Did God create over billions of years?
And why is it important?
by Lita Sanders and Gary Bates

First posted on homepage: 6 October 2011 (GMT+10)
Re-posted on homepage: 11 May 2022 (GMT+10)

Yes, the timescale is not a salvation issue, nor is it an issue in itself. If God had wanted to, He could have taken billions of years to create everything. So what's the problem? First, what did God say? What is written in the Word of God, on how long it took Him to create? At the end of the day, this boils down to a matter of "Does the Bible mean what it says?", as well as implications of having such a timeline in place. For example, if God really did create over a period of billions of years, what would it say about His character?

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OLAADEGBU:
Did God create over billions of years?
And why is it important?
by Lita Sanders and Gary Bates

First posted on homepage: 6 October 2011 (GMT+10)
Re-posted on homepage: 11 May 2022 (GMT+10)

Yes, the timescale is not a salvation issue, nor is it an issue in itself. If God had wanted to, He could have taken billions of years to create everything. So what's the problem? First, what did God say? What is written in the Word of God, on how long it took Him to create? At the end of the day, this boils down to a matter of "Does the Bible mean what it says?", as well as implications of having such a timeline in place. For example, if God really did create over a period of billions of years, what would it say about His character?

READ MORE

Did God create over billions of years?
And why is it important?
by Lita Sanders and Gary Bates

First posted on homepage: 6 October 2011 (GMT+10)
Re-posted on homepage: 11 May 2022 (GMT+10)

Often, people challenge biblical creationists with comments along the lines of, “I believe God created, and I don’t believe in evolution, but He could have taken billions of years, so what’s the big deal about the age of the earth?” Some claim that an emphasis on ‘6 literal days, 6,000 years ago’ even keeps people away from the faith, so “Why be so dogmatic? Why emphasize something so strongly that’s not a salvation issue?”

It might come as a surprise that we agree—to a point. The timescale in and of itself is not the important issue. So why does CMI emphasize it? It’s important because the issue ultimately comes down to, “Does the Bible actually mean what it plainly says?” It therefore goes to the heart of the trustworthiness of Scripture. As such, compromising with long ages also severely undermines the whole Gospel message, thus creating crises of faith for many as well as huge problems with evangelism.



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OLAADEGBU:


Did God create over billions of years?
And why is it important?
by Lita Sanders and Gary Bates

First posted on homepage: 6 October 2011 (GMT+10)
Re-posted on homepage: 11 May 2022 (GMT+10)

Often, people challenge biblical creationists with comments along the lines of, “I believe God created, and I don’t believe in evolution, but He could have taken billions of years, so what’s the big deal about the age of the earth?” Some claim that an emphasis on ‘6 literal days, 6,000 years ago’ even keeps people away from the faith, so “Why be so dogmatic? Why emphasize something so strongly that’s not a salvation issue?”

It might come as a surprise that we agree—to a point. The timescale in and of itself is not the important issue. So why does CMI emphasize it? It’s important because the issue ultimately comes down to, “Does the Bible actually mean what it plainly says?” It therefore goes to the heart of the trustworthiness of Scripture. As such, compromising with long ages also severely undermines the whole Gospel message, thus creating crises of faith for many as well as huge problems with evangelism.



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The implications of a long-age timescale

The idea of millions or billions of years simply is not found anywhere in Scripture; it is a concept derived from outside of the Bible.
First, we need to understand where the concept of an old earth came from. The idea of millions or billions of years simply is not found anywhere in Scripture; it is a concept derived from outside of the Bible. In 1830, Charles Lyell, a Scottish lawyer, released his book Principles of Geology. He stated that one of his aims was “To free the science [of geology] from Moses.”1 He built his ideas upon those of another geologist, James Hutton, who advocated a uniformitarian interpretation of the world’s geology. Lyell argued that the thousands of feet of sedimentary layers (laid down by water or some other moving fluid) all over the earth were the result of long, slow, gradual processes over millions or billions of years (instead of the processes of Noah’s Flood). He believed that processes observed in the present must be used to explain the geological history of the earth. So, if we currently see rivers laying down sediment at an average rate of say 1 mm (4/100th of an inch) per year, then a layer of sedimentary rock such as sandstone which is 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) thick must have taken about a million years to form. This ‘present is the key to the past’ assumption (and its variants) is a cornerstone of modern geology. It involves a rejection of the biblical account of a global watery cataclysm. The millions of years assigned to the various layers in the ‘geological column’ were adopted long before the advent of radiometric dating methods—well before radioactivity was even discovered.

Image by Daniel Smartt

But here’s the theological problem. Those rock layers don’t just have rocks or granules in them. They contain fossils. And these fossils are indisputable evidence of death—and not just of death, but carnivory, disease and suffering. There are remains that have tooth marks in them, and even animals fossilized in the process of eating other animals. There is evidence of disease, cancers, and infection; and general suffering from wounds, broken bones, etc. Biblically, we understand these things only began to happen after the Fall. But because of the Bible’s detailed genealogies, there’s no way for the biblical Adam to exist millions of years ago, before death and suffering started happening in the uniformitarian time scale. The implication of long-age belief is that God ordained death before the Fall of man, but the Bible clearly states that it was Adam’s actions that brought death into the world (Romans 5:12).

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