Historical Genesis: The Beginning and the age of the earth (S07, E02)

Greetings and welcome to the Faith Chapel Podcast. My name is Jason,

and I am the pastor of Faith Chapel.

In the podcast, we are going through an eight-episode series looking at whether

Genesis should be taken as history or mainly as fiction.

In this seventh season of the podcast, we will look at different aspects of

what is known as primeval history and discover if the Bible's account of the

origins of the human race can be trusted.

Today, we dive into the origins of the universe and the Earth's age.

We will look at the evidence of a young Earth, which some believe to be thousands

of years old, and the evidence of an old Earth, which some say is billions of years old.

Thanks for joining us today.

So, in order to know what the Bible is saying, and in particular what Genesis is teaching,

we need to actually get into it to see what it is proclaiming.

And then once we get into it and see what it's proclaiming, then we can dissect

whether or not its claims are legitimate or not.

So in the first verse of the Bible, it reads, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

And this goes to show that the universe has a beginning and that God is the

force that is making it come into existence.

God is not a part of creation. He is outside of creation.

And creation is not a part of him. It is totally two separate things.

But God is the creative force behind the universe, and the universe had a beginning.

And this is repeated over and over again in Genesis.

Later in chapter 1, in verse 21, we read, So God created great sea creatures,

and everything that scurries and swarms in the water, and every sort of bird,

each producing offspring of the same kind, and God saw that it was good.

So here again, it talks about God being the creative force, and it adds in this

part that God spoke these things into existence.

Every sort of bird, all the fish, all the whales, the sharks,

all of those things were created by God.

And again, in 127, we see that God is the creative force in this. It says.

Says three times in that one verse that God is the creative force of this universe.

And finally, in Genesis 5, 1, it says, This is the written account of the descendants of Adam.

When God created human beings, he made them to be like himself.

And so this helps us to understand that there was a beginning,

that God is the creative force behind it, and that God is the one who is bringing

everything into existence.

Charles Ryrie in his systematic theology book says this,

there was an actual factual historical supernatural creation of the heavens,

the earth, and man by God.

And so this is a clear attestation of what the Bible describes.

The Bible describes God as the creative force. He is the one who speaks these things into existence.

Also, Genesis is very clear that he created this out of nothing.

There was nothing in the beginning, and then God created, and it made something.

So Genesis 1 verses 11 and 12 says, Then God said, let the land sprout with

Genesis 1:11

vegetation, every sort of seed-bearing plant and trees that grow seed-bearing fruit.

These seeds will then produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they

came. And that is what happened.

The land produced vegetation, all sorts of seed-bearing plants,

and trees with seed-bearing fruit.

Their seeds produced plants and trees of the same kind. Then God said.

So in the beginning stages, God's the one who created these things.

And then he put in a process for them to reproduce and to replicate themselves

with these seeds that are going to bear more in that kind.

Outside of Genesis, we see this as well, that God created this out of nothing.

In Psalm 33, 6, it says, The Lord merely spoke, and the heavens were created.

He breathed the word and all the stars were born.

This is, again, showing that it was out of nothing that God created his creation.

This is totally of his own imagination and totally of his own power.

And John 1.3 really reinforces this, where it says God created everything through

him, The him there being the word, which later on in chapter one,

it says the word became flesh and we know that to be Jesus.

So it says God created everything through Jesus and nothing was created except through him.

So God is the creator and nothing exists that we can see, that we can hear.

That we can observe. nothing exists without his power and his might.

And this witness is what the early church thought of the book of Genesis, what it taught.

So in a letter from Theophilus, and this is a different Theophilus than the

one that is mentioned in Luke, because this one lived,

about 120 years after Luke wrote his gospel.

In a letter from Theophilus to Autolicus, he wrote these words.

For even a human artist, when he gets material from someone,

makes of it whatever he pleases.

But the power of God is manifested in this, that out of things that are not,

he makes whatever he pleases.

The power that he has goes beyond what human beings possess.

God gave us the ability to be creative, to take wood and to get paper out of

it, to go through the processes of learning and developing how to make paper.

And he gave us that ability, but we can't make paper without a truth.

We can't make anything without a substance to go with it, but God can.

Irenaeus, who again lived in that same time period with this second Theophilus, he said this,

God himself called into being the substance of his creation when it previously had no existence.

And again, it's just reinforcing the idea.

The Latin phrase for this is creatio ex nilo, which is creation out of nothing.

It came out of nothing.

In Practical Christianity by Barakman, he wrote this, God's creative activity

during the six days of creation week is indicated by his creative command let,

which does not allow a self-existent universe, independent creative agencies.

Or random chance start and development.

So what he's saying is by God using the phrase let or the word let,

it takes away the idea of a continually existent universe.

There used to be a thought that it was an eternal universe. All matter was eternal.

And what Barak Man is saying is, no, that cannot be based upon what Genesis is saying.

It is not self-existent. It is not eternal.

It is not independent creative agencies. And a way that might help us to understand

what that phrase means is evolution.

That evolution is an adaptation that happens. And he says, that's not what it is either.

And it's not a random chance start. And it's not the development that scientists

are projecting, especially when we look at the theory of evolution by Darwin.

And so all of those are out the door because God says, let there be light,

let there exist these things.

So lastly, we have Millard Erickson in Christian theology who says these words,

In bringing the whole of reality into being, God created merely by his word.

In bringing the whole of reality into being, God created merely by his word.

In Genesis 1, for instance, we read that God spoke and his statement became

immediate reality. The mere statement, let there be light, was sufficient for

light to come into existence.

And this shows the power of God, the creative forces behind him.

God did create the universe according to Genesis.

And again, we're going to check these statements based upon other areas.

But the Bible does declare that God created the universe and he created it out of nothing.

That is what Genesis 1 and 2, in their pronouncement of the creation of the world, readily says.

And science is in agreeance with the idea that the universe has a beginning.

So we're going to look at two different examples here.

One is a theory, the theory of relativity, that was produced by Albert Einstein in 1916.

And then reaffirmation of this that happened, I believe it was like 10 years later.

This is what the website I have here says about the theory of relativity So

the idea that the universe had a beginning was first suggested by the general theory of relativity.

Completed by Albert Einstein in 1916 Einstein's equations,

which describe the structure of space and time Suggested that the universe should not be static,

but that it ought to be expanding Both Einstein and other physicists realized

this consequence of the theory fairly early on,

but at that time most scientists believed wholeheartedly that the universe was

static, meaning eternal.

Einstein himself was so swayed by this idea that rather than accept his equations at face value,

he added an extra and extraneous term to this formula to still the cosmic motion they implied.

So when Einstein made up this theory of relativity, he was very surprised that

it pointed to a beginning of the universe.

And at that time in 1916, he was fearful of the pushback that he would get from

the scientific community. And he himself was like, I don't think this is accurate.

I don't think this theory of relativity is correct and so I have to amend it

and so I'm going to put this extra variable in this equation to really balance that out and make it so.

But when we get to a guy by the name of Hubble in 1924, he actually agrees with

what Einstein says based upon observation, not about theory.

So in 1924, using the world's largest telescope at that time,

the 100-inch Hooker Telescope, at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California,

Edwin Hubble discovered that almost all galaxies are moving away from us.

The universe is expanding, and that has profound consequences.

If the expansion of the universe is carrying galaxies away from each other,

then in the past, they must have been closer together.

Rewind that expansion back far enough, and every galaxy must have originated

at the same point in space and time.

And the concept here is that as he was observing these universes that were going

away from ours, he was surprised.

And if he took that back far enough, he would say, all right,

there was a beginning point when this universe started to expand.

Now, it's not using the exact same terms as Genesis, but the idea is the same.

The universe had a beginning point.

And that's what this article wraps up by saying, that point is the Big Bang.

The moment our universe was created, an expanding universe cannot be eternal,

but it must have a definitive start date.

And so what we see here is that it is scientifically believed right now that

there was a beginning of the universe because the galaxies are moving away from ours,

because there is expansion in this universe,

there is movement in this universe. It had to start somewhere.

And as they rewound the tape, so to speak, as they looked back and back,

they believe that it had to start with a single moment, what they call the Big Bang,

when everything started to exist.

Again, this is going along with what Genesis is saying about the creation of the world.

And so this leaves us wondering and pondering, when was that date?

When did the universe start? and

how should we as followers of Jesus take the evidence of science along with

the ideas of the Bible and be able to have a cohesive agreement on what these things mean.

So we're going to start out by looking at what they call a young earth theory.

What could be the biblical evidences for this and what are theories that help

describe what the younger theorists look at.

Wayne Grudem in Systematic Theology says this,

as part of the evidence of a young earth, it is significant that each of the

days of Genesis 1 ends with an expression such as, and there was evening,

and there was morning, the first day, from Genesis 1-5.

The phrase, and there was evening,

and there was morning, is repeated in verses 8, 13, 19, 23, and 31.

This seems to imply the sequence of events marking a literal 24-hour day and

suggests that the readers should understand it in that way.

So what they're saying here is one of the pieces of evidence for a young earth

or a literal six 24-hour day periods is the phrasing of there was evening and there was morning.

The addition of those makes it seem like it would be in our normal pattern.

Evening right now, morning comes when the sun rises.

That's what we know in a 24-hour day.

And so that's just one piece of evidence that they use, biblically speaking,

to say, all right, this is pointing to it being six 24-hour days.

Another example that they use is that the third day of creation cannot be very

long because the sun does not come into being until the fourth day and plants

cannot live long without life.

So they would point to the third day, which is when God makes the vegetation on the earth.

And they would point to the fourth day, which is when we have the sun,

the moon, and the stars, all the illuminaries of the sky that are created.

And they're like, it can't be really long periods of time because there is no

vegetation that can last without that sunlucked.

Again, this is taking scripture passage, looking at it and saying,

all right, this is pointing to a 24-hour period because plants cannot live long without life.

Then another example is found later on in the Bible, in the book of Exodus,

in the Ten Commandments, there is the proclamation of the Sabbath day and keeping it holy.

And this they use as evidence to point to a 24-hour day period because of what

it says in verses 8 through 11 of Exodus 20.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all

your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter,

your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner

who is within your gates.

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all

that is in them and rested on the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

They point to this passage and say, all right, this is going through a seven-day work week.

And one of the days that God is calling out is what we would call Saturday.

And that's the day of rest. That's the day of holy assembly.

And all the other six days, those are for work.

And using this formula, you could easily extrapolate that this could have been,

this was what the creation week looked like, a literal six days of creation in this way.

Then we have one more piece of evidence, and then we're going to go into some

theories about what this looks like and matching it up.

But the word day, when they use it in Genesis 1, when it's used with a numerical

adjective in the Pentateuch always indicates a solar day.

To be sure, the word day is used in several senses throughout the Pentateuch.

But with the numeral or ordinal, it only means a solar day.

And when it says the first day, so God created light on the first day.

He looked at the light, saw it was good.

There was evening and morning the first day. That qualifier first,

when it's used in the first five books of the Bible, is always in accordance

with a 24-hour solar day.

And so that's, again, another piece of evidence that they're using to describe

what's going on with that word day.

Does it mean 24 hours or does it mean a long period, epic, something like that?

So to get into a few of the theories about how we could have such varying degrees

of how old the earth is based upon a young earth theory.

One of the theories goes like this, and it's based upon the flood of Noah,

which says, at the time of Noah, the earth was covered by a tremendous flood

with huge waves with velocity of a thousand miles an hour.

These waves picked up various forms of life.

The mud in which these forms were eventually deposited was solidified into rock

under the tremendous pressure of the waves.

The various rock strata represent various waves of the flood,

these unusual forces accomplished in a short period what geologists believe

would ordinarily require three billion years to accomplish.

So the concept there is the theory is that when the waters came up from underneath,

when the waters came down from above, there's tidal waves, which can move massive

amounts of weight, destroying all of life on the planet, except for Noah and

those that were on the ark.

And when this happened, like sediments will gather together.

Heavier elements, lighter elements,

they're all going to kind of disperse and get into a general area,

and that's when you go out and you look at the Grand Canyon,

and there are all those different layers and levels of different rocks that

you can see exposed there.

Their explanation for that, while other geologists are going to say that's going

to take millions or billions of years, it can happen quickly, according to them,

because of these floodwaters that came on the Earth, and the different types

of skeletons that are put in each of the layers again correspond to the weight

that they were, and that's how they explain that theory.

Young Earth, it is a flood that throws geologists off because normally that's

not going to happen, but with the immense weight and the immense power of these waves,

it would have rocked the world as we know it.

To go along with this, the idea of being able to date the rocks would also have

been thrown off by this flood, they say.

So in Charles Ryrie's basic theology, he says, this would have caused a drastic

change in the climate of the world after the flood and certain other results.

Of course, the uniformitarianism, which is where they get to the dating of the

rocks, on which dating methods are based would have been affected by this.

The flood destroyed all life that was not in the ark Noah built,

accounting for the fossil remains in the earth.

The proclamation here is simply that the flood was so catastrophic and so different

than anything that they had explained.

The amount of weight that could have been moved by these waves,

the amount of pressure all of that water would have put on these rocks would

have caused the dates to be not realistic because of all of those elements that are there.

So that's one theory as to how this is a young earth,

but there are dating methods and the fossils in the rock are throwing other

people off because it just was a unique event that changed the scope of history.

The other theory to go over on the young earth is what's called the ideal time theory,

which says that God created the world in a six day period, a relatively short

time ago, but that he made it as if it were billions of years old.

Adam, of course, did not begin his life as a newborn baby.

If God created trees rather than merely tree seeds, they presumably had rings

indicating an ideal age rather than their real age.

Thus, each element of creation must have begun somewhere in its life cycle.

I think the stars would be a good example of this.

There are stars that are many, many millions of miles away from us.

And because we can see them now on this planet, the young earth theorists would

say that God created it like it was millions or billions of years old because we can see those gaps.

Because he created Adam, not as an infant, but as someone who could talk,

who could name animals, who was sentient from his creation,

and trees, like God told them not to go eat from the tree of the knowledge of

good and evil, which was already producing its fruit.

He created it as it was already producing.

So the last thing under the young earth heading that I want to go over is their dating methods.

If the rocks are not able to be trusted in how old they are,

if we cannot trust the fossil records in the layers of rock,

how do they get their time frame?

And their time frame is from the genealogies in Genesis.

So according to Millard Erickson, again in Christian theology,

he says this, Archbishop James Usher arrived at a date of 4004 BC for the creation.

On these terms, the creation is no more than about 6,000 years old.

Usher's conclusion was satisfactory before the development of modern geology,

which is only a rather recent development. It came about in the 1800s.

And so this was Usher's theory.

He took the genealogical records in Genesis and traced them back, and he got 4004 BC,

which that would be 6,030 years ago now, if that were accurate and correct.

And so that's how they got the young earth. That's one of the ways that they

trace back when the earth began.

And those are a couple of the theories as to how they can explain this from

a young earth perspective.

Now going to an old earth view, the evidence in favor of looking at it goes like this.

In favor of viewing the six days as long periods of time is the fact that the

Hebrew word yom or day is sometimes used to refer not to a 24-hour literal day,

but to a longer period of time, such as Genesis 2-4,

which says there are generations of the heavens and the earth when they were

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

And the word day there in that sentence means the era, the longer time frame of that.

And this being in the creation narrative, the old earth people will point to

that and say, yes, it means a long period of time, not just one 24-hour day.

There is something called the day age theory, which holds that God created in

a series of acts over long periods of time.

So the geological and fossil records correspond in the way that we are measuring

them today in scientific terms, they correspond to the days of his creative.

So the idea there is that the day means a long period of time,

so it's not six literal 24-hour periods, but it is six long periods of time,

and the theory that goes along with that just reinforces that concept.

Another idea by old Earth creationists will look at day six and say,

that is way too much that is going on in one 24-hour period.

So it says, The finite nature of man and the incredibly large number of animals

created by God would by itself seem to require that a much longer period of

time than part of one day would be needed to include so many events.

At least that would be an ordinary understanding of the passage for an original reader,

a consideration that is not unimportant in the debate that often emphasizes

what an ordinary reading of the text by the original readers would lead them to conclude.

And so we're going to go over what is all supposed to happen on day six,

according to Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.

In Genesis 1, 24 and 25, God creates the land animals.

Then a little bit later in verses 26 and 27, God creates Adam and Eve.

Then God declares in Genesis 1, 28, be fruitful and multiply.

Then God puts Adam in the garden of Eden in Genesis 2, 8, and 9,

which means that God plants the garden in Eden.

Time. God's direction regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is given in Genesis 2.17.

Then in Genesis 2.18, God finds no helper fit for Adam.

God is going then to bring all the animals to Adam for them to be named.

In Genesis 2.19, Adam then falls into a deep sleep and loses his rib, and Eve is created.

And so old earth will point to this and say, this is way too much to happen.

How can a man name every single animal that God created in one 24 hour period,

plus doing all of these other things. And so they point to this as biblical

evidence to support their claim that it is an old earth.

Then we have the evidence in Genesis 2, at the end of the seven days of creation,

where the seventh day doesn't follow the normal pattern, and where it doesn't

say that then there was evening and there was morning the seventh day.

So the seventh day, it should be noted, is not concluded with the phrase and

there was evening and there was morning a seventh day.

The text just says that God rested on the seventh day from all his work which

he had done, and that God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it.

The possibility, if not the implication suggested by this, is that the seventh

day is still continuing. It never ended, but is also a day that is a really long period of time.

So evidence that it's not a 24-hour period is that the seventh day does not

end in the normal way that we would see it.

So a couple of the theories behind Christian creationists who believe in an

old earth, and one of them is the gap theory.

Which holds that there was an original, quite complete creation of the earth,

perhaps billions of years ago, the creation mentioned in Genesis 1-1,

in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Some sort of catastrophe occurred, however, so that the creation became empty

and unformed, which is what Genesis 1-2 says.

God then recreated the earth a few thousand years ago in a period of six days,

populating it with all species.

The apparent age of the earth and the fossil records showing development over

long periods of time are to be attributed to the first creation.

The catastrophe is often linked to the fall of Satan.

There is another way to look at this theory as well, and that is that when you

go from Genesis 1.1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,

and the earth was formless and void.

The gap theory would be saying that God was forming the earth at that time until

it got to a place where he could inhabit it.

And so the gap theory is either there was something catastrophic that a lot

of people link with the fall of Satan from heaven and how then God had to reform

that and create it again.

Or it could be that it just took a long time for the way that God put the processes

in to look at these things.

Evidence for an old earth goes like this.

So, Geology of the type that we know today came of age only in the 19th century.

When it did, however, serious problems arose for the traditional dating of creation.

A number of methods have been developed for date of the earth,

many of them relating to the characteristics of radioactive materials.

Out of these methods came a consensus that the earth is several billion years

old, perhaps five or six billion or even more.

And that is from Christian Theology.

And if you do a quick search on Google, Google is going to proclaim that the

universe is about 13.8 billion years old and the earth is about 5.54 billion years old.

I told you last week that there are some things that should not separate us as Christians.

And my belief is that this is one of those. It doesn't matter,

in my opinion, if someone believes that the earth is young. It doesn't matter

if someone believes that the earth is old.

That is not a salvation matter.

But these are the theories that are put forth.

These are what both sides are proclaiming. And this is the evidence that we have in front of us.

So, in Wayne Grudem's systematic theology, he says this, Therefore,

with respect to the length of days in Genesis 1.

The possibility must be left open that God has chosen not to give us enough

information to come to a clear decision on this question.

And the real test of faithfulness to him may be the degree to which we can act

charitably toward those who in good conscience and full belief in God's word

hold to a different position on this matter.

And that's what my beliefs are in the old earth versus young earth creation.

It is, there are arguments on both sides that I find persuasive.

And so with them being both persuasive in my opinion, it doesn't matter.

And that's where I lean on this as we look at how old...

Thank you again for joining us in our discussion of the universe's origin and the age of the earth.

There are some who think the age of the earth is one of the most important topics in all of Scripture.

But in my opinion, the authority of Scripture is not at stake no matter what

position you hold on this topic.

There is space for Christian charity in this discussion. If you would like more

information about Faith Chapel and its ministries, please visit the website gofaithchapel.org.

Next week we will look at evolution and then discuss the Christian perspectives

of intelligent design and creationism. Have a great week.