The Day-Age Theory
In Exodus 20:11, God told the Israelites that He created everything in six days, and rested on the seventh. That is exactly what we see when we read Genesis 1:1 through 2:3. On the other hand, the theory of evolution teaches that the Universe and everything in it evolved (without God) over a 14-billion-year period. Clearly, God’s work in Genesis and the theory of evolution are very different and conflicting.
Some people, who believe in God and the Bible, also believe in some of the things that evolutionists teach. Even though they believe God created the Earth, this group believes that God must have done it over a long period of time. In order to “drag” creation out over millions or billions of years (rather than six days), these people teach that the “days” in Genesis 1 were longer than the 24-hour days that we have today. In other words, these people teach that when we read of God creating things on “day 1” and “day 2,” these days were actually long periods of time (hundreds of thousands of years, or even millions of years, in order to fit in with evolutionary theory).
How do we know these days could not have been long periods of time? Well, as we read in Exodus 20:11, God compared the days of Creation with a regular workweek, and both of them were six days plus one day of rest. These were normal days.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six daysyou shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.… For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it (Exodus 20:8-11).
Also, think about how, after describing each day of Creation, the Bible says “and there was evening and there was morning.” In other words, each of these days not only had daytime, but also nighttime. If plants were alive during this time, how could they survive long periods of darkness? In general, plants are capable of surviving without sunlight for short periods, but not for thousands or millions of years. Some plants require more sunlight than shade, while others grow best in darker climates, but all plants that undergo photosynthesis require some form of light. These periods of darkness and light could not have been long periods because plants could not have survived a long time “in the dark.” This is because they would not have enough light to convert into energy (through photosynthesis) in order to survive. Therefore, the days of Creation must have been 24-hour days.
The truth is, these days really were days—just like
Moses recorded in Genesis 1 and Exodus 20.
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