Were they real days, or can we fudge by application of the scripture that says that a day to God is like a thousand?
How do we allign the scientific evidence of carbon dating, which says the earth is billions of years old with the Bible which says it's all only a few thousand years old? Who do we believe, science or The Bible?
How about the story of David and Goliath?
Or Noah?
Did the sea really part for the Israelites to cross on dry ground? How can that be?
What about the desert experience...did water really come out of a rock by just striking it with a stick? Did God really lead them with a pillar of fire? Manna?...every night for 40 years? Clothes that never wore out in 40 years???
Sounds a bit far fetched. Was it all true, or was there some "literary license" taken by the authors? After all, the stories didn't get written down for centuries. There had to be some errors, didn't there?
I have to confess that those and other questions like them have troubled me over the years. And if those questions are legitimate, doesn't that mean that we can loosen up on our interpretation of other parts of The Book that are not so easy to swallow?
But then I had an epiphany; There is something that Jesus did NOT do while here on earth, and that knowledge made all the difference for me.
Here's what Jesus did do:
Jesus was born, was crucified for my sins and died, and on the third day rose from the dead. Then He spent some period of days on earth as a resurrected being, showing Himself to over 500 people. And finally, He ascended into the sky...to heaven, in the full view of His disciples. All of this is established fact. Only those who have not studied their history argue the truth of these events.
Furthermore, Jesus was a Jew, and in His formative years, studied The Law and History of the world like all young Jewish males did. And He excelled in His studies. The scripture tells of Him astonishing the leaders at the temple with His knowledge at the young age of 12.
From this, I gather that He had read all those claims that caused me to question the accuracy of the writers; in fact, He knew them in the First Person, because according to John 1, He was there helping when it all happened. So not only did He know it from His reading and studies as a young boy, He also knew it because He had already lived it. Nobody else on earth can ever make the claim of being there, creating it, and then coming to earth as a human and studying about it as a boy. He knew the truth before He studied it, and so He is the only person who can ever establish the absolute veracity of the stories in the Bible.
Now here's something that Jesus did NOT do during His life on earth as a man; He didn't sit with the scholars and say, "Well, really...um, that event didn't happen exactly that way." He didn't make excuses, "Well, you know...there was a LOT of time between the event and when it got written down." Here was His perfect opportunity to correct any errors that had been written. When His disciples answered His question and said, "We believe you are the Son of God," He could have taken the opportunity right then to say, Well then, since you believe that, let's get some of the stories straight for the future generations." He didn't. In fact, He didn't even bring this subject up!
By His very silence on this subject, He proclaimed the absolute Truth of every word written in the Scriptures!
Jesus lived them, then He was born and He studied them; and He not only believed them, He lived them!
The conclusion one has to draw is that all Word is indeed God-Inspired. How else can you explain such accuracy, the that very person of Creator God accepted every written word as His truth to live His life by on earth? Therefore, every Word is Truth, because every written word of scripture is indeed God-inspired!
And that thing about 'scientific evidence.'..since when has God Almighty ever had to answer to man's facts or opinions?
