To JWs - Creative Day Request (page 2)

Billygoat

Yoyomama,

And why would I attempt to argue with my brothers, whom I love, over such an insignifacnt trivial thing as the length of a creative day?

I'm not saying you would do this, but I'm sure you see brothers/sisters quibble over more trivial items than this. Even these "trivial" items are preached against from the platform.

Some of those items?

Men's hair length
Facial hair
Type of car driven
Sister's skirt length
Fake fingernails
College Education
Married people performing oral sex
Masturbation
Type of clothes worn
Type of blood products acceptable during surgery
Where to work/not to work
What hotels NOT to stay at during conventions

The list could go on and on and on...

Andi

Lionel_P_Hartley

normie67,

Your recollections are in error - please see the new thread on "Craetive Daze ...."

LPH

cynicus

I believe LPH's reference to 1988 is based on the following:

*** w87 1/1 30 Questions From Readers ***
Second, a study of the fulfillment of Bible prophecy and of our location in the stream of time strongly indicate that each of the creative days (Genesis, chapter 1) is 7,000 years long. It is understood that Christ’s reign of a thousand years will bring to a close God’s 7,000-year ‘rest day,’ the last ‘day’ of the creative week. (Revelation 20:6; Genesis 2:2, 3) Based on this reasoning, the entire creative week would be 49,000 years long.

In Awake of November 8, 1982 the following is stated:

*** g82 11/8 7 Science and the Bible ***
True, the account goes on to say that huge steps in the development of the earth took one day each. But, in the Bible, “day” can mean more than a twenty-four-hour period. It can mean a thousand years or even longer! (Genesis 2:4; Psalm 90:4) The Bible record, together with verifiable history, indicates that the seventh day of that creative week covers a period of 7,000 years. Hence, each of the six preceding “days” would be of the same length.

This statement is referred to by an article in the Watchtower of 1994, September 1st, in a footnote on page 6. Apparently in 1994 the view that a 'creative day' covers a period of 7,000 years was still valid.

---
Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.

cynicus

...who just read LPH's other thread on this topic and is technically still a JW

Lionel_P_Hartley

cynicus,

You're correct - I said 1988 because the last refernce I could find to a 7000 year long creative day was in 1987. But I'm intrigued by your discovery of that footnote reproduced here

*** w94 9/1 7 Science, Religion, and the Search for Truth ***
[Footnotes]
See Awake!, November 8, 1982, pages 6-9, and Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, page 545, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. For more information on creationism and its conflicts with science and the Bible, see Awake! issues of March 8, 1983, pages 12-15, and March 22, 1983, pages 12-15.

Good job!

LPH

AlanF

The 1987 WT article that cynicus pointed out is the last reference to 7000-year creative days I'm aware of in JW literature. Based on that specific statement, some current JWs insist that the Society still teaches it, saying that the current references to "millennia" are consistent with and don't change the older teaching. However, according to certain WTS sources I've talked to, the Society does not still officially hold to the 7000-year idea. They've had no answer when I've asked them, "Well why don't you publicly announce a change in teaching?" I believe that the reason is that they don't want to upset the many older JWs, including and probably most of all a lot of the oldtimers in Bethel. When those folks die off, the Society will begin making references to millions of years long creative days.

A bit of background: The 7000-year creative day concept is actually extremely old. C. T. Russell adopted it from his Adventist teachers in the 1880s, and he wrote in Zion's Watch Tower that it was an ancient tradition. A 2nd-century writing called "The Epistle of Barnabas" lays it all out clearly: 6000 years of nastiness followed by 1000 years of peace. By that time this was already an old Jewish tradition. Traces of the idea, via the notion of a 1000-year period of peace, can be found in ancient Zoroastrianism going back to at least 1500 B.C.

Until the early 1980s everything the Society wrote about creative days indicated that they were exactly 7000 years long, based on the idea that the 7th day would prove to be exactly that period. You can find the notion in JW literature of every period, such as in WT & G articles, the 1943 book The Truth Shall Make You Free, the 1927 book Creation, Russell's famous Creation film from 1914, and so forth. I suspect that the failure of the 1975 date, along with the realization that their ideas were not much different from those of the young-earth creationists they were beginning to bash, made some of the Society's top men change their minds.

AlanF

Lionel_P_Hartley

Alan,

Very interesting stuff. Actually, as I recall, in some of the 60s/70s/80s literature a creative day was sometimes referred to as being "simply thousands of years long" since that is not inconsistent with the official 7000 year teaching. It all seemed to depend on the point being made - whether it was simply that a creative day was not 24 hours long or whether the point of the article was to say exactly how long such a day was. In that context the current references to a creative day being "thousands of years long" are guaranteed not to raise questions in the minds of the "oldsters" while setting the scene, as you say, for a revamping of the entire thing.

Thus one sees two streams of dubs who, when they read the same words, attach totally different meanings to them.

LPH

To JWs - Creative Day Request

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