Table of Contents
- Does God exist?
(Chapter 1)
- Six days? Really?
(Chapter 2)
- What about ‘gap’ theories?
(Chapter 3)
- What about carbon dating?
(Chapter 4)
- How can we see distant stars in a young universe?
(Chapter 5)
- How did bad things come about?
(Chapter 6)
- What about arguments for evolution?
(Chapter 7)
- Who was Cain’s wife?
(Chapter 8)
- Were the Nephilim extraterrestrials?
(Chapter 9)
- Was Noah’s Flood global?
(Chapter 10)
- What about continental drift?
(Chapter 11)
- Noah’s Flood-what about all that water?
(Chapter 12)
- How did the animals fit on Noah’s Ark?
(Chapter 13 &
Chapter 14)
- Where are all the human fossils?
(Chapter 15)
- What about the Ice Age?
(Chapter 16)
- How did animals get to Australia?
(Chapter 17)
- How did all the different ‘races’ arise?
(Chapter 18)
- What about dinosaurs?
(Chapter 19)
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Study guide
Creation Answers Book
by Dr Don Batten, Dr David Catchpoole, Dr Jonathan Sarfati, and Dr Carl Wieland
Lesson 2: Six Days? Really?
Textbook
The Creation Answers Book, Chapter 2
Text
Why is it important? (pp. 27–32)
Discussion questions
How does an acceptance of ‘millions of years’ of Earth history affect the message of the Gospel? (See also pages 29–30, 52.)
If one believes that human death came into the world through sin sometime after the first identifiable humans evolved, but that animal death is normal, natural and God’s
way of doing things, how does such a view undermine the Gospel?
Text
Why ‘Long Days’? (pp. 31–32)
Discussion questions
- What is the main reason some people say that
Genesis 1 speaks of long ages?
- What is meant by the term ‘special revelation’? What is ‘general revelation’? Why is it inappropriate to refer to
‘general revelation’ as the ‘67th book of the Bible’? (See General and Special
Revelation and The Canonisation of ‘Nature’ for more information.)
- Why is it improper and unwise to use the findings of secular ‘origins’ science to interpret Scripture? See:
Text
How has Genesis been understood in the past? (pp. 32–35)
Discussion
- List two reasons for looking at the history of how Genesis has been interpreted.
- It has been claimed that, before long-age beliefs became main-stream, there was a minority view that God may have created instantly, and so that a day
did not really mean a 24-hour day
- How did the various ‘church fathers’ view Genesis? (See also Q&A:
Genesis—Church Fathers and Reformers.) Choose one leader and write a paper discussing his views of Genesis.
- Do the ‘church fathers’ give any support to adding billions of years to the Bible?
- What are some of the problems of tracing the ‘young-earth creationist’ movement back to the invention of George McCready Price in the
1920s?
Text
Why must the Creation Week days ‘ordinary’ days? (pp. 36-41)
Discussion questions
- Look up the word ‘day’ in a Hebrew
lexicon. Which Hebrew word refers to normal-length (approximately 24 hours) days? Which Hebrew words refer to long periods of time? What other Hebrew words are translated
‘day’? Which Hebrew word for ‘day’ is used in
Genesis 1? (See also How
long were the days of Genesis 1?)
- Why is it important to consider the context when determining the meaning of a word?
- How do we know the ‘days’ referred to in Genesis 1 were normal-length and not long periods of time?
- What is the basis for our month? Our year? The seasons? The seven day week?
Text
Other arguments against six days (pp. 41–45)
Discussion questions
- What is significant about God creating the Sun on Day 4, rather than on Day 1?
- Why should 2 Peter 3:8 not be
used to justify the idea that the creation days were long periods of time? (See also 2 Peter 3:8.)
- How would you respond to someone who claimed that you were limiting God by believing that He created in six earth-rotation days?
- Why should Genesis 2 be considered
complementary to Genesis 1, and not contradictory? (See also
Do Genesis 1 and 2 contradict each other?)
- What kinds of animals did Adam name on the Sixth Day? (See also Naming the animals: all in
a day’s work for Adam.)
- In your own words, explain why the first three days of Creation should be considered ordinary days, even though the Sun was not created until Day 4.
(See also How could the days of Genesis 1 be literal if the sun wasn t created
until Day 4?)
Text
Is Genesis poetry / figurative, a theological argument (polemic)
and so it is not history? (The Framework hypothesis) (pp. 45–50)
Discussion questions
- It is widely held that there are literary devices within the text of
Genesis 1 that preclude the genre being taken as straight prose;
for instance, a lot of key words appearing multiples of seven times, and various other patterns within the text.
- Examine some of these alleged literary devices and comment on their significance
- Explain why the presence of literary devices does not imply that Genesis (or any text) might not be history. (See also
Should Genesis be taken literally?)
- What is the ‘triads of days’ idea?
- Name three ‘out of sequence’ events in
Genesis 1 that argue against the ‘triads of days’ idea.
- List some of the problems with the framework hypothesis reading of
Genesis 2:5. (See also
An understanding of Genesis 2:5)
- It is claimed that the structure of Genesis
1 deliberately mirrors the structure found in ancient pagan origins accounts (which, it is claimed, pre-dated
Genesis 1), and stands as a polemic against these pagan accounts.
Research one of these accounts (see Genesis and the Lost Tablets or
A comparative study of the flood accounts in the Gilgamesh Epic and Genesis)
- What are some of the corresponding features of the text? How strong is the correspondence?
- Is there any evidence that it pre-dates or post-dates Genesis?
- What are the problems with assigning a late date for Genesis (see
Archaeologist confirms creation and the Bible)
- Is there any evidence that Genesis 1
was written for a specific audience at a specific time in history, and that as such it does not have anything to say about the mechanism of creation?
Text
Other problems with long days and similar interpretations (pp. 51–52)
Discussion questions
- List three reasons (apart from the words of Scripture, itself) for why the days of creation could not have been long periods of time.
- How does the evolutionary order differ from the biblical order of Creation?
Text
Long-age Compromises (pp. 27–28)
Discussion questions
- What is ‘theistic evolution’? What are some theological and scientific problems with accepting this idea? (See also
Creation Compromises—Theistic Evolution.)
- What is ‘progressive creation’? List some theological and scientific problems with this view. (See also
Creation Compromises—Progressive Creationism.)
- Why do those who do not take Genesis straightforwardly tend towards a local—rather than global—Flood?
Additional reading: Some questions for theistic evolutionists and ‘progressive
creationists’
Text
Does it really matter? (pp. 27–31, 52)
Discussion questions
- Why is it important to accept that the days mentioned in
Genesis 1 are regular in length?
- What should be our attitude toward Scripture?
Additional Resource:
15 Reasons to Take Genesis as History (booklet)
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