I felt something weighing heavily on my heart recently—a conviction—when discussing creation with a family member. Looking to Scripture to interpret Scripture, I’ve come to a conclusion about creation.
I’ve been following Answers in Gensis for several years. I love the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter (highly recommend visiting!). When I read and studied what I’m going to discuss in this post about creation, I hadn’t yet read AIG or any other studies at that time about this particular aspect. Now, however, after researching their articles, their conclusion (along with several others) met and confirmed my own in what I’ve studied.
I also love books like The Young Earth: The Real History of the Earth – Past, Present, and Future by John Morris and It Couldn’t Just Happen: Knowing the Truth About God’s Awesome Creation by Lawrence O. Richards (I haven’t read this one in its entirety). I have held a young-earth view for quite some time—well, since adulthood when I studied such, because, like everyone else in public school, I was taught millions-of-years evolution, and as a self-proclaimed “Christian” as a youth (false convert), I went towards a theistic evolution viewpoint, trying to combine both macroevolutionistic ideas with creation by God, or a Day-Age view (really, I don’t know what I believed at that time in my life; all I know is that I was a terribly confused child about the matter).
*Theistic Evolution believes in macroevolution (large, complex changes, like dinosaurs turning into birds) guided by the hand of God. Day-Age view believes in the creation events as told in Scripture, but instead of six literal days, creation is represented by unknown, fixed periods of time—people who believe this often use 2 Peter 3:8 to justify their belief, yet, they are taking this verse and its meaning out of context. “God is not attempting to redefine our words in 2 Peter 3:8. Peter does not say that one day is a thousand years; he says that one day is like a thousand years. In other words, he is using figurative language to make his point. The point is not that we should interpret the word day as “a thousand years” everywhere we find it in Scripture; rather, the point is that the passing of time has no bearing on God’s faithfulness to His promises. He is ‘the same yesterday and today and forever’ (Hebrews 13:8)” (Got Questions).
In the creation account of Genesis 1, the first compelling evidence (something I DID learn from my studies with The Young Earth and AIG) is the fact that the Hebrew word for day is YOM, meaning a 24-hour day. Not only this, but God took the care to add “and there was evening and there was morning,” which further drives home the idea of a literal day. But even this is questioned by “scholars” going into literal vs. metaphorical interpretation. So, I looked to other Scripture, and I thought of some things.
First, when we read Genesis 1 and other passages like Psalm 148, we see that God simply spoke what He did into creation. In Psalm 148:5, we see “he commanded and they were created” (Also Psalm 33:9). Timing aside for now, God merely spoke, and He created—His omnipotence is shown in His ability to create with one word. Even one breath from God gives life (Genesis 2:7). No other being, no other creation, no other thing has this omnipotence. One critical aspect of theology to understand—God is omnipotent. In God’s omnipotence, His power wouldn’t have needed millions of years to speak, to take place, and to develop. To deny that He spoke and the things listed in Genesis were created in that instance, would be to deny His omnipotence.
God could have even simply spoken, and everything listed in Gensis 1 would have been created instantaneously and simultaneously, yet, that’s not what we see in Scripture. Why?
To look for the answer to this question, I looked at Exodus 20:8-11 and 31:12-18.
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
And the LORD said to Moses, “You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the LORD, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.’” And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.
In these passages, not only is the Sabbath highlighted, but the design of time itself, days and nights making up the week.
By creating everything in existence in a literal week, God established the structure of time itself (the week). As I mentioned, He could have spoken all into existence instantly and simultaneously, in a single second (or less), but He purposefully chose to do this day-by-day in order to establish the week and highlight the Sabbath of that week.
God is a God of order and purpose.
Everything He does and has done is with specific purpose, and the purpose of creation in literal six days was to establish the week and the Sabbath for the Israelites—and us today—to follow.
In this structure of time,
“God did not merely ‘rest’ on the seventh day; He ‘stopped creating.’ It was a purposeful stop. Everything He desired to create had been made. He looked at His creation, declared it ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31), and ceased from His activity. In the Jewish tradition, the concept of shabat has been carried over as the ‘Sabbath.’ The Law of Moses taught there was to be no work at all on the seventh day (Saturday). Because God ceased from work that day, the Israelites were to cease from their work on the Sabbath. Thus, the days of creation are the basis of our universal observance of a seven-day week” (Got Questions).
It’s also important to note the number seven in Scripture is used frequently, correlating with completion and perfection. It was used in timing on more than one occasion. There are seven days in our week. Seven was used in the command of the Sabbath year or sabbatical year under the Old Covenant (Exodus 23:10-11/ Leviticus 25:1-7) and the Year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25:8-22—a Sabbath/sabbatical year after seven cycles of seven years [49 years]). Sacrificial animals had to be at least seven days of age, being given up on the eighth day (Exodus 22:30). Joshua had to march around Jericho for seven days—six days once, and the seventh day seven times (Joshua 6:4). The number seven “signifies a completion of some kind: a divine mandate is fulfilled” (Got Questions).
Creation has set the standard for all time, even today, as we still observe the set week. And like those under the Old Covenant who observed six days of work and one of rest in holiness to the LORD (Exodus 31:15/Genesis 2:3) and for sacred assembly (Leviticus 23:3)—the Sabbath, we also still observe six days of work and one day as the Lord’s Day (now, under the New Covenant, Sunday, to worship the risen Savior on the day of His resurrection). Even many secularists hold Sunday as a break from work.
This, to my discernment, like others have so discerned, is God’s purpose for the timing of creation. Again, God is a God of order and purpose. He doesn’t do anything willy-nilly, and we would be wise to understand His omnipotence and order in the six-literal-day creation and Sabbath, making the model week.
References
Got Questions. January 4, 2022. Why did God rest on the seventh day of creation (Genesis 2:2)? Retrieved August 4, 2023, from https://www.gotquestions.org/God-rest-seventh-day.html
Got Questions. January 4, 2022. What is the biblical significance of the number seven/7? Retrieved August 4, 2023, from https://www.gotquestions.org/number-7-seven.html
Got Questions. September 19, 2022. What does 2 Peter 3:8 mean when it says a thousand years are a day? Retrieved August 7, 2023, from https://www.gotquestions.org/2-Peter-3-8-thousand-years-day.html