God Created the Earth in six literal Days
In the church today it is popular not to hold to a literal creation view in that God created the earth in six literal 24-hour periods of time. Due to the influence of Naturalism, many Christians have come up with a number of theories as to how God created the world. One popular view is called progressive creationism and this means that days can be understood as eons of time, and during the creation, God stepped in at various times (one of which was when he created Adam) and did His creation work. Another popular view, theistic evolution, means that God allowed and used evolution to make the creation event happen. None of these views are Biblical, and anything other than the literal interpretation of creation is an attempt by man to harmonize the Bible's Creation-Fall-Flood account (Gen 1-11) with the popular millions of years view of the universe. Those that believe in millions of years think that the rocks which contain fossil records formed over millions of years, and all before God created Adam. There are many problems with the millions of years view and any other view other than the Biblical one as it does some serious undermining of the Gospel. "For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive"(1 Cor 15:21-22,NIV). Jesus came to undo the work of Adam (1 Cor 15:45) and died on the cross for the entire human race and all of mankind (Gal 3:13, Col 1:22). A non-literal interpretation of Genesis 1-3 not only undermines the Gospel, but the rest of the Bible. If one cannot believe in God creating the world in six 24-hour periods of time, then certainly why believe the events of the Exodus? Or why believe that the Gospels are literal events that actually happened?
Why creationism happened in six literal 24-hour periods of time
The Hebrew word for "Day" yom is first used here in Genesis and always refers to a 24-hour period of time. The original readers were not Hebrew scholars, nor scientists, but were ordinary people, and so the language Moses wrote was very clear to them. Moses probably never imagined that readers one day would find ways to re-interpret the plain meaning to support their Naturalistic presuppositions that they have approached the text with. The reason why the days referred here mean literal 24-hour periods of time is that the phrase "And there was evening and there was morning" is repeated at the end of each day, and this can only mean a literal 24-hour period of time. God knew that the pagan philosophers of antiquity would one day try and distort his record of creation to support pantheistic evolution, so He was careful to define His terms. Also Genesis was written as history and not poetry so Moses's intention when he wrote it was to communicate factual literal events. Plenty of Hebrew scholars agree with this. No hint of the text being an allegory exists in the text. It is odd that other passages in the Old Testament that speak of numbered literal days such as Numbers 7 are not disputed, even when the exact same structured sequence of days is used. We must let the Bible speak for itself, and not let science and man's opinion interpret the Bible. "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it" (Ex 20:11 KJV).