The Biblical Account: Genesis 1-2, Being Fair to the Text

Introduction

The first two chapters of Genesis contain the primary biblical information on creation. However, this portion of the Bible has been the object of numerous books and articles by various scholars which have placed interpretations upon the text that have little to do with what the original writer had in mind to say to his audience. Clearly, the meaning of any text of Scripture, as with any writing for that matter, has more to do with how it would have been perceived and understood by its original audience of readers rather than what any subsequent generation might force upon it based upon its unique presuppositions and world-views. The Genesis account of creation has been the subject of such “rethinking” and “reinterpreting” over the years, and this has brought into being quite a number of approaches to the narration proffered by the author of the document. Consequently, there is much controversy on the interpretation of certain features of the chapters. We shall have somewhat to say about these matters in the course of our presentation. Still, certain basic truths stand out in such a way as to be beyond controversy or quibble. Let us begin with a summary of a few of these points of general interest, and then move on to those aspects of the chapters which require further scrutiny:

1. God is the Creator. His power and will are manifested in bringing the earth and all living things into existence.
2. There is an order in the creative activities. There is a division of six days, the seventh being the original Sabbath, on which no work was done. On the third day plant life was created; on the fifth, birds and sea creatures; and on the sixth, various kinds of animals, and finally man himself.
3. Man was clearly viewed as the climax of creation. Man was last in order, but first in importance. As a living being, he shared the breath of life with other created things; but stamped with the image of God, he possessed a spiritual nature that made him unique among all forms of life.
4. The entire process of biological creation appears to have been completed in a very short process of time. This is the most controversial part, even among professed creationists, for it flies in the face of so much of modern scientific theorizing about the origin of the universe. The question whether the penman of Genesis wished his readers to believe this, based simply upon what he says about the matter, lies safely beyond dispute.

These four points, on the surface at least, appear to stand on their own merits. The text is so plain that little may be said to object to the conclusion that the writer of Genesis wanted his first readers to believe these basic facts of the case. One may argue that he either does not believe or cannot accept these to be accurate, based upon issues or information extraneous to Genesis, but he may not claim that the early readers would have gotten any impressions different than the one’s stated above in this little synopsis.

How Long The Days?

There has been considerable debate among Bible-believing conservatives, with the rise of modern scientific opinion, regarding the length of the days referred to in the creation account. And the debate is only among religious conservatives, because modernist biblical scholars take the biblical text at face value on this point. They believe that it means precisely what it says, namely, that the world was created in six literal twenty four hour days. They simply do not believe it. Liberal scholars read the account in Genesis 1-2 as an outdated cosmology dreamed up by an ancient Hebrew bard who was attempting to answer the question, “Where did the world and all that it contains come from?”Some evangelical scholars have interpreted the days of creation in such a way as to bring them into some semblance of accord with current concepts of geology. The temptation to do so is understandable (and thus to avoid a few of the major conflicts and more onerous contradictions between modern scientific theory and the Bible), but such attempts usually involve imposing an a priori structure upon the interpretation of Scripture which the normal rules of biblical interpretation simply will not permit.Such “interpretation” is not only strained to the breaking point, but also presents itself as rather foolish to the scientific community. They view it as the struggle of religious zealots to retain some meager vestige of what they consider to be their “precious religious mythology.” They are not at all impressed with the effort. Those of us who take seriously the words of Genesis are not impressed either, for we view their attempt at striking a bargain with the zeitgeist as a traitorous sellout to contemporary culture.Their efforts are neither serious Bible study nor serious science. In the end, they make of themselves “men without a country”! Evolutionists do not want them; and we do not want them. But that is the way of the compromiser in every age. The judaizing teachers of Paul’s time were rejected by churches which stood steadfast in the faith, while also being rejected by orthodox Jews who could not accept the notion that Jesus was their Christ; this, in spite of their attempted compromise: “As many as desire to make a good showing in the flesh, these would compel you to be circumcised, only that they may not suffer persecution for the cross of Christ” (Gal. 6:12). Faithful saints rejected them because of their compromise, as we must today reject those who invent compromises with the present culture. Likewise, the “Christian” gnostics attempted a compromise between the Christian system and the multifaceted gnosticism, which itself was a commingling of Greek and Oriental mysticism and worship. In the end, they too, found themselves unable to please either group. They became what Francis Legge has called one of the “rivals of Christianity” (Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity From 330 BC to 330 AD). The Apostle Paul considered their efforts at defining true wisdom as pure folly: “…avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge–by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith” (1 Tim. 5:20, 21).

Most words in any language have a somewhat flexible range of meanings, and their meaning is not determined by a lexicon so much as by the context. In Gen. 1 and 2 the word “day” (yom) has a similar range of meaning as does the English word. One may, for example, speak of “George Washington’s day” as an indefinite period of time (the context makes this clear), and this is how the word “day” is used in Gen. 2:4. But if a physician prescribes medicine that is to be taken at one dosage the first day, at a reduced dosage the second day, and so on, something quite definite is meant by his language. The context of the term leaves nothing to the imagination and little room for interpretation. “Day” is clearly used in this latter way in Gen. 1:23. The other usages in this same chapter being of the same type and utilizing the same descriptive, “there was evening and morning, a first day,” and so on, it is natural for the reader to imply that the same thing is meant in each and every instance. And it is very unnatural, if not ridiculous, to infer the existence of millions or billions of years either during the days or between the days of Genesis 1. Whichever is the choice of the “interpreter,” it is plain from a simple reading of the chapter that these long periods of time are being read into the text and not out of it! One could never find these extensive periods in Genesis the first chapter without first believing this notion that the universe is billions of years old and then inserting them between the verses–not because they are there, but because they must be placed there in order to fit one’s preconceptions. The word yom in the Bible, and its plural form yamim, in approximately 95% of its occurrences has the ordinary literal meaning. Passages such as Psa. 90:4 and 2 Pet. 3:8 are not meant to interpret Genesis 1 and 2. Their purpose and the occasion of their usage is to show God’s eternity, not to offer a new way of viewing the creation week. In fact, they have no connection at all with the creation story. With the word yom, always it is the context and the clues provided in the context that determines its meaning. In the case of Genesis 1, we are left with no doubt whatever as to the signification of the word. It means exactly what it says! It represents a normal, average, ordinary, 24 hour day–except that some very extraordinary things happened on those days!

The Trouble With Long Days

Now the modern theory of evolution is not taught in the Scriptures. Its assumptions are not the agendas which are put forward in the Word of God, nor do they at all motivate the writers of the biblical books. This is why evolutionary postulates seem so utterly alien to what we discover when we read Genesis 1-2 on its own terms. Although long “days” may appear more congenial to evolutionary concepts than 24 hour days, in fact they really only substitute new problems for old ones, this time imminently biblical rather than scientific. The “Bible believing scientist” who wishes to strike a compromise with the theories of modern science merely trades science problems for Bible problems:

1. The Bible teaches that the earth was created before the sun and stars (Gen. 1:1,16). The theory of evolution (in its full scientific context) teaches that the sun and stars existed in some cases for billions of years before the earth.
2. We Are left, for example, with plants existing for millions of years before there is sun, moon, day or night (cf. 1:11), a veritable botanical–not to mention scientific–absurdity. The theory of evolution, and any other theory that postulates long periods of time between the days of Genesis, cannot reconcile these facts.
3. Then, if insects and birds were created millions of years after plants, pollination would have been quite impossible and many plants would have died out. Once more, a scientific conundrum for such a Bible student. So the Bible will have to somehow be “adjusted” to make this fit.
4. The Bible teaches that birds were created before insects (1:20,24). The theory of evolution demands that the insects precede the birds.
5. The Bible teaches that the land plants preceded marine life (1:11,20). The theory of evolution demands that marine life precede plants.
6. The Bible teaches that whales were created before reptiles (or any other land animals), Gen. 1:21,24. But the theory of evolution not only teaches that reptiles came before whales, but that whales are in fact land animals that have returned to the water.
7. The Bible teaches that the birds were created before the reptiles (1:20,24). But evolution demands that birds be the direct descendants of the reptiles.
8. The Bible teaches that man was created before rain fell on the earth (2:5-7). The theory of evolution demands that rain fell on the earth for millions of years before man. (The terms for the plants of 2:5 are apparently used in reference to cultivated plants such as were grown in the garden of Eden, and not to the general vegetation of 1:11).
9. The Bible teaches that death and suffering are the result of sin, and that sin entered the world with Adam and Eve (2:17). But the theory of evolution demands that the process of life and death struggle had been going on for millions of years before man, and that man’s most immediate ancestors were part of that struggle.
10. The Bible teaches that man was made first, and then the woman was made from his side (2:18-22). This is the crowning blow to any attempt to reconcile the theory of evolution with the Bible. Evolution demands that the sexes evolved together.
11. Finally, if day six (when Adam was created) was thousands or even millions of years long, Adam’s age at death would have numbered in the thousands or millions of years, instead of hundreds, as Genesis 5 clearly teaches.

The clearest and simplest approach to Gen. 1 is to render the days of the chapter as comparable to our own days, to allow that those days reflect the temporal order of creation events, and to appreciate the internal harmony among the various biblical passages dealing with creation.

There is no reason to suggest that the events of Gen. 2 contradict those of chapter 1. Genesis 1 deals with creation in general, showing man’s place in the larger pattern of God’s genesis of the cosmos. Genesis 2 treats the creation of man in more detail; it represents an enlarging of what was summarily discussed in chapter 1.

It is also entirely possible and reasonable to translate certain verbs in Gen. 2 in the pluperfect tense, as does the New International Version: “Now the Lord had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air” (Gen. 2:19).All apparent contradictions disappear when this is done. Chapter one represents a summary of all six days of God’s creating, whereas chapter two focuses in upon day six, and in particular the beginning of the human race.

Gaps and Blanks in Genesis 1 and 2

Several views have been put forward in an effort to escape the obvious declaration made in the early chapters of Genesis that the world is of recent origin. Given the fact that this position is completely out of favor in the scientific community because evolution is currently the most popular of the theories of origins, several alternative views have been set before the reading public with the hope that both religion and science may be able to coexist. None of these views has gained much currency among either Christians or scientists, but for those who seem set upon the notion of “having it both ways,” so to speak, these are options which have become popular. The following are the main theories:

1. The Long Chaos or “Gap” Theory. According to this view, there is a gap in time between the inaugural event reported in Genesis 1:1 and the creative forming of those elements which were shaped in 1:2, which may consist of millions or even billions of years. During this period the original creation stood in total chaos. This hypothesis is sometimes described as the “Gap Theory.” Those who hold to this position say that the evidence of great age which is apparent from the geological record comes from this chaotic period. C. I. Schofield in his 1909 reference Bible also cited Isa. 45:18 as proof that such a time existed in the history of the earth. In fact, there is nothing either in Genesis 1:1-2 or Isa. 45:18 which remotely suggests such an extended period of chaos. This “gap” must be read between the lines of Scripture, for it is most assuredly missing from Scripture itself.

2. Creation-Ruination-Recreation Theory. This view also assumes the gap and long chaos of the previous theory but adds to this the supposition that there may have been many worlds before our own and that these are what produced the geologic column and its supposed evidence for an exceedingly ancient world. Those who hold to this position believe that God may have created and then destroyed each of them (Gen. 6-8) in its own turn. But one of the problems which this theory confronts is geologic column itself. There are in fact no such “blanks” as would be expected to appear in the fossil record on a worldwide basis prior to a subsequent creation. Science is against the view. But another rather formidable problem exists as well. First, no passage of Scripture clearly teaches the idea. And, second, the theory contradicts Exod. 20:11, which says, “in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day…” and connects the creative week with the ordinary work week of the Hebrew people. So, Scripture is also against the view.

3. The Day-Age Theory. This is one of the more popular of the “alternative theories” of understanding the Genesis account. According to this theory, each creation day is supposedly answerable to a Geologic Age represented in the various layers of the crust of the earth. A major obstacle to the acceptance of this position is the modern scientific theorist’s reconstruction of the development of life upon the earth cannot be made to correspond with Genesis 1 and its picture of the creation of living organisms. This view also is tormented by the problems associated with all “long day” systems (cf. the section above titled, “Problems With Long Days”). The writer’s use of the terms “evening” and “morning” in Genesis also contradict any approach which does not take seriously this rather obvious and simple terminology, which in all other cases would be taken at face value and not subjected to further “interpretation.” As Dr. Davis Young, a committed Day-Age theorist has acknowledged, the literal-day interpretation of Genesis is not only a “legitimate” approach to the text (p. 44), but is “the obvious view” (Creation and the Flood, p. 48). It is certainly appropriate to challenge the promoters of the Day-Age theory to produce even a single instance as a parallel in Scripture where the word “day” (yom) means an age comprised of millions or billions of years, as they assert the word means in Genesis 1.

An interesting footnote to this view is set forward in Dr. Young’s book Creation and the Flood. Young’s main Biblical basis for taking the creation days as ages is the idea that the seventh day is still going on, since God is still resting from His work of creation. This view has recently been taken up by brother Shane Scott, instructor at Florida College in an exchange with Greg Gwin in Sentry Magazine. Those who hold to this view ignore the tense of the verb “and He rested on the seventh day…” (Gen. 2:2, 3). The writer does not tell us that God “is resting” as they assert, but that “He rested.” Moreover, in Exodus 31:17 the Bible goes on to explain that God “rested, and was refreshed.” And, even though God’s rest from the original creation may be said to be continuing, that would not prove that the seventh day was continuing, much less that it continues to the present. After all, Jesus said, “My father has been working until now, and I have been working” (Jn. 5:17). And that was on a Sabbath! The Lord viewed the Sabbath of the creation week as over. Howbeit, God only rested from his original creation, for the Bible gives ample evidence of his continued work of creating (cf. Psa. 51:10; 104:2; Isa. 43:15; 65:17, 18). Additionally, Hebrews 4:9 does not provide any consolation for this mistaken view, since vs. 11 makes it evident that the author has in mind the heavenly rest, i.e. heaven itself.

4. The Literal Day-Long Gap Theory. This writer must make the admission that he has been forced to create a name for this “new” theory which has been bandied about lately. It is actually a combination of two theories, the Day-Age and the Gap Theory, although it does not present itself as either.

Really, it is just another way of espousing what has been called by some “progressive creation” or “threshold evolution.” Dr Bernard Ramm set forth this position in his influential book The Christian View of Science and Scripture as do the several writers of Evolution and Christian Thought Today (1959). The idea in the progressive creation approach is to suppose that, while life was developing over the vast span of geologic time the way evolutionists have imagined it, God intervened at various occasions to create something new, which the evolutionary process could not have accomplished unaided. “Saltatory evolution,” “macroevolution” or “quantum evolution,” “punctuated equilibrium” are all terms and ideas used by Drs. Richard B. Goldschmidt and Stephen J. Gould which have given impetus to progressive evolutionists (or should I say rather, “progressive creationists”) among the so-called evangelicals; the theories seem to give support to their claims. The following is a characterization of these writers and their position, given in the words of Dr. Henry M. Morris in his excellent book Scientific Creationism (220-221): “Details vary considerably in the exposition of the progressive creation concept by various writers, with greater or lesser numbers of creative acts interspersed in the evolutionary process according to the taste of the writer. All, however, accept the basic framework of the evolutionary geologic ages and visualize progressive creation as taking place over five billion years instead of six days. It is difficult to see any Biblical or theological advantage which the progressive creation idea has over a straightforward system of theistic evolution.”

According to the form of this view to which we recently have been introduced, popularized by Mr. Hill Roberts, each of the days of creation were 24 hour periods, but they were separated by millions or billions of years between them. What this view attempts to do is to avoid one of the very obvious and troublesome problems of the Day-Age theory, namely the fact that it places the interpreter into the unenviable position of forcing the word “day” (yom) into a strait-jacket which it never wore when it was used in Classical biblical Hebrew. The word never described long eons of time in any instance in the Old Testament, and the cases where it is claimed to have meant this (in Genesis 1) are bounded by very conspicuous contextual limitations (“evening and morning”). So Mr. Roberts thinks he avoids this difficulty by saying that the days of Genesis 1 are literal 24 hour periods which are separated by long ages of time. It is clear that he makes the identical assumption that all Day-Age theorists do, however, that the creation week must somehow be expanded to incorporate all of earth history from its primeval beginning up to and including man’s arrival. Hence, the “days” of Genesis 1 must correspond more or less to the geological “ages” as set forth in modern science text books. This theory ignores the evidence offered by scientists for a relatively young earth, some of which is provided elsewhere in this article, and the difficulties created by the assumption that the creative week was more than six 24 hour periods immediately following one another. See the section titled, “The Trouble With Long Days” above. Each of these difficulties is precisely the same, whether the days are longer than the 24 hour periods they claim to be, or the week is longer than the 144 hours it claims to be.

5. The Pictorial Day Theory. As per this approach to the first two chapters of Genesis, the “six days” are merely a device to picture what went on at the beginning. It is not at all literal, nor was it ever meant to be. The writer’s presentation is topical and logical, but not chronological in any fashion. Here the “days” are merely taken as literary devices and not serious descriptions of what happened or in what time-frame they occurred. All it seems to say is, “God did it.”

6. Theistic Evolution. Theistic evolution is a form of reaction against mechanistic or atheistic evolution. This view suggests that God’s method of “creation” might really have been what modern scientists call “evolution.” It makes an earnest effort to get God involved in the process of the evolution of the cosmos and of the living world. Two types of such evolutionists are found. First, there are those who consider it a continuous process with God always present and working out the process constructively through natural laws. Then there are those who believe in what we might call “God at the beginning only”; in this instance the processes are left to themselves after an original creation. This view, of course, assumes from the start that evolution actually did happen, and that scientists have proven it so conclusively that some vestige of the biblical tradition must be salvaged from the catastrophic effects of this torrent of new and damaging information. In reality, neither of these assumptions is correct.

The Pattern of Creation

The “Kinds”

The word translated “kind” (min) here apparently refers to the general reproducing groups of organisms (1:21, 24-24). The term probably does not refer to the term species in most cases, but it may refer to what we today call genera, families, orders, or other taxonomic categories. The word may have no exact twentieth-century equivalent. And, while there may be some uncertainty as to what is precisely meant by “kind”, it is plain that the word does have a definite and fixed meaning. One “kind” could not transform itself into another “kind.” We can infer that all the changes which take place (and we admit that some do take place), happen only within the boundaries set by the creative hand of God, because organisms reproduce “after their kind.”Hence, no change is capable of causing an organism to move to a kind different from that of its ancestors. On the evidence of these texts, and given the fact that evolution’s advocates have not been able to produce examples of the very thing which they are obligated to prove, there are many very substantial reasons to reject the evolutionary account of man’s origin:

1. Eve was formed from the body of Adam.
2. Adam was molded by divine transmutation from some type of earth.
3. Descendants of the original man and woman (as well as other creatures) must have been subject to change in a limited sense by diversification, which would account for such things as racial variations.

This clear teaching of Genesis 1 is accepted and confirmed in other parts of the Bible. For example, consider 1 Corinthians 15:38, 39: “…God giveth…to every seed his own body. All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.”

“Create” and “Make”

There are two types of creative activity recorded in the Genesis account. One type is that described by the word “create’ (Hebrew bara). This has the meaning of ex nihilo creation, fiat creation, ‘creation out of nothing’. Only three works of real ‘creation’ are found in Genesis 1:

1. One is the creation of the basic elements of the physical cosmos–space, mass and time (1:1).
2. The second is the creation of human consciousness, also associated with the breath of life (1:21).
3. The third is the creation of the image of God in man (1:27); this represents either the same thing that is alluded to in 1:21 or an enlargement of the notion.

In the other instances, God’s work was to “make” (asah) or to “form” (yatsar), i.e. out of pre-existing matter the final product, as a potter would shape his vessel on the wheel out of clay. It was never left to its own devices, i.e. to form and shape itself. God was the Former and the Fashioner. He did not leave the elements of His creation to fashion themselves over vast stretches of time. One looks in vain in Genesis 1 for these vast eons of time and the Ages which they represent in the geological time table as described in modern science text books. Hill Robert’s remarks about the word “make” are indicative of one who believes that the elements were left to themselves over these vast expanses of time, and thus they formed themselves into what became of earth as the result of their processes: “Now once again God lets this environment He’s created do what He created it to do: make (assah’) (sic) the surface of the Earth. The earth is going through a process of cooling as it stabilizes…How long was this? How long did it take God to pronounce His will? Not long. A day is surely sufficient. How long did it take the Earth to comply with His decree? However long it takes…” (A Harmonization of God’s Genesis Revelation and His Natural Revelation). In this writer’s humble opinion it is very difficult to avoid the term “evolutionist” to describe Mr. Roberts and his views, since it is apparent that he believes in a process of “evolution” (whether he would agree to the use of the word or not) of the inanimate world through natural processes and subject to natural law. If God used such processes over vast ages to bring the inanimate world to an advanced state, why would it be unthinkable that He used the same or similar processes to bring the animate world to an advanced state of development? When you put the two together, the result is called “theistic evolution.”

Creation Outside Genesis

The creation is also discussed elsewhere in the Bible. Each of the following texts, along with a host of others like them, makes a contribution to our overall understanding of God’s remarkable work in the original genesis of the universe as well as our own world.

God existed before the creation: Psa. 90:2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

God Himself created heaven and earth, and not another: Isa 45:12 I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens; and all their host have I commanded.

God gave order and usefulness to His creation: Isa 45:18 For thus saith Jehovah that created the heavens, the God that formed the earth and made it, that established it and created it not a waste, that formed it to be inhabited: I am Jehovah; and there is none else.

God made everything beautiful, so everything has a place in the creation: Eccl. 3:11 He had made everything beautiful in His time; also he hath set eternity in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.

God made everything good, including man; but man has tarnished His image: Eccl. 7:29 Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.

God’s creation is temporal, while He Himself is eternal: Ps 102:25-27 Of old didst thou lay the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.

God owns His creation, they are for His pleasure: Ps 89:11-12 The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them. The north and the south, thou hast created them: Tabor and Hermon rejoice in thy name.

God created it in six days, answering to the days of an ordinary week: Exod 20:8-11 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is a sabbath unto Jehovah thy God: (in it) thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore Jehovah blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

In six days the creation was complete, for one day God rested: Exod 31:16-17 Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.

God created all things through the Word, His Son: John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made.

The Son is the image of God, creator of all things, and in Him all things continue to exist: Col 1:15-17 who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and unto him; and he is before all things, and in him all things consist.

God continues to give us life and breath and all things, i.e. His work continues: Acts 17:24-25 The God that made the world and all things therein, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is he served by men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.

God’s creative activities assure us today that He is yet active in our world: Psa. 121:2 My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

Logic and Symmetry of the Creation

1. Purposeful progress — Each stage of the creative process was an appropriate preparation for the succeeding stage and all of them for the ultimate purpose of providing a suitable home for man.

2. Appearance of Age — The creation was mature from its inception. It did not have to grow or develop from simple beginnings. Adam and Eve were fully formed adults; stars and sun gave light immediately, though the spaces between the stars were many light years and would normally require eons to cross that space, etc. It was so because God willed it to be so and spoke it into existence. The fact that under “ordinary circumstances” it would not be so has absolutely nothing to do with the creation. Even though some operate on the assumption that such a miraculous intervention would be an aberration in a “uniformitarian” world, it was so: “And God said, Let there be…and there was…”

3. It Was Different From Our World — “The world that then was” (2 Pet.3:6) was vastly different from our own. The Firmament (raqia) about which Genesis speaks may have been a vast blanket of water vapor (vapor canopy) which produced a greenhouse effect, maintained mild temperatures, prevented rainfall (2:5), prolonged life and decreased the aging-process.

Evidence The Genesis Account Is Accurate

Evolution requires an old earth and an old solar system. Without billions of years, virtually all informed evolutionists will admit that their theory is dead. But by hiding the “origins question” behind the veil of vast periods of time, the unsolvable problems become difficult for scientists to see and laymen to imagine. Our media and text books have implied for over a century that this almost unimaginable age is correct, but practically never do they or the professors examine the shaky assumptions and growing body of contrary evidence. Therefore, most people instinctively believe that things are old, and it is disturbing (at least initially) to hear evidence that our origins are relatively recent. Walter T. Brown, Jr., Ph.D. authored an article on the “Evidence That Implies A Young Earth And Solar System” published by the Institute for Creation Research in March of 1981. Brown wrote: “Actually most dating techniques show that the earth and solar system are young–usually less than 10,000 years old.” Listed below are just a few of these evidences as they are provided in Brown’s insightful essay (his citations are also provided):

1. Atomic clocks, which have for the last 22 years measured the earth’s spin rate to the nearest billionth of a second, have consistently found that the earth is slowing down at the rate of almost one second a year.(a-c) If the earth were billions of years old, its initial spin rate would have been fantastically rapid-so rapid that major distortions in the shape of the earth would have occurred.
2. Direct measurements of the earth’s magnetic field over the past 140 years show a steady and rapid decline in its strength. This decay pattern is consistent with the theoretical view that there is an electrical current inside the earth which produces the magnetic field. If this view is correct, then 25,000 years ago the electrical current would have been so vast that the earth’s structure could not have survived the heat produced. This would imply that the earth could not be older than 25,000 years.(a)
3. Over twenty-seven billion tons of sediments, primarily from our rivers, are entering the oceans each year. Obviously, this rate of sediment transport has not been constant and has probably been decreasing as the looser top soil has been removed. But even if it has been constant, the sediments which are now on the ocean floor would have accumulated in only 30 million years. Therefore, the continents and oceans cannot be one billion years old.(a)
4. The atmosphere has less than 40,000 years worth of helium, based on just the production of helium from the decay of uranium and thorium. There is no known means by which large amounts of helium can escape from the atmosphere. The atmosphere appears to be young.(a)
5. The rate at which elements such as copper, gold, tin, lead, silicon, mercury, uranium, and nickel are entering the oceans is very rapid when compared with the small quantities of these elements already in the oceans. Therefore, the oceans must be very much younger than a million years.
6. Evolutionists believe that the continents have existed for at least 1 billion years. However, the continents are being eroded at a rate that would level them in a relatively short 14 million years.(a)
7. The occurrence of abnormally high gas and oil pressures within relatively permeable rock implies that these fluids were formed or encased less than 10,000 years ago. If these hydrocarbons had been trapped over 10,000 years ago, there would have been leakage which would have dropped the pressure to a level far below what it is today. (a)
8. There have been no authenticated reports of the discovery of meteorites in sedimentary material.(a) If the sediments, which have an average depth of 11/2 miles, were laid down over hundreds of millions of years, many of these steadily falling meteorites should have been discovered. Therefore, the sediments appear to have been deposited rapidly; furthermore, since there have been no reports of meteorites beneath the sediments, they appear to have been deposited recently.
9. The rate at which meteoritic dust is accumulating on the earth is such that after 5 billion years, the equivalent of 182 feet of this dust should have accumulated. Because this dust is high in nickel, there should be an exceedingly large amount of nickel in the crustal rocks of the earth. No such concentration has been found–on land or in the oceans. Consequently, the earth appears to be young.(a-c)
10. If the moon were billions of years old, it should have accumulated extensive layers of space dust-possibly a mile in thickness. Before instruments were placed on the moon, NASA was very concerned that our astronauts would sink into a sea of dust. This did not happen; there is very little space dust on the moon. Conclusion: the moon is young.
11. The sun acts as a giant vacuum cleaner which sweeps up about 100,000 tons of micrometeoroids per day. If the solar system were just 10,000 years old, no micrometeoroids should remain since there is no significant source of replenishment. A large disk shaped cloud of these particles is orbiting the sun. Conclusion: the solar system is less than 10,000 years old.(a)
12. Since 1836, over one hundred different observers at the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the U.S. Naval Observatory have made direct visual measurements which show that the diameter of the sun is shrinking at a rate of about .1 % each century or about 5 feet per hour! Furthermore, records of solar eclipses infer that this rapid shrinkage has been going on for at least the past 400 years.(a) Several indirect techniques also confirm this gravitational collapse, although these inferred collapse rates are only about 1/7^th as much.(b-c) Using the most conservative data, one must conclude that had the sun existed a million years ago, it would have been so large that it would have heated the earth so much that life could not have survived. Yet, evolutionists say that a million years ago all the present forms of life were essentially as they are now, having completed their evolution that began a thousand million years ago.
13. Short period comets “boil off” some of their mass each time they pass the sun. Nothing should remain of these comets after about 10,000 years. There are no known sources for replenishing comets. If comets came into existence at the same time as the solar system, the solar system must be less than 10,000 years old.(a-c)
14. Jupiter and Saturn are each radiating more than twice the energy they receive from the sun.(a-b) Calculations show that it is very unlikely that this energy comes from radioactive decay or gravitational contraction. The only other conceivable explanation is that these planets have not existed long enough to cool off.(r)

All dating techniques, to include the few that imply an old earth and an old universe, lean heavily on the assumption that a process observed today has always proceeded at a known rate. In many cases this assumption may be grossly inaccurate. But in the case of the many dating “clocks” that show a young earth, a much better understanding usually exists for the mechanism that drives the clock. Furthermore, the extrapolation process is over a much shorter time and is therefore more likely to be correct.

Dr. Brown’s References

1. a) Arthur Fisher, “The Riddle of the Leap Second,” Popular Science, Vol. 202, March, 1973, pp. 110-1 13, 164-166.

b) Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory, Earth Motions and Their Effect on Air Force Systems, November 1975, p. 6.

c) Jack Fincher, “And Now, Atomic Clocks,” Readers’ Digest, Vol. III, November 1977, p. 34.

2. a) Thomas G. Barnes, Origin and Destiny of the Earth’s Magnetic Field (San Diego: Institute for Creation Research, 1973).

3. a) Stuart E. Nevins, “Evolution; The Ocean Says No!,” ICR Impact Series, No. 8 (San Diego: Institute for Creation Research).

4. a) Melvin A. Cook, Prehistory and Earth Models (London: Max Parrish, 1966), pp. 10-14.

6. a) Nevins, pp. ii-iii.

7. a) Cook, p. 341.

8. a) Peter A. Steveson, “Meteoritic Evidence or a Young Earth,” Creation Research Quarterly, Vol. 12, June, 1975, pp. 23-25.

9. a) Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism (San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers, 1974), pp. 151-153,

b) Steveson, pp. 23-25.

c) Hans Peterson, “Cosmic Spherules and Meteoritic Dust,” Scientific American, Vol. 202, February, 1960, p. 132.

11. a) Paul M. Steidi, The Earth, the Stars, and the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979), pp. 60-61.

12. a) “Analyses of Historical Data Suggest Sun Is Shrinking,” Physics Today, September, 1979, pp. 17-19.

b) David W. Dunham, et.al., “Observations of a Probable Change in the Solar Radius Between 1715 and 1979,” Science, Vol. 210, December 12,1980, pp. 1243-1245.

c) Irwin 1. Shapiro, “Is the Sun Shrinking?”, Science, Vol. 208, April 4,1980, pp. 51-53,

13. a) Thomas D. Nicholson, “Comets, Studied for Many Years, Remain an Enigma to Scientists,” Natural History, March, 1966, pp. 44-47.

b) Harold Armstrong, “Comets and a Young Solar System,” Speak to the Earth, ed. George F. Howe (New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1975), pp. 327-330.

c) Steidl, pp. 58-59.

14. a) H.H. Aumann and C.M. Gillespie, Jr., “The Internal Powers and Effective Temperature of Jupiter and Saturn,” The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 157, July, 1969, pp. 169-172.

b) “Close Encounter with Saturn,” Time, November 10, 1980, p. 78.

c) Steldi, pp. 51-52, 55.