If Earth’s rotation in relation to the sun gives us evening and morning, how do we account for the 1st 3 days of creation where there was no sun ?

Literal View

The 1st three days of creation are not measured by the earth’s rotation in relation to the sun. God is creating light and darkness. On day 4, He created the sun and uses it to govern the 24 hour period.

Revelation 22:5

God controls light in Heaven just like He did in the 1st 3 days of creation.

Phenomenological View

From the perspective of standing on the earth, there appeared to be no sun because there was so much darkness. We have witnessed dark stormy days. There appears to be no sun, but we know it’s there.

Young Universe View

Scientists have made mistakes in the past. We know this because science in itself is a self-correcting system. We are always catching up to what God already knows. Scientists have made mistakes in the past about the earth square or that the sun revolved around the earth (Geocentricity). How do we really know the earth is billions and billions of years old? And if so, how many billion? The problem is Scientists start off with a presupposition. Radiometric dating methods assume an original condition of the substance that was “pure”. They also assume that there has been a constant rate of change since that time. To argue from the amount of salt in the sea for the old earth view,  one must assume there was no salt there to begin with and that salt had been deposited there from streams and rivers at a constant rate since the beginning. To argue to an old universe of billions of years from lead isotopes in uranium, one must assume that there were none there to begin with and that the rate of decay has been constant ever since. There is always the problem of a contaminated sample or some other factor to throw off the rate of decay or deposit. This is particularly true of carbon dating.

God may have created enormous trees instantaneously. Would the trees look a day old to you? No, maybe hundreds of years old. The point is, in creation did things appear to be old from the start? Sure. Adam was never a baby. Young universe advocates also start off with a similar presupposition. To argue from the shallow depth of moon dust to prove the moon is only thousands of years old, one must assume that the moon had no dust to begin with and that the rate of build up was constant.

Old Universe View

Genesis 1:1

This verse only states that there was a beginning and not when that beginning was. It answers the question who, but not when. There may have been a gap at the moment of creation before the actual 24 hour days began. A day is measured by the earth’s rotation in relation to the sun. There was no sun during the first 3 days of creation, so they weren’t necessarily 24-hour periods. Old earth and young earth views are both accepted in Christianity. We hold to the essentials of faith and debate the non-essentials. The essential is In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Ben Stein - Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Bill O'Reilly and Ben Stein on Creationism

Cited Sources: Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics by Norman Geisler