The day is not an age
Billions of years don’t fit with the Bible
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When my daughter was young, I introduced her to sketching and how to use colored pencils to enhance her drawings. She continued to practice and develop her technique until now, as a young woman, her skill has far exceeded my ability to draw. After examining one of her drawings of a horse – so real that its muzzle looks soft to the touch – one would never believe that she just randomly chose a few colored pencils, blindly allowing them to contact the paper in random strokes.
Yet, this is how some Christians attempt to reconcile the historical account of Creation, the world of order and beauty recorded in Genesis 1-2, and the “fact” claimed by secular scientists that everything in the world around us is the product of random processes, occurring without a plan, over a very long period of time.
What if we stretch the days?
There are good reasons to believe that God did create everything in six, literal 24-hour days (Gen. 1:1–31). However, some people feel the need to interpret each “day” in Genesis 1 as symbolic of millions or even billions of years, because Science tells us that the universe was created by the Big Bang, that the Solar System and our Earth formed out of the chaos of this unique explosion, and that all life came about through the random processes of Evolution. This attempt to reconcile the Bible with science is called the Day Age Theory because it posits that each “day” in Genesis 1 represents an ‘age’ that is millions or billions of years long.
The problem with the Day Age Theory is that it contradicts the Biblical narrative.
This theory assumes that the reigning cosmological theory for the origin and history of the universe – from the Big Bang to the evolution of all life on Earth – must be correct because it is proven by Science. However, the Day Age Theory does not reconcile scientific belief with the events described in Genesis 1 because the order of events in Big Bang cosmology are completely different from those given in the Bible.
The Sun or Earth: which came first? Secular science says that the Sun came before the Earth, and the Bible says the opposite. So who are you going to believe?
For example, Genesis asserts that:
the Earth was formed (on Day 1) before the Sun and stars (Day 4),
plants were formed (on Day 3) before the Sun (Day 4),
and that birds were formed (on Day 5) before the land animals (Day 6).
Secular scientists, on the other hand, claim that:
over 4 billion years ago the Sun formed first from a collapsing solar nebula, followed by the planets, including Earth,
plant life only began to colonize the land around 450 million years ago,
and some land animals (i.e., dinosaurs) evolved from birds.
The Day Age Theory is, therefore, entirely at odds with the Biblical account and so it does nothing to reconcile the historical account in Genesis with scientific opinion.
History can be symbolic too because God writes it
The Literary Framework Hypothesis dispenses with the need to harmonize the “facts” of scientific cosmology with the Biblical narrative by teaching that the Biblical account is not intended to be taken as a chronological history but as a figurative, poetic narrative that teaches that God is the creator of all things. This notion that the Biblical narrative is allegory or poetry stems from a perceived parallel structure between Days 1-3 and Days 4-6.
Beginning with Genesis 1:2, which describes the cosmos as “formless and void,” this argument contends that Days 1-3 create the “form” and Days 4-6 fill the “void.” However, as Dr. Noel Weeks has pointed out, “even though there is no logical reason why the presence of a structure should prove that a passage is not to be taken literally, this idea seems to have great emotive appeal.”
Just as the process of constructing a building follows an ordered process – site preparation, laying the foundation, erecting the framework, etc. – the process of creating the universe will also be structured and not chaotic. Therefore, the presence of a structure in the creation narrative actually supports the fact that this is a record of a real historical and creative event that occurred over six literal days.
In addition, parallel literary structures are also found elsewhere in the Bible, such as in the historical narratives contained in Exodus and the gospel of Matthew. For example, in Matthew 2, Jesus took a journey into Egypt and was led back into Israel, fulfilling the prophesy that “out of Egypt I called my son,” which parallels the nation of Israel being led out of Egypt by the Spirit of God, with pillars of fire and smoke going before them (Ex. 13:17–22). Also, the people who came out of Egypt passed through the waters of the Red Sea (Ex. 14), which Paul describes as passing through the waters of baptism into Moses to be identified as God’s people (1 Cor. 10:1–4), parallels Jesus passing through the baptismal waters and being identified as God’s Son (Matt. 3:13–17).
Many other parallels could be listed, making it evident that parallel structure in a narrative does not indicate that the text is allegorical. Rather, it demonstrates God’s involvement in history.
As with the examples of historical parallels described above, historical events and objects may also have spiritual significance. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, points out the error of assuming that because something described in Scripture has spiritually symbolic significance it could not exist as a “visible and material object.” He writes:
It is arbitrary to suppose that there could not have been a material paradise, just because it can be understood also in a spiritual significance… there was no rock from which water flowed when Moses struck it, just because it can be interpreted in a symbolic sense, as prefiguring Christ; which is how the same Apostle takes it when he says, ‘Now the rock was Christ’ .”
In the same way, states Augustine, one may attribute symbolic significance to the Tree of Life (cf. Gen. 2:9, 3:33; Prov. 3:18; Rev. 2:7, 22:2) and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – even the entire garden paradise of Eden: “There is no prohibition against such exegesis,” says Augustine, “provided that we also believe in the truth of the story as a faithful record of historical fact.”
Jesus taught that Genesis was literal
The Bible clearly teaches that humans did not evolve but were created, first man and then woman. Dr. Weeks asserted that Genesis 1 is to be understood literally stating that
“a number of passages which refer to the original creation of man and woman and their relationship may be considered together (Matt.19:4; 1 Cor. 11:8–9; 1 Tim. 2:13–14). Note that the account is taken literally and made the basis of teaching on the relation of man and woman. Even if in only this point we take issue with evolutionary theory we find ourselves in complete antithesis to naturalistic evolution.”
The gospels contain several examples of Jesus referring to the events recorded in Genesis as real history.
When speaking of the prophets who had been martyred by the Jews, Jesus refers to Abel as the first martyr and Zechariah as the last (Luke 11:48–51, Matt. 23:49–51).
In Matthew 19:5–6 (and Mark 10:7), Jesus quotes Genesis 2:24 to clarify that marriage is between one man and one woman: “‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Jesus uses the real history of Genesis to explain the basis of the marriage covenant.
Finally, Jesus tells us that His return will bring judgement on everyone in the world in the same way God judged all people in Noah’s day. In Luke 17:26–27, Jesus says that “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all” (also Matt. 24:36–44). The world-wide flood recorded in Genesis 6-9 was a real event, and so Jesus expects his listeners to believe that the final judgement will be just as real.
Still, some people are tempted to believe that God used millions of years to create because the Bible says that, “with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (2 Pet. 3:8).
However, we need to look at the context of this statement. The whole passage says, “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” Peter is not writing about long ages of creation but about the Lord’s willingness to wait patiently so that every person has an opportunity to repent and restore their relationship with God. Peter is repeating the same illustration that he used in his first letter where God waited patiently so that people would have every opportunity to repent and be saved “when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared” (1 Pet. 3:20). Even with the help of his sons and hired men, it would have taken Noah many years to build and provision a ship as large as the ark and so those aware of Noah’s project would have had a long time to come to repentance. In other words, God is more than willing to wait a long time so as not to lose anyone (Eze. 18:23).
Gradualistic assumptions took hold
While there were exceptions, in the late-seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, scientists seemed to readily accept the Genesis account of a global flood, concluding that it was responsible for the Earth’s geology, including the creation of fossils.
Grand Canyon formed gradually? If you assume that “all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation” then the Grand Canyon’s depth and size, and the small river running through it would all be evidence of it being formed over tens and hundreds of thousands of years. But the Bible speaks of things being different in the past than they are today, with a worldwide Flood and its enormous volume of water able to carve out much more quickly what would take a small river eons to do.
But by the end of the eighteenth century the majority of scientists began to favor a more “naturalistic” view of geology, no longer seeing a need for their ideas to fit with the Biblical account of Creation nor its account of watery catastrophe on a global scale. This naturalistic geology relied on slow and gradual processes, such as the laying down of layers of sediment to form layers of rock. Physician James Hutton, considered the father of contemporary geology, stated that the natural forces we observe shaping the Earth in the present also operated in the past, slowly and gradually over long periods of time.
In his treatise on the subject, Theory of the Earth, Hutton says that “in examining things present, we have data from which to reason with regard to what has been..., therefore, we are to examine the construction of the present earth, in order to understand the natural operations of time past.” Hutton writes that such slow and gradual processes occurred on Earth “for millions of ages.” Hutton’s gradualist, or uniformitarian, views were later popularized by Charles Lyell in his three-volume work titled Principles of Geology. And it was the acceptance of slow and gradual geological processes that provided Charles Darwin with the long-ages required for his theory of biological Evolution, Origin of Species, published in 1859.
This dramatic shift in scientific thought, currently held by many scientists today, was the antithesis of the Biblical account of Creation contained in Genesis 1. Thus, The Day Age Theory was invented in an attempt to reinterpret the days of Creation as symbolic of the “deep-time” required for the Big Bang and biological Evolution required by scientific thinking.
God foreknew that people would invoke ideas like uniformitarianism to deny the historicity of the global Flood and bring doubt concerning the final judgement of the world:
“Scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished” (emphasis added; 2 Pet. 3:3–6).
Thus, it should come as no surprise that, rejecting the Creation account in Genesis 1, scientists claim that the Universe formed 15 billion years ago after the Big Bang, and the geology of the Earth was formed by slow, gradual processes over millions of years, and that life evolved over millions of years. When we are encouraged by scientists to believe that the universe was created over billions of years, and that life evolved over millions of years, we are being asked to doubt God’s Word. Logically, once the beginning of the Bible is called into question, we will also begin to doubt everything else written in the Bible as well.
Did God really say?
Hearing ideas that may cause us to doubt God’s Word is not a new phenomenon; in fact, sowing seeds of doubt was the first ploy used by Satan to deceive humanity. It was not long after God created a world that was “very good” and placed the first couple in the Garden that Satan came along and tempted them to doubt God’s word. We read in Genesis 3:1 that “ said to the woman, ‘Did God really say....’” In this way Satan caused the woman to doubt God’s goodness, convincing her that God does not really mean what He says.
Some people do not want to believe in a God Who will hold them to account for their thoughts and actions. They do not want to acknowledge that they are sinful – that they disobey God – and that the only way to restore a right relationship with God is through repentance and belief in Jesus, God’s Son, Who died to redeem them and was raised from the dead (Rom. 10:9). Nor do they want to believe that Jesus will come again to judge each one of us.
As a result, they make up their own stories about how the world began so that they can write God out of history, pretending He does not exist. The apostle Paul wrote that some people would deny God and create their own stories: “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Tim. 4:3-4). We are living in such a time and Big Bang cosmology and Evolution are those myths. When Satan uses the authority of science to cast doubt on God’s Word – “Did God really say...He created the heavens and the earth in six days?” – remember how Satan deceived Adam and the woman in the garden, which had devastating consequences.
Dr. Mark Sandercock is a retired forensic chemist who worked for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the author of “Foundation: A Biblical Worldview.” This is an abridged extract from Chapter 4. His book is available on Amazon....
