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By: Mark Sandercock

Published May 28, 2026

The day is not an age

Billions of years don’t fit with the Bible

*****

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… [in that same way it is arbitrary to suppose that] 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’ [cf. Ex. 17:6; Numbers 20:11; 1 Cor. 10:4].”

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 “[Satan] 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.

Tagged: creation, evolution, Genesis, Mark Sandercock, theistic evolution

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Science - Creation/Evolution

6 days or 24 years: why does the difference even matter?

I recently set about the task of making an enclosure to keep animals, and I want to tell you how I did it. This may seem to be a strange topic for Reformed Perspective readers but please bear with me and I trust that all will become clear. Quite the creation My aim was to create a large, secure enclosure and so I began by marking out an area within my back yard. You may think it somewhat eccentric, but for some very good reasons (which I won’t trouble you with) I had to begin the construction at night. So right after I had marked out the area and unraveled some fencing, I erected an enormous halogen lamp over the whole site, which, when turned on, flooded the area with light, which was good. The following day I began to clear the enclosure, which was somewhat waterlogged. I bailed out most of the water, but took care to leave some behind, as I needed a little in order to provide ponds for the aquatic animals. By the end of the day, I have to say I was well pleased with the result. When I came back to the site the next day, I began to shift some of the water I had left in the enclosure into ponds by digging holes in some places, and then piling the dirt up into mounds elsewhere to create dry patches. Once this was done, I spent the remainder of the day putting in some plants and food for the animals to eat. By this time, the whole thing was starting to take shape really nicely. My main task on the following day was to take down the halogen lamp, which I had only intended as a temporary measure, and to put some smaller, permanent lights around the outside of the enclosure, which when fixed up, looked really quite wonderful. The next two days things began to get really exciting. First I put some fish and other aquatic creatures into the ponds and I also brought some birds into the enclosure. Then on the following day I introduced some land animals into the enclosure. At this point, the whole thing was almost finished, except for one thing. It had always been my intention to get my son to look after the enclosure, and so the last thing I did was to show him what I had made, telling him that it was a gift to him and giving him some quite specific instructions as to how I wanted him to perform the task of looking after it. You perhaps won’t be surprised to hear that at the end of all that I took the next day off and had a well-earned rest. Surveying all that I had done, I can honestly say that I was extremely pleased with the way things had turned out. The whole thing had taken me a total of 24 years from start to finish, but it was well worth it. ***** “Now hang on a second. Did you just say 24 years?” “Yes, that’s right, 24 years.” “But from what you said above, it sounded like the whole thing took you six days with one day of rest at the end.” “Yes, it did sound like that, didn’t it? But if I told you that one day is as four years to me, would that begin to make a little more sense?” ***** Well no it wouldn’t, but hopefully you’ve got the point by now. The time frame above clearly cannot be stretched out from six days of work into 24 years, yet this is essentially the position taken by those who advocate theistic evolution when they attempt to stretch the creation account in Genesis into billions of years. What I want to do in the remainder of this article is to ask whether there are any compelling reasons why we might want to engage in this particular “stretching exercise.” Why would it take so long? Sticking with the above introductory analogy, let me pose the following question: why might such a project end up taking 24 years, rather than six days? There are five possible reasons: I might actually need 24 years to complete a project because of the sheer amount of work involved (although anyone who has seen the plethora of unfinished projects in my shed might wonder whether even 24 years would be enough time). I might be impeded by one thing or another – resources, health or weather, for example. I might just be plain lazy and so somehow manage to turn a six day job into a 24 year job. I might need to take a long time in order to make sure the work is of sufficient quality. I might have some other purpose for having taken 24 years, when I could easily have done it much quicker. Now of all these possibilities apply to men, but only the last one might apply to God. Though the volume of work, unforeseen impediments, laziness and the issue of quality might be factors in the length of time it would take me to build my enclosure, all Christians would agree that none of these things would be factors for God in the creation of the Heavens and the Earth. The amount of work involved was no obstacle to God, nor could anything have impeded Him in the process. It goes without saying that laziness, whilst applying to men, does not and could not apply to God, and it also goes without saying that the quality issue is not a factor with God, and He could have produced a Universe of the same perfect quality no matter what time period He took to complete it. In other words, there was nothing whatsoever that could have prevented Him from finishing His creation in a nanosecond, six days or 13 billion years – whatever He willed to do. A reason for six days Which leaves us with only the final possibility – that of having some other purpose for taking time to finish a job. With men, it is difficult to think of a single reason why anyone, given the option of building an enclosure such as the one described above in 6 days or 24 years, would deliberately choose to do it in 24 years. That would make little sense. If a man were just as able to produce work of excellent quality, whether it took him 6 days or 24 years, why would he choose the 24-year option? Furthermore, if his purpose in creating the enclosure was because he wanted to give it to his son as a gift, wouldn’t it be odd if he deliberately chose to take 24 years to complete it rather than six days? Now someone might conceivably use this very point to question why God would have created in six days, rather than a nanosecond. After all, He could have finished it all in a nanosecond if He had wanted to. There is, however, a very good reason why this was so, since His purpose was to give the world as a gift to man to tend and keep. The six days of work and one day of rest sets a pattern for how men are to live, worship and take dominion over that gift. This is clearly seen in the reason given for keeping the 4th commandment: “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” But what good reasons exist why God might have chosen to create in 13 billion years rather than six days? If I am to take the claims of theistic evolution seriously, what I want to know is why He would have done it this way and not done it that way. Arguments for or against theistic evolution are usually discussions of whether the word "day" (Yom) must be taken literally, or what “the rocks” say, or whether evolution undermines the foundation of the gospel itself. These arguments have been covered very ably by others, but what I want to do is to come at the issue from a different angle. My question is simply this: If God could have made the Heavens and the Earth and all that in them is in six days, what arguments from Scripture and from the purposes of God are there to support the idea that He actually decided to take billions of years and evolutionary processes to do so? In other words, why would He do it like that? Bring glory to God In order to test the claims of those who affirm theistic evolution, we must begin by asking the following question: what is God’s overarching creational purpose? Revelation 4:11 supplies us with the answer to this: “You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; for you created all things, and by your will they exist and were created.” In other words, God’s purpose in creating all things was to bring glory and honor to himself. There are essentially two ways that God gets glory from his creation. One is from the very fact of his creation itself being wonderful and reflecting his glory. There is a sense in which even if there were not one single believer on planet Earth, the creation would still praise Him and He would still be glorified. The Psalms are particularly rich in descriptions of God’s natural order praising Him, for instance verses 3 and 4 of Psalm 148: “Praise Him, sun and moon; Praise Him, all you stars of light! Praise Him, you heavens of heavens, and you waters above the heavens!” But although the creation can and does praise Him, by virtue of their being glorious and reflecting His glory, is this the praise that God ultimately seeks? Imagine that Beethoven had premiered his 5th Symphony to an empty concert hall and so at the end there was complete silence. Would the lack of people to applaud the piece diminish it at all or call into question the genius of its composer? Of course not! The music is glorious regardless of whether anyone actually listens to it or applauds. In much the same way, God’s creation exalts Him and brings Him glory irrespective of whether there exists another being to acknowledge it. Days 1 to 5 of Genesis – prior to the creation of man – are all described as good. But just as Beethoven’s intention was never just to create a symphony and have it played to an empty concert hall, God’s intention was never to create the world and leave it without a creature to praise and thank Him for it. Beethoven’s 5th is great, regardless of who listens to it, but how much more glorious does the piece become when an audience is there to hear and gives a standing ovation at the end? By the same token, God’s creation is glorious, regardless of who is there to appreciate it, yet how much more is God glorified when He receives the praise of angels and men? His overarching purpose was therefore to create a being that was not only made in His own image, but also capable of and willing to give Him glory. The Westminster Shorter Catechism famously begins with the question “What is the chief end of man” and gives the answer, “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” This can be flipped on its head to become “What was God’s purpose in creating man? That He might be glorified and that man might share in His happiness.” That, in a nutshell, is why God made us and therefore why we are here. We are to reflect his glory in everything we do, we are to enjoy Him and the gifts He gives us, and we are to return praise and thanksgiving to Him in our worship. This fits perfectly into the six days of work and one day of rest worship paradigm, where the pattern for our lives is established and ordered. But how does this fit in with the paradigm given by theistic evolution? Earth made for us Theistic evolution assumes that it took billions of years for the earth to even exist, yet alone become inhabited. Yet this is at variance with Isaiah, who says that “the Lord did not create the Earth in vain,” but rather “formed it to be inhabited” (Isaiah 45:18). If God’s purpose for the Earth was for it to be inhabited by men, and that it would be vain not to be inhabited by them, what possible reason would He have had to leave it uninhabited for so long? Genesis 1:26-28 is clear that the whole purpose of the created order was that it was a gift for His image bearer who was to be given charge over it. If this was the purpose of God’s creation, what possible reasons would He have had to put this off for something like 13 billion years? The Scriptures plainly teach that God’s purpose for man was not only to bear and reflect his image, but also to praise him in his worship: “I will praise You, O Lord, with my whole heart; I will tell of all your marvelous works” (Psalm 9:1). If this is God’s purpose for man, what possible reasons would he have had to defer receiving praise for billions of years? Deferred glory, dominion God’s purposes and His glory simply cannot be reconciled with the theistic evolution paradigm. To come back to the original analogy I used earlier, if my purpose was to create an enclosure and to give it to my son, so that he might tend it and return to give me thankfulness, in what way would I be achieving my purpose if I deliberately took 24 years to complete it when I could have finished it in six days? How then was God’s creational purpose and His glory fulfilled if he took 13 billion years and a multitude of dead animals along the way, when he could have done it all in six days and minus the carnage? Furthermore, where is man’s dignity in all of this? Psalm 8 states that man is crowned with glory and honor (Psalm 8:5). In the six day creational paradigm, it is easy to see why this is so. The Earth was made for man and given to him as a gift. He was then given responsibility for it and God “made him to have dominion over the works of his hands” (Psalm 8:6). The theistic evolution paradigm robs man of this highly exalted position for over 99% of the history of the creation, and for billions of years the Earth was apparently left to its own devices, without a dominion taker and without one bearing the Imago Dei. In conclusion, a straightforward reading of the Genesis account clearly suggests that God finished the Heavens and the Earth, including His image bearer, in a period of six days. This entirely accords with God’s purpose in creating all things – that He might receive glory and honor. The onus is therefore on those who advocate theistic evolution to show from the Scriptures and from the purposes of God why and how He would have used billions of years of slow graduated changes, without mankind to glorify Him, in order to bring this about. My contention is that theistic evolution is not only incompatible with the straightforward Genesis narrative, it also misses the entire purpose God had for His creation. As far as theories go, it falls well short of His glory. This was originally published in the July/August 2013 issue under the title “Why would He do it like that?”...

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