The Six Days of Creation

By Allen Epling

      Much discussion has been made of the description in Genesis of all things being made by God in 6 days. For 3 millennia the standard view of this was that the time period was 6 earthly days. It has only been in the last 20 to 30 years that serious consideration has been given to alternative theories of what those passages mean. Many faithful simply dismiss it as an unsolvable mystery. Others reject any scientific explanations of the creation outright simply because to do so, to them, means accepting the idea that the six days are wrong. There are several popular, possible explanations for the 6 days of creation and I will list them for your consideration.

       1.God simply willed all things into being through a supernatural event that took 6 earth days to complete and simply aged everything instantaneously to look old. This is the traditional concept.

      2. There is the idea that God created all things in 6 days that were not earthly days           but heavenly days, which were longer time periods than on earth.

      3. Another theory is that there is a gap of billions of years between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. and that the 6 days were a later event.

     4.There is also an idea among the intelligencia that because the Babylonian Creation describes a 6 day creation also, that the Hebrews, while in exile, took that story and incorporated it into the Torah.

      All of these theories have merit but are just theories. I have a problem with number one because it requires an unnecessary supernatural event when God did not have any reason to be in a hurry. Why do so much in 6 earthly days when you control time anyway and 1 billion years is nothing compared to infinity.

     Some say it is literal and why not accept it at face value.

     Because it would be the least natural way to complete the project and I believe God always chooses natural means over supernatural means when He has a choice. After all he did create the physical laws of the universe for some reason. Why violate them when it is unnecessary. This sometimes causes a problem with man because it is human nature to prefer a miracle over a natural event.

     Another reason is that there are clear instances in the Bible of God using figurative language to describe an event, such as the Angel standing on the four "corners" of the earth in the book of Revelations. For many centuries, believers accepted that at face value, "literally", until it was proven that the earth was round.

     Also, the first day was a time period before the first "day" happened on planet earth. There was no sun or earth to revolve to cause a "day" as we define it, until the second Genesis "day". How can we be sure that our definition of a day is the same as God's? If He wrote the book of Genesis, as I believe He did, then our definition of a day came later, after His. Our day is based on an earthly event, while God's day is based on Heavenly events. After all it does say, "In the Beginning, God created the HEAVEN and the Earth. Heaven came first.

      Theory number 2 has merit simply because the Bible says it does. II Peter 3:8 says that "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years...". This is a clear statement that our days are not the same as the Lord's days, and according to Genesis, His days came first. Even Albert Einstein, probably the greatest pure theorist of the last century, became famous for proving that time is a flexible dimension. If he were not right, all of our revered GPS units would fail to operate.

      Theory number 3 describes what some call the "Gap" theory, but that is a stretch that is unnecessary. Why have the gap at all if you still have the same problem with the 6 days after the "gap".

      Theory number 4 is illogical because the Torah contains details of the creation never mentioned in the Babylonian description. Those who hold to that theory forget that the Hebrews had a tradition of preserving stories of the creation by word of mouth, such as the lineage of Adam all the way down to Jesus, and it sometimes was more accurate than written text. I would suggest that it was the Babylonians who borrowed the story from the Jews while they were in exile. Daniel did have a tremendous influence on the spiritual beliefs of the rulers. Where is that level of detail and accuracy in the Babylonian Creation Epic, which is a rambling, illogical, though entertaining story.

     There is a another way that the 6 days can be true and still be compatible with science as we know it. This is my own unproven, yet possible hypothesis.

     At the moment God created the universe, scientists say that an event took place that they call "The Big Bang". This explosion resulted in the universe being instantly created by an enormous expansion of, not only matter and energy, but space itself, so that everything that we can observe today was begun by this event. Space is a dimension, such as length, width, and height. If space is a dimension and expanded, why not time, which is also a dimension, a concept accepted by most scientists and mathematicians?

     If time did expand in this way, like space and matter, then time should have expanded much faster in the earlier period of creation than the present. The result would be that time ran faster then and is gradually slowing down as the universe ages, like a balloon that slowly reaches it maximum size.

     If time ran faster in the early universe, than now, God's consistent clock could have indicated one day while perhaps 1 billion years were passing in moments just after the creation of the universe. As the universe expanded, and creation progressed further, this difference would diminish to where, perhaps on the seventh day of God's clock, only 1 million years of earth's time passed. This would allow time for all the processes to take place that our science book say happened.

     We still have no idea of how our clock compares with God's clock today but the Bible 2000 years ago said that one day of God's time was equal to 1000 years of man's time. God Himself said to Adam, that "in the day that you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die." Adam lived for 930 years, well within a "day" of God. To say a day is 24 of our hours would be to say that God was wrong about that.

     If science says that man began as a species on earth 2 million years ago, which could have been the 6^th day on God's clock, and then we would have no conflict between the two.

     I realize that all of the above ideas are possible and plausible, and any statement on them would be hypothetical at best, as no one can say for sure. The point I would like to make here is that there are explanations for this passage that are compatible with what we know to be true, and anyone looking for the truth should begin with an unbiased, open mind to all possibilities. That is not always true of both scientists and the Christian Fundamentalists.

     To say that anything is certain is foolish and for any scientist who believes in the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal, such a statement would be hypocritical.

     This article is part of a continuing feature dealing with the Evolution Vs Creationism debate. Each week a new topic will be dealt with presenting, hopefully, a balanced, educated viewpoint, while ALWAYS upholding the divinity and sanctity of the Bible. The basic tenet of this article is that every word of the book of Genesis is factually, historically, and scientifically true.

     For the book from which these thoughts were taken, visit

     http://www.beyondgenesis.com