We need to look at what is being told to us about a day in the Genesis record.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Genesis 1:5
Have you ever wondered why a Muslim would blow themselves up to gain heavenly rewards? Have you ever wondered why a Mormon would trust a book written by one man with no outside evidence to confirm it? Have you ever wondered why an atheist wants to reject God? Do people wonder why Christians trust an old book? The reason we do these things is in large part because we have a bias towards something. Our brain will believe the first thing it hears because it has no reference. If all we hear is the reaffirmation of the same thing, we can be led down the wrong road. Sometimes we are intimidated by leaders into believing what they tell us.
No matter if you are a Muslim, Mormon, Atheist, or Christian, it would be wise to once in a while to check yourself. We should step back to look at what we believe from another perspective. Even if your ideology is correct, there are probably things within that belief that you should rethink. With this in mind, I would like you to open your mind to what the Bible says and not what you were taught or what you think it means.
In the verse, I read God calls it Day when it is light, and He calls the dark period Night. Then we are told the light, and the darkness is a day. In Hebrew, this word day is the same in both cases. So what does that tell us? It tells us that the word day is just a period and is not necessarily a particular length of time. The Bible even refers to the whole week of creation as a day.
These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,
Genesis 2:4
That being said, the word day is not always used in an undefined way. While the daylight will fluctuate the first day will not. There are two reasons to understand the day as a twenty-four hour period of time that never changes. The day is described as being made up of light and darkness. The way our world works is every twenty for hours we have both night and day. The other reason is the day is being described as the first day, meaning it is part of a sequence.
What we have learned is important because the Bible is teaching us that our time cycle is not just a product of random unintelligent happenings. The mind of God orders our time dimension. There is an order to this creation, and if we refuse to acknowledge it sooner or later, these laws will condemn us.
As we will see, the day does more than tell us of time. The day is also used as an outline to describe the order of event in the creation of the world. What we should not assume though is that the events being outlined happened with a twenty-four hour period. Think of an acrostic you have heard. Think of the acrostic using GRACE. G is a literal letter and should not be considered as anything else. But in the acrostic G is to remind us that it is God who gives us what we do not deserve. G is more than the letter itself.
Using items to create an outline is also used in the book of revelation. There is seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowels which form an outline of events but doesn’t determine how long the events are. I am not telling you the creation of the world did not happen within six twenty four hour period, one hundred and forty-four hours, but I am also saying the narrative does not demand it.
We are working our way through a story that defines the world we live in. Failing to understand it will lead to a life of heartbreak and misery. It will lead us down the pathway of death.