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The Days of Genesis One

Since we are bombarded at every turn with assertions of evolution and millions of years as a fact, many Christians try to reconcile the days of Creation with long periods of time. Expressions like, "Well I think the days are God's days, and we can't know how long they really are!" Some are sidewinders who know precisely what is going on and deliberately corrupt God's Word.

The days of creation are confusing to people who do not accept what the Bible actually says. Day means day. If God wanted us to think he meant long ages, there were other words he could have used.
Background image credit: freestocks.org / Joanna Malinowska
To be blunt, it doesn't matter what you or I think. The important thing is what God said in Scripture, and that too many professing Christians are uninformed about the Bible they claim to believe — especially at the foundation, the first chapter of Genesis. Some misquote 2 Peter 3:8, "One day is like a thousand years", which does not help much because it would make creation week six thousand years long, unhelpful for deep time. Also, the verse cancels this idea out, "...and a thousand years like one day". Read the context, people.

"Evening and morning, one day...evening and morning, the second (third, fourth, fifth, sixth) day." God defined yom (יוֹם) as day. A child or anyone else who has been uncorrupted by secularism can plainly see that day means literal day. To get millions or billions of years out of Genesis, you must perform eisegesis and put them into it first. For them, God cannot preserve his Word or make it understandable — or they are unwilling to believe it.



There are compromisers who adamantly refuse to let a day in Genesis 1 be an actual day. Biblical scholars (even those who do not believe the plain meaning of the text) know that yom means day. It is interesting that Bible-deniers circle the wagons to defend against logic and scholarship, trying to take word and force it to mean long ages. They ignorie the fact that if God had wanted us to think the creation days were long ages, there were other Hebrew words he could have used! (They also ignore Exodus 20:11 and 31:17, and essentially call Jesus, Paul, Peter and others erroneous or even liars.) Let's be honest about what the text actually says and perform serious exegesis.
Were the days of Creation Week of 24 hours duration or were they long periods of time? This article will discuss the Hebrew ‘time’ words which the author had available to him and what meaning he intended to convey by his choice of the specific words he used.
I hope you will read the rest of this important article and even save it for reference. To continue, click on "How long were the days of Genesis 1?" I also recommend "Genesis and the Character of God".