A Day whose Space is Fifty Thousand Years

A Day whose Space is Fifty Thousand Years

1989 3 March 7-8 A Day whose Space is Fifty Thousand Years (510) “He is the Lord of the Ladders, by which the angels and the spirit will ascend to Him in one day: a day whose space is fifty thousand years” (70:3-4).

Everyone is familiar with the idea that God created the world in six days. The Bible tells us so, and so does the Quran. But the notion of the creation of our world and everything in it in a mere six, days has now become untenable in the light of recent scientific findings. In fact, there is no way that the ‘days’ could even have existed when the natural phenomena which produces them, i.e. the earth and its rotation round the sun, were still not supposedly in existence. In The Bible, the Quran and Science, Dr. Maurice Bucaille writes:

“The idea that successive phases of the Creation....could have been compressed into the space of one week is one that cannot be defended from a scientific point of view. Today we are perfectly aware that the formation of the Universe and the Earth took place in stages that lasted for very long periods (p.27).”

But we need not allow this apparent inconsistency with modern scientific data to shake our fundamental beliefs. The Quran, indeed tells us that “He governs all things from heaven to earth. And in the end it will ascend to Him in one day, a day whose space is a thousand years by your reckoning” (32:5). Another verse says, “.... Each day with your Lord is like a thousand years in your reckoning” (22:47). Yet another verse equates the day to an even longer period.” He is the Lord of the Ladders, by which the angels and the spirit will ascend to Him in one day: a day whose space is fifty thousand years,” (70:34),

If we look at the original Arabic Quran, we find that the word used for “day” (yaum, pI. ayyam) is one that does not necessarily refer to the interval of time that elapses between two successive sunrises or sunsets for an inhabitant of the earth. The word can also have the broader meaning of a ‘period of time’ as is evident from the above-quoted verses. This means that we may interpret the creation of the heavens and the earth to have taken place in six ‘periods of time’ or, as Abdullah Yusuf Ali writes in his commentary on the Quran (1934), six “stages in the evolution of physical nature,” (p. 1290). This would make our fundamental dogma quite compatible with modern scientific data.

It is obviously essential to be in possession of divine scriptures which have been preserved in their original form, without interpolation, distortion or damaging omissions due to neglect. Of all the religious works which we have at our disposal at the moment, the Quran is the only one which meets such exacting historical requirements. It has been preserved intact to this very day in pure and pristine form. It is, therefore, to the Quran which we must turn if we wish to bring scientific exactitude to our acquisition of learning.