How Long was Creation Day
Four?
Many Christians struggle with what seems like a paradox, the
fourth creation day. According to
Genesis One, plants sprouted from the ground, some growing into wooded
trees that bore fruit
during Day Three. This happened before the Sun, Moon and stars began to
form on the fourth
day. The astronomer / minister Hugh Ross "harmonizes" Genesis with
science by suggesting that
the stars formed billions of years before Earth. Ross proposes that
during the fourth billions-of-years era the atmosphere cleared and the
Sun and stars became visible. Young Earth Creationists
believe that the heavenly bodies formed on the fourth evening and
morning. However, they
cannot explain why the galaxies are very old (distant) if the stars are
only 6,000 years old.
The Bible states that the sky (shamayim) declares God's
glory
and the spreading place (raqiya)
shows His handiwork. Day and night the spreading sky (shamayim raqiya)
proclaims knowledge
of God's glory (Psalm 19). Only in the distant sky can we actually see
the past exactly as it
happened. We see, with sight, the events that the Hebrew Bible states
began on the fourth day.
Genesis 1:14 Then Elohim continued to
command, "Let there be lights in the spreading sky
(shamayim raqiya) for dividing day from night, for signs, seasons, days
and years; (15) so that the
lights in the spreading sky (shamayim raqiya) should shine upon Earth,"
and it was so. (16)
Elohim continued to form two great lights, the greater light to govern
the day, and the lesser light
to govern the night; the stars also. (17) Elohim incompletely placed
them in the spreading sky
(shamayim raqiya) to give light upon the earth (18) for ruling over the
day and night; for
separating light from darkness; Elohim, looking, saw that it was good.
(19) Evening and morning
- day four.
Analysis.
Genesis chapter one
does not state that God created the Sun, Moon and stars on the
fourth day. The chapter only mentions creation (Hebrew bara) on three
occasions during the first
week. On the first day, Elohim completed creating the heavens and the
earth, all of it - (Hebrew
et). This day began in darkness when transitory things (mayim) had not
yet received the ability to
take up space. Out of the darkness, Elohim continually commanded light
to continually be.
Atoms take up space and have form because they are a relation with
light. Evidently God finished
creating the basic building blocks (the god particles) on the first
day. Then He began to give
shape to atoms as he continued to command the atomic relation with
light.
On the fourth
day, God began to fashion, make and appoint (Hebrew asah) the Sun, Moon
and
stars apparently using the matter created on the first day. The
Hebrew
verb asah (verse 16) is an
imperfect verb, showing a continuing process of fashioning the heavenly
bodies. This is
reinforced by God's commands, which are also imperfect, a continuum of
commanding.
Furthermore, the verb for placing the heavenly bodies (Hebrew nathan in
verse 17) is also
imperfect suggesting continuing changes in position. These changes are
augmented by the three
usages of the phrase shamayim raqiya. Raqiya is the noun of raqa, to
pound out and spread out.
Literally, Elohim continued to command the making of the heavenly
bodies and placing them in
the spreading sky. Nowhere in the Genesis account does it mention time
(per se) or support for
closed orbits (linear time), even in the solar system.
Do the Sun, Moon
and stars continually spread apart? A few thousand years ago,
our
ancestors
recorded disasters when the planets passed at close range. They also
recorded the catastrophic
shattering of a great, watery planet at close range. The Hebrew Bible
mentions both events.
Biblical solar system history is supported by tens of thousands of
shattered planet pieces orbiting
the Sun as comets and asteroids. Do measurements support a growing
solar system? The earliest
astronomical record preserves the rise and set dates for Venus during
21 years. The Ammizaduga
tablets could only be valid is if the solar system was much smaller in
historical times. After the invention of
precision measuring with angles, Ptolemy measured the diameter of the
Moon and planets with a
dioptra, whose construction details he recorded. His diameters are much
larger than those we
measure today. He mentioned that previous astronomers recorded even
larger orbs. Over the
centuries, generations of astronomers continued to record a decreasing
solar parallax. The solar
parallax continues to decrease, even today. During the twentieth
century, the astronomical unit
was fixed using clocks (including radar) yet the parallax to Mars and
Venus continue to decrease.
According to
Genesis, God finished creating the heavens before He began to form the
stars. We
see billions of naked galaxies in the most-distant parts of the
heavens, some of which shine at
1/10th the light frequencies of modern atoms. These compact, naked
galaxies characterize the
state of the universe before the fourth day. In that early era, the
stars had not yet formed from the
countless galactic globs of primordial matter. We verify this
because
at closer ranges we observe
tails of distinct, equally-spaced, blue clumps surrounding the
primordial cores. At many ranges,
we observe how the clumps rotate around more, spread out more, as stars
form and accelerate
outward. We observe, with optics, in billions of galaxies how they grew
into huge local growth
spirals. We optically observe the shamayim raqiya, the spreading sky,
that incompletely began
on Day Four. What is visible could not be valid unless the properties
of matter are emerging.
If the
galactic
processes that began on Day Four are visible, why do Old Earth and
Young Earth
Creationists struggle over the age of the universe? They interpret the
Bible with science, a way of
thinking and measuring that did not exist during biblical times. Peter
prophesied
that
in
the
last
days,
false teachers will come saying "all things remain the same."
Scientific definitions, such as,
clocks measure linear time, depend on the notion that atoms are
perpetual motion engines.
Scientists use their definition of time to contrive thousands of
secondary measuring units and
mathematical constants using the notion that the properties of matter
"remain the same." Peter
also predicted that the false teachers will obfuscate (Greek lanthano)
the age of the stars, ouranoi
esan ekpalai. Ekpalai is a compound
word. Ek means to come out, the
point of origin. Palai /
palin refers to repetitions, vibrations, orbits. With optics, we see
that atomic clocks everywhere
accelerate throughout cosmic history. We also observe that galactic
orbits concurrently accelerate
as galaxies grew from the insides outwards as the stars formed and
spread out.
The
paradox
of
Day Four clears up once we interpret it in its historical, grammatical
context,
instead of
tailoring the text to fit science. How long were ancient
days? We cannot see the
rotation rate of ancient objects. However, ancient orbits were
ponderously slow, since we
observe how the stars continually accelerated out as billions of
galaxies grew from the inside
outward. Evidently it was not just the days of creation that were long,
but all days and years
continue to change as Jacob stated. Old man Israel said that the days
and
years of the children are
shorter and worse than the days and years of the fathers. (Genesis
47:9).
The shamayim
raqiya reveals God's glory because it shows His power and wisdom - even
to the extent of how He defeats science for
His glory.
The first picture is from
NASA's infrared Spitzer telescope. It shows a nearby one armed galaxy,
NGC 4725. Notice how the arm continues to spread out as it rotates out
from the core. The next galaxy is nearby NGC 4622 from NASA's
Hubble space telescope. again showing how the stars came out of the
relatively large core (in this case). The last galaxy is HUDF-3180 from
NASA's Hubble space telescope. This galaxy shines from the long ago
universe. This primordial galaxy is surrounded
by two arms made of distinct clumps. The arms have not spread out and
rotated out like we see in local galaxies. However, many spiral galaxies
have dense
blue
clumps of stars spaced around the arms (see NGC4622 above). These
are the remnants of primordial clumps that came out of the core.
Read an essay on the duration of
Creation Day One
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 March 5, 2010