I do not believe you've shown a sufficient reason to introduce a time portal to suspend the physics of the universe, of which earth is a part. Beyond suspension of Prima Causa, you must now introduce a secondary cause, or a restart. I do not see enough basis to suggest this is the case, but I admit I'm lost by some of your reasoning. This looks like trying to force a square peg into a round hole.
I do not believe you have comprehended what I have said. But your last statement about fitting a square peg into a round hole may be an idea I can take up on that would help explain it. And that is to say that what is impossible for man is not impossible for God.
You say that "before" time God existed in a timeless state. Perhaps this is because in the round hole we imagine that there is a time space continuum. But God, being outside the creation box, doesn't fit into that category. So we can say something that doesn't make sense like the phrase "before time." Obviously, the adjective "before" is a reference to time itself. Therefore, there is no such thing as "before time." Yet because God is not the circle of the time space continuum, but something other, He can, in fact be "before time." And since we have a relation with Him despite our outer limits, His unlimitedness can comingle with our limitedness. And this is the mystery both of the incarnation and of the new creation we are becoming in Him as we are born again from "above."
Man, not being created, has no perception of ever having "waited" to be created, but nevertheless, if time is infinite then the odds of the concurrence of perception (x) with the point of time called now (y) is x:y. And where y is infinity, creating impossible odds.
If time is infinite, then our perception of now is thus proof that the imfinite odds are being played out right at this moment and being won by those who have perception. And I do have perception. And so do you.
It does not require an experience of waiting, since perception does not begin prior to the creation of the perceiver, but the reality of waiting that makes our perception at this point in time infinitely unlikely. Yet we do perceive that we are alive right now.
Many people on hearing me say this have said that really the odds of such perception are 1:1, not 1:infinity because the probability is being analyzed after the fact. Now already coexists with the time aloted for the human perception. And by such reasoning they discount what I am saying.
However, that is not the case. The probability existed before creation for however long God has existed and then time started rolling forth when creation began relative to creation's time and space, mass and energy. The probability from the perspective of God, rather than man, who existed for eternity past and will exist toward eternity future in whatever time continuum exists outside of creation was infinity to one that our perception would be right now at this point along the time continuum when the God time continuum, not the creation time continuum began. That is God's perspective. And then the odds of us existing at any point in time where that time appointed should coincide with now within the set of possible portions of time in a limited time-space continuum that began with creation, say some umpteen gazillion years ago with a big bang is maybe not infinity to one but umpteen gazillion to seventy or so.
This makes our existence right now highly improbable to say the least from the perspective of God, who being greater than creation is the one who would wait for our existence, but by His power doesn't have to.
Rather, he is able to bend the heavens, along with time, towards us. Thus the entire history of creation has taken place, but at the same time, along with Him, He is able to (and does) advance time on our behalf so that our lives may begin. In saying this I am not saying that the Universe only appears to be gazillions of years old but that it actually is that old - only that we as human beings did not have to wait for it to be born. Had we been forced to wait for our appointed time to be born we would not be having perception right now at this time, because either there would be umpteen gazillion years to wait for in the best case scenario, or infinity years to wait for, in the event that time, because of God, not because of creation, does extend infinitely into the past.
The age of the universe does nothing to dismantle this logic. Light is thus exactly what it seems, showing that the Universe is very old and very large, containing tremendous energy and mostly space, but also tremendous mass, just as the cosmologists suppose. I have no disagreement with them.
The formation of the world is another matter. Cosmologically, it seems to me that the earth starts out as a blob of lava at some point late in the history of this old Universe. The creation of the "heavens" thus occurs prior to the creation of the earth in two different ways. First, spiritually it exists incorporeally as part of creation. It is thus not subject to the time/matter/space system that has its limits. There is no reference to what happens and when in terms of the creation of the heavens in Genesis 1:1, only that "in the beginning" "they were created." The rest of the story pertains to the creation of the earth. And on the very first day that the earth was created so also did God create light.
Here, then is what happened - the earth spun off as a fireball from some other system, either a planet, or a meteorite, or the sun or some such thing and the earth began rotating around the sun, though it is well possible that even the earths rotation around the sun took a very long time. That is it may have floated in from outside of our own solar system and then got caught in the Sun's gravitational field and started to orbit much later.
The result is that it started out as formless. And the first thing that was created was the light - darkness having been hovering over the deep with the Spirit of God brooding there, where there was water. What this gives me the picture of is a mass of water that is on fire on one side and full of water on the other side and over the water is the Spirit of God getting ready to do something with this watery fire ball. The water, being in that portion of the ball that has no light gradually cools the surface of the whole ball so that the fire is put out, and over time there would have been a great deal of steam coming up creating a firmament in the heavens.
The fire does not produce life in the creation, which is very interesting because the fire winds up being swallowed up by the water and becoming the center of the earth, not only hot by birth, but continually hot on account of gravity's pressure. The symbol of the pull towards what is earthly, rather than heavenly is thus depicted in this beginning of earth's creation. And in all of this a day has not yet occurred because the earth has not yet been able to rotate because it is formless and void. A great deal of time thus passes while the earth cools. And to me that seems consistent with what geologists say. Thus not only is the Universe old, but also the earth is old. However, in the measure of days, these don't begin until the earth rotates because it is the Sun and the moon that are given for time and for seasons.
Right around Genesis 1:5-6 then the water covers the earth and the steam creates an expanse between the earth and the heavens and we wind up with a huge canopy of water in a very hot greenhouse environment with mists coming up wherever there is water. It is steam. The expanse was the "sky" or "firmament" and this steam canopy continued until at some point the earth was beginning to take some sort of shape because somewhere between day one and day two there was some rotation going on. As a Biblical literalist I would think this must mean that God would then count the rotation of the ocean floor which would eventually become the promised land. Now the timing of the planting of the Garden of Eden is never given because it doesn't come until Genesis 2. But the fact that the earth was rotation shows that there was a point of reference that mattered in the sight of God so that days could be measured. And that place would be where God dwelt upon the earth - that is over the waters of the deep. So a second day was completed while there was as yet no land above the waters. And again, this may have lasted a very long time, not just 24 hours, yet have been counted as a single day.
It is on the third day, Gen 1:9 that He separates the land from the sea. He does not say that He creates the land, but that He separates it from the sea. The vegetation that had been under the water also may have begun long before this in the mixture of earth and sea. And then once the land is separated, on the same day it is separated so also does the land produce vegetation of its own accord. He does not create vegetation, but lets the land produce it. See verse 11. All this happens on the third day, which again may have lasted fro millions of years and yet have been counted as a single day because the earth had not yet begun to rotate rapidly.
It is not until the fourth day (Gen 1:14) that the lights are given for signs. It is thus beginning with the fourth day that the earth seems to gain a faster rotation. The rhythm of the seasons thus marks the first stabalization of a formerly formless world whose elements were first put in place so that the world could sustain every variety of life in a very short period of time thereafter.
The fifth day the waters begin to teem with living creatures. This does not mean that there were no living creatures with life prior to the fifth day, but merely that the oceans were not teaming with them prior to that time. The birds also begin to fly and teem at that time, as well. These also may have had much older origins but did not begin to teem until the fifth day. Hence there may be found skeletal remains of both birds and fish that are much older than sixth thousand years by a constant scale, but not necessarily in terms of counting days by rotation, which the lights of day four were given for. God created the sea cratures and the birds and also says for them to multiply on that day, which again may have still yet been very long. But on this day the earth is normalizing its orbit with the Sun and its rotation may be picking up speed
The sixth day then comes and the beasts are created on the land and everything that crawls and these also multiply. The only other thing I should point out here that people usually fail to notice is that not just man, but also every beast was given not animals to eat, but the plants, as per Gen 1:29-30 ...
Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the groundeverything that has the breath of life in itI give every green plant for food." And it was so.
Notice he says this about the beasts of the earth and of the birds but not of the fish. The land beasts and birds were thus created as herbavors, as was man. After the fall, satan messed up the chromosomes of many creatures because he was given some authority over man, which included the ability to cause him to die through disease and decay in the multiplication of sin. When the earth became very barren and devoid of proper nutrition outside fo the Garden of Eden some dinosaurs, through disease and lack of nutrition became meat eaters and developed sharp teeth. The world became very dry in certain places. Agriculture became toilsome. And the dinosaurs and other beasts roamed the earth looking for meat because man was not ruling over them and was unable to provide Eden's good nutrition to them.
Archeologists have not ever found Eden. But the redemption of the animal kingdom is depicted both in the Noah's Ark and in the clinging of the animals to the crosses at Gobekli Tepe - a sign that Paradise may one be restored through Christ when He returns and when man comes to obtain dominion over the earth as he was intended.
I do not necessarily call this a gap theory. My beef is with evolution, not cosmology. In a sense this may make me a Gap supporter as I've described it above. But I don't just see extra time being placed between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, but in these other verses as well. In my opinion, this leaves much more room for a consistency with the findings of geologists, which include fossilized plants and animals that are very old inside of rocks.
A slowly rotating earth that increases in speed is something that wabbles and then reaches an equilibrium followed by some gradual decrease. The text does not provide the timing of this but recorded history, I've been told, is showing a gradual slowing down of the earth's rotation which shows it to be very young if extrapolated. But in what I am telling you here, there is not an endlessly increasing speed to look for just because the earth's rate of rotation is now decreasing, but an initial increase as the form of the earth stabilized, followed by a decrease after an equalization point of sorts.
The slowing of the earth's rotation may thus show that the earth is young, but the formula is not so easy to determine, and must instead be calibrated by other factors, not excluding the Word of God itself.
In all of this science lives in harmony with the Word of God and does not conflict with it in a single word, particularly when the anthropomorphisms are accounted for. That is, the sun does not rotate around the earth, but the earth itself rotates. But from man's perspective, (and the Bible is written for man, so why not write it often from man's perspective?), the sun rotates around the earth. And indeed, all things being relative, if something rotates, then in relation to it everything is rotating around it.
That the earth is surrounded by the universe is thus the very image God wants to reveal. It speaks of God's great love towards us that creation itself should appear this way, because in God's eyes, no matter how vast and good the heavens are, the whole Universe rotates around us. It is an expression of His great love that He condescends this way.