How Old Is The Earth?

coffee4u

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I was just wondering because we're in the year 2020,.. but isn't that just counting the years after Jesus was born?

The age of the earth may be completely different to the creation upon it. I think this is an important thing to keep in mind.

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Perhaps there is a gap here?
2 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.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

It doesn't say that each verse happened immediately one after the other.
They could have, but I don't see that it had to.

I am not advocating for the well known 'gap theory' That is something else again.

God created the heavens and the earth 'in the beginning'. It could have sat empty and dark for however long God wanted it to. A few seconds? Minutes, billions of years? Or if this was before time perhaps those are the wrong questions to be asking, perhaps time can't be determined at all. I don't bother with how long the earth might have sat or not, I only bother with the creation upon it and that starts on verse 3.
 
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SkyWriting

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I was just wondering because we're in the year 2020,.. but isn't that just counting the years after Jesus was born?

All the descriptions of Creation in Genesis describe the earth as ancient, as does literally say so.
 
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Xenophon

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But no two estimates were ever identical. So they were not from God.
As if they need to be? No two bodies of water are identical, so water is not from God?

Where in the Greek (as the septuagint is the authoritative version) is the earth described as ancient, and how come in the 2000 years of Christian scholarship and the several thousand years of Judaic scholarship is there no conception of that - and instead endless polemics against such ideas (which are of pagan source.)
 
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johneb

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"How Old Is The Earth?"

During creation when did God create time? God created Adam and Eve both had the appearance of age, as they were not born and grew up like us. So as God created the Earth and the heavens could not God create these things with a appearance age as well?
I try not to get to hung up about this, as it distracts me from my goal, which is knowing God though his Son Jesus and the Holy spirit.
Sorry about the bold type???
 
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coffee4u

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"How Old Is The Earth?"

During creation when did God create time? God created Adam and Eve both had the appearance of age, as they were not born and grew up like us. So as God created the Earth and the heavens could not God create these things with a appearance age as well?
I try not to get to hung up about this, as it distracts me from my goal, which is knowing God though his Son Jesus and the Holy spirit.
Sorry about the bold type???

The B bolds and unbolds and the T symbol sets size, 4 is normal size.

3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

I believe God created time on the in verse 3-5
 
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johneb

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That's okay, but why the bold?
I guess I hit the wrong button, good thing my finger is not on nuclear button. Which reminds me of Old Joe that doesn't know where he is most of the time. It's not easy keeping your witts after two brain aneurysms.
 
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April_Rose

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I guess I hit the wrong button, good thing my finger is not on nuclear button. Which reminds me of Old Joe that doesn't know where he is most of the time. It's not easy keeping your witts after two brain aneurysms.







Who's Joe? You? I thought it was John.
 
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SkyWriting

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I was just wondering because we're in the year 2020,.. but isn't that just counting the years after Jesus was born?

And Adam seems to be a grown up as well as the garden, built on dirt, producing food.
So there is no documented creation date. Even the number obsessed people end up with
different totals but they don't add in the age of Adam.
 
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miamited

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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
 
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jamesbond007

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One of things I am trying to resolve now is the Biblical timeline with the evolution timeline. I became interested when I heard that Moses (1500 BC) would have been considered a prehistoric person. We have people before Moses such as Abraham (the first Jew?), but the Bible states Adam and Eve were the first humans. This was around 2500 BC. If you look at the type of clothing they wore as animal skins, it would be similar what stone age people wore, but the stone age was billions of years before. I think the idea that people lived in caves during the stone age is myth, but it's hard to dispel because this is what we have been taught from childhood. We do not think of Adam and Eve nor Moses as prehistoric figure, but according to the Bible they are.

There is no resolution between the two timelines, so I figure only one can be right.

Here is the Biblical Timeline that I am going by -- The Biblical Timeline

This is what I have for the human history timeline (evolution) -- Human History Timeline
 
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coffee4u

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I think the first mistake it trying to place a timeline on it. The Bible only mentioned people of note, those who are important for us to know. It does not show everyone and it is not a calculator.

Adam and Eve were the first created people and there is no such thing as 'cave men'. There are however people who live in caves. A cave would make a handy dry shelter. There are people groups to this day who still live as hunters and gatherers. It doesn't make them 'primitive' in the sense that they are less intelligent. All people have been intelligent from the moment Adam became a living being. have you heard of the Sentinelese? They live on an island in the Bay of Bengal in India. They are hunter gathers who use bows and they will shoot to kill anyone who comes near. They are not the only ones.
Intelligence or a time line is not based on appearance or life style.
 
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