For some reason, many professing Christians are determined to get long ages out of the first two chapters of Genesis. The word under fire is yôm, which means literal day (or part of a day) when qualifiers are used, otherwise it can mean an indefinite period of time.
Why those people want to take the only word that can mean literal day and confuse the issue so they can have millions of years in Genesis is baffling. They take the rest of Genesis and the Old Testament at face value, relying on context, when yôm is used.
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| Bible and pathway, Unsplash / Aaron Burden |
Several popular efforts have been made to compromise with the enemies of God and make creation seem to be older than God's Word tells us. (Do they really believe the Bible, or is it just for show?) These compromises include the "Gap Theory," the "Framework Hypothesis," theistic evolution, and others. One of the others is the popular "Day-Age Theory." The article linked below succinctly shows why that one defies Scripture and even rational thought.
Some people argue the Hebrew word yôm in Genesis 1 means a very long period of time, usually because they are seeking to accommodate billions of years (with or without evolution) within the biblical timeline for creation. We have comprehensively critiqued the claims being made in a variety of past articles. For a broad overview of the six days of Genesis 1, refer to Chapter 2 of the Creation Answers Book. The following is a list of individual arguments that are often put forward to defend yôm as an eon, together with corresponding verse references, brief counter-comments and links to our articles.People who hold to the day-age theory say yôm in Genesis 1 is an eon because …
To continue, see "Genesis 1: YÔM ≠ eon — Day-age theory assessed." Also, the material should be useful in refuting some of the other compromise positions.