How Could the First Three Days of Creation Be Literal Days If the Sun Was Not Created until Day Four?
This is an excerpt from my book Jesus Is Not the Answer to Every Sunday School Question: Book 1: Foundations (p. 81).
I once had a conversation with a brother in the Lord who insisted that only the first three “days” of creation were long ages and that the 24-hour day was not instituted until Day Four.
But this view does great violence to the text. The exact same pattern (“Then God said, ‘Let there be...’ there was evening and morning, the [insert number here] day”) occurs before and after Day Four! So at best this view is inconsistent. It also ignores the fact that the sun is not needed to create day and night. As I demonstrated in class using a flashlight and a globe, all that is necessary to create a day-night cycle is a rotating sphere and a “fixed” light source some distance away. Since God separated the light from the dark on Day One (Genesis 1:4), we have all we need for a night-day cycle. To hold to this flexible “day” scenario would therefore require that God create the earth with an imperceptibly slow rotation (taking millions of years to make one revolution) and then deciding later to give the earth a big kick to get it spinning at the present rate. It just doesn’t add up.