Evidence of Creation Day 4 of the Sun, Moon Stars

Only a .42% chance of a Full Solar Eclipse on this day.

Could this be Creation Day 4 when the Sun, the Moon and the Stars were made?

Throughout history, people have calculated the age of the earth using the Bible to guide them. Though compelling, until now, no one has brought forth astronomical evidence supporting their calculations.  It appears that there was a complete solar eclipse on Day 4 when God created the Sun, the Moon and the stars.

Jeff Swanson’s profession was in software development. For 22 years, he implemented large scale banking systems, containing calculations of over 6,000 variables, and processes that authenticated customer identification. This would turn out to be his training ground for a God given project now published, known as The Plan: The Chronology of God’s Word from Creation to Completion (www.PlanBible.com). An entire Bible rearranged chronologically verse by verse. It contains the 66 date calculations from the fall of Jerusalem (586 BC) backwards to Adam’s creation date. It also contains all 440 biblical historical dates, calculated in a matrix. If you change one date the entire matrix changes.

Importance of Time for this Generation

Some put forth the argument that things that happened long ago are not important today. However, Jesus said that if you do not believe the earthly things how can you believe the heavenly things (Jhn 3:12).  Today, truth is attacked, as never before, even the very definition of it has been altered in the dictionary.  Webster’s 1828 dictionary stated truth as “Conformity to fact or reality; exact accordance with that which is, or has been, or shall be. The truth of history constitutes its whole value.” That means we need the whole of history for truth. The scripture for this is found in Psa 119:160. If we fail to understand the truth of where we came from, then we have an incorrect understanding of who we are today. Christ said He was the way the truth and the life (Jhn 14:6).  The enemy always questions the word of God, undermining our faith in it (Gen 3:1). Prophecies state that Satan will attack the truth of the last generation before Christ comes again. This is found in Daniel 7:25 – he will speak against the Most High…and try to change the set times. The way to change the set times is revise history into an untruth, and then you can control ones perception of the future. We need to walk in all the truth, so that we will not fall into the enemy’s deception and thus be ready for Christ’s soon return.

Year of Creation

Interestingly, if you start with the known assumption date of when King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem, as 586 BC, there are 66 date calculations in an unbroken chain of time back to Adam’s creation date. These “dates” follow the chronologies:

1. Kings I & II, state the ages of the kings from Zedekiah back to king Solomon
2. 1Ki 6:1 states there was 480 years from Solomon back to the Exodus
3. Exo 12:40 states there was 430 years from the Exodus back to Abraham leaving for Egypt
4. Gen 12:4-10 states Abraham was 75 at the time he went to Egypt
5. Genesis 5 and 11 states the ages of patriarchs from Abraham back to Adam’s creation date

Using the biblical text to construct the date calculation (See Fig 1), Jeff’s formulas remove personal interpretations and presuppositions. Jesus quoted the law stated all things should be established by two or three witness (Deu 19:15, Mat 18:16). Following this principle, Jeff compared his calculation with archbishop Ussher’s calculations published in 1658. He found out of the 66 calculations they agreed on all but two. This left a 44-year difference in their creation dates. They agree that the age of the earth is young (Less than 6,000 years old).  The differences are in the age of Abram’s father Terah, when Abram was born and the reign start date of Jeroboam II. Unable to change the text of the Bible he settled to disagree, agreeably.

Fig. 1: Excerpt from The Plan unveiling the formula for Noah’s date of death.

Exact Day of Creation

Where it gets interesting is how do you find an exact day for creation? Jewish tradition states that Adam was created on the first day of Tishri (Rosh Hashanah). If that is true, then one needs to convert our current Gregorian calendar into a Hebrew Calendar. It sounds easy enough, except that the Gregorian calendar is based on the days the earth rotates around the Sun, and the Hebrew calendar is based on the days the moon rotates around the earth. One more challenge is that the calculated Hebrew calendar starts at 3760 BC falling short of the modern biblical calculation for creation ^[1]. The solution is to lengthen the Hebrew calendar about 200 years to find the creation date found in the Christian Bible.

The purpose of this exercise is to find if there are any noteworthy astronomical events given evidence to support the calculated age of the earth. Today we have accurate software that can take us back to any time and place in history, and see the location of the Sun, the Moon, and the stars. This adds one more complexity. Astronomical calculations are based on the Julian Calendar that was replaced by the Gregorian calendar.

Concisely one must recreate a Hebrew Calendar lengthening the creation date to calculate the first day of Tishri. Second, one must correlate this calendar to the Julian calendar in order to see the heavens. Third, the date needs to be converted into a modern date that has meaning to us today in the Gregorian calendar.

Calendar Coordination Problem

Theoretically, all of the calculations for the age of the earth are doable. However, in practice we face one more problem. When we align the known astronomical events that occurred on Jewish festivals in the past and correlate between the Hebrew calendar and the astronomical data we find an issue. For example: on Pentecost of 791 BC there was solar eclipse. The software and NASA confirm this event on the date. The problem is that modern Hebrew calendars do not calculate this date as being Pentecost.

The Talmud gives a clue as to what happen. This is a extra-biblical Jewish Rabbinical writing states that R. Aqiba established three leap years in a row ^[2]. This never happens in the normal 19-year cycle of the Hebrew calendar. Thus, it would make calculation off up to 30 days. This is why Jeff Swanson states in the introduction that his calculations contain a margin of error between 2 and 30 days in The Plan.

However, that still should not prevent discovery. The margin of error simply means he needed to scan forward and backward 30 days from the assumption date of creation, looking for astronomical events.

Observable Location Problem

The next problem is the location of the hypothetical observer viewing the sky at the creation event. The software requires a location on earth to observe astronomical events. Since Jerusalem is the center of biblical reference that would be logical. However, it appears that major plate tectonics shifted all locations on the globe from the flood of Noah’s day. Therefore, the observable location in the software is simply an educated guess.

Precision of Time Calculation Problem

The reason Spain first adapted the Gregorian calendar in 1582 was bring the celebration of Easter to the correct date. The Julian calendar was adopted in 46 BC. However, it was 11 minutes per year too long so the calendar slowly drifted away from the equinoxes. The Gregorian calendar solved this problem with leap years every four years with the exception of century mark having only one in 400 years. However, this still leaves 27 seconds per year unaccounted. Not a problem in our lifetime however, over 6,000 years this means 1.88 days are unaccounted.

Finding the Creation Date

Jeff Swanson published The Plan originally with a two-year margin of error. When a friend introduced him to the movie The Star of Bethlehem, he came to realize where his elusive two-year discrepancy was. Exactly 72 days after publishing, Jeff spent a whole day recalculating the entire matrix. He made his peace with the creation year and noted the time. Interestingly it was 11:11 pm. Only later did he realize it was 1/11/11 at 11:11 pm! The number one in scripture stands for unity. It denotes that the Lord God is one meaning not other God before Him (Deu 6:4). The number nine represents judgment or the conclusion of the matter. This placed the creation year at 3960 BC with a Hebrew virtual year of 3961 BC (Hebrew counting starts at 1, not 0).

The Discovery of the Eclipse

Months later, Jeff would use the same method of discovery used for the star of Bethlehem to see if there was any celestial events during the creation week. He recalculated the Hebrew calendar, and aligned it with the Julian calendar and their it was: a complete solar eclipse during the creation week. The only problem it was not on the right day. The Sun and the Moon would not be created until Wednesday. That is when he realized if he removed the 1.88 days adjusting the Gregorian calendar and subtracted one day for Joshua’s long day (Jos 10:13) that the adjustment placed the complete solar eclipse on Day 4 of the Creation week. This is the day the Lord created the Sun, the Moon, and the stars. He calculated the changes of this not happening on this day as 99.58%. One more interesting note: it appears that the sun and the moon were created in the constellation Ophiuchus: A picture of the Son of Man defeating the serpent who is seeking a crown (See Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: The Moon eclipsing the Sun on Day 4 of the creation week, September 18, 3960 BC on the Gregorian Calendar

 

Confirmation Evidence of Rosh Hashanah

The first day of Tishri is an observation event of the first light of sun hitting the moon after the new moon. The adjustment in the calendar also demonstrated the new moon of the month on Friday the Day 6 day of creation. This would make Adam created on the first day of Tishri (Rosh Hashanah), just as Jewish tradition states (See Fig 3).

Fig, 3: The Moon’s first light after the new moon Day 6 of the creation week (Rosh Hashanah) Friday September 20, 3960 BC on the Gregorian calendar.

 

 ^[1]The Hebrew calendar uses an AM (Anno Mundi) Latin for “Years of the World.” This dating system starts with a creation date assumption and counts forward, the same way we count AD Latin Anno Domini, “The Year of our Lord” or CE (Common Era) dating today.

^[2]Babylon Talmud Volume XV Chapter 1, page 27