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What Do Christians Believe About the Length of Creation Days? (Video)

What Do Christians Believe About the Length of Creation Days
Image Credit: RODNAE Productions

Why do Christians argue over the first chapter of Genesis? Is there only one proper way to interpret the age of the universe and the definition of a “day”? Detective Jimmy Wallace (J. Warner’s son) tackles these questions as part of his Incarnate Investigation Video Series.

To see more training videos with J. Warner and Jimmy Wallace, visit the YouTube playlist.

For more information about the scientific and philosophical evidence pointing to a Divine Creator, please read God’s Crime Scene: A Cold-Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe. This book employs a simple crime scene strategy to investigate eight pieces of evidence in the universe to determine the most reasonable explanation. The book is accompanied by an eight-session God’s Crime Scene DVD Set (and Participant’s Guide) to help individuals or small groups examine the evidence and make the case.

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Jimmy Wallace is a detective who holds a BA in Psychology (from UCLA) and an MA in Theology - Applied Apologetics (from Colorado Christian University).

3 Comments

3 Comments

  1. Keith Schultz

    April 26, 2021 at 2:20 pm

    The real issue is not old verses young but the authority and inerrancy of Gods word!
    The real questions are:
    Did God really want us to take His description of creation as a literal account or just leave it up for His followers to decide what it means? I would argue from scripture that He wants us to take it as a literal 24 hour “yom” since we must exegete His word in context to the meaning He is trying to convey; “there was evening and morning the ___ day”. I do not know how anyone can interpret that to mean millions of years?
    Also, in EVERY case where “yom” is used as an ordinal it means a literal 24 hour day.
    He also references a normal work week “six days work and the seventh day to rest or cease working, and refers to His creation week. Again, how slowly would he have to say “Let light be…and so it was” over millions of years?

    Another major question has to be when and why did the “old age theory” occur and by whom and what was the reason to change from the accepted interpretation for over 5,800 years? The main force that drove the theory was “Darwin’s theory of natural selection (evolution) in the mid 1800s which required millions of years to sustain the necessary processes of chance natural trials to become successful.

    So what theist biblical scholar introduced this interpretation of creation and how ancient is this theory and were they searching scripture to help interpret Gods intended message of creation?

    So now the big question: “why did/do Christians think it is no big deal how we interpret Gods word in regard to creation? Because they think it helps validate Christianity with secular scientism which is the religion of most atheistic secular scholars and bridge the gap (compromise) so Christian scientists can be accepted into the pro evolutionary scientific academic club.

    So it comes down to accepting the authority, validity, of scripture versus accepting mans recent authority of truth. By allowing a crack in Gods word that describes everything we need to know about how we are supposed to live and serve our creator, it opens and has opened the door to question any other scripture in the Bible. Was Mary really a virgin, did Jesus really raise people from the dead, were His miracles just magicians tricks, and did He really rise from death to life. One card knocked down and the whole house of cards (Bible) crumbles.

    A quote from Henry M. Morris Phd. called “Old-Earth Creationism” on “the Institute for Creation Research’s” website says:
    Compromising with Evolution

    We strongly believe that it is a serious mistake when Bible-believing Christians compromise with the great ages demanded by the evolutionists. Various interpretive devices have been suggested by Bible expositors as they try to convert the six-day creation record of Genesis into billions of years. Some will frankly advocate “theistic evolution,” but others will call it “process creation,” “progressive creation,” “multiple creation,” or some other term, implying that they still believe in some sort of “creation.”

    Some do criticize and reject Darwinian evolution, but then will still allow some other form of evolution–“creative evolution,” “pantheistic evolution,” “punctuational evolution,” or something. Some still resort to the unscientific “gap theory” which seeks to insert the “ages” between the first two verses of Genesis. Every such group must turn to either the “local flood theory” or the “tranquil flood theory” if they are going to hold to the geologic ages, since a global cataclysm such as the Bible describes would have destroyed all evidence for the geologic ages.

    Then they go on to patronizingly deplore the supposed anti-intellectualism of what they call “young-earth creationism” (this is their term; we prefer “biblical creationism” or “literal creationism”). They think this position is an embarrassment (one has even called it a “scandal”) to evangelicalism.

    However, we who believe in a recent literal creation of all things do not consider ourselves anti-scientific or anti-intellectual! Many of us are fully credentialed scientists, and we are quite as familiar with the scientific and biblical evidences as they are. Indeed, there are now thousands of scientists who believe in recent six-day creation. There are also organizations of scientists who are young-earth creationists in many different countries, as well as in many states in this country.

    The difference is this: we believe the Bible must take priority over scientific theories, while they believe scientific theories must determine our biblical interpretations.

    Is the Bible God’s Inerrant Word?

    It all seems to us to hinge on one overriding question. Do we really believe the Bible to be God’s inerrant Word or not? If the Bible is really the Word of our Creator God, then–by definition–it must be inerrant and authoritative on every subject with which it deals. This assumption leads clearly to the conviction that the creation took place in six literal days several thousand years ago. We believe this simply because God said so and said it quite plainly! And then we find also that this revealed fact will fit all the facts of science much better than the long-age evolutionary scenario does.

    It is no good to say, as one evangelical leader said recently: “Well, I believe that God could create in six days or six billion years–it makes no difference.” Yes it does, because it has to do with God’s truthfulness! It is not a matter of what God could do. The question is what God says that He did! And what He said in writing was this, recorded with His own finger on a table of stone: “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day” (Exodus 20:11; see also Exodus 31:15-18).1. I highly encourage anyone to read the entire article here:https://www.icr.org/article/4535/

    Just to reiterate that this debate has nothing to do with validating whether one is saved or not. However, I along with many others do believe that this difference is more than an in house discussion with both sides just giving their interpretation of what God wanted us to understand about His process of creation. God’s word cannot be only 99% correct and the 1% subject to debate. It is just my belief that anything that usurps God’s word is heretical.

  2. Paul Smith

    April 26, 2021 at 8:57 pm

    The interpretation of the Hebrew word “yom” being “day” is completely consistent with the interpretation of the English use of the word “day”. There is no difference!

    When someone hears or reads the English word “day” one immediately looks at the context to determine if the word is to be interpreted as a daylight period of approx 12 hours, or a 24 hour period, or a longer period.

    This is no different to interpreting the word “yom”.

    It is completely irresponsible or possibly even deceptive to try to claim that God did not make His use of the word “day” clearly defined in Genesis 1 – each day is numbered, each day states “morning” and then for greater clarity includes “evening”, and finally, if that was not clear enough, with God’s own finger, He writes His reason for keeping the Sabbath Day holy (Exodus 20:11).

    People enjoy coming up with many creative ways to say Genesis 1 was not completed in six literal 24 hour periods of time, but such attempts are foolish and undermines the authority and reliability of the Bible.

    A few years ago, I was blown away after spending just a few weeks leading a an interested unbeliever in a twice weekly Bible Study starting with Genesis 1.

    After finishing studying the flood account, at the start of our next Bible Study, he declared that he had become a Christian – I did not know that everything that had been preventing him from following Jesus Christ, had been answered in our previous weeks of Bible Studies.

    History shows repeatedly, the consequences of watering down God’s Word – it produces disbelief and the exact opposite of what was the initial intention of winning converts.

    When will we learn??!!

  3. Paulette Gray

    May 7, 2021 at 7:05 pm

    The very first use of the word day in the Bible does not refer to a 24 hour period, so interpreting Yom as a 24 hour period is open to another opinion (based on what some Bible interpreters say relates to the ‘first use’ of the word having an impact on its use later in the Bible.
    Like Hebrew the word day in English has a variety of specific meanings each one referring to a specific period of time and its interpretation depends on context. If the context demands a different interpretation of other words (such as how long things took rather than how long they would normally take)then more consideration is demanded.
    One of the chief problems applied to the Creation story (as the Big Bang theory) is when the creation theory is conflated with Evolution – those are two different things.
    Having a varying interpretation for the word Yom does not immediately mean that the theory of Evolution is also included.

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