The Second Day or Epoch
The expressions "evening and morning" and "day"
cannot be understood to signify twenty-four-hour days, for neither Sun nor
Moon was visible until the Fourth Day. The Earth was swathed in
impenetrable darkness.
The word "day" applies to any period, or Epoch, as for
instance, the "Day of temptation in the wilderness"--forty
years. (Psalms 95:8.) Note again, that we read of the "Day of
Christ," evidently referring to the thousand-year Day in which
Messiah is to be King over all the Earth. (Isaiah 2:11.) In the common
affairs of life we use the word "day" similarly, when referring
to Caesar's day, Napoleon's day, etc.
We follow the theory that each of the Seven Days of the Creative
Week was a period of seven thousand years. This, seven times seven
thousand, equals forty-nine thousand (7x7,000=49,000) years, ushering in a
grand Jubilee Epoch.
As one after another the encircling rings of water and minerals
approached the Earth they would spread out like a great canopy, but would
not be permitted to fall upon the Earth because of the circumambient air,
referred to in Scripture as a "firmament." Saturn's rings have
not yet fallen.
God made the firmament in the second, or Palaeozoic Day, and separated
the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above
the firmament. (Genesis 1:7.) The strongly mineralized waters above the
Earth, held off by the "firmament" and centrifugal force,
greatest at the equator, gradually concentrated at the two poles, where
later they broke and then reached the Earth, forming layer after layer of
mineralized earth deposited by the water which rushed from both poles
toward the equator.--Genesis 7:11,18.
These rings, or belts, of water and minerals followed each other as
great deluges upon the Earth--perhaps thousands of years apart. The Deluge
of Noah's day was the last, of pure water only, heavier minerals being
attracted first. Hence minerals are generally under several layers of
shale and soil.
