Yes, there is a standpoint from which the days are 24 hrs. The 6 days are a time scale that we can understand instead of billions of years, and is scaled correctly. Day 1 begins in the evening at 6pm (4.5 billion years ago). Halfway through the day at 6 am, God says, let there be light! The inside of the Earth is light mixed with darkness, liquid mixed with solid, without form and void. The whole earth is lit up because the light comes from within! Just like our light of Christ comes from within us.
Here is the scale:
- 2Pe 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
Is this just a poetic way of repeating the same thing in reverse order? No, its both ways. The second instance of a thousand years corresponds to the one day with the Lord. So its …“a thousand years (with the Lord is) as one (creation) day.” This makes sense because God is not bound by time. He can act very slowly like with evolutionary creation, or very quickly with miracles.
Our relation to Earth time is as Gods relation to our time. A “day with the Lord” is our time with the Lord. As an example, Adam lived less than 1,000 years in his time but it counted as 1 day in Gods time and 1,000 x (number of days in a year) in Earth time. The days in a year is not a constant, because the number of hours in a day change as the Earth slows in its rotation. The number of hours in a year, however is a constant at 8,766 hrs. To convert creation days into Earth year, we multiply the number of days in a year by 1000 x 1000.
Oh, and we need a starting point! Jesus is the image of God and we could not be made in the image of God until He came and showed Himself to us over 2,000 years ago. So, lets make an assumption that the year 4 BC was toward the end of the 6th creation day. We could use 0 for simplicity or even today is not going to make much difference in the time scale we are working with.
To get to the beginning of day 6: (365 x 1000 x 1000 ) = 365 million years ago. We need to do a little iteration here as there were only 23 hrs in a day 365 million year ago. So, 8,766 / 23 = 381 days in a year.
Adjusted beginning of day 6: (381 x 1000 x 1000) = 381 million years ago.
Continuing on I found that there were 20 hrs in a day at the beginning of day 5, 19 hrs in a day at the beginning of day 4, 18 hrs in a day at the beginning of day 3, 17 hrs at the beginning of day 2 and then a big jump as when the earth was first created there were only 4 hrs in a day as it spun rapidly.
Day 6: 381 million years ago - present
Day 5: 819 million - 381 million
Day 4: 1.28 billion - 819 million
Day 3: 1.77 billion - 1.28 billion
Day 2: 2.28 billion - 1.77 billion
Day 1: 4.48 billion - 2.28 billion
Then there was the beginning of the universe when 1 hour counted as the whole day. If we can spend one hour with God per day, He counts it as spending the whole “day with the Lord”.
- Mat 26:40 Then He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour?
(8,766 x 1000 x 1000) = 8.77 billion years
8.77 billion + 4.48 billion = 13.25 billion years to get to the beginning!