congeal my thoughts and make the paper that much more exciting and persuasive. But not having that time, I'll just read what the paper says. Let me begin by extending my thanks and congratulations to the administration of the Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. for calling together a conference such as we are having on this point of discussion in our PCA and in our times. I'm not sure that after all is said and done, there will be many who are persuaded to change their views on this subject, which has been often considered and long discussed already. But it will surely mean that we will understand one another better and be the better prepared to take our part in the brotherly spirit in the discussions that will continue. And that has been said already, and I appreciate that. I also appreciate being involved in the discussion. I have a history of discussions on this subject. When I was a boy under 10, my brother and I were arguing evolution with a doctor's son who lived across the road in our little country town in Pennsylvania. That's been a while ago. Neither of us knew much on the subject, and indeed the field has moved ahead so far that all those early discussions are outdated. In my university work in chemical engineering, the subject did not come up much, except that the matters of radioactive decay and its possibilities for age measurement were occasionally referred to. My interests were continued, rather, by the growing literature on such matters. And after I turned to the ministry and studied at Westminster Seminary, my attention was even more directed to the biblical questions as they related to the alleged scientific evidence, evidences, and I was the more interested in the literature. Then came a major development in evolutionary thinking when S.J. Gould publicly proclaimed that the famous missing links were still missing, and that Darwin's gradual evolution could not be sustained, but that evolution preceded by accidental major mutations. Darwin is given great credit. Everybody thinks Darwin, Darwinianism, and so on, but nobody believes Darwin. That, I guess, is typical. The arguments continue. Can such mutations be induced? Apparently not. Can they be observed in the rocks? Opinions differ, but apparently not. Would one or two such mutations help or be deleterious? Michael J. Behe's example of a partial mousetrap in Darwin's Black Box, his book, is rather convincing. A partial mousetrap, his point is, will not catch fewer mice, it won't catch any. Other voices are raised. Michael Denton's book, Evolution, A Theory in Crisis. I suppose many of you know that book. I think it's one of the better of the three books here given from its positive statements. And Philip Johnson's book, Darwin on Trial, has also been much used against the current evolutionary tide, which we must add is still held widely by experts and the general public alike. Evolution is a given in the minds of an awful lot of people. This is aside from our particular problem of the age of the Earth. The evolutionary view from almost any angle requires long periods of time. But long periods of time do not require evolution. There is the remarkable recent discovery of the coelacanth fish off the eastern coast of Africa. which has not evolved but is evidently exactly like its fossil remains of allegedly some 400 million years ago. My wife and I went on a trip to Europe just recently and saw in the little magazine in the airplane a publication of the data about this coelacanth fish. It was remarkable. And it was really surprising to scientists that this fish that they had thought was long since extinct They had good casts of it in the rocks, and here it's alive, just off the coast of Africa, and allegedly from 400 million years ago. Well, now the question is the length of time, of course, and whether that's accurate or not, but it really shook a lot of scientists. Evolution demands time, but time does not automatically cause evolution. I think we should remember that. God has plenty of time. He is eternal. He is not part of our space-time universe. He is in no hurry. If he desired to create instantaneously, six 24-hour days would be too long. On the other hand, if he desired to linger over his handiwork, it would proclaim his glory during the process, however long it may have been. There's another factor of interest to me and to many. It is the remarkable argument, formulated, I believe, by Hubble in the 20s, that the universe has been expanding at phenomenal rates. Now, if you run the video backwards, a presently expanding universe reverts to a relatively small point of origin. You've seen these videos run backwards where the fellow comes out from the pool and comes up on the diving board again. Well, this is the way you could run the universe backwards. And a presently expanding universe would revert to a relatively small point of origin. This original ball, it is believed, began to expand somewhere between 10 to 20 billion years ago. Plus or minus. The Big Bang theory appears to be widely held, and recent newspaper science, for what it is worth, claims that new measurements argue that the universe will never recondense. There was a view, you know, that the Big Bang would expand, expand, and then eventually it would come back and you would have an accordion universe. And so they would keep, somehow keep, the eternality of matter. Now the point is that the claim is going at such speed and all that, that it will never come back. there was a point, according to the Big Bang theory, there was a point when matter began, which has really been shocking to a great many people. The Big Bang theory appears to be widely held. The Big Bang is a point of origin, the beginning. This is a view that has astonished scientists. Robert Jastrow, for instance, and the god of the astronomers, remarks that scientists have at last climbed over the last great hill of knowledge and have found a bunch of theologians who have been sitting there all along. That's practically his words. It is not written particularly from a Christian point of view, this book, but it is astonishing to many that the Big Bang theory seems to fit so very well with the statement, you know, of Genesis 1.1. When I was in seminary in the 1930s, I greatly enjoyed the book by James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World. He has a footnote somewhere in which he argues against the then prevailing anti-Christian view of the eternality of matter. Matter was thought to be eternal all along. He claims that cause preceding cause forever is an unthinkable philosophy. Well, maybe he's right. Maybe that's true. But that philosophy has been held by a lot of people a long time. Now the prevailing scientific view is not the eternality manner. It's nicely encapsulated in an old statement, as you may have heard before. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This advance in the argument is a very wonderful thing for theology. It is just a bit disquieting to find that the six 24-hour-a-day creation theory prevents us from using this apparent support of the fact of creation that has become almost popular. However, our arguments on the question of the length of the six days must not be overly influenced by these considerations. There is even the possibility, resurrecting somewhat the old gap theory, that the statement in Genesis 1.1 may be an overall statement consistent with the Big Bang theory, whatever you hold concerning the days of the following statements. And that the rest of the chapter deals with the more particular matters of the creation of the world as history. Before I take up the particular arguments on the length of the days, I will freely admit that the view that the six days were 24-hour days is a natural first reading of the chapter, especially in the English. The days are listed. Evenings and mornings are mentioned. Comparison with the seven-day week in Exodus 20 is natural. Why go further? One answer is that more than once a first impression reading of an ancient Hebrew record has been misleading. God did not give us the Old Testament in English. We have to study the Hebrew. But the study of the Hebrew is not easy. I do not refer to the paradigms which every beginning theologian must master, but the language itself is really not all that well known. We must ask ourselves, what was the Hebrew in Moses' time? And we have practically no Hebrew of that time to compare with it. Since the 1920s, we've had Ugaritic, a close sister language, dating from about that time. It gives us real help, but is not all that extensive. Since the 1800s, we've had the very extensive Akkadian clay tablets, with a very large vocabulary, and the grammatical system of the sister Semitic language. which have been, of course, very helpful for Old Testament interpretation. And we have other resources, including some material resources and many excavations that give us some historical pegs, but still our knowledge of ancient Hebrew, its grammar, its body, and in places, tentative. Therefore, there is some room for differences of opinion in interpretation of Hebrew words, expressions, and literature. It is helpful to remember that the Hebrews also doubtless wrote extensively, as did their neighbors. We have this extensive literature in the clay tablets. We don't have extensive literature from the Hebrews. Why was that? Well, some people say that the Hebrews were working in a period of oral tradition. Much is made of oral tradition these days. Well, we've got no evidence for that, really. It's hard to find evidence for what was not written. But actually, the Hebrews wrote very clearly on either skins or cheap Egyptian papyrus. Now, the Egyptian papyrus lasted fine in the dry climate of Egypt, and the clay tablets lasted fine, especially when they were burned in palace fires and so on in Mesopotamia. But the papyrus in Palestine that the Hebrews used for their writing would not last, because there is, after all, a wet season in Palestine, mildew does its work, and the skins and clay tablets have not survived, and there was an extensive written literature, but we just don't have it. Some of it has been preserved, as you know, in the Dead Sea Valley, where it's so dry. But up in the mountains, where you have the rainy season, it has not been preserved. A few inscriptions, but that is all. So we have very little of ancient Hebrew examples. The Hebrews had the advantage of an alphabet that could be conveniently represented with a brush on the cheap Egyptian papyrus or on animal skins. Medium writing was cheap and convenient, but unfortunately the climate of Palestine, which has a damp winter season, mildew and decay destroyed most of the writing we would dearly love to find. So we must remember the caution of the Westminster divines. All things in scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all. Yet, not only the learned, but also the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them." We believe in the inerrancy of the original writing. But we also believe, and we should not forget this, we believe in the perspicuity of scripture. We believe that the scripture is a plain book, and that it should be given to the laity, and it should be given in the English language, and that although there are details where good men may differ, nonetheless, the main points are clear. The way of salvation is obvious. We believe in the perspicuity of scripture. And yet, in significant places, good interpreters may differ. One such place that I cite for illustration is in the dates of creation. Archbishop Usher in the 1600s read the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11, added to them such later notices as Exodus 1240, the time in Egypt, and 1 Kings 6.1, the time since the Exodus to Solomon's Temple, and concluded that the world was created in 4004 BC, and the flood began in 2349 BC. Usher has been pilloried for his exactitude in these dates. I think it was S.R. Driver that said that Usher had dated the creation as the evening of Tuesday on such and such a date in 4004 BC. Driver said, closer than this, the Vice Chancellor of Oxford, as a cautious scholar, would not venture to commit himself. Well, they made fun of Usher, but actually, He was only revising the calculations of the medieval rabbis. Rabbis have done this too, come up with a date not quite 4004. Their date was 3760 BC. And you look on Jewish calendars today, the date is 5759. That's 5759 years after creation. So Archbishop Usher was not the only one who read these genealogies and so on as complete. These dates are reasonable on a cursory reading of the genealogies, et cetera. But nobody believes them. The date of the flood is especially instructive. There was not a universal flood at 2349 BC. That would be after the pyramids were built. The city of Jericho is far older than the pyramids. It lies at the bottom of the deepest valley on Earth. Its early mud-brick buildings would hardly have outlasted a universal flood. That date of usher for the flood is just impossible to hold. Not only from an archaeological perspective, but from comparison with the genealogy of Christ in Matthew 1, can we learn that old Hebrew genealogies were not complete. That genealogy in Matthew 1 is structured in three parts of 14 generations each. Why, I don't know, except perhaps for memory purposes, but four well-known kings of Israel are missing. Now, that wasn't by accident, everybody knew those kings. They're stated again and again in the Old Testament, and the genealogy's there, but they're missing the genealogy in Matthew. And the first 14 links go from Abraham to David, a thousand years, and the next 14 links go only about 500 years to the captivity, and the next 14 links also. So it seems quite clear that these are structured genealogies. And although they may look to be complete, they are not complete when you compare it with other passages of scripture. Now, we know so little about ancient practices in this regard that we just cannot make Usher's assumptions, even though they look to our eyes quite possible. Even in Creation Research Society, which body I was once a member, believes in a universal flood at least 10,000 years earlier than Usher's dates. Dogmatism on the interpretation of such ancient literature is just not justifiable. Another example is closer to our chapter. Genesis 2.4, it says, the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth. Various references. There had grown up the idea that there was no rain until the time of Noah, and he was surprised to see it. That comes partly from the statement that I set my bow in the clouds, as if the rainbow was a new thing. The question is, does that mean that the rainbow was a new thing, or does it mean that it was invested with new significance? Either way is possible. But some have held that there was no rainbow before the flood. There was no rain before the flood. It says the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth. The NIV has a footnote. And in verses four and six, the word eris can also be translated land. There was no rain upon the land. The meaning is affected also by the word aeth in verse six, which the King James translated mist. The mist went up and watered the face of the earth. Well, the mist went up and watered the face of the earth. The word aeth is used twice. It's used in Job also, where it does not necessarily mean mist. There's no evidence that meant mist in Genesis 2. But if it watered and if it went up, why, it looks like mist. This was the implication. Since then, we've found the word elsewhere. The word is well attested in Akkadian, where it refers to the floods and inundations of the Euphrates. It is itself borrowed from the Sumerian, the references. It is quite possible to hold that already at Genesis 2.4, the narrative turns to the description of Eden, which God had prepared for mankind. Rather than saying that there was no rain in the world, it can be held that there was no rain in the land. That there was no rain in the world would be difficult when you have the four rivers of Eden mentioned, and their springs are mentioned, the Hebrews, Rashim, their headwaters. The picture in the King James gives you the impression that the rivers originated in Eden and flowed out four ways. That's not what the Hebrew says. The NIV, I think, has it a little bit better. Those four rivers flowed into Eden. You stand in Eden, you look out and see where the rivers come from. And the sources are said to be their headwaters. The headwaters are in the mountains up above. And the verse of Doubtless describes describing the area of Eden in southern Mesopotamia, where as in Egypt the climate is dry, but the ground is wet from the four rivers that flowed into the sea. And these four rivers, it says that these four rivers watered the land. And that's what the A's not missed, but the inundation of these waters was doing in the land, not in the earth. The question is, how do you translate the word earth in that particular context? And it's not obvious, but it can, I think, be done adequately. Again, a superficial reading or even a careful reading of the King James translators who did not have our ancient witnesses and information can be misleading. These conclusions I gave are easily stated, but the application of these principles can be difficult. And therefore, we should probably be less dogmatic in presenting our own interpretation of difficult and debatable passages. That is to say, other people should be less dogmatic. It may be of some interest to consider briefly the interpretations of the word day before the problems consequent upon modern conceptions arose. For this, I'm indebted to Dr. William S. Barker of Westminster Theological Seminary. Some of this has been well known. Augustine is often quoted as a prominent ancient author dealing with the subject. His problem was not long days. He didn't know that it was our problem, but whether or not creation was instantaneous. Why did God take six days to create? And after all, he spoke and it was done, it says in Psalm 33. Augustine says, what kind of days these were is extremely difficult or perhaps impossible to determine. He did not come down flatly on the 24-hour days. Of course, if Genesis 1-1 taught instantaneous creation, the following days would be a problem. Calvin believed in six days of creation, probably 24-hour days. But the alternative he opposes is instantaneous creation. William Perkins also speaks. He's in the days of the Westminster Assembly. William Perkins also speaks against instantaneous creation, which could be inferred from Genesis 1.1. And he owes to creation in, quote, six distinct days, or, quote, six distinct spaces of time. His views of the days are various. Other examples may be given of those who held the long days of creation already before the modern situation after the evolutionary theories arose. After that time, after the rise of evolutionary views, after that time the problems have become more significant. The great stalwarts who supported the truth of the Bible against the mounting wave of criticism and attack can be cited as holding that here at least a considerable age of the earth holds no great problems. Among these can be cited the old Princeton tradition of the Hodges, Warfield, and later J. Gresham Machen, O.T. Alice, McRae, Oliver Buswell, and others. Good men can be cited on both sides of the argument, and perhaps I would leave it there. A matter of great interest and concern, but not a matter decisive for full belief in the Bible and its truth, both in spiritual matters and in things historical. We believe the Bible is true when it speaks of historical matters, as we do when it speaks of spiritual matters. The two are closely interrelated in the Bible, of course. Quote from Morton Smith in his book, Testimony, Introduction to Christian Doctrine, quote, we should recognize that many sincere Christians differ on the length of the creation days, and acknowledge that we do not know enough in this life to be dogmatic about our own views. I quote men like this and Boswell and Alice, but I think we should remember that men like Calvin and others, you quote them, sometimes these men change their opinions. I did once. And so sometimes these men can be quoted on both sides. because their views do change. We proceed to the main questions. And first, of course, the meaning of the word day. When people ask me if I believe in the 24-hour day, I sometimes answer no. Jesus said there were 12 hours in a day. The remark is not totally facetious. Day is used in many different ways in Hebrew, Greek, and English. It is of some interest that the nights are barely mentioned in Genesis 1. When light was created in day one, the darkness was called night, but between the days comes only the formula was evening and was morning day one. Did God work only in the daylight if the day included the night? Why is it ended in the evening or is evening and morning used only as boundary zones between the days of creation? Elsewhere, it is quite obvious that the word day is used broadly. The word yom is used in its various forms. 508 times, King James Version translates it by 58 different expressions, according to the Englishman's Hebrew concordance. It is sometimes said that when day is in a sequence with numbers, it always refers to a 24-hour day. That may be true, but how many such sequences are there in comparison to other uses? Though the daily sacrifices of feast days are so used, other sequences in poetry, narrative, et cetera, could be otherwise. It is hard in such cases to establish binding rules of word usage, especially, I say, when our ancient evidence is so limited. This brings up the argument that those who do not interpret day in Genesis 1 as a 24-hour day do not, quote, take the Bible literally. The problem here is what is meant by literally. Do we take the Bible literally? The answer is yes and no. You can take that literally. If by literal interpretation is meant always translating the same Hebrew or Greek word by the same English word, then no one takes the Bible literally. There have been efforts made, you know, to do that, to use the same word always the same way. It won't work. The example I give is the word fast. If you use fast, if you say, he ran fast, you use it in one way. In German, it would be schnell. If you say, he stood fast, you use it another way. In German, it would be fast. Of course, you can use brake fast also. And the way we use words is very broadly. I wondered sometimes what's the difference between slow up and slow down. If you had it in the Bible, you would have one set of interpreters who would say that slow up means always you were going uphill. And if you said slow down, all this would be going downhill. There would probably be denominations started on that basis. Least of all, the King James Version. The King James Version, as I quoted this very word today, the King James Version certainly does not use the same word the same way in different places. We indeed believe that the Bible is inspired, it is inerrant, and its very words are inspired. But they are inspired in the context. And different contexts demand different shades of meaning. God is not a rock. God is not a high tower. God is not a fortress. He is all these things, but not, quote, literally. Oh, there's one example after another, I think, of the one where it says, God took Israel, it says in Deuteronomy, and bore them on eagles' wings. That's a wonderful figure of speech. And we all know that there are those figures of speech and different usages. Jesus is not a lamb. He is a person. But he fulfilled the type of the sacrificial lamb of ancient Israel. The phrase, this is my body, is taken literally by all Roman Catholics. It is not taken literally by Protestants. And I think rightly so. I argue that some engaging in these discussions do not take the Bible literally. I think is to confuse the issues involved and mislead some of God's people. The Quakers will not take an oath. Jesus says, swear not at all. Quakers will affirm that they will not take an oath because they take that word literally. The Mennonites, some Mennonite ladies, will not wear gold earrings or gold ornaments of any kind. The Bible says a woman's adornment should not be with gold and fine apparel. Well, it's pretty clear in Peter, most of us think that that's a comparative negative. should not so much emphasize the outward form, but more the inward character of the heart. But the whole denomination emphasizes this particular meaning of a particular word. And I think we should be careful about such an insistence. Number two, the problem of the start of the diurnal cycle on the fourth day. has long been noted. Only on the fourth day were the heavenly bodies established to separate day from night and to mark the seasons, days, and years. The language is quite broad. Does it mean that there was no sun shining on the third day to nourish the plants and trees? Some have felt that would have to be the case if you felt that. How could plants exist a long period of time without sunlight? One answer could well be the use of a pluperfect verb. God had made two great lights. The Hebrew doesn't have a pluperfect. It has a perfect in past time, an imperfect in present and future time. I say that in general, but you can't limit those two uses in those two ways. The pluperfect, the perfect if the perfect is used. What normally is past time is used in pluperfect time. I give some examples here. So it could be God had made two great lights and God set them in the heavens, as some have held. That is, he dissipated the clouds and steamy atmosphere so that the heavenly bodies would appear and mark the passage of time. At least, they marked the passage of time on the fourth day and not before. The NIV uses the two perfect in Genesis 2.19. to relieve an old assumed conflict between Genesis 1 and 2. In Genesis 1, it says God made the animals, and then later on, God made man. In Genesis 2, it says that God made man, and then he made the animals and brought them to man to name them. And the NIV simply says God had made the animals, and now he brought them down to Adam to name them. Perfectly proper translation, and the alleged conflict which critics have argued against between Genesis 1 and 2 as if they were contradictory. That's the only real contradiction there. It can be resolved very easily simply by translating it as a two-perfect. So other clear examples of such usage of two-perfect are Genesis 12, 1 and 6. 1 Chronicles 21.3, which tells us what a king did after he had died. It must be too perfect. In the earlier periods of the earth, when there was perhaps much volcanic activity and the seas were warmer from internal heat and gaseous greenhouse effects, plants may well have thrived under filtered sunlight until God later made the heavenly bodies appear. Besides, those who believe in long days never have insisted they were all the same length. I don't think that we have to say that this particular day was equal to that particular geological period. It may have been a number of geological periods or a short day or whatnot. It doesn't say. To make a concordance between Genesis 1 and geological periods is going surely too far. The first days of star formation may have been at great length. The other days may have been millions of years long or thousands of years short. In a phase short, we just do not know. On the third day, we may have had a simple vegetable life for many years before larger complicated forms were created near the end of the time. We have no way of knowing what all could have happened. By the same token, we have no adequate principles to use to judge what could not have happened. The fact remains that the daily round of sunlight and darkness is not mentioned before the fourth day, and therefore to insist that the first three days were like our days runs into quite a problem. Number three, creation in one day. This point from Genesis 2-4 was already picked up by John Lay, one of the Westminster divines. In Genesis 2-4 it says, in the day that God created them. That's the King James. This is the beginning of the heavens and the earth and the day that God created them. So one day, the day that God created them. Six days. Six days doesn't equal one day if they're 24 hour days. If it's a 24-hour days, if it's one period, by one period, one long period can equal six short periods. And then there's no problem. But if they're 24-hour days, John Lay picks this up with this citation I've also embedded in Barker, who puts him, the day is not here taken as in the first chapter and at the beginning of this chapter for the seventh part of the week, but with more latitude for time in general. wherein a thing is done, or to be done, as in verses 17 and in the book of Newton, and so on. I'm not sure that I would agree with John Lay's analysis, actually. I would rather argue that Genesis 2.4 says, in the day that God created, in the day that God created. Now that's a Hebrew expression, v'yom, preposition with the word day. And v'yom doesn't mean in a particular day. It just means when. And it's not quite fair to say that that means one day. But if you believe that yom is always 24-hour days, then you have a problem. So I would not push that exactly, except as an extreme case. Obviously, one 24-hour day does not equal six 24-hour days. But the phrase when can refer to any period of time. However, if one insists that yom always means literal day, then here in the immediate context, there's an obvious warrant for a different interpretation, or there would be a conflict between chapters one and two. Number four, expanding time. I'll put this in for curiosity's sake, I guess. There is a quite different approach to the long day theory that has been drawn to my attention by a friend, Maxine Harris, no relative of mine. It is that of Gerald Schroeder, a theologian-scientist. He has written a book, Genesis and the Big Bang, and his views are popularly presented on a video put out by the Ministries of Zola Levitt. In brief, he argues that the days were indeed 24-hour days, But in Einstein fashion, the 24-hour days of early time have expanded with the expanding universe, so that looking back, we see them as millions of years. He says there were six 24-hour days, and that equals 50 millions of years. And he does it with the Einstein equations, you see. I must confess, I cannot judge the validity of such a suggestion. But perhaps it may be safer to understand this varying approach to time not as a direct consequence of Einstein's theories, but as an illustration of the use of Psalm 90 and 2 Peter 3. God's time and its measure are far different from our puny conceptions. My knowledge of the Einstein relationships was improved somewhat by studying Dr. Machen. Dr. Machen used to tell about a young lady whose name was White, who traveled with speed like the light, She went out one day on a relative ray and came back the preceding night. I learned that in New Testament exegesis. So his ideas are very interesting, I must say. But I'm not sure that he can prove them from the physics equations either. The seventh day. The seventh day is presented as very special. Unlike the others, it has no conclusion mentioned. There was no evening to it, no morning leading to anything else. God rested from his creative activity. Not only does Genesis not signify any end to the seventh day, Psalm 95 declares that the disobedient generation of Israel in the wilderness would never enter into God's rest. Evidently, God's rest was and is still going on. Hebrews 4 further interprets this passage. Paul, who, as I've argued elsewhere, wrote these words, quotes from Genesis 2-2 and declares that the verse in Psalm 95 refers to that Sabbath rest of God. Specifically, he says it could not have reference to a rest won for Israel in Canaan by Joshua, or else the later author, David, would not have written as he did in Psalm 95. There remains, he says, a Sabbath rest for the people of God who enter into God's rest. I cannot see how it can be argued in the face of these verses that God's rest was a 24-hour day. Now, if God's rest is still going on, still in a sense eternal, what can we say about the references to the Sabbath and the Ten Commandments? In Deuteronomy 5, there is no reference to the creation ordinance. This is the greatest difference between the two versions. But in Exodus 20, 11, the warrant for the seven-day week and the seventh-day Sabbath is plainly given and somehow connected with Genesis 1 and 2. The parallel is drawn between God's six days of labor and our six weekdays of labor. With God resting on the seventh day, which brought him to bless the seventh day, our Sabbath day, and make it holy. Now, if God's seventh day is an eternal rest, eternal day, as argued in the Psalms and Hebrews, and yet it is paralleled to man's seventh-day Sabbath, it follows that our weekdays cannot be duplicates of God's days of creation and rest, but are symbolic thereof. It seems to be an inescapable conclusion that our seventh day, 24-hour Sabbath, is symbolic of God's eternal Sabbath of rest from creation. If so, then there is no reason at all to deny that our particular six 24-hour days of labor are symbolic of, not equivalent to, God's six long days of creative labor. Notice there's no hint of a parallel of our Monday with the creation of light, For in our Tuesday with the separation of earth and sky, all is symbolic of God's labor and eternal rest, and our weekly labor and one day of rest, which is to be a rich day in which we do not only rest, but which we use the present worship of God and rejoice in the anticipation of our eternal rest with Him in that heavenly Canaan, where our communion shall be forever perfect and our joy forever full. I will close by repeating it is not my purpose to deny anyone's right to other opinions on these matters. I have said our knowledge of the linguistic background of the Hebrew Moses time is such that it is difficult always to be certain and precise. If anyone wishes to believe in six 24-hour days of creation, I agree that indeed God could have done it that way. For general theological reasons, I would deny that God could have done it in six days in such a way as to look like long periods. God can neither lie nor deceive. But things can have been misinterpreted by us, by current scientists, or by false religions. So I only plead that we be cautious in our interpretations and not curtail the freedom of those who would responsibly try to determine the limits of interpretation of this quite broad and general, yet grand and inspiring account of the work of God, the maker of heaven and earth.