Day of The Five Billion 2024 is on Thursday, July 11, 2024: Christians, just asking how many of you believe it was 6 days for creation, .?

Thursday, July 11, 2024 is Day of The Five Billion 2024. Five Billion Gallons We use Five Billion Gallons of

Genesis clearly states that God created in six days, but were they days as we know them? The Genesis days were marked by "an evening and a morning - the first day", which does not amount to a 24-hour Earth day. The afternoon is entirely left out. Could this be poetic language to make us think on how God is actively organising chaos out of darkness and forming things to His design, which we can behold in the light of His light?

A problem is that some people take verse 1 to show that the universe and the Earth were already created before God started with light, on day one. Others say that is an introduction to the detail that is to follow and I am inclined to take that view because the creation of light on day one seems to correspond to the Big Bang. If that is so, science shows that it took billions of years for the matter which suddenly expanded out into our universe to slowly take shape. Stars and planets were gradually shaped by gravity and ever so slowly pulled into orbit around a sun. Our sun in the Milky Way had to be strong enough to attract the formless lump that was Earth into orbit around it. Earth was hurtling around space far faster to begin with; it had a five-hour day which was gradually affected by gravity to slow it down to its present orbit with a 24-hour day. So, until day four, when the sun, moon and stars were said to regulate our planet to its present cycle of days and seasons, there could not possibly have been 24-hour Earth days!

Further, when the Bible speaks of one of God's 'days' being as a thousand years to us, we cannot insist that that must mean a thousand years, because Psalm 90:4 adds, "or like a watch in the night". That was a four-hour period. Notice how a watch in the night is when we are sleeping through darkness, with no sense of time? We can no more say a day to God is 1,000 years as we can say it is 4 hours, or 24 hours. The time period is actually indeterminate from our point of view. The creator of time cannot be bound by Earth-time! But He may choose to use language that we can get a handle on, to stimulate us to think of the immensity of how He is Master of time and space and creation. My view is that those six days were six time-periods known precisely to God, but not yet to us.

We are called to accept the miracle of His creation, with man being a direct, special creation before day six closed. This also fits in with Big Bang cosmology because hydrogen and helium were the elements of matter minutes after it. Gravity then drew these gases together. The closer they came, the higher the temperature rose. Eventually they burst into incandescence and stars were born. The temperatures were so huge and the energies so high that the nuclei crashing against each other fused and built up into heavier elements, such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen - the basic building blocks of life. Some stars imploded at the end of their life, scattering those elements into space. The process then repeated on second-generation stars. Gradually, the atoms of life were built up. Our bodies are made up entirely of these atoms. If we want to sound romantic, our bodies are 'star dust', or more scientifically, our bodies are reprocessed nuclear waste. But there is not a nucleus of a carbon atom in our bodies that wasn't made in a star.

Yes, God could have caused all of that to happen in a short span of time, but He could also have unleashed His creative forces and then allowed them to take their natural, predestined course. My thinking (and virtually all of the previous paragraph) has been moulded by the book below, where 15 scientists, who are also Christians, explain how they believe science and the creation account are not at odds. I do recommend this book to you.

One $ billion in five days, cash for clunkers. (what) ?

This was a lame program from day one. Another bomb program from the liberals.

Not only can't we afford this but what are they going to do with all the clunkers? This is a logistical nightmare!

EDIT: Bart S, this was not intended to help the "poor African Americans" buy cars. This was to help the car industry sell new cars. The "poor" can't afford to buy new cars, even with the incentives! Stop blasting people that still have money, in spite of Obama.

ah, the $700 billion bail out has passed?

Yes, sad day. The schools and American people deserves much much better.

In its second vote in five days, the US House of Representatives approved a massive bailout package for the major banks and finance houses. The legislation, passed by a vote of 263 to 171 Friday afternoon, gives US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson virtually unrestricted powers to use at least $700 billion to buy up largely worthless paper assets from Wall Street using taxpayers’ money.

The approval of the measure by a wide margin followed the defeat in the House of what was essentially a similar bill on Monday. Then, on Wednesday, the Senate approved a revised bailout package that was supplemented by nearly $150 billion in tax cuts and other measures aimed principally at winning support from the Republican right.

These revisions brought the total price tag for the package to more than $850 billion, with many predicting that it will end up being only the first installment on a continuing transfer of public wealth to the coffers of the country’s major private banks.

Bush signed the measure into law barely an hour after it cleared the House. While uncharacteristically praising Democratic congressional leaders for pushing the bailout through, Bush warned in a statement from the White House, “Americans should also expect that it will take some time for this legislation to have its full impact on our economy.”

Earlier, White House spokesman Tony Fratto, a former official in the US Treasury Department, all but acknowledged that the measure is not aimed at ameliorating the increasingly dire conditions facing millions of American working people confronted with the loss of jobs and foreclosures on their homes.

Responding to a question as to whether the bailout would affect rising unemployment—reflected in jobless figures released Friday showing another 159,000 jobs destroyed—Fratto responded: “No one should be over-promising what this bill will do. It’s not been sold as giving a boost to the economy—it’s to avoid a crisis.”

There is little evidence that the plan will accomplish even that, as was reflected in the continuing fall of the stock market Friday and the widespread skepticism expressed by financial experts that the bailout could resolve the credit crisis.

The legislation—formally known as the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act—was first proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, which will be one of the act’s prime beneficiaries. While proposed by the administration, the bailout became law thanks principally to the efforts of the Democratic leadership in Congress, which became its main political sponsor.

In Friday’s vote, Democrats supported the measure by nearly a three-to-one margin, with 172 voting in favor and 63 against. The Republicans opposed the measure introduced by their own administration by a margin of 108 to 91.

In a press conference held immediately after the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank and other members of the Democratic House leadership engaged in a round of mutual back-slapping while cynically proclaiming that the aim of the legislation was to protect the American people.

The bill was passed not for Dow Jones, but “on behalf of Mr. and Mrs. Jones of Main Street,” declared Pelosi.

In reality, the bailout is aimed at shifting the full burden of the meltdown of the capitalist financial system onto the backs of working people, while providing a windfall to the wealthiest interests in the country.

The claims by the Democratic leadership of “improvements” in the bill are fraudulent. In all essentials, it is the same plan as that presented by Paulson in closed-door meetings with congressional leaders two weeks ago.