SILVER SPRING, Md. — After three years of discussion across the globe, worldwide leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church affirmed the church’s historic stance supporting the biblical account of creation during their annual council meeting that ended Oct. 14.
“We reaffirm the Seventh-day Adventist understanding of the historicity of Genesis 1–11: that the seven days of the Creation account were literal 24-hour days forming a week identical in time to what we now experience as a week; and that the flood was global in nature,” reads an executive committee response to a report from the church’s faith and science committee.
Jan Paulsen, president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, acknowledged that there are “shades of difference” among Adventists about how long it took to create the Earth and how long the Earth has existed, but he believes there is more agreement that “life as we know it on Earth is the handiwork of God.”
“I think the vast majority of Seventh-day Adventists will strongly assert the position that says … life on Earth was created in six literal days, continuous days,” Paulsen said in a news conference at the church’s headquarters Oct. 14.
“Adventists come down clearly on Scripture in terms of living with this tension,” said Bill Johnsson, an Adventist theologian and editor of Adventist Review, the denomination’s weekly newsmagazine, in an interview.
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