First of all I would like to talk a bit about what my Geography professor believes. He is eighty plus years old and went into his field with intentions of proving all the evolutionists and long age theorists wrong by proving that the earth is young from evidence that they were just not looking hard enough for. He did not find a plethora of young age evidence as he had anticipated. Rather he found piece after piece of information supporting the long age supposition. He was unable to do what he set out to do and so struggled a large portion of his life trying to force the two ideas that the earth was young and old into one view of reality. He finally was able to come to a conclusion that satisfied his understanding.
He will tell you of what he found by asking a question. “The Creation, how did it happen?” He will then answer his own question before you have a chance by saying, “It happened the way it happened.” And leave it like that plopped down in the lap of your mind with your jaw hanging open and a quizzical look on your face. Well… of course that’s how it happened, but really? Is that the conclusion eighty years of contemplation is able to produce? He then went on to say that, “ As a statement of faith, I can assert and believe that life is very young. This is not a scientific statement. This is completely defensible. Science works with integrated models that utilize all data.”
So, from what he was telling me, I have had a little bit of difficulty wrapping my mind in such a way to make sense of it. I thought I got it but I couldn’t quite fit it into my world view. He is able to say that he believes in a young earth and the biblical interpretation of creation literally but is also able to do science and such as if the earth was old. He can use the data and information in front of him that suggests an old earth yet continue his faith in a young earth without compromising what he observes with ideas such as, there must be something else we haven’t discovered yet, or that there are inconsistencies that must make it untrue. He has worked in the field and has seen how forests have grown on top of forest again and again in the layers of rock. Processes such as these would have taken eons for sure. How can he do it? “It happened the way it happened. Yes, the data points to one answer but it may be wrong. And in the end if God shows me that I’m wrong? Ok, then I was wrong. I’m not worried. My love for God is not different.”
What he was telling me was so alluring because I know that I cannot ignore the evidence that points to an old earth. It’s there. But at the same time it’s an agonizing realization because I cannot ignore the evidence I have experienced which exhibits that my God is love, and how could a loving God really create using evolution and death before anyone was even evolved enough with the capacity to choose and sin and change our world from that of perfection to what we have today? I can’t believe it, for it would alter everything I know about God. My best friend would be no longer be who He is. He would be merely a figment of my imagination even. I would crumple into despair upon realization of such a perception.
So, what to do? Well, just now I was reading a book and some very interesting thoughts were brought to my attention. The notion of the age of the earth and universe was evaluated in a way that is very appealing to me and seems to help me pull things together in my mind.
In a few short paragraphs that spanned just over a page I was launched into a pattern of thought that literally allowed things to click into place. The passage was a portion of an explanation by Dr. Jerry. R. Bergman, Biology Professor at Northwest State College, in Archbold, Ohio. In it he described the creation of Adam, the first man and that he would have been created fully functioning in the very instant that he was given life with blood already flowing in is veins before his heart even pumped the first time. Without this, his tissues would have begun to die or would have been damaged. In addition to this, Adam was created as an adult appearing perhaps 30 years old even though he was just a day old. If an examination were done on his body and tests were to be run, he would have been proclaimed a 30 year old man even thought he was really a mere one day old.
This thought can also be paralleled along the age of the universe. If the earth were to exist on it’s own with out the rest of the universe around it, there would be some problems from the start in how things were intended to work. Perhaps the universe and earth were in fact created old, when it was really only young? One thought I can think of to support this is soil. Soil is weathered rock. Weathering and erosion take time. But if plants were really created on the third day then there must have been soil. Soil is so called evidence for a long period of time because we have observed our own modern soil form from rock over long periods of time. But on the 3rd day it was already there fully formed and ready to grow things. God is truly in control of reality. It’s not deceptive this way but simply a requirement for the creation to look older in order to function. So perhaps the earth looks old but really is young and maybe it is appropriate to do science as if the earth were old just as it would be appropriate to treat day old Adam as if he were 30.
But then, what about the fossils in the earth? Is it possible perhaps that Satan attempted to do some creating during the flood? If the flood happened and if there is a Satan, then he would have wanted those eight people left on earth to question the creation as God had really made it. In the Bible we can find that Satan and his angels are capable of doing miracles to a degree. In the time of Moses he could somewhat replicate God’s miracles such as the stick turning into a snake. But his miracles are not quite the same because he does not have the creative power of God. Satan is the ultimate counterfeit and he is going to do everything in his power to be like God. His goal is to be God. So then, perhaps he manipulated the earth during the flood to try and make his own creation. Perhaps evolution is Satan’s version of creation It’s clear that only God can create from nothing, so what if Satan used all the animals and dead things to concoct what we see in the earth today?
I wonder if we are missing key links to many evolutionary boundaries because there simply are not links and since Satan could not create them he did the best he could. Perhaps God created so many different types of animals that Satan had quite a bit to work from to make it seem like things evolved. There are some gaps, especially when looking at homo sapiens. There is nothing to show the link between us and other monkeys or apes. The examples that they have found are only pieces of bone that could hardly be called a skeleton that have been built up with plaster according to an idea that the link may have looked like but really this is only art and not scientific data. Perhaps God limited his creativity when making animals similar to humans to set us apart. Perhaps this was to give us a reason to hold onto our faith in the biblical creation.
Of course I can never know now what really happened. I can only speculate.
….I’m content in trusting Gods’ word. My God knows what He is doing. I need not doubt Him.
