Chapter 9—The Beginning of the Literal Week
Like the Sabbath, the week originated at creation, and it has been
preserved through Bible history. God Himself measured off the first
week. It consisted of seven literal days. Six days were employed in the
work of creation. Upon the seventh God rested, then set it apart as a
day of rest for man. “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore
the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.”
Exodus 20:8-11
.
This reason appears beautiful and forcible when we understand the
days of creation to be literal. The first six days of each week are given
to man for labor. On the seventh day man is to refrain from labor in
commemoration of the Creator’s rest.
But the assumption that the events of the first week required thou-
sands upon thousands of years is infidelity in its most insidious and
hence most dangerous form. Its real character is so disguised that it
is held and taught by many who profess to believe the Bible. “By the
word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them
by the breath of His mouth.”
Psalm 33:6
. The Bible recognizes no
long ages in which the earth slowly evolved from chaos. Of each
successive day of creation, the sacred record declares that it consisted
of the evening and the morning, like all other days that have followed.
Geologists claim to find evidence from the earth that it is very
much older than the Mosaic record teaches. Bones of men and animals
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much larger than any that now exist have been discovered, and from
that it is inferred that the earth was populated long before the time
brought to view in the record of creation. Such reasoning has led many
professed Bible believers to adopt the position that the days of creation
were vast, indefinite periods.
But apart from Bible history geology can prove nothing. Relics
found in the earth do give evidence of conditions differing in many
respects from the present, but the time when these conditions existed
can be learned only from the Inspired Record. In the history of the
Flood inspiration has explained that which geology alone could never
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