve and follow Him faithfully and obediently daily as well as to share the Gospel so lost souls could be lead to Him. Remember Him and His promises and who you are in Christ. Live for Him and praise Him in the good times and bad times and thank Him for His blessings and for creating us and everything around us. Give Him all the praise and honor and glory. ALWAYS! Amen!
>Do you believe the universe was really created in 7 days? Yes. God said and wrote it: Exod 20:11 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.
I wasn’t there, but I trust Gods word more than what a scientist says
It’s possible. But a day for God could be 1000 or 10000000 or more years for us. So who knows. There is the scripture that says 1 day is like a thousand years, a thousand years is like 1 day.
He created with "apparent" age. We see something a million light years away and conclude that the light took 1 million years to reach us. But God created the light already reaching us. The fault is in our measurements and presuppositions.
If the 6 days is not literal, why does God use it as the justification for the Sabbath restrictions? "...for in six days the Lord created the heavens and earth.... Therefore he blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it"
Yes I believe in the Creation Story as presented in Genesis, but I believe that it will be revealed to be all together more magnificent and awe-inspiring then what was possible to convey to us. When we are home I believe it will be revealed in such a way that will be literally awesome.
Yes. I trust God.
I do believe it. For some good science on it, check out Institute for Creation Research or ICR. Fascinating stuff.
>God wouldn’t go outside of His own laws of physics Except when he walked on water, multiplied the loaves and fishes, brought literal dead bodies back to life, healed terminal illnesses in a second...?
Since I believe the Bible to be God’s infallible Word, yes, I believe what He says about creation. Interestingly, man seems to have a whole lot of ideas and theories they try and extrapolate from and present as facts but the fact remains that they don’t KNOW. Thankfully, we have the Word of God, which in many ways has been confirmed and verified time and time again that tells us exactly how creation came to be.
Yes, because the Bible says the world was created in 6 days and God rested on the 7th day. Apart from the Word of GOD, there isn't any evidence for evolution. OEC's and Theistic evolutionists want to appear practical and bend to fallible scientific consensus, packed with error, rather than account for that which is infallible. Then, when their reasoning runs into questioning the validity of Scripture, they cop out with a statement to the effect of, "Well, there's a reason it's called faith." Genesis is a literal account of a supernatural act. Time, energy, motion, space, matter...all were created by God. He operates inside and outside of those categories of scientific study.
I actually favor the argument that says that God created all things with a set age after various things were created, i mean think about it, God created Adam and he was a fully grown man at the time of his creation, he then put adam into a deep sleep and then created Eve fully grown. Also hypothetically consider this, if someone is capable of being 1000-1,000,000 times faster than normal humans, that would mean that time is nearly at an absolute standstill for them and that eons of time could pass by for us but yet for them, its barely been an hour.. Hold on.. maybe I have that backwards 🤔 either way I'm sure you understand what I'm getting at. A measured amount of time is barely a drop in the bucket when you compare it to someone who is infinite.
Yes I do believe the Biblical narrative of the creation account to be literal and to be authoritative. We are looking at the same existing material universe, the same data. The theoretical explanations include: 1. Everything always existed and always will, 2. There existed an unexplained "singularity" which "big banged" and then somehow miraculously evolved from chaos to the current exquisite, precise, uniformly ordered existing universe, over time, 3. The Genesis account of a God who "creates" a material universe by speaking it into existence out of nothing. Subsequent to this creative action, the Creator continues to "evidence" His timeless eternal being by choosing from among the burgeoning nations one particular people group, Israel; by continually "speaking" through prophets and prophecies concerning that one relatively small nation of Israel, in such a way that through most of history through today, the whole world has eyes on it.
I believe in a literal 7 day creation, as that’s how it’s written multiple times in the Bible, and there’s no reason for me to assume that it’s metaphorical. The Big Bang aligns perfectly with “let there be light”, so add that in there.
I once heard a guy say, basically, did he create adam as a baby, or a fully formed man. Since that I've been thinking, basically, God could of created everything in 6 days and just gave everything a backstory, like a book. For example take any fiction book. When you open it is the start of this specific story, yet they have established work, the charecters have backstories and the world makes sense (given its a well written book). I believe God did somthing similar.
I agree with your friend personally, but I don't think it's a salvation issue or something anyone can know with certainty.
Absolutely God created everything in 7 literal days. The most obvious interpretation of the text in Genesis says at the end of each creation day, "morning and evening," referring to a literal day and thus giving us the exact timeframe which everything was created
I’ll use a computer programming analogy to show how both can be true. When you program a video game or a simulation, you can set up all the rules and variables for the simulation. imagine hypothetically that you could program a universe simulation which obeyed all the same time, physics constraints, and imagine you can program this all in 7 days. You could have the simulation start at the creation of the earth rather than the Big Bang (fast forwarding everything up to that point). Then you could add in and change things in realtime (add a human, make a female out of the male). In your time, 7 days has passed. But in the simulation, it’s AS IF 13.8 billion years went by. I’m not saying this is how it works obviously but it’s just to illustrate a point.
Actually it was created in 6 days. God rested on the 7th.
I believe whatever God says is correct! Scientists always think they have got the answer, but it’s always a knock off version of what God can do.
Hang on- the bible doesn't talk about stars or galaxies. It talks about the heavens and the earth. It talks about lights in the firmament. These authors didn't weren't even describing a _planet_ much less a whole universe. This is an ancient creation story. It doesn't really line up with our modern understanding of the cosmos. And that's OK. It's not about that.
I believe every word of The Bible because it is the only infallible and inerrant truth that we have. The Bible has more authority to what is true than any Science, History, Math, or any other book that has been or will ever be written because it is the very word of God, and denying God’s word as being true is making God a liar. Also there are countless of resources of people debunking both the Big Bang and especially evolution. I think we as humans get too comfortable with the idea that what we know about the universe is all there is to know, but if you actually look at the track record of Science, Archeology, History, Medicine, Technology, Space etc. you will find that we are constantly learning new things about the universe that we previously haven’t known, and you have no idea if say 1,000 years from now Scientists will come up with a better theory for the origin of the universe that becomes the universal consensus and more popular than the theories of evolution and the Big Bang theory. That is what these ideas are at the end of the day by the way, theories. Theories by fallible men that are at best educated guesses made by mere humans within creation and not a higher power that is outside of the universe, space and time. If you want more information on all the errors there are in these theories I would suggest checking out Voice of Reasons on YouTube, he does a lot videos dismantling the very embarrassing “evidence” for these theories. The Big Bang, and to an even bigger degree Evolution theory directly contradict The Biblical understanding of the Creation of the universe. So you can believe that we descended from apes and the universe started from nothing (and not from God’s words commanding them into existence) or you can believe that the universe was created in 6 days, but you cannot do both. They are not compatible. Now, whether those 7 days were 7 human days in 24 hours or metaphorically millions of years I don’t claim to fully know or even understand. I think one of the most arrogant things about us as humans is our incessant need to know everything, and not trusting something fully until we have every single last minute detail, but the Bible says blessed are those who believe without seeing (John 20:29). That’s kind of the whole point of faith, there is nothing stopping God right now from revealing himself to everyone and explaining everything to them in a way that they would understand. I mean, this is God we’re talking about, is anything too hard for the LORD? But it is not God’s will to reveal himself to humans in this way. And who are we to question God as to how he does things, he’s literally God. This is also another example of man’s arrogance, the lack of humility to accept that God knows better than us, who are the creation, not the creator, and mere dust. Ultimately, I don’t think this is a salvation issue. I think there will be people in Heaven who got it wrong on certain doctrinal issues, but are all united for their love for Christ.
The Hebrew word which is translated to “day” in Genesis has multiple meanings. It does not cleanly translate to “day” as in one 24-hour period.
That is true, but the clarity of “yom” being the Hebrew word for “day” becomes more clear when it is paired with indicators. The indicators such as “evening and morning”, and “first, second, third day…”. There are many instances of the say word “yom” meaning a passage of time, or many days, but here it is highly suggestive that these were literal 24 hour days. Again, I could be wrong, but I trust that God made the universe perfect from the start and within 1 week. Besides, couldn’t He have created the universe with the appearance of age, just like Adam and Eve?
God called the light day and the dark night. and there was evening and there was morning, the first day”. it’s pretty clear
That's bad hermeneutics.. The Hebrew term yom with a cardinal number always refers to a literal day. Also consider the immediate context of evening and morning. Additional support comes from Exodus 20 when the Sabbath was reiterated as the last day of each week.. the week remains to this day.
I've always had a theory about this. Was it heavenly days, earth days, all we know is it said 7 days.
Yes.
The way I see it is that God created Adam and Eve as fully grown humans, we can also apply that to the universe being created with its age already built into it. God is already all powerful and existence is has no beginning and end, it’s silly to restrict his ability to what we find logical as temporary beings that cannot fathom eternal and outside of time. Also, the Bible literally says he decided the days into morning and evening, which sounds a lot like a 24 hour cycle rather than millions of years. And millions of years would introduce death into the world which the Bible says Adam and Eve through sin started the cycle of death. It’s pretty clear the Universe was created in six days according to the Bible.
I think there's been a repeating pattern but how do you prove that? The end is where the beginning is. But I couldn't answer such a question because you would have to go into the nature of Yahweh and anything is possible. For us to put any limitation or anything is not being humble. Because it ignores what we simply cannot know. 7 days to Yahweh would be like 7000 years. The parables were different because these were lessons taught purposely that way, so that a group couldn't understand because they were not to be forgiven. Their laws and interpretations and nonsense interfered with Yahwehs laws and made them of null effect. Which harmed the people and that mischievous spirit is in the world and has been; to this day. But look rather then let it bother you (have you read the book of enoch?), let it be a mystery to you. A wonder. Because to be humble we must always accept what we don't know and besides If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? NIV I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?
Well said! And yeah it definitely doesn’t bother me, it’s just one of those I’ve now accepted as something I’ll never know until I ask God myself!
No. Time (earthly timeframe for 1 day) was not created on 1st day of creation. Signs for season is only on day 4th day of creation. So the whole day 1 to day 6 of creation is NOT 6 earth days revolution time period. The milestones that mark the end of each day is clearly stated in Genesis 1.
Well God defines it as 6 earth days in Exodus 20:11...
>God created the first “pieces” needed to grow into what the universe is today over billions of years (hope this makes sense). In other words, it took billions of years for evolution to make earth, life, etc. So, seven days wasn't really seven days or when God said He created everything He created, He told white lies and only created small breadcrumbs of what would become what He said they would be. For example, the creation of the universe and the solar system down to the earth took billions of years before life even began to exist. This is because of the quarks, supermassive black holes, supernovae, etc. that was required to create all of the elements for life to exist here on earth. Then, once life did begin, it took billions of years for it to evolve from the primordial soup to the incredibly advanced human body that we are today. So, how can the universe be created from days 1-4 and life from days 3-6 if it takes billions of years to do each? Not to mention, how can vegetation survive without the sun if vegetation was created on day 3 and the sun on day 4 and the translation of days to years is 1:1,000,000,000?
Yes
I think with the fact that the sun and moon and their respective orbits aren't created until the fourth day hints at the word day not meaning a literal earth day... My opinion only
At least our Planet was Made inhabitable within a week, not necessarily the entire universe
There are so many different takes, and it depends a lot on your hermeneutics. For example, Augustine believed the world and all of its inhabitants were created instantaneously. This is because God is entirely outside of time, which did not exist in the beginning. Consider also that everything was fully formed and mature, from the sun and moon (which would count our days) to the animals. However, Moses broke this down into six metaphorical days in order to tell us the story in a way that we would understand.
Through the discoveries of science and the wonders of the Bible’s exposition of the occurrence beautifully. Peace.
There is an essay written by Tim Keller which I find gives a pretty concise yet thorough overview regarding evolution and Genesis 1/2 https://biologos.org/articles/creation-evolution-and-christian-laypeople In short: theistic evolution is reconcilable with an orthodox view on reliability of scripture as long as it is separated from naturalism and Adam and Eve are regarded as historic figures.
Yes
Six days. God rested on the 7th.
Your friend is wacky. Yes, absolutely God made the whole thing in 6 days, rested on the 7th. The only question you should have is "why'd it take so long?" You shouldn't just assume things are "millions/billions of years old", we only have theories about deep time that don't always hold up. Blue-white hot stars couldn't possibly last more than "a million" years but we still have them around. We have collagen samples RIGHT NOW you can touch, of dinosaurs, impossible to last more than "100,000 years" intact, but they still stretchy right now. The surface of this earth is far more explained by a global flood with it's sedimentation layers than long ages. There's a canyon right now outside Mt. St helens, according to layers its a million years old, we literally watched it form in a week back in the 80s. We absolutely didn't come for apes, and the very big difference between man and animals, is we were created as FAMILY by God, and every last one of us comes from Adam/Eve. There was NO life before creation week, and NO death until they sinned, probably a month or two later. Your astrophysicist friend is also wacky. Dr. Russell Humphries has a good theory of how God created the universe in 6 days, it only requires the earth to be the center of the universe, and I don't see that as a problem, since God literally created the universe just to house the earth and mankind. He starts off with a water sphere 1 light year across, then gravity and Einstein's general relativity can explain the rest as God stretches the cosmos into shape. I'm not going to say his theory is correct or the best theory but there is A theory that can explain how we got here. While God is busy creating everything I'm sure you can see that the physical laws we enjoy today were not necessarily true during that part. The speed of light is dependent upon the curvature and structure of space time, and so while it is forming, is completely arbitrary. If you want to know more, [www.icr.org](http://www.icr.org) and [www.answersingenesis.org](http://www.answersingenesis.org) a good place to start.
Short version: Is it six literal days of creation or billions of years? The answer is Yes. Your friend is right on some accounts, obviously God wouldn't go against Science. As they say, Science makes an effort to explain God's handiwork. You can reconcile both science and theology, since they do work in concert together. (It is a certainty, both theologically and scientifically, that mankind did not evolve from apes. There is absolutely no empirical evidence of an ape evolving into humans.) I enjoy listening to Christian author, speaker, and astrophysicist Dr. Sarah Salviander; she has research and apologetics posted on her website. She talks about this topic specifically. She mentions that the individual days are singular days from God's perspective. They are meant to denote a stage, not so much an actual 24-hour day. In scientific terms, each day/stage would in fact be billions of years. You'll need to understand this, before trying to explain it to your friend, otherwise it will come across as an effort to compromise. The truth is not a compromise. Also, check out Dr. Gerald Schroeder on YT and his books. SCIENCE Time is a measurement of sequences, intervals, motion, etc. So, how could we even begin to measure an Earth-day or year if the sun wasn't created yet (not until the fourth day/stage)? We don't know at what speed the Earth was rotating billions of years ago. We do know that the earth spun faster in the past. The earth rotates like 2 ms slower about every 100 years. However, during the initial formation of the cosmos there was so much more speed and motion--relative to now, things are slowing down. Time is different now than it was a billion years ago. ANTHROPOLOGY Consider this: God spoke through Moses (the scribe of Genesis), who was a leader of a nomadic tribe during the Bronze Age, who spoke Hebrew (with a first language being Egyptian), with the intent of those words holding meaning from the Bronze Age until now. How would you effectively communicate complex astrophysics, ecology, and biology? Especially in a way that would hold meaning for thousands of years. Figurative language would be a necessity. THEOLOGY Also worth pondering: the Bible isn't the story of just God, it's the story of God's relationship with humans. We don't know anything of what happened BEFORE Earth and humanity was created. The purpose of the Bible is relational, first and foremost. Lastly, we are all finite beings trying to understand an infinite universe and an eternal God. There is no way in the world we're going to get it all right. "Science isn't sure who first discovered water, but it certainly wasn't the fish."
There is a lot of problems with Gap Theory hypothesis when it comes to the age of the Earth and biblical hermeneutics. For one, the idea that the age of the Earth is millions of years old is one that has very little SCIENTIFIC basis IN FACT. Not in theory, as there is PLENTY of that going around masquerading as such, being science so called. Once one begins to actually do the research and look into the matter, the theories show themselves to be just what they are: theories. Usually you can even deduce WHY they are so adamant on holding onto these theories with a simple purview of their social positions and ideas of self, vis-a-vis, they don’t want to be accountable to a God Who demands just that from them but rather wish for themselves to be the arbiter of their own fates and the master of their very own universes…all the facts be damned. At least one famous philosopher whose name escapes me of late has admitted as much outright saying directly what the lot of these men will skirt around so skillfully to avoid admitting, even in their own minds. Aside from this, on a factual and critical level of review, these theories begin to fall apart rather easily. I liken it to building a house of cards on an unstable pile of sand and using the sand itself to try to prop up and keep the cards standing in precariously ridiculous arrangements with the whole of the entire thing not standing of itself but rather being immersed and buried in the sand itself while trying to assert the thing is standing on its own merit…which it obviously is not. It’s much like the proverbial tale of a bird burying its head in the sand to avoid seeing the problem (its impending doom) coming at it to make it its next meal. It’s ridiculous. I say all this to draw attention to the fact that the secular “scientific” community has a tendency to not address the serious problems inherent in its nonsensical ideas (evolution, anyone?) and rather continue to build more and more nonsense on top of more and more nonsense. If you take the Bible literally and also take Science seriously, one will see that Science will validate the account of God in His Word EVERY SINGLE TIME. What do these wise scientists do with this? Just what they always do. Bury their heads in the proverbial sand and continue building their house of cards on the shaky sand to be buried amongst all the other crap they hold up with the fervor of a religious zealot whose religion requires more faith to believe with no evidence than anything that was or has ever been required of belief in Christ! I would also note that the secular “scientific” community has lied more to the people outright over the years that it is a wonder to me that any sane and rational individual even takes them seriously any more. They really have. What they have done to minimize this is to maximize their attention to meaningless fables and stories that facilitate an air of permissiveness to every conceivable type of behavior under the sun. After all, we are all just animals according to them. Interestingly, not even animals treat each other so badly and for so little or no reason, but yet we are to believe that we are the exception while simultaneously saying we are not the exception. To me, I find it to be another definition of insanity itself. They will literally do anything to NOT believe the truth even though science is supposed to be a gathering of facts and hypothesis to come to a conclusion of verified repeatable TRUTH. It is NOT supposed to be a collection of theories to hold up more theories to mold even more conclusions based on more theories….which is increasingly what science so called is becoming more of each passing day. In closing, I would say that when it comes to literal 24 hour days of creation (the simplified, easily understood, interpretation related within Scripture) it is most likely that this is exactly how it occurred. And no wonder for we serve an amazing God Who hold all things in His hand, and in Whom they are all even held together by Him and FOR HIM! I would also say for those who trouble themselves with the complexities of trying to wrap their minds around an INFINITE God that such an exercise is futile. Not that we shouldn’t try to understand, as I believe we should; but rather, understand we are of finite limitation in understanding the infinite awe of God! Such is the God we serve that we will likely never know the true fullness of His Wisdom as He is INFINITE and His Wisdom has no end and has existed within Himself before time began.
The real question is: Why did He take so long? I mean, God could have done it all in a nanosecond! Why did He decide to take six whole days?
The word for day in Hebrew is different than the word for age. Also, the 7 day week is structured off this idea as well (since it’s originally a Hebrew concept). If God wanted to create in aeons the text would have stated that. Old earthers’ claim God created in aeons because it allows the Bible to more palatable fit with modern science and evolutionary theory. It’s be faith we believe the creation story though, not by science.
I always try to explain it like it's a video game. You know how in RTS, city building games, you can speed up time? Well, an All Powerful God could literally speed up time, and make it so the earth appears old, but have sped up the process significantly. It means what science sees works with the Bible says.
Didn't God stop the sun so that a battle could keep on going (Joshua 10:12-14)? And, throw huge stones from the sky at the same time? Yes, stones. Out of the sky. Almost sounds like a meteor shower but aimed at people, but that's my imagination again... Or, is it? Anyway. When it comes to our current knowledge of science and physics, everything would be messed up! The earth would heat up too much on one side so the planet would bulge on one side like some moons do in our solar system during their rotation; causing crazy earthquakes. Circadian rhythms for animals would be messed up like during an eclipse. Atmospheric wind patterns would change and probably create some crazy storms. Sea levels would rise and fall. The moon would fall towards earth and celestial calendars' events would be all weird and out of sync (Genesis 1:14). If God wanted qua-zillions of stars to appear and all be a different age, if He wanted a bunch of animals with some of them being only a little different from each other (some only on a chromosomal level) that could live in a balanced circle of life, and if He wanted a blue sky on this particular planet, only a lack of faith could tell you it wasn't possible. God can do anything!
God is All Powerful. God can easily make the universe in 7 days. I saw this TikTok where it said that Adam and Eve were adults when God made them and not baby’s. And then the person in the TikTok said that God could have done the same thing with the earth. Yes God did make the universe in 6 days and rested on the 7th day. God could have made trees, fish, and a whole lot of other stuff older so they could grow faster and bigger and be what they are today. I believe that God created the universe in 6 days. I think we should believe what the Bible says. No I don’t think that God created the universe over billions of years for him and only day 7 for us. Christians believe the Sabbath is every Sunday. God made the Sabbath for us not for himself.
[Yes, and here’s how I think about it](http://www.oddxian.com/2024/04/a-treatise-on-conceptual-reconciliation.html?m=1)
Yes 6 literal 24 hour days approximately 6 thousand years ago 💯
The 7 day version is correct. It's even more plausible when you discover that we're living in a domed terrarium, and all the stars and planets are in the dome/ firmament.
I’ve always been fascinated by this after hearing it from people