Attempts at compromise

[Attempts at compromise by Dr. Jason Lisle] "The belief in billions of years has a stranglehold on our culture today—even within the church. Many professing Christians have been taken in by the fallacious distant starlight argument or other eisegetical claims involving anti-biblical assumptions. As a result, many Christians have compromised; they have attempted to “add” the billions of years to the Bible. One of the most common methods of trying to believe both the Bible and the billions of years is called the “day age” position. In this view, the days of creation were not actually days, but rather were vast ages—many millions of years each. According to the day-age idea, God created over six long periods of time.

It is important to point out that even if the day-age position were true, it would not bring the biblical account into alignment with the secular story of origins since the order of events is different between the two. Recall that the big bang / naturalism view teaches that stars existed long before fruit trees which came after fish. The Bible teaches that fish were made on day 5 after the stars which were made on day 4, and after the trees which were made on day 3—regardless of how long the days were.

Day-age followers point out that the Hebrew word for day (yom) does not always indicate a “day” in the ordinary sense, but can sometimes mean an unspecified period of time. In certain contexts, “day” can refer to a longer period of time, but not in the context of the days of creation. Similarly, our English word “day” can mean an unspecified period of time in certain contexts like “back in grandfather’s day. . . .” However, it would not mean an unspecified period of time in other contexts such as “five days ago, the third day, day then night, morning of the day, evening of the day, the evening and morning.” Clearly, in the preceding phrases the word “day” must mean an ordinary day from context—not a period of time.

The Hebrew language also obeys grammatical rules, and as with English, the meaning of a word is always determined by its context. The Hebrew word for day means an ordinary day (and is never translated as “time”) when in any of the following contexts:
When combined with an ordinal (list) number (“the first day, the third day, etc.”) day means an ordinary day—not a period of time.
When associated with the word “morning,” such as “There was morning that day,” day means an ordinary day—not a period of time.
When associated with the word “evening,” such as “There was evening that day,” day means an ordinary day—not a period of time.
When evening and morning occur together, such as “There was evening and morning” (even if the word “day” is not present), this constitutes an ordinary day—not a nonspecific period of time.
When contrasted with “night,” such as “There was night then day,” the word day means an ordinary day—not a period of time.

In Genesis chapter 1, we see all of these contextual indicators used for the days of creation. The days of creation must be ordinary days from context; they cannot be long periods of time because context does not permit this. It would be wrong to try and read “day” to mean “a period of time” in Genesis 1, when the context clearly precludes such a meaning; such an error is called an unwarranted expansion of an expanded semantic field. The day-age idea is not logically sound; it is simply an unsuccessful attempt to make the Bible compatible with anti-biblical notions.

Ultimately, the Bible teaches that God created in six days and the secular opinion is that the universe evolved over billions of years. Each of us must decide whether we are going to trust the secular opinions of human beings, or the clear teaching of the Bible. As we saw in the last chapter, the Bible has always been correct when it touches upon astronomy.

It is important to remember that we are at just another point in history. Yes, people today will scoff at and ridicule a belief in a “young universe.” Then again, many of those same people will ridicule a belief in Jesus Christ being the one true God, or even the very belief in a Creator. The Bible has always been vindicated in the past. So there is no reason to cave in to mere peer pressure today." Attempts at compromise, Lisle.

“The heavens declare creation and science confirms it.” Jason Lisle

Attempts at compromise