The Timetable of Creation

There is no doubt among most Christians that God created the world. Many simply hold to this belief out of their faith in God. Others have investigated the scientific evidence and are convinced that creation is the only possible method for such an intricate design to have come about. While they will not go so far as to admit that God had anything to do with it, the science community is beginning to agree that there does appear to be an intelligent design to the universe: meaning that things did not just happen by chance.

The big bang theory, once the darling of the science community, is now believed to require even more faith than the creation story of Genesis. In the February 4, 1996, Parade magazine, Marilyn vos Savant wrote, “I think that if it had been a religion that first maintained the notion that all matter in the entire universe had once been contained in an area smaller than the point of a pin, scientists probably would have laughed at the idea.” She concluded that the Big Bang Theory is accepted on faith by many scientists who have yet been able to explain how this matter originally came into being.

Some Christians who believe in creation also believe that God did so through the means of evolution. These individuals point to carbon dating by science that shows the world to be older than the 5000 or so years that the Bible seems to suggest. How can Christians explain this scientific evidence and still hold to their faith in creation? There are two possible answers to this debate: the definition of “yom” and the apparent age theory.

Some theologians point out that the Bible does not exactly explain what God meant by a “day” in the Genesis account of creation. The Hebrew word for day (yom) used in Genesis is the same word used throughout the Old Testament, however it is unclear if “yom” indicated a solar day of a 24-hour period. The sun had not been created until the fourth day of creation (Genesis 1:14-19) so a solar day was not even known during the first three days of creation, yet God did refer to a morning and evening period prior to this. The Bible indicates in several scriptures that the word “yom” has no specific measure of time to God (Psalms 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8 and Zechariah 12-14), yet Exodus 20:11 appears to refer to creation as six literal 24-hour periods.

While the Bible was written for all people, it was written by God’s chosen people, the Hebrew nation of Israel. God understood that as legalistic as the Hebrew culture was, they accepted the term “yom” as a non-specific time period. God told His people that Jesus would rise from the dead in three days (yom). Many skeptics point to the fact that Christ was only in the tomb for about 48 hours. However, the Hebrew understanding of the term “yom” can explain how this is possible.

In the Hebrew culture, days began at sunset and ended at sunset and any part of the day constituted the entire day. When Christ died just before sunset on Friday, the Jewish people would have considered him dead for one day before he was even buried. Jesus was in his tomb on Saturday, which was the second day. The third day began at sunset on Saturday and Christ did not come out of the tomb until around daybreak on Sunday.

So it is easy to see how the term “yom” for day is unclear in Biblical standards. We don't know with any certainty whether the days of the creation were merely hours of work, a full solar day or some period of time that God considered a day to show His completion of the task.

The second possibility is the apparent age theory. “This is the theory that God created everything at full maturity with the appearance of having gone through the normal developmental stages. Examples of this would be Adam and Eve, created fully grown, and the wine that Jesus created in Cana, fully fermented in an instant of time.

“This would explain the earth’s appearance of millions of years of age, while in reality it was only recently created (6-20 thousand years ago). Some of the fossil evidence and geological data can also be explained by a universal flood depositing strata and fossils"1 in places that would not normally have been located. So it is possible that carbon dating and the Bible do not conflict with each other.

So does this mean that evolution contradicts the Bible? “Evolution not only contradicts the Bible, but it also contradicts some basic laws of science. For example, the second law of thermodynamics implies that left to itself, everything tends to become less ordered, not more ordered or 'complex.'

“This rule is an observation of the obvious: things grow old, run down, and eventually die or decay. They lose their structure. The theory of evolution says that things develop their complexity and structure. This is not the case.

“Evolution also says that changes or mutations are beneficial, while nature shows almost all variations are harmful. The theory contradicts observable phenomena.”2 Evolution is a religion unto itself that has no real evidence or proof to back it up. Scientists continue to use portions of fossilized remains to create intricate reconstructions of unbelievable creatures that they claim to be related to modern creatures. They have never shown any creature that connects the two together. They continue to show human-like remains that they claim are ancestors of the humans, but nothing that comes even close to the link between humans and apes. Even the father of evolution, Charles Darwin, determined in his later years that creation was more likely than evolution.

What is God’s timetable for His creation? We may never know. What matters is that we accept by faith that He did create the universe and that He is creating a place for us in heaven to live with Him for all of eternity.

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1 “Answers to Tough Questions: What Skeptics Are Asking About the Christian Faith” by Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, p. 109
2 Ibid, p. 107