Do you think God made the world in a literal 6 days?

Question

Or was it just symbolism/poetic language inspired to describe the way in which everything was created?

Answer 1

You know, even the literalist six, 24 hour day people have a problem.

Look at Gen 1:14, "And God said, 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years.'" (NIV)

Guess what day that was? Day four.

So as a minimum, the first three days HAD to be fluid, because nothing was created to determine the time of days. Who knows how long that took.

As it is, I don't think the Bible was written to specifically answer our Western scientific questions, although it does pretty well. Genesis one has a rhythm and beauty to it that makes it more like a dance than a science text book.

Answer 2

The question behind your question is:could God have made the world in literal 6 days? of course He could -and I am talking now of the Sovereign God of Chritianity and Judaism.
An other question is then that does it make any difference for us whether He created the world in a shorter or longer time? I have my doubts. I think that some other questions do have a lot of significance like was the world created and how He created the world in relation to the supposedly macroevolutionary processes -but that was not your question.
As God has limitless energy and information creating the world in 6 days was no problem to Him!

Answer 3

Definately not 6 days in a human sense. These were "creative days:"

The Hebrew word yohm, translated “day,” can mean different lengths of time. Among the meanings possible, William Wilson’s Old Testament Word Studies includes the following: “A day; it is frequently put for time in general, or for a long time; a whole period under consideration . . . Day is also put for a particular season or time when any extraordinary event happens.”1 This last sentence appears to fit the creative “days,” for certainly they were periods when extraordinary events were described as happening. It also allows for periods much longer than 24 hours

Answer 4

Hello, Colin:

Yes, I believe in a literal six-day creation, and God promises to re-create us as well as a new earth.

Can you imagine resurrection morning when God says: "I'm going to give you an angelic body, but you will have to sit here for 50,000,000 years while it evolves.

Such nonsense. It took nothing short of creative power to raise Lazarus' decomposed body from the grave, and equally so with Jesus receiving a glorified one. No, we will not hve to wait.

By the way, there is an ever-growing guild of scientists that believe the earth is really only 6,000 years old.

What Happens When Christ Returns? Read an online publication at www.revelado.org/coming.htm

Blessings and AGAPE love, Oneway

Answer 5

God made the world in 6 of God's days.

I truly belive that Creation and Evolution are the same. The twenty-four hour day is mans earthly concept of time because it fits the physics of earth’s rotation in orbit around the sun, and the spinning of the planet on it’s axis.

What if one of god' s days equals a billion or so of our years? To put this into perspective, compare a single atom to our solar system, then compare the average time required for the electrons (planets) to orbit around the nucleus (sun) and then think of the size/time relationship comparing our solar system to that atom. Then compare our tiny solar system, as an atom, to the immensity of the universe. Surely, universal time cannot be on the same scale as mans. If this concept is true, then six of "god's" days could equal billions of years of our earth time. When man interpreted and wrote "god's" word (bible) he had no accurate concept of the universe or different time scales. So six days, (mans interpretation of "god's” word) to create our earth could be correct form both “god’s” word (bible) and Darwin’s theory of Evolution

Answer 6

There seems to be some debate as to the wording of the original text that may lead us to believe it was a lot longer then six 24 Hour days but after a lot of study I have to say that I absolutely do not know for sure.

May the Lord richly bless you.

Answer 7

Fist off what is a day? A day is the time it takes for Earth to make a complete rotation on its axis.

If there was no world (Earth), then it must have been 6 days on a different world or planet.

Answer 8

I believe the bible to be the word of God. I believe it to be literal and that God inspired the men who wrote it.

So, yes, I believe that God created the world according to what the bible says. What isn't God capable of?

Answer 9

Yes, it is a symbolic interpretation.
The divisions that happened in the history of religions is in gran part due to the misinterpretations of the holly writings.

Answer 10

Whether He made it in 6 days, years, millenia, seconds or in the blink of an eye 4000 years ago with a built in 1.2 billion year history is irrelevent, unimportant and impossible to determine. The point is He made it.