The final instructions in this great project are:

Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.

Genesis 1 v 24

Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.

Genesis 1 v 26

So the land animals appear, with man last of all. The record makes no attempt to explain how it is done.

So, we have seen that the Bible is telling us that everything came into existence in six stages.

At the end of the first stage we read:

And there was evening, and there was morning the first day.

Genesis 1 v 5

There are similar statements at the end of the other stages. These statements are telling us that the stages are all a day in length.

The second book of the Bible - Exodus - supports these statements in Genesis:

In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them.

Exodus 20 v 11

If we look at how the Bible uses the word 'day', we see that it usually refers to a 24- hour period. But if we look carefully at the text of the Bible, we see that occasionally it refers to longer time periods. One example of this occurs in the creation account itself in Genesis chapter two. The Bible talks about:

the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

Genesis 2 v 4

This 'day' contains the whole six days of creation that we have just been looking at. We use the word 'day' in the same way today when we talk about 'our day and age' or 'Queen Victoria's day'. So we can see that the text is flexible in its use of the word 'day' in the creation account.

In the rest of the Bible there are some general comments about the God of the Bible being the Creator. However, none of these comments gives us any more information about the mechanisms involved. The Bible is not a science textbook. It is more concerned about why we are here and the purpose behind our existence.