Both Christians and unbelievers are guilty of misusing Bible verses by ripping them from their original context.

It’s been a while since I’ve added to the commonly misused Bible verses series, so it’s time to get back to it. There are many reasons why people misuse verses. Oftentimes, they are well-intentioned and simply repeat what they’ve heard many times before, and they have never taken the time to make sure the Bible really teaches what they are claiming. Others are not so well-intentioned, and simply try to rip a verse from its context to justify their beliefs or behavior.

The goal of this series is to help you avoid making these types of mistakes when using God’s Word. It’s a serious matter to argue that God supports your position, so you need to make sure that Scripture really does line up with what you think it says.

Commonly Misused Bible Verse #5: 2 Peter 3:8

It would be difficult to count how often I have heard this verse misused. I have been involved in creation research and teaching for more than a decade, and those who seek to deny the plain meaning of the first chapter of Genesis often cite 2 Peter 3:8.

But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. (2 Peter 3:8, NKJV)

Obviously, the person misusing this verse is attempting to make the days of the Creation Week to be something other than normal-length days. Why do they do this? Because they have a desire to add millions and billions of years to the Bible. Not only is this unnecessary from a scientific perspective, it fails on biblical grounds.

The days of the Creation Week were clearly normal-length days. They are marked by the phrase “evening and morning.” They are listed in a series with ordinal and cardinal numbers (literally the text for days 1–6 would be “one day,” “a second day,” “a third day,” “a fourth day,” “a fifth day,” and “the sixth day”). Since “the sixth day” uses the definite article (“the”), it forces the other days in the series to be literal days as well—otherwise it would not have been “the” sixth day. Also, in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) God revealed that the Israelites were commanded to work for six days and rest for one because that’s what He did. There are many other biblical and theological reasons why the days of Genesis 1 were normal-length days that I won’t go into here.

So why is it wrong to quote 2 Peter 3:8 when discussing this issue? If you haven’t learned anything else in this series, you should have learned that we need to take a look at the context. As you’ll see in the verses below, this passage is not about the time it took God to create the world.

…knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:3–9)

Peter did mention Creation in this passage, but the point of this passage is the return of Christ. He stated that scoffers will come in the last days and they will mock three specific events: the Creation, the Flood, and the Second Coming. Then he told his readers that they shouldn’t lose heart over the fact that Christ had not yet returned. Even though it seems like a long time to us, God is not bound by time so the period between the first and second comings of Christ isn’t a long time to Him.

But doesn’t this passage say that God’s day is a thousand years long? Not at all! Remember, it also says that a thousand years are as one day. So if this is supposed to be a mathematical formula, you’re right back where you started from (1=1000 and 1000=1). The fact is, this passage is using these terms in a simile (a figure of speech that makes an analogy, thus showing that we aren’t supposed to interpret these words literally).

Furthermore, even if this passage could be used to say each day of the Creation Week was a thousand years, it doesn’t really help much if you’re trying to squeeze millions or billions of years into the Bible. At most, it would just add another six (or seven if you include God’s day of rest) thousand years. So that leaves you with an earth and universe that is 12,000–13,000 years old. That’s nowhere near the 4.5 billion years that is commonly (and mistakenly) cited as the age of the earth.

The Bible is very clear on this issue. God made everything in six normal-length days about 6,000 years ago and then rested from His work on the seventh day. There is no other way to interpret the clear words of Scripture without forcing numerous contradictions into the text. I’ve written about these problems in much greater detail in my book Old-Earth Creationism on Trial: The Verdict Is In (co-authored by Dr. Jason Lisle).