The Sabbath Command
In Exodus 20:8–11, God gave the children of Israel the fourth commandment: work for six days and then on the seventh day, take a Sabbath rest. He could have given the command without providing a reason for the command, as he did in the first and the fifth through the tenth commandments and other times when he commanded a Sabbath rest (Exodus 16:23–29, 34:21; Leviticus 23:3). But as in the second and third commands in Exodus 20, God gave a reason for the Sabbath command. The Israelites should work six days and rest on the seventh, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (v. 11). And he repeated that reason in Exodus 31:15–17.
In Exodus 20:11, God used the same Hebrew word for “days” (yamim, the plural form of yom [day]) that he used in verse nine, showing that God’s days of creation in Genesis 1 were the same kind of days (the same length) as the days of the week for the Israelites. It is doubtful if any faithful Bible student ever interpreted it any other way until the idea of millions of years started to take control of people’s minds about two centuries ago.
Exodus 20:8–11 clearly implies that the days of Genesis 1 (and therefore the events on those six days) are in sequential order, just as the days of a human week are. Sunday always comes before Monday, which always comes before Tuesday, etc. So in Genesis 1, God created the earth completely covered with water, and then he created light (day 1), then the expanse (firmament) to separate the water into two parts (day 2), and then the dry land and all kinds of land plants (day 3). After that, he created the heavenly bodies to serve as timekeepers for man (day 4), then the sea creatures and birds and other flying creatures (day 5), then all the kinds of land animals and, finally, the first man and woman to be the progenitors of mankind (day 6). Given that truth, we can readily see the many contradictions between the order of creation and the order of events in the evolution story.1 We cannot remove those contradictions no matter where we might try to fit millions of years.
It is clear: God created everything in the beginning in six literal, sequential, 24-hour days. The events on those days were not normal but were unique and supernatural as God spoke things into existence (Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26; Psalm 33:6–9). He didn’t speak and then wait millions of years for things to happen. The days were normal days (approximately 24 hours), just like our days, “all the days” of Adam’s 930 years of life (Genesis 5:5), and “all the days” of Noah’s 950 years of life (Genesis 9:29).
No Place to Put the Millions of Years
So we can’t spread the millions of years over “figurative” or “symbolic” creation “days” (ages), as in the day-age view. And because God equated the human workweek with his creation week, there is no basis for saying that in Genesis 1, long stretches of time (millions of years) transpired between the literal days, as in the “day-gap-day” view of John Lennox.2
But we also can’t fit millions of years before the six literal days as in the old gap theory, the more recent “promised land” view of John Sailhamer, the view of John Lennox, or the “analogical day” view of C. John Collins. Nor can we fit the millions of years before Genesis 1:1, as in the “cosmic temple view” of John Walton and others. There was no time before the six days, because notice what God said he created in those six days: the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. He didn’t make anything before the six days. He made everything during those six days. Many Christians try to say that the six days begin in verse 3, but when did God make the earth according to Genesis 1? He made it in verse 1, not in verse 3. So, combining Exodus 20:11 with Genesis 1:1 unmistakably informs us that the six days begin in Genesis 1:1, not in 1:3.
There simply is no place to put millions of years of geological and cosmological time into or before Genesis 1—not in the days, between the days, or before the days of creation. Exodus 20:11 completely rules out those interpretations.
Conclusion
The above and further attempts to ignore or evade the clear truth of Exodus 20:11 could be discussed and are discussed more fully in the indepth article by Dr. Terry Mortenson, but the failed attempts discussed here reinforce the obviously correct interpretation. God made everything in the beginning in six literal, normal days just like ours.
It should also be noted that nobody has any trouble understanding the other nine commandments (although everyone has trouble obeying all of them). So, why all the convoluted arguments to attempt to explain away the obvious meaning of Exodus 20:11? It’s, sadly, because many Christians have allowed the scientific consensus (i.e., the majority view of geologists and astrophysicists) about the age of the creation to control their interpretation of God’s Word. The fallible opinions of sinful human beings (who don’t know everything, who make mistakes requiring revisions of their textbooks, and who weren’t there to observe the origin and history of the creation) have trumped the inerrant Word of our eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, infallible Creator in their minds.
If God really created over millions of years, then Exodus 20:8–11 could not be more misleading. Conversely, if God did create in six literal days, he could not be more clear in this commandment and in Genesis 1.
Exodus 20:11 stands as an insurmountable stone wall against any attempt to fit millions of years anywhere into Genesis 1. And Scripture is clear that those literal days of creation were just a little more than 6,000 years ago.3
