The Bible’s days are numbered!

by David Catchpoole

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‘Only a small proportion of the students would profess a belief in Christ,’ the Religious Studies teacher at a large church-run high school warned me privately, a few moments before I was due to address an assembly of hundreds of senior-grade students re creation/evolution.

‘That’s not unusual at Christian schools,’ I replied, ‘but what’s their knowledge of the Bible like? Even if they don’t believe it, do they know what Genesis says?’

‘Oh yes,’ replied the Religion Studies teacher. ‘During this past semester we’ve been working through the first eleven chapters of Genesis, in preparation for your visit today.’

So, after the Religious Studies teacher had introduced me to the assembled students, and welcomed me onto the stage, I began my presentation.

‘I’d like to start by testing your knowledge of the Creation account in the Bible. I’m not asking if you believe it—that’s a different matter—I’m just looking to get an idea of how well you know what the Bible says about Creation. So, here’s a simple True/False question.’

I then displayed a slide (on the huge screen in the assembly hall) with these words:

I said, ‘So, is that what the Bible says? True, or False? Hands up those who say “True”.’

No-one put up their hand.

‘False?’ I asked, and every hand went up.

‘Okay then, how about this?’, I asked, displaying this slide:

Once again, every hand went up for ‘False’.

‘Well, how about this?’, I asked.

When every hand went up once again for ‘False’, I said, ‘Look, how much longer do I need to go—am I heading in the right direction?’

‘NO’, they chorused.

‘Alright then, you win, we’ll go back the other way—how’s this,’ I said with an air of resignation, displaying this slide:

‘Okay,’ I asked, ‘Who says “True”?’, and a sea of hands went up.

‘And who says “False”?

Fewer than 10 students, mostly seated in the front rows in full view of the rest of the assembly, raised their hands.

‘Oh! Do you see that?!’, I said, with an air of being shocked, looking at the wider assembly but pointing directly at the students who’d indicated ‘False’ re seven-day creation. ‘How brazen is that?! And at a Christian school, too!’

I flashed a quick smile at my targeted minority of ‘victims’, who all had grins on their faces (as did the Religious Studies teacher), and by now many students in the rest of the assembly were beginning to murmur to one another, because (as the teacher later confirmed to me) the handful of students who’d answered ‘False’ to ‘7 days’ were well known as unashamed Bible-believers. So, I suspect it was dawning on the rest of the assembly that they (i.e. the majority) had given a wrong answer to ‘7 days’, and were puzzling over how this could be.

‘Well, you know what?,’ I said, ‘These students who said “False” are correct! Because the Bible actually says … ’ and I immediately displayed this slide:

There was a loud exclamation from the assembly, followed by a roar of excited chatter among themselves—it took nearly a minute for the hubbub to die down, before I could proceed with the rest of the presentation.¹

Apart from the obvious value of establishing rapport with the students at the start of my address to them, the primary reason I go through this sequence of slides is that it makes the crucial point that a straightforward reading of the Bible can allow no conclusion other than it says that God made everything in 6 days. Not 7, or 8, or 10 days, or longer. Not 10 weeks or months or years or millions or billions of years. In six days.

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Thus there was no need for me to point out what they had learnt earlier in the semester, i.e. that the Creation days in the Bible are numbered, and that they’re numbered from one to six.² There was no need for me to spell out that when the word ‘day’ appears with a number it means (according to a straightforward reading of the text) an ordinary day.

The students (whether believer or unbeliever) demonstrated by their answer telling me that I was initially going in the wrong direction that they understood that when the Bible says that the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the seas, and all that is in them, in six days, it means in six days.

In six days!

No more, no less.

Related articles

• How long were the days of Genesis 1?
• Ministry programs for your church or organization
• 2 Peter 3:8—‘one day is like a thousand years’
• The numbering pattern of Genesis

Further reading

• Creation days and Orthodox Jewish tradition

Recommended Resources

15 Reasons to Take Genesis as History

by Don Batten and Jonathan Sarfati

Many have been misled into thinking that the Genesis account of creation is not actual history, but is just some sort of theological argument (‘polemic’). This small book succinctly shows why those who believe in the inspiration of Scripture have no intellectually honest choice but to take Genesis as straight-forward history, just as Jesus did. It powerfully challenges one of the major problems in the church today that affects the authority of the entire Bible. Read it, and give it to your pastor or particularly anyone contemplating theological training—it could save them from getting derailed by some of the misleading arguments common in theological academia.

References

1. CMI speaker presentations demonstrate that there are straightforward answers to the common objections and queries people have relating to the creation/evolution issue, which are some of the most frequent objections to faith in Christ. For further info, see under ‘Speaking and direct ministry’ on the What we do page. Return to text.
2. Genesis chapter 1, verses 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31. Return to text.

Published: 5 August 2008(GMT+10)

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