Exploring the tension between biblical and secular history, this discussion delves into complex questions—Is the Earth thousands or billions of years old? What do genealogies reveal about the Bible’s timeline, and how do we reconcile this with the dates proposed by modern science? The conversation also touches on ancient Egyptian history, carbon dating, and why these topics shape our understanding of humanity’s origins and our place in history. Beyond these scientific and historical analyses lies a more profound question: why does any of it matter? With insights drawn from Scripture, the discussion unveils how beliefs about creation and the Fall directly influence the purpose and message of redemption. These foundational elements connect directly to the role of Jesus, the “last Adam,” who reconciles creation to God. Dr. Rob Carter weaves together science, theology, and personal experience, illustrating how a firm biblical foundation can transform both understanding and faith. He is one of my favourite expositors on creation and evolution.
Category Archives: Age of the Earth
LATEST INFORMATION ON CARBON DATING
What do scientists find when they check for carbon-14 in fossils, rocks, and artifacts? Well, in 2001, a creationist named Paul Giem published an article reporting that he had found carbon-14 in every fossil he tested! Not only that, but his results suggested that the fossils he studied could not have been buried more than 25,000 years ago. This obviously does not fit conventional time scales, but instead opens the door for a compelling argument in favor of young-earth creationism.
This discovery did not immediately refute an old earth or Darwinian evolution. Evolutionists have an answer to their carbon-14 problem. They suggest that more recent carbon has contaminated the fossils, making them appear younger than they are. Scientists have even developed methods to remove the carbon-14 “contaminants” to get the dates that fit their model. Paul Giem already anticipated this answer, but this has not stopped evolutionists from dismissing this carbon-14 as contamination.
In more recent years, creationists have done deeper research into carbon dating, with some attempting to demonstrate that the leftover carbon-14 is not contamination. Andrew Snelling, for instance, found carbon-14 in diamonds which —due to their resistance to erosion, water, or abrasion— cannot be contaminated. In this case, evolutionists suggest the equipment used was experiencing “background radiation”. Snelling argued that the diamonds contained varying amounts of carbon-14, even when detected by the same machine. This rules out flaws in the equipment as an explanation.
Creationists are not done with radiocarbon dating. Dr. Andrew Snelling and others are attempting to calibrate carbon dating to fit a young-earth model. When carbon dating is used, it yields dates that can reach 40,000 years of age. Why? Because an underlying assumption of carbon dating is that the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has not changed drastically in the past. This is linked to uniformitarianism, the conventional theory that things today are the same as they have always been. From a creationist perspective, however, this is not the case. The worldwide flood of Noah would have dramatically reduced carbon in the atmosphere. Assuming a dramatic carbon “reset” about 4,400 years ago, followed by a gradual restoration of carbon leading up to today, creationists can (hopefully) recalibrate carbon dating to yield dates that are accurate from a young-earth perspective.
For now, however, we need not fear the older dates yielded by carbon dating. We can even trust that conventional carbon dates, while not accurate in themselves, do reflect correct chronology. In other words, an artifact dated 20,000 years old is older than an artifact dated 10,000 years old, even if those dates are not quite accurate. Thus, creationists can infer data from carbon dating even without “fixing” the dates to fit the young Earth model.
Conventional archaeologists, evolutionists, and geologists cite carbon dating as an accurate dating technique. While the technique itself is valid, there is reason to believe the dates are miscalculated. Many creationists reject carbon dating as a whole because it seemingly yields ages older than 10,000 years. Just like carbon dating itself, both views of carbon dating need recalibration. Carbon dating is a sound method that will yield different dates depending on what assumptions are fed into it. Creation researchers have yet to perfect these calibrations, but the presence of carbon-14 in artifacts is encouraging evidence that the earth is not millions of years old.
The discussion of carbon dating’s role in the age of the Earth is not over. Creationists will work to fit carbon dating into their model, while conventional scientists will continue to accept carbon dating results. Is everyone still wrong? Well, yes. But perhaps “wrong” is too harsh a word. A more accurate–and gentle–description could be “in need of some recalibration.”
FILM: THE ARK AND THE DARKNESS
In an era when biblical narratives are often relegated to the realm of mythology, the “Ark and the Darkness” documentary seeks to reframe one of history’s most debated tales: Noah’s Flood.
“The evidence for the flood is really, really overwhelming,” Dan Biddle, executive producer of “The Ark and The Darkness: Unearthing the Mysteries of Noah’s Flood” and president of Genesis Apologetics, told The Christian Post.
“There are a lot of misconceptions about the flood. Hollywood not only doesn’t represent the true biblical account, they add a lot of mythologies and a lot of themes that are just clearly not biblical. … The two biggest misconceptions would be mythologizing the flood, saying it’s an allegory, it didn’t really happen. The other one that’s actually within Christian circles is, ‘It was just a local flood, God’s judgment was only pertaining to the people living in Mesopotamia Valley.’ … Our movie shows it wasn’t an allegory; it happened in real-time just thousands of years ago, and it was a worldwide event.”
“The Ark and the Darkness,” from Sevenfold Films in collaboration with Genesis Apologetics, bridges the gap between various scientific disciplines — geology, paleontology, the study of fossils, ancient civilizations, volcanic activity, and Earth sciences — all pointing unanimously to the reality of Noah’s Flood.
The documentary features experts, including scientists from Answers in Genesis and Liberty University, like Dr. Andrew Snelling, paleontologist Dr. Gabriela Haynes and researcher and speaker Dr. Terry Mortenson, who uncover the factual basis of Noah’s Flood.
The film hit theaters on Wednesday and Thursday.
Biddle pointed to a variety of scientific findings he said corroborate the biblical account, including the discovery of bioorganic materials in dinosaur bones, which suggests they were buried rapidly and relatively recently.
“There’s no way that these tissues could have lasted for millions upon millions of years,” he said.
The documentary, directed by Ralph Strean, explores the Morrison Formation, a geological site spanning 13 states in the middle of America, which contains a vast number of dinosaur fossils intermingled with marine life.
“How could you take a 13-state zone region and bury land creatures and marine creatures together over that much of an expanse?” Biddle asked. “The answer has to be a worldwide flood.”
Beyond presenting physical evidence, “The Ark and the Darkness” also delves into the implications of Noah’s Flood for understanding the state of the world today. Drawing parallels between the days of Noah and contemporary times, Biddle highlighted a perceived increase in lawlessness and moral decay, echoing biblical prophecies of the End Times.
“We just look around the world today, and it seems like a stage is being set for some interesting things,” he said. “I’m not a doomsayer, I’m not a sensationalist, I’m not even really a prepper. But I would just say that most Christians nowadays can look around the landscape and say, ‘Yeah, there’s a lot of shift going on.’ It’s not a time to be fearful. It’s a time to trust in the Lord, to run in our lanes, and to trust Him for both our short-term lives and what’s going to happen in a longer play. Jesus Himself draws that parallel between the flood and End Times, and so we do the same thing in the movie.”
The film counters evolutionary arguments, suggesting that Noah’s Ark could indeed have housed representatives of all animal kinds necessary to repopulate the Earth post-flood. Biddle challenged the notion that the ark’s capacity would have been insufficient, proposing that only around 7,000 animals were needed to account for the biodiversity seen today.
“One of the most popular allegations is … there’s no way that Noah could have taken all of those different species on Earth today on the ark because there are millions and millions of species. … But that’s one of the things that the Bible addresses straight out of Genesis and chapter one,” he said.
“The experts at Answers in Genesis believe that you only need 7,000 animals total on the ark to reproduce all the different species and all the different breeds that we see today. So that would be one aspect of how we go against evolution theory in the movie,” Biddle added.
Biddle also expressed concern over the growing trend among Christians to interpret the story of Noah’s Flood as allegorical rather than historical.
“We hear a lot of people say they’re just New Testament Christians,” he said. “If that’s true, please explain to me the Gospel without citing Genesis, and no one can do it.”
Biddle stressed that understanding the Gospel’s message of salvation is impossible without acknowledging the reality of sin introduced through Adam in the Garden of Eden. According to Biddle, denying the historical truth of events like Noah’s Flood undermines the entire biblical narrative, including the teachings of Jesus and the writings of New Testament authors who referenced the flood as a factual event.
“It really cripples the Gospel message to say that either the garden or Adam or the flood was a myth,” he said.
Biddle hopes viewers, regardless of their religious or scientific background, reconsider the historical validity of Noah’s Flood.
“I think every person who watches this movie, from a hardened, licensed geologist who’s a complete atheist all the way to a homeschool Christian who believes every word of Scripture, … will be shifted, shifted towards believing more about historic Christianity,” he said. “It would be really hard to sit through an hour and 52 minutes worth of this avalanche of evidence and not come out believing, ‘My gosh, I think they have a case.’ And, we do.”
THE BIBLE TEACHES SATAN RULES THIS EARTH FOR 6000 YEARS AND JESUS RULES FOR 1000 YEARS.
Great message from Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis. Make sure you visit their website http://www.answersingenesis.org. He omits what is next for this planet hence my addendum.
In an attempt to accept evolutionary ideas about the age of the earth (millions of years), many Christians try to add long ages somewhere into Genesis. Sometimes Christians will argue that the days of creation were not literal 24-hour days, that there was a time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, or that Genesis is just poetry. But any attempt to put millions of years into Genesis puts millions of years of death, suffering, and disease before sin—and that’s a big problem!
The Bible teaches that God’s original creation was “very good” (Genesis 1:31) and that death is the consequence of Adam’s sin (Genesis 2:17). Death did not exist in creation until after Adam’s sin.
“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” Romans 5:12
“For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” 1 Corinthians 15:21–22
Although those passages refer specifically to human death, they are also discussing death in general. Other passages like Romans 8:22 make it clear that the whole world is groaning because of sin, and this includes the animal world. Taking Scripture with Scripture, it’s obvious there was no death, disease, or suffering of human or animal (nephesh) life before sin.
This is a big problem for those who believe in millions of years because those long ages supposedly come from the rock layers and fossils. Now, fossils are, of course, dead things, so if those rock layers are millions of years old, there’s been millions of years of death before Adam and Eve. And not just death, but also, millions of years of diseases and suffering, animal carnivory (but in God’s original creation everything was vegetarian, see Genesis 1:29–30), and thorns and thistles (a consequence of sin, Genesis 3:18).
Millions of years is incompatible with the Bible’s teaching about death!
Death is not a natural part of creation; it’s not something that has existed for millions of years—it’s an enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26), an intruder into God’s once “very good” creation.
As Christians, we cannot accept millions of years and remain faithful to the plain meaning of Scripture. So how old is the earth? Well, God created everything in six days, and then Genesis 5 and 11 give us detailed genealogies that allow us to determine how many years passed between Adam and Abraham (about 2,000 years). We know about 2,000 years passed between Abraham and Jesus, and then 2,000 more years gets us from Christ to us today. So, starting with the Bible’s history, the universe, earth, and life is only about 6,000 years old.
Yes, we live on a young earth impacted by death because of sin. But someday Jesus will return and create a new heavens and a new earth where death and suffering will be done away with and everyone who has placed their faith and trust in Jesus will live with him forever.
Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken
A great message from Ken Ham except he left out the 1000 years Jesus will rule over the nations on this Earth with some, if not all of the glorified Saints. We have had 6000 years of Satan’s dominion over the Earth, next is Jesus’ Millennial Kingdom, and only then will this Earth be destroyed. The second resurrection of all of the dead will take place followed by Jesus’ White Throne judgement. It is only after the White Throne judgement that John sees the new Heaven and new Earth.
“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened… Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.” Revelation 20:11-12
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” Revelation 21:1-3
BIBLICAL AGE OF THE UNIVERSE
Exodus 20:11—An Insurmountable Stone Wall Against Adding Millions of Years to the Bible
God’s commentary on the Sabbath refutes all long-age theories.
by Dr. Terry Mortenson Sept. 22, 2023, featured in Answers in Depth (www.answersingenesis.org)
In Exodus 20:8–10, God gave the children of Israel the fourth commandment: work for six days and then on the seventh day, take a Sabbath rest. He could have given the command without providing a reason for the command, as he did in the first and the fifth through the tenth commandments and other times when he commanded a Sabbath rest. Or he could have given a different reason for the Sabbath command (e.g., so their animals could rest, to avoid death for disobedience, to humble their souls, to remember their exodus from slavery in Egypt, or simply because he is the Lord. But as in the second and third commands in Exodus 20, God gave a reason for the Sabbath command. The Israelites should work six days and rest on the seventh, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, 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.” And he repeated that reason in Exodus 31:15–17.
In Exodus 20:11, God used the same Hebrew word for “days”11 (yamim, the plural form of yom [day]) that he used in verse nine, showing that God’s days of creation in Genesis 1 were the same kind of days (the same length) as the days of the week for the Israelites. It is doubtful if any faithful Jew ever interpreted it any other way until the idea of millions of years started to take control of people’s minds about two centuries ago.
We should note that if God really created over the course of millions of years (as most Christians around the world today believe), he could have clearly indicated that in the Hebrew. He could have used the Hebrew word dor (דּוֹר), which is translated in English Bibles as time, period, or generation.12 Or he could have borrowed an Aramaic word, as he did in the books of Nehemiah and Daniel, such as zeman (זְמָ֑ן) or iddan (עִדָּן), which are translated as season, time, or period.13 Or he could have used some phrase such as “after many days,”14 “after some years,”15 “after thousands of ten thousand years,”16 or “after years of many generations.”17 But instead, God used the only Hebrew word, yom (יוֹם), which means a literal, 24-hour day, and it means that (or the light portion of a literal, 24-hour day, in contrast to night) in the majority of the 2,320 times it is used in the Old Testament.
One more point for this discussion: Exodus 20:8–11 clearly implies that the days of Genesis 1 (and therefore the events on those six days) are in sequential order, just as the days of a human week are. Sunday always comes before Monday, which always comes before Tuesday, etc. So, in Genesis 1, God created the earth completely covered with water and then he created light (day 1), then the expanse (firmament) to separate the water into two parts (day 2), and then the dry land and all kinds of land plants (day 3). After that, he created the heavenly bodies to serve as timekeepers for man (day 4), then the sea creatures and birds and other flying creatures (day 5), then all the kinds of land animals and, finally, the first man and woman to be the progenitors of mankind (day 6). Given that truth, we can readily see the many contradictions between the order of creation and the order of events in the evolution story.18 We cannot remove those contradictions no matter where we might try to fit millions of years.
It is clear: God created everything in the beginning in six literal, sequential, 24-hour days. The events on those days were not normal but were unique and supernatural as God spoke things into existence (Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26; Psalm 33:6–9). He didn’t speak and then wait millions of years for things to happen. But the days were normal days (approximately 24 hours), just like our days, “all the days” of Adam’s 930 years of life (Genesis 5:5), and “all the days” of Noah’s 950 years of life (Genesis 9:29).
No Place to Put the Millions of Years
So, we can’t spread the millions of years over “figurative” or “symbolic” creation “days” (ages), as in the day-age view. And because God equated the human workweek with his creation week, there is no basis for saying that, in Genesis 1, long stretches of time (millions of years) transpired between the literal days, as in the “day-gap-day” view of John Lennox.
But we also can’t fit millions of years before the six literal days, as in the old gap theory, the more recent “promised land” view of John Sailhamer, the view of John Lennox, or the “analogical day” view of C. John Collins. Nor can we fit the millions of years before Genesis 1:1, as in the “cosmic temple view” of John Walton and others. There was no time before the six days, because notice what God said he created in those six days: the heaven,20 the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. He didn’t make anything before the six days. He made everything during those six days. But when did God make the earth according to Genesis 1? He made it in verse 1, not in verse 3, which is where many Christians try to say that the six days begin. So, combining Exodus 20:11 with Genesis 1:1 unmistakably informs us that the six days begin in Genesis 1:1, not in 1:3.
There simply is no place to put millions of years of geological and cosmological time into or before Genesis 1—not in the days, between the days, or before the days of creation. Exodus 20:11 completely rules out those interpretations. There are many biblical, historical, philosophical, and scientific reasons to reject the millions of years, but Exodus 20:11 is a very important biblical reason. Another very important reason that nearly all old-earth proponents ignore is the problem of accepting millions of years of animal predation, death, disease, extinction, and other natural evils. This is seriously incompatible with the Bible’s teaching regarding the original “very good” creation, regarding God’s curse on the whole creation when Adam sinned, and regarding the future removal of the curse on creation when Jesus comes again to create a new heaven and earth.
Evasions of Exodus 20:11
As I said at the beginning, I have found in my reading and experience that most Christians who accept millions of years have not thought very carefully, if at all, about what Exodus 20:11 says in relation to the question of the age of the creation.
To see the truth and importance of Exodus 20:11 more assuredly, let’s now consider how some influential Christian scholars who accept the millions of years have handled this verse.
Through his 1955 book, The Christian View of Science and Scripture, Baptist theologian Bernard Ramm moved many to accept millions of years as he advocated the day-age view of Genesis 1. This is all he said about verse 11 in the fourth commandment: “The argument against the [day-age, progressive-creation] theory on the grounds of Exodus 20:11 is not at all significant. The verse simply means that the human week of seven days takes its rise from the divine week of seven creative epochs.”24 Following the scientific consensus by faith, he had already interpreted the days of Genesis 1 as “epochs.” Then he used this to silence Exodus 20:11. This is not a sound interpretation of Scripture, for he ignored God’s own commentary.
Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology is widely used in seminaries in English and other languages. In his first edition in 1983, he showed no awareness of recent young-earth creationist literature, gave a shallow treatment of the view, and undogmatically leaned toward the day-age view of Genesis 1. But his only mention of Exodus 20:8–11 was not in his chapter on creation but in the chapter on Christology regarding Jesus’ view on keeping the Sabbath. In spite of saying in his 1983 first edition that the subject of creation warranted further study, his third edition in 2013 showed no improvement on his awareness of young-earth literature or our biblical and scientific arguments, and he still ignored Exodus 20:8–11.25
In his book, Genesis in Space and Time, the great apologist Francis Schaeffer devoted merely a single paragraph to the question of the length of the creation days and said he did not know how long they were (p. 57). His book makes no reference to Exodus 20:8–11.
Gleason Archer was a leading evangelical Old Testament scholar in the twentieth century. In an article defending the day-age view, he stated about Exodus 20:11 in regard to the six days of Genesis 1, “By no means does this [verse] demonstrate that 24-hour intervals were involved in the first six ‘days,’ any more than the eight-day celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles proves that the wilderness wanderings under Moses occupied only eight days.” This argument fails because Leviticus 23:33–43 does not connect the number of days of the feast to the number of years Israel wandered in the wilderness. Rather those verses link the command for the Israelites to dwell in booths during the feast with the fact that they dwelt in tents in the wilderness after they left Egypt.
Another influential, twentieth-century Old Testament scholar was E. J. Young. In his Studies in Genesis One, he says that the first chapter of the Bible is a “straightforward trustworthy history.” He asserts that Exodus 20:8–11 tells us the days of creation were “consecutive” and “chronological.” But he says the Bible does not tell us how long the days were and how old the earth is, thereby leaving the door open to the acceptance of millions of years as secular geologists claim.27 It is no surprise then that his son, Davis Young, went on to get his PhD in geology and teach for decades at Calvin College, convincing many students and evangelical theologians to believe in millions of years.
The late John Sailhamer is another prominent evangelical Old Testament professor who has had an impact on many, including John Piper, to accept millions of years. In Genesis Unbound, he argues that Genesis 1:1 refers to the creation of nearly everything over the course of millions of years. But verses 2–31 describe the creation of the promised land (which he equated with the garden of Eden) and the creatures in, above, and around the promised land. He said that Exodus 20:8–11 refers to six literal days of “preparing the [earth’s] sky, the land, and the sea,” but not the earth and universe. His novel interpretation of Genesis is seriously flawed.
The highly respected British apologist John Lennox and well-known Old Testament professor C. John Collins try to evade the implications of Exodus 20:11 by saying that God’s work is different from man’s work. True, unlike man’s work, God’s work in Genesis 1 is supernatural, out-of-nothing, and not repeated, and God doesn’t get tired. But Exodus 20:8–11 is not comparing and contrasting man’s work and God’s work. Rather, the commandment is equating man’s week with God’s week of creation. Lennox and Collins have missed the point completely.
Wayne Grudem is arguably the most influential evangelical theologian in the world as a result of his many helpful writings, especially his Systematic Theology, which is translated into more than 12 major languages. He tries to get around Exodus 20:11 by saying that in the very next verse “‘day’ means ‘a period of time’”—so, since yom is used non-literally in the context, it therefore is not necessarily literal in verse 11. But two points expose the fallacy of this argument. First, yamim (plural of yom and used in 20:8–12) always means literal days everywhere else in the Old Testament. Second, in 20:12 it is not the word “days” (yamim) that is non-literal (figurative). Rather, it is the verb “may be long” (ESV, or “may be prolonged” as in NASB) that is used figuratively. In other words, verse 12 does not mean that if Israelites would keep the Sabbath, they would have longer days (say, 36-hour days) but that they would have many more (literal, 24-hour) days in the promised land to which they were going. Their disobedience would shorten their time of prosperity and residence in the promised land. Their obedience to God would enable them to stay and thrive as a nation in the land for a long time. Verse 12 simply does not say or imply that the six days referred to in Exodus 20:11 are figurative of long periods of time rather than being literal days.
In A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, David Snoke says, “It may sound trite to say that ‘with the Lord one day is as a thousand years’ (2 Peter 3:8; see also Ps. 90:4), but we do well to remember that God’s timing is not always our time.” It is indeed trite and irrelevant. Peter is referring to the second coming of Christ, not defining the length of the days in Genesis 1 or Exodus 20:8–11. Moses’ words in Psalm 90:4 are (in the context of 90:1–3) referring to the eternal nature of God, not defining the days of creation. The rest of Snoke’s argument quotes Leviticus 25:2–11 to say that “the Sabbath law was clearly not restricted to periods of seven twenty-four-hour days. Leviticus 25 gives the Sabbath year law, as well as the Jubilee law, which was a Sabbath of Sabbath years, a period of seven times seven years.”34 Of course Scripture speaks of more than one kind of Sabbath. But those Sabbath years are literal years, just like the Sabbath day of Exodus 20:11 is literal. Furthermore, in Exodus 20:11, the question is not how to interpret “Sabbath” but “day.” And the Israelites did not have or take the liberty of deciding whether they would work six literal days before a Sabbath rest or work six long, indefinite periods of time and then rest a seventh long, indefinite period of time. Leviticus 25 is as irrelevant to the correct meaning of Exodus 20:11 as is 2 Peter 3:8 and Psalm 90:4.
John Walton is a famous Old Testament scholar at Wheaton College. His influence in the church is growing in America as well as in other countries. In his book, The Lost World of Genesis One, he argues that God didn’t create anything in Genesis 1—it is not an account of material origins. Rather, he says, it is a description of God giving or assigning function to a preexisting creation. Everything was created before Genesis 1:1, and the Bible is silent about when and how God created. So, he contends, we can accept whatever the scientific majority says is true about the origin and history of the creation. His brief comments about Exodus 20:11 focus completely on persuading his readers that “made” (asah, עָשָׂה) means “gave function to” or “assigned function to” something that was made earlier. Walton’s view fails on so many points. He assumes cosmological, geological, and biological evolution over millions of years are proven scientific facts, which they are not. He assumes that all Ancient Near-Eastern cultures had the same worldview and that ancient Israelites shared that view, which they did not. And then he uses the ancient pagan thinking as the grid through which he interprets Genesis 1–11. Furthermore, Genesis 1 does not say that God transformed the preexisting creation to become a cosmic temple in which to reside. In fact, Isaiah 66:1–2 says,
Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”
Walton and others using the same hermeneutical approach are “trembling at” (believing) the words of scientists, rather than humbly trembling at (believing) the Word of God.
Furthermore, Genesis 1:14 says that the sun, moon, and stars were to serve a function—for man to measure time (literal days, years, and seasons). God assigns a function for Adam and Eve—to rule over the creation (1:28). But God doesn’t assign a function for the firmament (made on day 2), or for sea creatures, birds, or land animals (made on days 5 and 6). And Genesis 1 says nothing about the creation functioning as a cosmic temple at the end of day 6. But also, if God really created the sun, moon, and stars to exist for billions of years before man (as Walton believes), then for most of their existence, they did not fulfill the purpose for which he created them. Or are we to think that, for billions of years, the heavenly bodies also did not function to separate the day and night until God gave them that function just before he created Adam and Eve? Isaiah 45:12 and 18 says that God created the earth to be inhabited by man. So, if God really created the earth 4.5 billion years before man, it did not fulfill the purpose to which God created it. What kind of God declares purposes like this and then waits billions of years to fulfill it? Not the God revealed in Scripture. Neither Genesis 1 nor Exodus 20:11 says or even suggests, “For in six days, God gave function to the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them which he had made before the six days.”
Finally, I want to comment on Hugh Ross’ handling of Exodus 20:11, because so many Christian leaders and scholars have endorsed his work that promotes the acceptance of the big bang, billions of years, death before the fall, and a local flood of Noah. Ross tries to neutralize this verse with two points. First, he says that of the five passages addressing the Sabbath command, three make no connection to God’s creation week and man’s week. But that doesn’t tell us anything about the meaning of Exodus 20:11 (and 31:17) which does make that connection. The fact that God gives more than one reason (or no reason) for keeping the Sabbath, does not negate the reason he gives in Exodus 20:11 and 31:17.
He then says, “For the remaining two passages, the ‘proof’ would hold only if neither the word for ‘day’ nor the word for ‘Sabbath’ were ever used with reference to any time period other than 24 hours.” Relying on Archer’s fallacious argument about the Feast of Tabernacles (noted above), Ross says there is more than one kind of Sabbath (e.g., a Sabbath day, a Sabbath year), just as in his many writings he contends that yom (“day”) doesn’t always mean a literal day, which young-earth creationists have always acknowledged. And so he says, “day” and “sabbath” in Exodus 20:11 can be understood to allow Christians to insert billions of years into Genesis 1.
But sound Bible interpretation is not done by looking up all the possible meanings of a word and then picking the one we want to insert into the verse(s) we are studying. That is eisegesis (reading into Scripture our opinion or belief), not exegesis (reading out of Scripture what God wants us to understand, do, or believe). No, we correctly interpret the Bible by looking at the context around the word in the verse(s) we are studying and by considering other verses that relate directly to that verse. When we do that, it is obvious biblically that the days of Genesis 1 and Exodus 20:8–11 are literal, normal, 24-hour days.
Conclusion
More attempts to ignore or evade the clear truth of Exodus 20:11 could be discussed. But the failed attempts discussed here reinforce the obviously correct interpretation. God made everything in the beginning in six literal, normal days just like ours.
It should also be noted that nobody has any trouble understanding the other nine commandments (although everyone has trouble obeying all of them). So, why all the convoluted arguments in order to explain away the obvious meaning of Exodus 20:11? Because these Christians have allowed the scientific consensus (i.e., the majority view of geologists and astrophysicists) about the age of creation to control their interpretation of God’s Word. The fallible opinions of sinful human beings (who don’t know everything, who make mistakes requiring revisions of their textbooks, and who weren’t there to observe the origin and history of the creation) have trumped the inerrant Word of our eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, infallible Creator in their mind.
If God really created over millions of years, then Exodus 20:8–11 could not be more misleading. Conversely, if God did create in six literal days, he could not be more clear in this commandment and in Genesis 1.
Exodus 20:11 stands as an insurmountable stone wall against any attempt to fit millions of years anywhere into Genesis 1, either in the days, between the days, or before the days of creation. And Scripture is clear that those literal days of creation were just a little more than 6,000 years ago
CHURCH AS JESUS INTENDED
Returning to a no-frills practice of following Jesus will be good for all of us. We will remember what our faith is all about. This is why in the last days before Jesus returns He needs to purify His church. Apostasy in denominational churches is rife as demonstrated by the acceptance of gay marriage and homosexual pastors. They no longer believe in the inerrancy of God’s Word. Like the world, they have been caught up in the evolutionary myth of billions of years of Earth’s history. They no longer believe that God judged mankind with the worldwide flood of Noah’s day and yet it is the only explanation for the existence of billions of dead things buried quickly all over the world, including the fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas (the result of buried forests). They have discounted both Noah’s flood and the short timescale of Scripture determined by Genesis 1-11. When you study geology from a biblical standpoint and use the geological model of the Flood to connect the real-world observations of geology you discover it is superior to the prevailing old-earth frameworks in explaining the data. (Biblical Geology 101 by Michael Oard and Robert Carter 2021).
An exciting training development, one which could help us prepare for church without buildings, has gained great popularity in the body of Christ over the past several years by readying people for possible service on the mission field, particularly among Muslims. TOAG, or “Training Ordinary Apprentices to Go,” (Global Mobilisation Network). It seeks to teach people to “do church” in small group settings, away from large worship gatherings that will not be available abroad. Participants spend ten months learning how to reach unreached people groups and develop an authentic community in a small group setting. Families with children are welcomed in, and future workers for Christ are much better prepared than earlier generations of believers. I’ve heard from a few that have participated in TOAG that it is difficult, yet rewarding. The method’s founders state the goal of the training: During TOAG, interns learn to be a Kingdom Community without including Western structures that often hinder movements. They experience life in community with other interns, something more akin to the Book of Acts. By taking them out of present ecclesiastical structures, which include powerful (& professional) music, well-crafted homilies (by highly trained professionals) in safe, comfortable surroundings (expensive buildings), interns experience first-hand what is and is not required for believers to be a ‘Kingdom-Community,’ experimenting with simple, organic structures capable of sharing the life-changing power of God’s Kingdom and reproducing into movements. … These are just some of the reasons why many Americans benefit from the hands-on learning experience of TOAG.
We need to prepare for the prophesied persecution that is coming and expect God to grow us through it as never before. Literally, millions of Christians around the world can testify to this truth, as Paul testified clearly in this Scripture.
“We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” Romans 5:3-5:
Whether you use TOAG or some other training method you need to get with like-minded believers who understand the times and get into step with what God is calling us to do in these last days to make sure we complete the Great Commission in the community where God has placed us.
Check out http://www.lastdaysovercomer.org for the free ebook Prepare for the Last Days – Fulfilling God’s Purposes at the End of the Age.
AGE OF THE EARTH
This is such an important topic as a Cosmos that is billions of years old undermines the authority of God’s Word. For me now, fulfilled prophecy, just of Jesus first coming to earth is sufficient proof of the inerrancy of the Scriptures. Nevertheless, I did pharmacy at Sydney University and evolution was the stumbling block for me to doubt the Scriptures. It was not until the age of 46 that I attended a Creation Ministries weekend conference that I realised that evolution does not explain the origin of you and me and the Cosmos. I was General Manager of Abbott Laboratories Hospital Products Division at the time and the only thing that got me along to the conference was Professor John Rendle-Short who at the time was Foundation Professor and Head of the Department of Child Health at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. was on the program. He was also Chairman of Creation Ministries. I knew Prof. Rendle-Short as he was doing work for the Paediatric Division of Abbott Laboratories. I admired the man and if he was talking about creation versus evolution I wanted to hear what he had to say. Well! I came away from that conference annoyed with myself and our educational establishment for believing such nonsense. There is no scientific plausible mechanism that can explain how we go from “goo to you”. Natural selection only works with what is already there it does not create anything new and mutations all go in the wrong direction they lose information. They do not generate complex new information that is required for the functioning of anything, let alone a human brain that can create all of the technology we have today.
Whilst there are billions of dead things buried catastrophically all over the world, because the world had excepted Lyle’s and Darwin’s slow gradual change (uniformitarianism) and evolution which need billions of years, the worldwide flood of Noah’s day had been put into the myths and fables bin.
What about today with all the technology that we have is the Earth really 4.5 billion years old? How can we measure age with certainty? What about radiometric dating methods—don’t they prove millions and billions of years? Does the age of the Earth even matter? Dr Mark Harwood discusses these topics and more, focusing especially on why an old Earth sits in conflict with the Bible, while also providing evidence for a younger age of the Earth.
Go to http://www.creation.com/age for 101 documents of evidence for a young earth
⏳ TIMESTAMPS ⌛ 0:00 Introduction 0:48 Mark’s story: How origins affected his faith (An old Earth undermines the Gospel narrative) 11:11 How do we determine the age of something? (You can’t measure age!) 13:32 The dripping tap example (Dating methods rely on assumptions!) 16:17 Radiometric dates aren’t definitive – assumptions rule 19:51 The importance of witness testimony 23:36 The importance of worldview / starting assumptions 26:24 So, how old is the Earth? 28:58 Evidence from radiometric dating / rocks 36:04 Evidence from sedimentation / erosion 37:41 Evidence from our solar system 40:09 Evidence from Earth’s population 41:43 Evidence from carbon-14 in fossils 43:28 Summary: You can’t measure age! (Everything depends on your assumptions!) 46:29 An old Earth calls God’s character into question 48:47 An old Earth calls the inerrancy of Scripture into question 50:38 Conclusion: Three reasons the age of the Earth matters to a Christian
WHY RADIOMETRIC DATING GIVES AGES OF MILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF YEARS
A young age for ‘ancient’ granites
When physicist Dr Russell Humphreys was still at Sandia National Laboratories (he now works full-time for the Institute for Creation Research), he and Dr John Baumgardner (still with Los Alamos National Laboratory) were both convinced that they knew the direction in which to look for a definitive answer to the puzzle of why radiometric dating consistently gives ages of millions and billions of years.
picture – Linear accelerator used in radiometric dating.
Others had tried to find an answer in geological processes—e.g. the pattern was caused by the way the magma was emplaced or how it crystallized. This is indeed the answer in some cases.2,3 But Drs Humphreys and Baumgardner realized that in other cases there were many independent lines of evidence that suggested that huge amounts of radioactive decay had indeed taken place. (These include the variety of elements used in ‘standard’ radioisotope dating, mature uranium radiohalos and fission track dating.) It would be hard to imagine that geologic processes alone could explain all these. Rather, there was likely to be an answer that concerned the nuclear decay processes themselves.
From the eyewitness testimony of God’s Word, the billions of years that such vast amounts of radioactive processes would normally suggest had not taken place. So it was clear that the assumption of a constant, slow decay process was wrong. There must have been speeded-up decay, perhaps in a huge burst associated with Creation Week and/or a separate burst at the time of the Flood.
There is now powerful confirmatory evidence that at least one episode of drastically accelerated decay has indeed been the case, building on the work of Dr Robert Gentry on helium retention in zircons. The landmark RATE paper,4 though technical, can be summarized as follows:
- When uranium decays to lead, a by-product of this process is the formation of helium, a very light, inert gas, which readily escapes from rock.
- Certain crystals called zircons, obtained from drilling into very deep granites, contain uranium which has partly decayed into lead.
- By measuring the amount of uranium and ‘radiogenic lead’ in these crystals, one can calculate that, if the decay rate has been constant, about 1.5 billion years must have passed. (This is consistent with the geologic ‘age’ assigned to the granites in which these zircons are found.)
- However, there is a significant proportion of helium from that ‘1.5 billion years of decay’ still inside the zircons. This is, at first glance, surprising for long-agers, because of the ease with which one would expect helium (with its tiny, light, unreactive atoms) to escape from the spaces within the crystal structure. There should surely be hardly any left, because with such a slow buildup, it should be seeping out continually and not accumulating.
- Drawing any conclusions from the above depends, of course, on actually measuring the rate at which helium leaks out of zircons. This is what one of the RATE papers reports on. The samples were sent (without any hint that it was a creationist project) to a world-class expert on helium diffusion from minerals to measure these rates. The consistent answer: the helium does indeed seep out quickly over a wide range of temperatures. In fact, the results show that because of all the helium still in the zircons, these crystals (and since this is Precambrian basement granite, by implication the whole earth) could not be older than 14,000 years. In other words, in only a few thousand years, 1.5 billion years’ worth (at today’s rates) of radioactive decay has taken place. Interestingly, the data have since been refined and updated to give a date of 5,680 (± 2,000) years.
- The paper looks at the various avenues a long-ager might take by which to wriggle out of these powerful implications, but there seems to be little hope for them unless they can show that the techniques used to obtain the results were seriously flawed.
The Bible clearly tells us that God created a mature universe: Adam was a man, not a baby, the trees and plants mature and on day six Adam could see all of the stars in heaven. God tells us that He stretched out the heavens at creation on day four. The Cosmos could only have been created by a being outside of His creation with miraculous powers.
Big Bang from nothing does not explain the complex ordered universe that is so evident, it is certainly not good science.
Taken from an article by Dr. Carl Weiland “Radiometric dating breakthroughs” http://www.creation.com
4. Humphreys, D. et al., Helium diffusion rates support accelerated nuclear decay, icr.org, 16 October 2003. Return to text.
DR CATCHPOOLE ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When did I realise that the earth could be no older than about 6,000 years.? The exact moment that turned my thinking around was when a simple image was put up, of Eden with layers of fossil bones in the earth beneath Adam and Eve. This showed the stark implications for Christianity if e.g. dinosaur fossils were millions of years old. That would mean there was not only death before the Fall; many fossils also show evidence of suffering, bloodshed and violence, and diseases like bone cancer. Yet after Adam and Eve were created, God called everything He had made “very good” (Genesis 1:31). I realised that it made no sense for God to have looked at tumorous dinosaur bones on Day 6, then call this very good, knowing that cancer would cause such enormous future human misery.
The Eden-on-bones scenario also raised a fundamental doctrinal issue. If we put the shedding of blood before sin, then why did God in Jesus shed blood because of sin? (Genesis 3:21, Hebrews 9:22, 10:4–10) I could see that my compromising of God’s Word by believing the secular millions of years completely destroyed the whole basis for the Atonement (1 Corinthians 15:21–22)1.
Evolutionary geneticists have themselves realised that mutations accumulate so quickly (about 60–100 per person per generation), that the human species should have become extinct at least ten times over. Evolutionary geneticist Alexey Kondrashov asks, “Why have we not died 100 times over?*
That presumes we’ve been here for the 100,000+ years of the evolutionary timeline. It’s not a problem in the Bible’s 6,000-year timeline, with only about 200 generations since Adam. We’re still going downhill fast (Romans 8:19–22), but it’s understandable we haven’t gone extinct—there simply hasn’t been enough time.
The importance of the age of the earth in presenting the gospel message is demonstrated by the following testimony of an aboriginal man.
“I’ve been locked up in every jail in Queensland, so I’ve had the Gospel preached to me more times than I can count. But I ain’t never heard the Gospel like this. Just think … we [Aboriginal people] haven’t been here 60,000 years like they tell us; we come from Noah just 4,500 years ago, and Adam 6,000 years ago—along with everyone else alive today— that’s powerful! So Christ died for everyone—whitefella and blackfella!“
*Kondrashov, A., Contamination of the genome by very slightly deleterious mutations: why have we not died 100 times over? J. Theoretical Biology 175:583–594, 1995.
Extract from article in the latest Creation magazine from CMI (www.creation.com) Creation magazine interviews former CMI speaker/scientist Dr David Catchpoole
NOAH’S FLOOD EXPLAINS ICE AGE
Just because uniformitarian scientists accept there was an Ice Age, or many ice ages, does not mean they can explain its origin. They realize that an ice age requires much cooler summers, much more snow, and a climate change that persists for hundreds of years.
What would cause these factors to come together? It has been repeatedly shown that the disruption caused by the global Flood would lead naturally to this confluence.4 However, those who reject the Flood continue to extrapolate present processes millions of years into the past, processes such as climate change and variations in Earth’s orbital geometry. Over the years more than 60 theories have been proposed. Secular Ice Age expert J.K. Charlesworth said about Ice Age theories: “Pleistocene [Ice Age] phenomena have produced an absolute riot of theories ranging ‘from the remotely possible to the mutually contradictory and the palpably inadequate.”5
That was back in 1957, however, and many people believe we have made great progress since then. However, the cause of the Ice Age still is unknown, as ice age expert David Alt stated: “Although theories abound, no one really knows what causes ice ages.”6
One of the main challenges for the secular model is that colder air is also drier air. Even if they discover a cooling mechanism, the air would be too dry for enough snow to fall for an ice age. As an example, if the average summer temperature of Canada were to fall 120C (220F), the air would become 60% drier.7 But this is not a problem for the biblical model because the warm waters just after the Flood would lead to large amounts of evaporation and precipitation.
When secular scientists run their computer models to explore the Ice Age, they find it difficult for any of their models to develop an ice age. But when they force their models to decrease the amount of sunshine by 6%, snow and ice begins to build up. However, the snow and ice sometimes grows over areas that have never been glaciated, such as Tibet and the lowlands of the far north: “We now have glaciation [in their climate model], but mainly outside the area where it existed during the last ice age.”13 In stark contrast, the biblical model easily explains the lack of glaciation in these lowlands. The oceans were warm at the beginning of the Ice Age, so the land near them was too warm for glaciation, except in the high mountains.
Because secular Ice Age models ignore the effects of Noah’s Flood, they have numerous difficulties, only some of which are mentioned here. These models are unable to explain either the distribution of large ice sheets or how they developed, demonstrating that their foundational assumptions—uniformitarianism and millions of years—are flawed. However, the biblical post-Flood model provides very plausible explanations and mechanisms for the various Ice Age phenomena.
Noah’s worldwide flood also provides the explanation for dead things buried all over the world ie. the fossils, fossil fuels – oil and coal. As a result, it provides the right answer to the age of the earth. It is thousands not billions of years old. It also demonstrates God does control events on His planet and that He judged and destroyed a lawless humanity just 4000 years ago (all but eight people).
God’s word reveals that in the “last days” before Jesus returns the world will ridicule those that believe Noah’s Flood was a real event when God judged the world. Scripture reveals Jesus will return to judge the nations and He will rule and reign with the resurrected saints on this earth for 1000 years. At the end of His Millennial reign this fallen earth will be destroyed by fire. This immediately precedes the White Throne judgement of the ungodly. God then creates a new heaven and a new earth where the saints will live on for eternity. The ungodly end up in the Lake of Fire which is the second death.
“Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. 2 Peter 3:3-7.
4. Oard, M.J., What caused the Ice Age? Creation 36(3):52–55, 2014; creation.com/ice-age-cause. 5. Charlesworth, J.K., The Quaternary Era, Edward Arnold, London, UK, p. 1,532, 1957. 6. Alt, D., Glacial Lake Missoula and Its Humongous Floods, Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula, MT, p. 180, 2001.
This article by Michael Oard was taken from Creation Magazine 36 (3) pages 52-55, July 2014 http://www.creation.com
LIVING ETERNAL NOW 