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NASB | Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God (Elohim) created [by forming from nothing] the heavens and the earth. [Heb 11:3] |
Subject: How old is the earth scripturally? |
Bible Note: Thank you Phillip. May the Lord bless you! I’ll try to respond to a few of the issues you raised, but I still recommend Dr. Hugh Ross’ Reasons To Believe Ministries for a fuller coverage of old earth creationism. First, your introducing evolution into the discussion is off track. I do not believe in evolution. Old earth creationists believe in fiat creation by the one and only all-powerful Creator God, the same as young earth creationists. There is no question about God’s power - of course He could create the earth in six literal days if He chose to - or even in six seconds! The question is, “What did the sovereign Creator God actually choose to do?” Old earth creationists believe that the bulk of the evidence reveals that God chose to take considerable time, even millions of years, in His creative activity. Sure he could have done it a lot faster - but He seems to have chosen to do it slowly. “Why did He do it that way?” is a far more difficult question - which I won’t even attempt to go into here. That said, I agree that Romans 5:12 is relevant to the discussion. This verse, “… one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin …” (NAS) tells us that death came through Adam’s sin. But, what kind of death? The context shows that Paul is explaining justification by faith in this passage - and thus eternal life. Paul is doing a contrast and comparison between spiritual death and spiritual life. The primary meaning of “death” here is spiritual death. The verse may also refer to physical death of humans, but there is little reason to extend the meaning to encompass animal and plant death. In fact, in most verses that speak of the gospel, the word “life” refers primarily to spiritual life and the word death refers primarily to spiritual death. Also, in Genesis 2:17 God tells Adam, “from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” If God was talking about physical death here then His Word did not come true - Adam did not physically die “in the day that he ate” - Adam lived hundreds of years after he ate the forbidden fruit. But Adam and Even did die spiritually at the very moment that they ate - their harmonious relationship to God was severed. Adam’s physical death was a secondary result that God had not directly said anything at all about. Exodus 31:17, as you pointed out, is also on target for this discussion. The verse states, “…in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from labor, and was refreshed.” At first glance this seems to be a proof text for a literal six day creation. But we must take into account comparison with all other relevant passages. First, before we say that the six days in Exodus 31:17 are absolutely literal, let’s ask whether the seventh day in the same verse is literal. Did God, whose existence is outside of time, literally rest for one 24 hour day? It seems unlikely. Also, while Genesis tells us God rested on the seventh day, Hebrews 4 tells us that some will yet enter the Sabbath rest of God - the implication is that the seventh day rest of God is still continuing. In Genesis 1 and 2, the sixth day is also remarkable. Genesis 1:27 tells us that male and female - Adam and Eve - are created on the sixth day. Genesis 2 has Adam name the animals on the same sixth day. While God can work at any speed He chooses, Adam is human. Since this is before the fall, Adam may have been more intelligent and energetic than humans are today, but he still basically human. Could he really meet all the animals and birds, name them, and discover that they could not fully meet his emotional needs for fellowship, and then finally find that Eve met those needs after she was created - all in one 24 hour day? Unless you greatly restrict the meaning of “all”, Adam would have had to name dozens of animals a second, non-stop for 24 hours. Remembering that Adam, however, intelligent, must remain fully human, it seems seriously improbable. Finally, in Genesis 1 the days are numbered using an interesting formula, “And there was evening and there was morning, one day” - etc. From my earliest Bible reading days this phraseology bothered me. In various cultures, days have been counted midnight to midnight, sunrise to sunset, sunrise to sunrise, and evening to evening. But I have never ever heard of anyone counting days from sunset to sunrise - that would be counting nights, not days! But if the text is somewhat poetic and is intended to be read as detailing six long periods of God’s creative activity, then the phraseology suddenly makes sense. The sense of the text would then be: “There was a twilight when God’s creative activity was suspended and then a new dawn when God began His creative activity again, creative era #1” - etc. May the Lord bless you! |