Continuing
from the last post, clearly the temporal existence of the earth was to last a
full week of the Lord's time, to be finished by the "great and last
day," a millennium or one thousand years of man's time. In a modern-day
revelation the Lord said:
"God
made the world in six days, and on the seventh day he finished his work, and
sanctified it...in the beginning of the seventh thousand years, will the Lord
sanctify the earth."
These
straight-forward and explicit statements leave very little uncertainty and
permit little individual interpretation.
For those who believe literally in the scriptures, we are in the evening
of the thirteenth "day" after the morning of the first
"day" of creation. Or
stated differently, it took six thousand of our years to form the earth, some
portion of a seventh day, the day of rest following creation, and then another
six thousand years of earth life. In all, the earth has existed for
approximately thirteen thousand years.
While
Moses used a word in Genesis meaning a period of time, the word he used
in the Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price, as translated by
Joseph Smith, is rendered day. In Abraham's writing, again as translated
by Joseph Smith, the word he uses to describe the creative process is time.
Careful study, then, of the scriptural meanings of the two terms indicates that
a creative time is synonymous with a creative day.
Now if
this creative day was different than the living day as referred
to in the scriptures—that is, one of God's days is one thousand years to us—we
have no indication. Certainly, the
seven days of earth life, as indicated in the previous post in the Doctrine and
Covenants, is synonymous with seven thousand years, or one thousand years for
each day. If this living day is the same as the creative day,
then it would appear that the earth was created in six days of the Lord's time,
or six thousand years of our time.
Certainly,
earth life will be completed somewhere near the end of the sixth thousand years
since Adam's fall. And assuming we are living toward the end of that sixth
thousand year period, then we are indeed living in the Saturday Night of time
as it relates to this world.
The
seventh day, or seventh thousand years, then, will be the millennium. This
would suggest, from the scriptures at least, that a day is equal to a thousand
years and it has been six thousand years since Adam's fall. But what about the
period of time that it took to organize the earth and the heaven?
Adam's Time in the Garden of Eden: What we do not know, of
course, is how long Adam and Eve spent in the Garden of Eden. We can surmise that they were in the
garden during the seventh day of the Lord's rest, which might imply a thousand
years. A careful reading of the
Doctrine and Covenants, particularly section 77, would indicate that Adam fell
within the "day of the Lord" in which he was placed in the
garden. Thus, our first parents
might have been given a thousand years to be in the garden, but that period of
time was cut short by the acts that led to the Fall. In any event, this period
of time is not indicated in the scriptures and we can only surmise its length
based upon the determination of the length of time for the creation process
itself—that is, a seventh period of time following the placement of Adam and
Even into the garden—that period of time, or day, in which the Lord rested from
His labors.
It should also be kept in mind that God
warned Adam while he was in the Garden that if he partook of the forbidden
fruit: "... in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die...."
Adam then lived for 930 years, dying within a thousand years of
leaving the Garden, or within one day to the Lord.
For those because of the
so-called Geologic Ages, or for other reasons, cling to a belief that evolution
and creation can be compatible, such as in the Gap Theory, it should be
recognized that Paul in the scriptural record tells us that there was no sin or
death until man (Adam) brought them into the world: “Wherefore,
as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed
upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12).
On the other hand the
evolutionary process would require billions of years of suffering and death in
the world before Adam or man had sinned, and that means that God Himself would
be directly responsible for sin in the world, but God, of course, could not be
the author of sin. So the evolutionary process where there had already been
billions of years represented by the fossils and the sedimentary rocks of the
earth’s crust, which are supposed now to identify the geological ages, with
death recorded in the fossil remains in rock and strata, dinosaurs, and cave
man simply does not fit the scriptural record. The two are not conceivably
compatible in any manner.
(See the next post, “The Length of Time of the
Earth,” to see the actual age of the Earth according to God’s word—not that of
man)
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