Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Bruce McConkie in "Christ and Creation" (1982) Moving Away from Belief in a Young Earth to an Old Earth Creation Model

  

As the work goes forward we see the fulfillment of that which God spake to Moses in the Ten Commandments: “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day.” (Ex. 20:11.) It is of the creative events that took place on each of these “days” that we shall now speak.

 

But first, what is a day? It is a specified time period; it is an age, an eon, a division of eternity; it is the time between two identifiable events. And each day, of whatever length, has the duration needed for its purposes. One measuring rod is the time required for a celestial body to turn once on its axis. For instance, Abraham says that according to “the Lord’s time” a day is “one thousand years” long. This is “one revolution … of Kolob,” he says, and it is after the Lord’s “manner of reckoning.” (Abr. 3:4.)

 

There is no revealed recitation specifying that each of the “six days” involved in the Creation was of the same duration. (Bruce R. McConkie, "Christ and the Creation," Ensign, June 1982)