The astronomers say the visible universe is 13.8 billion years old,
the vast distance can prove that.
Then, how valid is the Church to insist it is only 6000+ years old?
Here's the long answer:
Many believe that Genesis 1, the story of creation, is a myth or just a symbolic allegory. Even some Protestant churches have started to adopt this same world view of Genesis 1. Yet others still believe that it is a factual account of creation. There is an interpretation of Genesis 1 that is in complete agreement with science, with the exception of the theory of evolution.
We have two accounts of creation, Genesis 1 and the universe itself as Psalm 19 states.
Psalm 19: 1 The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
The skies display his craftsmanship.
2 Day after day they continue to speak;
night after night they make him known.
If the same God that created the universe also inspired the Bible, then Scriptures and nature should be telling us one and the same story. Scientists and theologians may disagree but God’s creation and God’s Word, when correctly interpreted, must agree.
Scientific observations suggest that the universe and the earth are very old. Everything from the size of the universe in relation to its rate of expansion, the distance of stars in relation to the speed of light, radioactive decay rates of atoms, fossil records in relation to geologic strata and other phenomenon all give testimony to the old age of creation. Currently understood scientific observations and calculations suggest that the universe is about 13.8 billion years old.
There are those who believe that the word “day” in Genesis 1 must represent an actual 24 hour period of time. Another theory is that the word “day” represents a long period of time. This is called the day-age theory. The Hebrew word for day is “yom” and comes from the Hebrew root word meaning “to be hot”. It has various other translations depending on the context and has been translated as Time (Gen. 4:3; Is. 30:8), Day as opposed to night (Gen. 4:12), Year (1 Kings 1:1; 2 Chron. 21:19; Amos 4:4), Age (Gen 18:11; Gen 24:1; Joshua 23:1, 2; Gen 47:28), Ago (1 Samuel 9:20), Always (Deuteronomy 5:29, 6:24, 14:23, and 2 Chronicles 18:7) and Season (Genesis 40:4, Joshua 24:7, 2 Chronicles 15:3).
Since God is timeless, one day or 1 billion years are the same to Him. He is not a God who needs to be in a hurry and He is not a God of deception. If the universe has every appearance of being old it is probably because it is old and not because God just made it to appear that way.
It is easy to see why so many people have difficulty believing that Genesis 1 could be anything other than a myth. In addition to the time discrepancy of 6 days of creation versus the scientific estimate of 13.8 billion years, the following list describes what are perhaps the biggest problems associated with the interpretation of the Genesis 1 narrative of creation:
1. And the earth was without form and void. Genesis 1: 2.
How can an object be without form and void?
2. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Gen 1:2.
Why?
3. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. Genesis 1: 3.
How can there be light without a source of light?
4. ...and God divided the light from the darkness. Gen. 1: 4.
What could that possibly mean?
5. And the evening and the morning were the first day. Gen. 1:5
How can there be a day before there is even a sun and a rotating earth by which a day is measured? The Genesis 1 narrative itself states that God appoints the sun and moon for the keeping of time (Genesis 1: 14), but the Genesis 1 account does not describe the creation of the sun, moon and stars until day 4.
6. God creates vegetation on day 3 but the sun is not mentioned until day 4. Obviously, plants on earth depend on the sun. Why would God make plants before He made the sun? Of course, those who argue that a ‘day’ represents 24 hours would argue that going without sunlight for only one day would not be detrimental for plant life. As already mentioned however, scientific observations of the universe are consistent with great age.
In reading the narrative, it would seem intuitive to assume that it was written in chronological order. However, it appears to be written as a ‘chronotopical’ narrative. The Author of the narrative deemed it more important to finish discussing specific topics or themes once they were introduced rather than follow a strict chronological account of events. This is done elsewhere in the Bible. The events written in the four gospels do not always follow the same sequence. It seems that relating events in strict chronological order does not carry the same priority to Biblical authors as what it does for us today.
Another rather obvious example of this occurs in the book of Revelation. A description is given in Revelation 12: 1-2 of a woman ‘clothed in the sun and the moon under her feet’ giving birth. Given the overall message of the Bible, few would argue that this represents the Virgin Mary giving birth, which occurred over 2000 years ago (See Appendix A for more on this topic). The following two verses of Revelation then describe a ‘dragon’ which sweeps a third of the stars away with his tail and throws them to the earth. This dragon is identified as the devil in verses 7 to 9 and the ‘stars’ that were swept away refer to the fallen angels. The ‘stars’ are identified as angels in Revelation 1: 20.
In Revelation 12: 1-4 the author describes the virgin giving birth prior to the fall of Satan, even though the order of events as understood throughout the Bible would indicate that Satan and his angels fell from Heaven long before the birth of Jesus. Although the book of Revelation is about future prophecy, the author describes past events such as the virgin birth and the fall of Satan and his demons, thus clearly interrupting chronological sequence.
Keeping this in mind, the following is an interpretation of the Genesis 1 narrative that is in complete agreement with science and astronomy.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Genesis 1: 1 KJV (King James Version).
This is an introductory statement. God creates time (“In the beginning”), space (“the heavens”), and matter (“the earth”).
Day 1
Genesis 1: 3
“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light”
The scientific theory of the Big Bang came into existence as a result of Edwin Hubble’s observations almost a century ago. After a century, scientists are still unable to explain what caused it. Genesis 1:3, written 3500 years ago explains it very well. When God said, “Let there be light”, there was light.
It should be kept in mind however, that prior to scientists proposing the Big Bang theory, this profound Biblical statement of the first words of God as recorded in the Torah, made very little sense to anybody. How can there be light without a source of light? The Big Bang theory explains that very well. Scientists, on the other hand cannot explain the cause of the Big Bang. As such, God’s Word, and observations of His creation through scientific endeavors, together help to explain each other, each one filling in unexplained gaps from the other.
In keeping with the ‘chronotopical’ view of the creation narrative, the second verse of Genesis 1 discusses ‘matter’ (the ‘earth’). The following 3 verses discuss ‘light’. It certainly reads in a much more coherent and poetic way as it is written but it may not be in strict chronological order.
If the first few verses of the Bible are rearranged in the following way, it may reveal a more chronological sequence of events. Verse 2 is placed in the middle of verse 4:
Genesis 1: 1-5
1
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth:
3
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4a
And God saw the light, that it was good:
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
4b and God divided the light from the darkness.
5
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
This is now completely consistent with what science describes. A big bang with all matter and energy formed in an instant but “
without form and void” (Genesis 1: 2a). The actual Hebrew words for this phrase are ‘tohu’ and ‘bohu’. Tohu means formlessness, confusion or unreality, and bohu means emptiness.
According to scientific theory, all matter and energy were created in an instant of time at the Big Bang. The theory states that everything was so hot that even the particles that make up atoms (electrons, protons and neutrons) were unattached and free floating. It is what scientists call ‘plasma’. The ‘earth’ (matter) was “without form and void”. ‘Plasma’ explains the phrase “without form and void” very well.
Genesis 1: 2b
“…and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”
Scientific theory suggests that it took 380 000 years for the plasma of subatomic particles to expand and cool to the point where electrons finally started to combine with the other subatomic particles to form hydrogen atoms. The scientific prediction is that until that time,
no light was able to escape from the plasma because the ‘free floating electrons’ would absorb all the photons of light. If that scientific theory is correct then truly
“darkness was upon the face of the deep” just as Genesis 1:2b states. This scientific theory has been in existence for less than a century but the book of Genesis was written about 3500 years ago.
Genesis 1: 2c.
“And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
Plasma, after the big bang, was hot, extremely dense and would have had a fluid consistency. As such, the term ‘waters’ of Genesis 1: 2 probably isn't referring to the waters of Earth’s oceans. The word 'waters' is probably referring to the fluid plasma state of matter and energy after the Big Bang. One interpretation then, is that the Spirit of God was moving over something far more significant than the surface of earth’s oceans. He was moving over the expanding face of the fluid plasma or ‘waters’ that consisted of all of the matter and energy that would ever exist in the whole universe.
God related the story of creation to Moses in a way that he could understand without having to give Moses an advanced course in physics and astronomy while at the same time maintaining a true account for more scientifically advanced generations to come.
So why was the “Spirit of God moving over the surface of the waters”? The answer comes in verse 4.
Genesis 1:4
“And God divided the light from the darkness.”
In the mid 1960’s, scientists discovered that the universe is full of microwave light, coming from every direction of the sky. The scientific theory is that this is the light that finally was able to escape from the expanding ocean of plasma 380 000 years after ‘the big bang’ when electrons finally attached themselves to hydrogen nuclei and no longer absorbed all of the light. Scientific theory suggests however that this microwave light should be completely uniform in the same way that water is uniformly dense, or that air in a room is uniformly dense. It would be against the laws of thermodynamics, fortunately, for air in a room to suddenly start to clump together, leaving some people suddenly gasping for air. But this is exactly the type of unnatural phenomenon that scientists have to explain when they view photographs of the ‘cosmic microwave background radiation’.
Instead of being uniform as the laws of thermodynamics would dictate, the photographs demonstrate an unexpected mottled appearance with light and dark patches. This is as unexpected and inexplicable as air in a room suddenly starting to clump together. Physicists and astronomers have not been able explain this in any way that would allow them to derive scientific equations to describe it or show why it happened. If there is a God, and if in fact the Genesis narrative is true, then it would be expected that scientific observations and theories would not be able to explain events where there is or has been direct Divine intervention.
Genesis states that, “God divided the light from the darkness”. Since there is no natural scientific explanation, it has been suggested that the photographs of the mottled microwave radiation are in fact evidence of God “dividing the light from the darkness”1. Those who have believed in the Genesis account of creation would have been at a loss to understand and explain this phrase until now. Once again, God’s Word and scientific observations of His creation, when viewed together, do not contradict but rather support and explain each other.
The first ‘day’ would then look like this:
God said, “Let there be light”, and there was light, or what scientists refer to as the Big Bang. Immediately all the matter and energy that will ever exist in the universe is formed in an expanding ocean of extremely hot and dense liquid-like plasma of free floating electrons and subatomic particles. In its plasma state, matter was “without form and void” and “darkness was upon the face of the deep”.
Then the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters (which can now be understood as the expanding ocean of plasma) and “separated the light from the darkness”. This can now be seen as the mottled appearance of the cosmic microwave background radiation. It would seem that the act of “dividing the light from the darkness” is the process by which God started to draw matter together to form stars, planets and galaxies, and that started on day one.
The universe is expanding but scientists were not sure about this until the past century. A portion of the Bible written 3000 years ago also agrees that the universe is expanding:
Psalm
104: 2b You
stretch out the starry curtain of the heavens;
Day 2
Genesis 1: 6-8
6
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
The word ‘firmament’ simply means ‘space’. The original Hebrew word is ‘raqia’ which means ‘expanse’. Scientists have a theory that most of the water on earth came from comets which for the most part consist of ice. They can’t confirm this theory for sure, but this theory would not be inconsistent with God “dividing the waters which were under the firmament (expanse) from the waters which were above the firmament”.
There is a ‘cloud’ of comets called the Oort cloud that forms a giant sphere around our solar system and is estimated to extend as far out as three light years from the sun (Thirty trillion km. or three quarters of the distance to the next nearest star). All comets that we see from time to time originate from this cloud where they orbit our solar system of planets.
There are oceans of water here below and the Oort cloud up above consists of comets made of frozen water and there is a very large expanse separating them – and that sounds a lot like day 2 as described in the Bible. Scientists are unable to visually confirm the presence of the Oort cloud or to directly test their theory of the origin of the water on earth.
The ‘Ancient Book of Jubilees’ states, “And on the second day He created the firmament in the midst of the waters, and the waters were divided on that day – half of them went up above and half of them went down below the firmament.” 2
The usual interpretation of Day 2 is that the moisture and clouds in earth’s atmosphere represents “the waters above the firmament”. The firmament is supposed to “divide the waters
under it from the waters
above it”. Atmospheric water is
in the atmosphere, not above it. Also, the water in the atmosphere is estimated to be only 0.001% of the total water on earth, not half. Perhaps the Oort cloud is where all that water is, as opposed to atmospheric clouds.
Scientists have discovered that the water composition of comets in regards to the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen is almost exactly the same as that of ocean water. Comets are estimated to be up to 80% water and the total mass of the Oort cloud is estimated to be 1 – 2 times the mass of the earth. At one time it was estimated to be several hundred times the mass of the earth. Perhaps as scientists learn more, future estimations will come closer to that given in the Book of Jubilees. (The mass of the oceans is about 1/4400 of the total mass of the Earth – Wikipedia: Earth).
It would be more consistent with the narratives given in Genesis 1, the Book of Jubilees and scientific observations to consider the Oort cloud to be the “waters above the firmament” (Genesis 1:7), rather than atmospheric moisture.
Scientists are starting to question whether all the water on earth came from comets. They are hard pressed to explain why such a large percentage of the Oort cloud would fall to earth. Again, according to the creation narrative, this was by Divine intervention, and as such, scientists would not be able to explain it. They may come up with theories in word, but not equations and formulas based on the known laws of nature that would predict that such a thing should have happened.
The European Space Agency sent a satellite they called Rosetta, to comet 67P/C-G. In August 2014, when it was within 100 km of the comet, scientific equipment on board the satellite unexpectedly discovered that the comet was producing music in the form of magnetic oscillations.
A recording of the comet’s music can be heard at:
https://soundcloud.com/esaops/a-singing-comet
Oddly enough, King David wrote the following approximately 3000 years ago:
Psalm 148: 3
Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light.
4
Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens. KJV
Psalm 98: 1
Sing to the LORD a new song; for he has done marvelous things. KJV
The comets actually sing in their own language – a language in the form of magnetic oscillations. It’s curious that although the space agency states that they were not expecting this phenomenon (they were not looking for a ‘new language’), and were completely surprised by it, they had named the satellite ‘Rosetta’ (after the Rosetta stone). The rest of the mission was considered a failure. The Rosetta satellite discovered a new song in the language of comets. Maybe the mission was a success.
Day 3: Genesis 1: 9 - 10
9
And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
Scientists also agree that the earth was originally completely submersed in water.
Again, God seemed to favour King David by revealing details of this to him when he wrote the following:
Psalm 104: 6 You clothed the earth with floods of water,
water that covered even the mountains.
7 At your command, the water fled;
at the sound of your thunder, it hurried away.
8 Mountains rose and valleys sank
to the levels you decreed.
9 Then you set a firm boundary for the seas,
so they would never again cover the earth.
In the New Testament the Apostle Peter writes this:
2 Peter 3: 5bAnd he brought the earth out from the water and surrounded it with water.
This can be taken to be true in two ways. God brought the earth out of the ‘waters’ of the expanding ocean of plasma and then surrounded it with the waters that we know covered the whole earth at one time. Or this could mean that God brought the earth (meaning the dry land) out of the waters that covered the earth and surrounded the earth with the waters which are above the firmament (meaning the Oort cloud).
Day 3 is also when God created all plant life according to the Genesis narrative.
Genesis 1: 11- 12
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
Day 4
The 1st chapter of Genesis discusses the creation of the sun and moon on day 4 of the narrative which of course makes one assume that this is the time in which they were supposed to have been made. The creation of stars and solar systems had been on-going from day 1 when God "divided the light from the darkness". Instead of interrupting the narrative of the 2nd and 3rd days with more details about the creation of stars, the creation narrative waits to summarize these details until it discusses the 4th day, which is when God
finishes creating the stars.
Many authors use this same literary technique when they want to describe different events which are going on at the same time. This again would be consistent with a ‘chronotopical’ approach. The fact that there are stars that are younger than the earth is in agreement with scientific observation. To believe that the Earth is older than the sun and all of the stars and that the sun didn’t exist until after God created vegetation on earth is inconsistent with scientific observations of the universe. It should be noted that the King James Version and the original Hebrew introduce day 4 in Genesis 1: 14 with the words “
And God said…” Notice that day 4 is not introduced with the words “
Then God said…”
Some will say that God could have made all of creation in six literal days and just made it to have the appearance of great age. I don’t disagree with this except for the fact that God as described in the Bible is not a God of deception.
Genesis 1: 14 - 19
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Days 5 and 6
As far as day 5 and 6 are concerned, the Bible narrative describes the creation of sea creatures, land animals and man by God, as opposed to evolution. Evolutionists cannot explain the ‘Cambrian explosion’, but the Bible narrative of days 5 and 6 explains it very well.
Genesis 1: 20 - 23
20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31 And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
The creation of Adam and Eve occurred almost 6000 years ago. The Hebrew calendar is said to have begun on the day Adam was created3. This makes allowance for days one to five of creation being billions of years long. Many books and articles have been written over the debate of whether creation was six literal 24 hour days or whether it was billions of years. This book was not written to debate the point of an old earth creation. It was written from the point of view that the Word of God and the witness of creation must both be true and coherent since God is the Author of both. The simplest solution is to interpret a ‘day’ as a long period of time rather than to come up with complex and convoluted explanations for all the scientific observations indicating that the universe is billions of years old and not just six to ten thousand years old.
Hugh Ross, Why the Universe is the Way it Is. Baker Books © 2008.
- Ken Johnson, Th.D. Ancient Book of Jubilees. © 2013.
- Age of the Universe (aishcom) http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48951136.html
