p. 1 | OBJECTIONS TO THE PERIOD-DAY THEORY

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, February 5, 1880

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 6

OBJECTIONS TO THE PERIOD-DAY THEORY.

A BROTHER has had the kindness to copy for the REVIEW, from a late English work of high authority, the following good thoughts on the days of Gen. 1, exposing the period dodge. The last paragraph is unanswerable.

The fact of the alternations of light and darkness being distinctly defined as day and night in Gen. 1:5, is, in my mind, a strong argument in favor of natural days, and against periods. For what is the primary meaning of day and night?—and surely the primary and currently-used meaning must be designed here, where they are given as definitions. Any other meaning (such as in John 9:4: “I must work . . . while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.”) is secondary and figurative, and derived from the primary one.

The use assigned to the sun and moon and stars,—which were made to shine upon the earth on the fourth day; viz., to be “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years” (Gen. 1:14),—seems clearly intended for the advantage of God’s intellectual creature, man. But on the period system of interpretation, he was not created to enjoy this benefit for myriads of years after it was prepared for him, all the animal existences on the earth—the work of the fifth and sixth days—intervening before man’s appearance. There is something incongruous in this.

The visible appearance of the sun on the fourth day, in the midst of the week, furnishes a conclusive argument for natural days, if the term “and evening was,” “and morning was”—which occurs six times—is to be interpreted consistently throughout. For it may be fairly assumed that the heavenly bodies began at once to fulfill the functions assigned to them, viz., “the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night” (Gen. 1:16); and therefore the fifth and sixth days, at least, must have been ordinary days of twenty-four hours each; and as they were of sufficient length for the works belonging to them, the first, second, third, and fourth may well have been sufficient for their respective works. The description “evening was, and morning was,” being the same, the day must be homogeneous.

Mr. Birks well remarks, that ordinal numbers never occur, either in the Bible or elsewhere, when words of time are used as indefinite periods. And he adds, that the reason is plain: two, three, four indefinite periods make only one indefinite period. The simple fact that the days are numbered from the first to the sixth, is thus a clear proof that definite periods, or days, are meant.—Pratt.