I was just wondering because we're in the year 2020,.. but isn't that just counting the years after Jesus was born?
Hi AR,
What one believes about the age of the earth is going to be determined by 'who' one believes. Many christians, and pretty much all devout Jews, believe the account of the earth's age as given in the first chapter of Genesis. However, that still leaves an awfully lot of people out there.
According to Genesis, and also a couple of other references in other Scripture, God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days. Many declare that we can't know the length of a day because there was no sun or moon to establish them. That isn't technically correct, although we can't be sure that the earth didn't spin slower or faster during those six days or not. But, technically speaking, a day has always been the length of time that it takes for a planetary body to make one full rotation upon its axis. There is no need for either the sun or the moon to exist for the period defined as a day to pass. So long as, when God spoke the earth into existence, it popped into the universe spinning on its axis, then however long it took for that first full spin...a day would have passed.
God's word declares to His children, that this entire realm in which we live, yes we live in a created realm of existence, came to be fully functional in the span of 6 rotations of the earth upon its axis. God's word also declares to us that on the sixth of those days, He created Adam.
Shortly thereafter, God's word gives us a fairly accurate timeline of the passing of time, through the genealogies from Adam to Noah. After the flood, for which we are also given a timeline for the duration of time that the waters covered the earth, we find a second genealogical timeline from Noah to Abraham. Then we are also given a timeline from Abraham to the captivity in Egypt and so on.
Now, if we trust God's word to be true, then we can merely use a calculator to add up all of those various and sundry timelines and we find that we're probably just shy of 6,000 years of existence. Meaning that it was, according to the Jewish calendar, and I think it worthwhile to consider that everything we know about God came to us through His people...the Jew, about 5,780 years. That is what the Gregorian calendar year of 2019 converts to on the Jewish calendar. The Jewish calendar is purported to be a recording of years since the creation event.
Now, I'm not so dogmatic as to say that it is exactly 5,780 or 5,781 years, but I am in full agreement that we are somewhere just shy of 6,000 years since God spoke from His throne, "Let there be light!"
Now, that's only going to apply to those who have full faith in the veracity of God's word
and believe that God does have the power and ability to actually command things the size of stars and planets to merely immediately come into existence by such commands in their fully formed and operating abilities.
For the rest there is the idea that science has proposed. That there wasn't a God who created the universe in a fully formed and fully functional capacity, but that He may have merely created the particles from which they eventually came to exist, but they actually came to exist as we see them now through billions of years of floating around in space and somehow drawing together to become what we now see in the universe. For them, the universe is believed to be several billion years old. The earth, having coalesced from the space particles of these other heavenly forms, is likely several million years old. Unfortunately, the scientific approach, while denying God's timeline, also denies God's order. The scientific approach is that the bodies of the universe existed long before the earth and that the earth was created from the bodies of the universe.
Lastly, there are those who just leave God out of the equation altogether, and they are pretty much in agreement with the second group.
So, what you are going to believe is going to depend in some measure on your faith in God and His word.
God bless,
ted