End Times and Current Events

"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." (Genesis 1:31).

Some people believe that the "days" in Genesis are not literal 24 hour days, that one day could be a thousand years or a million years in length. Many Christians claim that the days of Creation actually represent millions of years of earth's history. They say that God did not create the universe in six literal days but in six periods of time, representing the millions of years held by the evolutionists.

God is an infinite being. This means He has infinite power, infinite knowledge, infinite wisdom. Obviously, God could then make anything He desired. He could have created the whole universe, the earth and all it contains in no time at all. Six days is a peculiar period for an infinite being to make anything.

We find an answer in Exodus 20:9-11. "Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: 10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 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."
God is telling us that He worked for six ordinary days and rested one ordinary day to set a pattern for man – the pattern of our seven day week which we still have today.

The Hebrew word for day in Genesis, "yom" means an ordinary day. God did not say that He worked for six million years and then rested for one million years, telling us to do the same. Adam was created on day six and lived until he was 930 years old. If each day was a thousand years or a million years then there are problems here too. The word "day" in Genesis cannot be symbolic.

"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" (Genesis 1:14). If the word "day" here is not a literal day, then the word "years" being used in the same verse would be meaningless.

"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." (2 Peter 3:8 ). The context is in relation to Christ's second coming, pointing out the fact that with God a day is just like a thousand years or a thousand years is just like one day. He is outside of time. The thrust of the Apostle's message is that God can do in a very short time what men or "nature" would require a very long time to accomplish, if they could accomplish it at all. This has nothing to do with the Creation in Genesis. 

Does the length of the day matter?
Finally does it really matter whether we accept them as ordinary days or not? The answer is most definite "Yes!" It is really a principle of how one approaches the Bible. For instance if we don't accept them as ordinary days then we have to ask the question, "What are they?" The answer will be "We don't know". If we approach the days in this manner, then to be consistent we should approach other passages in Genesis in the same way. When people accept at face value what Genesis is teaching and accept the days as ordinary days, they will have no problem understanding what the rest of Genesis is all about. We should take Genesis literally, God created the earth for man.