The World Was NOT Created in Six Days

The other day, it was reported in the newspaper that EO (Dutch Evangelical Broadcasting Compagny) director Andries Knevel has distanced himself from classical creationism. He says he can no longer believe “that the earth was created in six days.” According to the director of the Evangelical Broadcasting Organization, it is no longer scientifically responsible to assume the historical reliability of the creation account in Genesis 1. For, as stated in the press release, “the universe is, according to him, about 14 billion years old, the earth itself about 4 billion.”

Andries Knevel now joins the wolves in the forest, crying out that Genesis 1 is not historically reliable. And that—from the mouth of an EO director! But how reliable is someone who turns out not even to be able to quote Scripture correctly? For the Bible nowhere says “that the earth was created in six days,” as Knevel seems to think.

Genesis 1:1 says: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” What follows in the next verse is the mention of a completely ruined world: “and the earth was [or: became] a chaos and vacant…” The rest of Genesis 1 shows how God restored this ruined world in six days.

Knevel attends a church where Exodus 20 is faithfully read every Sunday. Apparently, it has never caught his attention that it states: “…in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them…” Note carefully: it does not say created, but made in six days. Much like a bicycle repairman makes a bicycle—making, in the sense of restoring.

God once created the heavens and the earth. Perhaps even 14 billion years ago—though that number likely comes from the magician’s hat of evolution-believers. What those heavens and earth looked like—who can say? And whether, and if so, what kind of life once inhabited them—the Scriptures do not tell us. Nor how long that world existed. What we do know is that “the then world” was destroyed. That alone explains why heavens and earth later—on the second and third day, respectively—had to be made.

Be that as it may, the current world was preceded by an earlier one. That is what Scripture teaches. When science encounters millions or billions of years of prehistory (we won’t quibble over a few extra zeros), it merely confirms the reliability of Genesis 1.

Through further insight, I later discovered that the six days in Genesis 1 were days of revelation. During six days, God revealed and recorded the words of creation to humanity.

Delen: