The Bible, Science, and Age of the Earth

II—Questions on Creation, the Age of the Earth, and the Flood

The Days of Creation

Ellen White clearly states that the days of creation week were literal twenty-four hour days, just as we know them today. There is an important reason for accepting the creation story of the first week in its most obvious meaning. That record of the origin of the seven-day week, also is the basis for observing the Sabbath. When the law was written on stone at Sinai, Sabbathkeeping was enjoined as a memorial of the creative act of God. (See Exodus 20:11.) Ellen White says that each day of creation week ‘was accounted of Him [God] a generation, because every day He generated or produced some new portion of His work.’ The weekly cycle of ‘seven literal days’ has ‘originated in the great facts of the first seven days’ (Spiritual Gifts 3:90). BSAE 10.1

The implication of a theory calling for uncertain days at creation is large in regard to Sabbathkeeping. The supposition ‘that the events of the first week required seven vast, indefinite periods for their accomplishment, strikes directly at the foundation of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment,’ Ellen White says. When we adopt the view that the days of creation were indefinite periods, she says, we make ‘senseless the fourth commandment of God’s law’ (Spiritual Gifts 3:91, 92). BSAE 10.2

We are reminded of the inconsistency of such a position: BSAE 10.3

When the Lord declares that He made the world in six days and rested on the seventh day, He means the day of twenty-four hours, which He has marked off by the rising and setting of the sun. God would not present the death sentence for a disregard of the Sabbath unless He had presented before men a clear understanding of the Sabbath (Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, 136).

The Bible and the modern prophet are in agreement—the days of creation were seven literal days and the seven-day week originated at the creation of this world. BSAE 10.4