Q&A25: How are we to understand the Genesis creation account? - Part II

We're going to address the handout, the two sides of one sheet of paper that made available this last week. And it has, you know, what does Genesis chapter 1 mean by the word day? And why is that an issue? Evolutionary time frame, you essentially have a very significant difference in how you view the creation account depending on how you look at what's claimed to be science and how you look at the scripture. I shared last week how I started off with the idea that the days were somehow long periods of time and moved away from that. Most of my conclusions in that were not so much a matter of looking at the scripture passage intensely as much as coming to realize that the science was not all that well founded. and that in fact the category of items that you're studying were not ideal things about which to have a scientific theory. You're talking about a non-repeatable event. You're talking about a series actually of non-repeatable events. You're talking about not having someone present during the processes.

All we can do is look at what we look at now and make assumptions going back. So what we have here is kind of a quick summary of what we could spend a whole lot more time on, but the idea is to bring forth what is the evidence for scripture, or from scripture, regarding how do we take that Genesis account. Let's take a look. We're going to go down the bullet points. I have there is a kind of a bolded summary.

The days of creation are unquestionably literal days as we take them now. There are people with significant amount of Hebrew scholarship that have said otherwise. And so I don't say that with any disrespect for those who have said otherwise, but I think the points are pretty clear. Some of the reasons for this conclusion are this.

One, neither the text of Genesis chapter 1 nor its context gave any indication that metaphysical or symbolic language is being used. How would we know, excuse me, metaphorical, how would we know that language is being symbolic or metaphorical? Okay, context. If it was symbolic or metaphorical, what would that look like? What would it look like if it was a symbolic or metaphorical message that was being communicated to tell you that day wasn't really a day. It might be some point of comparison. Can you think of a metaphor or a symbolic language portion of scripture and why we see it as a metaphor or symbolic?

Yeah, okay, yeah, good. This is at the end of Matthew 23, I think it is, where Christ talks about bringing the children together as a hen gathers her chicks. So that would be some sort of symbolic language. there isn't any indication of that as you read the text. So you don't see that.

The next one, of the more than 2,200 times that the Hebrew word yom, that's the word translated day, occurs in the Old Testament about 95% of the time it refers to a literal 24-hour day. In other words, so not absolutely by this point, but the preponderance of evidence would lean towards that.

In those places where Yom is used as a figure of speech so that it does not mean a literal solar day, it is clear that it is still not intended to mean a period of time that includes thousands of years or longer. How do we use the word day, but we don't mean a literal day? referring to the olden days.

OK. We say the olden days, but that would be actually plural days. But just for a single day, we actually have a similar kind of term though. We would say in their day or in our day. And so we use the term. And matter of fact, once you get to be about, you know, A few decades old, you start talking about, in my day, right? And you don't mean just one day, you mean a bunch of them, right?

So we actually have a figurative use that's common in our own language. And some of that does actually show up in scripture. So notice we've said here, for example, 95% It refers to a literal 24-hour day. They actually did have some figurative use just like we do in English.

The third bullet point there, in every one of about 200 times in which the Hebrew word yom is accompanied by a numeral in the Old Testament, the context makes it clear that it means a literal solar day. What do I mean by that? Here in this passage, how do we have a numeral associated with the days? Day one, day two, day three, and it's pretty clear as you read through it which day it is, right?

And it goes through it in sequence. So that part is pretty clear. Well, it turns out that this word yom, translated day, occurs quite a few times in scripture, like we mentioned above there, over 2,000 times. But in about 200 of those times, it is, as we see in Genesis 1, along with a numerical sequence.

When that's the case, the context makes it clear that it's a literal solar day. In other words, we don't find any other instance where we have day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4. We don't have any other instance outside of Genesis 1 where in that kind of a statement, first day, second day, third day, where it refers to anything other than a literal solar day. The next one, the plural form yom or yamim is used about 700 times in the Old Testament and in each case the context makes it clear that it is referring to literal days. For instance, for in six days yamim The Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.

There we have the days of sequence, right? So Exodus 20, 11. See also Exodus 31, 17. Similar kind of statement. So that would be another confirming instance when we have plural days The plural days refer to literal days. Then the next one, in the Old Testament, when the word day, yom, is used in a numbered series, it always has reference to a normal day as in Numbers 29.

We give reference to Numbers 29. You looking that up, Pat? Oh, I see the next point. OK. Yeah, what you have what you have is is in scripture numbered series because they would have, for example, feast days where on the first day you do this and the next day you do that.

And and again, those are literal days. When they would tell them on your feast day, the first day you do this, and the next day you do that, and the next day you do that, they're not talking about thousands of years. The feast didn't go on for thousands of years per day. Alright, the next one, the repeated phrase, evening and morning, clearly limits the days of Genesis chapter 1 to solar days. This is the pattern of the Old Testament. If the days are long periods of time, then logic insists that the days be long periods as well, which is not credible or reasonable. The idea is if a day has evening and morning, do we somehow make that metaphorical?

How long do you like your morning to be? How many thousands of years do you like your mornings? And then your evenings. How many thousands of years do you like your evenings? I've got a question on that. It looks like the sun came out on the 4th day. But on the 2nd day we had an evening and a morning. So how do you have evening and morning and you don't have the sun? And this is a question that's often brought up. What's interesting is that it starts off with evening and morning immediately. and then talks about the sun and the moon and the stars on the fourth day. So you're saying, well, heavens, how does that happen? Let's ask this question. Do you think Moses messed up? Yes, he was inspired. He understood what a day was when he was writing it, so he wrote it.

In order for there to be evening and morning, and by the way, that also implies something else. It implies the Earth's rotation from the beginning, right? In order for there to be evening and morning, because actually, if you look at it, on one side it's always day, on the other side it's always night, right? So then the question becomes, when was light created? And what was the source of that light? Isn't that interesting? God said, let there be light. He didn't create light sources until later. Isn't that interesting? Let there be light.

So what's interesting is while we have our evening and morning in our context, we always think, well, there's got to be the sun there to define that. And obviously the moon is the alternate body that reflects the sun. And that's how our evenings and mornings get defined. Well, what happens when you don't have any light sources, but you've got light?

This is a very interesting question. So you just turn off the light when it's nighttime and turn it back on the next morning? Yeah, what's interesting is God said, let there be light, but he didn't say let there be light sources. So we have a phenomenon that's very interesting and it's certainly out of the context of anything that we're accustomed to. to dealing with, and that is God waits to the fourth day to have the light sources there, but he doesn't wait to the fourth day to have there be light. He creates light the first day, which would be the definition of His evening and morning. So a part of what I would say an answer is, is the evening and morning isn't a problem, other than the fact we don't have static light sources like we do now to define things. So God created the light but delayed the creation of the light sources for the ongoing generation of light. So how did that keep me from having a light source? Well, you have light. Who is the light source? I'm obviously biasing my question. Who is the light source? God is the light source for the first few days.

But we're never separated from him, so when you have evening when there's the light. Pardon? When you have evening when the light is fading or is going away. Well, again that implies rotation. Evening and morning implies rotation. There's always going to be a light side and there's always going to be a dark side.

God is everywhere. God is everywhere, but when He creates light, He is the light source. It doesn't mean that light is coming from everywhere and going everywhere. Just like He gave definition to the physical world, He also can give definition to light. which has characteristics of speed and direction and frequency and all those things. So when he said, let there be light, we're not given all the details as to how that comes about. What's interesting, God created light for several days before there was any physical light sources. All the light sources are talked about on the fourth has total ability to do anything.

He can give you light and keep me in the dark. And I'm not talking metaphorically. So, if that's the case, then when he says let there be light, because of the nature in which it's used, then that would be a universal light source. Whereby, if he could though, if you wanted to. Heaven just radiate on you and still have me in darkness, if you so wanted to. Yeah, where did the light sources come from? The sun and the reflection of that being the moon and the stars? Where did that come from? He created it. And he brought that into existence out of nothing.

NASA just released the most beautiful picture of 80 stars. Now, these stars, if we take the scientific time, which is solar time, then we're looking at stars that were created Even at that time, probably before we were, our planet was formed, and the whole, the whole magillic of the solar system. However, these are baby stars. And they're clusters of these.

And the picture is just unbelievable. I had to download it better than that. Misunderstanding, I think. Could you ask more questions about, for example, even the statement, let there be light. What kind of light? What color? Directed where? Coming from where? How much?

That's one of the things that Paul and I used to do. I have a fairly decent science background. wonderful science background. When he came to visit me in the hospital and learned the thing after he'd asked how I was and all that, we would get off on the second because I still did not believe in a solar time in creation. Yeah, while the light sources are not described, he simply said, let there be light.

Like the rest of the account in Genesis 1, there could be a lot more specifics that you might ask about, and frankly it's not described. Massive things are done without getting a lot of detail. You don't have, for example, all the questions you might ask about DNA and chromosomes given in Genesis 1. You don't have that.

Were all the physical laws that we know now precisely the same during those creation times? I don't know. And that's where we, when we talk about the origin of the universe, that's where we run into trouble is we have no way of testing, verifying, measuring the various things we call physical laws back in time. There's no way to do it.

Whether you're talking about creation or making the assumption that things somehow evolved. Now we can ask questions that we don't have answers to. And we will never have the answers to. Because all we can do, whether you're talking a complete skeptical approach that says I'm not going to put God in the picture, Or, if we say Genesis 1 is correct, as I think is the biblical view, either way we don't have all the information that we might want to have and we must make assumptions.

How do we verify our assumptions? You can't. Therefore it is not, strictly speaking, under the realm of pure science or the best science. You can't go back and verify your assumptions. You can't repeat the process. So the question becomes, are my assumptions good assumptions? Are they reasonable assumptions? Because I'll never be able to test them.

Was the speed of light always the same? the gravitational constant, was it always the same? God said, let there be light. Where did it start and where did it stop? Right after he said, let there be light, then he separated light and darkness and called it day and night.

Yeah. How do you do that? Yeah, we do not have the specifics. What's revealed is revealed there. If science needs to have someone who witnesses the process, we got one witness. And what we have is limited in terms of what's revealed. I think it is sufficient to spell out what we're spelling out here, but it is not by any means exhaustive.

Birds use the stars to navigate. It's almost like everything got in place and just started out. It's a lot of things, not just turning on the light. Yeah, you bring up a good point. What do the birds use to navigate? What do they use to navigate? Sun, maybe magnetism. Yeah, what's interesting is there's a mixed answer and you brought up one of them.

An interesting study was done in a planetarium. They had one particular set of birds, they put them in the planetarium, and as soon as they turn the lights on, all the birds face the same direction. But other birds, they found, orient themselves by the Earth's magnetic field. And so when they put in an artificial magnetic field that goes in a different direction, the birds orient themselves according to the artificial magnetic field. So very interesting.

You know, how did God decide to do some birds one way and some the other? I don't know. And, when he created the earth, when did the magnetic fields get generated? It doesn't even begin to answer that question. You can blindfold a bird, take them to some other location. You do it even with primates. And yet, they can find their way back to the original point within a couple of minutes. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. And we have our own magnetic field is, even now, magnetic north is moving. It's moving south toward Russia.

How do the birds accommodate those shifts in the Earth's magnetic field? These are questions that even today, watching the process, it's hard for us to answer. When I was flying, one of the things, of course, we had to do was adjust our compass for Here's a question. If you take a compass and stand on the North Pole, where does the compass point? It actually points south toward Russia.

But you run into questions like that. Here God is creating things and aside from what is addressed, and we could ask more questions about that, there are other things like the magnetic field of the earth that is dynamic. It doesn't stay the same and yet from what we have studied, at least some birds orient themselves according to the Earth's magnetic field and are able, in some way we don't understand, to accommodate the changes in the Earth's magnetic field and keep that recalibrated so that they don't get lost. Wow! This is amazing stuff. None of that is addressed here in this passage. We could come up with some fascinating questions that we don't even begin to have answers for.

One of the questions that I discussed with Dr. Thomas Barnes, he's now home with the Lord, but he was the author of a textbook on magnetism and of prior generations. But one of the questions I discussed with him was, how is the Earth's magnetic field, because the Earth's magnetic field is big. I mean, it's a huge magnet.

How is it generated? And even that is a matter of debate and discussion. Well, it's molten metal, right? The cinder. Yeah. I thought you needed something solid to line up all the... whatever they do to get a magnet. Yeah. But there's apparently some movement in it that is generating, we think, the Earth's magnetic field. So, yeah. I mean, there's a whole lot of questions that we can't even begin to answer. You know what I'm thinking about is one spot where it says, Jesus holds everything together. Uh-huh. In Him, all things cohere and consist. And what force is that? At what level is that talking about? We have there the third bullet from the bottom.

If a day is to be understood as a long period of time in Genesis 1, it makes the observation of the Sabbath an absurdity. So, Exodus 20.11, For in six days the Lord created the heavens and the earth, and rest on the seventh, therefore you, Jews, ought to observe the seventh day, the Sabbath. And that's what Sabbath means, the seventh, right? As your holy day. Well, obviously if the days are not somehow literal, that's a pretty silly requirement, right? If the seventh day is one day long, than the other days must be.

The second from the bottom, the word days in Genesis 114 is used in context of the word years, so the time comparison between the two words indicates that days is smaller in time, or else the use of the word years would be meaningless. Moses, in the last bullet, Moses could have used the Hebrew word olam to clearly indicate long periods of time if that were his intent. Olam is the term used for long periods of time.

So that would have been a good choice of words if that's what he had in mind to convey. Does that make sense? In other words, if you've got a word that does mean long periods of time, if that's what you mean to convey, that certainly would be the right word to choose.

But that's not what was chosen here. So anyway, on page one, the last paragraph there, the usual reason for a person to seek to make the days of creation account mean long periods of time is to reconcile the Genesis account with the supposed findings of modern science. This approach requires an unfounded and inconsistent approach to scripture.

And that, of course, is the wrestling point, isn't it? That people will look at scripture and they'll say, well, it sure looks like a literal solar day. And then they'll take a class in geology and biology and astronomy and things like that. And then they're told, you know, millions and billions of years.

So then Well, it sounds like I need to adjust my understanding of scripture, or at least that's the thought that I had initially. But as I examined it, as I examined it, I concluded that the science was not so certain, and it was founded on unverifiable presuppositions, things that were assumed there was no way to verify. We would work on We would work on generating dates for organic materials, for carbon-14 dating. For inorganic materials, we would do potassium argon and other dating systems on the rocks. All those required assumptions. All of them. But there was no way to verify the assumptions. You couldn't. There was no way to verify them.

Anybody been around for a million years? I would say probably not, right? So, the conclusion I came to is, I think what I should do is stand on scripture. And the rest of how do I deal with scientific information will always be based on assumptions. Always. There isn't any other way to do it. Science will always be based on assumptions.

Even if I have, let's say I had three fossils and it looked like I could put those in a series. If I put them in a series, does that demonstrate that those fossils are related? No. It doesn't, and there is simply no way to get outside of time and examine things, you know, get into the time machine and examine it. That time machine idea is still in the realm of science fiction. I can't go back and see what's related to what.

So we would, for example, in the geology classes and paleontology classes, go out and dig up fossils all around the western U.S. and get various creatures that were horse-like. And they would tell us, well this evolved into this, evolved into this, and this evolved into the next. And that's all assumption. That's all they could do was assume. Because there was no way to tell that one had evolved into the other except by assuming. Was anybody there to watch it?

Nope. But they teach it as fact. Yeah, they do. And why do they teach it as fact? Because they have nothing better. It appears to be more scientific to assume that only natural processes are involved. Almost everything else is linear. So they assume that it's got to be linear. But let's ask this question.

How was science invented? How was science invented? You see, back in the time of the Egyptians and the Babylonians and all that, they did some things that were mathematical and analytical. We have, from the Babylonians, our degree system for angles, right? We, after centuries, have carried that forward. The Greeks developed some very interesting things. Some of it's even impressive.

But they weren't able to invent science. How did modern science get invented? I think it's just a defiant rejection of God. Well, the modern viewpoint that God's not involved is certainly that. But how did modern science originally get started? A set of basically Christian assumptions is how science got started. It was people who took a Christian worldview that says, here is a God who is unchanging, and here is a God of order, and here is a God of intelligence. So a Christian worldview that then said, if there is a God of intelligence, if there is a God who is consistent, if there is a God who operates according to his character, which doesn't change, then that God must have created a world that operates similarly, where things have a certain character, where God puts in place laws that are not just completely capricious, but in fact have a consistency. And so that assumption centuries back in Europe created the foundations of modern science.

It's basically a Christian worldview that generated modern science. But what we have evolved is modern science without the Christian worldview. Science that has forgotten its Christian roots. And all of that is assumptions. Some modern science was generated by Christian assumptions and then has in great part left it. You're right. The viewpoint now is that God didn't have anything to do with it. But the original assumption that generated modern science was that God most certainly had something to do with it. And even the character of God is the basis for modern science. Let's turn to the flip side here. When did you say that occurred? Pardon? When did you say that occurred? What? Modern science. Modern science? What century? Oh, what you have basically in the 1450s and 1600s was the period of time.

Take, for example, Isaac Newton, who began pulling a lot of the kind of macro-scale physical laws together. He, as he expressed it, stood on the shoulders of giants. What's interesting is after Isaac Newton developed his laws, and he was in his 20s, he went on and he left science to write commentaries on books like Daniel. So his perspective, his worldview, was a Christian worldview. That's how he was able to take part in the development and the advancement of modern science.

Is there any church that's a heretic? The heresy problem was actually one that was generated in an earlier century. This is where you're talking about Galileo and Copernicus and guys like that. And and yes, then they had problems with Dealing with the church having some preconceived notions as to how things you know ought to be expressed and modeled and that sort of thing Okay, let's take a look at the top of page two The intended meaning of Genesis 1 through 11 is summarized by Professor James Barr James Barr is He's dead now.

I wish I could say that he's home with the Lord, but I'm not so sure of that. He wrote a letter in 1984. He was a professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford. Note that Professor Barr does not claim to believe that Genesis is literally true. He's just telling us openly and honestly what the language means. In other words, take a guy who knows Hebrew. He doesn't have anything in terms of believing this is true, not true, but just studying the Hebrew without having any need to make it match science or anything. What does it say?

So his statement goes like this, probably so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world class university who does not believe that the writers of Genesis 1 through 11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that a creation took place in a series of six days, which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience, b. the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition and chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story, and c. Noah's flood was understood to be worldwide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the days of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood being merely local Mesopotamian flood are not taken seriously by any such professors as far as I know. So this gives you, this is a guy who doesn't have any ax to grind in terms of it's true or matching it up with science or anything, because he doesn't believe it. But he just says if I study what the Hebrew says, and he says he's a world class Hebrew expert, he says that's what I would conclude.

That's what Genesis 1-11 is basically attempting to say. Now, as somebody you do know, in response to an email from John Doyle regarding the meaning of the word yom in Genesis chapter 1, Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum, whom I have met, and Randy and Jessica have also taken classes from him, he wrote this. Dear John Doyle, thank you for your email letter of January 26, 2006. While the Hebrew word for day, yom, could refer to a long period of time by itself, whenever it is used with a numeral, which is what we said before, it is only a 24-hour day. In the Genesis account, it is used with numerals, and furthermore, the Genesis account also mentions evening and morning, which reconfirms that it is only a 24-hour day.

Yours for the salvation of Israel, Arnold Fruchtenbaum. Fruchtenbaum was a fellow who was, in his earlier years, studying to be a rabbi, and as a result of studying things, decided that Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. Okay, I have this buzzing in my ears, and I don't think it's tinnitus.

Okay, we've covered something that people have obviously spent long periods of time on, and addressed it here quickly. What we're going to do is we're going to move on through this Genesis account. I'm going to address, not in great detail and not in technical detail, I'm going to address some of the various scientific issues that come up at this next time, and then we're going to continue to move chronologically through the Bible and answer some of the other questions that people have asked earlier on. If, as we proceed through the Bible, you think of other questions that we didn't come up with earlier, feel free to raise them. I'll do what I can to try to address the questions. Any questions, comments? Things of that sort, yes.

I just want to understand, when you have this series, so if you find a little dog or horse in period 10. You're talking about a fossil series, yes. And then in period 20, you've got a bigger horse or dog. Yes. And the whole basis is, I didn't find any big dogs back in 10. I only found the big ones in 20. So therefore, they didn't exist back then, and the big horse Yes, however, we have some creatures that, by the dating system, don't show up for sometimes tens of millions of years, and yet they exist now. So you go, hmm. So the absence of some fossil doesn't mean that the creature didn't exist. That's part one. The other thing is how do we arrive at a date?

How is something younger and something older? There are fossils that are reversed from the evolutionary sequence in the rock strata. What you don't find is, okay, here's in the same strata, Here's in the same strata, you know, at the bottom part, the smaller, and then as you go up, you know, larger. What happens is those are all spread out over different parts of the earth and sometimes different continents.

And so how they fit together time-wise is a real question mark. As a matter of fact, a lot of times what they'll do is they'll say, well, this looks like it evolved into that, therefore this must be younger and that must be older and those kinds of things. when in fact there's nothing other than the assumption to base that on.

Just that's it. It's like I mentioned, I talked to Dr. Melvin Cook. He's dead now, but anyway, he was a physical chemist, University of Utah, Nobel Honorable Mention, knew exactly what he was doing. He got this piece of wood out of rock that was supposed to be hundreds of millions of years old and they had a carbon-14 dated 4,000 years. What's young? How did you say it was young? How did you say it was old? The carbon-14 is based on a formula that makes a bunch of assumptions.

All of which are unverifiable. The fact that it was found in rock that was supposedly hundreds of millions of years old is again based on assumptions, all of which are unverifiable. So if you're going to be strictly scientific, you have to be humble and come to a place of saying, well there's a lot we don't know. But, you can also make a bunch of assumptions, and therefore look like you're being quite intelligent, all the while not being realistic or humble about the fact that there's no way I can verify all these numbers that I'm telling you, and that this is younger, and that this evolved into this, or this changed into that. There's an awful lot that we just don't know, in spite of our scientific sophistication.

Petroleum geologists find oil in rocks of all kinds of ages. We're having problems with that right now, right? And all over the globe. It is, as we see with our current crisis in the Gulf, it is in a great many cases under a huge amount of pressure and how do you stop it? And right now what's happening is that the pressure that the oil reservoir is under, we've created a hole and now it's coming out and we don't know how to make it stop. It's under such pressure. And there is a lot of it.

I've been involved in studies of this kind. The rocks, even though they seem like they're really solid, they all have a porosity. That is, there's a certain porous characteristic of the rocks. They also have a transmissivity. That is, the oil can transmit through the rock.

When you understand the porosity and the transmissivity of the rock, as well as fractures, And you look at the pressures that the oil is under, there is no oil reservoir on the planet that should exist past a million years. All the oil, you ever hear of oil shale? You know, stuff like that. Well, how did it get to be oil shale? The oil under pressure was squeezed into the rock. Well, when you take all the rock that we have and all the oil we have and extrapolate how fast the oil gets pressed into the rock, you don't have any oil after a million years. So what happened?

So going through those kind of calculations, our assumptions don't work. But we don't let that stop us. We say, well, I can't explain this, but I still keep driving. And so the science allows you to drive. The assumptions would tell you you can't. If I use the assumptions and extrapolate back, it says you don't have enough oil that's in liquid form to have it coming out of the ground and be able to drive your car. Was there rock there before or after the flood? Yeah, well again, those are all assumptions kind of things, aren't they? There was rock before the flood. There is rock after the flood.

And so you've got mixed answers. We're way past time and people are soon going to be pressing their noses against the glass. So, let's pray. Lord, we thank you for Just the things that you have revealed, we realize that we could ask questions that we'll probably never get answers to this side of heaven's gates. We're thankful for what you have revealed, knowing that you've revealed because you love us, you care about us, and you have told us the things that you want us to know, because we need to have this perspective, we need to have this understanding. And we thank you that you did, in fact, create all things. And we just entrust the rest of this day into your hands. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.