We know what a day is!

One tactic employed by old earth compromisers who try to reconcile their bankrupt theories with the clear words of Scripture is to haggle over the meaning of the word, “day.”  It’s weird, too, because the meaning of that simple word is not debated anywhere it appears in Scripture except for Genesis 1.  When Joshua marched around Jericho for 7 days, how long did he march around Jericho?  When Jonah was in the belly of the whale for 3 days, how long was he in the belly of the whale?  These sound like trick questions because the answers seem so obvious.  Yet when you ask a theistic evolutionist or old earth creationist how long it took God to create the heavens and the earth, suddenly they don’t know what a day is.  Excuse me while I roll my eyes.

Now, I’m the first to admit that words can have a range of meanings.  Even the word “day” can have multiple meanings.  If I were to say, “I have trouble seeing at night so I only drive during the day,” would you know what I mean?  Of course you would.

What if I were to say something like, “Back in my day, kids walked to school”?  Yes, I don’t think you’d have any trouble understanding that either.

If someone said I might win a Nobel Prize for my blog, I would probably answer, “That’ll be the day.”  In this case, “day” means a time that’s never going to happen - yet even then, no one struggles to understand the word.  

When God commanded His people to work six days and rest on the seventh (Exodus 20:11), do you think any of them stopped to ask, “I wonder what God means by six days?”  Hardly!  It seems like the word is easily understood everywhere it is used - in or out of the Bible - except in Genesis 1.  How strange!

So if the word “day” can mean so many different things, how can we know what it means in Genesis 1?  If only there were a definition given in the text //RKBentley stares off in the distance in deep thought//.  Oh wait - there is!!  

Genesis 1:1-5, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Oh, I see it now.  When God made the world, it was dark.  Then He made the light.  He called the light day, and the dark and light periods together (evening and morning) were also a day.  Duh!

“Day” can mean many things, but it can also mean a single rotation of the earth - the day/light cycle - of about 24 hours.  In fact, it usually means a 24-hour period.  So when the Bible provides a definition right in the text, why do people grope around for some other meaning?  

A while back, I wrote a series (here) rebutting a video by Inspiring Philosophy who claimed 10 scriptural problems with young earth creationism.  In the introduction to the video, the narrator said the following:

If you haven't heard, there are millions of people today who believe the earth is only about 6,000 years old and, about 4,000 years ago, there was a worldwide flood that destroyed all life on land except for a few people and two of every animal that survived in an ark. The basis of this theory comes from many who say that we ought to take a literal or a plain reading of the Bible, the Holy Book of Christianity.

The rational behind this young earth view, is that they are just taking the plain reading of the text and that Christians, who believe the earth is old, have to misconstrue or reinterpret passages to make the Bible fit with an ancient earth and the theory of evolution. 

Um… yes.  In order to make the Bible fit with an old earth and the theory of evolution, evolutionists have to make the clear words of the Bible mean something other than what the words ordinarily mean.  That’s exactly what Inspiring Philosophy does.  It’s what every evolutionist who claims to believe the Bible does.  The word day, to them, can’t mean “evening and morning” so they muddy the waters with a bunch of gobbledygook about how day could mean a bunch of other things too.  Meanwhile, they ignore the most ordinary meaning.

2 Peter 1:20 says, “no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.”  Yet in the case of Genesis 1, the word day means an undefined period of time that includes millions or even billions of years.  Exactly how does that fit the definition of “evening and morning” given in the text?  It’s the epitome of a private interpretation.  I can only think of 2 reasons they do this: they either are intentionally twisting the meaning of the word day in order to make the Bible fit their godless theory (which they deny) or they can't read.  

I think we all know which it is.