Six 24-Hour Days

Do you remember the fairy tale titled, "The Emperor's Clothes?" The story goes that two unscrupulous schemers heard of this emperor who was very much caught up in the vanity of life. They were hired by the emperor on the grounds that they were world renowned tailors who could weave and construct the finest suits of clothing. Their claim to fame was that they would weave beautiful garments out of gold...not only beautiful, but garments with very mystical powers. They told the emperor and his court that the mystical power of the glorious golden apparel lies in the fact that anyone who was stupid or unfit for his office would not be able to see the material...to them it would be invisible.

The emperor was so excited about such an idea that he put this endeavor on the fast track, daily supplying the would-be tailors with the finest gold, which of course they smuggled out the back door every evening. All day long they went through the motions of weaving material but in fact there was nothing in their hands. Continually, the emperor's people would peek in to see how the miraculous cloth was coming along. Of course they saw nothing, but in order to look intelligent and fit for their office they came away raving about the gorgeous material being woven. This information soon leaked out into the community and all waited with great anticipation.

The highly anticipated day came for the emperor to be fitted in his new suit. Much to his chagrin, when he entered the tailors' room, he couldn't see the material. "How could it be?" he thought. "I must be stupid or unfit for my office. What would happen to me if this got out?" So the tailors pretended to fit the emperor and he raved about the beautiful new suit.

The day came when the emperor would don his fine new outfit and parade before his subjects to show off his great beauty, pomp and power. An hour or so before it was time for the parade, the emperor instructed the archbishop, who was the wisest man in his kingdom, to go down and see if the tailors were ready, but his real motivation was to be sure the miracle clothing actually existed. The archbishop dutifully went to inspect the new clothing but left shocked and dismayed. He couldn't see the clothing. He must therefore be stupid and unfit for his office. There was only one report he could bring back to his emperor: "Your new suit is absolutely glorious." The emperor now felt confident; after all, this religious leader was the wisest man in the kingdom.

Well, after the emperor put on his invisible clothing he stepped out onto the avenue to lead the celebratory procession. The throngs of people could of course see nothing, but for fear that someone would find out they were stupid or unfit for their office, they raved about the emperor's great new suit of clothes...until that is, a little boy who didn't care whether he appeared stupid or unfit for his office yelled, "Hey mommy, the emperor is in his underwear!"

Many of today's confessing Christians, in the face of pseudo-science and modern academia, are afraid to appear stupid or unfit for their office and throw down the inerrency of their majority-text Bible. They flee from the concept of men living an average lifetime of 911 years before Noah's flood. They scatter from the record of a world-wide flood and Noah's ark. They wink at the concept of God creating one man Adam and one woman Eve. They reject fire-breathing dragons and fiery, flying serpents. Their faces turn red at the concept of a 6,000-year-old earth. They shrink at the miraculous virgin birth, the resurrection of the mighty Christ from the dead and they reject the inerrency and supernatural authorship of the scriptures. The funny thing is, all these Biblical examples can be established; however, the contrary positions that the emperor's subjects have chosen cannot.

God defines this phenomenon well in Jeremiah, Chapter 2, Verse 13:

For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

On this website we have discussed in some detail the concept of an earth just over 6,000 years old that was spoken into existence by God in six literal days. This subject has drawn significant e-mail activity. Many are trying in the hardest way to fit the Bible into evolution's billions of years in an effort to look wise and fit for their office. Many are legitimately confused and it is to those that this message is addressed.

GOD SAID in Genesis, Chapter 1, Verses 1-31:

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

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

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

This beautiful chapter is laiden with a plethora of marvelous revelations. GOD SAID in Exodus, Chapter 20, Verse 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.

MAN SAID, by those who place some credibility in the Bible, that the scriptures are not to be taken literally in these passages and that God is timeless so he could in fact have taken billions of evolutionary years to accomplish the creation feat. Typically they quote II Peter, Chapter 3, Verse 8:

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Another verse they often quote is Psalms, Chapter 90, Verse 4:

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

Now THE RECORD. The creation record in Genesis, chapter one, is quite unambiguous. Each day in the six creation days is prefaced by the words, "And the evening and the morning were the first day...And the evening and the morning were the second day," etc. Each day was prefaced by the solar day definer, "the evening and the morning" up to and including the sixth day. On the seventh day God rested.

Also note that the account we read in Exodus 20:11 is dealing with the concept of the Sabbath day of rest...six days of labor and the seventh a day of rest. So then God created the heavens and the earth in six 24-hour solar days.

For those who find the obvious too mundane, allow me to continue. First, the passages in Peter and Psalms do in fact deal with the timelessness of God. They deal with the timelessness of God and are not written in any way in a creation context. On this subject biblical concordist L. R. Bailey had this to say:

The text of Second Peter 3:8 has been misused by those who would bring it to bear upon the word "day" in Genesis 1...Rather, the purpose of that text is to point out that the Lord is not slow about his promise...but is forebearing...not wishing that any should perish...(3:9; cf v.4) That is, God is not subject to time in the sense that humans are. The intent, then, is to make a statement about God's fidelity to promises, and not to define the meaning of the word "day" as it is used in Genesis 1.

Please note that the cited passages in Genesis and Exodus are in the context of creation and clearly define a solar day.

The following excerpts are from a research article titled, "The 'Days' of Creation In Genesis 1," written by the late Dr. Gerhard Hasel. It reads under the heading "Considerations From Commentaries:"

The influential Continental liberal Old Testament theologian and exegete Gerhard von Rad states, "The seven days are unquestionably to be understood as actual days and as a unique, unrepeatable lapse of time in the world." Gordon Wenham, a British non-concordist Old Testament scholar, concludes, "There can be little doubt that here 'day' has its basic sense of a 24-hour period." James Barr, renowned Semitist and Old Testament scholar, notes with vengeance against figurative interpreters that the creation "days" were six literal days of a 144-hour period. Form critic Hermann Gunkel concluded long ago, "The 'days' are of course days and nothing else." This refrain can be continued with many additional voices, sharing the same non-concordist position.

Under the heading "Considerations From Lexicography," Hasel records:

The most widely recognized Hebrew lexicons and dictionaries of the Hebrew language published in the twentieth century affirm that the designation "day" in Genesis 1 is meant to communicate a 24-hour day, respectively, a solar day.

A prestigious recently published lexicon refers to Genesis 1:5 as the first scriptural entry for the definition of "day of 24 hours" for the Hebrew term yom ("day"). Holladay's Hebrew-English lexicon follows suit with "day of 24 hours." The Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon, the classical Hebrew-English lexicon, also defines the creation "day" of Genesis 1 as a regular "day as defined by evening and morning."

And again Dr. Hasel records under the heading "Considerations From Dictionaries:"

Magne Saeboe writes in the acclaimed Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament that the "day" (yom) in Genesis 1 has a literal meaning in the sense of "a full day." He does not entertain another meaning or alternative.

Ernst Jenni, an acclaimed Hebrew scholar of the twentieth century, states in the most-widely used theological dictionary of the Hebrew language that the meaning of "day" in the Genesis creation account is to be understood in its literal meaning as a "day of 24 hours in the sense of an astronomical or calendrical unit of time."

Finally, the great leader of the Reformation Martin Luther said:

We assert that Moses spoke in the literal sense, not allegorically or figuratively, i.e., that the world, with all its creatures, was created within six days, as the words read."

Remove the question from your mind. The Bible is clearly speaking of six literal 24-hour days. There is no room to fit the fairy tale of evolution into this scenario.

To the antagonists who have sent their scathing responses to the Bible's position of a very young earth, I would ask you to answer the three following questions:

1. What is truth?
2. What is proof?
3. Prove that the world is billions of years old.

To the believers: Don't get caught in the emperor's clothes. Jesus gives fair warning in Mark, Chapter 8, Verse 38:

Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

At the end of this message we will list various subjects on this site which deal with a very young earth concept.

GOD SAID he created all that you see in six literal 24-hour solar days.

MAN SAID, by those who place some credibility in the Bible, that the scriptures are not to be taken literally in these passages and that God is timeless so he could in fact have taken billions of evolutionary years to accomplish the creation feat.

Now you have THE RECORD.

Subjects on this site that deal with young earth:

• 6,000-Year-Old Earth
• Dinosaurs
• Truth Knows No Opinion
• Ever Learning
• Evolution is Dead...They Just Forgot To Bury the Corpse
• The First Law of Thermodynamics
• Carbon Dating and 2+2=5
• Made of Words
• Adam and Eve
• Created Out of Nothing
• Neanderthal Man

 

References:

King James Bible

Bailey, L. R., Genesis, Creation and Creationism, New York/Malwah, NJ, Paulist Press, pp 125-128.

Barr, J., "Fundamentalism," Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978, pp 40-43.

Benedickt Hartmann, Philippe Reymond, and Johann Jakob Stamm, Hebräund AramäWöder HebräSprache (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), 382. Hereafter cited as HAL. Its predecessor, i.e., by Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1958), 372, reads "day (of 24 hours)" for the creation day.

Brown, Driver and Briggs, p 398.

Gunkel, H., Genesis üunderkl&#228rt, G&#246ttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1901.

Hasel, G. F., "The 'Days' of Creation In Genesis 1: Literal 'Days' Or Figurative 'Periods/Epochs' Of Time," article, http://www.ldolphin.org/haseldays.html. Holladay, William H., A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Grand Rapids, MI, Wm. B. Eerdmands Publishing Co., 1971, p 130.

Magne Saeboe, "yom," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, eds. G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, Grand Rapids, MI, Wm. B. Eerdmands Publishing Co., 1990, 6:23.

von Rad, G., Genesis: A Commentary, Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1972, p 65.

Wenham, G. J., Genesis 1-15, World Biblical Commentary, vol. 1: Genesis, Waco, TX, Word Books, 1987, p 10.

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