No 22

(The Age of the Earth)

How old is the Earth? Some say millions of years, some say billions of years. May I propose thousands of years? According to Bible chronology and a six-day literal creation, the earth is no older than 10,000 years. This figure is generous because some Bible scholars say that it is no older than 6000 years; the Bible, however provides no absolute date so the task of determining the age of the earth is quite difficult. To calculate the date we must use the genealogical data in Genesis, in 1 & 2 Chronicles, in the Gospels and elsewhere. Information from Judges, 1 & 2 Kings, Daniel, Acts and other books may be included. All the genealogies begin with Adam of course and there is no way of knowing exactly when to start counting the years that went by in his lifetime; we know how old he was when he died (930 years old – Gen 5:5), we just don’t know when to begin. The Jewish calendar is based on lunar years and they have maintained the same time table since Genesis. The majority of nations in the world say that we are in the year 2004 but, the Jewish calendar says that we are in year 5764.

There is much, much more hard scientific evidence supporting a young earth that an older earth. Items such as : the small amount of helium in the earth’s atmosphere; the low concentration of chemicals in the oceans; the geological strata that we see in canyons; the lack of human skeletons in the fossil record and many others. The Bible says in Isaiah 55 : “8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” We as Christians ought to heed the words of this and other verses instead of buying into the humanistic evolutionist thinking of the world.