(2) Six Days, Genesis 1:1-31

Genesis 1:1-31

Some people say that the earth and the universe are billions of years old. And on the other hand you have those who think the world is only 6000 years old. Let's take a look at what the Bible says on the subject.

• 1 In the beginning God (Elohim) created the heavens and the earth.
• 2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
• 3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
• 4 God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
• 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

The first argument will come over the word "day". First of all, a suggestion; do not use the Greek language to decipher the OT. It was not originally in Greek. The original version is closer to Hebrew. The Hebrew word for day is "yom". Now day has a couple of meanings. It could mean: "back in my day", "24 hour period", or "daytime- when light is hitting the earth". Notice that verse 5 starts the problem. It has the word day in it twice and it is used as two of the meanings listed. But since this word has more than one meaning, there are those who will say that the second time day is used could mean an "indefinite time period". Hence this is where billions of years comes in. Christians who try and rationalize billions of years will bring in the scripture verses of Psalms 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8. Both of these scriptures link a thousand years to God is like a day. That would be an incorrect interpretation of these verses. Both passages here talk about how God has been around forever. These verses mean that time is not important to God. He is beyond all measures of time. Day one had one part daylight and one part night. If this was supposed to be billions of years then that was one long day.

Another argument will be about light. Some stars are billions of light years away from us. So, in order for us to be able to see their light then the universe has to be billions of years old for it would take that long for their light to travel. The natural law of physics would not allow this to be any other way. True. But God created the laws of physics. God is not part of the natural world. God set things into motion and to do that He created this in state of maturity. Adam was not a baby when he was created. Light was the first thing after the universe that was created. It was in its maturity. Let there be light and BOOM there was light, everywhere. They do have a neat theory. It is called doubling time theory. With the expansion of the universe happening in their eyes, every time the universe doubles in size, time is cut in half. Given the rate of the speed of light and the calculations of how big they say the universe is one can use the following to decipher how old they say the universe is:

• day one took 8 billion years
• day two took 4 billion
• day three took 2 billion
• day four took 1 billion
• day five took 500 million
• day six took 250 million
• and the Christian scientists claims we are still in day seven

Add these together and you get 15 3/4 billion years.

www.aish.com/societywork/sciencenature/Age_of_the_Universe.asp will give you more information on this theory. It is neat but doesn't hold all the water.

Science tells us that the sun had appeared by an explosion of gas and bits and pieces were thrown into our solar system. When these pieces cooled you have some planets forming. Same with the moon. Earth started to cool and a piece of earth had broken off and cooled 300,000 miles away in the form of our moon. So science tells us the order of these things coming into existence as: Stars, Sun, Earth, Moon. But scripture tells us that the earth came first. Then the light. Then the sun and moon and stars. The earth is the oldest but not billions of years old. So, if some of these stars we could not see until today because they are 15 billion light years away, and the stars were not created until the 4th day then by their own theory the stars could only be 3 billion years old at the most. Thereby if you stick to the doubling theory then the earth is either 60 billion years old or the stars are a lot closer than they thought. Or the Bible is inaccurate about which came first. In any way, their theory now has holes in it or the Bible does.

To get the final picture you have to go back to the way Genesis was written. Remember from Lesson A, Genesis was written so we could understand it. Six days is six days.