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.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I'll just comment that God is the greatest scientist, being the author of the universe and of all scientific and moral principals. There is not the slightest disconnect, except perhaps as pertains to our misperceptions and inability to understand. But the attainment of knowledge (the desire to do so being God-given) is something to encouraged so long as it does not displace our seeking for God's Will.
This is why I, an non-Catholic, embrace the approach of Catholic theologians to scientific inquire.
Fortunately, there is absolutely no connection between our assumptions as to the metaphoric or literal nature of Genesis and Salvation by Grace alone. There ain't a multiple-choice entrace exam into Heaven. :-)
Merry Christmas, friend!
I very much respect and appreciate your scholarship, my friend, and the comprehensiveness and logic of your response. Creation vs Evolution is obviously a subject that you feel very strongly about, and one that you have clearly thought thru and studied well.
For about 25 years I've believed strongly in what is now being called "Intelligent Design" -- tho' back then it wasn't called that. I could not reconcile what I could see and feel and touch and observe with what I knew to be true: the Bible.
I like to explain it this way: Evolution (or "Intelligent Design") tells us *how* things happened. The Bible tells us *why*. The questions are not mutually-exclusive. Of the two questions, the "why" one is the most important.
Being able to reconcile Evolution and Creation was and is absolutely pivotal to me being able to have Faith. Otherwise, I'd be a godless Heathen with a scientific belief but no hope of redemption. If, by doing so, I sin: well, God will forgive me that Vanity if I ask Him to.
But it allows me to look thru my 8" Newtonian telescope and marvel at the wonders of His creation -- as demonstrated by the Big Bang. And it allows me to look thru my microscope at all the creepy-crawlies and know that He evolved them.
And it allows me to visit the zoo, see the chimpanzees and know for a fact that I am visiting our ancient cousins, several times removed.
And finally, it allows me to, on my knees, every day praise and bless His name, for being so clever as to make such a wonderful Creation, and to humbly seek His forgiveness for my sins. And if one of those sins is to have misunderstood his Creation, well, one day on the Other Side, I trust He'll take some time out of his busy day to explain it to me properly. I've done my best, as a mortal, to try to understand it.
Merry Christmas, my FRiend!
And God Bless you in 2006
"DieHard the Hunter"