How Old is Earth According to the Bible?
6,000 years? 4,500,000,000 years? How long has this blue ball been bouncing? Folks have pondered the mystery of Earth's age for a long time. It's tripped Christians up quite a bit too (just sayin’). But what if it's a mystery the Bible never intended to solve? Check out this eye-opening teaching from Jimmy that will make you rethink how you read the creation account in Genesis.
What is Genesis 1 and 2 really about?
Genesis 1 wasn’t about the when and how of creation. It’s about the Who and the why! The creation account reveals that God made the world because He is preparing a place for us to live with Him as He rules from the promised land.
How have we thought about Creation?
6-Day Creationism
Young Earth Theory (roughly 6,000 years) based on genealogy accounts.
The flood brought about many significant changes that made the earth appear older.
Day-Age Creationism aka Progressive Creationism
The 6 days of creation weren’t literally 24-hour days. The creation account is a symbolic way to talk about 6 different slices of time. The earth could be millions or billions of years old.
Gap Creationism
Old Earth but still believes they were 6 24-hour days.
There was a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. During this gap, Satan and his angels fell from heaven causing a sort of “recreation” in 1:2.
Theistic Evolution
The Genesis account of creation was poetic. God created the earth. But as for the how, we look to science for answers. God acted on matter for billions of years.
This view has the most challenges by scripture.
Aside from Theistic Evolution, the first three creation theories are held by solid, bible-believing Christians and are within the realm of biblical plausibility.
Listen, you don’t have to hate the person who disagrees with you on this topic!
Your view on creation is a point of persuasion. Persuasions are different than convictions. Convictions are beliefs that we MUST agree with to be Biblical Christians. Example of conviction: Jesus is God. If we argue with that, then we’re not following scripture. But persuasion is different. We are free to hold different persuasions with fellow Biblical Christians.
Let’s look at what the Bible says…
Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
In the beginning - in the Hebrew, this term isn’t associated with time. It means “a span of time”. This span of time could be short, like 10 minutes, or quite long, like 10 years.
The point is the Bible isn’t explaining how old the earth is.
Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
Created - God, as only He can do, created something brand new and perfect.
This word in Hebrew is a literary device called a merism. A merism is a poetic device that states two contrasting ideas to allude to the whole of a thing. Example: I searched high and low for a thing. In other words, you searched everywhere.
So when God created the heavens and the earth, or the sky and the land, His point was that He created everything! The entire universe!
In other words, Genesis 1:1 could be understood to say, “In that indefinite period of time called the beginning, God created all that exists in the entire universe.”
Who was Genesis written to?
We must always ask ourselves “What did this passage mean to the original audience?”
Moses wrote Genesis to a group of people called the Israelites who at this point in time were poised on the edge of land that God had promised to their ancestors that they would inherit.
Why was Genesis written?
So that Moses could say to his people, “The same God who brought you out of Egypt to this land is the same God who prepared this land for you from the very beginning.”
Genesis 1:2 says, “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”
The Earth - This Hebrew word means land. It can also mean the whole earth, but this word in the Old Testament is primarily used to describe the promised land. In Genesis 1:2, God could be describing preparing the promised land for the Israelites.
Genesis 1:2 says, “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”
Without form and void - This sounds really amorphous and like a floating blob right? Yeah, until you discover that these same words in the Old Testament mean “empty, uninhabitable, and wasteland”.
God then spent the next 6 days ordering the land so that it would be a proper dwelling place for His chosen people.
If this is true, then this solves a lot of our questions about Genesis 1:1-2.
God created light on day 1 and then created the sun, moon, and stars on day 4. Doesn’t light come from the sun? Some have answered that God Himself may have been the light during days 1-3. That seems like a stretch though. If instead, this passage is about preparing the promised land, then we’ve already established that God had already created the sun, moon, and stars in verse 1. On day 4, God isn’t creating the sun, moon, and stars but assigning their function.
Genesis 1:14 says, “And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years”
Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night - In the Hebrew, this is actually saying “Let the lights in the expanse of the heaven be for separating the day from the night.” It assumes they exist! He’s assigning functions for them to form seasons, weeks, and years.
So for each of these 6 days, God is assigning functions to things. He’s separating water by creating clouds. He gathers water on the ground so there will be a space of land for mankind to live on in day 3. He’s placing fruit trees and plant life for man to have food. He’s calling birds to come over. God’s preparing the promised land for His people.
On day 6 of creation, God creates man and places him in this promised land. Man is tasked with ruling over creation and all of the animals. This is the climax of creation but not the conclusion!
Genesis 2:1-3 says, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.”
Why did God rest?
We have to remove our modern concept of rest from this passage. We think of naptime. As if God must be exhausted from creating all of these things! That is NOT what’s happening here! “Resting” to the Israelites would mean “settling in”. Picture a king settling onto his throne. He ain’t taking a siesta.
In other words…On the seventh day, after God had prepared the land, He took up residence and settled in to rule and reign as King in a palace called Eden.
What does all of this mean for us?
Did you know the text of Genesis 1-2 is repeated almost word for word at the end of our Bibles? Let’s take a look…
Revelation 21:1 says, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth”.
Revelation 22:2 references a garden.
Rivers are mentioned in Revelation 22:1.
Precious stones are listed in Revelation 21:19.
Gold in Revelation 21:21.
Fruit trees in Revelation 22:2.
Even man and God together (Revelation 21:3)!
Almost everything we see in Genesis 1 and 2 is included in Revelation 21 and 22. The story is being repeated. What does this mean? From the very beginning of the story, God had the end of the story in mind.
Revelation 21:3 says, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”
You were made so that you could be part of the people of God dwelling in the land of God with God dwelling with you forever!
But we can’t stop here. In Genesis 3, we forfeited our dwelling with God through Adam’s sin. It seems all is lost. But right in the middle of the story, God came to dwell in the form of a man, the man Jesus Christ.
John 1:14 states, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
When we were lost in our sins, God came and dwelt with us. In the person of Christ, He took on the punishment for our sins so that whoever would trust in God would have access to God forever.
Application questions:
In your own words, write out the purpose of man.
Why did God come down to dwell with us?
How has this challenged your view of the creation account in Genesis 1 and 2?
Dedicate some time to memorizing Revelation 21:3.
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