Genesis 1 1 Beginning

[Diamond72]

"In the Beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth". There was actually 8 billion years between when God created the Heaven (Universe) and when God created the Earth. Although in the first instant of time a trillion, trillion, trillionths of a second all was there and nothing was added. Physical matter, time & all the natural laws were there in the beginning.

 

[BeyondET]

Gold is produced from the death of enormous stars.

 

[SavedByGrace3]

I think that God sees time from outside of time. He heard our prayers before He created the universe was created. I pray for people who have passed on, knowing that He heard these prayers before the people were even alive. He can do anything!
But as to time... If he is outside of time, then a billion years may be a single line in a Cliffs Notes of the creation. Or a single instant could be a trillion years long. I think it has to do with His power to focus as broad or as narrow as He wants. Just thinking....

 

[BeyondET]

I think that God sees time from outside of time. He heard our prayers before He created the universe was created. I pray for people who have passed on, knowing that He heard these prayers before the people were even alive. He can do anything!
But as to time... If he is outside of time, then a billion years may be a single line in a Cliffs Notes of the creation. Or a single instant could be a trillion years long. I think it has to do with His power to focus as broad or as narrow as He wants. Just thinking....

Infinite is a long time, and to create, who would ever be in a hurry.

 

[Diamond72]

I think that God sees time from outside of time.

The question is how does a infinite God create a finite world. We see this in the atom. Something very small yet all of the physical world is made up of atoms. The day is very small. So how many days are their in infinity. The Yud means a little that holds a lot. We see the first day is 8 billion years. That is a very little that hold a lot. How many days are there in 8 billion years? God is one and yet God is all in all.

People think the past is a 24 hour day but the future is an infinite number of 24 hour days.

 

[BeyondET]

The question is how does a infinite God create a finite world. We see this in the atom. Something very small yet all of the physical world is made up of atoms. The day is very small. So how many days are their in infinity. The Yud means a little that holds a lot. We see the first day is 8 billion years. That is a very little that hold a lot. How many days are there in 8 billion years? God is one and yet God is all in all.

People think the past is a 24 hour day but the future is an infinite number of 24 hour days.

And there's still photons between the atoms in a infinitely finite universe.

 

[Vambram]

What is the age of the universe? | GotQuestions.org

What is the age of the universe? Is the universe billions of years old, or thousands of years old? Does the Bible talk about the age if the universe?

www.gotquestions.org

In Genesis 1:1, we are told that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The Bible gives no date for the creation; the only hint is that it happened “in the beginning.” In Hebrew, the word for “beginning” is bereshith, literally meaning “head.”

All Christians agree that God created the universe. Where Christians have a difference of opinion is in the interpretation of the word day (Hebrew yom) in Genesis chapter 1. Those who hold to a literal, 24-hour day believe in a comparatively young earth; those who hold to a non-literal, poetic day believe in a much older earth.

Many scholars and Christian scientists believe the word day in Genesis refers to a literal, 24-hour day. This would explain the repetition throughout Genesis 1 of the statement “and there was evening, and there was morning.” One evening and one morning make up one day (in Jewish reckoning, a new day begins at sunset). Others point to the non-literal use of the word day elsewhere in Scripture, e.g., “the day of the Lord,” and argue that evening to morning does not equal a day and should instead be understood as figuratively referring to beginnings and endings of periods of time (Genesis 2:4; 2:27).

If the genealogies in Genesis chapters 5 and 11 and the rest of Old Testament history are interpreted strictly literally, the creation of Adam can be dated to approximately 4000 BC. But this would only date the creation of Adam, not necessarily the creation of the earth, let alone the universe. There is also the possibility of “gaps” of time in the narrative of Genesis 1.

All that to say, the Bible does not explicitly give the age of the universe. Got Questions Ministries takes the position of a young earth and believes literal, 24-hour days in Genesis 1 are a preferred interpretation. At the same time, we do not have serious disagreements with the idea that the earth and the universe might be significantly older than 6,000 years. Whether the differences are explained by gaps or by God creating the universe with the “appearance of age” or by some other factor—a universe older than 6,000 years does not cause significant biblical or theological problems. In other words, this is not an issue over which Christians ought to suffer doubt or discord.

Ultimately, the age of the universe cannot be proved from Scripture or from science. Whether the cosmos is 6,000 years old or billions of years old, both viewpoints (and everything in between) rest on faith and assumptions. It is always wise to question the motives of those who argue the earth “must be” some specific age, and that the evidence could not possibly be interpreted as anything else. There are good and bad reasons, logic, and motivations on all sides of this question. Only one view will ultimately be proved true, but in the meantime some options are more biblical than others.

 

[Vambram]

What is the Gap Theory? Did anything happen between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2? | GotQuestions.org

What is the Gap Theory? Did anything happen between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2? Was there a multi-million year gap between Genesis chapter 1, verses 1-2?

www.gotquestions.org

Genesis 1:1–2 states, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” The gap theory is the view that God created a fully functional earth with all animals, including the dinosaurs and other creatures we know only from the fossil record. Then, the theory goes, something happened to destroy the earth completely—most likely the fall of Satan to earth—so that the planet became without form and void. At this point, God started all over again, recreating the earth in its paradise form as further described in Genesis. The gap theory, which is distinct from theistic evolution and the day-age theory, is also called old-earth creationism, gap creationism, and the ruin-reconstruction theory.

In young-earth creationism, Genesis 1:1 is seen as a summary of the complete chapter 1 in the Hebrew storytelling form. God created the heavens and the earth. Then verse 2 begins a detailed breakdown of the step-by-step process that verse 1 summarizes. However, the statement that “the earth was formless and empty, [and] darkness was over the surface of the deep” (Genesis 1:2) can be puzzling. The idea that God created a useless and shapeless earth is an uncomfortable position for some conservative theologians, and this leads them to the gap theory, or an old-earth perspective.

According to conservative proponents of the gap theory, Genesis 1:1 describes the original creation of God—perfect in every way. Then, between verses 1 and 2, Satan rebelled in heaven and was cast out. Satan’s sin “ruined” the original creation; that is, his rebellion brought about its destruction and eventual death, and the earth was reduced to its “formless and empty” state, ready for the “re-construction.” The length of time involved—the size of the “gap”—is not specified but could have lasted millions of years.

Of course, Satan must have fallen before Adam did; otherwise, there would have been no temptation in the garden. Young-earth creationists say that Satan fell sometime after Genesis 1:31. Gap creationists say that Satan fell between Genesis 1:1 and 2.

One difficulty of the gap theory is that it requires that creation suffer death and destruction before Adam’s fall. Romans 5:12 says, “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.” The gap theory counters by positing two worlds. Satan’s sin brought death to the original creation, whatever that was like; and Adam’s sin brought death to the re-creation, the realm of mankind. Through Adam’s sin, evil entered our world and the realm of man was cursed. But rebellion already existed outside the realm of mankind (in the spiritual realm), since Satan and his angels had already fallen (Isaiah 14:12–14; Ezekiel 28:12–18). Sin could not enter the realm of man until man chose it. And Satan, via the serpent, successfully tempted man to make that choice.

Objections to the gap theory include the idea that, if something important had occurred between Genesis 1:1 and 2, God would have told us so, rather than leave us to speculate in ignorance. Also, Genesis 1:31 says God declared His creation to be “very good”—a statement difficult to square with the theory that evil already existed because of Satan’s fall in the “gap.”

It is possible to hold to a literal, six-day creation week and still hold to the gap theory—the gap theory does not require evolution to be true, since the gap falls before the events of Day One in Genesis 1:3. And that’s why some conservative scholars do believe the gap theory, although its acceptance has waned since the days of proponents C. I. Scofield and J. Vernon McGee.

However, many of those who hold to the gap theory do so in order to reconcile old-earth, evolutionary theories with the book of Genesis. But it seems to be a strained reconciliation. The plain reading of Genesis 1 does not at all intimate a length of time between the first two verses. Genesis 1:1 tells us that God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:2 informs us that, when He first created the earth, it was formless, empty, and dark; it was unfinished and uninhabited. The rest of Genesis 1 relates how God completed the formless, empty, and dark earth by filling it with life, beauty, and goodness.

 

[Kylism]

"In the Beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth". There was actually 8 billion years between when God created the Heaven (Universe) and when God created the Earth. Although in the first instant of time a trillion, trillion, trillionths of a second all was there and nothing was added. Physical matter, time & all the natural laws were there in the beginning.

Astronomy is changing its view. The age of universe changes. Even the fact there was a beginning was not always accepted. Even recently astronomers found 6 full developed spiral galaxies with age of only 500 million years. So HOW OLD IS the universe if we are finding these conflicting data. We know it is some time. Just don't know how much.

Here is a webpage

Webb Telescope Finds Evidence of Massive Galaxies That Defy Theories of the Early Universe

The six “universe breakers” appear much larger than what scientists thought was possible at that time

www.smithsonianmag.com

Webb Telescope Finds Evidence of Massive Galaxies That Defy Theories of the Early Universe

Astronomers have identified what appear to be six massive galaxies from the infancy of the universe... The findings, publishe... in Nature, use data from the James Webb Space Telescope’s infrared-sensing instruments to picture what the universe looked like 13.5 billion years ago—a time when it was just 3 percent of its current age... Just 500 to 700 million years after the big bang...The mass of stars within each of these objects totals to several billion times larger than that of our sun, according to the research. One of them in particular might be as much as 100 billion times our sun’s mass. For comparison, the Milky Way contains a mass of stars equivalent to roughly 60 billion suns.

 

[Diamond72]

So HOW OLD IS the universe

Not my job to figure that out. I leave that sort of stuff to people with the PhD's. It always amazes me how high school drop outs claim to know more than PhD's. Science books are very scrutinized by parents and PTA associations all over the country. They are very careful about the claims they make because they know they are going to be challenged. They constantly update those books to keep them current. I have bought biiology books high school and college for $5 because one of the chapters in the book has been revised.

My brother wrote a text book for Medical Students. After a while he got tired of the updates and revisions so he let someone else do it. You have to do a lot of research and you have to know your stuff. Actually he makes $500 an hour to be a expert witness in the court. They try to tear apart his testimony anyway they can, but they fail to do that.

You can read the NASA article on this if you want to know how they determine that age of the universe.

Imagine the Universe!

This site is intended for students age 14 and up, and for anyone interested in learning about our universe.

imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov