I’ve added some additional comments found in March 2014 Awake.
HOW LONG DID GOD TAKE TO CREATE THE UNIVERSE?
The Bible states that God created “the heavens and the earth.” This broad statement, however, makes no reference to the length of time involved in creating the universe or to the methods he used to shape it. In the Bible account, each of the six creative days could have lasted for thousands of years. God had already created the universe, including a lifeless planet Earth, by the time the first creative day began. Evidently the six creative days were long periods during which Jehovah God prepared the earth for human habitation. The Bible account of creation does not conflict with scientific conclusions about the age of the universe.
1985 Life—How Did It Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation? Chap. 3 pp. 26-27 pars. 5&7 What Does Genesis Say?
5 This last sentence appears to fit the creative “days,” for certainly they were periods when extraordinary events were described as happening. It also allows for periods much longer than 24 hours.
7 It would seem reasonable that the “days” of Genesis could likewise have embraced long periods of time—millenniums.
WT January 1, 1987 p. 30
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…..and humans have existed, not for 49,000 years, but for about 6,000 years.
Blondie made an excellent point: “The WTS has backed off using the phrase 7,000 years but here it shows the concept is still official.” I looked it up for myself and as she quoted it’s found in a recent WT study namely the October 15, 2012. This was news to me.
Over the years I noticed they were using expressions like, millenniums, thousands of years, extended over many thousands of years, each of these epochs evidently lasted thousands of years, etc.”
I asked some JW’s over the years (when I was still involved) and many said that the literal view of 7000 years per creative day had been discarded and many more said they were unsure what the real answer was!!
Evidently the 2012 WT reveals that their still hanging on to the 7000 years for the creative days.