I listened to Ray's teaching at the Nashville Conference on Nov 2, 2008 and had this question that maybe someone could answer.
I would Email and ask Ray, but don't want to bother him in this time of distress.
As he debunked the young earth theory, saying that the days were a lot longer than 24 hours, I wondered why he didn't address the scriptures that said "the evening and the morning were the _____ day."
I would think that these words in scripture would make one think that each day was a 24 hour period.
No big deal, but I was just wondering.
Ron
Hello Ron,
Actually, he did address it [big study, you may have missed it.. I've listened to it at least 4 times and still find things I missed...].
Here's a few excerpts:
"Diomedes summarizes this thing about evening and morning by saying; On the earth both evening and morning are both always present. They are on the earth at every moment at ever changing places. Where it is morning, in places opposite it is evening.
It’s always evening and morning at the same time on the earth, at all times.
This reveals quite an exact comprehension of the illumination of the sun’s light on a spherical earth at a time in history when mankind mostly in western humanity dreaded falling off the edge of the earth.
Diomedes understood this, that the earth is a sphere and that it is sunrise and sunset at the same time always on the earth. It never goes away. You might say it turns around on it’s axes or whatever, but it is always there, it never leaves. It’s always sunset, it’s always sunrise and he had the sense to see that.
Continuing with Schroeder.
The Hebrew for evening is ‘ereb’ and this is the literal meaning of the word, although the root of the word carries with it implications far beyond that of a setting sun. What is the visual sensation of an evening? Darkness begins, object become obscured and blurred. The root of ereb means just that, mixed up, stirred together, disorderly.
The Hebrew for morning is ‘boqer’ it’s meaning is quite the opposite of ereb. Morning brings the first light, objects mingled by the dark of night become distinct entities. This is the root meaning of boqer; discernable, able to be distinguished, orderly.
It is interesting that Jesus Christ died and was buried in the evening. When did He rise? In the morning."
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"Evening and morning has absolutely nothing to do with the length of the time period that is being discussed. Has nothing to do with the length of the time. Evening and morning have to do with a condition. The evening is a condition that comes about at the end of a day. Morning is a condition that comes about at the end of a night. So don’t be coming up with definitions of stuff that don’t exist. Evening is as it begins to get dark, going from daylight to darkness. That transition period is the evening. As it goes from dark to becoming light, that division there between darkness and light, that is called morning. It doesn’t last for three hours or six hours or twelve hours, like a day and a night do."A few more things to keep in mind:
1. A literal 24-hour day begins with the Morning and ends with the Evening; not the other way around as described in Genesis. [obvious, I know.. but sometimes we don't think about these things when studying Scripture.. then someone points it out, and we're like "oh yea, duh!"]
2. The time from a literal Evening to a literal Morning is 12 hours, not 24.
3. The Scripture separates "day" from "night". [God created the Sun and Moon/Stars to
separate the day from the night; the great flood was 40 days
and 40 nights; Jonah was in the belly of a fish for 3 days
and 3 nights; Jesus fasted in the wilderness 40 days
and 40 nights; etc...]
Hope this helps.. I would recommend going through Ray's study again sometime; and also his new one from last year if you haven't yet...
Peace.
Daywalker