Are Days Getting Longer?

Need more hours in the day? According to secular scientists, we’ve added about five hours to our 24-hour days over the last billion years.

They aren’t exactly wrong. Though the earth hasn’t been around for a billion years, the days were likely a bit shorter in the past. The primary reason for the lengthening days is the moon slowly receding from earth due to tidal drag.

According to a recent BBC report, scientists have discovered that the moon is receding from earth at a rate of about 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) every year. As the moon gets farther away, its gravitational pull causes the earth’s rotation to slow down—about 1.7 milliseconds every century, an imperceptible change.

The evolutionary notion that days have been lengthening over billions of years requires many assumptions because it’s impossible to know anything about the past without an eyewitness account. But biblical creationists do have an eyewitness account in Genesis.

God created our world about 6,000 years ago in six days. The Genesis creation account and other Old Testament passages use the word yom for day along with words like evening and morning, indicating days have always been around 24 hours, since the very beginning.

While days on earth may have been a bit shorter in the past and will probably grow a bit longer in the future, don’t hold your breath for more hours in the day to cross things off your to-do list.