Jehovah's witness. Can anyone please explain?

Question

Hey, i wanted to know if anyone could explain to me the theory about how when God made the world, the seven days where not 24 hour periods, rather, hmm, how to put it, Gods time, i guess, for lack of a better term. My wife and her brother talked with me about it, though i still dont fully understand.

Answer 1

According to the JW Awake magazine of Nov 8, 1982, on page 7 it says that both the "Bible record" and "verifiable history" indicate that the seventh creative day covers a period of 7,000 years. (I'm pretty sure the Bible doesn't mention 7,000 years at all and the article doesn't quote any scriptures to prove that, but I'm just relating what the magazine said.)

Then the article says that each of the preceding six days would be of the same length as the seventh (7000 years). So logically, if this is true (and that's a BIG "if"), then the entire seven days would be a total of 49,000 years.

Answer 2

The words "morning", "evening", and "day" all have definitions other than the literal rendition:

"The first or early part; the beginning: the MORNING of a new nation." -The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

'Evening' also has more than one meaning:
"A later period or time: in the EVENING of one's life." -The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

"Often, days; A PARTICULAR TIME OR PERIOD: the present day; in DAYS of old. period of existence, power, or influence: in the DAY of the dinosaurs." -Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

One passage shows that grass shot forth, vegetation bore seed and fruit trees yielded fruit in just one of the days mentioned. (Gen. 1:11-13)

Also, Gen. 1:9-13 tells us that dry land appeared within the third creative "day" or stage. For a decent comparison, the islands of Hawaii used to be all under the ocean's surface an extremely long time ago. Due to volcanic activity, these islands slowly built up with time. The Big island is still growing. Compared to the continents we see today, Hawaii is relatively small. The time it took for the natural process for all of this dry land to appear MUST have been much longer than a literal day or two.

The scientific evidence shows that the earth could not have formed in 6 LITERAL days. Therefore, it must be THE DESCRIPTION of these particular periods of time in Genesis that was mentioned in a FIGURATIVE sense.

Answer 3

Actually it was 6 days, on the 7th day God rested. 2 Peter 3:8 says that 1 day with God is like 1000 years. Another example is Gen 2:17. God told Adam and Eve that in the 'day' they ate the fruit they would die. Well they were expelled from the garden of Eden, had children...then they died. They didn't die within 24 hours. But they didn't live longer than 1000 either. So the creation of the world probably took thousands of years.

Answer 4

Hello, Shane how r u today?

The time we know & understand is 24 hours = a day.
7 days make a week, and so forth.

With God, whose time is immeasurable,
bc He had No Beginning and has No End.

A thousand years of our time,
could quite easily be a blink of an eye to God.
A day in His garden, could be a thousand else where.
See 2 Peter 3:8.

Time in Jehovah's mind is different then ours,
we are earthly, physical, flesh.
He is a spirit. 2Th 2:6 says "being revealed in his due time."
His due time.
This statement reveals that His time is different from ours.
He created the sun for day & the moon for night.
He has set seasons and times, for us,
not for Himself.

Ask ur wife or other family member for the book
INSIGHT ON THE SCRIPTURES
look @ "calendar"; p. 389-393.
1 of the things it says is this:
So, in His position as Universal Sovereign He stands far above our spinning earth,
w/ its day and night, its lunar cycles, and its solar year.
However, in His Word the Bible, God does helpfully relate His actions and purposes to such measurements of time,
thereby allowing His creatures on earth to learn where they stand in relation to His Grand calendar of events.
This section has quite alot of 411; which may help you out.
Let us know how it goes w/ you.
B.A.

edit: even unsilenced lamb, is correct on this 1.

Answer 5

The bible tells us that a day is 1000 years. 2 Pet 3:8, Ps 90:4

The world was made in six days and on the seventh God rested. We are still in his rest Heb 4:9-11, speaks of humans entering into that day of rest.

Below is a quote from WT1961, 6/15, pg 376-380

Thus we see God’s use of the perfect number seven. The creative week consisted of seven days that were made up, not merely of hours, but of 7,000 years each. This means that each creative day was, within itself, a week of 1,000-year days. Following this master pattern, the nation of Israel was given a symbolic week of one-year days, with every seventh year being a sabbath rest for the land. This brings us down to the literal week of seven days, the seventh day of which was a sabbath in the nation of Israel. It was logical, therefore, that the fourth commandment should make reference to the great creative week of which the literal week is a small replica.

That God’s rest day consists of seven 1,000-year days was also observed by some Jewish rabbis several hundred years ago. In 1626 Henry Ainsworth quoted one of them in his Annotations upon the First Booke of Moses Called Genesis as saying: “If we expound the seventh day, of the seventh thousand of years, which is the world to come, the exposition is, and he blessed, because in the seventh thousand, all souls shall be bound in the bundell of life . . . so our Rabbins of blessed memory, have sayd in their commentarie; God blessed the seventh day, the holy God blessed the world to come, which beginneth in the seventh thousand (of years).”

The world to come is the 1,000-year reign of the Messiah, a fitting climax to the symbolic week of 7,000 years that make up man’s existence on earth during God’s rest day. It will bring to mankind rest from slaving toil and from the bondage of sin.

Answer 6

Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, but it proved to be formless.

We don't know how many eons of time passed from this creation. If a scientist wants to say the universe is upteen billion yrs old, it could be. The bible doesn't say.

The 6 creation days, are the time period when Jehovah prepared the earth for life.

A day is a period of time.

In my father's day. (a life time)

I work during the day. (8 - 12 hours)

Creation days, are a period of time, that have proved to be 1000's of years long.

.

Answer 7

The Bible does not specify the length of each of the creative periods. Yet all six of them have ended, it being said with respect to the sixth day (as in the case of each of the preceding five days): “And there came to be evening and there came to be morning, a sixth day.” (Genesis1:31) However, this statement is not made regarding the seventh day, on which God proceeded to rest, indicating that it continued. (Genesis 2:1-3) Also, more than 4,000 years after the seventh day, or God’s rest day, commenced, Paul indicated that it was still in progress. At Hebrews 4:1-11 he referred to the earlier words of David (Psalm 95:7, 8, 11) and to Genesis 2:2 and urged: “Let us therefore do our utmost to enter into that rest.” By the apostle’s time, the seventh day had been continuing for thousands of years and had not yet ended. The Thousand Year Reign of Jesus Christ, who is Scripturally identified as “Lord of the sabbath” (Matthew12:8), is evidently part of the great sabbath, God’s rest day. (Revelation 20:1-6) This would indicate the passing of thousands of years from the commencement of God’s rest day to its end. The week of days set forth at Genesis 1:3 to 2:3, the last of which is a sabbath, seems to parallel the week into which the Israelites divided their time, observing a sabbath on the seventh day thereof, in keeping with the divine will. (Exodus 20:8-11) And, since the seventh day has been continuing for thousands of years, it may reasonably be concluded that each of the six creative periods, or days, was at least thousands of years in length.

Answer 8

There is another point I did not see mentioned, although I may have overlooked it.

In Genesis 2:4 we read:

"This is a history of the heavens and the earth in the time of their being created, in the DAY that Jehovah God made earth and heaven." (NWT)

"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the DAY that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens." (KJV)

So here we see ALL the individual days (plural) of creation included in a single DAY of creation, thus showing that day can simply mean a period of time.

In both instances it is the same Hebrew word translated day: "Yowm."

Answer 9

24 hours is the time that the earth does the rotation, if all physical creation accomplished in just six days sometime within the past 6,000 to 10,000 years?

The facts disagree with such a conclusion: (1) Light from the Andromeda nebula can be seen on a clear night in the northern hemisphere. It takes about 2,000,000 years for that light to reach the earth, indicating that the universe must be at least millions of years old. (2) End products of radioactive decay in rocks in the earth testify that some rock formations have been undisturbed for billions of years.
Genesis 1:3-31 is not discussing the original creation of matter or of the heavenly bodies. It describes the preparation of the already existing earth for human habitation. This included creation of the basic kinds of vegetation, marine life, flying creatures, land animals, and the first human pair. All of this is said to have been done within a period of six “days.” However, the Hebrew word translated “day” has a variety of meanings, including ‘a long time; the time covering an extraordinary event.’ (Old Testament Word Studies, Grand Rapids, Mich.; 1978, W. Wilson, p. 109) The term used allows for the thought that each “day” could have been thousands of years in length.

Answer 10

It wasn't 7 days. in the bible, the word 7 it kinda means completion you know, 777 etc. it could have taken 7,000 years for all we know. the word is used because it means completion, because he completed the earth. I'm a bible student also, and i hope this helps I made a mistake. to answer the first answer-lol. like i said, it wasnt acual days. its called SYMBOLISM. god used SYMBOLISM the number 7= completeness, so..7 days=completed earth though it didnt really happen in 7 days