“He who made the Pleiades and Orion And changes deep darkness into morning, Who also darkens day into night, Who calls for the waters of the sea And pours them out on the surface of the earth, The LORD is His name.” (Amos 5:8)
Today I want to wrap up this discussion as I lay out my reasons for my belief in a literal interpretation of Genesis. I appreciate your patience and pray you learned something of value from this discussion. Let me be clear that I Do Not believe that acceptance of a young earth is necessary for salvation.
Salvation does not involve a perfect understanding of doctrine, for then no one could be saved. God grants salvation when one repents of his sin and asks for forgiveness based on Christ's death for his sin. A sinner doesn't have to know anything about the age of the earth. Nor does one have to believe in the young earth to be a Christian leader. But belief in an old earth, and the theory of death prior to Adam sinning is not really "very good." (See Genesis 1:31)
In my mind, the old earth theory gives you an unimportant fall and curse, and a local flood, among other things. I believe this destroys the foundation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Some Christians do believe in both Christianity and the old earth, but in my opinion this is inconsistent with their professed belief in the inerrancy of the Bible.
While the Bible may not specify a precise date for creation, it does indicate that the earth is only a few thousand years old. Likewise, while the geologic and physical evidence cannot give a precise age, all the evidence is compatible with the young earth doctrine, with far greater evidence supporting a young earth than an old earth.
Few things are more likely to arouse the contempt and ridicule of modern intellectuals than stating one’s belief in a young earth. Today’s image-savvy Christians apparently see the young earth controversy as an opportunity to prove that they are not wooden-faced fundamentalists or biblical literalists or anti-science or anti-intellectual or anything else considered by the world to be backwards and naive. It is the mentality of the herd.
Everything in the Bible is inseparably bound up with its first book, Genesis. All major Christian doctrines have their source, directly or indirectly, in the book of Genesis. Preachers, missionaries and theologians who fail to see this have lost the foundation for what they teach. On the other hand, those who do see this have the God-given proper basis for all their Christian witnessing, preaching, counseling, and teaching.
Many Biblical doctrines are based on a more recent creation doctrine, the global flood. One cannot hold the old earth position and believe that the flood was global, because if the flood was global, then the entire earth's surface would be altered. The flood would leave in its wake the rock and fossil record which today is misinterpreted by geologists as evidence for an old earth. All Christians who competently promote an old earth believe that the flood was only local. 1.
The inconsistent doctrine which results from a local flood and old earth are well documented in creationist literature. The most serious fallacy involves the death of the vast majority of earth's inhabitants before man appeared, and before he sinned and incurred the wages of sin. Astronomer Hugh Ross even proposes human-like animals, who buried their dead, practiced religious ceremonies, painted pictures on cave walls, etc., but did not yet possess an eternal spirit. 2. Death before sin implies that death is natural, not the penalty for sin. But if so, what good did the death of Jesus Christ accomplish? And what was the world like before the fall? Old earth advocates believe it was no different from our world—with death, bloodshed, carnivorous activity, and fossils.
I believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old. 3. This is not in itself an article of faith, and I might be wrong about it, but the burden of proof is on the old-earth promoters. The scientists, who have no tool but naturalistic extrapolation, have certainly not proven their case. Scientists calculate the age of the earth by extrapolating from natural processes they are capable of observing. Now, these extrapolations usually work, because natural processes are usually a pretty reliable indicator of natural history. But this is not always the case.
Old-earthers say that the age of the earth does not affect any of the major doctrines of the Bible so it is harmless to hold this view. But I believe it is more deceptive than it first appears. Allow me to summarize the reasons why I believe in a young earth:
1. As mentioned in Part-1, the old earth hypothesis is based on evidence that is interpreted through uniformitarian philosophies. What I mean by this is that if you took all the "evidence" out of the picture and read Genesis 1, you would come unsurprisingly to the conclusion that the earth was made in six 24 hour days. The only reason to put an old earth into the creation account is to support current scientific theory.
2. I believe that Genesis was written as history and that the biblical genealogies are reliable. They are not precise, they can be confusing, there are curious gaps, and reasonable scholars can disagree about a few hundred years. But they are not off by 4.6 billion years. Even old earth evolutionists admit that human civilization is not more than 25,000 years old.
3. An old earth would therefore require me to believe that the earth was around for billions of years before the creation of man. But our scriptures tells us that the earth was made for man. And man was given authority over the earth and all plants and animals. How do we explain God’s purpose for the man if He waited millions of years to create him?
Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." (Genesis 1:26)
4. Sin brought corruption into the world: not only human death, but the corruption of all creation. That is the biblical teaching. In an old earth scenario the cycle of natural conflict, death, and decay is established long before sin entered the world through Adam’s transgression.
“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned…” (Romans 5:12)
5. Which brings us to Adam and Eve, who, according to scripture, are the first created man and woman. How does their creation fit into an old-earth scenario? Most old-earthers believe in an old earth because it is the only thing that makes the biological evolution of mankind seem remotely possible, and they desperately want to be believe in some form of theistic evolution. Yet the biological evolution of mankind cannot be reconciled with Adam and Eve being the first created man and woman, or that they also were the first and only parents of the human race.
“Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.” (Genesis 2:7-8)
“For Adam was first formed, then Eve.” (1 Timothy 2:13)
“Now the man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.” (Genesis 3:20)
Let us assume, for a moment, that a biological mechanism for the formation of a new species has been discovered and it is now possible to imagine that man could have evolved from a primordial soup. If man truly evolved from some lesser form of life, via natural selection, how likely is it that the first man and the first woman happened to have emerged, after billions of years, at the same time and in the same place via the same natural process?
6. If the days were not literal 24 hour days but long periods of perhaps millions or billions of years, and given Adam lived through part of the sixth day and the seventh day, he must have been millions of years old, yet Genesis 5 states that he was 930 years old when he died, therefore it introduces significant discrepancies into the word of God.
7. I believe scripture clearly allows for the creation of man and the world in a state of maturity. If you are a theist and believe in creation ex nihilo (a Latin phrase meaning "out of nothing"), then you must at least believe in this possibility. Although the probability of maturity at the moment of creation doesn’t say anything one way or the other about the age of the earth, it does say something about modern techniques used to date the earth; things may have an appearance of age. The closer we get to origins, the less we are able to assume that apparent maturity is the product of age.
8. It requires interpreting other passages of scripture differently to their historical and natural translation. Consider Romans 5:12 where they would try to make it say that man’s sin only brought death to man as animals are not explicitly mentioned. However this particular example plays roulette with the redeeming work of Christ not to mention that it flies in the face of verses like Romans 8:19-22 and Isaiah 24:4-6.
9. Given the argument I just mentioned and that the primary purpose of old earth thinking is to account for the fossil record–it marginalizes the effects of sin. If sin only affects man then sin is not as bad as we have been led to believe. This has huge implications as we will see in a moment.
10. It marginalizes the wisdom of scripture by elevating the wisdom of man.
10. It is designed to make Christianity more palatable and acceptable to unbelievers rather than accepting that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who reject it.
11. It marginalizes the authority of scripture. Rather than opposing false science, false science is elevated to at least as much authority as the bible. Both scripture and science must be seen to be true or there would be no attempt to align their conflicts. However, scripture is the inspired yardstick by which science is to be measured.
12. By accommodating the fossil record before the fall, it marginalizes the consequences of sin and therefore the seriousness of sin
13. This in turn marginalizes the seriousness of Gods judgement as judgement is based on the weight of the individual’s sin
14. It marginalizes the work of Christ on the cross. If sin is not so bad then Christ’s death is not as significant.
15. It marginalizes the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit–as sin is not as significant to overcome
16. It marginalizes the supernatural nature of creation by replacing it with natural process
17. It marginalizes the glory of God as seen in His creation–this is the most serious issue
18. And it marginalizes the role of faith by trying to rationalize what cannot be rationalized. Hebrews 11:3 says "By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible." If everything can be rationalized intellectually, then we have no need for faith.
“There was a time when nature was not. The creation itself was a supernatural event and cannot be explained by nature. What are the implications of this basic truth? It means that the speed of light was not always what it is today, the properties of matter were not always what they are today, the laws of physics were not always what they are today, etc. Nature and science are insufficient: old-earth theory assumes that they are sufficient.” --Darryl Burling
When discussing the age of the earth, Christians must be ready to explain the importance of starting points and assumptions. Reaching the correct conclusions requires the right starting point.
The Bible is that starting point. This is the revealed Word of the Almighty, Faithful, and true Creator, who was present to observe all events of earth history and who gave mankind an infallible record of key events in the past.
The Bible, God’s revelation to us, gives us the foundation that enables us to begin to build the right worldview to correctly understand how the present and past are connected. All other documents written by man are fallible, unlike the God-breathed, infallible Word. (2 Timothy 3:16)
The Bible clearly and unmistakably describes the creation of the universe, the solar system, and the earth around six thousand years ago. We know that it’s true based on the authority of God’s own character. “…since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself...” (Hebrews 6:13)
Hope you enjoyed reading my thoughts on this topic. I always look forward to any questions and comments, and will reply as soon as possible.
1. Is a Global Flood Scientifically Possible? www.reasons.org/articles/is-a-global-flood-scientifically-possible
2. “Hominids,” Reasons to Believe, accessed April 15, 2015, Dr. Fazale Rana, www.reasons.org/articles/did-neanderthals-bury-their-dead-with-flowers
3. How Old Is The Earth According To The Bible? John D. Morris, Ph.D., www.icr.org/article/how-old-earth-according-bible/
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