Worldview #6: Couldn’t God Use Evolution (Part 2-The Age of the Earth)?

This month I celebrate my birthday. Age is a very interesting thing. When I was 30 years old, I remember going through orientation at Bible College. During that time, some people thought my wife and I were 18 or 19 years old, while others thought that we had kids who were enrolling in Bible College!

Sometimes it is hard to tell people’s age or the age of other things, like the earth. Evolutionists have to believe and teach that the earth is extremely old in order for life to arise by accident and evolve into the many different creatures and plants that now exist. However, the Bible suggests that the earth is not very old at all, roughly 6,000-7,000 years. This calculation is made by adding the genealogies recorded in Genesis chapters 5 and 11 (roughly 2,000 years), together with the commonly accepted date by both Christian and secular scholars of 2,000 B.C. for the patriarch Abraham. This gives us the date of roughly 4,000 B.C for the creation of the earth, or in other words about 6,000 years ago.

  This time-frame matches many cultures throughout the world who have kept track of history. “The first is that of the Anglo-Saxons, whose history has 5,200 years from creation to Christ, according to the Laud and Parker Chronicles. Cooper’s research also indicated that Nennius’s record of the ancient British history has 5,228 years from creation to Christ. The Irish chronology has a date of about 4000 B.C. for creation! Even the Mayans had a date for the Flood of 3113 B.C. This date is not far from where the Bible places it (After the Flood, p. 122–129).

Why is this important? It comes down to the trustworthiness of the Bible. In the coming months we will consider what historical and observational science tell us concerning the age of the earth. In so doing we will discover that commonly accepted dating methods, like radiometric carbon dates have been shown to be unreliable. Furthermore, we will overview some of the over 50 scientific limitations of the age of the universe, thus supporting a young earth viewpoint.

 Thus, it is a matter of trust in one’s worldview. “Will you trust what an all-knowing God says on the subject or will you trust imperfect man’s assumptions and imaginations about the past that regularly are changing?” (Bodie Hodge, How Old Is the Earth?).

In His service,

            Matt