I’ve heard some theologians use the analogy of having 3 drawers when it comes to Christian belief. The top drawer is what you would fight and die for. These are fundamentals to the Christian faith. The second drawer contains those very important—but not necessarily essential to being a Christian—issues. And the 3rd drawer are issues that are more personal convictions supported by Scripture, but not issues we can use by themselves to build solid theology.

This is one of those “3rd drawer” issues. We can’t build theology on it, but it likely supports the overall picture painted by a study of Bible prophecy. Scripture doesn’t tell us the date of Creation, but it gives us geneologies that can be studied to develop a pretty close age of mankind. (BTW, ministries like Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, and others have some great resources about scientific dating methods, the effect of Noah’s flood, as well as the reasons for and flaws in evolutionary models insisting on the earth being millions or billions of years old).

Anyway, with that aside, here some verses I wanted to share that support the idea of a 7000 year history—including a verse that may also contain a prophecy about Israel springing back to life after 2000 years of being down for the count:

Genesis 1:1-2:2 (7 days of creation including the day of rest)

2 Peter 3:8 ► But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

Hosea 6:2 ► After two days he will revive us (Israel); on the third day he will restore us (Israel), that we may live in his presence.

The primary/literal interpretation is a literal 24-hour day period of 7 days of creation and the concept that to God 1000 years is nothing. He is outside of time.

But there is often a secondary prophetic meaning to verses such as when Jesus would point to OT verses that prophetically pointed to him, even though their primary or literal meaning had an immediate concrete context.

For example, Isaiah 7:14 (The virgin will conceive a child) had an immediate context that had nothing to do with Jesus’s birth, but we learn in the New Testament that this verse also had a prophetic/secondary fulfillment in the account of Mary.

There are several examples like this that support the literal interpretation method, but also unveil a deeper (and distant future related to the 1st or 2nd coming) prophetic fulfillment.