A day to us is 24 hours. But is a day to God also 24 hours, as some argue?
A day on Earth is 24 hours, but a day on Mars is not exactly 24 hours, and the length of a day varies across the planets. So the obvious question is this: how long is a day to God who is not a full time inhabitant of Earth?
The Bible gives us an important clue:
“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
This is explicit. A day to God is like a thousand years. It is not necessarily saying that one divine day is exactly 1,000 years, but it is clearly showing that God does not experience time the way we do. A “day” can mean a long period of time, depending on the context. That makes sense. Why would an eternal God be subject to an Earth day as we are? He is not.
Further proof comes from the creation account itself. Some argue that God created the sun on the fourth day. But if the sun was created on the fourth day, then how can the first three days be ordinary 24-hour solar days? A 24-hour Earth day depends on the sun. This creates a contradiction for those who insist that every creation day must be a literal 24-hour period.
Now consider the third day. God created plants, and these plants were able to sprout, bear fruit, produce seed, and fill the earth. That sounds like a process, not something confined to a single 24-hour period.
Then there is the seventh day, when God rested. Where does the Bible say that God stopped resting after 24 hours? It does not. In fact, there is no eighth day, ninth day, or tenth day of creation. God is no longer creating in the same sense described in Genesis, which suggests that the seventh day continues. If that is the case, then the seventh day is clearly not a 24-hour period.
Some may respond by pointing to the phrase “evening and morning”. But this does not have to mean a literal night followed by a literal morning. It can also represent a movement from darkness to light, or from something not existing to something existing. The Bible uses symbolic language, idioms, and parables throughout.
For example, Revelation 1:16 speaks of a sharp sword coming out of Christ’s mouth. Do we believe Jesus is literally returning with a physical sword sticking out of his mouth? Of course not. The image represents the power of his words and judgement. Likewise, “evening and morning” can carry meaning beyond a strict 24-hour cycle.
In summary, if a day to God is like a thousand years, then the evening and morning within one of God’s days does not need to fit inside a 24-hour period. That is a straightforward conclusion.
There is another example. Adam was told that in the day he ate from the tree, he would die. Yet Adam did not physically die within 24 hours. So again, the word “day” cannot always mean a literal 24-hour period. It depends on the context.
Genesis 2:4 makes this even clearer:
“These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.”
Here, the word “day” is used to describe the whole creation period. Was all creation completed in one 24-hour day? No. If someone argues that creation took six literal 24-hour days, then they must also explain why Genesis 2:4 refers to the whole creation event as happening “in the day” that God made the heavens and the earth.
That shows the problem clearly. If “day” must always mean 24 hours, then the text appears to contradict itself. But if “day” can mean a period of time depending on context, the contradiction disappears.
So the argument is simple: a biblical “day” does not always mean 24 hours. In the creation account, there are strong reasons to understand the days as periods of time rather than ordinary Earth days.
So the claim that the Bible clearly teaches six creation days of exactly 24 hours is not supported by the text.
GeneBalthrop.
