by dothemath 41 Replies latest watchtower bible
For each creative day the bible says: " And there came to be evening and there came to be morning, a [First, Second, ... ] day"
It clearly refers to an evening and a morning... this tells me that the bible is talking about a literal day, one rotation of the earth.
Actually any evidence external to this planet is inadmissable, in the Genesis debate.
The Genesis days begin with the bringing forth of light, to the planet..
It acknowledges that the universe was in place prior to this.
Actually, it reads semi-ok if taken from the perspective of terraformers on the face of the planet (the "light" kicking off the process, and the stars becoming discernable as such, as the atmosphere clears up).
This doesn't cover how plantlife procreated, though there's no mention of when bugs arrived on the scene (other than creeping things).
Neither does it explain any timescale.
Yeru is right about the translation of Yom, however unless you take a YEC position (which seems vaguely ridiculous) it can only be representative.
One thing is for certain - given what has been unearthed by archaeology, there's been life on this earth for a long time.
That being the case, if we are to take the Genesis account as factual (albeit representative), then we are only a short ways into the seventh day.
Each day would also have to represent far, far, far more than 7,000 years.
As was pointed out, the Watchtower wants to avoid problems with "the world" and with old-time JWs brought up on the notion of 7000-year creative days. So they fudge and instead of giving a definite time period, like they used to, they use vague words like "millennia" and "thousands of years". This is consistent with the old-timers' belief of 7000-year days, and with modern geological dating since a billion years certainly can be described as "millennia". The former doesn't raise questions with the old-timers about the Society's veracity, so it's a Good Thing. The latter is stupid, of course, because it's like giving your age in microseconds, but avoids JWs having to try to convince prospective JWs of the ridiculous notion that life has only been on the earth for a couple of tens of thousands of years. So by being vague, the Society kills two birds with one stone.
For some years I've attempted to get various JWs I've come in contact with to give me a straight answer about the 7000-year creative day notion. A few, who I already knew were way out in left field JW-wise, admitted that the notion is in limbo. Several rank-&-file JWs promised to get back to me with an answer but never did. Several Watchtower officials absolutely refused to give a straight answer, simply dancing around it. So it's obvious to me that the Society has in place an explicit policy -- given, of course, only to WTS officials -- to avoid answering that question. The reason they do this is obvious: they want to avoid unanswerable criticism from knowledgeable "worldlings" and they want to avoid alienating long-time JWs who still believe in the 7000-year notion.
Bonnie_Clyde mentioned a Jan. 22 Awake! article about a man who got a Ph.D. in physics and simultaneously became a JW, who claimed that "one of the things that convinced him it was truth was that the Bible teaches that the creative days were "thousands" of years long--not 24 hours." This article was obviously highly massaged by the Watchtower editor to make the guy's "recollections" be in line with "present truth". No one working on a Ph.D. in physics in the 1970s could possibly be so stupid as to accept that macroscopic animal life has been on the earth for only 20,000 years -- which is exactly what the Watchtower was teaching at that time.
As for Genesis itself, if one insists on a literal interpretation of "day", then one might as well throw it in the garbage, since life is provably several billion years old, and life with nicely fossilizable hard parts (such as is preserved from the so-called "Cambrian explosion") is at least half a billion years old. So Christians who want to maintain the idea that the entire Bible is accurate, and in particular accurate where science is concerned, have no choice but to interpret the Hebrew "yom" in Genesis in a more general way than as a literal 24-hour time period. I see no particular problem with that.
Genesis does have problems, though, with the order in which creation is presented (I can accept that certain oddities, such as the statement that the sun and moon were "made" well after light appeared, refer to the viewpoint of someone on the surface of the earth). For example, Gen. 1:11 states that fruit trees were created on the third day, before animal life was created on the fifth day, but the fossil evidence proves that fruit trees appeared about 120 million years ago, some 400 million years after the "Cambrian explosion" of animal life. Gen. 1:20-25 states that all of the "flying creatures" (which for the Hebrews who recorded Genesis included birds) were created before any of the land animals (which includes amphibians, reptiles and so forth), whereas the fossil record indicates that flying creatures appeared long after the first land animals -- whether you talk about insects, flying reptiles, birds or bats. So for a Christian to claim that Genesis has any validity at all, he must claim that the order of creation presented in Genesis is at best allegorical (or whatever term one likes that means "not to be taken literally").
As for predictions about "the end" by the Watchtower or anyone else, based on "bible chronology", it's pretty obvious that according to the Bible itself, this is a fruitless endeavor. Jesus and the angels were directly involved in creation and knew the time periods involved. Yet Jesus explicitly stated that neither he nor "the angels in heaven" knew "the day or the hour", which is obviously a standard phrase meaning that they had no idea of the time period at all. If these intelligent creatures couldn't know the time of "the end", with their certain knowledge of events in time, then it's obviously impossible for humans to know either, no matter what they claim to pick out of the Bible. Why people who claim to be so knowledgeable of the Bible, such a JWs, don't understand this simple point, is a measure of their spiritual stupidity and willingness to be led down a garden path by false prophets.
AlanF
Actually any evidence external to this planet is inadmissable, in the Genesis debate.
Are the stars (other than the sun) included with other "luminaries" in the Genesis creation account? If so then I would disagree with your above statement. If stars aren't included, then you have a point.
Watson:Seems the account only directly mentions the sun and moon.
IF it's to be counted a halfway legitimate account, it would have to be a clearing of the atmosphere, so that they became visible.
The idea of transplanting a planet into a solar system, or suddenly letting loose a sun, after plantlife has been around for millenia, sounds vaguely catastrophic.
That other suns and galaxies have been around for billions of years seems to be accepted fact.
Alan:Interesting comment on fruit trees
The WTS uses this technique and then points back to show, "we always taught that."
Classic 1984 policy; the similarity between the George Orwell world of 1984 and the WT stunned me when I re-read the book last year.
Another issue you will not see discussed in the magazines in the last ten years or so: carbon 14 dating. This used to be vilified on a regular basis as being laughable; I have not read this for some time now. In fact, I know that they have used some dates arrived at by this method when it suits them, such as for biblical artifacts. It used to be that it was considered unreliable due to it's assumption of a static amount of radioactive carbon in surrounding; this was thought to be unreliable due to the "waters surrounding the earth" above the earth, the water canopy. Anyone recall the last reference to this idea?
And how about this: Earth's sculptor, ice or water? That was the title of a 60's Awake that tried to debunk the ice ages, because of course they called for a much older earth than the WT wanted to admit.
It is comical to think of it now. Blondie, you must remember this, and Alan too.
I really enjoyed all your posts...........it's obvious the Society just keeps this very vague on purpose.
All the publications used to state emphatically all the days were exactly the same length......but this is no longer mentioned either. Once again though, there are many older ones who still think that.
This is the quote from the Insight book.........
(INSIGHT BOOK- pg. 545)
Since the length of each creative day exceeded 24 hours (as will be discussed later), this expression does not apply to literal night and day but is figurative. During the evening period things would be indistinct; but in the morning they would become clearly discernible. During the "evening," or beginning, of each creative period, or "day," God?s purpose for that day, though fully known to him, would be indistinct to any angelic observers. However, when the "morning" arrived there would be full light as to what God had purposed for that day, it having been accomplished by that time.?Compare Pr 4:18.
Length
of Creative Days. The Bible does not specify the length of each of the creative periods. Yet all six of them have ended, it being said with respect to the sixth day (as in the case of each of the preceding five days): "And there came to be evening and there came to be morning, a sixth day." (Ge 1:31) However, this statement is not made regarding the seventh day, on which God proceeded to rest, indicating that it continued. (Ge 2:1-3) Also, more than 4,000 years after the seventh day, or God?s rest day, commenced, Paul indicated that it was still in progress. At Hebrews 4:1-11 he referred to the earlier words of David (Ps 95:7, 8, 11) and to Genesis 2:2 and urged: "Let us therefore do our utmost to enter into that rest." By the apostle?s time, the seventh day had been continuing for thousands of years and had not yet ended. The Thousand Year Reign of Jesus Christ, who is Scripturally identified as "Lord of the sabbath" (Mt 12:8), is evidently part of the great sabbath, God?s rest day. (Re 20:1-6) This would indicate the passing of thousands of years from the commencement of God?s rest day to its end. The week of days set forth at Genesis 1:3 to 2:3, the last of which is a sabbath, seems to parallel the week into which the Israelites divided their time, observing a sabbath on the seventh day thereof, in keeping with the divine will. (Ex 20:8-11) And, since the seventh day has been continuing for thousands of years, it may reasonably be concluded that each of the six creative periods, or days, was at least thousands of years in length.
The WTS uses this technique and then points back to show, "we always taught that."
IMHO this is not posssible with the teaching of the 7000 years. Too many other doctrines are tied into this. As already stated it begins with the Millenium = 1000 year reign of Christ. This is also called a sabbath hence the 7th day. Now we have a week and that makes 7*1000 = 7000 years. We have the 7th day of creation so as stated before it is 49.000 years.
Several Watchtower officials absolutely refused to give a straight answer, simply dancing around it.
If you drop any time scale you also have to drop the sabbath rest which is mentioned by Paul and is meant (by WTS) to be the millenium reign. I guess that's why nobody gets an official answer to this critical question.
The WTS uses this technique and then points back to show, "we always taught that."
If they last long enough, watch them as 2034 approaches.
They'll point back to 2003 as the period when "new light flashed forth" regarding the generation being 120 years.
We can probably expect 2035 to be another disappointing year for their statistics.
To try and force the Hebrew YOM to mean anything other than a standard 24 hour day in the context of Genesis is ridiculous.
But you must if you are trying to keep the biblical account of creation from collapsing under the huge amounts of physical evidence that the earth and universe are billions of years old. As I recalled, the WT explained that the universe and earth could be billions of years old, but that the creative days began with God's preparation of the earth for human habitation. That was an explanation I remember in the book, "From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained" published in 1958.
