Was the Earth Created in Six Literal Days?

Many people who have looked at what the scriptures indicate, including myself, and many scholars and scientists, come to a conclusion: That the Bible clearly teaches that God created the Earth in Six, Literal Days. (Picture credit to: AnswersInGenesis.com)

When Creationists are usually asked that question, that's where the conversation ends. The intention of this entry is to go a little deeper, find out what the Word of God has to say about the six days of creation, what science can tell us, and what we can calculate.

So let us look at several different reasons to believe the age of the Earth and the context of "six days." (Partial Credit to Ken Ham) 1) The Bible clearly tells us and teaches us that God created the Universe in six literal, 24-Hour days, only about 6,000 Years ago. If the Old Testament ever refers to a "day," but means something else, it shows it in the context. Genesis 1 does not, it refers to a literal day.

2) The Context of Genesis 1 clearly shows us that the days of creation were literal days. "Yom," the Hebrew word for Day, is first defined in Genesis 1:4-5 as a light/dark-day/night cycle, evening and morning. 3) The genealogies that we find in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 clearly indicate that the creation days happened around 6,000 Years ago. Abraham lived ca.2000 BC, and if you calculate the ages given in Genesis up to Abraham, taking the last 2010 years also into account, you wind up with a little over 6,000 Years.

Also, by using genealogies and theology from the time, the Irish Archbishop, James Ussher (1581-1656) calculated the creation of the Earth to be around 4004 BC. For a long time, this was the accepted date, although in modern times, Scientists, (with little to back them up on it), guess that the Earth is Millions of Years Old. Later on, the Archbishop elaborated with a date for creation: October 23, 4004 BC, the date on which the Jewish New Year (Yom Kippur) occurred during that particular year.

The word, "day" is used 2,301 times in the Old Testament. So if the word, "day" is mentioned throughout the entire Old Testament, why is it that Genesis is the only book questioned and scrutinized? 

4) In Exodus 9:9-10, God tells the Israelites that for six days they will work, and rest on the seventh, and refers to them as literal days. He then proceeds to mention that the days of creation were literal days. Exodus 20:11 refutes the claim of millions of years. "For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested in the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy."

5) Noah's Flood "washes away" the theory of millions of years. (Genesis 6-9) The evidence for Noah's Ark and the flood is at best, overwhelming. Those who refuse to accept God will not look at the evidence. The year-long Flood is responsible for most rock layers and fossils (See entry: Dinosaurs of the Bible), and since this is so, then those fossils cannot represent the history of the world over a period of Millions of Years, as those who subscribe to Evolution claim.

6) Jesus himself was a "Young-Earth Creationist." Constantly, Jesus treated the miracles and wonders of the Old Testament as truthful, factual, historical accounts. (Creation of Adam, Noah's Ark and the Flood, Jonah in the Fish, Moses and Manna, Lot and his wife in Sodom, etc.) Jesus affirms the authority and truth of the scriptures several times. (Matthew 15:1-9) Mark 10:6 says, (though not the only statement of this kind by Jesus) "But in the beginning of creation, God made them male and female."

He did not say, but billions or thousands of years later, God created Adam and Eve. He said, "at the beginning of creation." If Jesus himself knew the Earth to be so Young, then why do his faithful followers have a different view than he? (See also: How Do We Know the 66 Books in the Bible Are the Right Books?)

7) The idea that the Earth is millions of years old does not come from scientific fact. It was developed by deistic and atheistic geologists in the late 18th/early 19th centuries. These geologists used anti-biblical assumptions to interpret finds in such a way that it clearly contradicted the Word of God - the biblical account of the creation, the Flood, and the age of the Earth. Many churches and scholars use the idea of "deep time" to explain away millions of years, but the idea of deep time comes from assumptions, not scientific observations. Millions of years is only a guess by scientists.

8) Radiometric dating methods certainly do not prove that the Earth is Millions of Years Old. Developed in the early 20th Century, most of the world had already accepted the guesses and theories that the earth is millions of years old. However. There was a project called RATE, a recent project where they conducted experimental, theoretical, and field research to find more evidence.

In RATE, coal, which evolutionists claim to be millions of years old, was shown by carbon-14 to be a mere couple thousands of years old. Such experiments showed us that the decay rates, in the past, were orders of faster magnitude, which takes the millions of years and shrinks them to only a few thousand, proving the Bible.

While there are hundreds, if not thousands, of books out there that talk about this very subject, this is a brief skim off the surface of why the Earth was created in six literal days, not six weeks, years, or even 6,000 Years. When Christians claim that Evolution can fit in with God's plan, they are undermining the authority and truth of the scripture, of the character of God, of the doctrine of life and death, and of the foundation of the Bible itself.

If the first few chapters in Genesis are not literal history, then our faith in the entire Bible is shaken, including the teaching of salvation. To believe that death and sin could exist millions of years before Adam and Eve would completely take away the truth of the Bible, since death and sin did not enter the Universe until The Fall, which happened after Adam and Eve were created.

So I urge you, dear readers. Take a close look at what the Word of God has to say, and what the truth tells us. I would recommend "The New Answers" creation series, by Ken Ham, which goes in-depth about Creation, Evolution, Noah's Ark, and many other relevant topics. if you have not looked at the evidence for yourself, you would be missing out.

Overall, the Bible seems clear in the fact that God created the universe in six, literal days, and that Earth is at least 6,000 Years Old, but whether we know the specific day, month, or year, we may not know until we see the LORD - but we can still calculate thanks to genealogy and archaeology that proves the existence of Biblical Figures, allowing us to see when these men and women were alive, which gives us dates for those such as Abraham, allowing us even clearer calculations.

Thank you for taking the time to read this entry of "The Truth." I trust that the intention to show that God created the Heavens (Outer Space) and the Earth in Six Literal Days came across. Take Care, Reader, and May God Bless You. Troy Hillman (email: vexx801, facebook)