Did God Create Everything in Six Actual Days (24-hour time periods)?
Did God create everything in six actual days (24-hour time periods)? This question comes up every so often in our society. Why is this the case? The short answer is that there is a strong push to detract from the biblical account. Some adamantly push an atheistic macroevolutionary theory that man and beast have radically evolved over a period of 4.5 billion years, and yet others, wanting to maintain some belief in the Bible, want to incorporate a longer time frame in creation to allow for the billions of years timeline that the evolutionary theorists insist is factual. So why is it important to answer such a question? Does it matter what we believe concerning the time period of creation? If the Bible clearly teaches that God created in six literal days, then we cannot agree to disagree on a divergent thought. As a matter of housekeeping, we will use the term “twenty-four-hour” as posed in the question to signify one complete day. We are not arguing that God instituted our precise clock when He created, but rather we will use His definition of how He created, noted in this article.
Did God Create?
The first thing we will be concerned with is whether God created. The Bible teaches that the creator of all that is can only be God. Psalm 33:6,9 affirms this much. “By the word of Jehovah were the heavens made, And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. For He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.” The source of creation is God. This highly complex universe must have a creator or designer. The Teleological Argument states that the universe demonstrates design and order, therefore it must have a designer. The psalmist here states this in agreement with what we read in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Did God create? He created all.
How Long Did it Take?
The Bible also records the time frame by which God created. How can one say that these days in Genesis 1:1-2:2 are describing a literal 24-hour period? Starting at the end of the first day's creation in Genesis 1:1-5, the text declares these words in verse 5, “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening, and there was morning, one day.” Notice how the day is defined: there was evening and morning, and that defined a day. Each day we recognize has an evening and a morning. This is indicative of the totality of the day. Moreover, the Holy Spirit proceeds to finish this thought by defining it as one day. So, one evening and one morning equals one day. Indeed, the creation account details each day of creation in like manner (Gen 1:8,13,19,23,31). The word day appears twelve times in chapter one; each time we see a number preceding it signifies a 24-hour period.
There is a theory in some circles known as the Day Age theory. This suggests that, because of one verse in the New Testament, it is possible that day could allow for a longer period than 24 hours, even perhaps millions of years. 2 Peter 3:8 reads, “But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” The student of God’s Word must ask, is this talking about the Creation account, or applicable to it, or is it something else? Clearly, this is talking about the fact that God is fully eternal; He has no beginning and no end. So, one that has existed eternally, we can understand that time is not limited in days like a man, and rather we should recognize that God’s longsuffering and desire for more to be saved is why the earth continues as it does (cf. 2 Peter 3:9). This theory attempts to apply this verse, trying to make room for the evolutionary mindset. Still, some have said the word for day (yom) is more diverse than what this author is explaining. I agree that the word day does not always signify one complete day; there is no disputing that. While the word day appears in chapter 2:4 to describe the totality of God’s creation, it does not detract from the fact that in Genesis 1, as noted above, we have the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth day defined by evening and morning.
In addition, the Bible affirms the six-day literal creation again in the book of Exodus. In that passage, the Sabbath command given particular to the Law of Moses was explained to its recipients in this way.
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is a sabbath unto Jehovah thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore Jehovah blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
(Exodus 20:8-11)
Why did Jehovah give them this explanation? He wanted them to realize that if He could literally create everything in six days, they could get their much less strenuous work done in 6 days also. It would be absurd for God to say that if I created the earth in 6 million years, you can get your work done in 6 twenty-four-hour days. How many days are there in every week? Seven. God was clearly explaining what He expected of those under Moses to do every week. God, as He often does, challenges His people to follow His pattern and example. This reasoning appears again in Exodus 31:17, “for in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He rested, and was refreshed.”
The Bible and The Theory of Evolution are Incompatible
Evolution is incompatible with biblical doctrine. Evolution is defined as the process by which animals, plants, and other living organisms are transformed into different forms by the accumulation of changes over successive generations. This scientific theory states that the Universe is self-contained (of a thing), complete, or having all that is needed, in itself, and that everything has come into being through random processes over long periods of time without an outside cause/creator. There is no harmonizing God’s Word with Darwinian doctrine. The child of God needs not to be concerned with the accusations of men whose doctrine conflicts even with the Laws of Science, such as the Law of Biogenesis. That law states that life can only come from life, whereas evolutionary thought presupposes the origin of life from nonliving matter (abiogenesis). This is in clear violation of the Law of Biogenesis.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the state of entropy (disorder) of the entire universe, as an isolated system, will always increase over time. The second law also states that the changes in the entropy in the universe can never be negative. This is why the older do not age in reverse, ice melts, etc. We are not suggesting that there is no order in the universe (in fact, we declare it was created that way). However, the Bible and science declare that the world is breaking down rather than macroevolving into more complex forms. There is no way to move from a single-celled organism to a highly intelligent human being. So, if there are such glaring violations of Scientific Law that strike at the merit of the Evolutionary Theory, we must remind each other and those who have these questions, and show them from the Biblical account that the origin of the cosmos was completed by Almighty God in six twenty-four-hour periods.
Works cited:
https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry_Textbook_Maps/Supplemental_Modules_(Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry)/Thermodynamics/The_Four_Laws_of_Thermodynamics/Second_Law_of_Thermodynamics
