Hey guys,
Please don't delete this thread - it's a genuine inquiry. I've recently been made aware of the sheer timeline of life on Earth, let alone the universe. Maybe you've seen this before, but this is a condensed version of life on Earth if it were a single year.
Earth’s Calendar Year - Biomimicry 3.8.
Jesus would have appeared somewhere in the last minute, 23:59. Someone argued to me that anthropocentrism makes us believe that the whole history of life on Earth, let alone the universe, is important to US. What about all the people before Jesus? What about all the animals for millions and millions of years before Jesus? What about the entirety of the universe for billions of years before humans? Was it all just for Jesus? It just doesn't make any sense to me anymore. Please help me reconcile these facts with my faith.
Hi Abraham,
Good name. Question: Do you have the faith of the first Abraham we hear from in the Scriptures?
God's word says that the righteous shall live by faith. God's word says that faith is the assurance of things not seen.
So, what am I saying? As I understand the Scriptures, prior to the creation of the earth, approximately 6,000 years ago, all that existed was the black emptiness of space. An area, if you will, of unbounded emptiness. The area that we know as the universe, but without any of the heavenly bodies that we see today 'in' the universe.
The Scriptures declare that 'in the beginning' God created the heavens and the earth. This is also confirmed for us in the law of God. God tells us in His law of the Sabbath that He created all that is in this realm of His creating in six days.
Now, science cannot prove the things of God. Science can't tell you how Jesus created wine from huge jugs of plain water, with which they were only moments before filled, into wine in pretty much the blink of an eye. Science can't tell you how a sea was parted to allow an entire nation of people to pass through, and just as quickly closed up to swallow an entire army that was hot on their heels. Science can't tell you how the sky over Bethlehem lit up with a heavenly host of angels declaring Glory to God and telling a gathering of nearby shepherds that Jesus had been born. Science can't tell you how Jesus was born, nor how he was resurrected from the dead. Despite our dependence on science, there is really quite a bit that it can't prove to us, and most all of those things have to do with God's working within His creation.
But we are humans with a thirst to 'know' all about everything around us and we study and poke and prod and can only come up with natural explanations for how things came to be, because we sure can't explain miracles. The vastness of space and the passing of many many millennia of time allows man to 'fudge' all sorts of theories about how things came to be without being able to actually 'prove' how those things came to be. I mean, no one can replicate the day the earth was created, whether 6,000 years ago or 6 billion years ago. We can only poke and prod and extrapolate and formulate unproven theories, based on 'how' things operate today in the here and now.
For example: one of the greatest complaints for the biblical timeline when we look at the natural properties of things, is that the earth must be billions of years old for us to 'see' many of the stars in the universe that we know to be great distances from the earth and we know, based on how light travels today, that light travels at a given and measurable speed. But, if the creation of the earth and the heavens was a miracle, then God could have 'stretched' the light of the stars on the day that they were created, to be seen upon the earth by man. After all, God does tell us that the creation of many of the stars was for the benefit of man to determine times and seasons. God's word declares to us that the heavens declare the glory of God! Why would God have created them, yet they weren't going to be seen for millions of years?
But remember. The righteous shall live by faith. It is my faith that the creation of the realm in which we live, from one end of the universe to the other, (although the universe is claimed to have no end) was a miracle. A miracle created by a God whose purpose was to make a place for man to live and to prosper and to grow and to love Him. As far as I'm concerned, I'm going to live by that faith. I'm going to live believing that what the Scriptures say about the things of God is the truth of God. That means, as I read the Scriptures, that the earth was created before the sun, moon and stars. That means that plants were created on the day, which would have been about 24 hours, before the sun was created. They actually lived for this short period without the light of the sun to nourish them and begin their growing upon the earth. That means that within the span of 6 rotations of the planet earth, which is how the length of a day is determined, God made the earth, the plants the stars the animals and the first man. That first man's name was Adam and 130 years after his being created, he had a son in his likeness whom he named Seth. From that beginning, as accounted in the Scriptures, approximately 6,000 years have passed upon the earth, according to the Scriptures.
By faith...I believe that.
BTW, just for fun, you should look into the Hebrew calendar. It is claimed, by many Jews, to give us an accounting of years from the day that the earth was created. Today, that calendar lists the number of this year as: 5,781. Quite astonishing actually that the Hebrew calendar does seem to confirm the understanding that the created realm in which we live, for the pleasure and purposes of a wonderful God, is about 6,000 years old.
What I do know, is that everything I know about God, came to me through God's people...Israel! God raised up a people, just as He told Abraham, for the very purpose of revealing through them, all that we know about Him. Israel was just as faithless as many of us in keeping God's laws and decrees and they suffered for that, but they did accomplish the purpose for which God raised them up from the loins of the other Abraham.
God bless,
Ted