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Question: How old you think the universe is? I've always believed that the universe is only thousands of years old and that God made the world in six days. My science teacher at school is also a Christian but believes in the Big Bang theory and that the universe is billions of years old. He says this because of a verse in Psalms that says that a thousand years for us is only a day for God. He thinks that when God created the earth it would have been more than six days according to the translation and that God could have caused the Big Bang theory. |
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Answer: We believe in a relatively young earth and universe... the evidence points to this fact over and over again. Our Evidently God seminar deals with this very thing. Even the strata, which evolutionists try and make fit an old age theory, point to rapid formation and a young age. One excellent web site that has many articles regarding this is... http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/young.asp The Bible passages alluded to in the question are as follows:
Both of these passages have a specific purpose. The first is to show how brief man's life is in relation to time and how short time is in relation to an infinite God. The second passage shows how patient God is with man, that he has delayed his just judgement according to his timing, which in relation to man's perception is short. To use these passages to justify a day of creation being thousands or millions of years long is to misuse Scriptures. Do you believe that Jesus was in the grave for 3000 years? That flood was 40,000 years? That the thousand year reign of Christ talked about in the book of Revelation is really going to be only one day (Revelation Chapter 21)? No? Of course not! But you could if you can take verses like those in Psalms 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8-9 and apply them to creation. If this is permitted there, anyone could randomly apply those verses to any passage in Scriptures, what's to stop them? Again, this goes against every principle of interpreting Scriptures that the church has used throughout history.
In fact, the wording in Genesis goes out of it's way to point out a literal 24 hour day. The Hebrew way of accounting for a day is not like ours. We go from midnight to midnight, they began at sundown (evening) and went to the end of daylight (morning). If the writers had wanted us to believe that these days were figurative they wouldn't have added this clarification AND they would have used some of the other words available in Hebrew that would have indicated them to be figurative. But they didn't and yet these other words ARE used elsewhere in Scriptures regarding other things.
Passages such as Psalms 136 and Romans 1:20 tell us that God could not have used a Random Big Bang Explosion... How could a random process clearly point to a God of infinite order? (See also Psalms 8:3, and 33:6-9!). In addition, trying to stretch creation over a long time frame serves no purpose (unless you believe in evolution). Evolution is also ruled out, because again a process of death and decay can't clearly reveal a perfect, unchangeable, incorruptible, God of all life. Most, in Christian circles, who try to stretch out the days of creation, do so because they are trying to account for the fossil record, which evolutionists tell us took a long time to form. In fact, the evidence of the fossil record -- NO missing links -- and the way they were buried, points to rapid burial. Other evidence has also PROVEN that fossils and coal can form in a rapid period of time with the right conditions. Even, if for a moment, we allowed that the days could have been long periods of time, you still couldn't get a fossil record (without throwing out another passage of the Bible). The Bible clearly teaches that death came into the world by Adam and Eve's sin. So, in fact, no living creature died before their sin -- not one! (In fact, the first animal's death was by God to provide a covering for Adam and Eve). This Biblical understanding of the origins of death doesn't allow for the fossil record to be formed over large time frames -- before Adam and Eve -- it had to have been formed rapidly. If there was a pile of decaying dino bones laying around how could God look at it all and say that it was "good"? No, everything was newly made and in the perfect condition designed by the Creator. Did Adam and Eve live together at the same time as dinosaurs? Yes, they were both created on the same day (Genesis 1:24-28)! Even scientists will tell you that the fossil record doesn't line up with the order in Genesis, for example birds being there before lizards. No matter how hard anyone tries you can't harmonize evolutionary ideas to the Bible.
The Bible tells us when the largest mass death of animals, birds and people, took place in history. It was the flood of Noah's day. A global catastrophe that easily accounts for most of the fossil record and strata. Even the order of what is buried in the lower strata to the higher makes sense in regards to a global flood burying them. I find it far easier to believe in God's perfect word. Don't let anyone lead you astray -- stay on His path (Psalms 119:105). To doubt God's word is to doubt God who gave us a perfect revelation of who He is and what he wants us to know of the past, how to live in the present, and of the future. (Read 2 Timothy 3:16-17)
For all of man's speculations, only God was there...
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