The 7000 year "Creative Day" (page 2)

Leolaia

Actually, the w87 1/1 p. 30 Questions From Readers appears to be been the last overt mention of 7,000-year creative days.

BTW, don't ya love the circular reasoning in the 1987 article?

blondie

Either way 83 or 87, it's been along time since they mentioned it and most long-time JWs didn't notice and the new ones have no clue about 7,000 years.

This is another technique that the WTS uses to change doctrine, just stop mentioning it.

Blondie

Carmel

In any case, what kind of omnipotent god has to "rest"?

carmel

BluesBrother

What was the rationale for the 7000 year day teaching?

Um, I do not think that there ever was a good reason to decide on it . Even as a young man, "In the truth" I had reservations about that, because the Bible did not say and there was no solid argument for believing it.

Perhaps it came along with the "Prophetic rule" that a day should always stand for a year

Fe2O3Girl

Thanks for all your replies!

The basis for the 7000 year day does some to be a whirl of circular reasoning. There is a lot of "It is understood that" and "A person can see" phraseology. There is also the assumption that if day 7 is 7000 years, days 1 to 6 were 7000 days.

It is a long time since I checked the supporting scriptures listed in a WT article - it struck me how the scriptures they quoted don't seem to support what they are saying at all, UNLESS you start from the point of already believing it.

Aaah, what an embarassing memory - 13 year old me explaining to my biology teacher that I wasn't a wacky extremist, who believed God created the universe in seven literal days, oh no, it took seven 7000 year days.......................I suppose at least no-one who encountered me in the 1980s could have been mistaken that JWs were normal reasonable people........

blondie

Fe, I missed part of your question about where this came from? Actually, Russell used it in this calculations and I think he incorporated it from the Adventists. The Bible Students still hold to this teaching of a creative day being 7,000 years long.

Googling I found these:

Tracing Back a Tradition

The idea is indeed a venerable tradition. It may ultimately be based on an old tradition that the seventh creative day of Genesis is itself 7000 years long, and that the Messiah would reign during the final 1000 years of it.

A very early source, quite possibly 1st century A.D., is the New Testament apocryphal book called "The Epistle of Barnabas." There are several early Christian writings sometimes referred to as "The Apocrypha" of the New Testament, which were at one time or another considered for membership in the New Testament canon. From the 1979 reprint of a 1926 English translation of these, called "The Lost Books of the Bible", here are some relevant passages:

Furthermore it is written concerning the sabbath, in the Ten Commandments, which God spake in the Mount Sinai to Moses, face to face; Sanctify the sabbath of the Lord with pure hands, and with a clean heart. And elsewhere he saith; If thy children shall keep my sabbaths, then will I put my mercy upon them. And even in the beginning of the creation he makes mention of the sabbath. And God made in six days the works of his hands; and he finished them on the seventh day, and he rested the seventh day, and sanctified it.
Consider, my children, what that signifies, he finished them in six days. The meaning of it is this; that in six thousand years the Lord God will bring all things to an end. For with him one day is a thousand years; as himself testifieth, saying, Behold this day shall be as a thousand years. Therefore, children, in six days, that is, in six thousand years, shall all things be accomplished. And what is that he saith, And he rested the seventh day: he meaneth this; that when his Son shall come, and abolish the season of the Wicked One, and judge the ungodly; and shall change the sun and the moon, and the stars; then he shall gloriously rest in that seventh day. [The Lost Books of the Bible, p. 160-2; Chap. 13, The Epistle of Barnabas]

a Christian

Sorry, wrong thread.

Leolaia

n/t

outbutnotdown

Blondie said:

The Bible Students still hold to this teaching of a creative day being 7,000 years long.

Where's RR to explain how they could possibly believe something so outdated?

I remember, in Grade 4, doing a project on dinosaurs where I explained the error of the rest of the others kids whose projects who went by the science books that explained that the dinosaurs had been around for millions of years. I quoted the the Watchtower's explanation of the 7,000 year creative day. Therefore, of course, the dinosaurs were all created from between 6,000 and 13,000 years ago.

When they changed that theory, from my observation in about 1981, when they got rid of the old green Bibles and changed Genesis starting from 46,026 B.C.E. to "In the beginning", it opened my eyes.

Plus I remembered my supidity in Grade 4. I was so embarrassed.

Thank goodness for egos.

Brad

The 7000 year "Creative Day"

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