Paula

Re: On Length of Days:

(Heb 4:4-11)
The seventh day has not ended. Is Hebrews in error when it suggests the seven day was not 24 hours?

I think you’re mixing days here, the physical and the spiritual.

If the 7th day has not ended then you could say the days of Genesis equal ages. But there are several problems with this.

One is that Adam had to have been thousands of years old instead of what the Bible states. Do years mean ages too? Why not?

Another is that Genesis says God RESTED, not “is resting” or “started resting”. But Hebrews speaks of God’s rest, something that people can enter into. If this were the 7th day, then all people have already entered into it, not just the saved. Yet Hebrews says only the saved enter it.

I have done considerable reading and study in the history of science over the last twenty years. Church fathers like Irenaeus, Origen, Justin Martyr, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas suggested periods of longer than 24 hour days. Some speculated that each day was a thousand years.

The people at AIG also have spent their lives studying science, and many were teachers of biology etc. before the evidence convinced them that YEC is true.

The idea of “a day is as a thousand years” comes from 2 Peter 3:8 but it is taken out of context and highly speculative. Even so, it cannot be uncritically applied to Genesis.

It was solid devout Christians, many of them clergy, that were the first geologist in the 17th and 18th centuries.

So? This proves nothing but that people during that time were eager to relegate the Bible to inferior status compared to man.

As for Contemporary Evangelical leaders, all of the below at a minimum allow for an ancient earth and almost all actively embrace it.

Jack Akenberg (apologist)
Gleason Archer (Prof. of OT/Hebrew, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)
Jack Collins (Prof. of OT at Covenant Theological Seminary)
Chuck Colson
Norman Geisler (theologian, apologist)
Hank Hannegraff (apologist author)
Jack Hayford (Pastor of Church of the Way, Four Square Gospel)
Walter Kaiser (Prof OT and President of Gordon-Conwell Seminary)
Greg Koukl (apologist)
C. S. Lewis (apologist)
Paul E. Little apologist, author)
Mark A. Noll (Prof. Christian Thought at Wheaton College)
Bernard L. Ramm (Eminent Evangelical theologian and defender of inerrancy)
Francis Schaeffer (apologist)
Chuck Smith, Jr. (pastor)
Lee Strobel (apologist)

These are just the Evangelicals.

Not scientists. And there are many, many theologians who disagree with them, and many scientists, both Christian and atheist. Another site I highly recommend besides AIG is http://www.defendyourfaith.com/ , where on the lower left you can click for a list of the many scientists who no longer accept Darwinian evolution.

Note: It’s JOHN Ankerberg, not Jack. I saw the “debate” he staged between Ross and Ham, and it was a pathetic display of bias. I’ve seen many Ankerberg-hosted debates over the years and they were all one-sided, but of course nobody minds when it’s in favor of the Bible. Yet in this case, the exact opposite is true. The YEC position was continually interrupted while OEC had free reign. Archer and Geisler were, if memory serves, Ankerberg’s college profs, and he adopted their OEC views. This is not to put down the many good teachings of all those people, but they have made a grave error on this issue.

Yes, and why do they believe animals have been around for millions of years. Because those are unequivocally and incontrovertibly the facts! The question is why those who insist on a 24 hour period insist on a more narrow interpretation than is warranted. This interpretation needlessly creates a barrier to people hearing the gospel as it seeks to promote some extra-biblical agenda. While we dare not ignore what scripture does say we also dare not make it say things it does not say.

Not so! The facts are not the problem, it’s the interpretation of them. That’s philosophy, not science. There is not one shred of proof that anything existed for millions of years. Not one. There are even open challenges for million-dollar rewards for anyone who can prove evolution, and they’ve never been claimed.

Why do some of us insist that the days of Genesis were 24-hr. periods? I’ll tell you, but I could easily turn the question back on you: why do you insist that they are not?

Look at the language used: “And there was evening, and there was morning, the nth day”. Hebrew experts whose articles I’ve read show without a doubt that whenever an ordinal is used with “yom”, it means a literal day. And what is the meaning of “evening and morning”, unless you stretch it beyond reason?

But all of these common arguments in favor of the philosophical interpretive framework known as evolutionism are already soundly defeated in the many writings at fine sites like AIG, Defend Your Faith, and ICR. This debate goes on and on in a thousand message boards every day, and never ends. I seriously doubt we’re going to solve it here. But since all these arguments are already covered, why reinvent the wheel?

We’ve all been forced to believe in an old earth, through school, entertainment, and documentaries all slanted to favor evo without discussing its faults. You can’t read a book, watch a show, or take a class without it being forced down your throat. This is reality. So nobody can say we haven’t heard the evo side of the story. Now it’s time to hear the Bible’s side, the YEC side. To catch up to the years we’ve had to listen to evo, it’ll take many more years to listen to YEC. Until then, this debate here is pointless and uninformed.