How Long was Creation Day
Five?
Christians
believe in "special creation" - that God created all matter and all
life. According to the
Bible, creation took six sequential evenings and mornings. On Day One, God created the heavens
and earth. He commanded light to continue to be, which is when the
earth (matter) began to have
form (extension in space). On Day Two,
He
commanded
a spread-out (raqiya) atmosphere to
separate water above the air from surface water. (The Jewish historian
Josephus wrote that this
water was in crystalline form - ice). On
Day
Three, the watery surface of the Earth seeped down
into one place and the dry land appeared. Then God continued to command
the land to sprout
vegetation. Plants grew into wooded trees that bore fruit, all on the
third day. On Day Four, God
commanded the fashioning and placing of the Sun, Moon and stars in the
heavenly spread-out
place (raqiya). We confirm this day's activity with optics. Countless
naked galaxies existed
before the stars began to move out. At many ranges, especially in
spiral galaxies, we observe that
the stars accelerated out to form dusty, local, growth-spirals. Clearly
the universe is very ancient
to which the Bible agrees. Psalms 90:2 "Before the
mountains were born Or You gave birth to
the earth and the world, Even from eon (olam) unto eon (olam), You are
God." What does the
Bible (and the supporting evidence) tell about the duration of Day Five?
Genesis
1:20-23 Then Elohim continued to command, "Let the waters
multiply with swarms of
living creatures and let birds continue to fly in the spread-out
(raqiya) atmosphere." 21 Elohim
continued to create tanniyn and every living creature that moves, which
the waters multiplied
after their kind and every winged bird after its kind; Elohim continued
to see that it was good. 22
Elohim continued to bless them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and
fill the waters in the seas,
and let birds continue to multiply on the earth." 23 Evening and
morning was the fifth day.
*
Only
God
ca
n command water to bring forth
sea creatures and birds that
multiply into swarms.
Single-celled organisms follow billions of sequences during
reproduction. Reproduction in larger
animals is far more complex, since trillions of cells must
differentiate to form intricate
relationships. The Septuagint scholars translated tanniyn as drakon,
dinosaurs. Many dinosaurs
were bird-like. They had porous bones, laid eggs, had grindstones in
their crops and some of the
small ones were feathered. The tanniyn, sea-creatures and birds were
formed from water and subsequently multiplied after their kinds.
Living
cells
are
saturated with water, held in by a membrane. The water that
formed living things
was mostly subterranean by the Fifth day. On Day Three the dry land
appeared as the water under
the atmosphere was
gathered into one place. Why
should water gravitate
underground? God mentioned the formation of the sea in Job 38:8-9. "Who
closed (Hebrew
sakak - to entwine - to cover over) the sea behind doors (Hebrew deleth
- something swinging - a
gate - a lid) when it gushed forth out of the womb. When I clothed it
with clouds, Swaddled it in
dense clouds." At birth, the sea was singular, whereas by the third day
the gathering of waters in
one place was "yamin" - plural seas. Evidently the earth was originally
covered in a warm acidic
sea clothed in thick clouds. By the middle of Day Three the water had
percolated underground
(into one place) so that the dry land appeared.
** Did
creatures once swarm in underground
pools? Geologists find billions of barrels of oil under
the continents and continental shelves. The oil is often floating on
water, trapped in pools under a
rock 
dome. Some oils are sulfurous and black while others are
light and
volatile. Chemical
analysis indicates that oil is a fossil. How could swarms of creatures
live in underground water?
More than 30 years ago, undersea explorers discovered numerous
hydrothermal vents around the
volcanic expansion seam that runs through every ocean. The hot water
gushing out the vents is
acidic, anaerobic and loaded with sulfur and hydrogen sulfide. The
estimated amount of water
gushing out all undersea vents is more than the water running out of
all the rivers on earth. A
special mineral eating bacteria swarms around the hot vents, consuming
the sulfur. The bacteria
are the base of a food chain that supports dense colonies of animals.
Tube worms live right next
to the scalding water. They have neither mouths nor guts since bacteria
within their bodies digest
the minerals in the water. Other vent creatures include flea-like
amphipods, anchored dandelion
jellyfish, lobsters without eyes, octopuses, shrimp; clams; crabs;
sponges, mussels and fish.
Billions of barrels of fossil oil are evidence that underground waters
swarmed with mineral-eating bacteria.
How long was Day Five? Modern Christians
interpret the text with Western ideas about linear
time. Some Christians think the creation days were eons, while all
subsequent days were
short. Other Christians imagine that all days, since the beginning were
short. In Moses
day, no one could imagine such things because everyone believed that
time had continued to
deteriorate throughout history. Their genealogies showed that
earliest humans lived in the great
time, maturing slowly and living for eons. The Babylonian King List
records that the earliest
kings reigned thousands of times longer than latter kings. Josephus
mentioned twelve historians
who all agreed "that
the record showed the ancients lived a thousand years." Indeed we find
ancient skulls with great thick brows, as though the ancients lived for
geological ages. (The face
is the only part of our skeleton that keeps growing with age. If we
lived for geological ages, our
faces would gradually become Neanderthal). Hesiod wrote that miserable
old age rested not on
the first race who lived in the age of time (Kronos). Their arms and
legs did not fail them until
they died in their sleep. The next race matured slowly, children
playing at their mother's knee for
a hundred years. Hesiod wailed that he was part of the iron race, when
men never ceased laboring
by day and dying by night. He thought that this deterioration would
continue until children were
born with gray temples. Ancient people could not imagine short duration
creation, since in their
world view days had continued to shorten throughout history. Old man Israel stated, in a few
words, the world-view of his generation. He stated that days and years
get shorter and worse for
later generations. (Genesis 47:9). Even today we remember how
much slower life was in our
youth and how days and years speed up as we age. If we cared to look
carefully, we would also
notice that the optical parallax to the Sun, Venus and Mars continues
to decrease, from one
generation to the next. Indeed, over the centuries, astronomers
recorded, with angles, an
expanding solar system. For example, Ptolemy measured the diameter of
the planets and moon
with an instrument he described. His diameters are considerably larger
than modern ones. These
things do not support the Western notion of linear time.
The most powerful evidence against linear
time is the visible past. With optics, we see the past in
the distant heavens. Primordial atoms clocked tiny ratios of the
frequencies of modern atoms.
Evidently ancient atoms were scale models of modern ones, since
the continents only fit together
on a tiny globe without major oceans. We observe, at different ranges
(eras), that star-streams
accelerated out as countless galaxies grew from the inside outward.
Since countless galactic
orbits visibly accelerated outward, concurrently with accelerating
atomic clocks, ancient days and
years must have been longer than modern ones. How did accelerating
atoms and accelerating
orbits affect the length of an ancient Earth-day? Evidently they were
much longer than modern
cycles. Could creatures reproduce in a single day? Certainly, mineral
eating bacteria can swarm
rapidly. We can only conjecture how a long day would affect the
reproduction of primordial fish,
birds and dinosaurs. Apparently, according to the text, they all
multiplied in one day.
Why is it so hard for Christians to believe
what the Bible states? Paul wrote that everything in
creation is changing (Greek phthora)? The evidence is simple and
visible. With optics, we see the
past back to the creation era. No perpetual motion atoms shine from any
ancient galaxies. Yet all
modern scientists use perpetual motion atoms to define their versions
of time and to even
contrive measuring symbols and mathematical constants to supposedly
measure a "fixed reality".
Paul warned us that the rudimentary ideas of philosophy can imprison
us. Our scientific way of
thinking and measuring was built on a Greek rudimentary idea - that the
properties of all things
are fixed. Yet we can see in the ancient universe that matter keeps on
changing itself throughout
cosmic history. New telescopes are even now
photographing the primordial universe. So far they have observed
biblical cosmic history, following the things God says He does. The ancient universe can only be
understood simply, with biblical physics. Biblical physics simply
accepts that the properties of all
matter continue to emerge throughout cosmic history.
How long was Day Five? It
evidently was a vast age, yet it occurred as our tiny primordial planet
rotated slowly near a minuscule sun. How can we be sure? We observe how
atomic clocks and
star-streams both accelerated together as billions of galaxies grew
from tiny clumps of primordial
matter to great spread out growth-spirals. The visible evidence
suggests that the earth is
extremely old and yet days and years have continued to accelerate so
that the Earth made only a
few thousand rotations around our Sun. Think about it.
* This photo is of a fossil of Archeaopteryx from the Berlin museum.
Credit of H. Raab from
Wikipedia - Creative Commons license. Archaeopteryx had characteristics
of both birds and
dinosaurs. Like a bird it had claws and feathered wings and a feathered
tail. Like a dinosaur its
tail was long and bony and it had a mouth with teeth, unlike the beaks
of modern birds.
** This photo is
credit NOAA. It shows tube worms, a crab and muscles packed around a
geothermal vent in the East Pacific Rise.
Read an essay on the duration
of
Creation Day Three
Read an essay on
the first principle of modern science.
Visit godsriddle main page
This document is under a Creative Commons License by Victor
McAllister.
What does that mean?
Last modified on April 9, 2010