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FROM THE PASTOR'S STUDY

Topic: Science

A Critique of the Day-Age Theory

by Darrel Cline
(darrelcline biblical-thinking.org)

A Response to Hugh Ross' "Genesis One: A Scientific Perspective"

A Note to the Reader: As you read this critique, keep this question in the fore of your thinking: When it comes to deciding who and what to believe, which is more likely to be more trustworthy: the opinions of omniscience-deficient, appearance-bound men; or the language-based declarations of an omniscient God Who consistently cautions men to be wary of appearances?


The title gives a hint of rather significant problems to come...Genesis One: A Hindu Perspective; ...A Mormon Perspective; ...A Legal Perspective; ...A Universalist Perspective; ...etc. In precise technical terms for accuracy's sake, there can only be one "perspective" of Genesis One: a Literary Perspective. What I mean is this: the idea that man can take the perspective he has developed (by being immersed for XX years in a certain mindset) to the Bible and come away with Truth is fundamentally flawed. Man's perspectives have traditionally ignored the assumptions of revelation, primary of which is the assumption that man cannot know certain facts without God's telling him those things. To take any tenaciously held perspective to the Bible is to guarantee that one will come away with that perspective reinforced, and the text of the Bible will have suffered whatever distortions were necessary for that reinforcement (see E.D. Hirsch's Validity in Interpretation for more about this). Mankind's inability to be objective is serious, and the result is the plethora of religious propaganda that we have in our world today. The only way perspectives can be effectively addressed by the Bible is if the reader is willing to take a literary perspective to the Bible and ask the rather simple question: What meaning do the language and literary forms of a literary revelation establish?

Second, it is a fundamental scientific presupposition that true science is bounded by two major factors: observability and reproducibility. To say that there is a scientific perspective of Genesis One is to deny both of these fundamental scientific parameters. What went on there was not observable and is not reproducible.

Thus, the title indicates an ignorance of, a blindness to, or a rejection of the basics of the assumptions of revelation and the limitations of science. This leads the author to impose his particular brand of "science" upon the words of the text and, consequently, to fail to understand the meaning of that text.

Christians are often particularly guilty of two things: 1) their desire to make the message of the Bible palatable to intellectually arrogant human beings (and in the process to make themselves to appear to be intellectually capable); and 2) their naive approach to the Bible as a text that can be cut up and reassembled to fit the current theories of whatever theorists have their admiration. Christians, however, have one responsibility: to determine the meaning of the text of the Bible by honest literary evaluation BEFORE they decide if it is true. Then, having determined the meaning of the words in their linguistic, historical, and contextual setting, they are to be honest with how that meaning addresses their mindset.


First, it is impossible to legitimately interpret Genesis One in terms of Ross' day-age theory for the following reasons...

1) He frankly admits (p. 11) that "In the time of Moses people were familiar with only one such day" -- a day determined by the rotation of the earth -- but he then goes on to violate that meaning of "day" by saying that God's meaning was associated with the passage of several hundred million years because He was thinking in terms of the rotation of a spiral galaxy. For a man who makes his argument rest upon the claim that God is not a deceiver who would mislead people by His statements (p. 18), this is an astounding breakdown of logic.

How so?

In this way: If God knew that Moses had only one concept of the meaning of "day", and He used that word to Moses in a way that was completely foreign to Moses, He would be guilty of misleading Moses and all who read his writings.

There is no escape from this charge.

If I use a word in my conversation with you that I KNOW I have a different definition for than you will understand, I cannot be said to be honestly trying to communicate truth to you. Instead, I have deliberately misled you. For someone who objects strenuously to deliberate divine deception, this is an unacceptable interpretation. God cannot use words in ways that He knows are foreign to us if He honestly wants to communicate to us. He is bound by our ignorance to use words that we can grasp.

For example, suppose I know that you are a car buff and that you have always wanted to ride in a classic Corvette, and I know that you will think in those terms at the mention of a Corvette. If I tell you that I have a classic Corvette in my garage and that you are free to enjoy it, and then I take you to my garage and hand you a plastic model classic Corvette, you will legitimately feel chagrin with me because I deceived you. To use a word in someone's hearing that you know will be misunderstood is to deceive.

2) The meaning of "day" according to Ross is a completed cycle of a rotation of some heavenly body (in his case, a spiral galaxy--p. 11). However, this is completely off base. The Bible defines "day" in terms of two particulars. In Genesis 1:5 God calls the lighted portion of a darkness/light cycle "day"; then in the same verse, He said "and was evening and was morning, day one". This means that the primary definition of "day" is the lighted portion of a cycle of darkness/light, and that, by synecdoche of the part (a figure of speech in which a part of a whole is used to refer to the whole), it came to also refer to the entire darkness/light cycle. This definition, given by God, was clear and required no sophisticated science to be understood. All one had to have experienced for understanding was the reality of darkness followed by light. The hearers didn't have to know "how" the cycle was generated to understand God, nor did God have to explain which mechanism was being used in order to communicate truthfully. They could have mistakenly understood from observation (their particular brand of "science") that the sun traveled around the earth and that it was that mechanism that created the cycle of darkness/light. They would have been wrong in their understanding of the "mechanism" of "day", based upon their "science", but God would have not deceived them by His use of the word because He was not speaking of the mechanism, but of the reality.

This is where Ross completely fails to understand the meaning of "day". It is NOT the mechanism of a completed cycle (the "rotation of some heavenly body"); rather, it is either the lighted portion of a darkness/light cycle, or the entire cycle. This substitution by Ross of the mechanism for the resultant reality is what corrupts his interpretation. He gives the word "day" a meaning that God did not intend at all, and a meaning that God's audience could not possibly have understood, and did not, for hundreds of years of human history. And, because Ross errs in defining what a "day" is, his superimposition of his definition of a completed revolution of a spiral galaxy as a "day" creates a false understanding of God's Word. It is not -- unless he can show that the revolution of a spiral galaxy involves a period of darkness for the galaxy followed by a period of light. To repeat, God's definition of a "day" is not the rotation period of a heavenly body; it is either a completed cycle of darkness followed by light, or the lighted portion of such a cycle.

3) Ross claims that the word yowm refers to four possible time periods (p. 17): the hours from sunrise to sunset; the hours from sunset to sunset; a segment of time without any reference to solar days; and an age or epoch. This is completely erroneous. It involves a "time" fixation that isn't supported by the text. Legitimate interpretation sees that a "day" has nothing directly to do with "time", but, instead, has everything to do with "light" or a cycle of "darkness/light". If Ross had allowed the text to address him, rather than imposing his foreign "scientific" concept upon the text, he would have never made the claim that the "day of the Lord" was "a time period...during which certain comprehensive purposes of God are to be carried out" (p. 11). The "day" of the Lord is called that precisely because it is a metaphoric use of a "day" in that it is made up of a cycle of darkness (a metaphor for horrendous judgment by God upon the earth) that is followed by light (a metaphor for extraordinary blessing upon the earth by the presence of the Lord on the earth). It is not called a "day" because it is a "rotation" of some kind. And, it has nothing primarily to do with "time". Thus, Ross' methods of determining meaning are fundamentally flawed by his imposition of his current "science" upon the Bible and his wish to impose long periods of time upon the concept of "day". The necessity is this: we must go to Genesis (divine revelation) to find out what it teaches about the meaning of "day"; we cannot take our own definitions with us when we go to Genesis (divine revelation). When we get there we cannot impose our culturally and intellectually conditioned definitions upon God but must let Him impose His meaning upon us.

4) Ross frankly claims that the perspective of Genesis One is from the surface of the waters--i.e. from an observer who is on the surface of the ocean (p. 4). He makes this claim because he thinks it opens the door for his interpretation of days as long ages. But, here again, he errs. If we, for the sake of argument, allow his claim of an ocean-surface observer's perspective, the idea of days as ages is completely destroyed.

How so?

By the fact that the description begins with "darkness" in the observation of the ocean-level observer (1:2) and is followed by God's command for "light" (1:3) and that "creation event", as a cycle of darkness followed by light, is called a "day" and in that "day" God separated light from darkness -- i.e. he localized the light so that it was visible to the ocean-level observer for a while and then ceased to be visible as darkness descended to begin the second cycle of darkness/light. Now, by Ross' flawed method of thinking about days as time frames, we have a localized light and a rotating planet. Unless he can show that the rotational speed of the planet was one rotation per several hundred million years, the ocean-level observer is going to experience cycles of darkness/light on a regular basis as the planet rotates in the presence of localized light. Each of these cycles will be "days" and the ocean level observer can count them as they come and go...day one...day two...day three...etc. The temporal duration of these cycles is going to be governed by the rotational speed of the planet as the mechanism of a day, but not its definition. Thus, by his own claim of an on-the-planet observer, Ross defeats his day-age theory conclusively. The observer can hardly call arbitrarily collected units of hundreds of millions of darkness/light cycles "day one"..."day two"..."day three"...

What Ross has done (I hope without intent) is to do a serious bit of damage to the Christian community by means of two fatal flaws. First, he has corrupted the clear meaning of the text of the Word of God and thereby undercut Christians' confidence that the Bible can be understood apart from a heavy investment in Ross' branch of "science" (thus making them dependent upon scientists for their explanations of the Bible). Second, he has exalted the familiar human foible of forcing human understanding, derived from omniscience-deficient human "scientism", upon the text of God's Word (and, in the process, destroyed the meaning of God's Word) so that he has established, as acceptable, a pattern for interpreting the Bible that is utterly fallacious. The last thing man needs is an example of a man forcing his omniscience-deficient understanding of God's creation upon God's omniscience-based statements about His creation.


Second, Ross claims that his day-age theory is the only way God can be truthful and not be guilty of deception. This, also, is patently false for the following reasons.

Ross claims that "one may assume that while God created Adam and Eve with fully mature bodies, He did not put into them 20 or 30 years' worth of deterioration" (p. 18). His reason for this claim is that it would have been deceptive of God to create with an "appearance" of age. His claim is that "any object of His creation subjected to theoretically valid and correctly interpreted scientific analysis must reveal its true age." This is patent nonsense.

In the first place, there is a fundamental flaw in Ross' reasoning about Adam and Eve and the appearance of their age. The appearance of age is fundamental to any miraculous creative act. The wine Jesus created at the wedding feast appeared to the headwaiter, on the basis of all of his prior "scientific" observation, to be extremely superior wine that could not possibly have been just minutes old. The lame man who was leaping and running around minutes after Peter had imparted healing to him in the name of Jesus appeared to all the scientists there to have been leaping and running around for a long time. To their scientific analysis was attached the observation that it takes human creatures several months to learn how to walk and to leap and to run. The reality of the appearances was quite contrary to their assumptions and they would have been deceived if they had not seen it all from the beginning.

The problem here is that appearances depend upon methods of observation. Methods of observation are dependent upon the progressive development of various techniques of observation. Associated with this issue of techniques is the issue of whether to accept established testimony. When Jesus healed the blind man, the Pharisees wished to debunk it as a fraudulent charade, but everywhere they turned they found, from testimony, that the man had been blind from his birth and all the witnesses confirmed this. Thus, their scientific observation, that men blind from birth do not suddenly see because some healer anoints their eyes with mud, had to be adjusted to accept the testimony of established witnesses. They had to adjust their "scientific observations" to the testimony in order to be correct. In the same way, the only people who would be deceived by late twentieth century methods of determining the age of the earth, in the face of the divine proclamation of a miraculous six-day creation (established testimony) would be those who patently reject that divine testimony. God owes nothing to those who refuse to accept His Word. If men want to be deceived by rejecting God's Word and substituting their own methods of observation in its place, how can they accuse Him of deception?

If I build a replica of a three hundred year old table, and I build it with the exact appearance of the three hundred year old original, I am not guilty of deception unless I sell it to someone as a three hundred year old table. If I tell them plainly that I just finished building it and it is only days old, how can I be accused of deception? By the same token, if God tells Adam, 20 minutes after he was created, that He did all that Adam sees in the last five days, and Adam faithfully passes that information on to his offspring and they pass it on to theirs and Moses finally writes it into a record that gets preserved until the late 20th century, how can anyone claim that God has deceived anyone simply because He creates?

If you want to accuse God of deception in creation, try having Him tell us that He did it all in six darkness/light-cycle-days and means by that the six rotation periods of a spiral galaxy knowing full well that we will understand Him to mean six earthly cycles of darkness and light! That is deception.

Then, also, Ross says that Adam and Eve would have only appeared to have existed for moments if there was not a 20-30 year deterioration involved. The problem here is that Adam and Eve could have lived in the Garden for a hundred years without any deterioration if they had lived without sin. Then, after sin introduced deterioration, if they lived for another 30 years and then were evaluated by Ross and his research assistants, and they concluded that their science established that Adam had only lived for 30 years, Ross would be wrong by 100 years. He could claim God deceived him but it would have been sin that deceived him. And the rejection of divine testimony is sin and it does deceive. It has Ross believing in an 18 billion year old universe because he refuses to accept two things: uncomplicated divine testimony and the unavoidable nature of the appearances of age in situations of miraculous creation.

Besides, no one will be deceived by appearances if he simply sits down and thinks for about five minutes about the nature of miraculous creation. He will only be deceived if he is so intent on exalting human science over divine revelation that he refuses to accept plain words.

There is a bigger problem here. For centuries, men, on the basis of their omniscience-deficient science, believed that the sun revolved around the earth. This belief was reinforced by "appearances" every day of their lives. God created them upon the planet in such a way that the appearances were deceptive. God did not intend deception, but the nature of creation set up the possibility. For that cause, God warned men innumerable times in recorded words to pay less attention to appearances than to what He had to say. God told men that appearances are often misleading and for that reason that they needed to be extremely careful to pay attention to Him when He said something. But, men have rejected His cautions and exhortations for most of the history of man and have buried themselves in delusions because they insist upon going by appearances in direct disobedience to God. Current "scientific" thought exalts human perception of appearances and demands that God not "deceive" them by what they think they have discovered. God, on the other hand, being infinite and knowing the extreme limitations of man in his "science", continues to tell men to reject appearances over revelation and systematically, over the centuries, allows man's growth in knowledge to debunk former "scientifically established claims". The very fact that yesterday's "good" science is today's "laugh" ought to give men a sense of humility and extreme caution in their approach to their world, but it, so far, has not.


Finally, Ross' position is fundamentally scientific deism. He argues that God could have only created by the big bang method over 18 billion years if He did not want to deceive late 20th century, revelationally and hermeneutically challenged, scientists. But, his explanation of God's methods are not miraculous. Ross' position boils down to a claim that God simply set up phenomenal processes that guided the development of the creation to its current state. He claims it would have been "deceptive" of Him to have done it any other way. But this is nothing more than scientific deism. God was only necessary at the beginning to set the parameters of the processes in place and kick off the big bang.


More observations for those not yet bored...

The claim on page 2 that "evidence from the new science of observational cosmology has shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the universe originated from a primeval explosion, or "big bang," beginning about 18 billion years ago" is linguistically self-contradictory and ignores the realities of creation.

How so?

First, if this is "new science" (p. 2) and it finally reveals the true meaning of God's Word, that means that no one before the 20th century had access to its "truths". The implication here is that only the "new scientists" have true understanding.

Second, there is no such thing in language as "observational cosmology" (p. 2). By definition, cosmology is "a branch of astronomy that deals with the origin, structure, and space-time relationships of the universe" (Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary). There can be observational study of the PRESENT structure and PRESENT space-time relationships of the universe, but it is impossible to have observational study of origins. Thus, it is a flawed manipulation of language to speak in terms of scientific (observational/reproducible) observation of origins.

Third, the quote of Psalm 90:2-6 to validate the "interpretation" of the first statement of the Bible that the creation was "a very long time ago" (approximately 18 billion years) is patently false because that text says absolutely nothing about when God did His creating; it only says that HE is everlasting. And the quote of Isaiah 46:10 to support this false interpretation is also interesting because the verse says that God has TOLD us the end from the beginning...the implication being that God began telling men the end from the beginning, a claim that the new scientist patently denies since he claims that God didn't tell men anything until 18 billion years, minus a few thousand, after the beginning. The problem with going to the Bible to validate your assumptions is that you often misread what is there in favor of attempting to give biblical support for a flawed theory.

The dismissal of the plain language of the Genesis record with the claim that it could only give selective and brief sequences (pages 3-4) is a flawed dismissal. If the statements "there was evening and morning, day one...day two...day three...day four" are allowed to stand in ANY linguistic sense, the 18 billion year old creation with a clear "revelational statement" of days consisting of evenings and mornings constitutes a REAL deception by God. The argument that God is deceptive if He creates a universe with the appearance of 18 billion years of age while it is only a few thousand years of age ignores the fact that God IS deceptive if He creates a universe that is 18 billion years old and then tells us in clear language that He did it in six days consisting of evenings and mornings. The problem with the "scientific" approach to Genesis One is that it destroys the "linguistic/literary" approach and gives NO good reason for God to have said "there was evening and morning, day one...two...three...etc." Clearly, it is deceptive to say God created in six days if in fact He did it in 18 billion years because this is the record of what God has SAID. What He has DONE "may" be deceptive if what He has DONE contradicts man's observations, but what He has SAID "is" deceptive if what He has DONE is in contradiction to what He has SAID.

The argument on page 4 that the viewpoint of the record of Genesis is from the earth's surface as that of "an observer on the face of the ocean" is a neat bit of fanciful preparation for the reader to be drawn into the rest of the argument as it is developed in pages 6-7. It enables Ross to dismiss the clear linguistic meaning of evening/morning by saying that from the perspective of the surface of the ocean evenings and mornings would not be visible for several billion years while the atmosphere was being changed from opaque to translucent. But his argument is self-destructive. His argument is that the "observer" is on the ocean and cannot see the light because what is above him is opaque, thus he cannot describe evening and morning until the light can get through the cloud cover. However, this "observer", as soon as he CAN see the light, begins to describe days in terms of evenings and mornings which he can now "see" (this is what Ross says on page 7). This "ocean level observer" is now really confused. He thought that there was no light, but what was true was that the light was there, he just couldn't see it. God didn't really say "let there be light (an act of creation)"; what He really said was "let the opaque become translucent so the light can show through" (an act of governance over a multi-billion year old universe). Then, once the light was able to get through, the ocean-level observer noted that it got dark and then, a few billion years later, it got light again, so he began to mark time as days -- evenings and mornings. But, this requires that the rotation of the earth was so slow that it took several billion years for the darkness to pass and the light to dawn again. Either the ocean-level observer was a participant in a super-slow rotational earth, or his language skills became highly misleading.

What Ross calls a miracle is not a miracle. A miracle, by definition, is a violation of the normal "laws" of observational/reproducible science. What Ross is describing is simply the processes of observational/reproducible science at work. It would have been a creation-miracle for God to create the universe by simple command and then produce light in one evening/morning cycle. But Ross's god doesn't do miracles beyond the original bang. After that, everything develops according to Ross's rules. The production of a human being by the process of the union of egg and sperm and the consequent cellular multiplication by division over nine months is not considered a miracle except by the father and mother at the birth of their first child. Everyone else knows that it is simply the laws at work. Ross's 18 billion year old universe is not a miracle either; it is simply old deism transfigured into modern scientific jargon. God explodes the stuff and then lets the laws of his universe develop everything. What Ross calls "miracle" is not miraculous; it is simply the phenomenal precision of the laws at work.

By his labors, Ross has eliminated everything from Genesis 1:2 onward. He needs God to "create in the beginning", but after that all he needs is time and a rather phenomenal precision of the immutable processes of the "new science". The language of Genesis One is reduced by this "scientific perspective" to non-meaning. God didn't say "let there be light", He said "let the processes work for several billion years so that that which is now opaque can become translucent." Then, He didn't say "there was evening and morning, day one", His ocean-level observer said "there was evening and morning, day one, but the days here are really looooooong." Then, in the creation of the sun, moon, and stars, God didn't really say "let there be lights" and make the sun, moon, and stars, He really just allowed the translucent to become transparent by long term natural processes so that those billion year old lights could be seen. Remarkable what new science can do to old language!

Ross really reveals his bias on page 7 with his statement "this statement comes as close as any 15th century B.C. Hebrew perhaps could come to describing the making of the water cycle." So now the ocean-level observer is a linguistically challenged, scientifically challenged, 15th century B.C. Hebrew dummy who didn't have the advantage of the "new science" and only had deceptive revelation about creation days to go on. This kind of late 20th century arrogance based on the "new science" is so devastating that it occludes the possibility of the promoter to even approach the Bible as a relevant, linguistic, true revelation from God. He takes what he likes, and adjusts everything else to his "science". There is enormous heresy here and the spirit of heresy that drives this is not of the God of the Bible.

Ross continues to corrupt linguistic meaning with his dismissal of the length of the Genesis day as constituting a period defined by a literal evening and morning. He dismisses the understanding of the language ("In the time of Moses people were familiar with only one such day." But, God had some 10 to the 26th power spinning bodies in the universe...p. 11). In other words, though the readers of the biblical language-based revelation would have automatically assumed a six twenty-four hour day creation because they were familiar with only one such day, it was a fault for them to assume that God meant six literal days because they were ignorant of things that only late 20th century "new science" practitioners would discover! This makes language-based revelation meaningless. If God couldn't talk in terms that His readers would legitimately understand, revelation is meaningless. If the meaning of what God says is "adjustable" by those who live thousands of years after His saying because of their infatuation with their own brand of logic and intelligence, then revelation is meaningless. By what rules will anyone know anything that God means if what He says is not in harmony with the language they use? The problem with the "new science" is that in another 500 years, it will be both "old science" and, if history runs as it has for centuries now, it will also be "discredited science" based upon the discoveries of the latest "new scientists".

The issue here is this: do we interpret the language of the Bible by known linguistic reality, or do we superimpose our current infatuation upon the language of the Bible and make its words adjust to our latest fad?


The appendix is likewise filled with erroneous logic. The notion of a biblical chronolog as having its "significance" in showing "the orderly progression of God's unfolding plan and to reveal His sovereign control" being contradicted by rendering sophisticated measuring techniques incapable of discerning the age of events and, thus, destroying one of the purposes of the chronolog is a flawed notion.

The true purpose of a biblical chronolog is to describe the progress of time as it actually developed. For anyone to take Genesis 5 and argue that it does not give a chronology from the creation of Adam to the Flood is to deny the point of language. For what purpose are we told that Adam lived 130 years prior to the birth of Seth, and that Seth lived 105 years prior to the birth of Enosh, and that Enosh lived ... etc.?

Therefore, to argue, in the face of clear declaration by God that He did what He did in six days with evenings and mornings marking them off, that scientists cannot tell what happened, and when, and that means that God would not have done it that way, is to simply set up a notion of the purpose of chronologs that fits what one wants to say and then deny the biblical statements because they don't fit the notion that was arbitrarily set up. The plain fact is that nothing of any useful scientific service to man is compromised by a literal six day creation some 6000 years ago. Nothing. One can be a literal six 24-hour-day believer and not compromise true science in any significant way, but one cannot be a long-day believer without compromising the language of the Bible in multiple ways. So, one can be a "scientific" believer and a compromiser of biblical linguistic reality, or one can be a biblical linguistic believer and not compromise true science in any way, but one cannot be both. "New science" distortion of "old language" corrupts revelation beyond recovery.

Second, the notion that a long time period is clearly acceptable within the definitions of yowm, 'ereb, and boqer is another delusion. Not even in English does the word "day", when used in conjunction with "morning" and "evening", ever mean eons except when metaphor is being used and not literal meaning. The question, then, is this: is there ANY linguistic evidence in Genesis One that what is being discussed is metaphor? That what is recorded there is developed into metaphor by later biblical writers is beyond dispute, but to say that what is recorded there is metaphor without any linguistic basis is flawed reasoning. This is nothing more than forcing "science" upon the text and then finding that "science" in the text.

Third, the appeal to unusual syntax is unsubstantiated. That the wording "there was evening and there was morning -- day one" might sound a little unusual to a speaker of English does not mean that it is unusual to Mosaic Hebrew. The admission that it does not constitute a proof is true, but the claim that it at least suggests an indefinite period of time is groundless.

The problem here for Ross seems to be his determination to turn "evening" into "ending" and "morning" into "beginning" (see pps. 11 and 16-17). By that process we have God saying "and was ending and was beginning, day x". That certainly is unusual, but it isn't the syntax that causes it; it is Ross' imposition of translational possiblities that do not fit the context that causes it. What I mean is this: "evening" in the context is already linked to the period of darkness in the cycle of a day, and "morning" in the context is already linked to the period of light in the cycle of a day. So, even though it might be legitimately argued that other contexts impart a meaning of "beginning" and "ending", this context is clearly violated if that is done here. The fact that God defined a day as being from evening to evening in Leviticus 23:32, by the hand of Moses, who also wrote Genesis One, indicates that the most natural thing in the world would be to say "and was evening and was morning, day x".

The end of the matter is this: God said, to people who knew only one kind of darkness/light cycle, that He created the universe in six darkness/light cycles (Exodus 20:11 and 31:17). If He didn't mean what He knew they would understand Him to mean because of their language skills, He clearly deluded them and left all of us without any way to determine His meaning. If it took six millennia and a Hubble telescope for man to finally discover His meaning in Genesis one, how many more millennia will have to go by before we really understand what He meant by the Gospel?


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This is article #233.
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