The Days of Creation

Genesis

The Days of Creation

October 14th, 1956 @ 8:15 AM

Genesis 1:3-31

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. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
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THE "DAYS" OF CREATION

Dr. W. A. Criswell

Genesis 2:21-25

10-14-56    8:15 a.m.

 

This is the fourth time already and we’re getting a little more involved all the time, so I would think that for the next five or six times, we’ll be here looking at this Bible and this Genesis story of creation.  And it leads, inevitably, to the universally-accepted scientific idea – theory, hypothesis – of the evolutionary development of human life that all of us came from a green scum: that in the beginning, in the beginning, of itself without anybody, without any intelligence, without any direction – in the beginning back there uncounted eons of years ago, hundreds of thousands of years ago, back there, of itself, life created itself.  And from that one little minute, infinitesimal piece of life there developed up and up and up all the manifestations of vegetation – the world of botany – all the manifestations of the animal world – the world of zoology – and finally man himself.  We developed up and up and up.

That’s what all of these scientific teachers teach.  That’s what they do in these higher institutions of learning everywhere; that’s what they teach here in Dallas: all of us came from a green scum. 

Well, we’re going to look at that.  We’re going to look at that very carefully.  We’re going to look at it in the light of the Word of God, and we’re going to look at it in the light of science itself.  And it is amazing.  It is absolutely overwhelming what you’re going to find.

How many of you – and by the way, this fits into what I’m going to say about four or five or six Sundays hence – how many of you have read in the current Reader’s Digest  "The Piltdown Hoax"?  Have you looked at that?  Do it.  You’ll get a good background for what we’re going to have to say a little later on by reading that. 

You’ll find out that these scientists who try to teach our young people that we came from a green scum and that all of us developed from one primordial cell, you’ll find that they do everything under high heaven not to teach the truth, not to deliver themselves of the facts, but to establish a foregone a priori conclusion.  And whether it’s scientific or not, whether it’s truth or not, whether it’s fact or not, they’re interested in establishing a theory. So we’re going to look at it. 

Now, before we get to that, we’ve got a long way to go because we’re starting from the beginning here.  We’re going to look this morning at these days in creation.

Now, as I read the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, it’s like the first chapter of the Book of John.  It sounds like a poem, and it has a refrain.  Here it is in the fifth verse [Genesis 1:5], that last sentence there:  "wayhi ereb wayhi boker yom one."

All right, look at the eighth verse, the last sentence:  "wayhi ereb wayhi boker yom two."

All right, look at the thirteenth verse:  wayhi ereb wayhi boker yom three.

All right, look at the nineteenth verse:  wayhi ereb wayhi boker yom four.

All right, look at the twenty-third verse:  wayhi ereb wayhi boker yom five.

All right, look at the thirty-first verse, the last sentence:  wayhi ereb wayhi boker yom six.

Always that same refrain. 

Well, that’s a very interesting thing that word yom, y-o-m, yom, yom.  That’s the Hebrew word for "day," and that word "day" is used in Hebrew just like it is in our language.  It refers to many, many things. 

Now, I asked our library to place up here on this pulpit desk a copy of Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible.  You will find in that concordance to the Bible, you will find whatever you would like to know about these words.  You don’t have to know Hebrew; you don’t have to know Greek.  The Hebrew letters are spelled out in English and the Greek letters are spelled out in English, so any time that you want to know about a word, this analytical concordance will give you the Hebrew word and the Greek word right on through for all of these translations.

Now, I couldn’t keep in my mind all of the different translations of this word yom, but you’ll find them here in this Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible.  Just go down there and look at it and find in how many different ways and ways and ways and ways that word yom is translated.  And they’re in here. 

There are more than, ah, there’s way over a thousand times that word yom is translated "day" and "time" and "forever" and "age" and "perpetuity" and I don’t know how many ways.  But all of those things are available to you.  Now, I have taken the opportunity this morning to point out three different ways that that word yom is translated "day."

 When it says God created this in a day, and He created that in a day, and He did all this in a day, now, what is a day – a day?  Practically everybody says that that day represents an eon.  It represents an age.  It represents at least 500,000 years.  Now, I’m going to prove this morning, to my satisfaction at least, that that day is the revolution of the earth – twenty-four hours a day.

 Before I do that, let us first look at how the word can be used, yom, day.  Well, it can be used to refer to a period of time – a vast period of time or a relatively short period of time.  The word yom, day, can refer to an inclusive, comprehensive period of time or to an indefinite period of time.  Now all you have to do is just look at it here, and you can see it in your English Bible. 

Look at the second chapter of Genesis and the fourth verse.  Now here is an instance of the translation of the word yom, day, where the word day, yom, means a comprehensive, inclusive period of time.  A look at it:

 

These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day – in the yom – that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

[Genesis 2:4]

 

Well in the chapter above, the first chapter, it just said that God made the earth and the heavens in six yoms, yamim – meant six; yamim meant six yoms.  And yet here in the fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis it says: "This is that when God created the earth and the heavens in the yom," in the one day, in the day [from Genesis 2:4].  Well, there the word yom refers to a period of time, six there.

Well, let’s turn again.  Over here – you don’t need to turn to these, but you can if you want to – in the second chapter of the Book of Isaiah, all through the Book of Isaiah, Isaiah will use that word yom to refer to a vast, immeasurable period of time.  He says here:

 

The lofty looks of man in that day shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day –

talking about the great, final day. 

For the day of the Lord –

the yom of the Lord –

of hosts shall be upon everybody –  one that is proud and lofty, and every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low:

[Isaiah 2:11-12]

In that yom

twentieth verse –

 In that yom a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they have made every one to worship, to the moles and to the bats;

[Isaiah 2:20]

 

He’s talking about the great, final yom of the Lord, the great final day of the Lord.  Well, that’s no twenty-four hour day.  That’s a period; that’s an eon. 

Well, you find the same thing, and I’ll quit with this one, you find the same thing in Amos, the fifth chapter: 

 

Woe unto you that desire the yom of the Lord! To what end is it for you? The yom of the Lord is darkness, and not light.

As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or he went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him.

Shall not the yom of the LORD be darkness, and not light?  Very dark, and no brightness in it?

[Amos 5:18-20]

 

He’s talking about the great, final judgment day and millennial time of the Lord, the yom of the Lord.  Well, you can see there that that word refers to a great period of time: yom, that same identical word. 

Now, there is another use of that word yom.  That word yom sometimes is used to refer to time itself – yom.  In the thirtieth chapter of the Book of Genesis, in the thirty-third verse, look at this English translation: "So shall my righteousness answer for me in time to come" [Genesis 30:33].  That word translated "time" there is yom.  "So shall my righteousness answer for me in yom to come."

All right, look again over here in the thirty-ninth chapter of the Book of Genesis, the eleventh verse: "And it came to pass about that yom" – "about that time" you have it translated. 

Now, there’s another one here that’s typical.  In the thirty-second chapter of the Book of Numbers: "And the Lord’s anger was kindled the same time, and He swears, saying" [Numbers 32:10].  "And the Lord’s anger was kindled the same yom." Yom – there’s that word used again referring to time itself.  

Now, sometimes the Lord uses that word here in the Bible to refer to the revolution of the Earth, the solar day, yom, day, day.  In the seventh chapter of the Book of Genesis, the eleventh verse:

 

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeeth yom of the month –

Brother, there’s no doubt about the use of it there referring to a twenty-four-hour day in the seventeenth yom of the month –

the same yom were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

And the rain was upon the earth forty yom and forty nights.

[Genesis 7:11-12]

 

 

Forty days and forty nights [Genesis 7:12]: there the word yom refers to the daylight time.

You do that.  A day – a day in our language can refer to the sunshine and the twelve hours of the day, or a day in our language can refer to the day and the night.  It’s a day of the month – the first day of the month – and that includes the night too just like it is here in the Hebrew: "And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights" [Genesis 7:12].  That refers to the light and the darkness.  Up here in the verse before: "the seventeenth day of the month" [Genesis 7:11], the same yom, well, that refers to the day as such. 

Well, you have one other instance of this I have chosen here.  Moses says in the tenth chapter of Deuteronomy and the tenth verse: "And I stayed in the mount, according to the first time, forty days" – forty yom – "and forty nights; and the Lord harkened to me at that time also, and the Lord did not destroy thee" [Deuteronomy 10:10].

So we find in the Bible, in the Bible, that word yom referring to an age, to an era, to a time – an indefinite time.  We find that same word yom referring to time itself, and we find that word yom referring to a solar day, the revolution of the earth.  And we find that word referring to the journey – journey of the earth, journey of the sun across the sky, the turning over of the earth and the sun shining upon it. 

So in the word yom itself, you don’t find an answer.  Those six days of creation, as far as the word itself is concerned, those six days of creation could refer to six great, indefinite periods of time. 

"Well, why is it that you are so dead sure that those six days were days of the turning of the sun?  It’s not in the Hebrew language.  The word can be used to refer to an eon, to an era, to an age just as much as it can be made to refer to a solar day."

All right, I’ll tell you why, now, that I think that these days of creation were solar days.  First of all, the reading of the story sounds like it.  When you read the story, if you didn’t have some fellow coming along and saying, "Did you know those are eons there – those are ages; those are 500,000 years apiece?" – if you did not have somebody to suggest that to you, you would never have guessed in your life that there was anything meant here except a day.  It sounds like it when you read the story.  And I haven’t time to read the story, but you have already.  When you read the story:

 

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.

[Genesis 1:3-5]

 

Does that sound like an eon to you? 

 

And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, let it divide the waters from the waters." 

God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament . . .

[Genesis 1:6-7]

 

All of that water up there in the sky, and you got more than an ocean of it up there in the sky.  If all the water up there in the sky were to fall down on this world, we’d be buried thousands of feet under water right this minute.  You’ve a great, terrific ocean up there in the sky above you, and you’ve got one down here on this earth all around you; and so, God divided them.

 

And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. 

[Genesis 1:8]

 

Does that sound like an eon to you?  I mean, just reading it along, it sounds as though Moses meant a day. 

All right, I got a lot of reasons to bolster that.  Now, I am saying that the author of this, Moses, when he wrote this chapter, he had in mind a day – a day.  All right, now I want to show you that.

 Over here in the twentieth chapter of the Book of Exodus, in the twentieth chapter of the Book of Exodus, he starts there writing down in this book the Ten Commandments from the Lord God [Exodus 20:1-17], and in the writing of the Ten Commandments, he comes to the [fourth] one: zachowr et yom hashabbat [Exodus 20:8].

Now, you know enough Hebrew to translate that:  zachowr, "remember;" et, that’s just the sign of the accusative; yom, and we know what yom is, "day;" ha is "the;" shabbat, "sabbath."

 

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work . . . thy son, thy daughter . . . the maidservant, thy cattle, the stranger . . .

For in six yom –

in six days –

the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh yom: wherefore the Lord blessed the seventh yom, and hallowed it. 

[Exodus 20:8-11]

 

Now, when you read that, you don’t get the idea that those days are eons and ages do you?  I believe a man could read that passage 500,000 years, what they say one of those eons is, and he would never get any idea that it referred to any other thing than a day just as you know a day.

Up until the twentieth chapter of the Book of Exodus, all days were alike, every one of them as they were from the creation, but God gave that seventh day as a sign to Israel, not to us.  In the thirty-first chapter of the Book of Exodus, this same one, He says:

 

Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, "Verily My sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations; that you may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you."

[Exodus 31:13]

 

"Wherefore the children of Israel keep the Sabbath –

that seventh day –

to observe the sabbath throughout their generations . . .   

"It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel for ever:  for in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He rested, and was refreshed."  

[Exodus 31:16-17]

 

Now, I’m saying that it sounds as though, when you read this – when you read this, it sounds as though when Moses wrote it, he meant a day.

All right, now, let’s go to the next reason.  Now, you look over here in the way Moses wrote it.  Not only does it sound like it, not only as Moses wrote it does it seem that he intended for it to be a day, but he defined it.  Look at this: wayhi ereb wayhi boker yom one – "And the evening and the morning were the first day" [Genesis 1:5] – day one. 

Does that sound like an eon to you?  "And the evening and the morning," or, we’d put it around, turn it around, "and the morning and the evening were the first day."

Well, somebody comes along and they say, "Now, Preacher, that is impossible because God never set up there in the sky the sun and the moon until the fourth day, so how could there be an evening and a morning on the first day?"

Well, the reason is very simple: the evening and the morning that God created was not then dependent upon the sun and the moon for they were blackened out.  They were darkened out, and no ray of the sun came upon this earth.  But the earth was here in its chaotic state and it was revolving just like God had made it from creation, and when God created light, cosmic light – and we’ll take that a little later on – when God created light – anytime you think that the light is dependant on the sun, listen, there’s lots of kinds of light that doesn’t come from the sun, lots of kinds.  Many kinds of light does not come from the sun.  Light is a creature.  It is a creation just like the sun is a creation, and the moon’s a creation, and the world is a creation.  Light is a creation and doesn’t depend upon the sun at all.  It just happens to have light in it. 

God created light, and this earth was turning over, and it made evening and morning: twenty-four hours, light and darkness.  God made it that way.  And the setting of the sun up there in the sky on the fourth day [Genesis 1:14-19] has nothing at all to do with the revolution of this earth.  The earth was revolving, evening and morning, from the beginning of the creation, and when God set those lights up there in the heavens, they’d been set there from the beginning of creation.  But He never cleared this thing out and re-created this thing for those lights up there, those luminaries – those "lamp holders," the Hebrew says – until that fourth day.  But that sure reads like a day: "the evening and the morning were the first day" [Genesis 1:5] yom one. 

All right, I’ve got another reason why that thing looks as though it’s one day.  If that’s an eon, it sure doesn’t sound like it.  Look at this: wayomer, wayomer – that’s the third verse [Genesis 1:3].  Wayomer – I guess that wayomer is used in the Hebrew Bible the Lord only knows how many thousands of times.  Wayomer Elohim: "and He said God – and God said – yehiowr wayhi owr" [Genesis 1:3].

Doesn’t that sound like an instantaneous command?  It was.  "And God said" – wayomer Elohim – "and God said yehi, "be, exist," owr "light."  Not the sun, not the stars, not anything else – light, the creation of light.  And I say it doesn’t depend on the sun at all.  There are lots of kinds of light besides sunlight.  Yehi owr, "light," wayhi owr, "and light was" – just like that. 

Now, you come along and tell me that took 500,000 years to do that.  Well, Roddy, it doesn’t sound that way, does it?  Five hundred thousand years, yehi owr – 500,000 years, yehi owr.  It doesn’t sound that way.  It doesn’t sound that way even to you, does it?  I don’t see it.  I – when I read it, I cannot see that.  "And God said, ‘Let there be light’" [Genesis 1:3] and 500,000 years, one eon, passed – took that long to create light. 

No.  The whole thing – now, I take that as just one.  It’s all that way.  The whole thing gives you the impression of being instantaneous, just like that.  God said it. That’s where you get that word "fiat."  That’s the Latin translation of it: fiat "let it be."  God said – fiat – "let it be!"  And that’s where you get the word, a thing done by fiat – just said it.

All right, got another reason here.  Not only does that thing look like it was done instantaneously, but over here in this third day, you’ve got the world of botany created.  Now, look at it:

 

And God said, "Let the waters under heavens be gathered together in one place, dry land appeared:" and it is so. 

God called the dry land Earth; and the gathered together waters called He Seas:  And God saw it was good.

And God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth" . . .  

[Genesis1:9-11]

 

The seed was already in the earth.  Now, you see, you got to go back now to what I said the first time [How God Made the World; How The World Was Made II].  All of this ought to be said just one time, but you don’t have the opportunity in these little periods.  You remember I said back there God created the heavens and the earth [Genesis 1:1], and it was beautiful, and Satan was its lord.  He was the archangel that covered [Ezekiel 28:12-15].  He was the most beautiful of all God’s creations [Ezekiel 28:11] and so powerful that even the archangel Michael dared not rebuke him but say: "the Lord rebuke thee" [Jude 1:9].

And sin was found in him [Ezekiel 28:15], and this beautiful, beautiful earth that God had made, this beautiful world was destroyed [Genesis 1:2].  And all animal life perished because down here God creates it, but He doesn’t create this seed.  Says here that it was in the earth, and God said, "Now, you start springing forth" [from Genesis 1:11].  It is all down there underneath those continents, buried in the sea.  That great, vast, cataclysmic catastrophe – overwhelming destruction of this world – now, that’s where your eons come in and your multiplied thousands of geological ages come in.  Nobody knows.  Nobody could guess. 

When did God make those strata?  When did God lay down the pillars of the earth?  When did God create water and soil?  When did God make all of these?  Nobody knows.  Nobody knows.  But some time in those dim ages of the past, sin came, and Satan fell, and with him "and the earth became without form and void, and the Spirit of God brooded over the face of the waters" [from Genesis 1:2].

Now, on that third day, it says: "And the Lord spoke to His seed" down there in that earth, down there in that soil, "and the Lord spoke to it and said, ‘Now grow; now grow" [Genesis 1:11].  And it began to grow: the fruit tree, the herb – each one after his kind [Genesis 1:12].  And the evening and the morning are that same thing again: wayhi ereb, "the evening," wayhi boker, "the morning," yom three [Genesis 1:13]. 

All right, now I want you to look at the world of botany.  If it is true that these days are eons, they are ages, then the usual guess for an age is about 500,000 years, they say, then you had 250,000 years of darkness and 250,000 years of light, evening and morning. 

I’d like to see some kind of a plant grow in 250,000 years of glacial, icy darkness.  Why, it’s preposterous.  It’s unthinkable.  You just don’t ever do that.  Even God doesn’t do that.  It just doesn’t enter into the picture.  You just don’t think of it like that.  It just isn’t.  In those dark and glacial periods when this earth was covered with ice and snow and the deep was frozen, or else was dark and troubled waters, you never had any light.  It was a dead continent.  It was a dead planet. 

It says here: "And the earth became empty and unfurnished" [Genesis 1:2].  Wasn’t anything like that.  Yet Isaiah said God didn’t create it tohu wabohu, empty and unfurnished [Genesis 1:2; Isaiah 45:18].  God made it beautiful and glorious [Ezekiel 28:13-14], and it became that way. 

And in those dark and glacial icy ages, nothing grew – nothing.  But now in the re-creation of this world, on that third day, God speaks to His seed, and they all begin to sprout [Genesis 1:11-13].  Why, you say, "Now, I don’t see how that’s possible."  Why, bless your heart, that’s possible every day and hour of your life.  Every one of those little old seeds that God speaks to in the soil, do you speak to it?  Do you? 

"Oh, I do at my house, Preacher." 

We’ll all come over to your house and see you speak to a seed and make it grow.  Let me take out the little germ in that little wheat seed, and you speak to it and make it grow. 

Why, God does it all the time, every day of this life.  He’s speaking to His seed, and they grow, and each one after its kind just like it says here: that little seed, and it’ll grow into rice; and that little seed, and it’ll grow into oats; and that little seed, and it’ll grow into wheat; and that little seed, and it’ll grow into barley.  And I’m so dumb and ignorant that I can’t even look at one and say hardly whether this is rice or wheat or barley or oats or what it is: it all looks just about the same to me. 

But the little seed knows, and you taught it.  Ah, brother, you are somebody smart.  You taught that little seed to know that this is wheat and this is oats and this is barley. 

No sir, God did that!  God did it just like He did it here.  God spoke to His seed and they began to grow in the earth [Genesis 1:12-13].  And God does that today.  He speaks to His seed today, and they begin to grow.  The only thing we got to do is ask God for a little rain so they will.  Yes, sir.  That’s the Lord’s doings, and it never happens in a glacial darkness.

All right, we have to hurry – just one or two minutes more.  How do you know that’s a day?  All right, here is one way – there is never an exception to this: whenever in the Hebrew language a numeral is used with yom it refers to a solar day, always, always.  If you have the thirteenth day or the first day or the third day or the fifth day or whatever day, if a numeral is used with it, it always refers to a solar day. 

Now, over here in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Exodus, now, you look at the figures that are used with these days and you see if they’re not all just ordinary days.  Now, this lamb, this Passover lamb, beginning at the fifth verse:

 

Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it from the sheep, or from the goats:

And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day –

now there you have a numeral with a yom, the fourteenth yom

the fourteenth day of the same month . . .

[Exodus 12:5-6]

 

You’re to keep it four days until it becomes identified with your family.  All right, now look at the fourteenth verse:

 

This day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever.

Seven yom, seven days, shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first yom, the first day, ye shall put away all the leaven out of the house: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first yom until the seventh yom, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.

 And in the first yom there shall be a holy convocation, and in the seventh yom there shall be an holy convocation to you . . .

[Exodus 12:14-16]

 

You see those numbers?  There’s no exception to that.  Wherever in the Bible, wherever in the Bible you have a numeral with the yom, with the "day," it always refers to a solar day – always.

Well, now look at another instance of that.  It’s all through the Bible.  It’s endless.  In Leviticus, it says here about this sacrifice in the seventh of Leviticus and the sixteenth, seventeenth verses:

 

If the sacrifice of his offering be a vow, or a voluntary offering, it shall be eaten the same day –

all right, that’s one –

                        and on the morrow –

that’s two –

                        the remainder of it shall be eaten:

But the remainder of the flesh of the sacrifice on the third day –

third yom

                        shall be burned with fire.

[Leviticus 7:16-17]

 

You see, "third."  There’s your numeral again: "third yom."  There’s no exception.  Wherever in the Bible that word is used, a numeral with yom, it refers, without exception, it always refers to a day.

Now, I have just one other here out of a thousand that you could choose.  In the seventh chapter of the Book of Numbers, all those princes, one from each of the twelve tribes, is bringing a gift [Numbers 7:1-3].  All right, the twelfth verse: "Now he that offered his offering the first yom was . . . Judah" [Numbers 7:12].  Now the eighteenth verse, on the second yom, it was Issachar [Numbers 7:18].  On the third yom, it was Zebulun [Numbers 7:24].  On the fourth yom, it was Reuben [Numbers 7:30].  On the fifth yom, it was Simeon [Numbers 7:36].  On the sixth yom, it was Gad [Numbers 7:42].  On the seventh yom, it was Ephraim [Numbers 7:48].  On the eighth yom, it was Manasseh [Numbers 7:54].  On the ninth yom, it was Benjamin [Numbers 7:60].  On the tenth yom, it was Dan [Numbers 7:66].  On the eleventh yom, it was Asher [Numbers 7:72].  And on the twelfth yom, it was Naphtali [Numbers 7:78].

All through your Bible, there’s no exception: wherever there is a numeral used with that word yom, it always refers to a solar day – always. 

So, when I turn back here to the first chapter of Genesis, there is the numeral used with the yom.

 

And the evening and the morning were the one yom –

you have it translated "first" –

                        one yom . . .

And the evening and the morning were the yom two . . .

And the evening and the morning were the yom three . . .

[Genesis 1:5, 8, 13]

 

Wherever those numerals are used with the word yom, it always refers to a solar day. 

All right, one last hurried word, and then we have to quit.  One last hurried word here.  How do you know these days are days, solar days, turning of the earth, the days?  How do you know that?  Well, here is an indication.  It says here, on the sixth day, on the sixth yom:

 

God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness . . .

So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.

And God saw that every thing He had made was good.  And the evening and the morning were the sixth day –

so Adam was created on the sixth day –

So the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all that He had made. 

[from Genesis 1:26-27, 31; 2:1-2]

 

Then you have the story of the fall of Adam after the seventh day of rest [Genesis 3:1-24].

Now, you look at this.  If these days are eons, if they are ages, Adam was created in the sixth eon, in the sixth age [Genesis 1:26-31], and God rested the seventh eon, the seventh age [Genesis 2:1-3].  Then you have the story of Adam’s fall in this age, in our era [Genesis 3:1-24].  Reckon how old Adam was if these days are eons? 

Well, the first of his life, he was created in the sixth eon [Genesis 1:26-31].  Let’s say it was 500,000 years.  Well, let’s say he was created in the middle of it.  Well, the sixth age, then, Adam lived 250,000 years in the sixth age. 

Now, he lived throughout the seventh age [Genesis 2:1-3], so let’s say that’s 500,000 years as they want to say it is.  So he’s 500,000 years in the seventh age, he’s at least 250,000 years in the sixth age, so he’s already 750,000 years old.  And then you get to our age, our present age, and if you’re going to keep it ages, you know, well, let’s say that surely he lived a while in our age, in this age, so let’s add, just to be conservative, let’s add a number – oh, let’s say a 100,000 years at least for this age.  So Adam was at least 850,000 years old when he fell. 

I’ll tell you what you ought to do. You just ought to take the thing and just throw it out, just throw it out – just foolishness, silliness, idiocy.  Well, that’s what the scientist does.  They look upon that as childish imagination: "That’s foolishness."  But the reason they do is they say this is what it means and they interpret it like this, then on the basis of that interpretation, they ridicule it and make fun of it!

Same thing happened to me when I was a boy.  My Bible said right there under Genesis 1:1: "BC 4004."  That’s what it said.  That’s what it said: "BC 4004."  It said that in the Bible I had as a boy.  Then when I’s a kid, I went out there when they first opened Carlsbad Cavern.  We went through with lights in our hands, and they’d just found it.  That fellow White – Jim White [James Larkin White, 1882-1946], Texas cow poke – he’d just found that cavern. 

And we went through that thing with lights when I was a boy, and some of those scientists there that were looking and poking around there said that big stalagmite called The Rock of Ages is twenty million years old.  And I went home and looked in my Bible, and it said there in my Bible, God created the heavens and earth 4004 BC.  And I tell you, I had the awfulest time when I’s a youngster that you ever saw in your life.  I had a hard time.

Well, what is the matter?  There’s nothing the matter with that stalagmite being 40 million, or 80 million, or 500 billion years old if it’s that way.  That doesn’t matter, and there’s nothing wrong with my Bible.  What was the matter was the interpretation thereof: sticking those things in there 4004 BC.  That’s what’s the matter. 

And that’s what’s the matter with our world today.  We take God’s Word and put an interpretation upon it and then laugh at it and ridicule it.  Let’s throw away the interpretation, that’s what man said, and let’s stay with what God says.  And as surely as the sun shines and the moon at night, you’ll find what God has written in His Book to be just exactly what God has written in His sky.

And you got to go to Sunday school.  Let’s sing our song, Billy.  While we sing this song, somebody give his heart to the Lord or put his life with us in the church, you come while we stand and sing. 

 

THE "DAYS" OF CREATION

Dr. W. A. Criswell

Genesis 2:21-25

10-14-56

 

I.             
Day

1.    Sounds like one
day equals 24 hours

2.    Evening and
morning

3.    Text implies
instantaneousness of accomplishments

4.    Third day the vast
world of botany born

II.           
In Hebrew, solar day is intended

III.          
Man appears the sixth day