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Patriarchs and Prophets
recognizes no long ages in which the earth was 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. At the close of each day is given the result of the
Creator’s work. The statement is made at the close of the first week’s
record, “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth
when they were created.”
Genesis 2:4
. But this does not convey the
idea that the days of creation were other than literal days. Each day
was called a generation, because that in it God generated, or produced,
some new portion of His work.
Geologists claim to find evidence from the earth itself that it is
very much older than the Mosaic record teaches. Bones of men and
animals, as well as instruments of warfare, petrified trees, et cetera,
much larger than any that now exist, or that have existed for thousands
of years, have been discovered, and from this it is inferred that the
earth was populated long before the time brought to view in the record
of creation, and by a race of beings vastly superior in size to any men
now living. 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. Those
who reason so confidently upon its discoveries have no adequate
conception of the size of men, animals, and trees before the Flood, or
of the great changes which then took place. 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 fathom. In the days of
Noah, men, animals, and trees, many times larger than now exist, were
buried, and thus preserved as an evidence to later generations that the
antediluvians perished by a flood. God designed that the discovery of
these things should establish faith in inspired history; but men, with
their vain reasoning, fall into the same error as did the people before
the Flood—the things which God gave them as a benefit, they turn
into a curse by making a wrong use of them.
[113]
It is one of Satan’s devices to lead the people to accept the fables of
infidelity; for he can thus obscure the law of God, in itself very plain,
and embolden men to rebel against the divine government. His efforts