Suggested Videos on the Age of the Earth and the Bible
Overview
A delicate question we receive sometimes is, “Can a person be a Christian but still believe in evolution and millions of years?”
To understand the breadth of a complete answer to this question, one must understand what the Bible teaches about the nature and connection between Jesus, the Creation, and the Word/Logos. Scripturally speaking, there is some deep exploring that can be done between the connection of these three. In short, Jesus is Lord, Creator, and the “Word” (Logos) incarnate. In introduction of these complex and deep issues can be found in Genesis 1, John 1, and Colossians 1:15-18. If one really wants an answer to this topic, don’t skip reading these.
On a practical level, there are two things that can be said about this topic.
First, if you want to get to know Jesus better, read his Word. If you want to love Jesus, hold and keep his Word (see John 14:23-24: “Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me.”) The word used for “keep/keepeth” my sayings means, “to attend to carefully, take care of, to guard, to observe, and to reserve. And because Jesus ‘wrote’ Genesis (as the Logos), this includes that book too. If someone who says they are a Christian wants to grow in their relationship with Christ, read the Word and allow it’s transformative power to renew and shape your mind (Romans 12, Hebrews 4:12), including what the Word consistently says about Creation.
Second, as our trust and intimacy with the Lord Jesus and His Word grows, it starts to replace the things of this world, including what we’ve learned in the past and the beliefs that we hold that are contrary to God’s Word. As the Holy Spirit grows stronger and our clutches to this world grow weaker, He expands our understanding about theology, creation, and history. We know of many who became Christians at an early age, but only grew to a fuller understanding about Genesis 1-11 being real history (as plainly written) only after years of study and humbling themselves under the authority of God’s Word, not man’s. A person who professes to be a Christian and really is one will start showing signs of a renewed mind (Romans 12) and transformed life (James 2). Both should be present in someone’s life to reflect true redemption by our Creator.
With the above stated, a deep or even cursory review of Scripture reveals a very consistent presentation about Creation. Even the Fourth Commandment (Exodus 20:11), written by God’s own hand, specifies that he created the “Heavens, Earth, Sea, and all that is in them.” This same or similar statement echoes throughout Scripture: Nehemiah 9:6, Psalm 102:25, 146:6, Acts 4:24, 14:15, and Revelation 10:6.
The Bible plainly teaches that God created in six days as we would understand them. Every “day” of the six days in Genesis 1 are accompanied with the terms “evening,” “morning” and a “number,” and every time outside of Genesis “day” is used with any of these three qualifiers always means an ordinary day. What else would God have wanted the Israelites to believe when He wrote with His own hand in the fourth commandment: “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.” God could have created in a split second but He chose to create over a week so we would have a cycle and rhythm to live by.
What about the 6,000 year old earth? Where does that come from? The genealogies in Genesis clearly map to Adam who was created by God out of dust just thousands of years ago, and they are even affirmed by the New Testament writers.
Denying these fundamental truths—truths that even connect to the Gospel itself—result in many trying to fight their spiritual battles with broken swords. Because our actions and choices in life stem from what we believe, how effective can we be with our minds anchored into secular ideas rather than God’s Word? Inserting millions of years into the Bible—or anything else for that matter—begins a slippery slope. If truth does not start on the first page, when does it begin? How deeply will the Bible influence our lives if we pick and choose what it says about history? The impact of sin? The nature of God? The Bible is clear that God spoke creation into existence—He did not use evolution over millions of years. The table below easily demonstrate how our view of earth history and Scripture plays into several areas of our lives.
How can we Determine the Age of the Earth from the Bible?
Determining the age of the earth using the Bible is a straightforward, two-step process: (1) Determine whether the six days in Creation Week were ordinary days. This leads us to Adam, who was spontaneously created by God (i.e., he didn’t evolve) on the Sixth Day of Creation; (2) Determine how long ago Adam lived using the genealogies in Genesis.
We know that the six days in Genesis 1 were ordinary days (not six long ages) because the Hebrew word for day (yom) is qualified with “evening,” “morning,” and a number for each of the six days in the Creation Week. When yom is used with any of these qualifiers throughout Scripture, it always means an ordinary day. We’ll take an in-depth look at this topic in this section.
Determining how long ago Adam lived is a straightforward process because Genesis records the fathering age and total lifespan of Adam’s descendants all the way to Abraham and his sons (most directly; in some cases indirectly). Summing the lifespans in these genealogies leads to Creation Week either about 6,000 or 8,600 years ago (based on the Masoretic or Septuagint texts, respectively[i]). We’ll take a closer look at these genealogies below.
In addition to these interlinking (and overlapping) genealogies, the Genesis account itself provides two clues that lead to our understanding that Adam and Eve were the first humans who were created immediately after God had created everything else. The first clue is God’s commission given to humans to take dominion over (that is, to wisely manage) everything God made during Creation Week. The second is God bringing the animals to Adam “to see what he would call them” (at the animal kind level, not every species) (Genesis 2:20). Thus, the Genesis account itself forbids inserting millions of years of animal death and life (e.g., the dinosaur “era”) before Adam and Eve were present to take dominion over Creation and name the animal kinds.
Significance of Believing in a “Young Earth”
Most students who have graduated from Christian colleges can name at least four different views of the Genesis Creation account: the literal/historical “young earth” view, the Day-age view, Progressive Creation, and the Gap Theory. Unfortunately, however, many of these same students would also likely say “we don’t really know because we weren’t there” and/or “it doesn’t really matter what you believe.”
Sadly, these couldn’t be further from the truth. First, as we will see below, we can reliably know when God created because He’s clearly told us in His Word. Second, it really does matter what we believe.
How we regard God’s Word (authoritatively or only as a guide book) has a direct bearing on how we live our lives. Today’s students want to know: If truth doesn’t start on the first page, then how many pages do I need to turn in the Bible until I run into truth?” If truth doesn’t start on the first page, the rest is up for grabs.
Honest readers will admit that the text clearly means what it says in Genesis 1: God created in six normal days. Readers who spend time investigating the genealogies listed in Genesis 5, 10, and 11 will also admit that it’s a historical narrative with real people, real dates, and real lifespans that lead directly back to Adam, the first human who was miraculously created out of the dust by God.
They will also notice that there’s certainly no way to insert millions of years between these genealogies. While scholars may quibble about hundreds of years and the ancient texts upon which our modern bibles are based may differ by a couple thousand years, honest readers will admit there’s certainly not room for millions of years. Without filtering what’s clearly written in Genesis through secular science textbooks, the reader is left with a young earth.
If one submits to the authority of Scripture, relying on Scripture to tell them about the basic framework of the history of the world, origins, and their purpose, their lives will radiate outward from these understandings. Their entire worldview will be different than one who does not believe. For example, to a Christian who holds that Genesis 1 is literal history:
- God is the all-powerful Creator who spoke Creation into existence (Psalm 33:9, Hebrews 11). Each person will give an account to this all-powerful Creator.
- God started out everything “very good” without bloodshed and disease, but man’s sins brought death, corruption, bloodshed and disease. Cancer is man’s fault, not God’s.
- God did not use a slow, random, murderous process of natural selection and survival of the fittest to bring the many types of life on earth into existence.
- The fossil record reflects God’s judgement on a world turned corrupt after the Fall.
- Racism has no foundation because there aren’t millions of years for the human line to splinter off to various “races.” A recent dispersion at the Tower of Babel means all people groups are closely related, separated by only hundreds of generations.
Submitting to biblical truth—beginning in Genesis—results in all these benefits and more. A person whose worldview is anchored to biblical foundations will also be constantly reminded that they are in the world but not of the world, and that the world has fallen into the deception of the enemy (1 John 5:19). They will see the lie of “deep time” espoused in the vast majority of secular schools, media outlets, and state parks. These two perspectives are very different: It’s either death and suffering over millions of years before Adam or a perfect creation marred by original sin just thousands of years ago.
A person can be saved by the Blood of Jesus and still believe in deep time, so we’re not talking one’s salvation. But if they believe in long ages they can’t grow fully in their faith because it undermines the authority of Scripture and erases the logical foundation for Christ on the cross. Just try to explain the Gospel to someone without referring to a historical view of Genesis. It is a difficult (if not impossible) task.
Many Christians feel pressured to be accepted by the mainstream and thus buy into the idea of millions of years. Some just haven’t fully thought through why they believe the way they do. Most of the time they really don’t know how much it’s costing them and their families.
Because I “converted” to a Biblical Creationist late in life, my two older children were raised by Christian parents who had “undeclared” positions on origins. Their questions about the dinosaurs and cavemen were always prefaced with “if the earth is young, the answer is… but if the earth is old, the answer is…” With this type of conditional answer to many of life’s very basic questions, what they were really hearing was “maybe dad doesn’t know,” or (even worse) “maybe the Bible, which is supposed to be the most definitive book for me to build my life upon, doesn’t have an answer, or perhaps it even doesn’t even have the correct answer.” Fortunately, I had the opportunity to re-solidify their faith before they went to college.
Blessings will come to those who completely embrace the whole Scripture. For example, Jesus said, “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels” (Luke 9:26).
The Book of Psalms is likely one of the most frequently read books of the Bible. The very beginning of this book starts out by stating those who believe in and meditate on the Torah (the first five books of Bible, led by Genesis) will be blessed in every way:
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; But his delight is in the law [Torah] of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper. (Psalms 1:1–3).
The Bible presents the unchangeable, perfect, and true Words of God Himself, including what God says about the history of our world—history that occurred before the Great Flood of Noah’s time thousands of years ago. And, since the Bible says that God cannot lie and that He even honors His Word along with His own name, we ought to treat Scripture with the reverence it deserves.[ii]
The Days in Genesis 1
The Hebrew word for “day” (yom) is used over 2,000 times in the Old Testament. In some instances, it means a period of time or an era, but in the vast majority of instances it means an ordinary day.
In the first chapter of Genesis, it’s clear that yom means an ordinary day. The first time yom is used in the Bible is Genesis 1:5: “And the evening and the morning were the first day” (v. 5). Notice that day (yom) is qualified by “evening,” “morning,” and a number (day one). This pattern—evening/morning/number—repeats for each of the six days in Genesis 1, so the entire Creation Week is described by days that are qualified as ordinary days.
The word yom is used over 400 times in the Old Testament when it’s used with a number, like “first day.”
In every case, it always means an ordinary day. Yom is used with the word “evening” or “morning” 23 times, and “evening” and “morning” appear together without yom 38 times, and in all 61 instances the text refers to an ordinary day. God seemed to want to make it clear to us. He said “evening” and “morning,” then a day, and a number.
Because God is all-powerful, He could have just created everything in an instant, but He didn’t. He chose to take six days because He was setting up a system of days and a context for our lives and how the world works.
Genesis 1:14 states that God established “lights in the firmament of the Heavens to divide the day from the night” and that they would be used for “signs and seasons, and for days and years.” This shows that God began the measurement of time using days and years: Two well-known units of time—days and years—are linked in Genesis 1:14, their duration being determined by the fixed movements of the earth in reference to the sun.
If we need to be convinced further, consider that God wrote the Ten Commandments with His own hand (Exodus 31:18, “He gave Moses two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.”). When God wrote the Fourth Commandment, he stated:
For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:11).
Here are the six days again—this time in the Ten Commandments no less—and written by the hand of God. What do you think God wanted the Israelites to believe when He said this? Long ages or real days? God was talking about the Sabbath, which is one day a week. If God meant “thousands of years” when he said “day,” then that would make for a really long work week! It seems from this passage that God told us what to believe, and how to model our lives: six days of work followed by a day of rest.
Our weeks have been like this ever since the beginning. After all, we don’t have a five-day week, do we? Back in the 1920’s the Soviets tried a five-day week and a six-day week, but it was a major failure. So they went back to a seven-day week. The seven-day week seems to be hardwired into human existence—as if God designed us to work six days and take a rest on the seventh.
Taking a careful look at the context of the Ten Commandments, it wouldn’t make much sense if nine out of the Ten Commandments were literal and one was figurative. How could lying, adultery, and stealing be figures of speech? They are rather black and white—just like the days of Creation. We certainly don’t work for six long ages, but six days, then we rest. God gave us a day of rest to reset our internal clocks. God didn’t have to give us that seventh day, but He knew we needed it.
James Marshall’s gold discovery in Coloma (1848) was a catalyst that led to the California gold rush. Marshall’s diary is on display in a museum in Coloma, open to a page where he’s discussing the fact that people were caught up in a feverish gold frenzy—mining gold seven days a week with no rest. They were driven by the idea that the next “big nugget” was likely in the very next pan. He then remarks that most of these miners died between the age of 35 and 40. It seems like God knew what He was doing by setting up the “six days and a rest” pattern!
When fending off scholars who were developing the idea that God really didn’t create everything in six days (but rather only a single day), the famous reformer Martin Luther warned: “When Moses writes that God created heaven and earth and whatever is in them in six days, then let this period continue to have been six days, and do not venture to devise any comment according to which six days were one day. But if you cannot understand how this could have been done in six days, then grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being more learned than you are.”[iii]
Doesn’t the Bible Say That “a Day to the Lord Can Be like a Thousand Years”?
Many Christians ask, “Doesn’t the Bible say that ‘a day to the Lord can be like a thousand years.’” Second Peter 3:8 actually says that “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” This passage is talking about God’s judgment and His patience with man’s rebellion. It’s not talking about Creation Week.
Notice that the verse says one day is as a thousand years. It’s a simile showing that God is outside of time, because He is the Creator of time. We know that those who use this verse to say that one day in Creation Week took one thousand years are forcing that view onto the Bible since they never assert the last part of the verse: that a thousand years of Old Testament history all happened in one day.
This passage is saying that God is outside of time and is unaffected by it, but to man, a day is still a day. It’s not defining a day, because it doesn’t say, “a day is a thousand years.” It’s not even talking about the days of Creation. Rather, both times—a day and a thousand years—are described from God’s perspective because “with the Lord” these times are the same. The verse is saying that with God, time has no meaning, because He is eternal, outside of the dimension of time that He created. So a thousand years, a day, and a second all are the same to Him. He sees all of history simultaneously.
Because yom is used over 2,000 times in the Old Testament, it’s important to look at the context in which it’s used. In the passage in Peter, the writer is referring to Psalm 90:4, which says, “For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night,” yet a night watch does not last 1,000 years, does it? Here, 1,000 years is just a figure of speech, a comparison to make something more vivid. In context, 2 Peter 3 is saying that although it may seem like a long time to us, the Lord still keeps His promises.
If each day in Genesis 1 was a thousand years, on day three God made the plants, but on day four He made the sun. We know plants need the sun to survive, so if each day was a thousand years, the plants would have all died long before the sun rose on the fourth day.[iv] Also, flying insects like bees were created on the fifth day to pollenate plants and trees that were created on the third day. It really makes more sense if all these components of creation were present for it to work as a whole.
How Do We Get a 6,000-Year-old Earth from the Bible?
Genesis 5 lists ten patriarchs that lived before Noah’s Flood. For each of these patriarchs, their age before having the son named, the years they lived after having a son, and their total years are listed:
Genesis 5: The Family of Adam
And Adam lived 130 years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were 800 years; and he had sons and daughters. So all the days that Adam lived were 930; and he died. Seth lived 105, and begot Enosh. After he begot Enosh, Seth lived 807, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Seth were 912; and he died. Enosh lived 90 years, and begot Cainan. After he begot Cainan, Enosh lived 815 years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Enosh were 905 years; and he died. Cainan lived 70 years, and begot Mahalalel. After he begot Mahalalel, Cainan lived 840 years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Cainan were 910 years; and he died. Mahalalel lived 65 years, and begot Jared. After he begot Jared, Mahalalel lived 830 years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Mahalalel were 895 years; and he died. Jared lived 162 years, and begot Enoch. After he begot Enoch, Jared lived 800 years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Jared were 962 years; and he died. Enoch lived 65 years, and begot Methuselah. After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were 365 years. And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him. Methuselah lived 187 years, and begot Lamech. After he begot Lamech, Methuselah lived 782 years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Methuselah were 969 years; and he died. Lamech lived 182 years, and had a son. And he called his name Noah, saying, “This one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord has cursed.” After he begot Noah, Lamech lived 595 years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Lamech were 777 years; and he died. And Noah was 500 years old, and Noah begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Let’s take a closer look at this passage focusing on Adam, the first one listed in Genesis 5:
Notice that three numbers are given for Adam: his age before having Seth (130), the years he lived after fathering Seth (800), and his total lifespan (930 years). Because these three sets of numbers are provided for all ten patriarchs before the Flood, it’s easy to assemble an inter-connected, non-overlapping chain that we can use for summing up the years that go straight back to Adam, the very first man created:
Table 1. Genesis 5 Genealogies.
Notice that adding the ages in the “age at birth of first son” column sums to a total of 1,556 years (as shown in the far-right column). Because Noah was 600 years old when the Flood came (Genesis 7:6), adding 100 years to Noah’s age in the table (500) places the Flood at 1,656 years after Creation. Genesis 10 and 11 provide the next set of genealogies that allow us to move up the timescale to Abraham who lived about 2,000 BC, as shown in the chart below.
Figure 1. The First 20 Patriarchs since Creation.
Notice that the lifespans of the pre-Flood patriarchs overlapped. Plus, their lifespans declined in a systematic way. These give us confidence that Genesis records an accurate timeline (see Lifespans Before the Flood: How Did People Live to Be 900 Years Old Before the Flood?). Summing the time from Adam, the first man created on the Sixth Day of Creation Week, to Abraham is about 2,000 years, then from Abraham to the time of Christ is about another 2,000 years, then we have from Christ until now, another 2,000 years. So, the straight chronology from the Bible places Creation about 6,000 years ago.
Scholars have debated possible gaps in these genealogies for years, but even if there were gaps in these genealogies, we cannot insert them without basically rewriting the text to fit our own preferences. Further, such gaps may allow for hundreds of additional years, but certainly not thousands or millions!
Even many secular historians would agree with Christian scholars that Abraham lived about 2,000 BC, or about 4,000 years ago. If that’s true, with Abraham being the 20th patriarch after Adam listed in the line-up provided in Genesis, we can’t have tens of thousands of years’ worth of missing genealogies based on the (evolutionary) idea that “modern” humans emerged from ape-like ancestors about 50,000 years ago.
For example, some creation views (e.g., Progressive Creation) agree with the evolutionary timeline that places the evolution of modern humans about 50,000 years ago.[v] With this position, there would be 44,000 years of “missing” genealogies in Genesis (4,000 genealogy years from Genesis, plus the 2,000 years from Christ to present)! Just how can one fit an extra 40,000+ years into the 4,000 years shown on Figure 1 (ten times the number of years accounted for in the Bible)? Under this model, the Bible’s genealogies would not be a reliable record.
An additional consideration with the lifespans in Genesis is that many of them overlap, so there’s not a lot of room for gaps. Further, the Genesis genealogies are repeated in other parts of the Bible, including the books of Ruth, Jude, Matthew, and Luke. This shows that the New Testament and Old Testament’s human authors also believed in the Genesis genealogies as real history.
Finally, consider the fact that Jesus referred to the Old Testament over 40 times. Every single time He treated the Old Testament literally and historically. For instance, in Mark 10:6 Jesus mentioned that God created man and woman at the “beginning of Creation”—not long ages after Creation. Jesus also references other Old Testament accounts as true events, such as Noah’s Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Jonah and the great fish, and many others.
[i] The Biblical timelines that rely on the 17th-century chronology formulated by Bishop James Ussher place Creation at 4,004 BC and the Flood at 2,348 BC. Some recent research into the copyist differences in the early Masoretic and early Septuagint texts place the Flood around 2,518 BC based on the Masoretic text and between 3,168 BC and 3,298 BC based on the Septuagint (and other early texts), with Creation as early as 5,554 BC. These differences, however, can be settled by comparing multiple texts to reveal the perfect nature of the original writings which were “written through man by God” without error. These issues have been discussed in papers from three leading creation ministries. See, for example: Brian Thomas, “Two date range options for Noah’s Flood,” Journal of Creation 31(1) (2017); Henry B. Smith Jr., “Methuselah’s Begetting Age in Genesis 5:25 and the Primeval Chronology of the Septuagint: A Closer Look at the Textual and Historical Evidence,” Answers Research Journal 10 (2017): 169–179. Answers in Genesis: www.answersingenesis.org/arj/v10/methuselah-primeval-chronology-septuagint.pdf (November 5, 2018); and Lita Cosner and Robert Carter, “Textual Traditions and Biblical Chronology,” Journal of Creation 29 (2) 2015. Journal of Creation: https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j29_2/j29_2_99-105.pdf (November 5, 2018). Linking from the present to Abraham’s day is well established historically based on correlations between inscriptions and the biblical chronology of the Kings.
[ii] See 2 Peter 1:31; 2 Timothy 3:16; Numbers 23:19; Titus 1:2; Matthew 24:35; Psalm 12:6–7; Proverbs 30:5; and Psalm 138:2.
[iii] Ewald Plass. What Martin Luther Says: A Practical In-Home Anthology for the Active Christian, 1523.
[iv] God Himself provided the light source on day one.
[v] Leading Progressive Creationist, Dr. Hugh Ross, places the emergence of the human race via Adam and Eve about 50,000 years ago: Fazale Rana with Hugh Ross, Who Was Adam? (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2005), p. 45. See also: www.reasons.org/articles/new-date-for-first-aussies (January 26, 2017).
