It is true that God created the earth and the rest in six days. That is what the word says. However, the Word does not specify how long each day was. Many assume because our days are roughly 24 hours long that God’s days were roughly 24 hours long. It is only an assumption. No scriptural proof for so many to be so dogmatic about it. Joshua’s long day was longer than 24 hours and was only one day. The days in the Tribulation period will be shortened [earth speeded up?] and they will be short days for three and a half years. With God, one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are as one day. So while 24 hours is the norm, two examples above show longer and shorter than 24 hours that we know about. The point is that making assumptions based on the way things are normally in our experience is not proof that that is the way they were out of man’s experience. Man assumed the earth was flat and Christians especially got dogmatic about the earth being flat because of the Word’s mention of the four corners of the earth. I guess they missed Isaiah’s mention of the circle of the earth. Since God did not mention how long each day was, and at any rate the sun was out of that equation until man came along, we have to be satisfied by what the Word does say. If one wants to insist those days were 24 hours, insist to your heart’s content. I don’t believe the days were that short given the actual creation narrative. In the scheme of things it is not that important. What is more important is the sorry condition of the Church in America. Jesus is kicked out, knocking on the door from outside. Now that would qualify as important, the way I reckon things.

Commentary by Don
Posted on: 8/4/2007 19:43 pm

PROOF OF THE SIX LITERAL DAYS THAT GOD CREATED THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH OUT OF NOTHING.
I am one who believes that God created the heavens and the earth in 6 literal days. Although there are some passages that the word “day” is not a literal 24-hour period, I submit to you, that in the first Chapter of Genesis, that the “day” mentioned there, is indeed, a literal day as we now know it. Note that “…and the evening and the morning were the first day […second day”, etc.] “Evening” and “morning” are not plural in ANY of the original manuscripts. Although man cannot comprehend HOW God “created”, it is understood in the original manuscripts that He “created” something out of nothing by His WORD. He did not “make” the heavens and the earth, he “created it out of nothing”. If one would like to know exactly how powerful God’s WORD is, one only need read the Gospel of John, Chapter 1.

Commentary by Steve K.
Posted on: 8/4/2007 15:00 pm

Genesis opens up with the earth already created. When Spielberg created Star Wars he did not start at the beginning either. God has not provided us with a prequeal. We are to walk by faith. God does not tell us everything. We are to walk by faith. Genesis 1:1 is not the heading of an outline or a thesis statement. Genesis 1:1 is the very start that we are privy to. In the beginning is not the real beginning either. The angels,Lucifer, arch angels and the host of heaven were created before. No matter which beginning you go back to there was God the Father, and the declared (not born, not created) eternal Son who is God and one with the Father and Holy Spirit. But in our beginning, that is of the earth, we see the earth enveloped in a massive amount of water like a baby in a womb. Then we see the earth grow, as it were, until it reaches maturity, a fit habitation for man. God has not revealed to us how he created the atom or how he created matter. Mysteries abound. We still don’t know how gravity works. The just shall live by faith. God has revealed enough for us to believe. The rest is in his department.

Commentary by Don
Posted on: 8/1/2007 08:39 am

On the question of how long a day was in Genesis, the Bible does not say. There was no man alive who could tell us. There is a strongly expressed assumption given as pure fact that each day was 24 hours long. This is largely insisted on as a rebuttal to evolution, as if God needs help defending his truth. The truth is that we really don’t know how long those days were. However, there are some hints that would indicate that the days were not our standard day. On the third day God commanded the vegetation to sprout and grow. We know that by the time we get a human perspective, the trees were magnificent. Notice that in spring, everything that is practically dead, springs up alive and abundant? Does not take much time to see the spring foliage blossom. A matter of days. Now back on a perfect world, how fast did that vegetation grow naturally? It was a process but unhindered by a fallen world. Yet even so, it would seem the day was greater than our standard day. Day six cinches it. After lunch, as it were, Adam was created. God created the animals in the morning. So late in the day, Adam experiences the wonder of a brand new creation, names all the animals and has enough time to get lonely — all this in the waning hours of the sixth day? The earth is in the womb, as it were, when we come to Genesis. Then the process of readying the world for human habitation takes place. The process has the feel of a period of time elapsing that does not coincide with our feel of a 24 hour period. Light was created instantaneously; the vegetation sprouted and grew; and the day of
Adam seems like it would contain a month of exploring the world, another month of cataloguing all the animals, and a while to get lonely. Quite a day. The only thing we know for sure is that all this was created in 6 days.
No need to force the 24 hour theory to combat evolution because evolution killed itself. All the half way this and half way that species, or the missing link, would have to be plentifully seen in the fossil record. Not there. Evolution is a fairy tale for those who don’t want accountability to a God who commands right living. The length of the creation days is anything the Lord says it is. He has not said; He has only hinted.

Commentary by Don
Posted on: 7/28/2007 19:02 pm

The Genesis account of the creation of the earth does not start at the actual beginning. Genesis opens up with the earth already created. It was empty and surrounded by an unbelievable amount of water. We are not privy to how it got to this stage. We must remember that the whole creation account was from God’s perspective. Man had no perspective at all until late on the sixth day when it was all over. Earth was birthed and developed step by step. First the food, then the habitation, and when it was all perfect, man.

Commentary by Don
Posted on: 7/28/2007 03:27 am

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1 A statement inspired by the Holy Spirit, written by Moses between 1450-1410 B.C. that was purposed by God to show the beginning - God revealing his plan of salvation through history that originates here. By faith, as Christians we believe his word - he created all - our beginning hidden in him through the ages.

Commentary by Sharon Corea
Posted on: 6/6/2007 06:10 am

Genesis 1:1 oes not start with “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” It actually reads “the gods” where you have placed “god.” The second version, by the Yahwists, have one of the gods ordering primordial matter; the first version has all of the gods using primordial water to create everything else out of. The myth, of course, came from Babylon.

Commentary by Desertphile
Posted on: 6/3/2007 17:44 pm

If we consider the speed of light and how long it takes for light of the edges of our universe to travel to the earth, I think indeed that we can’t say it was billions of years ago. I understand the Genesis “days” of creation in a non-literal manner. So, we don’t know exactly when God created everything.

Commentary by H.Hilton
Posted on: 6/3/2007 11:09 am

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. . .
Then Verse 2 startes to talk about the earth, So it is very important that
we realize we have no idea how long the creation was before it mentions the Earth that is formless and void
What I am saying is we have no idea how long it was from verse one to
verse 2.
By the time we get to Gen 5 we can start to learn how long Creation as been on the earth.

Commentary by Often Misty
Posted on: 6/3/2007 06:18 am

On my computer I found some interesting remarks about this first verse of the Bible:

“The verse refers to the beginning of the world as we know it; it affirms that it is entirely the product of the creation of God. But there are two ways that this verse can be interpreted: (1) It may be taken to refer to the original act of creation with the rest of the events on the days of creation completing it. This would mean that the disjunctive clauses of v. 2 break the sequence of the creative work of the first day. (2) It may be taken as a summary statement of what the chapter will record, that is, verses 3-31 are about God’s creating the world as we know it. If the first view is adopted, then we have a reference here to original creation; if the second view is taken, then Genesis itself does not account for the original creation of matter [my remarks:”and does not account for the origin of God”]. To follow this view does not deny that the Bible teaches that God created everything out of nothing (cf. John 1:3) – it simply says that Genesis is not making that affirmation. This second view presupposes the existence of pre-existent matter, when God said, “Let there be light.” The first view includes the description of the primordial state as part of the events of day one. The following narrative strongly favors the second view, for the “heavens/sky” did not exist prior to the second day of creation (see v. 8 ) and “earth/dry land” did not exist, at least as we know it, prior to the third day of creation (see v. 10).”

Commentary by B-Forscher
Posted on: 6/2/2007 01:14 am