Ready, Aim, Fire

“This charge I commit unto thee…that thou mightest war a good warfare” (1 Timothy 1:18)

I think the below statements regarding the word “day” in the Genesis account of creation, have excellent reasoning ability attached to them! They are easy to know and remember and use next time you find yourself in a conversation with anyone regarding the topic of Theistic Evolution or the “day age” (long period of time) theory. Those 3 words, know, remember, and use are vital to a good discussion regarding the accuracy of scripture. I appreciate believers who have a greater understanding of these issues and a passion to see them righted, who take time to do the research, and then give us the tools we need in order to confidently engage a skeptic—and I REALLY appreciate when those tools are easy for my little mind to grasp (and therefore remember and actually use.)

We need to have “the truth” established within us...something to draw from in order to refute or counter “the lie” being thrown our way. We should strive to be prepared for the topic...! (the topic being anything that would defy sound doctrine—wouldn't that be prudent and wise?) This is crucial—especially for me—for I am easily flustered and feel ignorant when I am with a person who shoots down any scriptural text with impudence.

Mark Zook, missionary to Papua, Indonesia, taught the importance of using questions to make someone doubt their own position. What do you mean by that? is a good one for starters. Being confident of the truth (and of your own belief), coupled with good questions that shed light on the holes in someone else’s theory, is a powerful approach. This, of course, means we must fill our satchels with the proper ammunition and practice loading our guns and firing. (Firing on the lie…not the person believing the lie!) Using questions allows you the ability to be winsome and non-confrontational instead of negative and arrogant. You don’t want to encourage someone to hate you…but to question their own belief. It isn’t about getting your point across…it is about a lost soul or misguided believer coming to “the knowledge of the truth.”

This following article was written for a Creation Blog—it was used to remind me that God’s Word is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. It is the weapon He has given to us to use! God can take care of Himself and He defends His Word with accuracy every single time. It is our responsibility to be aware of the battles around us (the war on creation, on life, etc.) and then properly train and fight, as if to gain the victory! Read the Word daily…read it looking for specific truth. This teaches us how to handle our weapon, how to pull the sword out of its sheath and gain the strength needed to hold such a powerful piece of defense for long periods of time. Ask God to teach you how to defend His Word. We need to have the ability to wield our weapon with determined precision and valour! This is important if we are to fully engage the enemy—and see his defeat. Memorization, meditation, and opening our mouths to “make Christ known” are excellent field exercises to make us fit soldiers of the cross. There are also many sites online that can help us do just that—so many books written, so many dvd’s created, so many tracts published. These resources are often very easy to watch or read and grasp (like the blog post below) and were created in order to properly outfit the believer. Pick a topic and study it…glean from others and then go use what you have gleaned to the glory of the Lord.

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The Book of Genesis in the Bible says God created the universe, and everything in it, in six days. Some people have tried to harmonize this description with the theory of evolution by suggesting that the “days” in Genesis must have been long periods of time, or ages.

But the Bible has its own amazing way of showing that the long “ages” idea is wrong. The days were real, ordinary, solar days of 24 hours each.

Here are the reasons why:

Genesis 1:14 says God created the lights to divide day from night, and to be for signs, for seasons, for days, and for years. If the days are ages, then what are the years.

If a day is an age, then what is a night? The concept becomes ludicrous when you try to stretch the length of a day.

Whenever the word “day” in the Bible is limited by a number (such as the first day, the third day, the sixth day) it always means a 24-hour day.

Whenever the word “day” is used with the phrase “evening and morning,” it always means an ordinary night-day cycle.

Among the Ten Commandments that God gave to Israel, recorded in Exodus 20, God said that His creation in six days followed by a day of rest was to be the pattern for the Israelites' working week: six days of labor followed by a day of rest. “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work …,” God said, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.” This would not make sense if they had to work for six million years followed by a million years of rest.

Some people think that a day may mean a thousand years, because the Apostle Peter said that “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). But Peter did not say a day is a thousand years, but it is as a thousand years. He is saying that God is outside time, that a thousand years are no more significant than a day in God's eternal scheme of things. People who say Peter meant that a day is a thousand years are ignoring the second part of Peter's statement, which says a thousand years are as one day. How could we count how many days are in a thousand years if a day only means a thousand years? It becomes silly when you try to force a meaning that wasn't intended.

The passage about a day being as a thousand years has also been said to mean that a day is simply a long period of time. But that makes nonsense of Peter's statement. It would mean that Peter was saying that “a long period of time is a thousand years.” See how ridiculous things get when you stray from the straight meaning of Scripture?

The clear meaning of the days of creation is the obvious one: they were literal, ordinary, 24-hour days. Nothing more and nothing less.

—www.creationtips.com