In this day and age when most people, in the West certainly, seem to believe in evolution and the world being billions of years old, it was interesting to come across a modern book written by Fifty PHD Scientists who all believe that the world was made and fashioned and filled with life in six days about six thousand years ago! The book is called, "In Six Days!"

What was also interesting was that they come from many scientific disciplines. They were bringing knowledge from the fields of Geology, Physics, Biology, Mathematics, Information Science, etc., and all stating why after looking at the evidence they were convinced of God and His account of creation.

When I've encountered people who do not accept Genesis 1 as a true historical record it's usually because they are hung up on trying to fit God into evolutionary thinking. So the days of Genesis 1 to them don't have to be 24 hours each and the time of God's forming the earth from Genesis 1:2 onwards to them is not when God made the earth. To them it was made eons before and just re-fashioned thousands even millions of years ago! The (in)famous 'Gap Theory'!

When we look at the passages where God tells us what He did in the beginning and when the beginning was though we find some interesting details.

Gen 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The word translated 'created' above is 'bara' which is sometimes translated as formed/fashioned so some people take this as saying that at this point God is fashioning/shaping something that had long existed. The thing is that when talking about creation God uses 'bara' interchangably with 'asah' which means made! Now moving on to verse 2...

Genesis 1:2 The earth was without form and void...

There, you see, they point out! The earth was without form and void; or 'became' without form and void.

Of course another way of saying this is that at this stage the earth was unformed and unfilled. It was just the raw clay. God had yet to do that part of the creation which took place in the following days!

Genesis 1:5 And there was evening and there was morning, the first day (Actual Hebrew is 'Day 1').

We could debate what a day is in length of time in Genesis 1, although the obvious length from the context, of the days being numbered (not just called 'a day' or 'in that day' and having evenings and mornings, is that they were 24 hours. Nothing in the bible says otherwise! But, we cannot prove this to someone who needs millions of years for their theories!

It's interesting though to have a look at other passages which relate to creation week. For instance, take Genesis 2:4...

Genesis 2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.

In this passage as God starts to go over the history of the earth and the heavens we find that the word translated 'created' is 'bara' but the word translated 'made' is 'asah' which means 'to make or to bring forth'.

So here in Genesis 2, God tells us that he formed and fashioned the earth in the same 'day' that he made it. Notice that there is no number with the 'day' and no 'evening' or 'morning' so from the context we know that it's talking about a time-frame. And, it was the same time-frame. It wasn't 'another' day billions of years later! At least that's what God says.

Now if we look at Exodus Chapter, 20, verses 8-11, we find this...

Exo 20:8 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 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. 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.

Here in a section of scripture that was written in stone by God's own finger, He tells the Israelites to work six days and rest one day in the same way that He worked six days and rested one day at creation. So these can only be 24 hour days (not million year days), otherwise the Israelites could not obey! They should still be 'working' on the first week if the days were thousands or millions of years, or if they started with the Sabbath they shouldn't have done any work for thousands of years!

Incidently, the word translated 'made' here where God 'made the heaven and the earth' is 'asah', the one that means 'to make or bring forth'. So to God, the six days of creation week was the time when He 'made or brought forth' the earth.

We can also look at Isaiah 45:18 where God inspires this...

Isaiah 45:18 “For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited), I am the Lord, and there is none else.”

Here Isaiah tells us that God made the world to be inhabited. If this was billions of years ago and everything died out without a remnant/witness and God had to re-think and start again 6,000 (or millions of) years ago, then He's obviously a weak God! He's neither omnipotent nor omniscient nor omnipresent since He couldn't -
1. keep the inhabitants alive in the first place;
2. know that it would all come to naught and have a better plan A; or
3. be around to save them when things went south.

If that is really true of God then how can we trust Him to save us!

But, since it was actually about 6,000 years ago as stated in the bible and shown by good science, and God has always saved a remnant, then we CAN trust Him.

Now just because Fifty PHD Scientists believe in a six day creation of the earth and heaven six thousand years ago is not of itself a reason for you to believe. And, just because, as we can see from the passages above, the God of the Bible seems to be convinced of this also and that fits with Him being 'Almighty', is again not a reason of itself for you to believe.

You have to come to the conclusion for yourself, from your study, that the God of the Bible does exist and is God and that His word can be trusted. Once you do that and accept Him as your Lord and Saviour, then believe Him, and the rest should just follow on as the evening and the morning of a day.

Best wishes for Grace and the Peace of Jesus.

Attlee.

Another thought....