> Disagree. The scriptures are unabashedly opposed to anything but a 6 day creation.
I understand your point but respectfully differ. The Scriptures allow for a six-epoch Creation (ie not literal days, but figurative stretches of time).
Mate, I have agonized over the Genesis record for years now, trying to reconcile what I believe to be true to what the evidence before my own eyes suggests. The missing element in the Genesis record is time -- lots of it. Lots and lots of it.
There is No Way in Texas that New Zealand is only six thousand years old. No Way.
For example, drive from Auckland to Rotorua. Just before you get there, you will go thru an other-worldly place. A place of violent volcanic activity. Columns of basalt poke out of the ground heavenward: these are volcanic plugs. The rest of the volcano has eroded away over a timreframe of many thousands, probably millions of years: you can see their remains. You can count the sedimentary lines, over millions of years, many, many thousands of volcanic eruptions.
These could not have happened overnight, or even over the period of recorded History. It's just impossible.
It is then that it hits, right between the eyes and undeniably (or at least it did for me): this earth is an ancient place, much older than six thousand literal years.
I know I'll be unlikely to change your viewpoint, and I certainly do not wish to upset your Faith. I'm merely explaining the world as I see it...
Your concern for the world round about you, as you see it with your own eyes, is very clear from your post. I would challenge you to look to the Scriptures with your questions and not to the world as you see it. What you see with your eyes and feel in your heart will decieve you from reality in this fallen world. (Jeremiah 17:9, Proverbs 14:12). God put Job in his place asserting his power, mysterious dominion and superiority of being.
God's ways are not your ways and you should know the mind bending feats he can accomplish. Your love for your family, The pounding you felt in your chest at your first love, Christ's miracles, the intracacy of the human eye. These are all items you most likely, are personally acquainted with and can't explain. So then I ask why cannot God, The King of Kings, maker of your feelings, who hung the stars above you, make an intricate world in the space of six days? He is not a man. He's not like anything you or I can fully comprehend. We must not make the mistake of believing we have to prove truths with our own understanding when we are finite beings who could not possibly have these answers in the first place (Prov. 3:5)
Christ stated all things are possible with God. He stated in Matthew that putting a camel through the eye of a needle is impossible for man, but God can do just that. God can and did make this world round about us in the space of six days and all very good. Having said that, let's look to the Scriptures, and I'm assuming you do care about them or you wouldn't be here posting.
Exodus 20:11 God’s creation week is said to have involved "six days" (yammim), plural. In the 608 instances of the plural "days" in the Old Testament, we never find any other meaning than normal days. Ages are never expressed as yammim.
In Exodus 20:9-11 (the Fourth Commandment) God specifically patterns man’s work week after his own original creational work week. Man’s work week is expressly tied to God’s: "for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth" (Ex. 20:11). Exodus 20:11: "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 31:15-17: "Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD. . . . It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed."
There are a total of 119 cases in Moses’ writings where the Hebrew word yom is written in conjunction with a numerical adjective (first, second, third, fourth, etc.), in all of those cases it never means anything other than a literal day. It is also true of the 357 instances outside the Pentateuch.
Moses carefully qualifies each of the six creative days with the phraseology: "evening and morning." The qualification is a deliberate defining of the concept of day. Outside of Genesis 1 the words "evening" and "morning" occur together in thirty-seven verses. It never speaks of anything but a normal day in all of these instances.
This denial of six-day creation is a capitulation to the most prevalent unbelieving opposition to the Scriptures and Christianity in our day, a secular, humanistic-based science that arbitrarily excludes any possibility of six day creation by it's presuppositions. It then proceeds from a chance oriented universe by means of uniformitarian science because of those very same presuppositions.
We can get into the Science of this world, if you would like. I did not touch on that here because our conversation was about the biblical concept of the days of creation in Genesis. Having said that, I wholeheartedly believe that the evolutionist has a lot of explaining to do. I believe it is scientifically a joke. The evolutionary concept of creation cannot be reconciled the biblical account of creation. Either men are deceived or God is a liar. Can't be both.