I always wondered why God *suddenly* was in such a hurry. :)

And I'm not really committed to a 24 hour day if truth be known.  Heck even today, it's not a 24 hour day.  (Yeah, yeah darn close).  Although I learned an interesting fact today.  On Jan 1 when we're celebrating the 2008 year AD, Ethopians will be dealing with Y2K on their calendar.

I also learned this week that most scholars actually put Christ's birth at 5 AD and that his birth most definitely wasn't December 25th.  I also continue to be amazed reading through Acts of events that we often picture as happening instantaneously... instead happening slowly.

I wonder if it's fair to say God worked through the night? :)

How long was the earth sitting formless?  That seems to happen *before* we even start dealing with evening and day. 

Actually I wonder if the light source was the sun initially.  Sounds like a dumbererer question until you ask yourself were the heavens just planets and not stars?  Or are we arguing that only the sun was created on that "day".  Or all the stars were created on that day?  Or gravity was introduced which caused us to "catch" onto the sun?  Did it take a bit for the sun to start revolving around the earth in 24 hour periods?  ("Galow"lian humor there in case any catches that backwardness)

My point I guess is that we humans are lousy when calculating time (or when it comes to not wasting it. ;) ) and God isn't bound by time.  I've seen fair arguments on both sides.  Do I have a problem believing either?  Erm not really. 

And with this rambling... it's bedtime. 

wow what a message God Bless you

happy new year 

Just to be clear.  Just because someone doesn't believe in young earth, doesn't mean they believe in evolution.  The two do not go hand in hand.  As I said, this is something I personally haven't decided on yet as I've been sifting through the evidence.

What's important is the evidence that God created us and our belief the Bible is the accurate, if not completely full*, account of what happened is.

* - Meaning we don't have the mechanical or engineering layouts of how everything happened.  Sometimes it strikes me that we are incredibly arrogant in thinking that "WE NEED TO KNOW".  Or as it was put in Job 38 (full chapter here because it's a great picture of what we are talking about now)

On the other hand it would be fun to have that fold out "map" in a Bible.  :)

One more asterisk. 

As I said, this is something I personally haven't decided on yet as I've been sifting through the evidence

Meaning young earth vs. old earth evidence. 

Great post once again my friend, have a great ending of your year!

I'm praising God for the wonderful comments rec'd so far! (some could easily see this topic as an excuse to pound the dissenters) Thanks Michael, Norm, Paul, Mary, Jeremy, and Lara for sharing your time and thoughts with us!!!!!!!!!! (and same goes to those who commented before/after you)

Michael, I wouldn't even begin to suppose I can understand God's timeframe, eternity (timelessness) is something I just can't get my (finite, limited) mind around! :-)  But God created a timeframe that we can understand when he created matter (universe). Amazing, isn't it?

Paul, you have "chosen the way of truth" (Ps 119:30) my friend, that ranks you up there with the greatest men and women written about in the Bible! Childlike faith is one of the most intelligent choices we can make! Mary, I'm growing right along with you!!

I just glad our day starts at midnight.  It would be so confusing if each day started at a different time based on when sunset occurred.

However, I disagree.

http://www.accuracyingenesis.com/index.html
http://www.answersincreation.org/word_study_yom.htm
http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/sixdays.html

The last article particularly refutes the point that "yom" is used in every occurrence to mean a 24-hour hour period.  One is an audio presentation.

Whether the creation occurred in a short period of time or much longer as scientific evidence indicates, the important aspect is that it was instigated by God.  Creation came from nothing.  There is no evidence for that to have been possible form anything other than God.  This is the Jewish tradition and does nothing to refute God's purpose, 

There are many theological scholars and written sources that disagree with the young earth theory.  That isn't the point when it comes to the salvation story.  Science simply tells us how - not why.  That is what was being recorded for our benefit in scripture.

I'll expand on your thought on eternity, Mike.  If God is eternal and we have an eternal life, why should it be that the universe is so young in all of eternity?  Thanks for stirring things up, Mike.

I'm still missing where the 24 hour thing keeps coming up.  Let me rephrase a question from above.  If we were on Mercury would there have to have been a different word for day?  So you don't have to look it up, a "day" on Mercury is 176 times the length of a "day" on Earth.

If all I'm worried about is that somewhere it went from night to day 7 times that still does not necessarily give me a time frame.  And remember the problem with the sun again.  We on earth get so focused on it having to be about us, we assume the galaxy (and the sun) revolves around us.  So everyone seems to assume God has to count days using the same star we do every time the word is used.

It's also always struck me as God using the creation of the earth as setting an example of how we are supposed to live, moreso then it actually being 6 days.  Why do we say it took God 7 days to create everything btw?  It took 6.  On the 7th, He showed us a model of how to live our lives.  Unless you want to believe God was actually tired. 

To tag on just one more comment, in the Genesis order of creation, the day could not possibly be associated with sunrise and sunset; at least not at first.  The sun, moon and stars were not created until the fourth day.  Obviously, something else was the benchmark for the first days.

OK, Mike.  I'll quit now. . .

Mike,

You missed my question.  Your argument is a day has to be 24 hours.  My question is where is it written that a "day" has to be 24 hours?  And I didn't ask because I had the answer, I asked because I didn't. 

By the way, a human idea is that the day HAS to be 24 hours.   And I haven't been arguing that the Bible has it wrong.  Just as I don't want to ignore what the Bible has written, I don't want to add or misinterpret the things it doesn't say.   Hence my constant pokes at the Gallileo stuff because the church thought that the Sun HAD to revolve around the earth because of what was written in Genesis. 

Let me pull you back to Genesis.  This may seem nitpicky but I'm a literalist.

Until God created the light there was no "Day" (which interestingly enough even though it doesn't mean 24 hour period is translated from the same word as the one you keep pointing at, so I don't know what that's supposed to prove).  So unless you count *everything* before that as evening means there had to be a day or an evening not accounted for here.  We go "nothing" to light (day) to "And there was evening and there was morning, one day".  So what do I do with that first "day" when light was made?

Correction to comment to Gene. Astrologically speaking the length of a day is defined by the rotation of the earth, but God defined day as "light". What light, if no sun? I dunno! God is light, perhaps he was shining.

Norm, I simply keep bringing up yôm (day) b/c it appears the word meant the same thing to the writer of Genesis as it does to us today: approx 24 hours, eve and morn, one full rotation of the earth. To get long indefinite ages into Gen 1, we have to reinterpret yôm to mean something the word doesn't naturally mean in the Bible.

The Bible never literally says the earth is flat, as it literally says the universe was created in six days. So I can't really see the parallel there. (Isaiah seemed to call the earth circular.)

Norm, I simply keep bringing up yôm (day) b/c it appears the word meant the same thing to the writer of Genesis as it does to us today: approx 24 hours, eve and morn, one full rotation of the earth.

Why?  I'll agree with "Evening" and "Morning".  But my question on the rest is why?  Why are you convinced it has to be 24 hours?  I mean the first couple of days we definitely have issues with how long a day is.  We don't have "markers" until vs. 14 which is day 4.  And we aren't told the markers are the same span of time now as they were then.  Additionally I don't understand for me to be reading this correctly why a day HAS to equal a certain number of hours.  Heck we've made how many changes to the calendar because our calculation of what a day since we began recording time has been wrong.  If I went back and asked Moses.  Hey, is a day 24 hours?  I really do think I'd get a look like... What???!?

Additional points that I need to be honest.  If there are over 200 living species that are existant and I'm reading Day 6 (where man and woman are created), it really strikes me as taking longer than 24 hours especially since that's not how the day started.  And all of that has to be happen in that 6th "day" because until it happens woman is not created.

All this said, it's 12:00 and the bells have rung.  The carriage is changing back into a pumpkin and I probably don't have time to followup more.

Oh and on a separate topic, I really am curious about what God would consider rest. :) 

Golden, THANKS for dropping in with that word from Strongs. I've been studying Genesis using a couple of commentaries, Be Basic by Warren Wiersbe and The Genesis Record by Henry M. Morris. Both authors are highly respected and very committed to letting scripture interpret itself rather than bending it to fit the way we think things were.

Norm, why should the length of a "day" be any different on day 1 than day 5 or 6? Each creation day ends with precisely the same language, "there was evening and there was morning, the n-th day." Now we can take the position that the days varied in length, perhaps by thousands or millions of years....but that really seems to go against the thought that the Genesis author was trying to convey -- consistency. But I'll let you take that up with Moses when you see him. :-)

why should the length of a "day" be any different on day 1 than day 5 or 6?

Why would they have to be the same? We are now living in a world of watches and clocks where we can make the argument that the definition of a day is 24 hours.  However as you have pointed out numerous times, the way Genesis seems to define the passing of a day is:  "There was evening and there was morning.".  And as has been pointed out numerous times, we don't know *where* there was evening and morning.  Realistically when I see God doing this, I could just as easily see this taking 2 seconds a day because he knew how he wanted it.  Do I also have to believe He took 24 hours a day for 6 days to get this to work?  In the end, I see nothing that says it has to be a specific period of time.

BTW, when we're in Heaven, how long is a day going to be?  Are you committed to that having to be 24 hours as well?

Oh and I forget to answer your question before.  Maybe I shouldn't answer it, because as I said above, I don't know which camp I'm in. 

I would like to ask a question of those who would be quick to reinterpret Genesis to line up with geologic ages (millions of years), evolution, and the big bang (or whatever they call it these days). When was the last time you read/studied a commentary that actually supports six-day creation, or young earth?

The last time I've read or listened to a "young earther" was Friday or Saturday when I listened to an Answers in Genesis broadcast.  Actually both Thursday and Friday seemed to be a really good outline for the argument you are presenting. ;)

I am done now. :)

Gene,
What does "and there was evening, and there was morning" all by itself convey to most people? I would venture nobody would answer "the triassic period" lol. That is my point with this blog.

Furthermore, the six days that I work is compared to the six days that God "worked", according to Exodus 20:9-11, making it easy to apply the command to rest on the seventh day. If God worked for billions of years before he rested, where's the explicit command that I work for six 24 hour days before I rest? Remember, we can make "day" mean anything we want!!

I don't agree that everything Gene lists is a mystery.  But that's a different post.  Actually I don't have an issue with someone living 600 years (or more).  But it brings back the context of what is normal.  If someone asked what is a normal life, would you answer 72 years (or whatever the statistic is now.)?  If so would you have a problem with a 600 year old person?  I don't (ok I might be a little startled at first).  But that's because my definition of what a life is, is not dependent on the length of it.  That may be telling in what was done with a life, but it doesn't throw my life off kilter if I encounter someone who dies at 1 vs. someone who dies at 110.  In other words I don't say a life has to be 72 years.  It has to be measured from birth (or time of direct creation in the case of Adam) to death.  And the fact that Adam began with a 20 or 30 year old type of body, doesn't mean the word "life" associated with the time he was living means anything different than someone who was conceived and died later.

Somehow the fact that I believe the first day *may* not have been 24 hours (but defined as a day by other parameters) makes me a non literalist.  It even means I'm beating a dead horse. :)  All I've been asking is why putting a specific constant amount of hours is important to the definition of day.

As to why I would treat the first days in Genesis different?  Well because they were in the sense that parameters we usually use to measure days were just being created and some weren't created until after the first "x" days.  Would God be lying to say it was a day if it took from evening to morning (but evening to morning took 25 hours)?  Apparently so because that's not "normal".

if days can be anything we want to interpret them to be

I don't think days can be anything "we want to intrepret them to be".  They need to be the length of time God used. :)  Do they have to be 24 hours (which is just as much an interpretation as someone saying that it may not be hour dependent)

The Bible never literally says the earth is flat, as it literally says the universe was created in six days.

And the Bible never literally says a day is 24.xx hours does it?

And things were settling down until I had to post this....  Here are my random quotes and comments.

Mike wrote, "In fact, I often wonder why he drew it out that long!"  Augustine wondered the same thing!

Valya wrote, "I think the details of creation are going to stay a mystery untill we can ask God personally in heaven."  What's so mysterious about Genesis 1-2?  I don't think God could have spelled it out any clearer.

Norm wrote, "My point I guess is that we humans are lousy when calculating time"  In this case tho, God wrote it.

Norm wrote, "Do I have a problem believing either?  Erm not really."  To believe both simultaneously is to believe in a contradiction.  The Bible says plants were created before the sun.  The world says the sun was created before plants.  You can't have it both ways. 

mstoval2003 wrote, "GOD is GOD and his creation was done in his OWN time, not OURS."  What verse tells you this?  His creation sits in our time, not His.  Also, if creation was done in His time, what basis is there for our work week?

mstoval2003 wrote, "That is why we have to stay in the word, believe what is written and pass it on."  Amen!

Paul Delucia wrote, "This much I do know........ we must, every day, live for Jesus !!!!!"  Amen!  But more:  be encouraged by Hebrews 5:11ff (discipleship and growth).

Norm wrote, "it would be fun to have that fold out "map" in a Bible.  :)"  Heck yeah!

Norm wrote, "As I said, this is something I personally haven't decided on yet as I've been sifting through the evidence [between OEC and YEC]."  What turned me was the realization that neither camp has all the answers, that both camps have very good answers, but God clearly endorses YEC.  Since YEC is plausible and God endorses it, I went with that.  Since then, I've learned to trust God alone, even when evidence appears to contradict His word.  (Years later the troubling evidence ends up confirming God's Word anyway.)

Michael ATL43:  I don't know you, but you say Pro 3:5-6 changed your life.  Why then do you use 2 Peter 3:8 to interpret Genesis 1-2 instead of using Genesis to interpret itself?  It seems you're resisting Pro 3:5-6.

Gene wrote, "the important aspect is that it was instigated by God"  It seems you are cutting your losses.  I'd say the important thing is we can trust what God wrote.  If I were to subscribe to your sentiments, then Genesis 1-2 could have consisted of a single line:  "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."  The fact is God gave us so m