How Old is the Earth?

February 09, 2016

How Old is the Earth?

How Old is the Earth?

The Bible contains numerous lists, many of which include the names of people and how long they lived. These lists are known as chronologies. By simply adding up the peoples’ ages, we can estimate how much time has elapsed since God first created Adam and Eve. Based on these chronologies, it appears that the earth is somewhere between six to ten thousand years old.

Why is the Earth’s Age So important?

The theory of evolution teaches that everything (including us) merely came into existence on its own – over time and by random chance. To help make this irrational theory come across as more believable, evolutionists continually argue that given enough time, anything can happen. They say that the more millions and billions of years you add to the timeline, the more likely it is that things could randomly evolve. Simply put, “time” becomes their “creator”. Even though evolutionists can’t seem to explain when and how non-life suddenly became life; or how complex systems can just masterfully create themselves on their own; or why just about everything around us appears to be intelligently designed, they insist on playing the “billions of years” trump card, suppressing the truth, and denying our Creator.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made… Romans 1:18-20

Which Viewpoint is Right?

God made it abundantly clear in His Word that He created the universe in six days, and a thorough and intellectually honest review of the scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports this truth. While scientists from both sides continually make new discoveries (some of which seem to contradict one another), all findings and theories should be filtered through the biases, limitations and sin natures of man. And since no man was “there” at the beginning, it would seem reasonable that we should turn to the One who was – our Creator.  After all, Creation and the Bible have the same Author.

Days of the Creation Week…

Some Christians do not understand the important implications of the age of the earth. Unfortunately, there are those who accept evolutionary assertions just because these claims were presented by people who had a PhD next to their name. It soon becomes a problem when they realize that these claims are in direct conflict with the plain teaching of Scripture.  Both can’t be true, so they’re forced to decide whether they will embrace the unchanging and plain Biblical account presented by our perfect, all-powerful, all-knowing God; or the often flawed and changing interpretations of imperfect men.

Fitting Millions of Years into the Bible…

Since Bible chronologies indicate that the Earth is only thousands of years old, Christians who choose to believe that science has “proven” that the Earth is billions of year’s old must find a way to reconcile evolution with the Biblical account of creation.  So they create new theories that attempt to merge these contradictory positions. For example, they’ll change the meaning of the word “day”, claiming that God didn’t really mean 24-hour days when He used plain teaching such as “the evening and the morning were the first day”, “second day”, etc., and choose to conclude that each “day” was actually a very long period of time.

The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew. One Hebrew word for “day” is the word “yom”. Almost without exception, in the hundreds of times yom is used in the Old Testament, it means a plain, ordinary, twenty-four hour day. On rare occasions the word “yom” can mean a period of time; but in the Genesis creation account, God purposely used descriptive words such as the first and the second day, morning and evening, etc. so that it would be very clear. Whenever “yom” is used with the words “first” and “second” or “evening” and “morning”, it always means a literal twenty-four hour day – not a long period of time.

Why Does Genesis Matter? from Institute for Creation Research on Vimeo.





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