Pat Robertson Claims God Could Have Made The Earth in Six ‘Galactic’ or ‘Universal’ Days
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Televangelist Pat Robertson again refuted that the Earth was created in six literal days in answering a question from a viewer on Tuesday’s “700 Club” broadcast.
The viewer, named Julie, had asked Robertson if he believes that the earth is billions of years old, and if so, how that would square with the Bible’s chronology of a six-day creation.
“I enjoyed watching your recent interview with Hugh Ross. He seems to believe in the Big Bang theory and that the Earth is billions of years old. I was wondering if you hold to this belief as well,” she inquired, her question being read by co-host Terry Meeuwsen. “If so, how does one reconcile this with the account of Creation in Genesis that the Earth was created in [six] literal 24-hour days.”
“You use the term ‘literal 24-hour days.’ The Bible doesn’t say that,” Robertson responded. “It says day one, day two, and so forth. But what is a day?”
Robertson then asserted that there are different types of days and the Bible could have meant any one of those.
“A day is how long it takes the Earth to revolve — that’s one way of looking at it. But another day could be a lunar day — how long does it take for the moon to revolve around,” he said. “Another would be a solar day — how long does it take the sun to revolve. Another could be a galactic day — how long does it take a galaxy to move around. And a universal day would be how long does it take to traverse the entire universe.”
“And any of those could be a day,” Robertson contended. “The Bible doesn’t say a literal 24 hours. Okay?”
View Robertson’s remarks here.
As previously reported, Robertson made similar remarks in May when another woman asked a question about the age of the Earth. He responded that young Earth teaching is “nonsense” and “embarrassing.”
“I learned in church that the time of creation was 6,000 years ago. How does that work, compared to science saying dinosaurs are thousands or millions of years old?” the viewer asked.
Robertson pointed to 17th Anglican Bishop James Ussher, who used both biblical and non-biblical historical sources to chronicle and calculate that Adam was created by God at approximately 4004 B.C., thus dating the earth to be 6,000 years old.
“Well, the truth is the dinosaurs were extinct maybe … about 50 billion years ago, and this planet has been [around] much longer than that,” Robertson asserted. “And there was a course that they were trying to hustle around called creation science that was just nonsense, and it was so embarrassing, so we wanted to make sure we told the truth.”
“You know, this universe that we live in is about 14 billion years old and there’s no question about it,” Robertson claimed. “And we have tremendous geological records and all the rest of it. And that 6,000-year stuff just doesn’t compute. But we, as Christians, we need to know the truth.”
In describing the vastness of the universe, which He attributed to the hand of God, he then told viewers with a chuckle, “Let’s give God the credit for what He did and not try to limit Him to 6,000 years.”
In 2012, Robertson responded to a viewer who was afraid that her husband and teenage sons might leave the faith, including because of questions they had surrounding the existence of dinosaurs.
“[I]f you fight revealed science, you’re going to lose your children, and I believe in telling them the way it was,” Robertson remarked.
However, the Kentucky-based apologetics ministry Answers in Genesis has refuted Robertson several times as it teaches why theistic evolution does not reconcile with the Bible and does not make logical sense.
“As a Christian, one cannot consistently take millions of years and add that to the Bible,” President Ken Ham explained in The New Answers 3. “To do so, one would have to reinterpret the Bible’s clear account in Genesis, which results in undermining the authority of Scripture.”
He outlined that the Bible clearly states that death only came after the Fall (“[B]y one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, and so death upon all men.” Romans 5:12). But if one holds to the old Earth theory, then death, decay and suffering would have occurred millions and millions of years before humans ever came onto the scene — which would contradict the Scriptures.
“If one believes in millions of years as the secularists tell us concerning the fossil record, then we have a fossil record of million of years before man that has evidence of [death and animals eating each other] … and evidences of diseases in the fossil record … and evidences of thorns in the fossil record,” Ham stated.
“The Bible makes it very, very clear that thorns came into the world after the curse. We’re also told that originally, before sin, Adam and Eve and the animals were all vegetarian, and we’re told the God declared that the creation at the end of the sixth day was all very good,” he outlined. “A fossil record with diseases like brain tumors described as very good certainly would not fit.”
“In other words, it’s the Bible’s account of sin changing the whole world, changing the universe, that helps us understand why there’s death in the world, why now animals eat other animals, why people even eat animals,” Ham continued. “The whole world has changed because of sin. In fact, Romans 8 tells us that the whole of creation groans in pain because of sin.”
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