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Did God rest for a "day," or for an "age?"

    My short and simple question is, can you tell me, as simply, as concisely, and as scripturally as you possibly can, how God is resting in the seventh day, when it is believed that we are still living in the sixth day of creation, of which God is a great part of? I'm speaking of course of Genesis 2:1-3, with Genesis 2:4 to Rev. 22:21 being the detailed version of the sixth day.

  Genesis 2:1-3 says, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.”

The Creation Week was a literal 24 hour day, 7 day week. This is clear by the references to, “And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Genesis 1:5), “And the evening and the morning were the second day.” (Genesis 1:8), etc. So God’s rest on the 7th day was also a literal 24 hour rest — not an “ages long” rest.

Genesis 2:4 starts a different train of thought, because it is summarizing what has just been said. “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, IN THE DAY that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.” We already know that God did not create the earth and everything in it in just one day, because we just got through reading about it in chapter 1. He is now making general reference to the day (the time period) of creation.

That is no different than what we say many times. I could say, “September 11th was sure a great tragedy when the terrorists hit the World Trade Towers. It was also terrible when a few weeks later the Anthrax was sent in the mail by terrorists.” Then I could say, “This is a tragic day that we are living in right now with all of these attacks taking place. God is trying to get our attention, that men might repent and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, that they might be saved.”

I have done the same thing in the paragraph above, that Genesis chapter 2 does. I have talked about 2 events that took place on different days, but I summarize those events by calling “this time period” a “tragic day” in which we live. I am not contradicting my previous statements (that the events happened on different days), I am simply summarizing the events as one “time period.”

The Creation Week was a literal 24 hour day, 7 day week. God rested on that literal 7th day from His creation work. That He is not literally resting since then is clear. John 5:16, 17 says, “And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day. But Jesus answered them, MY FATHER WORKETH HITHERTO, AND I WORK.”

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